Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets by Harald Bauder

Reviews / Comptes rendus

Thinking about GIS: Geographic InformationSystem Planning for Managers (Third Edition),by Roger TomlinsonDANIEL JAKUBEK 122

City Trees: A Historical Geography from theRenaissance through the Nineteenth Century,by Henry W. LawrenceANDREW MILLWARD 123

Labor Movement: How Migration RegulatesLabor Markets,by Harald BauderCATHERINE NOLIN 124

Frontiers: Histories of Civil Society and Nature,by Michael R. RedcliftDAVID WOOD 125

Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha LandUse in China and Thailand,by Janet C. SturgeonPETER VANDERGEEST 127

Arctic Hell-Ship: The Voyage of HMS Enterprise1850-1855,by William Barr

Footsteps on the Ice: The Antarctic Diaries ofStuart D. Paine, Second Byrd Expedition,edited by M. L. PaineBRUCE YOUNG 128

Thinking about GIS: Geographic InformationSystem Planning for Managers (Third Edition)

by Roger Tomlinson, ESRI Press, Redlands, Cali-fornia, 2007, xvi + 238 pp., paper US$24.95 (ISBN978-1-58948-158-9)

Thinking about GIS is intended to bridge the com-munication gap in GIS and related informationtechnology that exists between senior and tech-nical managers. Roger Tomlinson, the ‘father ofGIS’, has designed the text for managers work-ing in organizations that could benefit from theimplementation of GIS, but it also serves as avaluable instructional guide for researchers, in-structors and students alike.

The book is divided into 12 chapters, with addi-tional appendices, a comprehensive glossary andan excellent reading list, featuring books, journalarticles, white papers and Web sites. Since the in-troduction states that the successful implemen-tation of a GIS in any organization requires ex-tensive planning, strategic planning methods formanagers are outlined in the light of rapid tech-nological advancements that enable the develop-ment of complex server level GIS applications. Ashardware, software, and geospatial data resourcesbecome more affordable, reliable and abundant,enterprise GIS systems are identified as the newdirection for GIS implementation.

A general description of GIS and of the scopeof GIS projects (from enterprise level to consult-ing practice) is followed by a detailed overviewof Tomlinson’s 10-stage GIS planning method-ology. This methodology has been developed

The Canadian Geographer / Le Geographe canadien 52, no 1 (2008) 122–130C© / Canadian Association of Geographers / L’Association canadienne des geographes

122 Reviews / Comptes rendus

over decades of professional experience, throughglobal GIS seminars and public and private GISpractice. Each stage is allotted a chapter and fea-tures practical methodology for implementing GIStechnology, with examples to demonstrate howthat planning stage can be completed success-fully. A variety of scenarios are utilized, of dif-ferent geographic and organizational versatility,such as an in-house GIS application for JasperPark in Canada, or an enterprise-planning pro-posal for an Australian state government.

Although now into a third edition, this is stilla unique text, given its currency and concisepresentation of GIS in a variety of contexts. Tom-linson has retained the 12-chapter format ofhis second edition, but two new appendices areadded, including a ‘Request for Proposal (RFP)’outline and instructions for writing a prelimi-nary design document. The most significant im-provements in the new edition include a reorga-nization of content, edited diagrams/illustrationsand a more polished layout. Effective reorganiza-tion of text through the addition of topical sub-headings aids in the readers’ interpretation ofthe content by highlighting significant portions ofthe GIS implementation process. Diagrams, illus-trations and sub-headings featured in the previ-ous version have been edited (resized and printedin colour). In addition, information is presentedmore effectively, exemplified by tables of theadvantages and disadvantages of relational andobject-oriented data models.

However, this third edition adds only minimalnew content. There is an excellent update of thechapter on ‘GIS Staff and Training’, reflecting thechanging roles of the GIS manager, analyst, enduser and systems administration staff, but, else-where, examples used in the previous editionhave been recycled. Tomlinson has removed theearlier section on ESRI’s Model Builder, but theaddition of a detailed outline of ESRI’s ArcGISData Interoperability extension is not balancedwith the inclusion of an alternate solution. Dataacquisition and interoperability are increasinglysignificant in the application of a GIS system.Detailed comparison with another software ap-plication, such as Safe Software (FME), would bevery valuable to managers attempting to addressdifferent levels of GIS need within their partic-ular organization. If a detailed comparison wasnot an option, then a list of software solutions

(corporate and/or open source) should have beenadded to the suggested reading list.

