SOURCE: Haliburton, Gordon MacKay. “The Planter Roots of Thomas Chandler Haliburton.” Dalhousie Review 71, no. 3 (fall 1991): 292-309.

In the following essay, Gordon MacKay Haliburton traces Thomas Chandler Haliburton's ancestry back to Boston and Scotland and argues that his views were influenced by the fact that he and his compatriots were all representative members of the third generation of the Planter community in Nova Scotia.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the first Canadian writer to enjoy international acclaim, was, like all of us, moulded by a combination of genetic inheritance and by the environment around him in his early formative years. What were these influences in his case? Scholars and writers have examined them and have given answers to illuminate the reality they perceive, a reality conforming to their particular interests or arguments. Some detect as the chief element in forming his “Tory” personality, the Loyalist legacy of suffering and sacrifice imbibed...