Violence on the Western Canadian Frontier

This chapter examines the history of violence on the western Canadian frontier within the parameters of British and Canadian law. Since the subject of violence cannot possibly be seen within a legal context alone, an attempt will also be made to place the history of violent crime within the larger social, geographic, and demographic contexts. The chapter argues that violence was part of the human landscape of the western Canadian frontier. It identifies the causes and extent of the history of violence in the Canadian west, and place it in the continental as well as the national context. The three early Canadian western frontiers developed in the first half of the nineteenth century in Rupert's Land in the District of Assiniboia, in the northern Rocky Mountain and Mackenzie River region, and in the northern Pacific Coast area. The radically different images of the 'lawless' American frontier and the 'peaceful' Canadian one stem from two conflicting traditions in English legal culture.