There is no doubt that this book is a mustread for managers implementing GIS in their or-ganizations. If the reader is interested in explor-ing the application of Tomlinson’s methodologythrough updated examples, he or she will not getthem in this book. However, improvements in or-ganization, layout, presentation of graphics andupdated terminology warrant acquisition of thisupdated version.

DANIEL JAKUBEK

Ryerson University

City Trees: A Historical Geography from theRenaissance through the Nineteenth Century

by Henry W. Lawrence, University of VirginiaPress, Charlottesville and London, 2006, xvi +336 p., cloth US$75.00 (ISBN 0-8139-2533-2)

Consider for a moment a city without trees. Theabsence of such green space erodes the image ofa majestic city. While trees and parks may notbe the first mental image one conjures up whenasked to describe a city, few among us woulddisagree with the notion that they are an impor-tant (and necessary) enhancement to the livabilityof urban centres. In fact, the apparent oxymoronof ‘a city within a forest’ is one that many inwestern cultures are rethinking, and not for thefirst time. Henry Lawrence’s City Trees is a thor-oughly researched and accessible text that tracesdiscourse and manifestation of urban trees andgardens across four centuries and includes manyof the world’s foremost Western cities.

Trees have a rich history of influence on ar-chitecture, and on the social and economic ac-tivities of cities. Decisions to plant trees, whereto plant, as well as selection of species, havebeen influenced by cultural practices, politics,and even military necessity. Beginning with Re-naissance Europe, Lawrence chronicles the tree’srole as a strategic tool in fortification of citywalls, and describes a time in history whencity trees were largely inaccessible to the com-mon person. Increasing population density withinwalled cities, during times of armed conflict,caused the removal of gardens and trees—a sel-dom discussed ‘natural’ casualty of war. By the

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Reviews / Comptes rendus 123

seventeenth-century Baroque period, urban greenspace emerged as a resource for recreation andas a playground of the wealthy elite. For the firsttime, tree-lined city walls were made accessibleto the public as a place to recreate and minglein a ‘socially acceptable’ venue of the day. Theera of the pedestrian promenade, made famousby Paris’s Avenue des Champs-Elysees, was em-braced by many European cities. The eighteenthcentury brought the idea of the vegetated quad,or rectilinear urban park, around which busi-nesses and homes were positioned. This mani-festation of urban parkland was popularized inBritain and is traceable, in part, to the prestigiousOxbridge campuses.

Lawrence provides a parallel narrative for someof the major European colonial cities; however,his major focus in this later realm addressescity trees in North America, with specific empha-sis on the United States. Many historical tradi-tions manifest in the work of Olmsted and Vaux,the visionary architects of New York City’s Cen-tral Park and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park,are thoughtfully detailed. Their work is cast inthe context of the emergence of an indepen-dent United States, where natural history andwilderness are coveted national treasures. WhileLawrence is not forthcoming with personal opin-ion about the environmental benefits of trees in acity, he provides the reader with many commentsfrom progressive publications of the day. By wayof example, the local parks commission in Lynn,Massachusetts, stated in 1892 that, ‘The preser-vation of forests is becoming a question of vitalinterest to the whole country. In our small fieldwe may show a public spirit and bestow a careupon the forests around us that may be a healthyexample’ (p. 235)

What is the current state of our urban forests?With age-old complaints by citizens about ob-struction of the sun, leaves littering streets, andfalling limbs that cause property damage and per-sonal injury, the city tree is not without criti-cism. Add to these the often inhospitable city en-vironment that includes severe soil compaction,soil moisture deficits, air pollution, road salt andthe high probability of vandalism, and you havea marvel of urban tenacity. Lawrence providesmany interesting anecdotes that offer compellingreasons to describe the mere presence of citytrees as nothing short of miraculous. Where the

city tree survives, its presence is a celebration ofhistory and a testimony to adaptation. This bookcontains a rich collection of historical maps andillustrations. It has broad appeal, but will be ofspecific interest to the urban historian and citynaturalist.

