Nostalgic Reaction and the Canadian Prairie Landscape

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 1982 Nostalgic Reaction And The Canadian Prairie Landscape Ronald Rees University of Saskatchewan Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Rees, Ronald, "Nostalgic Reaction And The Canadian Prairie Landscape" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1665. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1665 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. NOSTALGIC REACTION AND THE CANADIAN PRAIRIE LANDSCAPE RONALDREES A man is, of all sorts of baggage, the most dif fanciful; to enrich their understanding of the ficult to be transported. problems of adjustment to an alien environ Adam Smith, 1776 ment, American astronauts were required to read Walter Prescott Webb's classic study of In psychology and psychoanalysis, nostalgic the Great Plains.)3 Even settlers accustomed to reaction refers to the behavior of people continental conditions were overwhelmed by separated from familiar places and familiar the enormities of the region. German Catholics pasts.1 Used professionally, the expression from the Ukraine and Ukrainians from Poland encompasses the entire range of behavior ex were dumbfounded by the emptiness of the hibited by the uprooted. It is used here in a plains and by the length and severity of the limited sense to describe the efforts, both winters. For the Ukrainians, wrote Myrna physical and imaginative, made by migrants Kostash, the first nostalgia was longing for the from Europe and eastern North America to early spring and the blossoming plum and adjust t~ a difficult and unfamiliar landscape. cherry trees of their homeland while the prairie Cut off from their homelands, migrants to the offered only poplar saplings, willow brush, and Canadian prairies and to the northern plains in grasses, still under the snow.4 general were forced to make a home of a new The dimensions of the problem posed by the and, as one of them put it, "naked land.,,2 loss of home and the need to make a new one For most, arrival on the plains was the equiva were the subject of a poignant memoir by lend of a moon landing. (The analogy is not Welshman Evan Davies, who homesteaded with his friend David James on the southern edge of the Saskatchewan parkland: An associate professor of geography at the University of Saskatchewan, Ronald Rees has I felt very low, and I believe David James did published many articles in Canadian, Ameri too. This was so unlike what we had imag can, and British journals in geography and ined back in Wales. We had visualised a green history. He is especially interested in imagina country with hills around, and happy people tive responses to the Canadian prairie land as neighbours-no doubt a naive outlook on scape. so drastic a venture, but one common to 157 158 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982 many people emigrating at the time. There redeemed. "They were islands of beauty," was something so impersonal about this wrote Aileen Garland of the station gardens, prairie, something that shattered any hope "tokens of gracious living in a landscape often of feeling attached to it or even building a bleak and bare. When the train had pulled out home on it. Any moment now, I thought as ... passengers would have found the pervasive we trotted along, we'll come to our piece of aroma . of the coaches replaced by the land. Any moment! What is there to make it fragrance of mignonette, tobacco plants, and different from the rest of the land we've sweet-scented stock. They were home again.,,9 come through since yesterday morning? Nothing. Nothing at all. 5 RESPONSES OF RANCHERS David James selected a quarter section that had AND HOMESTEADERS on it patches of stone and a small ridge. He could have chosen a cleaner quarter nearby, but Symbolic adjustments to the landscape and "I rather fancy," remarked his companion, "he the nostalgia that they expressed were not as took the piece with the ridge on it because the evident in ranching as in farming districts. flatness of the other pieces was abhorrent to his Ranchers did not plant trees and they often Glamorgan nature." David James's reaction was dispensed with gardens. Immigrant ranchers commonplace; in unfamiliar surroundings we were not immune to nostalgia-those in Al gravitate to what we know. Pioneer records are berta, for example, created a distinctly English rich in examples of locations that were chosen colonial society-but among them the condi as much for emotional as for practical reasons. tion was never epidemic. They were clearly Forest and parkland locations, sometimes with more at home on the prairie than farmers were. stony and poorly drained soils, were repeatedly In the foothills of southern Alberta and the preferred to the richer and more easily worked hills and coteaus