This study of the history of human impact upon the North provides a baseline, grounded in historical and scientific evidence, for measuring environmental change in the Subarctic. Piper examines the sustainability of industrial economies, the value of resource exploitation in volatile ecosystems, and the human consequences of northern environmental change. She also addresses northern communities' historical resistance to external resource development and their fight for survival in the face of intensifying environmental and economic pressures.

Between 1821 and 1960, industrial economies took root in the North, transgressing political geographies and superseding the historically dominant fur trade. Imported southern scientists and sojourning labourers worked the Northwest, and its industrial history bears these newcomers' imprint. This book reveals the history of human impact upon the North. It provides a baseline, grounded in historical and scientific evidence, for measuring subarctic environmental change. Liza Piper examines the sustainability of industrial economies, the value of resource exploitation in volatile ecosystems, and the human consequences of northern environmental change. She also addresses northern communities' historical resistance to external resource development and their fight for survival in the face of intensifying environmental and economic pressures.