The Canadian Prairies: A History

A.A. den Otter is a history professor at Memorial University of
Newfoundland and co-author of Lethbridge: A Centennial History.

The latest and certainly the best in a growing list of histories of western Canada is Gerald Friesen’s The Canadian Prairies: A History. Based on the latest work on the region, Friesen has crafted a comprehensive survey of the economic, social, and political development of the region.

The theme which Friesen threads throughout his broad, sweeping tale is that the West is a unified region with a clear and distinctive identity. Although the region contains three landscapes — the prairies, the parklands, and the boreal forest — history and economy have welded them into a single, distinctive unit. Friesen shows, for example, that the seasonal economy of the Indians relied variously on one or more of the regions, while the fur trade depended on all three. The happy co-operation between Indian and European during the fur trade era was a regional cultural experience in which each geographical region played its essential role.

As the author moves into the next stage of his story, he unwittingly loses sight of the boreal forest. The market economy and industrial capitalism, which transformed the prairies and parklands into an agricultural economy, altered the entire regional outlook. Nevertheless, Friesen insists, the new economy created another cohesive regional consciousness. Although unmentioned, by this time, the new sense of identity was limited to the settled areas — that is, the prairie and park lands.

More importantly, as the territories were settled, various areas within the region took on different political shape. The author recognizes this, and consequently he devotes a full chapter to Manitoba and then another to the North-West Territories. Moreover, the creation of the two provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905 demonstrated that each of these territories had developed a unique political outlook.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the concept of a western identity became even more clouded. The political development of each of the three prairie provinces was decidedly different. Friesen argues that the new order first destroyed regional consciousness but, paradoxically, also rebuilt it. By effectively controlling its local economy, building a distinctive ethnic flavour, and maintaining the uniqueness of the native identity, the West created a common sense of purpose. It became a close neighbourhood in a multinational economy and culture. The prairie identity, expressed in its own literature and art, remained alive and well.

Friesen has written an excellent survey of western Canadian history. Students will appreciate how he tackles historiographical discussions by clearly detailing the several sides of complex issues and concluding them with suggested resolutions. Although this novel approach in a survey history tends to give a disproportionate amount of space to some events, it provides the undergraduate student with an ideal introduction to controversial topics. The emphasis on theme rather than chronology may sometimes confuse students; nevertheless, the book will serve them well for many years.