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a broken frontier
ECOLOGICAL
IMPERIALISM IN THE CANADIAN NORTH
LIZA PIPER AND JOHN SANDLOS
ABSTRACT
Ecological imperialism is one of the most enduring models of past global environmental change.This essay argues that the application of ecological imperialism as an explanation for New World environmental change should not be limited to temperate regions where the process was so spectacularly successful. Using the Canadian North as a broad regional template, our analysis suggests that consideration of both the failures and the limited successes of ecological imperialism are critical to a more complete understanding of global colonialism. Although the Canadian North was never subject to the broad ecological transformation that occurred further to the south, attempts to colonize particular regions did occur in tandem with the successful introduction of alien species. Ecological imperialism need not be conceptualized solely as an all-encompassing process of biological transformation. Instead, efforts to colonize peripheral nontemperate regions can be understood as a product of a limited application of ecological imperialism in a New World environment.
| IN HIS NARRATIVE ACCOUNT of the expedition sent in the summer of 1899 to secure a treaty with the Cree and Chipewyan people who inhabited lands that would become part of northern Alberta, the Secretary of the "Half-Breed" Commission, Charles Mair, suggested that the lower reaches of the Athabasca River offered ideal conditions for agricultural settlement within Canada's northern territories. "The future of the Athabasca," Mair wrote, "is more assured than that of Manitoba seemed to be to the doubters of thirty years ago. In a word, there is fruitful land there, and a bracing climate fit for industrial man, and therefore its settlement is certain." Most importantly, there was, according to Mair, "ample room" for new immigrants who were willing to work the land; the time had come to extend the reaches of Canada's agricultural frontier into the fur trapping and trading frontiers of the high northern latitudes.1 Mair's vision of a taiga forest and tundra landscape transformed into a productive and fertile plain was repeated time and time again in government survey reports and popular narratives over the next two decades. For the promoters and dreamers of northern expansion, the time had come to extend the farming and settlement frontier to the northward reaches of the country.2 |
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In retrospect, the general enthusiasm for the agricultural potential of Alberta's northern forests appears to be largely misplaced. Extreme winter temperatures, the risk of summer frost, the long distances from major markets, the variable quality of the soils, and a relatively brief growing season ensured that there was little land suitable for large-scale agriculture in the Canadian Prairie Provinces above the fifty-sixth parallel. As one moves farther north and east to the vast Arctic tundra region, extreme temperatures, continuous permafrost, and nutrient deficiencies in the soils suggest that agricultural production of any kind is a futile undertaking. In central and eastern Canada, the exposed granite rock and thin acidic soils of the Canadian Shield have allowed the northern boreal forest of spruce, pine, and balsam to extend as far south as the upper Great Lakes, largely confining farming activity to the most southern reaches of Ontario, a band along the St. Lawrence River corridor, and parts of the Atlantic Provinces.3 |
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