In Canada, at different periods of her history, we find all those causes existing that produce speech mixture in its various degrees from the union of two wholly divergent idioms, as in the case of the French and Indian, down through forms of language that are more or less closely related according as they belong to the same general stock or are contained, as special varieties, within the domain of a single common type. The conditions, furthermore, of antagonistic racial difference, of incompatible stages of civilisation, of strong variations of traditional culture, of divergence of social customs, of well marked and persistent dialect varieties, give to the problem here a many-sidedness and a kaleidoscopic coloring which are indicative, from the beginning, of its complex nature.
