ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the anthropological significance of ideological/metaphorical islands, places bounded by something other than water, beginning with a micro-essay on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Uranium City, Canada, a one-time boomtown built for 10,000 residents and now largely left to decay in the subarctic forests of far northern Saskatchewan. This town of 75 permanent residents is isolated from the rest of the province and only accessible via plane or seasonal ice roads, making for a unique illustration of how remoteness forms its own islands. The second piece examines my own childhood of growing up in an off-the-grid farm in northern Ontario, an experience that ultimately authored my affinity for islands. Here, Nolalu represents the islandic nature of the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s and the purposeful resistance of the mainstream-as-mainland. Lastly, based on my extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how High Plains ghost towns throughout Canada and the US were essentially islandified through changing economic patterns and transportation systems.
