ABSTRACT
In the next two chapters we shall describe the adaptations made to the Jasper region by the Euro-American settlers, classified here in terms of the two major agrarian adaptations worked out over the three generations of settlement. From a cultural standpoint, however, this is a study of Westerners in Canada, and there is little difference between these people and their neighbors across the unfenced and undefended border. Like their American cousins, the Canadian settlers found a land of enormous skies and refractory but stimulating climates; of vigorous and mobile aborigines, of antelope and bison, railroads and wagons, hope and hard work. The North American West was one of the world’s last frontiers, and one of such color and energy that it has shaped an entire literature and dominates sections of the mass media in the Great Society of North America, and even of Europe.
