Before the Second World War, Canada was a rural country. Unlike most industrializing countries, Canada's rural population grew throughout the century after 1871 - even if it declined as a proportion of the total population. Rural Canadians also differed in their lives from rural populations elsewhere. In a country dominated by a harsh northern climate, a short growing season, isolated households and communities, and poor land, they typically relied on three ever-shifting pillars of support: the sale of cash crops, subsistence from the local environment, and wage work off the...