Broadly speaking the purpose of this Atlas is to tell the history of Canada visually, to unfold it by means of a series of maps. For each map an explanatory note is provided, but the vital thing is not the note but the map. Read the note and then study the map. As an occupation it is both profitable and fascinating. Maps may seem at first to be rather dead things, but in reality they are very much alive. Each has a story to tell—a story of human achievement, of discovery, of exploration and adventure by land and sea, of conflict between man and man or man and nature, of missionary enterprise, of the gradual development of political, social, and commercial institutions. The story is there. Read it and make it your own. Map reading has the immense advantage that when one has grasped the story each map has to tell, it becomes firmly planted in the memory. One not only knows that certain things happened, but can see how they came about.