Mary Janigan, Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark: The West versus the Rest since Confederation.

Beland, Daniel

MARY JANIGAN, Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark: The West versus the Rest since Confederation. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2012, XII + 426 p., index.

Regional political struggles over natural resources have been central to Canadian society since Confederation. Today, for instance, ongoing battles over the oil sands and equalization policy illustrate the enduring political significance of natural resources and related fiscal and policy issues. Historically, political tensions over resources have been particularly strong in the three Prairie provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan). In her book Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark, historian and journalist Mary Janigan offers a broad yet comprehensive analysis of the territorial conflicts over natural resources in Western Canada, from Confederation to the early 1930s, when Ottawa finally granted the three Prairie provinces control over lands and natural resources. This political history book focuses primarily on "high politics" and actors such as premiers, ministers, and prime ministers, who debated resource control and related federal subsidies for decades. Yet as a counterpoint to this political story, Janigan discusses the everyday lives of homesteaders and other migrants who built the West. Overall, the book offers a history of Western Canada in the six first decades after Confederation seen through the lens of natural resources and the territorial politics surrounding them.

An experienced journalist who wrote for newspapers such as the Global and Mail and the Toronto Star, Janigan is now a PhD student in the department of history at York University, and this book is partially derived from research she conducted there as a Master's student. This information is essential to understand how this book is written. Although a trade book issued by a commercial publisher and endorsed by former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed, Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark is grounded in systematic archival research the author conducted in different locations across the country. The author writes as clearly as the best journalists do but she also draws on solid historical evidence to illustrate the rich and multifaceted story she tells. This is not a social science book grounded in explicit theoretical assumptions but a well researched yet pleasant to read historical account that focuses primarily on vividly painted characters, from politicians to hardworking (and sometimes distressed) settlers.

Although most of the book is chronologically structured, it begins with a discussion of a largely forgotten federal-provincial conference that took place in Ottawa in November 1918. This conference witnessed the failure of the Prairie premiers to gain control over lands and natural resources from the federal government, something the six other provinces had enjoyed since their inception. The analysis of this conference and other key episodes sheds light on regional tensions in Canada and the push back from British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, and especially, the three Maritime provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), which also had strong grievances about the functioning of Canada's federal system. Considering this, the book does not only focus on the West but on the federal government and the other regions of the country, which were all involved in the debates over land, resources, and related fiscal subsidies. Significant attention is also paid to the situation of Metis people and First Nations in relationship to these issues and debates. Moving away from this long historical narrative, the short Afterword explores the relevance of these past debates on contemporary policy and political issues such as the exploitation of the Alberta oil sands, and attempts to protect the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a fascinating book that does relate contemporary policy issues to the long and frustrating quest for provincial control over natural resources in the West. Because the so-called New West is a growing economic and political force in Canada, this book does draw attention on crucial historical developments many Canadians (including social scientists) know relatively little about. Regional grievances are strongly embedded in Canadian political culture and society, and Janigan's book does an excellent job at tracing the emergence of such grievances, in the Western provinces and in other parts of the country. Canada is a territorially fragmented, unequal, and tense polity, and her book helps us better understand why. Social scientists, especially political sociologists, are likely to find Janigan's rich historical narrative helpful to map the development of policy debates and issues that remain central to this day.

Yet, in that regard, the book does not do a very good job at exploring the relationship between the debate on provincial control over natural resources and recent territorial conflicts surrounding federal equalization policy, in which the status of these resources within the equalization formula plays such a crucial fiscal and political role. The book does stress the close past relationship between natural resources and federal subsidies but the author largely fails to connect the dots (equalization is mentioned a few times but the term does not even appear in the index) to show how this relationship remains ever present in contemporary federal equalization policy. Prom this perspective, Janigan could have done a better job at exploring the ties between the story she tells about the distant past and current fiscal and territorial struggles in Canada. Another problem with this book is its misleading title and (oil rig) cover image, which could easily suggest it is all about the early 1980s National Energy Program and post-1973 Alberta politics ("Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark" was a slogan found on bumper stickers in Alberta during the 1970s and 1980s, while the provincial government fought what it perceived as Ottawa's attack on its oil industry and livelihood). This is obviously not the case and, although catchy, the title is more a marketing ploy than a reflection of the book's actual content. Despite these critical remarks, Janigan's book is excellent for what it is: a clear and accessible history of the political struggles over provincial resource control up to the 1930s.

DANIEL BELAND, Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy