Kirkus Reviews QR Code
DOMINION OF THE NORTH by Donald Grant Creighton

DOMINION OF THE NORTH

By

Pub Date: April 4th, 1944
Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

This differs from other recent histories of Canada in being geared primar Canadian rather than our market. There is no attempt to interpret Canadian is in religion, in politics, in international relations -- it is rather a scholarly, comprehensive, and meticulously detailed study of Canada's history from the ha records of Eriksson's explorations, down to the present war (no attempt to include the to date). Much more space is given to the early explorations and settlements, the fisheries and expanding fur trade, the growth of the Hudson's Bay Company fur empire, the Jesuit missionary exploration, the growth of French-Canada and English-Canada and the problems that grew out of it -- than in the other briefer histories which skim these slow years of putting down roots. Then the years of trial and error politically, of conflict between Upper and Lower Canada, of westward expansion and the battle for the northwest territory, of fur interests in conflict, of problems of the Alaskan borders, of internal struggles for unity, of the Conservative Party opposed to the Reform of Liberal Party, of nationalism vs regionalism, of the pressure of Empire, symbolised by the reactions to the Boer War, of the development of the Prairie Provinces, of the coming of industry and the rise of cities. Political and nationalist problems came to a head with the first world war, but the outcome with Dominion status, independence of English control, improved conditions between and the U.S.A. brought Canada through the depression and prepared her for cooperation in the second world war.