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Between 1873 and 1932, with the exception of one decade, the formulation and implementation of Indian policy on the prairies was much in the hands of a government appointee known as the Indian commissioner. The commissioner was a senior official in the federal Indian Department and, while he received instructions from Ottawa, had considerable authority within his domain in directing policy. The extent of his influence was determined in large measure by political connections, force of personality and an ability to articulate positions and concerns that resonated with the temper of the times.This is a study of the men who held the position of Indian Commissioner. The approach is biographical in that it explores their lives, their characters and their ideas. It also seeks out the confluence of the personal and the political -that indeterminate space where individuals and structures intersect and the course of events is shaped. And the events were momentous. The commissioners had charge of a complex configuration of laws, obligations and policies that guided the transition of the Native population from the independence of the buffalo days to the dependence of reserve life.Treaties, the Indian Act, schools, agriculture, missions were all part of this mix as a shattered Native society was incorporated into the apparatus of the emergent Canadian state and forcibly socialised into its rituals of conformity and submission. The Indian Commissioners were the men who presided at this remarkable and convulsive chapter in our history. ... Read more

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Forging Alberta’s Constitutional Framework explores the nature and development of Alberta’s constitution by examining a number of celebrated cases and themes that have shaped and altered legal, social, economic, political, and cultural rights and responsibilities within Alberta and Canada. Contributors from across Canada include historians, lawyers, political scientists, and politicians writing on themes that illustrate how Alberta’s constitution is the product of decades, even centuries, of contest, debate, division, and negotiation. ... Read more

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The Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board, created by the Alberta government in 1938, ensured that the province's petroleum resources were utilized in a manner that protected the long-term public interest. ... Read more

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The Mountie may be one of Canada’s best-known national symbols, yet much of the post-nineteenth century history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police remains unexamined, particularly the period between 1914 and 1939, when the RCMP underwent enormous transformation. The nature of this transformation as it took place in Alberta and Saskatchewan – where the Mounties have traditionally dominated policing – is the focus of Steve Hewitt’s Riding to the Rescue.

During the 1914-to-1939 period, the nineteenth-century model of the RCMP was evolving into a twentieth-century version, and the institution that emerged responded to a nation that was being transformed as well.Forces such as industrialization, mass immigration, urbanization, and political radicalism compelled the Mounties to look away from the frontier and toward a new era.

Incorporating previously classified material, which explores the RCMP both in the context of its ordinary policing role and in its work as Canada’s domestic spy agency, Hewitt demonstrates how much of the impetus behind the RCMP’s transformation was ensuring its own survival and continued relevance. Riding to the Rescue is a provocative and incisive look behind one of Canada’s most enduring icons at the cusp of the modern era.

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Canadians are struggling with choices regarding their constitutional future. These studies focus on how many important areas would be affected by alternative constitutional scenarios: a more centralized Canada without Quebec; a more decentralized Canada that includes Quebec; and an independent Alberta. ... Read more

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This innovative book considers the issue of educational reform by examining three examples of change in school districts in Alberta, Chicago, and Kentucky. Though every reform movement in education seems unique, certain efforts towards change attract more attention and create broader links to outside organizations. These three monumental cases of reform are presented along with more modest efforts in other locales, but the larger changes are shown to involve a combination of elements that are not found in the more modest reforms. ... Read more

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Canada and the Arab World examines the important issues that have arisen in the past decades that involve Canada's dealings with and understanding of Middle Eastern countries. ... Read more

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Some of the most intense effects of globalization can be seen in rural communities. Despite a booming world economy, rural communities-and the people who work in natural-resource industries like farming, forestry, mining or fishing-have been hard hit by recent international trade agreements. This collection looks at changing rural life, across the country and around the globe. ... Read more

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Since his election as Prime Minister in June, 1968, Pierre Elliott Trudeau has dominated Canadian politics and wielded an extraordinary influence-even after his retirement from political life in 1984. Right up to the present day, through his pronouncements and publications, Trudeau continues both to fascinate us and to provoke highly emotional reactions. ... Read more

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The Alberta Order of Excellence is the highest honour the Province of Alberta can bestow on a citizen. Members of The Alberta Order of Excellence come from all walks of life. Their careers range from medicine, science, engineering, law, and business to politics, education, agriculture, and the arts. The one thing all members have in common is that they have made an outstanding provincial, national, or international service contribution. ... Read more

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A bestselling investigative journalist takes a tour of the Alberta oil and gas industry, revealing how Canada’s richest province is squandering our chance for a sustainable future.

