Canada: Its Regions and People

Canada and Canadians are currently at crossroads. Their hard-earned self-identity as constituting a distinct people, a nation-state in the political sense of the term, is now facing serious competition from other, often more basic, senses of individuals and collective identity based on language, culture, territory, religion, gender, ethnicity, social class, and religion. Whether or not Canada survives and thrives as a nation-state into the twenty-first century will depend largely on the outcome of this struggle over competing identities. If the past is an indication of the future, the ten chapters of this rather unorthodox book lead us to the conclusion that Canadians will confront and overcome, yet once again, this age-old challenge with imagination and determination. The structure of this book, which combines chapters on regions, provinces, time periods and themes with a general overview was quite deliberate. This book was conceived primarily for non-Canadian students, involved in Canadian studies, involved in Canadian studies programmes, who are seeking historical background on a wide-range of topics. Most students come to the study of Canada through their interest in contemporary Canadian literature, visual arts, music, sociology, geography, political science, government policy, trade or economics. Most of these disciplines or topics take for granted that their students possess a general basic knowledge of Canada’s past. Their practitioners offer their analyses and draw conclusions which often do not make much sense to the non-Canadian students who lack a basic knowledge of Canada’s past. The editors of this book felt that this problem could be overcome if we offered Indian students interested in Canadian studies a book on Canadian history. All of the contributors are from Canada and are well known specialists in their respective sub-fields of Canadian history. Each of them presents, from his or her particular vantage point, a comprehensive overview of their chosen subject matters.