The poet, political activist, and constitutional theorist Francis Reginald Scott (1899-1985) was a catalyst in the struggle for Canadian political, legal, and literary independence; for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Canada; and for Quebec nationalism.

Francis Reginald Scott was born in Quebec City in 1899, the son of a well known poet and Anglican clergyman, Canon F. G. Scott. The young Scott inherited his father's social concerns and his poetic interest in the Canadian northland. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, he received a B.A. in 1922 and a B. Litt. in 1923. He then returned to Canada, where he graduated from McGill University with a B.C.L. in 1926. As a young man who came of age in the 1920s--a strongly nationalist period in Canadian history--Scott became a catalyst in the struggle for Canadian political, legal, and literary independence.

A shaping component in F. R. Scott's nationalism was...