The Trajectories of Rural Life: New Perspectives on Rural Canada

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the former editor of the journal, Ontario History. He is the author
of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality and Canadian History to
1967, and the co-author of The College o

The line between rural and urban was once easily drawn. Rural people
were those who farmed or lived in the small communities that served as
service centres for farmers. Rural people looked different from
urbanites, with their burnt brows and rustic clothes that assaulted city
fashion sensibilities. Much of this changed during the 20th century with
the advent of motorized vehicles and the consolidation of farms into
much larger operations. At the same time the focus of agricultural
production shifted from exclusive concentration on the domestic market
to sales in the international arena. With the urban–rural divide
narrowing, the word “rural” has come to be subject to a variety of
definitions that generally are either culturally or empirically based.

This collection of 14 essays on rural Canada focuses heavily, though
not exclusively, on the Prairies. Edited by Raymond Blake of the
Saskatchewan Institute for Public Policy and Andrew Nurse from Mount
Allison University, the volume provides a series of fresh perspectives
that concentrate particularly on the recent past. Three chapters deal
with rural women and centre on the topics of changing gender roles, wife
abuse, and under-representation in the political sphere. Two other
chapters examine Aboriginal peoples and ethnic and racial minorities in
rural locations. For Saskatchewan, where the rural farm population
dropped from a high of 564,821 in 1931 to a low of 147,935 in 1991, one
essay examines how the concept of community has shifted under the impact
of momentous change. What policies of regional development have meant
for social cohesion in that province is explored in the succeeding
chapter. The last sections look at the emerging rural face of the West
and elements in the urban–rural dynamic.

This book provides an excellent starting point from which to examine a
rural Canada that once seemed so evident but that is today caught in the
grip of a transition so rapid as to emasculate it.