Regionalism, W. L. Morton, and the Writing of Western Canadian History, 1870–1885

Abstract

In attempting to imagine and to define Canada--a persistent, almost obsessive, intellectual exercise among CANADIANS--analysts invariably come up against the of For regionalism has been a pervasive concept and factor in Canada's evolution. Regions existed long before Canada became a nation in 1867, and have continued to be an integral part of the country since Confederation. The of in Canada, therefore, recalls the penetrating comment by the distinguished literary critic Northrop Frye that identity so far as it affects the creative imagination, is not a 'Canadian' at all but a question. (1) The regional question is, however, a complex one. Despite its pervasiveness, no consensus exists as to how to define regionalism or what constitutes a region. To date, four dominant views of regionalism exist within the Canadian context. (2) In the first part of my paper, I will sketch out these four perspectives, using the Prairies as my chief example for illustrative purposes. Then in the second part of my paper, I will examine how the most distinguished Prairie historian, W.L. Morton, applied these four perspectives of the region in his historical analysis of the in Prairie history, the integration of the Prairie West into Confederation in the period between the acquisition of the North West by the Canadian government in 1869-70 and the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. Morton maintained throughout his historical writings on the Prairie West that the incorporation of the West into Confederation was a decisive moment in Prairie history--what he called an initial bias --that altered the direction of the region's history from one associated predominantly with fur trading to one based on agricultural settlement, that integrated the region into Canada, and that shaped every aspect of the subsequent history of the region after the period 1870 to 1885. In his attempt to understand this important period in Prairie history, Morton used a variety of perspectives including aspects of the four approaches to regionalism set out below. The first classification of regions in Canada is what geographers refer to as regionalism. Regions are classified according to a common feature, most often a common physical environment (although some analysts have looked to other distinguishing features besides topography, such as climate, ethnicity, or voting behavior as means to differentiate one formal region from another). This is the traditional and the most pervasive view of regions, one that is particularly popular with the Prairie region where there has been a long association and identification with the landscape. Even the term used for the region--Prairies--comes from the French word pre meaning meadow or grasslands, and therefore links the region to one of its geographical features, although geographers remind us that topographically it is not the most pervasive geographical feature of the region even if it has become its predominant imagined physical feature. Literary analysts have written numerous books about the magical influence of the land on the nature of the populace and on the creative imagination of the region. One thinks of W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind (1946), or Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow (1962), or more recently Mark Abley's Forget: Rediscovering the Prairies (1986), Sharon Butala's The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature (1995), and Sid Marty's Leaning on the Wind: Under the Spell of the Great Chinook (1996). Historians of the Prairie West often begin their studies of the history of the region with reference to the region's geography, on the assumption, implied if not stated, that geography has played an important role in the history of the prairie region. Note, for example, Gerald Friesen's Introduction to The Canadian Prairies: A History (1987), and John Herd Thompson's first chapter Ever. …