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Book Review
| Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Environment, Society, and Culture in the Trent Valley. By Neil S. Forkey. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003. 164 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $49.95.Parallel Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies. By John M. Findlay and Ken S. Coates, eds. Seattle: University of Washington Press and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002. 302 pp. Maps, index. Cloth $50.00, paper $22.95.
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| Neil Forkey's short monograph on Upper Canada (which inexplicably has a picture of Quebec landscape on its cover) begins hesitantly, affirming his bioregional approach to environmental history, discussing broader historiography in Canadian and environmental history, and the area's landscape. Much has been written about early English settlement in Upper Canada, so his study is a reworking and a synthesis of previous studies. In discussing the transition from aboriginal to pioneer society he utilizes William Cronon's approach successfully. The original aspects of the book begin in Chapter 4 when he discusses a controversial mill project in the swampy area of Scugog Lake and how, over time, and after much controversy, that area became integrated into the larger Trent Canal project that linked the pioneers to larger markets. His analysis reveals much about the approach of administrators to the use of water resources in the growing colony. |
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He discusses land transportation changes in a case study of one colonization road developed to attract settlers to northern areas bordering the Canadian Shield. The policy was a failure, as he and others have indicated, but Forkey's analysis of the changing alliances of lumbermen, settlers, and policy makers subtly explains how the northern development policy was implemented, and why it suited different interests at different times. Both case studies of water and land transportation issues reflect the ways in which this pioneer society developed, how its environment was manipulated, and how aboriginal and European peoples adapted to the changes. |
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The evolving culture of the region is portrayed through the writings of early naturalist, amateur scientist, and pioneer in many senses, Catharine Parr Traill. A remarkable woman, and an early ecologist, Traill loved her new environment and was sensitive to the physical and cultural changes taking place during her long life of over ninety years in the Trent Valley during the nineteenth century. Forkey places her in the broader context of British and American nature writers. He concludes that while her space was specific, many changes she described were international trends in European colonies—the frontiers for immigrants—that were permanently transformed socially, culturally, and environmentally. |
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The second book, Parallel Destinies, contains eleven essays, only two of which are environmental history, written by well-known historians Joseph E. Taylor III and Donald Worster. The book emerges from a conference about the Canadian-American border in the Pacific Northwest, probably funded to celebrate closer Canadian-American ties in the era of globalization. The theme is the porous border in the past, which Ken Coates implies may be less important in the future. Thus the book's premise is already outdated, as heightened border security issues, the war on Iraq, and NAFTA disputes—in which American policy has been "do as we say and not as we do"—have heightened tensions between the United States and its smaller northern neighbor. |
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Daniel Marshall's essay details the sickening massacre by American miners of natives in the British territories trying to protect their turf during the 1858 Fraser River gold rush. John Lutz writes a fascinating, analytical, and original piece on the annual migrations of northern Pacific coast natives southward and explains their behavior in relation both to the changing economy and their cultural adaptation to it. Patricia Wood writes a weaker essay with few comparative features on the irrelevance of the border to Italian immigrants in the Canadian west, using racialist language this reader found offensive. Jeremy Mouat's essay is also about Canada only; he reminds readers that railway competition in the region had as much to do with capitalist profit as it did with the creation of a nation, a point stressed by other historians, and he recognizes that this approach may seem platitudinous, which it is. Galen Perras's diplomatic history of the "asymmetrical partnership" is amusing in that the past Canadian-American dialogue echoes present-day discussions. The debate over west coast defense from Japan between 1934 and 1942 depicts what must be, for American policy makers, the consistently maddening preoccupation in Canada with sovereignty in quiet times, when the American government insists that if Canada cannot protect its territory, then it will have to do so, only to have Canada revert to being the friendly cooperative ally in times of crisis. Carl Abbott reviews long-term economic change in the area to evaluate the idea of Cascadia as a binational region, about which he is skeptical. Chad Reimer reviews the historiography of the Pacific Northwest from the Oregon Treaty to the present, noting that the border has been an important, frequently contested theme, as has nationalism on both sides. Michael Fellman, an American-Canadian who misspells the name of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, recapitulates with wit Trudeau's truism that it is difficult to sleep with the American elephant, but Canadians have learned to do so. |
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In the two environmental history essays, Taylor displays his command of his field of research and concludes that historically the west coast salmon fishery never has been managed well or rationally, partly because of the spatial nature of the resource, but largely because of uncontrolled fishing by Canadians and Americans, increasingly sophisticated technology that has depleted the resource, and no cooperation by the two countries to participate in a sustainable, more limited approach to the salmon fishery that will enhance the number of salmon. Donald Worster, in his always erudite, sparkling prose, writes a meditation on different Canadian and American approaches to the environment, which result in divergent policies, with the Americans seeming to be more committed to wilderness preservation, and the Canadians undertaking a more muted effort to try to achieve sustainability, or stewardship within their society. |
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Environmental history in Canada is a less developed field of study than in the United States, so both of these books are welcome additions, especially Forkey's as a new environmental history monograph. The book of essays, in including several chapters on the environmental history theme, is a good model. The link between the books is that both portray how land use, resources, and culture are intertwined, and Parallel Destinies is a reminder to environmental historians that politics matters. |
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Canada has a different climate, topography, and history than the United States, and while American historiography is drawn on to analyze some themes in Canadian environmental history where there are parallels, new issues are emerging that are unique to each country. The increase in Canadian environmental history writing will contribute to a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the two North American peoples and their relationships to the changing environment on the continent. |
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Reviewed by Laurel Sefton MacDowell. Ms. MacDowell is a professor at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Renegade Lawyer: The Life of J. L. Cohen (University of Toronto Press, 2002), and currently is writing an environmental history of Canada. |
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