of southwestern Saskatche grasslands. "We chose to settle in the Dauphin wan, they had the most scenic landscape of the region of Manitoba," said one Ukrainian praIrIe. "It was beautiful," wrote novelist emigrant, "because the woods and streams and Robert Stead of the foothill country, "not meadows very much resembled our native with the majesty of great mountains, nor the Carpathian scenery.,,6 solemnity of great plains, but with that nearer, As well as choosing settings that reminded more intimate relationship which is the peculiar them of home, settlers undertook physical property of foothill country. Here was neither changes that sustained the illusion of conform the flatness that, with a change of mood, ity between the new landscape and the old. The could become in a moment desolation, nor the intractable nature of the prairie allowed only aloofness of eternal rocks towering in cold token changes, or what anthropologist John space, but the friendship of hills that could be Bennett calls "symbolic" adjustments.7 Trees climbed, and trees that lisped in the light wind, were planted, lawns and gardens made, and and water that babbled playfully over gravel towns and villages given names that recalled the ridges gleaming in the August sunshine.,,10 homeland. The changes were encouraged and To the advantages of life in attractive, en supported by the government and the railways, folding surroundings ranchers could add the both of which, said a government spokesman in satisfaction that accompanies a natural rela 1901, were eager to convert "a bleak and tionship with environment. Unlike the exposed uninviting stretch of country into one in which farmhouses, the low ranch houses nestled in newcomers will be anxious to settle.,,8 Under a coulees where they were protected from wind policy of "beautification" the government and fire and where there were trees, sweet planted trees and the Canadian Pacific Railway water, and sometimes trout. Many of the made gardens. Together they demonstrated ranches had been located by settlers who had that a landscape as plain as the prairie could be followed Indian and buffalo trails that led to NOSTALGIC REACTION AND THE CANADIAN PRAIRIE LANDSCAPE 159 sheltered campgrounds and good grazing. The or they fasten onto it.13 Ranchers evidently hard words "sodbuster," "mossback," and rode and farmers fastened. The choice may "nester" were expressions of contempt for have been related to temperament. territorial invaders who compounded the Psychoanalyst Michael Balint has identified trespass by committing ecological abuse. The two personality types based upon fundamental ranchers were not guardian angels of the prairie differences between people in their need ecosystem, but they did not, in areas too dry for security.14 The two types are labeled for agriculture, turn the sod "wrong side up," "ochnophil" and "philobat." According to nor did they need to "root, hog, or die." Balint, the ochnophil is hesitant and fearful, Ranchers, in Bennett's phrase, conformed to and his world consists of objects (refuges) the environment; range cattle filled the eco separated by "horrid empty spaces." Fear is logical niche left by the buffalo, and raising provoked by leaving the protective objects and them was not usually toilsome. More im allayed by rejoining them; sojourns in the portant than the homesteader virtue of dogged empty spaces are therefore kept as short as determination was a sympathetic understand possible. The philobat's world is the converse ing of the environment and of the animals. In of the ochnophil's: the horrid empty spaces ranching parlance, "knowing cow" indicated a are, instead, friendly expanses interrupted by knowledge of cattle psychology and-to prevent occasional hazards that have to be negotiated. unnecessary movement and overgrazing-knowl Unlike the ochnophil, whose security is found edge of the behavior of the animals on partic ed on the proximity of protective objects, the ular kinds of topography and on particular philo bat relies on his own resources and a arrangements of grass and water. Though the limited amount of equipment. Provided the ele prairie was not always beneficent, ranchers ments are not actually threatening, he is con were less vulnerable than farmers to wind, hail, fident of his ability to survive. The philobat's and drought; and in the prairie grasses they had, world, concludes Balint, is characterized by thanks to sun-curing and chinook winds, a safe distance and sight, the ochnophil's by year-round supply of pasture and hay. The physical proximity and touch. result of a way of life that was more a partner The early farmers and ranchers on the ship with nature than a struggle against it was Canadian plains might readily be assigned a sanguine attitude toward the environment.

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