“A Vision Beyond Reach”: Some Recent Atlantic Canadian Studies

Reviews "A Vision Beyond Reach": Some Recent Atlantic Canadian Studies MAKING ADJUSTMENTS: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN PLANTER NOVA SCOTIA, 1759-1800. Margaret Conrad, ed. Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1991. NINETEENTH-CENTURY CAPE BRETON : A HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY. Stephen J. Hornsby. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. TROUBLE IN THE WOODS: FOREST POLICY AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN NOVA SCOTIA AND NEW BRUNSWICK. L. Anders Sandberg, ed. Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1992. GRENFELL OF LABRADOR: A BIOGRAPHY . Ronald Rompkey. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1991. AWAY. MAR/TIMERS JN MASSACHUSETTS , ONTARIO AND ALBERTA: AN ORAL HISTORY OF LEAVING HOME. Gary Burrill. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES IN CONFEDERATION . E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds. Toronto, Buffalo, London and Fredericton: University of Toronto Press and Acadiensis Press, 1993. Academic research and writing on Atlantic Canada is no longer the neglected orphan of Canadian studies.' The region now has had its past carefully examined, at times with a vengeance.2 But has the result been an illumination of what went wrong rather than an attempt to understand better what other options were articulated or realistically available? The crop of six books examined here might be unrepresentative but the studies all paint a picture of a difficult past and some underline an even more difficult future for 160 a troubled part of Canada. The books also reveal the major contributions now being made by practitioners from disciplines beyond the strictly historical; insights from historical geography and sociology are proving especially valuable. Regardless of discipline however - and to their credit historians have welcomed and applied many of the findings unearthed by other disciplinary approaches - it is clear that the history of this region remains far from completely understood while the region's quest for accommodation and integration within Canada remains unachieved. Caught between the expulsion of the Acadians and the arrival of the Loyalists, Planter-era Nova Scotia might be quickly passed over but for the work of the Planter Studies Committee at Acadia University. Making Adjustments, edited by Margaret Conrad, is a selection of the papers presented at the second Planter Studies Conference, held in October of 1990, which examined these New England settlers who moved northward largely in the late 1750s and early 1760s. The intention was to focus on "Planters in the wider Nova Scotia and international contexts of the second half of the eighteenth century" (9). Papers on genealogy, archaeology, literature, religion, architecture, map-making, and music reveal the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of the conference and add new dimensions to our understanding of these American settlers and their descendants. Contributions on the non-Planter societies and communities - Germans, Blacks, Micmacs, Scots/Irish and Quakers - provide evidence of preand post-revolutionary Nova Scotia's vibrant cultural mosaic. Hints also emerge of the discrimination, neglect, and harsh treatment accorded some minorities. This is not to suggest that the Planters must bear total responsibility for policies and attitudes that were very much a part of the colonial world in which they found themselves in the 1760s and 1770s. It is in touching upon this broader· world and in probing systematically the inner workings of the various Planter communities that this volume makes its Revue d' etudes canadiennes Vol. 28, No. 4 (Hiver 1993-94 Winter) most substantial contributions . The keynote address at the conference, by John Reid (45-59), emphasizes "the devising of collective strategies by peoples who had seen their lives profoundly changed by geopolitical events of the 1750s and early 1760s and who now had to adapt as best they could to political and environmental contexts that were unfamiliar to them." Both Planter and non-Planter were confronted by these realities and, as Reid suggests, if linked to imperial changes of the 1760s, comparative studies of Nova Scotia, Florida and Louisiana, areas which have received less attention than Quebec and the trans-appalachian regions, could reveal a great deal about the adjustments made to survive and prosper. Just how difficult it was to achieve prosperity in the economic realm is underlined in Julian Gwyn's contribution (60-88). His study of Nova Scotian economic fluctuations from 1755 to 1815 makes clear...