Abstract

British Columbia's Sumas Lake was drained in the 1920s to create farmlands in the Fraser Valley. This event is the subject of Laura Cameron's Openings, a history of a vanished lake as seen from the perspectives of various groups - Native people, bureaucrats, families, farmers - and an important attempt at the lake's "reclamation." A multifaceted exploration of the complex relationship between place and history, Openings presents an innovative meditation on the historian's craft. Cameron shows that this task involves not only locating the past in the fluid process of oral discourse and the creative bonds people forge between stories and the places around them.