Parallel Destinies

The essays in this volume - which grew out of a conference commemorating the Oregon Treaty of 1846 - view the boundary between Canada and the United States as a dividing line and also as a regional backbone, with people on each side having key experiences and attitudes in common. In their eloquence and scope, they illustrate how historical study of Canadian-American relations in the West calls into question the parameters of the nation-state. Essays consider both the nineteenth century, when the international border had limited power to restrict the movement of Native peoples, of financial capital, or of settlers' racist attitudes, and the strengthened boundary of the twentieth century, with its disputes over salmon runs, free trade, and World War II defense. Essays also explore the ways in which Canada and the United States have defined and preserved wilderness, the 1840s dispute over the Oregon Country, and U.S. attitudes that have provoked anti-Americanism in Canada. The U.S.- Canadian border has meant different things to different people, and those meanings have changed over time, but the situation today is the evolution of cross-border integration that took place in the past, and each side of this borderlands region remains, in part, the creation of the other. John M. Findlay is professor of history at the University of Washington. Ken S. Coates is professor of history and dean of arts and sciences at the University of Saskatchewan. Other contributors are Carl Abbott, Michael Fellman, John Lutz, Daniel P. Marshall, Jeremy Mouat, Galen Roger Perras, Chad Reimer, Joseph E. Taylor III, Patricia K. Wood, and Donald Worster.