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The Canadian Historical Review 85.1 (2004) 171-173



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A Thousand Miles of Prairie: The Manitoba Historical Society and the History of Western Canada. Edited by Jim Blanchard. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press 2002. Pp. x, 262. $19.95

The last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth were incredible years of expansion for Winnipeg and Manitoba. Although periodic economic downturns tested its citizens, the era of unprecedented growth spawned a spirit of unbridled optimism and confidence in human knowledge and science. Imbued with this dauntless zest, a group of Winnipeg men in February 1876 founded the Historical and Scientific Society, and its publication Transactions, with the purpose of preserving the history of the North-West by means of publications, a library, and a museum.

In anticipation of the 125th anniversary of the Manitoba Historical Society (its more commonly used name), Jim Blanchard has ably collected and edited a number of representative articles from the Transactions. Although it published articles on geology, meteorology, and biology as well as history, Blanchard chose most selections from the last discipline. Two notable exceptions are a delightful description of the prairie chicken by Ernest Thompson Seton, the well-known naturalist and illustrator, and a fascinating explanation for the disappearance of the passenger pigeon by George Atkinson, a taxidermist and naturalist. The bulk of the selections, then, is historical in nature. The value in their republication at this time lies not in the contributions they make to current historical knowledge but as primary sources for an understanding of establishment thinking in the early years of Manitoba as a province.

Virtually all the historical inclusions narrate the achievements of the newcomers to Manitoba and pay scant attention to its Aboriginal inhabitants. In 1883, for example, George Bryce, clergyman, professor, and historian, wrote a tribute to A.K Isbister as the perfect example of a westerner making good in metropolitan London. The modern reader will likely be jarred by Bryce's fairly detailed description of Isbister's Scottish [End Page 171] lineage and the passing reference to his 'trace' of Aboriginal ancestry. The total lack of interest in the culture and history of the original or Métis inhabitants of the region is striking.

This imbalance in historical thinking is also evident in Bryce's essay, read at the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the Battle of Seven Oaks. His interpretation of the incident leaves no doubt why he would not have appreciated 'La chanson de la grenouillère.' Fortunately, one of the founders of the Historical Society, Charles N. Bell, read from a number of manuscripts, creating a more balanced and less conclusive perspective. The famous (or infamous?) John C. Schultz's triumphant assessment of human progress on the plains notes, in contrast, that all its various inhabitants are Canadian. Schultz includes the Métis but not the First Nations. Gilbert McMicken, a lieutenant governor of Manitoba, in his memoir of the abortive Fenian raid on Manitoba, reveals much about his attitude to the Métis as well as something of his activities as a former federal secret agent.

Schultz's second piece, reminiscing about his first trip to and from Red River, provides a valuable insight not only into early travel to the region but also into the mature mind of someone who, decades earlier, was a thorn in the flesh of the Métis. Schultz's narrative, like most of the essays, is tinged with nostalgia, but not as strongly as that of John McBeth, an 'old settler,' whose portrait of social activities in pre-Confederation Red River is redolent with romantic yearning for a supposedly richer communal past. Less sentimental, but still nostalgic, is John W. Dafoe, the eminent editor of the Winnipeg Free Press. Running through his amusing recollections about early newspapers and newsmen is a fierce admiration of the press and its role in the social and political development of Winnipeg and Manitoba.

The vast majority of Transactions' contributors are Anglo-Saxon males...

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