From Wood Mountain to the Whitemud: A Historical Survey of the Grasslands National Park Area

Ron Goldsmith is a professor of Geography at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute.

It has been two decades since the concept of Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan first began to receive serious attention from provincial and federal governments and local area residents. During these two decades, progress toward the formal establishment of the park was, at best, frustratingly slow. The time has not been characterized by idleness on the part of Parks Canada, and the area now has official park status.

From Wood Mountain to the Whitemud ispresented as “an interpretive historical framework for the study of the proposed park” rather than as a fully developed and integrated history of the park area. In fact, however, despite the brief four-month period devoted to preparation of this study, it goes considerably beyond the modest claims of its authors by offering the reader a rich variety of information concerning the history of southwestern Saskatchewan.

The study is presented in two major sections, accompanied by an introduction, numerous appendices, and an extensive bibliography. The first section, “Buffalo and Cattle,” presents physiographic and historical overviews of the region up to the 1920s. Emphasis is on the sequential transition of the area from its natural state through fragmentary occupance by native groups to the early foothold established by a tenuous agricultural system. Particularly noteworthy are Chapters III and IV, which deal with the early period of the North West Mounted Police and the Canadian repercussions of America’s “Indian Wars.”

The second major section, entitled “The Post-Ranching Era,” deals with the period from 1908 to the present and primarily covers the “modern” settlement of the area. Among its other notable qualities is an effective, albeit usually indirect, commentary on the fragility of a semi-arid environment in the face of industrialized agriculture. Appendices deal both with specific aspects of the area’s history and with relevant historiographic material. While this study is too narrow in focus to appeal to a wide readership, its quality and surprising comprehensiveness make it a useful addition to the reading list of those interested in the region, the proposed park, on historical research in general. One disturbing question pertaining to the study is why it was not published until 1983 despite its original submission in 1977, but the intervening six years have fortunately not reduced its overall impact. This in itself says much about the slow progress made by Parks Canada in the proposed park area.