Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada's History Illustrated with Original Maps (review)

Reviewed by: Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada's History Illustrated with Original Maps Dale Miquelon Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada's History Illustrated with Original Maps. Derek Hayes. Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre Ltd., 2002. Pp. 272, illus. $75.00 Derek Hayes is clearly on a roll. Having published the Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (1999), the Historical Atlas of the North Pacific Ocean: Maps of Discovery and Scientific Explorations, 1500-2000 (2001), and First Crossing: Alexander Mackenzie, His Expedition across North America and the Opening of the Continent (2001), he presents us with this new atlas (2002) with its vast scope from sea to sea to sea. [End Page 549] This new volume raises problems of structure and purpose, but none that prevent it from being a milestone for history and geography in Canada. The book contains 422 maps. Each is described in a catalogue that gives the exact title, the author or publisher, the date, the repository, and even the call number. The author places his own brief commentary on each map (anywhere from one to ten sentences) in a caption. The main text is historical rather than cartographic. The author states that he has 'deliberately tried to include as many maps as possible and maps at a size where details are clearly visible, at the expense of text, feeling that there are plenty of Canadian histories available but few with these maps, and certainly none in which they have been collected together in an atlas format' (7). On the same page, he also claims that the book 'is intended as a history illustrated with maps rather than a cartobibliography.' As the first quotation makes clear, the book in neither the history nor the cartobibliography of the second quotation. It is quite simply an atlas, but one with a lengthy text tightly related to the maps themselves, which it contextualizes. While the main text is important if the reader is to come to grips with the maps, one cannot help thinking that it could have been abbreviated to the advantage of the captions, which only someone with Hayes's expertise could write. The emphasis of the atlas can be discerned from the author's comment that the history of Canada has been 'mainly a progressive encroachment onto previously occupied native lands' (155). This is the story of exploration, discovery, and settlement, with its sub-themes of transportation and urbanization, surveying and boundary determination, Native-newcomer relations, and, of course, war. Historic maps being what they are, this should come as no surprise. The maps in the Hayes atlas are historic maps bequeathed to us by the past, not historical maps of our own devising that reflect our contemporary passions, such as appear in another noteworthy atlas, R. Cole Harris and Geoffrey J. Matthews, Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 1 (n.d.). The bibliography of some 150 items reflects the nature of Hayes's atlas: atlases, historical atlases, narratives of exploration, particular histories of railways, canals, street names and such, and mainstream works of history. The maps are divided into eighty-seven sections - too many to list here. They begin with 'Saint Brendan and Other Early Navigators.' Many sections cover standard topics such as 'Early French Explorers' and 'The Coming of the Loyalists.' Others offer a cartographic look at some very specific questions such as 'The Fall of Louisbourg, 1745' and 'The Canada Company.' Some sections concerned with exploration and cartography are exceptional. 'The Maps of Peter Pond,' 'James Cook: [End Page 550] Defining the Width of Canada,' 'Alexander Henry's Great Map of the West,' and 'Drawing the Line - the Webster-Ashburton Treaty' are examples. There is an excellent section on 'Native Maps.' Most historians will not have seen many of these maps. Their inclusion here renders it more probable that they will become a part of the core research base from which history is interpreted. In some cases, the maps as presented are quite adequate for research purposes or to initiate research for which examination of originals or full-size copies may later become necessary. With that in view, one regrets instances where maps are almost but not quite adequate for the researcher's need...

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