| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.3

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The War on Weeds in the Prairie West: An Environmental History. By Clinton L. Evans. Calgary, Alberta Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2002. xviii + 309 pp. Illustrations, plates, notes, bibliography, index. Paper $29.95.
This slender, pleasantly illustrated volume is perhaps the most complete examination of weeds in North America. Clinton Evans has given us more than the title implies, for this is a social and environmental history of weeds as integral components of British agriculture as it was transplanted to Ontario, and eventually onto the prairies.	1
Evans sees striking parallels between weeds and humans. Both are migratory, adaptable, aggressive colonizers of ecological niches. He aptly views weeds and humans as interdependent agents of North American agricultural expansion. Weeds were more than just "plants out of place." They were, and remain, plants that are highly competitive in disturbed environments—plants that thrive in agricultural settings. Both farmers and weeds were immigrants. Most weeds were European in origin and pre-adapted to "Europeanized" agriculture in Canada. Nearly all of the noxious weeds were imported by farmers themselves, along with the seeds they brought to their new farms. Weeds were literally and figuratively part of the cultural baggage of prairie settlers.	. . .

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