Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier: Environment, Society, and Culture in the Trent Valley (review)

The author claims the Trent Valley experience to be a microcosm of the pioneer settling throughout North America, and this study to be a model for analysing it. A critical review of the book in an Ontario journal, by an academic named in the acknowledgments as 'very helpful,' challenged the present reviewer first to look for virtues. Part 1 argues for bioregional/environmental history as an appropriate methodology, especially in light of the Aboriginal way of life and the ubiquitous struggle of the pioneers with the natural conditions. 'Ecological locale' (area as natural environment) and 'home place' are introduced as analytical tools. The Mississauga's resistance to giving up their traditional access to the land might be seen as attachment to a home place. The three case study chapters in part 2, dealing with the hubris of Purdy's mill dam on the Scugog River, the activities of lumbermen and settlers on the Bobcaygeon colonization road, and the story of the matriarch Catharine Parr Traill, are readable, informative, and copiously referenced (the first two from primary sources). The overall impression is that the case studies were separate, thoroughly researched essays that were then yoked to a theoretical context provided by part 1.

The first chapter justifies the environmental history methodology and avers, 'the study of human interaction with nature ... should deal intimately with these two variables and demonstrate an understanding of both.' The breadth of knowledge required is a unique challenge for environmental historians, and part 1 falls short of demonstrating intimacy with the natural components. There seems to be a lack of understanding of the two fundamental aspects of the environment, the geomorphology (land surface) and the climate. It is not reassuring to read of glacier-cut 'deep ridges,' 'foothills' (of?) or waste lands 'straddling' (rather than characterizing) the Canadian Shield after the extraction of the big timber. The climate is described in very general terms that fail to distinguish between the Rice Lake and Haliburton extremes of the watershed. The boundaries of the Trent Valley bioregion are not clarified, though its northward reach 150 kilometres north of Lake Ontario is mentioned. References to 'the upper Trent Valley' are puzzling. The reader is not told why the parts of the valley highlighted are significant or why other parts can be ignored. This ecological context is less helpful than it might be in the explanation of the early settlement.

The prime importance of land in human settlement presents the greatest theoretical hazard to the writing of environmental history, namely the temptation to attribute purpose to nature. The book refers to the environment as an actor, a player, an agent, and not 'a passive object.' Historical geographers and Canada's Laurentian historians wrestled with this problem in the early decades of the twentieth century, and were cautious in describing the role of nature. A related issue is the imputing to people of intentions and beliefs without providing supporting evidence or framing the debates over, for example, claims that settlers copied the Native occupants and also aimed to replicate the landscapes of their overseas homes. To demonstrate cultural transfer from the old country by the pioneer Irish requires a full case study based on specific local evidence, in addition to citing the standard sources. If the land is of vital importance to a bioregional historian, why not show what the Irish did to domesticate the terrain of actual townships in which they settled? It would be helpful if the two-page conclusion could be expanded to clarify the ways in which the Trent Valley was a microcosm of the North American frontier.

Typographical errors (starting with two in the table of contents), incorrect words ('proscribe' for 'prescribe' or wheat called 'import' rather than 'export'), and awkward expressions in part 1 suggest editorial deficiency, as does the division of the book into two parts only in the table of contents. To conclude positively, there is a wide...