 The first issue appeared in summer 1959 to skeptical reception because of a general belief that Canada had no national literature; some critics predicted that the journal would run out of material after only a few issues.Initially, editor George Woodcock intended that "Canadian Literature" would be fully bilingual in French and English, but due to the lack of French submissions, after ten years of publication French-language material never rose above 10% of an issue's content.At the time of its foundation, "Canadian Literature" was the first and only quarterly entirely devoted to the discussion and criticism of Canadian writing and literature.