Protecting Ontario's Wilderness: A History of Changing Ideas and Preservation Politics, 1927-1973

While the literature on American wilderness preservation is well-known to environmental historians, the Canadian experience has only begun to be documented. This book is the first full-length history of wilderness protection in Ontario. Drawing on government records, the private files of environmentalists and their organizations, and personal interviews, Protecting Ontario's Wilderness examines the changing idea of wilderness and the politics of preservation from 1927 to 1973. This book traces the evolution of lobbying tactics, and the internal debates that galvanized Ontario's modern wilderness preservation movement. Through their pressure group activity, preservationists became a catalyst for the emergence of environmental politics in Ontario.