Powering Up Canada: A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600. ed. by R. W. Sandwell (review)

R. W. Sandwell's edited volume, Powering Up Canada, is the first comprehensive overview of Canada's energy history. It covers nearly all energy resources and carriers, and discusses their various uses over time while addressing the roles of individuals, society, industry, and government. The volume is structured chronologically. UsingE. A. Wrigley's (Continuity, Chance & Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England, Cambridge: Press Syndicate, 1988) distinction between organic and mineral regimes, it is subdivided into two parts, with six chapters each. In addition to an introduction and conclusion, an extensive forty-two-page "Primer on Technology," by Colin A. M. Duncan, is provided. Statistical appendices, figures, images, and maps further complement this book.

Although the history of energy is a topic that is not always best told within national confines, Sandwell makes a convincing case in her introduction about Canada's distinct energy past. Even though Canada followed the energy trajectory of industrialized countries, it "demonstrated variations from the norm set by Britain" (4). Per-capita energy consumption in this northern country has always been high, but because of its wealth of organic energy resources, it entered the mineral energy regime much later. Thus, Canada shifted to the modern energy era only in the 1950s. Since then, it has risen to the ranks of the world's top producers of fossil fuels while becoming one of the leading hydropower nations.

Stretching from Canada's colonial period to the early twentieth century, the first part is devoted to the organic energy regime. George Colpitts (Chapter 2) discusses the link between food energy and the economic expansion of Canada's settler society during the colonial period. He argues that the availability of Indigenous pemmican on the Plains provided enough nutritional energy to voyageurs, and thus it facilitated extension of the fur trade to the Canadian West. The following two chapters by J. I. Little (Chapter 3) and by Joanna Dean and Lucas Wilson (Chapter 4) highlight the importance of animal muscle power for life in both rural and urban Canada. While oxen were used for farm work, horses often transported produce to the mills and markets. Tracing the history of these "living machines" (59) from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, and discussing the late introduction of mechanic machines in rural areas, Little maintains that the transition in prime movers was a complex process, as horses continued to play an important role well into the twentieth century. Explaining how some mechanization developments led to an increase in horse-powered applications, he contests Wrigley's claim that horses belonged only to the organic regime, which had disappeared by the early twentieth century. In cities, horses continued to play an equally important role beyond the preindustrial and organic eras. Defining urban workhouses as "industrialized organisms," Dean and Wilson transcend the divide between organic and mineral regimes. Whether horses powered machines or transported and hauled goods and people, they functioned as a bridge between human-muscle and steam-powered work in the city. However, as with human beings, these "organic machines" constituted a "troublesome source of power" (122) because they were able to resist.

Joshua MacFadyen (Chapter 5) provides a similar story of the persistence of the organic regime through a history of wood energy in Canada. Traditional energy systems persisted much longer in Canada, because wood "remained a critical source of energy" (129), peaking only in the "middle of the fossil fuel century" (130). According to MacFadyen, the easy availability of wood made it such a natural part of Canadian life that its use was often not recorded, and it remained understudied. As his new calculations demonstrate (149), wood consumption remained important for home heating purposes in the industrial era, and it followed regional patterns; meanwhile, trade in wood was often connected to...