ANDREW MILLWARD

Ryerson University

Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates La-bor Markets

by Harald Bauder, Oxford University Press,Toronto, Ontario, 2006, x + 269 pp., paperUS$45.50 (ISBN 0-19-518088-7)

While reading through Harald Bauder’s recentbook based on immigrant labour research con-ducted in Vancouver, Berlin and rural Ontario,my mind kept returning to his statement that‘migrant and immigrant workers are valuablebecause they are vulnerable’ (p. 22). LaborMovement is shaped by this statement on thecritical role of immigrant workers in the labourmarkets of these particular places in Canada andGermany. From social justice and human rightsperspectives, a stated concern with (im)migrantvulnerability, temporariness, exclusion, and divi-sions is a welcome addition to the robust lit-erature on geographies of migration and urbansettlement and to the smaller body of researchon labour migration and rural areas.

Certainly, Bauder achieves his stated goal to‘expose some of the mechanisms and processesthat create, enforce, and maintain this divisionbetween migrant and non-migrant workers in in-dustrialized countries’ (p. 5). In terms of empiri-cal work on immigrant labour in particular partsof Canada and Germany, Labor Movement con-tains a wealth of information and analysis thatshould be taken up by policy makers, the settle-ment services sector, and others.

But I am also uneasy with what I see as amismatch between Bauder’s stated concerns ofvulnerability and the concept of integration (achallenging concept with which to grapple, forsure), which, in the end, seems to reinforcethat vulnerability and exclusion. No consensusemerges in immigration or migration literatureabout the meaning of the term integration. BrianRay (2002, para 4), for example, argues that



‘[i]ntegration now is understood as a sustainedmutual interaction between newcomers and thesocieties that receive them; an interaction thatmay well last for generations.’ Specifically, eco-nomic integration, Ray (2005, final para) cautions,‘remains a serious challenge for an ever more di-verse Canadian society’, particularly when facedwith a number of recent studies that highlight‘considerable and sustained income differencesbetween newcomers and the Canadian-born pop-ulation’.

But, rather than employing an immigrant-centric approach to economic integration, Bauderquestionably adopts what he calls a more func-tional than normative use of the term. From thismarket-centric approach, Bauder argues that

integration means that immigrants have a distincteconomic function that is vital for local, national,and international economies to operate. . . . Even un-employed immigrant workers could be consideredintegrated into the labor force because they affectlabor supply and thus wage structure and other la-bor conditions (p. 9, emphasis added).

Certainly, (im)migrants may have an impact onthe labour market, but it is a little more difficultto tell an unemployed immigrant that she is inte-grated into the labour market of her new countryeven though she does not have a pay cheque.

In common with many academic books, LaborMovement is a compilation of several separateresearch projects, each with their own strengths.After discussing in Part I, the research frame-work for exploring how migration regulateslabour (and not the other way round), the bookis organized into Parts II, III and IV, focussing,respectively, on immigrants in Vancouver, Berlinand rural Ontario. Part II offers a fascinatingwindow into three social and cultural processesof segmentation in the Vancouver labour market:first, through (im)migrants’ unfamiliarity with the‘rules to work by’ (Chapter 3); second, throughthe cultural judgements of non-immigrantpopulations that segment (im)migrants intoparticular occupations (Chapter 4); and third,by institutional processes that devalue foreigncredentials, leading to the all-too-familiar storiesof cab-driving immigrant doctors and PhDs(Chapter 5).

Part III draws on Bauder’s work in Berlin thatoffers not so much a comparative case to Van-

couver but illustrates some of the ways in whichdiffering processes result in similar subordinateoutcomes for permanent (im)migrant workers. InPart IV, we return to Canada, with a set of threechapters that explore cultural representations oftemporary, seasonal farm workers from Mexicoand the Caribbean employed in rural Ontariocommunities, and the ways in which these man-aged migration programs are legitimized.

