Bruce Erickson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at York University in Toronto.

Canoe nation explores how the canoe is not only an important object of Canada's understanding of itself as a nation, but also a vital and changing practice that is key to historically specific configurations of economics, landscapes, and modes of governance and citizenship. Ranging from the fur trade to celebrity wilderness paddling and tracing complex connections among economic, colonial, pedagogical, recreational, and environmental desires, Erickson's brilliantly original analysis shows that the canoe is, quite literally, a vehicle of power in the Canadian national landscape. - Catriona Sandilands, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

• Preface: Canoeing MattersIntroduction: Canoes and the Nature of Canada1 Pedagogical Canoes: "Forced Intimacy," Suffering, and Remembering National History2 I Fish, Therefore I Am: Recreational Canoeing and Wilderness Travel at the Turn of the Century3 Regimes of Whiteness: Wilderness and the Production of Abstract Space from Seton to Grey Owl4 Recreational Nationalism: Canoeing as Political ActivismConclusion: Future Politics and the Production of the NationNotesReferencesIndex

Bruce Erickson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at York University in Toronto.

Canoe nation explores how the canoe is not only an important object of Canada's understanding of itself as a nation, but also a vital and changing practice that is key to historically specific configurations of economics, landscapes, and modes of governance and citizenship. Ranging from the fur trade to celebrity wilderness paddling and tracing complex connections among economic, colonial, pedagogical, recreational, and environmental desires, Erickson's brilliantly original analysis shows that the canoe is, quite literally, a vehicle of power in the Canadian national landscape. - Catriona Sandilands, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

• Preface: Canoeing MattersIntroduction: Canoes and the Nature of Canada1 Pedagogical Canoes: "Forced Intimacy," Suffering, and Remembering National History2 I Fish, Therefore I Am: Recreational Canoeing and Wilderness Travel at the Turn of the Century3 Regimes of Whiteness: Wilderness and the Production of Abstract Space from Seton to Grey Owl4 Recreational Nationalism: Canoeing as Political ActivismConclusion: Future Politics and the Production of the NationNotesReferencesIndex