The Passing of the Pioneer Fringe in Western Canada
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4486334 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Burke G Vanderhill (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 200 |
| Publication date | 1982-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geographical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/214867 |
| OpenAlex | W2333427227 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
T HE forested northland of Canada is commonly viewed as a resource frontier, an arena for economic development centered on the extractive industries and their support services.1 A second and inner frontier closely associated with the northward expansion of agriculture is often overlooked. Economic, societal, institutional, and environmental variables have produced a highly irregular, discontinuous margin of settlement traceable for some four thousand miles across the boreal forest region of Canada: in reality a belt of varying width whose delineation is complicated by the presence of numerous spatially discrete outliers or outposts of agricultural development.2 During the peak of settlement activity-the late 1890s to approximately 1940-the boreal frontier in Canada constituted a classic example of a pioneer fringe, that is, a zone in which would-be farmers, often ill-prepared and ill-equipped for the task, struggled to convert an unfamiliar and somewhat recalcitrant environment to agricultural production.3 Today the term in vogue is agricultural fringe. Segments of this fringe zone may be found from the broad valleys of interior British Columbia, where some land is still available, to the clay belts of northern Ontario and Quebec, where land settlement is currently at a standstill, if not in retreat. The most significant reach of the farming frontier is in the wooded plains of the interior west. Stretching almost two thousand miles from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the edge of the Canadian Shield, the plains frontier involves portions of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba (Fig. 1). Once the scene of meaningful advances of agriculture onto virgin land, the western Canadian fringe zone has witnessed only limited and localized growth at the margins during the past forty years, and the validity of such efforts is currently questioned. The patterns, processes, and problems of agricultural settlement in interior Canada have attracted the attention of various scholars, including several geographers. Helge Nelson made a particularly useful survey of early development along the forest frontier as well as a careful analysis of colonization in 1920-1921, which he assessed in environmental terms.4 J. Lewis Robinson con
Archaeology · Geography · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Canadian Identity and History · Forest Management and Policy · History
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1983 - 2007 (25) |
| Highly cited | No |