Awards

• Winner of Honourable Mention - Wilson Book Prize, The Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University 2020 (Canada)
• Winner of Honourable Mention - Wilson Book Prize, The Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University  2020 (Canada)

Overview

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 details how engineers, bureaucrats, and politicians conspired to manipulate the world’s most famous waterfall. Essentially, they turned this natural wonder into a tap: huge tunnels divert the waters of the Niagara River around the Falls, which ebb and flow according to the tourism calendar. To hide the visual impact of diverting the majority of the water, the United States and Canada cooperated to install massive control works while reshaping and shrinking the Horseshoe Falls. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on how the Niagara landscape ultimately embodies both the power of technology and the power of nature.

Full Product Details

9780774864237

Table of Contents

Reviews

Daniel Macfarlane has surely read most--if not all--relevant books on Niagara Falls in his research for this truly cross-border history of one of the most important natural sites in North America. --James Murton, Nipissing University Fixing Niagara Falls is unlike any other book that I know of, framing the Niagara landscape as an example of the 'technological sublime' devoted both to beauty and power. --Kurk Dorsey, University of New Hampshire Daniel Macfarlane has surely read most--if not all--relevant books on Niagara Falls in his research for this truly cross-border history of one of the most important natural sites in North America.--James Murton, Nipissing University How do you write an original book about Niagara Falls, when so many excellent books about the Falls have already been written? Macfarlane shows it's possible. In this fascinating and well-crafted study, Macfarlane weaves together energy histories, toxic histories, and cultural readings in his analysis, while foregrounding the waterfall itself. He shows that Niagara Falls today is a mesmerizing mixture of nature and culture, radically re-made in service of industrial capitalism. This is truly a transboundary analysis, paying close attention to evolving ideas about the public good and the role of nature in industrial North America.--Nancy Langston, Michigan Technological University I've always loved Niagara Falls--it is sublime. And no less so, I think, once you read this book and understand how it came to be. It speaks of nature's power but also of a dozen epochs and the ideas of the people who shifted and shaped it over the last centuries. This is engaged and engaging history.--Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Once an icon of untrammelled wilderness and inexhaustible natural resources, over the past two centuries Niagara Falls has been harnessed for hydropower to the point that today it is a roaring paradox--a man-made natural wonder, an amusement park for nature seekers. Yet the Falls are still worth visiting because they are still one-of-a-kind spectacular, and so is Daniel Macfarlane's (not-so-natural) history of how it all happened.--Dan Egan, author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes In Fixing Niagara Falls we find Niagara serially harnessed, saved, negotiated, empowered, disguised, preserved, and fabricated. Through these pages we come to understand the Falls as an extremely complex, ever-changing entity.--Graeme Wynn, University of British Columbia Once an icon of untrammelled wilderness and inexhaustible natural resources, over the past two centuries Niagara Falls has been harnessed for hydropower to the point that today it is a roaring paradox--a man-made natural wonder, an amusement park for nature seekers. Yet the Falls are still worth visiting because they are still one-of-a-kind spectacular, and so is Daniel Macfarlane's (not-so-natural) history of how it all happened. --Dan Egan, author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes In Fixing Niagara Falls we find Niagara serially harnessed, saved, negotiated, empowered, disguised, preserved, and fabricated. Through these pages we come to understand the Falls as an extremely complex, ever-changing entity. --Graeme Wynn, University of British Columbia I've always loved Niagara Falls--it is sublime. And no less so, I think, once you read this book and understand how it came to be. It speaks of nature's power but also of a dozen epochs and the ideas of the people who shifted and shaped it over the last centuries. This is engaged and engaging history. --Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Historians and general readers interested in the Falls and in issues connected with the associated technological and political background will appreciate this work. -- A.M. Strauss, Vanderbilt University * CHOICE * Small quibbles aside, Fixing Niagara Falls is an excellent monograph that cleverly analyzes how engineering interventions and human hubris helped make the Niagara Falls that we are familiar with today. -- Clarence Hatton-Proulx * NiCHE *

Author Information

Daniel Macfarlane is an associate professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. He is also a senior fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto, and president of the International Water History Association. He is the author of Negotiating a River: Canada, the US, and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and also co-edited Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian–American Water Relationship with Lynne Heasley, and The First Century of the International Joint Commission with Murray Clamen.

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