<p>?The Canadian News is Unimportant? analyzes the anomaly of Canada in the British Empire in the nineteenth century by seeking to understand the role that Canada played in the production of empire abroad and understanding of empire in the metropole. The study is situated between the periods of the American Civil and the Canadian confederation movement and explores metropolitan newspapers and parliamentary debates to develop the themes of imagined identities, paternalistic language, and rhetoric of empire. Such explorations illustrate just how difficult it would become for the British metropole to reconcile their constructed image of a dependent and child-like colony with the reality of increasing Canadian autonomy. This study expands imperial historiography by showing just how important the Canadian news was in the constructions of the British empire in the nineteenth century.