In its desperate search for oil and gas riches, Alberta is destroying itself. As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophic climate change, Alberta plunges ahead with uncontrolled development of its fossil fuels, levelling its northern Boreal forest to get at the oil sands, and carpet-bombing its southern half with tens of thousands of gas wells. In so doing, it is running out of water, destroying its range land, wiping out its forests and wildlife and spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, adding to global warming at a rate that is unrivalled in Canada or almost anywhere else in the world. It’s digging, drilling and blasting its way to oblivion, becoming the ultimate symbol of Canada’s – and the world’s – pathological will to self-destruct.

Nowhere has the world seen such colossal environmental destruction as is being wreaked on Alberta. At one point the province even went so far as to consider a scientist’s idea of nuking its underbelly to get at the tar sands. Stupid to the Last Drop looks at the increasingly violent geopolitical forces that are gathering as the world’s gas and oil dwindle and the Age of Oil begins its inevitable slide towards oblivion. As Canadians deplete their energy reserves, selling them off to Americans at bargain-basement prices, no thought is given to conservation or the long-term needs of the nation.

In this powerful polemic, William Marsden journeys across the heart of a province seized by the destructive forces of greed, power and the energy business, and envisions a very bleak future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Quick, interesting, but scary
This is an exposé of the oil and gas industry in Alberta from its beginning until late 2007.Marsden discusses the environmental damages primarily from the massive oil sands project and from drilling for coal bed methane.One can only presume that Marsden's facts and figures are correct.He provides no list of references or notes at the end, and only names the people with whom he spoke or an occasional reference within the text. Assuming what he relates is even half true; I found this book extremely disturbing.As a resident of British Columbia, we also have a burgeoning oil and gas industry, and may be headed on the same path as Alberta.Also the present Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is from Alberta, and his federal government shows as little regard for the environment as the Alberta government appears to.This is a very quick and interesting read, all be it very scary.
Americans should also find this book worthwhile.Canada is now the largest single foreign supplier of oil to the US.The US is also beginning to exploit its coal bed methane and has large oil shale resources. See how not to do things.

Stupid to the Last Word
This book is a very one-sided, not to mention alarmist, view of the Alberta oil and gas industry. The author's goal seems to be to write a best-seller rather than give an unbiased, informative picture. There are two basic themes: "Americans are evil", and "Albertans are stupid".

It appears that Marsden has done only superficial, rather than in-depth research. His information seems to be drawn mostly from the popular press and pamphlets by environmental activist groups. Much of it is anecdotal and/or politically motivated. There is little real information about the history or geology of Alberta, but instead a reiteration of popular misconceptions about the oil industry.

However, much of his information comes from American sources, and does not really apply to Alberta. There are too many specific cases of misinformation to elaborate here. However, the main discrepancies arise from the fact that the Alberta government owns most of the mineral rights and all of the water rights in the province. This is very different from the United States, or even Eastern Canada, and gives Alberta unequaled powers of control over its resources. Much of that power has been used in the interests of resource conservation and environmental protection. Marsden mentions none of the initiatives that the Alberta government has undertaken in these areas over the decades.

Marsden devotes a lot of the book to a scheme devised in the United States to produce oil using atomic bombs (the Russians tried the same thing), and finds Alberta guilty of stupidity by association. He doesn't mention that Alberta spent about $1 billion to develop an advanced oil sands process called "Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage" (SAGD), which increased its reserves by about 150 billion barrels - a 300 year supply worth over $7 trillion at current rates. Marsden doesn't believe this, but see the Oil and Gas Journal or the CIA web site for their assessment.

He implies that Alberta has frittered away its oil with no benefits, but in reality it has used them to become one of the most affluent places on earth, with one of the best public school systems in the world, particularly in science and mathematics.

Marsdon ends with a return to territory more familiar for him - the tired old oil fields of Ontario, which peaked about 100 years ago. He thinks this holds a lesson for Alberta, but in reality Alberta has far more oil left than Ontario ever had. Given the amount of oil in its oil sands, and its technological edge, Alberta will be one of the few place in the world still producing oil 100 years from now.

When Marsden describes Albertans as "stupid", he needs to answer the question: "If they're so stupid, why are they so rich?" And when he wonders why they're so unconcerned about destroying the environment and running out of oil, maybe it's because they're not doing either.

bill marsden enlightens us about a vile oil industry
this book is very well written, readable, and thorough.Our politicians and media would do well to take a clue from marsden and stop hiding the wrongs perpetrated on us - the canadian people - by an oil industry devoid of morals or even loyalty to this country; a country whose limited resource has made them (but not us) rich.If norway can put together a $400 billion savings fund for its country simply by maintaining a crown corporation, why the hell did we let our politicians (or at least alberta's "politicians") sell our future prosperity off to an already rich and well subsidized industry?This book raises many questions - its time WE started demanding answers.

