W.L. Morton – författare

Here is a modern, authoritative, and readable history of Manitoba written by a well-known native of that province. "My native province," says Professor Morton, "has always seemed to me an unusual and fascinating place, possessed at once of a history of great interest and a deep sense of history."The narrative begins with the early year of the seventeenth century when the fur trade around Hudson Bay began, and covers every step in the growth of Manitoba from those days to the present. Interwoven are the essential themes of immigration and patterns of settlement, conflict and compromise among the many national and religious groups in Manitoba, the development of a distinctive economic and social structure, the growth of political consciousness, and the deep-seated conflict between the east-west and north-south axes.

A striking and significant phenomenon of the Canadian political scene immediately following World War I was the rise and fall of a third party. Professor Morton describes and analyses the background and political history of this movement, and gives a graphic description of western economy and politics generally which will assist all readers towards a better understanding of the Canadian west and its problems.The Progress party represented essentially an agrarian revolt against what western Canada considered to be Canadian economic policy and Canadian political practice. As seen through western eyes, our economic policy at the same seemed a metropolitan economy, designed by control of tariffs, railways, and credit to draw wealth from the hinterland and countryside into the industrial and commercial centre of Canada. Political practice appeared in much the same light. The classic national parties took on the guise of instruments used by the vested interests of metropolitan Canada to implement this national policy. Distrust and dissatisfaction mounted over the first twenty years of the century and impetus for independent political action on the part of the farmers increased proportionately.While the western grievances were shelved during World War I, party lines were weakened by the coming to power of the Union Government, and allegiance in the west was easily turned away from the unsatisfying traditional parties after the Union Government was defeated. By 1919-20, organized farmer groups were definitely committed to a programme of political action.

The Harmony of Verse is a study of rhythm and metre, a thought-provoking analysis of those qualities which make up a formal aspect of poetry. It is an interpretive essay rather an exhaustive treatise.Most works on metre in English poetry make, or seem to make, little attempt to relate theory to the actual sound of poetry as read by the ordinary sensitive and practised reader. In this study the author makes that connection: he regards the poem on the printed page as speech-music; spoken freely it becomes musical speech. He constantly listens to the verse he is describing and the result is a theory and system of notation to fit what he actually hears. The basic premise of his system is that individuals have their own autometre: that the positions of major and minor stresses, for example, are not imposed according to some inflexible, universal system but vary with the poetical ear of each reader. In this essay on prosody, a field which has often suffered from pedestrian treatment, the author offers an original and successful study of tonal patterns and the phrasing of verse.