Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Environment, Society and Culture in the Trent Valley (review)

Neil Forkey seeks to invigorate environmental history in Canada, and to establish the land and the natural world as key actors in the history of Upper Canadian settlement. He does so by focusing quite sensibly on a bioregion, the Trent River valley. Forkey is most interested in showing how different peoples adapted to and interacted with the particular natural features of the area, and in analyzing the ensuing conflicts over the use of natural resources.

Forkey's discussion of Mississauga and Anglo-Celtic adaptations to the land is quite brief, superficial and, to my mind, unremarkable. There is little here that deviates from the standard narrative of settlement, although Forkey may be more willing than some historians to see similarities between the subsistence strategies of European and North American peoples. Both groups adapt to and transform nature, although Forkey clearly suggests that the European transformation of the landscape was more profound. The best chapters in the book focus on conflict - between Europeans over the most appropriate uses of the resources of the land, and between the intended uses of nature and the natural world itself. The best chapter, previously published in this journal, offers an astute examination of the social conflict over a mill dam, and is used to effectively illuminate attitudes towards the environment and to show how the environment itself could shape political and social debates. A second chapter explores a somewhat more traditional theme, the interaction of settlers and lumberers, but Forkey effectively shows just how much those favouring settlement exaggerated their ability to triumph over nature, and were frustrated by the natural environment.

Perhaps because this is already such a slim book, the author and publisher have not honed some of the thesis-like features of this publication. In particular, I found the introductory survey of 'nature and national narrative,' which comments on the sweeping works of Harold Innis, Andrew Hill Clark, and Donald Creighton, out of place in what is really a very modest study. By focusing on the grand old men of Canadian history, Forkey misses an opportunity to make a strong case for environmental history. He fails to engage the very fine, strong, and continuing tradition of historical literature on the settlement of Upper Canada, to show how an environmental perspective might enhance or modify the work of, for example, John Clarke or Randy Widdis. At the other end of the book, we have a chapter on Catharine Parr Traill, which, on its own, makes for an interesting if debatable reading of her work. Its connection to the rest of this book, however, is quite tenuous, and it seems to shift the focus from Forkey's main concern.

I have no doubt that the two very good chapters and a series of promising but underdeveloped insights made for a solid doctoral thesis, but they do not make for a very effective book.