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Whoop Up Country is a book written by Paul Sharpe about a specific region between Canada and Montana. This region is the Whoop Up Trail, which connects Fort Benton, Montana and Fort Macleod, Alberta. The original reasoning for Sharpe writing this book was so that he could test Walter Webb’s theories about how the environment determines the way that the people live. For that reason he chose the Whoop Up trail because the area is very similar on both the American and Canadian sides of the trail the only differences between the two is the nationalities of its inhabitants. Throughout the book you find that although the environments are very similar the people do not live the same. Some of the more common reasons on the Canadian side is the Mounties patrolling on the Canadian side while the American side was more or less lawless. The common thoughts of the Canadians on the trail were that the Americans were drunken idiots who didn’t and could not follow any laws; obviously the Americans had another point of view about themselves. Another difference that Sharpe found was that on the Canadian side the cattle were fenced in orderly area’s and rotated around from pen to pen so as to keep the grass growing in regular intervals. The American side only a few miles away used the range cattle grazing method. It was very interesting for me to learn some specific details about how different Americans and Canadians can be on such common terms. I also enjoyed learning about this because I have never been a strong believer in environmental determinism as the only factor in our lives. Sharpe in this book provides solid proof that environmental determinism is not the only factor in how we live even though it definitely is one of the factors.

By Justin Nygaard