CANADA. A DESCRIPTIVE POEM
BY CORNWALL BAYLEY

Edited by D.M.R. Bentley


Acknowledgements


I wish to express my deep gratitude to the University of Western Ontario for its support through its Academic Development Fund of the project of which this edition of Canada is a part, and to acknowledge with particular appreciation the help of Richard Shroyer.  Without his computing skills, his shrewd insights, and his unstintingly generous gifts of enthusiasm, advice and time the Canadian Poetry Press Series of editions of Early Canadian Long Poems would not exist.
    To the staff of the National Library and the Library of Parliament, Ottawa, the Baldwin Room at the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, the Archives Nationales du Québec, and the D.B. Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario, thanks are due for making available materials pertinent to the edition.  For assistance with research on Bayley and his poem, I owe great debts to J.J. Talman, E.J. Devereux, E.W. Pitcher, Patricia Kennedy, Barry Hoffmaster, Louise Latour, Kit Hargin, Denise Heffron, Peter Raby, John, Jane, Helen and JOANNA Burnett, and above all, John Rupert.  For assistance with proofreading and for work on the computing aspects of this edition, I am very grateful to Susan Bailey, Joan Binnindyk, Judith Catton, Jennifer Hall, and, again, Denise Heffron.  To J.A.B. Somerset, the Chairman of the English Department, T.M. Lennon, the Dean of Arts, and T.J. Collins, the Provost, at the University of Western Ontario, I am multitudinously grateful for facilitating and encouraging my research on Canadian poetry over a long period.  To the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, I am grateful for the Research Grant that I enjoyed during the year in which this edition was brought to completion.  Finally, and as always, I wish to thank my wife Susan and our children Michael, Simon, and Diana for their support and affection; theirs are four “hearts” that would undoubtedly “bear the palm away” to Canada. [Page 9]