Stupid Doesn't Survive Evolution
Book combines on-the-ground first hand investigation with historical context, a broad overview, pointedly specific and lucid stories of technological and scientific issues, and an interesting yet concise writing style. See, for example, page 218 where author writes, in considering the contamination of water wells by fracturing of coal beds to more readily extract methane:

While the EUB [Energy Utilities Board, of Alberta] maintains in public a happy confidence in CBM [coal bed methane], in private the agencys worries about water contamination are rising. Evidence of this can be seen in the EUBs CBM licensing permits, which are public but which almost nobody in the public ever reads. They are now replete with indications of concern over groundwater contamination. The agency began requiring that gas companies install monitoring wells in aquifers close to their CBM drilling to monitor any changes to the groundwatera clear indication of concern over water well contamination. It also began insisting on improved well bore casing protections.

And so on. If the public rarely sees these Alberta government licensing permits, that an investigative journalist had the insight and discipline to read them and report on his findings is but one indication that the author is presenting a fact-based case.

Polemical would be to deliver a one-sided argument. I think here the evidence is pretty well stacked up on one side of the issue, showing the Alberta, and incidentally also the Canadian Federal government, generally wanting to foster an oil industry irrespective of environmental damage, or harm to the health of First Nations and other communities. An objective observer could well find that the evidence on the other side of the issue that might allow one to argue that side is so weak in considerations other than corporate profit and spin-off jobs that to speak in favour of it, although thereby hewing to what in this case would be an empty criterion of balanced argument, would be in effect unethical. Let the corporations and governments present their own case.

Mind you, author Marsden rides in the huge shovels and trucks of the gigantic open pit oil sands deep extraction sites and reports his conversations with the drivers, with other company personnel, and with local officials with even-handed, sometimes empathetic tone. But what is clearly documented in this account is that his judgment has shown an awesome scale of imbalance that effectively precludes occupying the writers and readers time with the corporate and government case, though risking the label of polemic. I dont think Marsden is sufficiently aggressive or argumentative to properly deserve the term.

If corporations and large-scale centralized governments cannot conduct business that does not harm the public interest, broad-based public decisions, if allowed, may be to evolve away from those forms of organization. Alberta needs to rethink their economic base as contained within a physical environment providing guidance and limits to economic activity, rather than treating the environment as an irritant contained within their economy.

A wakeup call to Canadians
William Marsden is an author and investigative journalist who bravely took on the Hell's Angels biker gang in a series of books and columns. Now he's after a bigger, richer, and far more deceptive foe... the Canadian oil industry. Marsden goes to the physical and metaphorical heart of Canada's oil country to provide an incisive examination of an environmental catastrophe effected by a manipulative oil industry in denial and aided an impotent and incompetent system of governments.

Marsden begins by supplying a great deal of informative historical background of the oil sands project, including a bizarre scheme in the 1950s to extract oil via controlled nuclear explosions. He also provides an inside view of the immense scale oil sands excavations by visiting the projects and talking with the workers. This sets the stage for the critique to come.

The two primary targets polemically identified by Marsden (the "stupid" ones of the title) are the oil industry and governments within the province of Alberta.

Marsden describes a heavily subsidized industry that flouts the rule of law, uses propaganda and intimidation to achieve its ends, is deliberately deceitful, and remains astonishingly ignorant of the long term effects (environmental, social, and financial) of its activities. He illustrates how time and time again the massive public relations machine of the oil industry obscures facts and keeps citizens in the dark (for example, by stating that the toxic petrochemical-related products suddenly infusing wells and land are naturally occurring).

The second side of the problem rests with an impotent and largely incompetent provincial government. This is not a government that serves its citizens; rather, it is a veritable plutocracy under the sway of corporations and addicted to royalties delivered by the ever-increasing prices of crude oil. The politics of ignorance appear to be the central creed of the Alberta government, and there is little or no desire by elected officials to listen to citizens or take their concerns seriously. As such, Marsden takes it upon himself to visit concerned citizens and report their stories, and they are not pretty. He reports of a government bought and paid for by the oil industry and who remain astonishingly oblivious about the effects of the industry on the citizens of Alberta.

Marsden concludes that the results the industry and government action/inaction have resulted in boreal forest depletion of a massive scale, a significant and possibly catastrophic depletion of the water table, and destruction of wildlife and rural agriculture. If continued unchecked, the Alberta of the future will be a bleak monument to uncontrolled avarice, and yes, stupidity. ... Read more