Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2005
Abstract
Anthony Rasporich says that a "sense of struggle, of painful discovery, and loss of innocence" in the face of disasters is "embedded in the Canadian consciousness" with the same sense of urgency felt south of the border but with "a different collective sense." Some essays in this collection on the Prairie West do allude to that comparison. Hugh Dempsey shows that nineteenth-century smallpox epidemics did not respect the border and weakened the ability of the Native peoples to resist European settlement. Janice Dickin's analysis of the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918-19 in Calgary, however, only suggests that Canadians and Americans had different experiences. Given current concern over mad cow disease, Max Foran's study of foot and mouth disease in Saskatchewan in 1952 is timely. It explains how Canada quarantined the area and the United States temporarily embargoed Canadian livestock and goods likely to carry the virus that probably came in the effects of a European immigrant.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 25:4 (Fall 2005). Copyright © 2005 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.