New and Naked Land: Making the Prairies Home by Ronald Rees
8vo. pp. viii, 188. b/w illustrations. bibliography. index. hardcover. dw. (near fine). Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, [1988].
ISBN 10: 0888332602 / ISBN 13: 9780888332608
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Since time immemorial displaced mankind has suffered from homesickness and nostalgia for the homeland. Few nations were left untouched once the Industrial Revolution and the opening of the new worlds began to scatter the old world population. It is easy to forget, in our present age, how stationary people used to be and how insurmountable distances were. People were tied to localities in ways we can no longer appreciate, and moves of only a few miles could be profoundly disturbing.Migrants who found themselves on unfamiliar terrain had the most difficult adjustments, both physical and spiritual, and those who settled on the Canadian prairies encountered an environment stranger than most of them could ever have envisioned.New and Naked Land begins with an estimate of immigrants’ expectations of the new land and ends with an assessment of their attempts to make a home of it. In conclusion it is suggested that the prairie is perhaps too austere an environment for the common sensibility ever to absorb completely. Certainly, it is a landscape that overwhelms the newcomer and haunts the native, however far he may wander, for a lifetime.