Knister had against Canadians was that they were 'colonials'. He ably described their cultural colonialism when he wrote of the "ideal Canadian litterateur" as a man who has been educated as an English gentleman, though certain New England Universities will pass; in addition he should know about Canada as accurately and sympathetically as possible from the point of view of an omniscient tourist who, after all, knows better things. We want not so much to be different as to have had different experiences about which we can talk at tea as suavely as anybody. It amounts in fact to our wanting to be American or English with an added background which will lend chic. Verse written by someone with such an outlook could not help but be unrealistic in its treatment of Canadian subjects. One need only look in issues of The Canadian Magazine from the period to find such poetry in abundance. Knister also attacked the conservatism of Canadian taste, especially as it was reflected in the magazines. Arthur Stringer, in his opinion, was forced to become a writer of murder mysteries because the Canadian reading public refused to accept the innovative poetry in Open Water. Another example he cited was Pratt, whose poem "The Witches Brew" could not find a Canadian publisher until after it had appeared in The London Mercury. Knister himself was unable to find a Canadian magazine which would print his work: My poems and stories were so Canadian and came so directly from the soil that Canadian editors would have nothing to do with them. The injustice was perhaps, trifling; the quite modest merits of my efforts were adequately rewarded by the audience, fit though few, of the "little" magazines [sic]. But they weren't morally subversive, nor eccentric mannered, these attempts. It seems gruesomely significant that not a Canadian editor would have anything to do with them. ("Canadian Literati," 162) Implicit in his comments was the conviction that this conservatism was a direct result of colonialism and the dulled appetite for sublimity. His bitter feeling that he was one of a generation of writers who were being ignored is obvious. Although many of Knister's contemporaries were equally unhappy with the state of Canadian poetry, only he dared to attack established writers by name. In "Canadian Letter" Knister dismissed Carman, Maclnnis, Leacock, Roberts, and D.C. Scott with the comment that "their contributions were made at