The American Influence on Conservation in Canada: 1899–1911

Abstract

n Canada, as in the United States, historians and conservationists tend to look on the years from 1899 to 1911 with nostalgia. Conservation movements in both nations made great strides in influencing official policy and in awakening public interest and concern during this period. The evidence suggests that American conservationists saw and grasped their opportunities to a greater extent than did their Canadian counterparts. Nevertheless, the Canadians saw policy changes at the federal level in these twelve years they had thought unattainable since the depression of the early 1890s waylaid the initiatives following from the American Forestry Congress of 1882. Conservation began to revive as a political issue at the federal level in Canada slowly after 1893, with a revitalization of the forest reserve surveys and the creation in 1894 of Moose Mountain Reserve in present-day southeastern Saskatchewan. Then, in the general election of 1896, the Conservatives, long in power, were toppled from office and the Liberals, led by Wilfrid Laurier, formed the government. The Liberal party under Laurier was an amalgam of interest groups and ideologies stretching from the prime minister's rather traditional laissez-faire liberalism, tempered by political expediency, to Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton's clear-headed, calculated dedication to material progress. Sifton thought government should act as the dynamic leader for private enterprise, using strict regulation if neces-