Print capitalism, languages-of-power, and the development of widespread literacy have been understood to be key historical forces in the construction of imagined national communities(Anderson). In Canada, the convergence of the newspaper publishing industry, English as a language-of-power, and literacy set the stage in the late 19th century for the emergence of an imagined Canadian nation, embedded both in Anglo-Protestant ideals of identity and British imperialist aspirations. Frontier College, in providing literacy and citizenship education to laboring immigrant men on the resource frontier, was the quintessential embodiment of the grand project of Anglo-Canadian nation building. Based on research in the Frontier College fonds of the Canadian National Archives, this article discusses the nature of the imagined community constructed in the literacy programs of Frontier College from 1899 to 1933, the means by which this image was promoted, and the particular conceptions of race, class, and gender that shaped it.
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