Canadian Literature, when traced from when the first settlers arrived in Canada until today,
            
             has changed not only in its literary form but also in its aspirations.
             As one might expect from an immigrant community, the first literary forms were epistolary in
            
             nature, describing conditions and climes in this strange new world to relatives and friends
            
             back home in Europe.
             Frances Brooke, in 1766, took advantage of this accepted form of writing and created a novel
            
             called 'The History of Emily Montague' which described this new land from several different
            
             viewpoints. By utilizing her characters as individual narrators, Frances Brooke was able to
            
             provide the Europeans with descriptions that varied from a both a perspective of gender and
            
             of experience.
             Other early immigrants wrote in another widely popular form of literature, '
            
             the exploration narrative.' These novels originated from hastily written notes and reports
            
             written by the early explorers and surveyors. They provided very detailed illustrations of
            
             the flora, fauna and geographical environment. Although they also provided a description of
            
             the hardships and privatations that their authors endured, these observations were often
            
             only included by inference and as a backdrop or as a reinforcement for their technical and
            
             geographical data.
             These 'exploration narratives' also introduced a detail of the aboriginal culture to the
            
             Europeans. They reported this culture and how that culture differed from that of the
            
             Europeans. Samuel Hearne was one such writer. In 1769 he wrote a record of his journey from
            
             Hudson's Bay to what he referred to as 'The Northern Ocean.' During his journey he relied
            
             heavily upon the knowledge and support of those natives, and perhaps because of this
            
             reliance, or perhaps because of the documentary format of his record, did not take too great
             ...