Structure

Vaillant's Fire Weather is divided into three distinct parts. Part One is "Origin Stories" and contains the history of Alberta, specifically the history of animal fur trading that preceded the discovery of fossil fuels there. Before bitumen, there was the Hudson Bay Company. Vaillant explains, "By making beaver skins a standardized unit of currency, and offering irresistibly attractive and useful things in return, the Company and its aggressive competitors turned the inhabitants of the boreal forest, human and animal alike, into a huge, surprisingly efficient profit-making machine--until they exhausted the resource" (33). Origin Stories also discusses the history of Fort McMurray and oil: "The dramatic transformation of Fort McMurray from trading post to petroleum hub has been as rapid and radical as any on the continent, and it has followed the manic-depressive pattern of all petroleum boomtowns before it" (42). In addition, Origin Stories provides a history of fire...