Pipe Dreams: Imagining Different Futures for Canada in the 1970s

This article examines the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (1974–7) for what it reveals of Canada’s 1970s. Led by Justice Thomas R. Berger, the inquiry assessed the regional impacts of a proposed natural gas pipeline across the northern Yukon and Mackenzie Valley in the Northwest Territories. However, it also provoked a broader debate about what Canada should be, revealing deep divisions over development, democracy, and progress. I explore how different public interest organizations and Indigenous peoples used the inquiry to offer critiques about the closed nature of decision-making, the limits to growth, and the impacts of colonialism. These critiques were the basis of different imagined futures for Canada, ones with varying paths for development and societal progress that still had a role – albeit a reimagined one – for government.