What was the general Canadian attitude to ‘Nature’ in the early years of Canada’s existence as a nation?

The history of development of the urban environment in Canada is the history of the development of the Canadian discourse on nature and technology. The experience of wrestling with a rigorous northern climate and wilderness conditions have shaped the Canadian imagination. Since the time of the early settlers the idea of the forest therefore has struck in the Canadian mind so that it has become a symbol. One of the most nostalgic pastimes of a Canadian tourist is to stay in a log cabin in the northern wildness. This is the dream of the original explorer.

One way of looking at Canadian literature is to see it as an ongoing dialogue with the wilderness, an obsessive, repetitive effort to relieve (and perhaps reframe), that moment of original encounter that the settlers had with nature. Major John Richardson who fought with the British Army against the Americans in the War of 1812, wrote a novel of the wildness : Wacousta or the Prophecy’s Tale of the canadas (1832). It is a Gothic extravaganza, a historical romance set in 1763 and describes the last Indian uprisings led by the famous chief Ponties against the British Forts. The two forts Richardsdon describes are, outposts of civilisation lost in terrifying and alien wilderness, desperately defending the rituals of British culture”,