Men Against the Desert. 2nd ed.

W.J.C. Cherwinski is a professor of history at the Memorial University
of Newfoundland and the co-author of Lectures in Canadian Labour and
Working-Class History.

Originally published in 1967, Men Against the Desert was the first book
to describe the concerted effort to ensure that the prairie drought of
the 1930s—an ecological disaster brought on by faulty farming
practices and poorly conceived policies—would never be repeated. The
book introduced readers to the major anti-drought
crusaders—agricultural engineers like H.A. Lewis, scientists like Dr.
L.E. Kirk, bureaucrats like E.S. Archibald, and politicians like Jimmy
Gardiner. It also recounted how the Dominion Forestry and Agricultural
Experimental Farms, the University of Saskatchewan’s Agriculture
faculty, and the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act provided the framework
necessary to transform the desert back into a verdant garden. As a
result of this book, the author writes, “Canadian agriculture grew out
of parochialism into international stature.”

The contributions made by Gray’s book and by the anti-drought forces
are, unfortunately, visibly dated. Today, what is left of the indigenous
prairie grasslands is being threatened with

extinction by the more aggressive foreign species (such as the Crested
Wheat Grass from Russia) introduced by the anti-desert activists as a
way to control drifting. Whether a new generation of prairie saviors
will emerge is hard to say; what is certain is that Gray will not be
around to chronicle their accomplishments.