Results tagged “nationalism”

In 1921, the Ontario Department of Education selected Charles William Jefferys to illustrate George M. Wrong's Ontario Public School History of Canada, a textbook being published under Lorne Pierce's Ryerson Press imprint. Upon their first meeting, the English-born artist—whose family had bounced around the northeastern U.S. and Ontario before settling in Toronto around 1880—and Pierce, a former Methodist minister, hit it off immediately despite a gap in age of twenty-one years. In Pierce, Jefferys found a kindred spirit who shared his ambition to excite nationalist sentiment among Canadians. He wanted to popularize Canadian history as an epic and romantic story by bringing historical characters to life through his illustrations. The long friendship and collaboration between artist and publisher, which resulted in a number of books, proved so successful that Jefferys's images became instantly recognizable, Canadian icons that shaped more than one generation's understanding of Canadian nationalism.