Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt

David W. Leonard is the project historian (Northern Alberta) in the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development. He
is the author of Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909 and
coauthor of The Lure of the Peace River Count

In his preface to this new edition of Empire of Dust, which was
originally published in 1987, Jones makes the point that, when
undertaking in-depth historical research, “you cannot help but become
part of what you feel.” If ever anyone has “felt” the human drama
of the dry belt of Western Canada’s Palliser Triangle, albeit from a
distance, it is Jones. And, through this work and others, he has also
become inextricably identified in the minds of prairie historians with
the suffering endured by farmers in this region during the early part of
the 20th century.

Empire of Dust provides much detail, including many statistical
appendixes. Jones, however, is at his best when revealing the misery
endured at that time, not all of which was due to a lack of moisture.
There was, for example, the herd of horses being chased by “millions
of big mosquitoes,” or a gopher plague in which children were offered
a bounty, with one schoolgirl recording 6984 kills. And there were human
villains as well, particularly the promoters of the region, from the
well-intended Dominion Botanist John Macoun to the manipulative Interior
Minister Frank Oliver. All villains are vilified by Jones, though with
varying degrees of subtlety.

Aside from the new preface, the book is basically a duplicate of the
original, and herein lies its greatest shortcoming, for so much better
use could have been made of the photographs, many of which are simply
too small to say very much—indeed, most could stand enlargement. In a
book where the text draws out such compelling emotions from the reader,
this is unfortunate.