What comes to mind when we think of the Old West? Often, our conceptions are accompanied by as much mythology and mystique as fact or truth. What are the differences in how the Canadian and American Wests are perceived? Did they develop differently or are they just perceived differently? How do our conceptions influence our perceptions?

A companion volume to One West, Two Myths: A Comparative Reader, this collection presents scholarly views on the comparison of the Canadian and American Wests and the various methodologies involved. Contributors include literature specialists, scholars of popular culture, art historians, and political, social, and intellectual historians, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of this area of study.

With Contributions By: J.M.S. Careless Sarah Carter Brian W. Dippie R. Douglas Francis C.L. Higham William H. Katerberg Lee Clark Mitchell Roger L. Nichols Robert Thacker Fredrick Jackson Turner Aritha van Herk David L. Williams

Carol Higham is a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

C.L. Higham's profile page

Robert Thacker is a professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University. He is the author of Munro's biography Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives (2005, revised 2011) and the editor of The Rest of the Story: Critical Essays on Alice Munro (1999).

Robert Thacker's profile page

R. Douglas Francis is a professor of history at the University of Calgary. He has published extensively in the areas of Canadian and western Canadian intellectual and cultural history.

R. Douglas Francis' profile page

Brain W. Dippie's profile page

William H. Katerberg's profile page

Sarah Carter, F.R.S.C., is H.M. Tory Chair and Professor in the Department of History and Classics, and Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She is a specialist in the history of Western Canada and is the author of Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada to 1900, Capturing Women, and Lost Harvests. Sarah Carter was awarded the Jensen-Miller Prize by the Coalition for Women's History for the best article published in 2006 in the field of women and gender in the trans-Mississippi West.

Sarah Carter's profile page

Roger L. Nichols' profile page

David L. Williams' profile page

Lee Clark Mitchell's profile page

Aritha van Herk teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative. Her novels include Judith, The Tent Peg, No Fixed Address (nominated for the Governor General's Award for fiction), Places Far From Ellesmere (a geografictione) and Restlessness. Her critical works, A Frozen Tongue (ficto-criticism) and In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) stretch the boundaries of the essay and interrogate questions of reading and writing as aspects of narrative subversion. With Mavericks: an Incorrigible History of Alberta (winner of the Grant MacEwan Author's Award) van Herk ventured into new territory, transforming history into a narratological spectacle. That book frames the new permanent exhibition that opened at the Glenbow Museum in 2007. van Herk is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is active in Canada's literary and cultural life, writing articles and reviews as well as creative work. She has served on many juries, including the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. She is well known in the broader community of the city, the province, and the country as a writer and a public intellectual.

Aritha Van Herk's profile page

Frederick Jackson Turner's profile page

J.M.S. Careless, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, was for many years Chairman of the Department of History. His historical research and writing have brought him many awards. In 1953, he won the Governor General's Award for Canada: A Story of Challenge, and in 1963 the same award for his two volume biography of George Brown, Brown of the Globe (reprinted by Dundurn Press in 1989). In 1985 he received the City of Toronto Book Award for Toronto to 1918. He holds honourary doctorates from seven universities. In 1981 he was created an Officer of Canada and in 1987 an Officer in the Order of Ontario.

J.M.S. Careless has been active in many historical societies and agencies. He has served as President of the Ontario Historical Society and the Canadian Historical Associations as well as being the Chair of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and Chair of the Historical committee of the Ontario Heritage Foundation.

In 199 many of Professor Careless's former students and other colleagues contributed studies of their own to Old Ontario, Essays in Honour of J.M.S. Careless (Dundun Press) as a tribute.

J.M.S. Careless' profile page