The Past Speaks

Next week, I begin teaching a third-year course on the history of western North America.

Actually, the official title of this course is “the History of the Canadian West”. However, my lectures will deal with western North America as a whole, since it is impossible to understand the history of western Canada without knowing about events south of the border. The 49th parallel transects biomes, traditional aboriginal territories, and natural economic communities. Despite the best efforts of governments based in the eastern time zone to exercise control over the border, animals, drugs, and illegal migrants continue to flow across it. These efforts have included removing all vegetation along the 49th parallel.

Many westerners dislike the border and the central government power it represents. Some First Nations regard the border as illegitimate. Anti-Ottawa sentiment is also common among whites in western Canada. In Alberta, many right-wing people believe that they have more in common with their American neighbours than with central Canadians. Some left-wing ecologists in BC and the Pacific North West have dreamt of establishing a new nation called Cascadia. Separation from Canada remains a topic of conversation in Alberta. Separatist sentiment is western Canada can be found at both ends of the political spectrum.

The situation in the United States is similar. Anti-central government sentiment is also pronounced in the American West. In some cases, this sentiment translates into outright secessionism, as in the case of Hawaii. In other cases, dislike of Washington takes the form of hostility to specific federal government policies and strong regional or state identities.

Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater once said that he would be happy if the whole eastern seaboard of the United States fell into the Atlantic Ocean. During the Bush Presidency, it was not unknown for Californians travelling overseas to tell people that they are from “California” rather than “the U.S.”.

The American West has been the birthplace of many protest movements of both the political left and the political right. Some of these protest movements crossed the border and became part of western Canadian political history.

There is a strong libertarian movement in western North America. Western libertarians tend favour policies such as low taxes, unrestricted immigration, the right to carry handguns, and the legalization of divorce, homosexuality, pornography, drugs, gambling, and prostitution.  Barry Goldwater, the archetypical western libertarian, hated the social programs of the New Deal, but he also hated the religious right.

The environmental, Native rights, and gay rights movements have also been strong in western North America. Greenpeace was created in Vancouver. The first openly gay public official was elected in San Francisco, where he was quickly assassinated.

There are others reasons for treating the histories of the American and Canadian Wests in a single course. Large First Nations and East Asian populations are two things the American and Canadian Wests have in common. The economies of the two regions face similar environmental challenges. In the nineteenth century, both regions had skewed sex ratios, which changed gender roles, at least according to some historians. It is no coincidence that the first jurisdictions in North America to give women the right to vote tended to be in the west.

Logo of Greenpeace. Founded Vancouver, 1971.

The course explores major topics in the political, social, and economic history of western North America. These themes include:

1)    First Nations
2)    race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism
3)    Canada and the United States as Pacific nations
4)    state formation, regulation, and individual liberty
5)    gender, sexuality, and illicit substances

As a vehicle for teaching these broad themes, I have adopted a “history through biography” approach, so each lecture revolves around the life and times of an individual. The men and women who are the subject of my lectures come from diverse social groups and historical epochs.

The Canadian and American Wests arguably have more in common with each other than with the eastern regions of their respective nations. This raises the question of whether “Canada” is a useful concept for historians. Are Canada and the United States fictive concepts?

At the end of this course, you should be able to both defend and criticize the usefulness to historians of such geographical terms as “Canada”, “Western North America”, “the Canadian West,” and “the Canadian Prairies”. The western provinces and states have much in common with each other, but region is also very diverse. You should also be prepared to tell me where Western North America begins and to debate whether the 49th parallel actually matters.

The students will be writing an essay and a book review. The book I have selected for review is:  Greg Robinson, A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), which compares post-1941 Japanese North American internment in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Robinson’s book is a first-class work of pan-North American history.

Lecture Schedule