This study of forty-two anthologies of English-Canadian poetry published between 1864 and I96O reveals some of the processes whereby the canon of English-Canadian poetry has been defined, from the earliest anthologists'  attempts to bring together good Canadian verse to the latest anthologists' attempts to define in their selections a body of verse that may be considered the Canadian poetic tradition. With the introduction of "modern poetry" and the assertion of the modern critical sensibility, the period 1928 to 1954- was turbulent. New poetry was being written and admitted into the anthologies and the anthologies presented earlier Canadian poetry in new lights. A concluding analysis of the anthology representations of Roberts, Carman, Lampman and Scott shows that each anthology, through its selection of discrete poems, presents both a version of the tradition as a whole and a profile of changes in the reputations of individual poets.