Levelling the Lake
Transboundary Resource Management in the Lake of the Woods Watershed
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Stretching across Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota, the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake basin spans boundaries and jurisdictions. Levelling the Lake explores a century and a half of social, economic, and legal arrangements through which the resources and environment of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake watershed have been harnessed and harmed. Jamie Benidickson traces the environmental consequences of mining, forest industries, commercial fishing, hydro-electricity production, and recreation, as well as their often unanticipated impacts on local residents, including Indigenous communities, which encouraged new legal and institutional responses. Assessing the transition from primary resource extraction toward sustainable development at a watershed level, Levelling the Lake also shows how interjurisdictional and transboundary issues - many involving the Canada-US International Joint Commission - continue to play a significant role throughout the region.
About this Author
Jamie Benidickson teaches environmental law at the University of Ottawa where he is a member of the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability. His publications include Idleness, Water, and a Canoe: Reflections of Paddling for Pleasure; The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage; and, with Bruce Hodgins, The Temagami Experience: Recreation, Resources, and Aboriginal Rights in the Northern Ontario Wilderness.
Reviews
Benidickson shows how the many controversies and challenges--from the early negotiations around leveling the lake, to the Winnipeg water problems, the search for answers to the mercury crisis, and the need for a bridge and road to address the living conditions of the Shoal Lake band, illustrate how essential and necessary multi-agency solutions have been for the problems of the Lake of the Woods basin.
Benedickson's story embraces the field of environmental history.
Benidickson shows how the many controversies and challenges--from the early negotiations around leveling the lake, to the Winnipeg water problems, the search for answers to the mercury crisis, and the need for a bridge and road to address the living conditions of the Shoal Lake band--illustrate how essential and necessary multi-agency solutions have been for the problems of the Lake of the Woods basin.
Jamie Benidickson injects subtle ironic humour throughout [Levelling the Lake], but readers not interested in water or history may find it a long, hard haul ... but ultimately this is a rewarding read, perhaps best appreciated as an unfolding story ... while subdued in tone, Levelling the Lake offers a valuable analysis on how ecosystems and relations between people can decline from one generation to the next ... the book quietly and forcibly puts into relief how long-term economic and social security can be assured only through mutual trust among peoples, along with the proper maintenance and re- establishment of ecological balance.
This lengthy, erudite, and often (necessarily) dense manuscript details the environmental and social consequences of resource development in numerous sectors: fish, water levels, hydropower, pollution, logging, mining, recreation, etc.
Benidickson is to be congratulated for both the depth and quality of his research. His understanding of the complex legal and constitutional frameworks which have been imposed upon this region from the 1860s to the present is outstanding. [...]
This is an important work - and a pioneering one at that.
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