Quiring demonstrates quite convincingly that a fundamental contradiction underlay the CCF's Aboriginal policy. On the one hand, the CCF sought to reserve 'traditional' occupations, such as agriculture, fishing, and trapping, for Aboriginals. On the other, the party sought to modernize the Aboriginal way of life, with the ultimate goal of assimilating Aboriginal people into the mainstream economy and culture. CCF Colonialism effectively demonstrates that the party was caught in a classic Catch 22, its own policies contributing to the sense of displacement and marginality its policies professed to address.
Peter Campbell, History Department, Queen's University
H-Canada
David Quiring’s study constitutes a radical departure from earlier hagiography. It is acidic in demonstrating how far short the CCF fell in applying its egalitarian ideology to the rugged northern half of the province, whose population then, as now, was overwhelmingly Aboriginal in origin ... for as this book makes clear, socialism as a popular movement stopped where the prairie ended and the northern forest began.
David E. Smith, University of Saskatchewan
Western Historical Quarterly, Summer 2005
David Quiring’s work is an exciting addition to a growing body of scholarship on the Canadian North, both in its territorial and provincial dimensions. Although focusing on the policies developed by the CCF government in Saskatchewan toward the northern regions of the province from 1944 to 1964, Quiring’s research offers many original insights into a host of related issues. It will become compulsory reading for those with an interest in the modern history of Saskatchewan, the workings of the first social democratic government in North America, and the evolution of Aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations in postwar Saskatchewan.
Michael Cottrell, University of Saskatchewan
The Canadian Historical Review
Quiring builds his critique carefully and painstakingly by examining the CCF ideology, the new economic and social policies the government pursued, and the consequences of these policies for the northern population ... Quiring’s attack on the traditional image of the CCF makes this a worthwhile study.
Bob Irwin, Grant MacEwan College
Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 97, no. 1, Winter 2005/2006