In the spring of 1881, William Bell and his son-in-law Walter leave their families in Pickering, Ontario, and head west in hopes of securing land in what was then the North-West Territories. At fifty-six William is determined to keep a promise made to his dead wife, Annie, that they find land and settle where they can make a life for themselves on their own terms, a place where their family can forge a future beholden to none. And so it is that the two make their way first to Winnipeg, then on to Portage la Prairie—where the railroad ends—passing north of Brandon on foot and out into the vast unbroken heartland of the continent.

It is summer, 1884. Most folks in the fledgling community of Blaris in western Manitoba have had two to three years to establish their subsistence farms. All have the long-term view that when there are railroads to carry their grains and livestock to market, they will have the cash flow to survive. At the moment, they are growing pork, beef, chickens, and grain for flour, mostly for their own tables. Meanwhile, tensions are mounting further to the west in the valleys of the Saskatchewan. Many in Blaris have some appreciation and sympathy for the western causes, such as the plights of the Métis, many of whom left the Red River Valley in Manitoba following the conflicts of the 1870s. The Métis are again being hounded by the government in Ottawa, which has begun surveying the river lots that they had already established, mostly along the banks of the South Saskatchewan River near Batoche. The Métis want recognition for the provisional government they established in the absence of any interest from the East. In short, they want some control over the laws and structures of the land on which they live. The Prairie Indians, who had signed Treaty 6 with the Queen in 1876 at Fort Carlton and are reluctant to occupy the confining Indian reserves that they had been allocated, are suffering from severe malnutrition. Without the prairie bison on which they had depended for generations, they now face starvation. In addition, they—especially their children and elders—are being decimated by diseases such as scarlet fever, smallpox, and measles. There is no sign of the medicine chest that they had been promised in the treaties. Back in western Manitoba, the settlers’ nightmare is that the Indians and the Métis will find common ground and unite their formidable warrior skills to drive the settlers from their lands. Accounts of the bloody Sioux uprising in Minnesota only twenty-two years earlier fan these fears. Unrest is rampant.

Imperial Plots depicts the female farmers and ranchers of the prairies, from the Indigenous women agriculturalists of the Plains to the array of women who resolved to work on the land in the first decades of the twentieth century.

This multi-functional reference is a useful tool to find information about history-related organizations and programs and to contact those working in history across the country.

Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice. Although this conception has been challenged in recent years, it has not been completely dispelled. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, and underscores the damaging legacy of inequality that continues today. Backhouse presents detailed narratives of six court cases, each giving evidence of blatant racism created and enforced through law. The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian, and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the 'Ku Klux Klan of Kanada.' From thousands of possibilities, Backhouse has selected studies that constitute central moments in the legal history of race in Canada. Her selection also considers a wide range of legal forums, including administrative rulings by municipal councils, criminal trials before police magistrates, and criminal and civil cases heard by the highest courts in the provinces and by the Supreme Court of Canada. The extensive and detailed documentation presented here leaves no doubt that the Canadian legal system played a dominant role in creating and preserving racial discrimination. A central message of this book is that racism is deeply embedded in Canadian history despite Canada's reputation as a raceless society. Winner of the Joseph Brant Award, presented by the Ontario Historical Society