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Sometimes conventional wisdom and academic truth coincide. And sometimes they may even be true. This is the comforting message of Jared Wesley's well researched and sprightly written book about the political cultures of the three Prairie provinces. At one point the author observes that his findings more or less confirm what long ago C.B. Macpherson, Seymour Martin Lispet and W.L. Morton said about Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba respectively. One was a redoubt of petit-bourgeois libertarians, the second the birthplace of social democracy and the last an encampment of moderate, practical transplanted Ontario Liberal-Tories. Though the prairie region has many commonalities--terrain, economy and people--each of the provinces has been very different from the others. Wesley concludes that these profiles of the three political cultures continue to prevail. Continuity is king it seems.
To explain the profound differences between the three prairie political cultures Wesley depends to a great extent on the work of Nelson Wiseman. Somehow the three provinces were distinguished at the outset by the markedly different character of their incoming settler populations. White settlers literally wrote a new script or code for their respective provinces. Manitoba was settled in the 1870s by southern Ontario farmers, Protestant and Liberal-Tory in outlook. Saskatchewan's formative immigrant wave was composed of English immigrants going on the land but carrying "Fabian" ideas from the...