Power From The North Territory Identity And The Culture Of Hydroelectricity In Quebec

the long version

In Power from the North, Caroline Desbiens explores how this culture of hydroelectricity helped shape the material landscape during the first phase of the James Bay hydroelectric project. She analyzes the cultural forces that contributed to the transformation of the La Grande River into a hydroelectric complex. Policy makers and Quebecers did not, she argues, view those who built the dams as mere workers -- they saw them as pioneers in a previously uninhabited landscape now inscribed with the codes of culture and spectacle.