‚Prepared to do, prepared to die.‛ Evangelicalism, Imperialism, and Late-Victorian Canadian Children’s Publications

Abstract. Canadian churches took seriously their commitment to nation and empire-building in the welter of late-Victorian imperial commitments. This particular study explores one unique and little-known expression of Cana-dian Methodist and Presbyterian imperialism: the infusing of children with imperial virtues. What is striking for the purposes of this essay is the confla-tion of family values, evangelicalism and imperialism. The lived experience is decidedly imperial in these children’s publications. Evangelicalism’s em-phasis on family was an important motivating factor in nurturing young imperialists, and the editors of these publications believed that imperial val-ues were synonymous with Christian values, and that girls and boys who embodied the ideals of their papers would become good mothers, fathers, citizens, as well as defenders of empire. While it is difficult to determine how many children took the imperial message to heart, the fusion of family values and imperialism reveals just how enmeshed evangelicalism had be-come with late-Victorian imperialism