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Asked to write about my scholarly career, I do as bid. I briefly explain how I became a historical geographer and what I take to be the particular interests and opportunities of this small field tucked between geography and history. I describe the different intellectual climates in which my work has been situated, a brazen, law-seeking positivism in the sixties and later an almost equally brazen cultural theory, and my response to them. I identify my broad research interests - social and cultural change as Europeans migrated to new settings overseas; Canada as a historical geographical construction; the territorial dispossession of Native peoples by settler colonial societies - and my principal observations thereon. Finally, I look back on an enjoyable and rather spoiled academic life, muse about academic pressures that my generation hardly faced, and insist on the continuing value of work situated between geography and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first section of this two-part paper describes my historical geographical career, particularly the topics and issues I have pursued and the changing intellectual environment in which they have been situated. The second section offers a summary interpretation of the emerging human geography of early-modern Canada followed by some reflections on its contemporary implications. This interpretation stresses the extent to which boundaries and discontinuities marked early Canada, and contrasts a pinched Canadian experience with the land with a far more expansive American one. It shows how deeply difference was constructed and ingrained in the Canadian past, and suggests some challenges and opportunities that follow from this inheritance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]