In Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Land and Times of Charlie Russell, Warren Elofson debunks the myth of the American "wild west" and the Canadian "mild west" by demonstrating that cattlemen on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel shared a common experience. Focusing on Montana, Southern Alberta, Southern Saskatchewan, and the well-known figure of Charlie Russell - an artist and storyteller from that era who spent time on both sides of the border - Elofson examines the lives of cowboys and ranch owners, looking closely at the prevalence of drunkenness, prostitution, gunplay, rustling, and vigilante justice in both Canada and the United States.

A visually rich, historically epic tale of cattle ranching in southern Alberta, focusing on multi-generational family-owned ranches that are still in existence today. In the 1880s, a group of fledgling cattle ranchers descended on the plains of southern Alberta. They were drawn by the promise of the West, where the grass seemed endless and they could ranch under the arch of the Chinook-the warm Pacific wind that swooped down the eastern slopes of the Rockies to melt the snow and clear the land for year-round grazing. They came with wild optimism, but their ambition was soon tempered by the brutal reality of a frontier land. Ranching under the Arch is a tale of survival, perseverance, and prosperity in the face of struggle, loss, and loneliness. Following over a dozen ranches still in operation that have roots dating to the late nineteenth century, historian D. Larraine Andrews recounts the culture that developed around this unique vocation. These ranches have endured as vibrant enterprises, sometimes into the fifth generation of the same family, sometimes with new faces and dreams to change the focus of the narrative. Drawing from historical archives, diaries, and personal accounts, and illustrated by informative maps, fascinating archival imagery, and stunning contemporary photography, Ranching under the Arch is an epic portrait of the "Cattle Kingdom" and its place in Alberta history.

In Metis Pioneers, Doris Jeanne MacKinnon compares the survival strategies of two Metis women born during the fur trade—one from the French-speaking free trade tradition and one from the English-speaking Hudson's Bay Company tradition—who settled in southern Alberta as the Canadian West transitioned to a sedentary agricultural and industrial economy. MacKinnon provides rare insight into their lives, demonstrating the contributions Metis women made to the building of the Prairie West. This is a compelling tale of two women's acts of quiet resistance in the final days of the British Empire.

Transforming the Prairies proposes a new understanding of Canada’s Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), complicating common views of the agency as a model of effective government environmental management. Between 1935 and 2009, the PFRA promoted agricultural rehabilitation in and beyond the Canadian Prairies with mixed and equivocal results. The promotion of strip farming as a soil conservation technique, for example, left crops susceptible to sawfly infestations. The PFRA’s involvement in irrigation development in Ghana increased the local population’s vulnerability to various illnesses. And PFRA infrastructure construction intended to serve the public good failed to account for the interests of affected Indigenous peoples. The PFRA is revealed as being a high modernist state agency that produced varied environmental outcomes and that contributed to consolidating colonialism and racism. This investigation affirms the importance of engaging historical perspectives to help ensure that contemporary environmental management efforts support more just and sustainable futures.

Nineteenth-century farm families needed land for the next generation. Their quest shaped agricultural settlement across Canada. This overview of rural history in Quebec, Ontario, and the Prairies provides a new perspective on the ways in which agriculture and the family farm were central to the country's expansion and essential to understanding social, political, and economic changes. How Agriculture Made Canada shows how differences between the agricultural development of Quebec and that of Ontario had a decisive influence on the settlement of the Prairies. Peter Russell demonstrates that farming families eventually ran out of land against the edges of the St Lawrence lowlands. While Quebec-based Habitants reached their region's limits earlier, Ontario encouraged people to migrate west. Russell argues that the thousands of relocated Ontario farmers changed Manitoba's bilingual openness to an exclusively English-speaking province that then assimilated East European arrivals. Thus, if not for the agricultural crises in the Canadas, Manitoba might have been at least as francophone as anglophone. The first comprehensive synthesis on the history of Canadian farming in decades, How Agriculture Made Canada reveals the lasting impact that nineteenth-century agricultural changes have had on the nation.

The Encyclopedia of Politics in the American West is an A to Z reference work on the political development of one of America’s most politically distinct, not to mention its fastest growing, region. This work will cover not only the significant events and actors of Western politics, but also deal with key institutional, historical, environmental, and sociopolitical themes and concepts that are important to more fully understanding the politics of the West over the last century.