| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

*Alberta Formed, Alberta Transformed*. Volumes I and II. Edited by Michael Payne, Donald Wetherell, and Catherine Cavanaugh. (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press and Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006. xv + 808 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index, CN$100.)
A provincial or state centennial presents the historical profession with an interesting challenge. Historians are not much given to commemoration these days. There is a preference for the thrust of critical analysis and the theorizing and contextualizing that has come to dominate the field. Hagiographic and celebratory commentary on discoverers, founding fathers, and the heartiness of early settlers, if not entirely gone from historical writing, remain the purview of popular historians. Even politicians struggle to know what to do about major anniversaries, for every jurisdiction's history has more than a few marks of malice, racism, dispossession or disappointment. At the same time, the marking of critical points in history focuses public attention on historical questions and is not an opportunity to be missed.	1
The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1905. They celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2005. Public celebrations and events were positive but muted. For these Canadian provinces, both enjoying resource-driven economic booms, a nostalgic contemplation of earlier times seemed somewhat out of place. In Saskatchewan, provincial historian Bill Waiser, produced a first-rate provincial history, Saskatchewan: A New History (Calgary, 2005). Alberta did not commission a single volume, solely authored book to memorialize the province's first 100 years. Instead, it has this fine and carefully edited, two volume collection of historical essays that reflects the diversity of both Alberta's history and its historians.	. . .

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