Warkentin Analysis

Robert Bone’s The Regional Geography of Canada versus, John Warkentin’s A Regional Geography of Canada: Life, Land, Space In both Bone’s The Regional Geography of Canada, and Warkentin’s A Regional Geography of Canada: Life, Land, Space the methods used to look at the province of British Columbia are different. Both authors take different standing on their views of regional geography as a whole, as well as the overall view of BC as a province. Both chapters identify the attributes of British Columbia, explain their opinions as to what they feel make up the identity of BC, and what makes it a homeland. Bone and Warkentin take different approaches to the explanation of the province and have different strengths and weaknesses in their approaches.

It delves further into the breakdown of the pieces that makes up the essence of BC. Both texts begin with the definition of BC as a region and take the time to explore its boundaries and various sub-regions. A brief description of the physical geography follows the introduction in both texts. Though Bone’s portion on the physiographic regions is more straightforward compared to Warkentin’s text. Both chapters follow the history of the province, and then gradually moves into modern day, British Columbia. Warkentin’s text has a very broad overview of the historical background but still is able to explain the fundamentals. It is in the post-war growth sections of both the text that the reader is able to distinguish BC from the other provinces as a powerhouse region. While Bone remained very broad and covered a variety of topics minimally, Warkentin veered to a more specific body of text. Warkentin’s chapter has a more in-depth overview of each sub-region described in the text, allowing for a different viewpoint of the province compared to Bone’s style. While Bone’s text is broader in its subject, it is much simpler put; and is easier to follow along. Though both texts address the use of resources, and BC’s successes and downfalls in using their resources, Warkentin’s text is mingled with other information making it less obvious as Bone’s text does. Bone addresses environmental

This text is something that a student who was not well versed in Geography would be able to easily navigate and understand all the key topics. Though being harder to navigate the extensive pool of information, Warkentin’s close up look on each key sub-region within BC is a greatly detailed aid that allows a non-BC native have a look into each section laid out. In terms of learning the most about the province in a short span, Warkentin’s text was able to pull on more specifics of the province in comparison to a broad minimal overview of such topics. As the text represents what the ideal format for course materials, the way that Bone was able to concisely present his information in a comprehensible way that was visually pleasing to the reader. As a means to learn about geography in a broad sense, Bone was able to use his materials to put out a chapter that was able to teach the prime topics without appearing wordy or trivia-rich. As much as the physical text matters, Bone’s use of maps, pictures, and tables was able to aid in the overall understanding of the topic and allowed for the reader to have a concrete image of what was being spoken about. Warkentin’s text although very useful, and content rich did not happen to have as much of a visual aspect to aid the compartmentalisation of the topics discussed. Overall in looking at the texts as a