Canadian History Precis: W.J. Eccles, "Society and the Frontier."

While elementary exposure to history cloisters many in an idealistic interpretation of the past, it is the job of the academic historian to push past the nebulous tales of heroes and villains and evince a clearer illumination of actualities. While Canadian history, like many others, is filled with the protagonists and antagonists and stories of great fortune that build a nation, W.J. Eccles has pursued a career in dissuading the myths of historical reticence and injecting the old with true scholarship in pursuit of a greater base of knowledge. In The Canadian Frontier, this has never been truer. In "Society and the Frontier," W.J. Eccles provides a sound disclosure of fact and theory that knit together the nuanced truths and assumptions of Canadian history to create an accurate reflection of the development of northern frontier society.

In the entirety of his works, Eccles seeks to dismantle hackneyed approaches to viewing Canadian history that are frequently based in a Davey Crocker-esque approach to history; far more said than done. In his first book, Frontenac: the Courtier Governor and later Canada Under Louis XIV, he expertly riffles through superficial statements about the Canadian past repeated through both textbooks and lectures at all levels of historical knowledge. It is from this perspective that "Society and the Frontier" was cast; in Frontier, he approaches these facts as...

He continues his discussion by addressing the problems of New France as being used as a commercial outpost for Europe. This commercial structure was devastating for Canada; cod fishing villages in the East were made solely for export, with very little raw local investment. The fishing villages were inevitably small and lacked the inherent foundational ties integral to the creation of a society; there was no need for a common source of consumer experience, since both boat and sail were imported from Europe. As such, the size and nature of the villages was immediately truncated and monochromatic, and the ability to grow a society from such nascent forms was impossible as allows for by the governing system in early Canada.
While the fur trade pushed out into parts unknown, as the Cod industry did in the seas of the North Atlantic, it did so with family and future in mind, settling the "wilderness" of the Canadian north. The peculiar market, an oddity in the international economy, mirrored its industrial role in the…