DIRECT PERCEPTION AND PICTORIAL PERCEPTION OF THE PRAIRIE

Reply to "Images of the Prairie: Landscape Painting and Perception in the Western Interior of Canada," an article by Ronald Rees in The Canadian Geographer , xx (1976), 259–78.
R onald R ees has suggested that insight into the history of pioneer settlements might be gained by studying the paintings of some artists who depicted the prairie. Pointing out that his essay is actually "a study of the perception of artists only," he surveys briefly a number of prairie landscape painters active during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the intention of demonstrating possible changes in the "perceptual environment" on the basis of depictions of the prairie made during the last two centuries.     

GROWTH CENTRES,ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING*

The purpose of this note is not so much to contribute new ideas or interpretive insights, but essentially to discuss for the general reader in regional development and economic geography ideas and hypotheses which have been formulated in the last few years by people in various disciplines. Space does not permit an in-depth review here.     

Canadian Northern Settlements: Top-down and Bottom-up Influences

The objective of this paper is to examine the evolution of settlement in northern Canada from the viewpoint of the paradigms of bottom-up or top-down development, the former being community driven and the latter government initiated. Following a review of the stages of settlement evolution and the major influences on them including the airplane and the Second World War, the Scone Report's characterization of settlements as developed or underdeveloped is presented. Much of the initial settlement of the North was top-down involving government or private capital from outside the region because it was a frontier devoid of settlement. Subsequently the building blocks of bottom-up development emerged. The federal government's devolution of power to the NWT Council in Yellowknife and the decentralization of a civil service from Ottawa was an important prerequisite for local government. This process has been strengthened recently by comprehensive settlements with aboriginal groups providing another building block in the form of land, hunting and mineral rights, and cash compensation for the extinguishment of aboriginal rights. A third building block for bottom-up development lies in the mixed economy which has emerged encompassing employment and business income from, for example, regional development corporations and co-operatives, transfers from Ottawa, country food, and the use of traditional skills of hunting, fishing and trapping. The adaptation of these skills to tourism, prospecting, guiding as well as aboriginal participation in oil and gas development and diamond mining indicate that such community involvement with a modern economy will outlast specific non-renewable resource use.