Drawing largely on court records and archival newspaper accounts, this study concludes that the incidence of violence on the Canadian frontier had both similarities as well as important differences from that in the United States. The current model for the study of violence in North America is Gurr and Graham's "Violence in America." Some of the themes of that work are relevant in the etiology of violence on the Canadian frontier. These include the role of the competitive hierarchy of immigrant groups, economic exploitation, reservations for aboriginal societies, restrictions on immigrant groups, large-scale socioeconomic change, and the violence generated by governments and corporations. Other aspects of the American experience have at least partial parallels in the Canadian West; these include racial and ethnic strife; vigilante activities; and conflict between large corporations, employees, and communities. Some themes present in the American West, however, were not involved in the violence of the Canadian West, such as the use of violence to nurture a law-abiding mentality and the link between the rise of violence and the growth of the nation-state. 130 notes