The Prairie West as Promised Land.(Brief article)(Book review)

The Prairie West as Promised Land

edited by R. Douglas Francis & Chris Kitzan. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 486 pp., illus., soft cover, $54.95.

Fifteen leading scholars and writers from western Canada have contributed their views of how new settlers and others viewed the West as a "promised land." The West lived up to the dreams of some, but not for others.

Doug Owrem leads off with an account of how mid-19th century expansionists saw the West as a land of opportunity but found no easy way to exploit it. Palliser, Hind, and other explorers showed that the fertile lands were there but the land was still wild and not yet ready for the plough.

Laurence Kitzen looks at the same time period, but through the eyes of travellers and writers. The West was often seen as romantic but also as a brutal land that would be difficult to conquer. Such authors as Ballentyne, Southesk, and Butler were realistic in their descriptions of life in the West.

These two papers set the pace for a number of other articles that vary widely in time and topic, a few just barely touching the target of a "promised land."

Front and centre in this theme is Tony Rasporich's look at Utopian ideals. If anything reflected a "promised land" ideal, it was the view of some incoming settlers that they would find or create a new social order in the West. As a result, the settlement of Cannington ...