The imperial heritage in Canadian prairie fiction

Canadians are inclined to be apologetic about their colonial past. Take, for example, D.C. Jones's description of the United Empire Loyalists who fled the rebellious Thirteen Colonies: 'For many of the Loyalists Canada was simply the prize of war, the booby prize. ' Jones here expresses the excolonial's embarrassment over his country's failure to fight for its independence and yet emphasizes the distinctive feature of Canada's colonial past - that its slow emergence into nationhood was the result of a deliberate choice between clear alternatives, to remain in the British Empire or to join its cousins to the south in a free republic.