The West: Regional Debate, National Ambition, Global Age

by Gerald Friesen

An incisive look at the Canadian West The British Columbia geographer Cole Harris has written that Canada is "a composition of islands." In a country where the geography of settlement is disjointed and discontinuous, Canadians have come to think in terms of broad regional the West, Central Canada, the East, the North. In this second volume in the new Understanding Canada series co-published with the McGill Institute, Gerald Friesen argues that it's time to re-imagine the islands upon which we have constructed our Canadian identities, and that we need to develop new myths for a global age. He reviews the history, economics and social foundation of the old Western grievances with the Big Bad East, and depicts the West as it should be as four distinct provinces with a few elements in common. He takes issue with the claim that the West has a single political outlook and challenges readers to visualize and debate the purpose and choices of our nation with a clear picture of current Western Canadian reality in mind.

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999