Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law, and the Making of a Settler Society
Lesley Erickson
In the late nineteenth century, European expansionism found one of its last homes in North America. While the American West was renowned for its lawlessness, the Canadian Prairies enjoyed a tamer reputation symbolized by the Mounties’ legendary triumph over chaos.
Westward Bound debunks the myth of Canada’s peaceful West and the masculine conceptions of law and violence upon which it rests by shifting the focus from Mounties and whisky traders to criminal cases involving women between 1886 and 1940. Lesley Erickson reveals that judges’ and juries’ responses to the most intimate or violent acts reflected a desire to shore up the ... Read more
This fascinating exploration of hegemony and resistance in key contact zones draws prairie Canada into larger debates about law, colonialism, and nation building.
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About Lesley Erickson
Reviews for Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law, and the Making of a Settler Society
Laurie K. Bertram, University of Alberta
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