Individually, each of the book’s three parts isappealing for use in university courses on mi-gration and settlement, both within geographyand beyond. The sections, though, could be wo-ven together more neatly with a clearer ratio-nale for the choice of case studies (other thanthat of convenience). A much stronger rationaleis required for not including an American casestudy, while nonetheless choosing to illustratethe book’s front cover with a striking image ofthe U.S.–Mexico border fence. Why use this pow-erful image of an undocumented migrant on oneside and the U.S. border patrol on the other, ifBauder only goes on to argue that the additionof an American case study would not change thebook’s central thesis nor its conclusions? Thisbook will certainly be of use to those of us (andour students) interested in critical migration is-sues, and its brief concluding thoughts on ac-tivism can be a jumping off point.

References

RAY, B. 2002 Immigration Integration: Building to Opportu-nity (Migration Information Source) (Washington, DC: Mi-gration Policy Institute) (Available at: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=57)

—. 2005 Canada: Policy Changes and Integration Challengesin an Increasingly Diverse Society (Washington, DC: Mi-gration Policy Institute) (Available at: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=348)

CATHERINE NOLIN

University of Northern British Columbia

Frontiers: Histories of Civil Society and Nature

by Michael R. Redclift, MIT Press, Cambridge, MAand London, 2006, xiv +237 pp., paper US$23.00(ISBN 978-0-262-68160-5), cloth US$57.00 (ISBN978-0-262-18254-6)

This book is a series of case studies from Europeand the Americas, each fundamentally concerned



with how indigenous society engages with its nat-ural resource base and the outside world, andmetamorphoses economically and politically. Thecase studies from 30 years of the author’s re-search begin with an attractive essay on the un-usually independent Val d’Aran, in the Pyrenees,and its modulations over centuries from transhu-mance to modern ‘ecological management’. It isfollowed by a description of settlement in mid–nineteenth century Ontario (‘Upper Canada’ or‘Canada West’), based in part on letters writtenby a young English medical practitioner in the Ot-tawa Valley. The next chapter is an account of thesocial travail associated with various plantationcrops introduced to the coastal lands of Ecuadorto satisfy fickle international demand. The lastcase study traces the contested control and useof land in the forested Yucatan region where, formore than 150 years, the indigenous Maya havestruggled to maintain their culture and livelihoodin the face of externally controlled resource ex-ploitation. From chicle gum in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, outside investment to-day has turned to ecologically damaging tourism,especially along the coast.

These case studies, though individually inter-esting, are strikingly disparate; from pastoralismto tourism in Val d ‘Aran, to Mayan armed resis-tance in the Yucatan, to forest clearing for agri-culture in the Ottawa Valley. Only in the latterwas there a retreating ‘hither edge’ of wildernessthat characterized the celebrated New World agri-cultural frontier. The emphasis on frontier in thetitle is misleading. There is no satisfactory defi-nition of what frontier concept is being applied,and as the book proceeds, it becomes clear thatit is the subtitle, the relationship of society andnature, that is the primary focus.

The importance of the concept of private prop-erty and LeFebvre’s identification of the so-cial construction of environment and its values,though presented as relevant theory, are not ef-fectively applied to the case studies. LeFebvre islast mentioned in chapter 3. Chapter 7 elaboratesthe strongest theme of the book in a thought-ful essay on nature as commodity. The conclud-ing chapter 8 sets out to demonstrate how theassessments of the cases might offer directionfor coming to terms with today’s global economyand perhaps influence ‘the discourses of environ-ment and development’ (p. 202). This conclusion

summarizes the aims of the book—a kind of ‘ret-rospective prolegomena’ that would be useful inchapter 1 or 2. It also sketches various ways inwhich the term frontier has been intended in thebook, generally converging on the notion of pe-riphery in location or social status or both. Espe-cially persuasive sections, such as on Yucatan orthe Ecuador coast, deal at length with the strug-gles of native-born workers to raise themselvessocially and to resist the proletarianization thatseems a natural accompaniment of the plantationeconomy.

