Vancouver prides itself on being a green city, and the west coast is known for its active environmental protest culture. But the roots of this mentality reach far beyond the founding of organizations such as Greenpeace. Small campaigns led by local community groups from the 1960s onward left a lasting impact on the region. At the Wilderness Edge examines five antidevelopment campaigns in and around Vancouver that reflected a dramatic decline in public support for large-scale commercial and industrial projects. J.I. Little describes the highly effective protests that were instrumental in preserving threatened green spaces on Coal Harbour, Hollyburn Ridge, Bowen Island, Gambier Island, and the Squamish estuary, keeping these important British Columbia landmarks from becoming a high-rise development project, a downhill ski resort, a suburban housing tract, an open-pit copper mine, and a major coal port, respectively. Through detailed analysis of development proposals and protests, government studies, and community responses, Little argues that it was not the usual suspects – 1960s radicalism and anti-establishment youth culture – that initiated and carried out these protests, but rather middle-aged, middle-class, politically engaged citizens, many of whom were women. An engaging study of grassroots politics in action, At the Wilderness Edge sheds new light on the rise of environmental consciousness, a pivotal era in the history of British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada.

J.I. Little is a professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University, author of Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812–1840, and co-author of An Illustrated History of Quebec: Tradition and Modernity.

J.I. Little's profile page

"At the Wilderness Edge breaks new ground by exploring a series of complex local antidevelopment campaigns that helped to open up and support new aspects of progressive political culture in British Columbia." Michael Dawson, St Thomas University

"This lively and extensively researched history of popular challenges to development projects in and around Vancouver in the 1960s and '70s makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the emerging environmentalist movement in this period, and the motivations and social positions of its constituents." Jennifer Bonnell, York University

"As a Vancouver-based and -bred environmental historian, I enjoyed this book enormously and learned a great deal about paths I’ve trodden and slopes I’ve skied. I expect At the Wilderness Edge will gain a considerable audience in the region, and deservedly so. It will be interesting to see if other environmental historians address this important, proto-environmental phase in Canadian development politics to allow for wider comparative insights to emerge." Matthew Evenden, NiCHE: Network in Canada History & Environment

"Some cultural historians treat resistance as a terminus to analysis, rather than a spur to new questions. Little is no such historian. He charts the why, how, and who of these movements [revealing} a deep seated civic will that the city comes out on top." Literary Review of Canada

"In At the Wilderness Edge, Little's assessment of the process through which antidevelopment protests were effective is broken down into five chapters, each devoted to a particular protest. The book is easily accessible and is recommended for those interested in environmentalism in general, and environmental policy and successful environmental movements in particular." British Journal of Canadian Studies

"The author explores in great detail five different cases where various types of development projects were thwarted by or with the help of local antidevelopment movements. At the Wilderness Edge is an interesting and useful contribution to the history of these fragmented and understudied groups and actors that seem to form a much larger tapestry not only on the West Coast but also, ... , throughout North America from the 1970s on." HNet

"Little's study has much to recommend it. Above all, it highlights Vancouver's Janus-faced relationship with its natural environment. Little has made an important contribution to the literature on the environmental history of southern British Columbia." BC Studies