My Passion is collecting Old & Rare Books and vintage magazines Here is a great article on Canadian book collecting The story of printing in Canada goes back to 1751, when a New Englander, Bartholomew Green, brought his printing press to Halifax. The Halifax Gazette was the first newspaper to be published in Canada. The first printing to be established in Quebec was not until 1764, which had a late start in contrasts to our Americans who started publishing in 1640. Newspapers were imported too, English and American. They came not very quickly but seemed to have interested a number of people. The early presses were used to print handbills, forms, pamphlets, and even small books for the local authors. While readers found it difficult to buy books in Canada, there was even less opportunity for authors to have them published here. By 1815 there were a few private libraries that mainly consisted of classical, religious, and political writings gathered without special regard for edition or other factors important to Canadiana book collecting in this field. The period from 1800 to 1847 was call the golden age of discovery where sailing ships were searching for the northwest passage in the Artic by Franklin, Ross, Parry, Lyon, Back, Simpson, and Rae. The Sir John Franklin's (1786-1847) Narrative of the journey to the shores of the polar sea, in the years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 (1823); and Narrative of the second expedition to the shores of the polar sea in the years 1825, 1826, and 1827 (1828) were recently sold at auction in 2001 for under $2000 each. Under priced in terms of there true worth in relation to our geographical knowledge of the region and literature of the Artic. George Heriot's Travels through the Canada's (1807) is a rare book and quite valuable piece for Canadiana book collectors. Colonel Samuel Strickland wrote Twenty-seven Years in Canada West; his sister, Mrs. Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush; and another sister, Catherine Parr Traill's first book, The Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters from the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrated of the Domestic Economy of British America (1836), and Canadian Wild Flowers, Painted and Lithographed by Agnes FitzGibbon (1868) . In Lower Canada , Francois-Xavier Garneau, stung to the quick by Lord Durham's remark that French Canadians were "a people of no history and no literature" composed his history of Canada, the first considerable work in French-Canadian literature. In poetry, a beginning was made by Charles Heavysege (1816-1876), a Montreal journalist whose Saul ran into three editions; by Charles Sangster (1822-1893), who published two volumes of poems and lyrics; and by D'Arcy McGee and Joseph Howe, both of whom combined poetry with politics and oratory. But there was little in this pre-Confederation literature which the world would not willingly let die; and it was only after Confederation that a Canadian literature, in any real sense arose. The gol