The chapter on Ontario calls for attention. Itis based on a book by Redclift (2000) that de-picted pioneering in the province through a seriesof informative letters written by Francis Codd.The letters originated in the Ottawa Valley in the1840s, a time when timber extraction still domi-nated the watershed. The valley around Pembrokewas not promising agricultural land, but it cannotbe lumped in with the adjacent Shield upland asthis book appears to do (p. 197). Nor can the in-cursions into the upland, a region of agriculturalfailure, be thought of as representative of fron-tier settlement in Ontario, as intimated aroundpages 94 and 102. It is puzzling to see Codd’sdistrict referred to as ‘The Algonquins’, presum-ably meaning ‘The Laurentians’. A review of Red-clift’s book on Codd highlighted this confusionfour years earlier (Wood 2002).

A complete lack of maps, apart from two sim-plistic reproductions, leaves a large gap in thepotential contribution of the book. There are defi-ciencies of production, such as typographical er-rors, a lack of a list, and of the provenance offigures, tables or maps. It is disconcerting to seethat the author received the DPhil twice from thesame university (1971, 1978) under slightly dif-ferent titles!

This book is an ambitious attempt to isolatecommon ground in the exploitive human relation-ship with nature in a handful of contrasting lo-cations. The concept of frontier applied here isnot inclusive enough to integrate the case studydescriptions and theory to achieve the ‘inten-tions . . . to provide general and comparative con-clusions’ (p. 193). There is success, however, indepicting ‘the relationship between nature andsociety . . . as a metaphor and a point of depar-ture for examining the contradictions of moder-nity’.



References

REDCLIFT, M. 2000 The Frontier Environment and Social Order: TheLetters of Francis Codd from Upper Canada (Elgar: Chel-tenham)

WOOD, D. 2002 ‘Book review: the frontier environment and so-cial order: The letters of Francis Codd from Upper Canada’Area 34(3), 330–331

DAVID WOOD

York University

Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha LandUse in China and Thailand

by Janet C. Sturgeon, University of WashingtonPress, Seattle and London, 2005, xi + 255 p.,cloth $US 50.00 (ISBN0-295-98544-2)

In Border Landscapes, Janet Sturgeon, a geogra-pher at Simon Fraser University, uses a compar-ative methodology to draw out differences andsimilarities in how national borders, ecologies,land uses, ethnicities and citizenships have beenremade over the past 50 years in two sites, onein China and the other in Thailand. Both sitesare located in the geographic peripheries of ma-jor nation-states, and are inhabited by membersof a common ethnic group, the Akha. In the1950s, land-use practices and ecologies in thesetwo sites were broadly similar, and both includedextensive protected areas and swidden forests. Bythe late 1990s, the site in Thailand had lost ofmost of the forest and most farmers were impov-erished. In comparison, Akha farmers in the Chi-nese site were benefiting from a relatively robusteconomy and healthy ecologies, including the re-tention of large areas of diverse forests. Popularperceptions of the Akha follow from these con-trasting outcomes, with the Akha in Thailand gen-erally framed as forest-destroyers, and the Akhain China as good forest managers. What explainsthese divergent pathways in two sites that wereso similar 50 years ago? Sturgeon’s ability to or-ganize her account around this clear questionand her extensive fieldwork encompassing bothsocial and ecological work allows her to formu-late a convincing answer and along the way toproduce a text that can be read as an example ofwhat a political ecology approach can achieve.

The short answer to the question that animatesthis book lies in the different state policies to-wards upland minorities and towards forest man-

agement. In Thailand, local resource managementwas undermined as the government took an ex-clusionary approach that separated Akha farmersfrom forests, and framed the Akha as ecologi-cally destructive non-citizens. The result for theAkha was a rapid intensification of agriculture,and almost complete loss of access to forest land.In China, by contrast, the government includedboth territory and ethnic minorities as objects ofrule, keeping them together conceptually and ma-terially, and allowing the Akha to maintain moreecologically healthy forests consistent with theChinese image of the Akha farmers as ecologi-cally knowledgeable citizens.

