|
|
|
REVIEWS
AWFUL SPLENDOR: A FIRE HISTORY OF CANADA
|
by Stephen J. Pyne
|
| University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver and Toronto, 2008. Photographs, maps, tables, notes, index.548 pages. $85.00 cloth. $34.95 paper. |
| Stephen Pyne, the leading authority on global fire, has published yet another book, telling Canada's story through the lens of grassland and forest fires from the time of retreating glaciers to our present moment of global warming. Awful Splendor recasts Canadian history "with fire as an organizing conceit" (p. xxv). The author offers up a series of "nested narratives" of climate and climatic zones, of dramatically differing fire regimes, of the conflicted world of dominion and provincial politics, and of the bureaucracies and ideas that shaped what Canadians thought about fire. The result is a sweeping analytical narrative outlining the complex interactions of humans and fire across the amazingly diverse Canadian landscape. |
1
|
|
From a very early time, as they did elsewhere around the globe, humans began to reshape the biotic landscapes in what would become Canada. As glaciers retreated northward, humans colonized post-glacial North America sometime around 11,500 BP, carrying with them in memory and practice "a power no other creature possessed. They could kindle fire" (p. 7). For several millennia thereafter, fires waxed and waned in accord with cooling and warming climatic conditions. The fires that best define Canada today, the fire-prone boreal forest that embraces much of continental Canada, were put to the torch by the indigenes to make their surroundings better suited to human survival. Pyne points to their central strategy for using the torch: "to control the geography of foraging and hence influence the migration of herds" (p. 35). |
2
|
|
All of this changed with European contact, after which cultural disturbances increased exponentially. Cutting and burning brush to make way for pastureland and plow dramatically increased the human-ignited fires that burned across the land. The capstone to the settler infernos in the eastern provinces was New Brunswick's great Miramichi Fire of 1825, a symbolic and defining event that scorched some 5,000 to 8,000 square miles and more than 3.8 million acres before fall rains and freezing temperatures stilled the embers. The Miramichi holocaust, Pyne contends, "became the standard and type by which, for a century, all other colonizing fires were measured" (p. 131). |
3
|
|
Like their counterparts in the United States, Canadian policymakers slowly groped toward federal and provincial standards to cope with the threat of fire. Because they had administrative responsibilities for their lands and natural resources, first the eastern and then the western provinces exercised increasing authority in coping with fire. Even when the dominion government mandated specific fire management practices, the provinces largely controlled their own destiny because the federal parliament refused to provide funds to enforce its own regulations. This schizophrenic duality has characterized Canadian fire policy from its inception to the present day. For most of this history, the provinces remained suspicious of federal initiatives, a mindset that assured persistent quarreling. |
4
|
|
This is an important book for interior and coastal forest districts of the Pacific Northwest. British Columbia, the province in closest proximity to the American Northwest, possessed a similar geography — a rainforest west and a drier east — conditions, according to Pyne, "that set the pattern of its fires" (p. 313). As it did in the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, fire policy in British Columbia developed in tandem with the province's lumber industry. With most of its forested areas designated as Crown lands, the province recognized at an early time that fire protection would be its own responsibility. The fight to control fire emerged in bits and pieces after British Columbia joined the Confederation in 1871. What had been a seasonal nuisance of recurring smoke and fire, however, assumed very different dimensions with the early twentieth-century timber boom and the sudden rise in the value of heavily forested areas. Beginning with the Forest Act of 1905 and its revision in 1912, provincial lawmakers set in motion the creation of fire district wardens, with a mandate to assure the permanence of British Columbia's forest industries. |
5
|
|
"British Columbia became a colossal timber mill," Pyne argues, and developed a political economy that shaped political discourse throughout the twentieth century (p. 314). Public-sector forestry evolved as an adjunct to the needs of industrial production, always on the look to increase harvests and to cut costs, especially those related to science. "What happened to fire protection," Pyne writes, was happening to the Forest Service overall. Each had become an empire unto itself" (p. 327). When big fires began to occur in the province with increasing regularity in the 1980s, British Columbia's Forest Service, like federal forestry south of the border, was largely bereft of new ideas and insights as to appropriate fire-management strategies. The province struggled with "let-it-burn" policies into the new century. |
6
|
|
Awful Splendor is a magnificent and thoroughly researched book. It is not, however, without imperfection, especially in its sometimes questionable organizational strategy and tendency to repetition. Another annoying narrative device is the author's penchant for the excessive use of acronyms. Those few caveats aside, this is an excellent rendition of Canada's fire history. |
7
|
|
|
| WILLIAM G. ROBBINS
|
Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History
Oregon State University |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|