Toward Defining the Prairies: Region, Culture and History ed. by Robert Wardhaugh (review)

412 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 It is easy to underrate a book like this. The map of the number of transactions for every farm lot in Essex, for example, must have taken months scrutinizing legal instruments and is truly innovative, but what shows is a map that looks very much like any other here, small and lacking the visual contrast necessary for rewarding reading. Clarke has wrung incontestable conclusions out of documents from seemingly every angle: that owning cleared, well-drained land was more important than access to it; or that speculators behaved rationally. Such findings are not surprising, however, nor is the statement that >connection in all its forms was important = in public life. Intuitively obvious results leave the reader feeling that Clarke has added little. But he has, by his depth. Such is the special contribution of this book, challenging readers to penetrate other pioneering situations in Ontario and beyond. In his final chapter Clarke is still asking questions instead of tying up the ends in a firm overarching statement. That=s a bit of a letdown, but allows me to conclude with a new thought in reference to the Canada Land Company, established in 1826. After years of ineffective management and absence of revenue, Clarke tells us that privatization of the Crown Reserves was the answer. How familiar that language sounds in 2002! Furthermore, he tells us that the company subsequently made money, but whether reserves retarded settlement remains questionable. That, we hear, is a question for the future. John Clarke has not yet said it all, and readers should look forward to more! (THOMAS F. MCILWRAITH) Robert Wardhaugh, editor. Toward Defining the Prairies: Region, Culture and History University of Manitoba Press. 232. $22.95 In 1998 St John=s College at the University of Manitoba hosted an interdisciplinary conference on the theme >Defining the Prairies.= Thirteen of the papers presented at that conference have now found their way into this collection of essays. Appropriately, Toward Defining the Prairies begins with an essay by Gerald Friesen, the region=s pre-eminent contemporary historian. He notes that Native people, European fur traders, and the settler society that began to take root in the late nineteenth century each in turn imagined and/or defined >the prairies= in their own way. For the last-mentioned group B predominantly central Canadian and British in origin and outlook B what was distinctive about >the prairies= was that they were predominantly rural and produced millions of bushels of wheat for world markets. This image of the prairie west persists in Canadians= popular consciousness to our own xxxxxxx humanities 413 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 day, but Friesen argues that it no longer accords with reality. Resource development, urbanization, wealthier and more powerful provincial governments, and globalization have given rise to a new western regional consciousness >constructed upon four distinct provinces and numerous metropolitan centres= stretching from Manitoba to British Columbia. Alvin Finkel, too, argues that the traditional stereotype of the three prairie provinces as a monolithic entity is no longer valid. In the 1950s and 1960s, he points out, Alberta opposed a national medicare scheme, federal equalization grants, and regional development schemes while Saskatchewan and Manitoba welcomed them. Finkel concludes that Alberta=s opposition was not >motivated by social credit ideology or western alienation, but ... social conservative and rich-province thinking.= Other contributors take a fresh approach in attempting to describe and define >the prairies= as a distinct region. Royden Loewen points to the remarkable diversity of ethnic groups that peopled the Canadian prairies after 1870, and makes use of diaries to recreate the everyday lives of Mennonite families in the East Reserve (near present-day Steinbach, Manitoba). R. Rory Henry argues that far greater attention should be paid to the history of the middle class on >the prairies,= for it was they who were primarily responsible for shaping the west=s regional identity from the 1890s to the 1930s. Gerald T. Davidson approaches >the prairies= (or rather the >Great Plains,= the term he prefers because it identifies a special ecological region) from the perspective of...