One West, Two Myths, II: Essays on Comparison

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

The essays in this companion volume to One West, Two Myths (2004) are
the product of conferences held in Cody, Calgary, and Germany. What
intrigues the contributors is “the bifurcated sensibilities, the
conflicting cultural claims, the separate versions of history” that
infuse Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow and Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The
Englishman’s Boy. Robert Thacker, the co-editor of this volume,
believes all the essays demonstrate the impossibility of one “West”
being understood without reference to the other. Traditionally, both
United States “Americans” and Canadian “Americans,” with a few
exceptions (above), have suffered myopia in this regard.

R. Douglas Francis offers a concise description of the contrasting
Turner and Laurentian theses and defines their limitations. Brian W.
Dipple suggests that, in Western art, the work of Charles M. Russell and
Frederic Remington demonstrate that the divide was not between north and
south, but east and west, and the cowboy was the archetype of choice.
William H. Katerberg emphasizes the broad similarities between the
American and Canadian versions of the myth, but reveals the contrast
between the autonomy of the West in American mythology and the role of
metropolis (both European and Canadian), which dilutes the sense of
distinctiveness in the Canadian case. The Canadian West was in fact the
Northwest.

Sarah Carter reviews the broad similarities that shaped the lives and
possibilities of women, but demonstrates how differences in law,
government policies, and popular perceptions variously created openings
in one West and closed them in the other. For Roger Nichols the
comparative historian’s life is similar to that of John Bunyan, a
litany of trials and temptations professionally and financially and—in
the area of Amerindian studies—more challenging than most pilgrimages
in comparative history. Taking Wolf Willow as his exemplary text, David
Williams concludes that historical analysis, rather than the literary
imagination, is the “infrared light” that will reveal any
differences that exist between the two Wests. Clark Mitchell traces the
creation of the Western myth in the United States before concluding
it’s all for naught: the Hollywood myth (“the goodness of man in a
state of nature”) is for everyone the unshakable reality. Aritha van
Herk gives us the lowdown on Tulip Pane (the Parade Marshal of the
Calgary Stampede in 2003), and Tulip gives us the nitty on the Stampede
from her perch on the chuckwagon.

The essays, for the most part, are outstanding, and the volume as a
whole possesses coherence that the first lacked.