François-Xavier Garneau of Quebec City was the first major Canadian historian to write in either English or French. In his one great work, a liberal-nationalist history of Canada (4 volumes, 1845-1852), he took the story of French Canada only as his central theme, beginning with the earliest explorers and ending with the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1840. This latter event was regarded by Garneau as an affront to French-Canadian national hopes. His interpretation of it determined the thrust of his entire work, which was intended to provide French Canadians with a written history of which they could be proud. This view of history influenced subsequent historical writing in French Canada for more than a century. The best-known modern historian writing in the Garneau tradition was Lionel Groulx, and he, too, has had influential successors.

Garneau, the son François-Xavier and Gertrude Amiot-Villeneuve Garneau...