It's our neighbor, but what do most Americans really know about Canada? Visiting Assistant Professor of Canadian Studies Neil Forkey has not only helped St. Lawrence students understand more about our country’s biggest trading partner, but through a book he wrote, he's helped others to understand more about what lies to the north of the U.S.

Among the courses that Forkey teaches, with an economist, is a spring seminar for first-year students that asks them to explore what it means for two different countries – with very different cultures – to share a continent. Tracing the settlement and development of each country from 17th-century beginnings to the present, students in the course examine what makes the two countries, which may seem at first glance to be remarkably similar, vastly different. The University's proximity to Canada, especially its capital region of Ottawa, makes foreign field trips to museums, government offices and cultural sites a snap.

Forkey is the author of the 2003 book Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier:

Environment, Society, and Culture in the Trent Valley, which provides a look at that region in the 19th century, when it was a microcosm for wider human and environmental changes throughout North America. This environmental history explored the geography, prehistory and Native peoples – the Huron and the Mississauga – alongside the Anglo-Celtic migrations and "resettlement" of the region.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Forkey earned a master's degree from the University of Maine and the Ph.D. from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.