Northern visions
Subtitle: new perspectives on the North in Canadian history
By: edited by Kerry Abel and Ken S. Coates.
Contributors: Abel, Kerry M.; Coates, Kenneth, 1956-
Publisher: Broadview Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Peterborough, Ont; Orchard Park, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: Canada, Northern -- History
Description: "Canadian nationalists in the nineteenth century argued that the North, with its extremes of winter, distance, and isolation, defined the country's essential character and gave its population the resolve and determination necessary to create a prosperous nation. Promoters lauded its enormous economic potential while cursing its vast expanses and dangerous winters. Novelists, poets, and painters were awestruck by its boundless reaches and environmental diversity.

Today, the North retains its complex place within the Canadian psyche, at once celebrated as the very essence of the nation, while being largely ignored by a population that clings to the Canada-USA border. Many have debated its significance in Canada's history, and have attempted to bring the region to the attention of the rest of the country by carving out a niche for northern history within the academic curriculum. The current generation of historians has a more ambitious and complex agenda.

While they are interested in the North for its own sake, they also firmly believe that the study and teaching of Canadian history as a whole does not currently recognize the North's importance to the development of the nation.".

"Northern Visions, by bringing together a variety of perspectives on the history of the North in Canada, raises new questions and challenges existing ideas. Provocative in their interpretations, these essays do not point to a single path forward in the writing of regional history, but instead suggest that it is time to rethink some of our basic conceptions - and misconceptions - about the North.

Northern Visions calls upon historians of both region and nation to broaden their range of research, to connect regional developments to activities in other northern regions of the world, and to think much more widely about the place of the North in the understanding of Canada's past."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-216) and index.
Table of contents: label: Introduction: The North and the Nation
title: Kerry Abel & Ken S. Coates
pagenum: 7; label: Winter and the Shaping of Northern History: Reflections from the Canadian North
title: Ken S. Coates & William R. Morrison
pagenum: 23; label: A Very Long Journey: Distance and Northern History
title: Bill Waier
pagenum: 37; label: Parks Canada and the Commemoration of the North: History and Heritage
title: David Neufeld
pagenum: 45; label: Change, Continuity, Renewal: Lessons from a Decade of Historiography on the First Nations ofthe Territorial North
title: Mary-Ellen Kelm
pagenum: 77; label: Inuit History in the Next Millenium: Challenges and Rewards
title: Shelagh D. Grant
pagenum: 91; label: Women, Gender, and the Provincial North
title: Nancy M. Forestell
pagenum: 107; label: Creating New Angles of Repose: Northern Canadian Communities in a National Context
title: Charlene Porsild
pagenum: 117; label: History and the Provincial Norths: An Ontario Example
title: Kerry Abel
pagenum: 127; label: Alaska and the Canadian North: Comparing Conceptual Frameworks
title: Stephen Haycox
pagenum: 141; label: Whither the Northern Natives in Russian History?
title: Aileen A. Espiritu
pagenum: 159; label: Reflections on a Career of Northern Travelling, Teaching, Writing, and Reading
title: Bruce Hodgins
pagenum: 177; label: Notes
title: 187; label: Contributors
title: 217; label: Index
title: 219