After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a general fear of invasion swept North America, and particularly the West Coast; it seemed essential that immedtiate steps be taken to defend the Far Northwest. With the approval of the Canadian government, Washington drew up plans for the future Alaska Highway to connect Edmonton, Alberta, with Fairbanks, Alaska, and for a pipeline to connect the oil fields at Norman Wells, Northwest Territories, with the Pacific Coast. As a result, between 1942 and 1946, forty thousand American military and civilian personnel invaded the Canadian Northwest. Where there had been few roads or none, a pioneer road more thant 1500 miles long was built in less than a year. A rough road was built from Normal Wells to Whitehorse, Yukon ( a distance of nearly 600 miles), and the Canol Pipeline was built along its length. Navigation facilities along the Mackenzie River were improved. Pipelines were laid from Whitehorse northwest 600 miles to Fairbanks; southest 300 miles to Watson Lake, near the British Columbia line; and southwest 100 miles to the Pacific Ocean at Skagway, Alaska. The Haines Lateral, almost 150 miles long, connected the Alaska Highway to salt water at Haines, Alaska. Existing airfields were upgraded and new ones built on the Northwest Staging Route. Ancilary facilities, such as a telephone network, were constructed.The Northwest was totally unprepared for this friendly invasion. The AlaskaHighway ran through a semiwilderness where many inhabitants pursued a nomadic, harvesting way of lie. More thanb 5,000 trucks arrived where there had been hardly that many pepoel. Edmonton, with 95,000 people, became "the young Chicago of the North." Whitehorse, an obscure village of fewer than 800 people, was to become northern Canada's largest community and the territorial capital. Many other small towns and settlements were overwhelmed by the tens of thousands in the American "army of occupation."This lively history of a great episode in American civil and military engineering is based largely on interviews with veteran and local residents, as well as research in Canadian archives and those of the U.S. Corps of Engineers.. The authors address such related topics as how and why the projects were planned and built; the impacts of the newcomers on the environment, the wildlife, and the Native people; social and sexual relations between the Americans and local people; law enforcementl and racism. The anecdotes of the participants provide humour and insights on the events of fifty years ago. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This book works through the conflicting and contradictory positions, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, on indigenous rights in Canada.

A Global History of Indigenous Peoples examines the history of the indigenous/tribal peoples of the world. The work spans the period from the pivotal migrations which saw the peopling of the world, examines the processes by which tribal peoples established themselves as separate from surplus-based and more material societies, and considers the impact of the policies of domination and colonization which brought dramatic change to indigenous cultures. The book covers both tribal societies affected by the expansion of European empires and those indigenous cultures influenced by the economic and military expansion of non-European powers. The work concludes with a discussion of contemporary political and legal conflicts between tribal peoples and nation-states and the on-going effort to sustain indigenous cultures in the face of globalization, resource developments and continued threats to tribal lands and societies.

Product Description: The Canadian West and the American Northwest offer a valuable setting for considering issues of borders and borderlands. The regions contain certain similarities, and during the first half of the nineteenth century they were even grouped together as a distinct political and economic unit, called the "Oregon Country" by Americans and the "Columbia Department" of the Hudson's Bay Company by the British...read more

Product Description: Essays consider both the nineteenth century, when the international border had limited power to restrict the movement of Native peoples, financial capital, or settlers' racist attitudes, and the strengthened boundary of the twentieth century, with its disputes over salmon runs, free trade, and World War II defence...read more

Product Description: Essays consider both the nineteenth century, when the international border had limited power to restrict the movement of Native peoples, financial capital, or settlers' racist attitudes, and the strengthened boundary of the twentieth century, with its dis

Product Description: Bishop William Carpenter Bompas was a difficult man, cantankerous, stubborn, and more than a little eccentric. He carried on his shoulders the deep spirituality of his own faith, the assumptions of his background, and the cultural aggressiveness of the Victorian age...read more

(view table of contents)

Product Description: In The Marshall Decision and Native Rights Ken Coates explains the cross-cultural, legal, and political implications of the recent Supreme Court decision on the Donald Marshall case. He describes the events, personalities, and conflicts that brought the Maritimes to the brink of a major confrontation between Mi'kmaq and the non-Mi'kmaq fishers in the fall of 1999, detailing the bungling by federal departments and the lack of police preparedness...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Outstanding Academic Title, 2002 - Choice Canadian nationalists in the 19th 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Those of us who live in northern BC know why we're here. This book tells the rest of the world why they should at least visit The area's physical beauty is the most obvious mason. There are raging rivers, rugged mountains and lakes of all sizes and descriptions...read more

Product Description: They came north like a storm surge of humanity, those wartime workers driven by the forces of World War II. Men and women, black and white, civilian and military, they outnumbered and effectively overwhelmed the largely Native population of Canada's northwest...read more

The indigenous population, Coates stresses, has not been passive in the face of expansion by whites. He argues that Native people have played a major role in shaping the history of the region and determining the relationship with the immigrant population. They recognized the conflict between the material and technological advantages of an imposed economic order and the desire to maintain a harvesting existence. While they readily accepted technological innovations, they resisted the imposition of an industrial, urban environment. Contemporary land claims show their long-standing attachment to the land and demonstrate a continued, assertive response to non-Native intervention.

Product Description: PrefaceIntroduction1.The Sub-Arctic Fringe2. The Incorporation of Northern Regions3. The Colonizers' North4. The Original Inhabitants5. Completing the Colonization of the Provincial Norths6. Divided Dreams: Perspectives on the Modern Provincial NorthsSuggested ReadingsIndex

Product Description: In March 1942, the northwestern North America was invaded by an army of 10,000 soldiers and an equal number of civilians. Their purpose was to thwart any attempt by the Japanese to overrun this continent. Their improbable task was to push a highway 1,500 miles long through dense bush and over mountains and raging rivers, to link Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska, in less than eight months...read more

Product Description: In March 1942, the northwestern North America was invaded by an army of 10,000 soldiers and an equal number of civilians. Their purpose was to thwart any attempt by the Japanese to overrun this continent. Their improbable task was to push a highway 1,500 miles long through dense bush and over mountains and raging rivers, to link Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska, in less than eight months...read more

Product Description: Book by Coates, Kenneth

Product Description: Published in 1989, The Modern North examines the experience of the peoples of the Yukon and Northwest Territories from the Berger inquiry of 1975 and onwards.Untangling the varied strands that make up the Northern tapestry—its resourceful peoples, its awesome physical landscape, its political and economic agenda in the late 1980s—they portray in vivid colours a society struggling to cast off the chains of colonialism and define its own future...read more

Product Description: Book by Coates, Ken

Product Description: Furs, gold, whales, oil--the reason for going north has always been to empty the treasure house. The northern territories are vast and sparsely populated, so southern Canadians have been content to consider the North a colony, not a true part of Canada...read more