This is the simple answer that passes over themore complex processes that linked state rulingpractices to these outcomes. The more general ar-gument that less exclusionary state forestry willproduce better forests is a tenet of political ecol-ogy, but this result is not automatic. The realaccomplishment of Sturgeon’s book is thereforeher rich account of how these distinct state poli-cies produced these divergent local outcomes.Although the full argument cannot be repro-duced here, it is worth mentioning the conceptof landscape plasticity. For Sturgeon, landscapeplasticity evokes the ways that Akha farmersdraw on both their memories of past landscapesand imaginings of future landscapes to adjustcomplicated land uses in ways that respond tostate ruling practices and the activities of lo-cal border chiefs. She frames this as encountersbetween ‘landscapes of productivity and rule’ onone hand, and ‘landscape plasticity’ on the other.Sturgeon argues that a key reason for the diver-gent outcomes is that in China intensified land-use regulations enabled Akha landscape plastic-ity, while in Thailand they disabled landscapeplasticity. More specifically, in China most forestland remained under the control of rural house-holds and villages, and Akha farmers were stillable to practice a combination of shifting cultiva-tion, cash cropping, wet rice, animal husbandryand forest management. In Thailand, Akha farm-ers were confined to tiny areas zoned as agricul-ture, where they were encouraged to plant cashcrops.

There are two key features of Sturgeon’s ana-lytical methods that are also worth highlighting.The first is the idea that much can be learnedby seeing borders from the vantage point of the



border rather than from the centre. From thecentre of state rule, borders look static andaccomplished, but from the point of view ofmarginalized peoples living in border zones, bor-ders are always in the process of being broughtunder state control, often by local border chiefswho use the ambiguities, negotiations and trans-gressions of border-making processes to accumu-late and distribute resources.

The second methodological feature of the bookis Sturgeon’s comparative approach. As a re-searcher who has also laboured to do compar-ative research in Southeast Asia, I can attest tohow difficult it is to do well. Good comparativework requires both in-depth knowledge of the dif-ferent sites and an ability to take the analysisback to more general processes so as to clearlyidentify and explain differences and similarities.The relatively short length of this book beliesthe enormous amount of work that went intolearning about the two sites and, subsequently,into writing a comparative account that doesmore than write two parallel stories but makesa convincing case that comparison can provide abetter explanation of historical processes in eachof these sites.

The way that Sturgeon brings both social andecological data to bear on her research situatesthe book squarely in the burgeoning field of po-litical ecology. But Border Landscapes is an ex-emplar of how this approach can be productivein answering questions that go well beyond en-vironmental politics. The text would fit well intocourses that take a comparative geographical ap-proach to ethnicity, racialization and indigeneity.It is accessible to undergraduates, and I wouldalso recommend it highly to graduate studentslooking for examples of how to do comparativeanalysis, and to scholars looking for innovativeapproaches to understanding how borders aremade.

PETER VANDERGEEST

York University

Arctic Hell-Ship: The Voyage of HMS Enterprise1850–1855

by William Barr, The University of Alberta Press,Edmonton, 2007, xiv + 318 pp., paper $34.95(ISBN 978-0-88864-472-5)

Footsteps on the Ice: The Antarctic Diaries ofStuart D. Paine, Second Byrd Expedition

edited by M. L. Paine, University of Missouri Press,Columbia, 2007, xxvii + 368 p. cloth US$34.95(ISBN 978-0-8262-1741-7)

New books on past polar expeditions and activi-ties are unlikely to reveal anything new geograph-ically, but may contribute to our understandingof the social and physical impact of severe en-vironments upon those who in years gone byventured to the far north and far south if theydraw heavily upon hitherto unpublished sources,including diaries, journals, manuscripts and con-temporary reports. An outstanding example isTyler-Lewis’s (2006) The Lost Men. Now, hard onits heels, we have two more books that meritscholarly attention. Furthermore, both are goodreads, and are likely to adorn library shelves la-beled ‘Arctic’ and ‘Antarctic’.

