{"id":125,"date":"2006-01-20T03:34:15","date_gmt":"2006-01-20T08:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=125"},"modified":"2018-08-24T02:47:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T06:47:41","slug":"14572-%c2%a0%c2%a0-d-m-lebourdais-canadas-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"14572. (D. M. LeBourdais) Canada\u2019s Century"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nursing<\/a>

Nurs\u00ading Sis\u00adter at Fort Churchill, Man\u00adi\u00adto\u00adba, prepar\u00ading to board an RCAF<\/span> De Hav\u00adil\u00adland Otter. Cana\u00addi\u00adan-made bush planes such as the Otter and Beaver were the \u201ccov\u00adered wag\u00adons\u201d of the Cana\u00addi\u00adan North (Library and Archives Cana\u00adda Pho\u00adto, MIKAN<\/span> No. 4234435)<\/p><\/div>\n

This book was pub\u00adlished in 1956, and it reflects a time when Cana\u00addi\u00adans had very dif\u00adfer\u00adent things to think about. This was the peri\u00adod when a num\u00adber of peo\u00adple became inspired by visions of the North\u00adern Fron\u00adtier. French-speak\u00ading Cana\u00addi\u00adans seem to have been more caught up in it than Eng\u00adlish-speak\u00ading Cana\u00addi\u00adans, who seem to have been more attract\u00aded to the mag\u00adic of the bloom\u00ading sub\u00adurbs, but there were books like this pub\u00adlished in both lan\u00adguages. The North was bristling with poten\u00adtial min\u00aderal wealth. The 1940s had already seen a Pio\u00adneer Move\u00adment, which was espe\u00adcially encour\u00adaged by influ\u00aden\u00adtial peo\u00adple in Que\u00adbec, who want\u00aded to divert the leak\u00adage of French Cana\u00addi\u00adans migrat\u00ading to New Eng\u00adland (where they would cer\u00adtainly lose their lan\u00adguage) into the North\u00adern and West\u00adern Cana\u00adda, where they would be able to keep it. This meant mov\u00ading into the last remain\u00ading untouched patch\u00ades of pos\u00adsi\u00adble agri\u00adcul\u00adtural land in North Amer\u00adica, and home\u00adsteading under the most extreme con\u00addi\u00adtions. Some set\u00adtle\u00adments failed, some\u00adtimes home\u00adsteads would be aban\u00addoned in moment of despair, the cof\u00adfee pot left boil\u00ading on the stove. (It\u2019s iron\u00adic that my moth\u00ader, from an ancient Que\u00adbec fam\u00adily along the St. Lawrence, expe\u00adri\u00adenced both. Her fam\u00adily moved to Mass\u00ada\u00adchu\u00adsetts to get work in the mills, but when she fin\u00adished school, she returned to Cana\u00adda and wound up in a sub\u00adarc\u00adtic Ontario min\u00ading town.)<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1950,<\/a>

1950, some\u00adwhere in North\u00adern Ontario. A typ\u00adi\u00adcal north\u00adern impro\u00advi\u00adsa\u00adtion: the School\u00adroom On Rails.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

LeBour\u00addais\u2019 book is full of the opti\u00admism that swept Cana\u00addian econ\u00ado\u00admists, busi\u00adness, and politi\u00adcians. Fab\u00adu\u00adlous plans were made for roads and rail\u00adways that would open up the North and assure Canada\u2019s place as the Land of Oppor\u00adtu\u00adnity. Many projects were actu\u00adally started.<\/span><\/p>\n

But with\u00adin a decade, the Dream of the North was start\u00ading to fade. Que\u00adbec con\u00adtin\u00adued to pur\u00adsue large scale hydro devel\u00adop\u00adments in the North, there con\u00adtin\u00adued to be a lot of activ\u00adity in north\u00adern Alber\u00adta and Saskatchewan, and a lot of road-build\u00ading in BC<\/span> and the Yukon. But the Great Macken\u00adzie Pipeline and the High\u00adway to the Bering Sea (pro\u00adposed in this book) nev\u00ader mate\u00adri\u00adal\u00adized. There was nev\u00ader any large pop\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtion move\u00adment into the sub\u00adarc\u00adtic, and after Inu\u00advik and Iqaluit, no more bright new space-sta\u00adtion style towns found\u00aded in the high arc\u00adtic. Amer\u00adi\u00adcan and Russ\u00adian sub\u00admarines played tag in our arc\u00adtic waters, and we all pre\u00adtended it wasn\u2019t hap\u00adpen\u00ading. The last big project was the Demp\u00adster High\u00adway, com\u00adpleted in 1979, a 736 km grav\u00adel road con\u00adnect\u00ading Inu\u00advik to the Klondike High\u00adway in the Yukon. A friend and I hitched that road in the mid 1990\u2019s, and it still had only one build\u00ading on it\u2019s entire length, the halfway truck-stop at Eagle Plains \u2014 one of the most beau\u00adti\u00adful places on Earth. The high\u00adway is named after the young Moun\u00adty con\u00adsta\u00adble who fre\u00adquently ran the dog sled trail from Daw\u00adson City to Fort Mcpher\u00adson, which the high\u00adway rough\u00adly follows.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s inter\u00adest\u00ading that the last few years have seen a renew\u00adal of pub\u00adlic inter\u00adest in the North, and a grow\u00ading real\u00adiza\u00adtion that, if Cana\u00adda does have a future, it is going to have to revive some of that fron\u00adtier sen\u00adti\u00adment. The recent ker\u00adfuf\u00adfle over Hans Island shows that politi\u00adcians are grow\u00ading more sen\u00adsi\u00adtive about our shaky con\u00adtrol of the far\u00adthest north. The dia\u00admond rush in the North\u00adwest Ter\u00adri\u00adto\u00adries has been bring\u00ading more and more adven\u00adtur\u00aders to the arc\u00adtic, and the new ter\u00adri\u00adtory of Nunavut has been a rea\u00adson\u00adable suc\u00adcess since it has assumed full self-gov\u00adern\u00adment. Mon\u00adey is being poured into new snow roads, and upgrad\u00ading the Demp\u00adster and Yel\u00adlowknife roads. <\/span><\/p>\n

Undoubt\u00adedly, any new North\u00adern Fron\u00adtier move\u00adment will have to be more eco\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcally sen\u00adsi\u00adtive and sophis\u00adti\u00adcated than the brash plans of the 1950\u2019s plan\u00adners, but I wouldn\u2019t be sur\u00adprised if the next few years see the pub\u00adli\u00adca\u00adtion of new books that are not very dif\u00adfer\u00adent in spir\u00adit from this one that LeBour\u00addais wrote in 1956. Per\u00adhaps I\u2019ll end up writ\u00ading one of them, myself.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book was pub\u00adlished in 1956, and it reflects a time when Cana\u00addi\u00adans had very dif\u00adfer\u00adent things to think about. This was the peri\u00adod when a num\u00adber of peo\u00adple became inspired by visions of the North\u00adern Fron\u00adtier. French-speak\u00ading Cana\u00addi\u00adans seem \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9816,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/9816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}