1 2 _________________________________ Borers in oaiation Research Proect 1 Railroads and Borderland Spaces: The Canada-U.S Case Rand illia iddis University of Regina Superised istor inal ersion ACSUS Presentation including Alexander Paul PoerPoint Presentation Introduction Transportation has played a decisive role in transforming the economic and social geography of both the United States and Canada and in this context, railroads have been prominent. Their extension in both the American and Canadian hinterlands was designed to organize territory, increase the number of settlements, support resource exploitation, and facilitate the development of regional and national markets. Yet, as history has demonstrated, while geopolitical protectionism played a somewhat more prominent role in the development of railroads in Canada than the United States, railroad expansion in both countries was not circumscribed by the international boundary. In fact, in many cases the border actually transcended such development. In other words, the Canada-United States border has historically presented both limitations and opportunities to railroad interests. This paper presents an historical overview of cross-border railroad networks, focusing on key elements such as nodes, hubs and corridors. The paper also develops the argument that because such networks responded to changes in technologies, regional development and market forces, their role in shaping the Canada-United States borderland zone varied over space and time. Framing Arguments Networks of exchange and flows of people, capital, goods and information shape borderland spaces and, in part, are determined by them. As such, transportation systems have played, and will continue to play, an important role in the development of borderlands. Flows, gateways, hubs, corridors, and networks and their variable arrangements through time and over space together form a kind of spatial grammar and constituent syntax which directs this 1 discussion of railways and their impact on the emergence of cross-border spaces within the Canada-United States borderland zone.1 This approach is sensitive to the view that sees borderlands as more than places linked across a geopolitical boundary by economic, social and cultural forces. The discussion assumes that borderlands are evolutionary regions where constituent components are both integrated and differentiated by dynamic and complex local, regional, national and international forces. Furthermore, while the borderland is primarily a territorial concept, the temporal factor is of fundamental importance in defining its role as place. The Canadian-American borderland zone as “place”2 was fundamentally altered when railways emerged as the dominant form of transportation towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The constituent borderland regions of the larger zone were further changed when subsequent transportation and communication technologies reduced, but did not eliminate, the relative impact of this mode of transportation.3 Finally, we contend that cross-border rail transportation has in recent history re-emerged as a major force in reconfiguring borderland regions. Transportation Technologies, Railroads and Borderlands 1 Briefly, spatial grammar is an approach to the study of borderland evolution that is influenced by the perspective of postmodernism and the concepts of time-space compression/extension and de- and re-territorialization. For greater discussion of the concept of spatial grammar and it constituent syntax, see: R. Widdis, “The Spatial Grammar of Migration Within the Canadian-American Borderlands at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” in A. Freund and B. Bryce, eds., Entangling North America: Space and Migration History (forthcoming 2014), 61-96; R. Widdis, "Looking Through the Mirror: A Historical Geographical View of the Canadian-American Borderlands,” (forthcoming The Journal of Borderland Studies, 2014). 2 We contend that the Canadian-American borderland is not a singular homogeneous region but rather, is a complex heterogeneous zone composed of several international regions that, while sharing functional similarities resulting from cross-border interaction, nevertheless retain distinct identities arising from local settings. Further, we maintain that these borderlands are organic; they evolve over time to become different kinds of places. 3 Based on the arguments of McKinsey and Konrad (1989) and economic evidence on cross-border relationships Policy Research Initiative, 2005), the following groups of provinces and states are associated with these international regions: Atlantic (Newfoundland after 1949, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., New Brunswick, eastern Québec [Gaspé], Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut); St. Lawrence (Québec, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut ); Great Lakes (Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota); Plains and Prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana); Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon). See: L. McKinsey and V. Konrad, Borderland Reflections: The United States and Canada, Borderlands Monograph Series # 1 (Orono: Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, 1989); Government of Canada, Policy Research Initiative, The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions Interim Report (November 2005). 2 Time-space compression, a term first coined by David Harvey,4 is used by geographers when considering how societies have used transportation and communication technologies to reduce the friction of distance and facilitate the interaction among places.5 While geographers understand that space- and time-adjusting technologies have existed for centuries, they also recognize that the nature, impact and pace of such developments have rapidly accelerated during the transition to modernity and post-modernity. Before the major technological transformations brought about by the industrial revolution, transport technology was limited to harnessing animal power for land transport and wind power for maritime transport. This meant that human movement and trade for the most part were local in scope. As a result of and in addition to limited transportation, communications were restricted between human communities; few had the opportunity to see or hear beyond their own village or town. At the turn of the nineteenth century, certain flows and networks, some in place for centuries for both aboriginal and non- aboriginal peoples, crossed the newly created Canada-United States border, but life for most people was circumscribed by the shared spatial and temporal context of the local. In general then, people, at least those of European descent, lived on the farm or in villages and small towns, working the land and relying upon the local community to provide for them. Indeed, it was more likely at this time that certain indigenous groups, especially those involved in pursuing the buffalo and participating in the fur trade, were the most mobile people on the North American continent. At this point, a non-native borderland zone did exist but it was more or less a territory 4 The idea of annihilation of space and time through new transportation technologies first emerged during the Industrial Revolution. As early as 1844, the New England philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared: “Not only is distance annihilated, but when, as now, the locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot every day across the thousand various threads of national descent and employment, and bind them fast in one web, an hourly assimilation goes forward and there is no danger that local peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved.” See: R. Emerson, “The Young American, “a lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, Boston, February 7, 1844. from American Transcendentalism website. http://transcendentalism- legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/youngam.html (accessed September 12, 2013); D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). 5 For example, see: B. Warf, Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies (New York: Routledge, 2008). 3 characterized by a limited degree of interaction between people, businesses and communities that were geographically proximate. Industrialization developed vehicles of communication and transportation which triggered a shift in the capture of space-time relationships, expanding the experience and cognition of space and time and, by default, increasing the size and reconfiguring the shape of the borderland in spite of any impediments (e.g. tariff policy) that might serve to hinder interactions taking place across the border. Increasingly, people and communities were drawn out of their spatially confined and familiar worlds into one that was more connected, integrated and mobile. During the nineteenth century, turnpike roads, followed by canals, steam boats, and railroads, along with the telegraph, not only reduced time-space and extended space among communities and regions within Canada and the United States, they also operated to develop and strengthen connections within the borderlands. This increased the capacity of people, businesses and communities to orientate themselves with other people and places beyond the local, the regional, and even the national. This “annihilation” of time and space, in turn, increased the ability of capitalism to expand markets,