Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada by Tina Loo (review)

Much has been written about the forced removal of Canadians during the postwar period. Some were moved as the state engaged in resource mega-projects which could only proceed by displacing the people in the way; others were removed when projects such as the creation of national parks were defined so that they required the displacement of the resident population; and yet others were moved because the state believed there were insufficient resources to allow people to remain where they had long lived.

In this meticulously researched and compelling book, Tina Loo brings together five case studies of forced relocation, looking at the process from the perspective of those responsible for implementing the projects. Exploring examples from the central Arctic, Newfoundland, eastern Quebec, Halifax, and Vancouver, she allows us to hear the voices of experts, mostly bureaucrats and social scientists, who wanted to provide marginalized Canadians with "the good life," the minimum level of services required to get by. Relocation became a strategy for providing such services. As Loo explains, "If the state couldn't deliver services to the poor, it would deliver the poor to services" (197).

Loo recognizes that there was something potentially troubling about bureaucrats and social scientists descending on poor communities, telling them what they required. However, she generally refuses to view these experts as operating from what the anthropologist James Scott described as a "high modernist" perspective, one which would have empowered officials to ignore what the objects of their efforts had to say. Instead, the experts described here wanted to listen to the views of marginalized Canadians, with the intention of integrating them into a larger political culture. This was a two-edged sword: "Development disciplined as it enabled" (199).

For the most part, Loo views the experts positively. They wanted to do the right thing, driven by "the power of hope." Indeed, the book brings to life fascinating individuals such as Walter Rudnicki. A psychiatric social worker by training, Rudnicki held a variety of positions with the federal government, particularly in the North. He listened to the Inuit, allowing them to play a role "in making the decisions that shaped their own lives and collective futures" (201).

I learned much from this book, which totally engaged me, and yet I was left with two sets of questions that I wished had been answered. First, Loo needed to provide a clearer explanation of what was meant by "forced relocation." While this concept figures in the title and is referred to throughout, it does not seem pertinent to each case study. In the case of Newfoundlanders, Loo consistently describes how relocation from outport communities was voluntary; in the case of eastern Quebec, while there may have been thoughts about forcefully removing the population, this never occurred, nor did it take place in Vancouver. In fact, the only two cases of forced relocation were in the North and in Africville.

The question of forced, as opposed to more voluntary relocations, leads to a second set of questions regarding how Loo downplays the high-modernist dimensions of these case studies. In a series of articles over the past decade, she has provided a needed correction to the work of researchers who too quickly accepted the idea that state projects such as forced relocation could be understood through the high-modernist prism. She continues this line of thought here, and her point is well taken that the concept might not be totally applicable in the case of Newfoundland, where the relocations were voluntary, and, thus, does not easily fit into Scott's conception of the high-modernist state "wiping the slate utterly clean and beginning from zero."

But what about the other cases, such as the one at Africville? While there were a variety of efforts made to listen to the residents, something frequently lacking in a high-modernist context, their input could not prevent...