The Prairie Provinces cover Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Place and Replace is a collection of recent interdisciplinary research into Western Canada that calls attention to the multiple political, social, and cultural labours performed by the concept of “place.” The book continues a long-standing tradition of situating questions of place at the centre of analyses of Western Canada’s cultures, pasts, and politics, while making clear that place is never stable, universal, or static. The essays here confirm the interests and priorities of Western Canadian scholarship that have emerged over the past forty years and remind us of the importance of Indigenous peoples, dispossession, and colonialism; of migration, race and ethnicity; of gender and women’s experiences; of the impact of the natural and built environment; and the impact of politics and the state.

In the late 1870s, thousands of Chinese men left coastal British Columbia and the western United States and headed east. For them, the Prairies were a land of opportunity; there, they could open shops and potentially earn enough money to become merchants. The result of almost a decade's research and more than three hundred interviews, Cultivating Connections tells the stories of some of Prairie Canada's Chinese settlers - men and women from various generations who navigated cultural difference. These stories reveal the critical importance of networks in coping with experiences of racism and establishing a successful life on the Prairies.

William Van Horne, general manager of the CPR, pushed through construction of the transcontinental line and went on to become company president.