Overcoming Niagara

Analyzes the nineteenth century canal age in the Niagara-Great Lakes borderland region as a transnational phenomenon. In Overcoming Niagara Janet Dorothy Larkin analyzes the canal age from the perspective of the Niagara–Great Lakes borderland between 1792 and 1837. She shows what drove the transportation revolution, not the conventional story of westward expansion and the international/metropolitan rivalry between Great Britain and the United States, but a dynamic connection, cooperation, and healthy competition in a transnational-borderland region. Larkin focuses on North America’s three most vital waterways—the Erie, Oswego, and Welland Canals. Canadian and American transportation leaders and promoters mutually sought to overcome the natural and artificial barriers presented by Niagara Falls by building an integrated, interconnected canal system, thus strengthening the borderland economy and propelling westward expansion, market development, and the Niagara tourist industry. On the heels of the Erie Canal's bicentennial in 2017, Overcoming Niagara explores the transnational nature of the canal age within the Niagara–Great Lakes borderland, and its impact on the commercial and cultural landscape of this porous region. Janet Dorothy Larkin has taught history at several colleges and universities and specializes in early nineteenth-century American history with a focus on the United States–Canada borderland.

In this synthesis of urban geography and environmental studies, ten scholars explore the complex physical and human characteristics of Canada's best known region. They attempt to formulate a geopolitical blueprint for preservation of both the natural elements and future enterprise.

Niagara Falls is a place where lands are contested, industry debated, freedom harbored, the spirit uplifted, and fame won. It overflows with stories. Since before digital technologies made visual reproduction easier and more abundant than ever, writers composed Niagara Falls as symbolically meaningful. But in the face of four centuries of writing on this natural wonder, how does one make these stories new? Niagaras of Ink collects anecdotes of famous writers' experiences—previously untold tales, unique takes on well-known visits, and materials just too good to exclude—with an anthology of some of the most engaging Anglo-American writing on the Falls from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This collection invites readers to re-see Niagara through these lenses.

Since the late nineteenth century, Niagara Falls has been heavily engineered to generate energy behind a flowing façade designed to appeal to tourists. Fixing Niagara Falls reveals the technological feats and cross-border politics that facilitated the transformation of one of the most important natural sites in North America. Daniel Macfarlane shows how this natural wonder is essentially a tap: huge tunnels around the reconfigured Falls channel the waters of the Niagara River, which ebb and flow according to the tourism calendar. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary and transborder perspective on how the Niagara landscape embodies the power of technology and nature.

Visit to the falls is a diary of his journey from New York city to Albany, Niagara Falls, Kingston, Ont., Montreal, and Quebec.

Towns without nationally advertised fast-food restaurants often eagerly await the day when the golden arches sprout next door to the local car dealership. But what really happens to a community with the arrival of the uni-burger? Christopher Gunn and Hazel Dayton Gunn demonstrate that perhaps three-quarters of the money a community spends at its burger emporium will leave the area. Poor communities remain poor, they assert, because local capital tends to be drained off to financial centers, corporate accounts, and stockholders' portfolios. In keeping with ecologists' injunction to "think globally and act locally," this imaginative book documents ways in which communities have counteracted constraints of the capitalist economic system and succeeded in promoting democratic control of their resources. Taking as one example the local impact of a new McDonald's restaurant, Gunn and Gunn first illustrate how capital potentially available for community development may be identified. They then explore a variety of alternative institutions—credit unions, nonprofit corporations, and consumers' and workers' cooperatives, among others—that serve to attract and retain resources, foster growth, and extend public control over the development process. The authors also consider how grassroots activism for social change may be integrated with more conventional political practice. Reclaiming Capital will be a vital resource for activists, elected officials, and others concerned with urban and regional planning.