Canada’s resource economy

• Main Authors: Roger Hayter, Trevor J. Barnes
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.629.9482; http://www.geog.ubc.ca/~tbarnes/pdf/PAPER_Canada%27s_Resource_Economy.pdf

From the beginning, resource activities defined Canada’s global role. As Glen Norcliffe’s original and perceptive paper observes, John Cabot’s discovery of Newfoundland began a relentless, albeit uneven pat-tern of resource exploitation of Canada designed to serve the metropolitan markets of the world. This early European maritime contact supported small, vulnerable, and dispersed settlements on Canada’s eastern shores. As Innis (1930) documented, the east-west extension of these maritime contacts, through the sinewy tentacles of the fur trade via rivers, lakes, and portage geographically defined the future Canada, and its relation to the rest of the world. The purpose of our paper is to fill out Cabot’s story, and more generally the issues of staples, envi-