Byrd may be of less interest than Franklin toCanadians pondering the environmental and geo-political implications of global warming on theNorth, and the diaries of a ‘Byrdman’ in Foot-steps on the Ice may resonate more loudly else-where than Arctic Hell-Ship. More than 65 yearsafter they were written, in pencil—and some 46years after Stuart Paine’s death—the diaries ofthe young Yale graduate, who signed on as adog-driver with Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s sec-ond Antarctic expedition (1933–1935), have beenedited and published by his daughter. Moved inthe mid-1990s to transcribe her late father’s ac-count of his time with Byrd for the ‘family’, shewas then encouraged to distribute it ‘to a wideraudience’. And those with polar interests will bepleased that she responded positively; though itis likely that her father would have appreciatedthat his diaries did not see the light of day anysooner—when survivors of that expedition wouldhave been around to read his candid assessmentsof his fellow explorers. Mr. Paine evidently wrotewhat was on his mind!

Hardly a day goes by without some blunt com-ment in the diaries on one or other of the men(and sometimes on small groups) in the 56-man-strong Ice Party that overwintered at Little Amer-ica. Neither Byrd nor Dr Thomas Poulter (thesecond-in-command) escape criticism. Paine’s di-aries, in fact, mainly concern the dogs, including



‘Jack’ (his lead dog), which he brought back tolive on the family farm in New Hampshire, al-though there are several striking passages de-scribing the landscape.

The Chief Archivist at Ohio State University(where Byrd’s papers are now housed) contributesa brief but useful foreword to Footsteps, andeditor M. L. Paine an even briefer preface, inwhich she notes inter alia that essentially the ‘di-aries have been transcribed and published hereas Paine wrote them’ (p. xxvii)—including, one no-tices, the incorrect spelling of Jim Sterrett’s name.Her numbered footnotes are numerous and of-ten lengthy, frequently quoting from Byrd’s own(1935) account of his second expedition, as wellas her father’s (1936) co-authored book about‘Jack’.

Over a hundred photos are reproduced in Foot-steps, all but 20 or so new to this reviewer (andfrom the ‘Paine Antarctic Collection’). And thereare over 50 pages of appendices, some 40 pagespresenting sample material from the short-livedThe Barrier Bulletin, which Paine co-edited at Lit-tle America. Unlike Stuart Paine, who seems toconsider it ‘simple, childish, gablitive’ (p. 134),this reviewer relished Dr Louis Potaka’s BedtimeStories (Appendix 4, pp. 303–304) published un-der the nom de plume ‘Uncle Peter’ in the TheBarrier : it suggests the young part-Maori physi-cian (who was to take his own life in October1936) knew a thing or two about explorers andspecifically the men in his care—and had a sharpsense of humour!1 Paine’s own contributions toThe Barrier (as one might expect, after readingthe 275 pages of his diaries) dwell on seriousmatters—such as the ‘liquor question’ (p. 330),‘disloyal and niggardly acts’ like stealing (p. 317)and ‘carelessness in the use of the toilet andthe mishandling of Victrola records in the library’(p. 305).

The first few pages of Emeritus ProfessorWilliam Barr’s latest publication Arctic Hell-Shipalert the reader to the probability that there willbe little to amuse one in his elegant and meatynarrative account of the voyage of HMS Enterprisein the mid–nineteenth century. The main charac-

1 There is nothing humorous in the reviewer’s biographical es-say on Dr Louis H. Potaka (in Ohio State University’s digitaldepository The Knowledge Bank on the Internet)—but he con-fesses he had not read the doctor’s piece in The Barrier Bul-letin until 2007.

ter in his story was a ‘suspicious, arbitrary, vin-dictive martinet’ (p. viii), who placed all four ofhis executive officers under arrest for offencesthat can only be described objectively as trivial,on a ship where the ‘atmosphere must have beenunbelievably tense and unpleasant’ (p. xi). By allaccounts, however, Captain Richard Collinson wasa remarkably experienced mariner and naviga-tor when appointed on December 14, 1849, tocommand the expedition to search for the miss-ing Franklin expedition—and he brought his shipsafely home.

