This detailed study of the g̀ateway community' of Lac la Biche in northern Alberta examines life in the region during the fur trade near the Beaver River route, Portage La Biche, Red Deers Lake House, Greenwich House and Lac La Biche Post.

This detailed study of the g̀ateway community' of Lac la Biche in northern Alberta examines life in the region during the fur trade near the Beaver River route, Portage La Biche, Red Deers Lake House, Greenwich House and Lac La Biche Post.

In recent years there has been growing interest in identifying the social and cultural attributes that define the Metis as a distinct people. In this groundbreaking study, Brenda Macdougall employs the concept of wahkootowin � the Cree term for a worldview that privileges family and values interconnectedness � to trace the emergence of a Metis community in northern Saskatchewan. Wahkootowin describes how relationships worked and helps to explain how the Metis negotiated with local economic and religious institutions while nurturing a society that emphasized family obligation and responsibility. This innovative exploration of the birth of Metis identity offers a model for future research and discussion.

With a unique how-to appendix for Metis genealogical reconstruction, this book will be of interest to Metis wanting to research their own genealogy and to scholars engaged in the reconstruction of Metis ethnic identity. The search for a Metis identity and what constitutes that identity is a key issue facing many aboriginals of mixed ancestry today. This book reconstructs 250 years of the Desjarlais' family history across a substantial area of North America, from colonial Louisiana, the St. Louis, Missouri, region and the American Southwest to the Red River and central Alberta. In the course of tracing the Desjarlais family, social, economic and political factors influencing the development of various Aboriginal ethnic identities are discussed. With intriguing details about the Desjarlais family members, this book offers new, original insights into the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, focusing on kinship as a motivating factor in the outcome of events.

Born in 1833 at Fort Edmonton, Johnny Grant experienced and wrote about many historical events in the Canada-US northwest. Grant was not only a fur trader; he was instrumental in early ranching efforts in Montana and played a pivotal role in the Riel Resistance of 1869-70. Published in its entirety for the first time, Grant's memoir is an indispensable primary source for the shelves of fur trade and Métis historians.

The fifth title in our provincial histories series, Mavericks is an idiosyncratic and episodic history of what is arguably Canada's most unconventional province. From mapmakers to ranchers, Stampede Wrestling to Stockwell Day, acclaimed writer Aritha van Herk brings the drama and combative beauty of this irascible province to stunning life. van Herk's portrait of her home province embraces all its extremes, from deadly and spectacular weather to dinosaur graveyards, and from oil gushers and geysers to barnstorming social reformers and political haymakers. Bronc-riders of boom and bust, Alberta's people are a beguiling mixture of opinionated extremists, hardy pioneers and gentle sinners. Alberta is a province that most Canadians simply don't understand, the province most Canadians love to hate. It is regarded as a land of reckless, redneck and ignorant individualists. But it is also the province where the Famous Five fought the landmark Person's Case, giving Canadian women the same status as men in the eyes of the law, a province that truly believes in free speech. Albertans tolerate in their midst people whose extreme views on any manner of subjects would make them outcasts elsewhere. And Albertans practice the creed of western neighbourliness, giving assiduously to charity and always lending a hand where help is needed. They are a tough, tender bunch, squinting into the wind of determined difference. If you're an Albertan, you'll recognize yourself and your home in this book. If you're not an Albertan, this book will be an education for you. Mavericks will open your eyes to the real Alberta, as she was and is.

Gritty, deeply touching, fascinating, informative; these letters show the joys and heartbreaking challenges of family life in the fur trade.

Among the most dynamic Aboriginal peoples in western Canada today are the Ojibwa, who have played an especially vital role in the development of an Aboriginal political voice at both levels of government. Yet, they are relative newcomers to the region, occupying the parkland and prairies only since the end of the 18th century. This work traces the origins of the western Ojibwa, their adaptations to the West, and the ways in which they have coped with the many challenges they faced in the first century of their history in that region, between 1780 and 1870. The western Ojibwa are descendants of Ojibwa who migrated from around the Great Lakes in the late 18th century. This was an era of dramatic change. Between 1780 and 1870, they survived waves of epidemic disease, the rise and decline of the fur trade, the depletion of game, the founding of non-Native settlement, the loss of tribal lands, and the government's assertion of political control over them. As a people who emerged, adapted, and survived in a climate of change, the western Ojibwa demonstrate both the effects of historic forces that acted upon Native peoples, and the spirit, determination, and adaptive strategies that the Native people have used to cope with those forces. This study examines the emergence of the western Ojibwa within this context, seeing both the cultural changes that they chose to make and the continuity within their culture as responses to historical pressures. The Ojibwa of Western Canada differs from earlier works by focussing closely on the details of western Ojibwa history in the crucial century of their emergence. It is based on documents to which pioneering scholars did not have access, including fur traders' and missionaries' journals, letters, and reminiscences. Ethnographic and archaeological data, and the evidence of material culture and photographic and art images, are also examined in this well-researched and clearly written history.

The greatest threat to water quality worldwide is nutrient pollution. Cultural eutrophication by nutrients in sewage, fertilizers, and detergents is feeding massive algal blooms, choking out aquatic life and outpacing heavy metals, oil spills, and other toxins in the devastation wrought upon the world's fresh waters. Renowned water scientists, David W. Schindler and John R. Vallentyne, share their combined 80 years of experience with the eutrophication problem to explain its history and science, and offer real-world solutions for mitigating this catastrophe in the making. For those who have lost sight of Vallentyne's 1974 first edition, Schindler's fully revised and expanded edition is an unambiguous road map for change.

"It might be said that Canada was founded because of a fad of fashion - the insatiable demand for beaver hats that swept through Europe in the late 17th century. When it was discovered that the beaver existed in abundance in North America, the fur trade was born. As trappers in their relentless pursuit of beaver probed every stream and lake moving ever deeper into the wilderness, they pushed back the boundaries and opened the way for the settlers who followed them. Let Them Be Remembered, by Elizabeth Browne Losey is the story of the fur trade and the fur trade forts. Over the course of twenty years, the author and her husband, long interested in the fur trade, not only sought information from a wealth of sources such as fort journals and traders' diaries and letters, but also searched for and traveled to the sites of the forts themselves."--: //uwwebpro.uwinnipeg.ca/academic/ic/rupert/OrderForms.html.