Collinson’s own account of the long voyage,published posthumously by his brother in 1889,did not, we are told, make mention of Collinson’sproblems with his officers on the Enterprise: thecaptain had ‘edited his original shipboard journalquite severely, removing any reference to his em-barrassing personnel problems, in order to pro-duce a publishable manuscript’ (p. xii). So Barr’s‘augmented’ narrative in Arctic Hell-Ship drawsheavily ‘from unpublished journals and officialcorrespondence’ (p. xi). The latter Collinson hadnot been able to ‘sanitize’ and Barr was able toconsult them in England and in California. In ad-dition, the detailed journal of the Second Mas-ter of the Enterprise is in the archives of theScott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, Eng-land; and the second volume of the journal ofthe more circumspect gun-room steward on theEnterprise is in Vancouver. Without material fromthe unsanitized official documents and from thepens (and pencils) of Francis Skead and stewardRichard Shingleton, Professor Barr’s book wouldbe little more than a rehash of what we alreadyknow about early attempts to find Franklin andin particular the Collinson-led rescue effort. As itis, in excess of 50 percent of Barr’s account is de-rived from ‘new’ material; and it illuminates whatwas going on aboard the Enterprise, and suggestswhat could develop in an environment where dis-cipline was strict, the leader was ‘insecure andintolerant’, and many critical decisions had to bemade—and frequently when impenetrable ice wasall around.

Barr’s main narrative—like Paine’s diary—isstructured chronologically. The final chapters ofboth books are a little disappointing. After read-ing Paine’s diaries, would one not wish to knowhow in the years following Stuart Paine felt aboutwhat he had written as a young man, and in



some detail how the experience with Byrd’s partyhad affected him and what discussions he mayhave had with family members? The editor quotesfrom a 1936 essay in which her father writes thathe longed to go back but should he never do sohe would be ‘happy to a certain extent that I havedone my part, as small as it was, to further theknowledge of mankind’ (p. 278). She also notesthat his ‘yearning for the omnipotent purity thathad enriched his spirit never abated’ (p. 281). But,or so it seems, Stuart Paine essentially not onlykept his diaries out of sight but also out of mind,for the 25 years or so before his death in 1960.

As for Arctic Hell-Ship, having read 233 en-thralling pages and making it back to Ports-mouth, we are anxious to see whether CaptainCollinson prevails over the officers he treatedso roughly—not to mention whether tests revealthat he has anything significant to show for thetime and effort spent on his search for Franklin.Professor Barr’s final chapter is somewhat anti-climactic: there are no courts-martial and noth-ing Collinson has found proves to be relevantto Franklin’s disappearance.2 Barr surmises that

2 How close Collinson came to where Franklin’s ships wereabandoned, and the “last evidence of the survivors” was even-tually found, can be seen on the maps in Ice Blink: The TragicFate of Sir John Franklin’s Lost Polar Expedition, Scott Cook-man, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2000.

the Admiralty was too embroiled in the CrimeanWar to take seriously the trivial disputes betweena handful of officers, in close quarters for solong and under such trying environmental condi-tions. One is left wondering what squabbles (andworse) must have occurred amongst those liv-ing even closer together, and perhaps less wellfed and cared for; and whether a diary or twofrom those on the lower deck might yet surfaceto add to the story. It is far more likely, onefeels, that the 1930s diaries of other Byrdmenwill be unearthed and be deemed worthy of pub-lication, though perhaps not for their scientificcontent.

References

BYRD, R. E. 1935 Discovery: The Story of the Second Byrd AntarcticExpedition (New York: Putnam’s)

TYLER-LEWIS, K. 2006 The Lost Men: The Harrowing Saga of Shack-leton’s Ross Sea Party (New York: Penguin)

WALDEN, J. B., and PAINE, S. D. L. 1936 The Long Whip: The Story of aGreat Husky (New York: Putnam’s)

BRUCE YOUNG

Wilfrid Laurier University


Documents

Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets by Harald Bauder