Nature | History | Society – serie

For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as the devastating nature of asbestos-related deaths became common knowledge, the industry suffered terminal decline. A Town Called Asbestos looks at how the people of Asbestos, Quebec, worked and lived alongside the largest chrysotile asbestos mine in the world. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community's survival, they developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos's proud history and reveals the challenges similar resource communities have faced – and continue to face today.

Along the east shore of Ontario's Georgian Bay lie the Thirty Thousand Islands, a granite archipelago scarred by glaciers, where the white pines cling to the ancient rock, twisted and bent by the west wind -- a symbol of a region where human history has been shaped by the natural environment. Over the last four centuries, the Bay has been visited by some of the most famous figures in Canadian history, from Samuel de Champlain to the Group of Seven. This book traces the history of Canadians' reactions to and interactions with this distinctive and often intractable landscape.Claire Campbell draws from recent work in cultural history, landscape studies in geography and art history, and environmental history to explore what happens when external agendas confront local realities -- a story central to the Canadian experience. Explorers, fishermen, artists, and park planners all were forced to respond to the unique contours of this inland sea; their encounters defined a regional identity even as they constructed a popular image for the Bay in the national imagination.Beginning with a revealing analysis of the cartographic history of the Bay, Campbell proceeds to examine changing cultural representations of landscape over time, shifts between resource development and recreational use, recurring motifs of water and rock in landscape design and representation, changing memories of place, and the environmental politics of place read through debates about resource management and parks.Campbell investigates the relationship between landscape, culture, and regional identity, and presents a case study in modern environmental thought. Each chapter presents a different type of encounter -- different ways in which people approached and interacted with the Bay. She incorporates a wide variety of sources, including art and literature, maps and survey journals, cottage architecture and boat design, government and park archives, tourism brochures, and oral interviews.This is not a narrowly conceived local history but a focused argument about how places take on shifting cultural meanings over time. The author argues that the environment of Georgian Bay is not simply an imagined geography but has been created through an active engagement between cultural readings and physical circumstances. Shaped by the West Wind speaks to a wide variety of disciplines including geography, art and design, literary criticism, environmental studies, and public history. It will appeal to anyone interested in the environmental dimensions of Canadian history.

Since the early days of the fur trade, wildlife has been powerfully and inspiringly emblematic of Canada. Yet the story of saving Canada's wildlife is largely unknown. States of Nature is one of the first books to trace the development of Canadian wildlife conservation from its social, political, and historical roots. While noting the influence of celebrity conservationists such as Jack Miner and Grey Owl, Tina Loo emphasizes the impact of ordinary people on the evolution of wildlife management in Canada. She also explores the elements leading up to the emergence of the modern environmental movement, ranging from the reliance on and practical knowledge of wildlife demonstrated by rural people to the more aloof and scientific approach of state-sponsored environmentalism.Illustrated with evocative images of the Canadian wilderness of yesteryear and supported by historical case studies, States of Nature will appeal to historians, policy makers, and wildlife managers, as well as to general readers fascinated by the natural world and its champions.

To most, the flush of a toilet is routine: the way we banish waste and ensure cleanliness. It is safe, efficient, necessary, nonpolitical, and utterly unremarkable. Yet Jamie Benidickson's examination of the social and legal history of sewage in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom demonstrates that the uncontroversial reputation of flushing is deceptive. The Culture of Flushing is particularly relevant in a time when community water quality can no longer be taken for granted, as it investigates and clarifies the murky evolution of waste treatment.The Culture of Flushing is essential reading for specialists in environmental history, environmental law, public health, engineering, and public policy. Those concerned with protecting water quality and the environment will also find it unique, comprehensive, and accessible.

In the early 1900s, British Columbia embarked on a brief but intense effort to manufacture a modern countryside. The government wished to reward veterans of the Great War with new lives: soliders and other settlers would benefit from living in a rural community, considered a more healthy and moral alternative to urban life. But the fundamental reason for the land resettlement project was the rise of progressive or "new liberal" thinking, as reformers advocated an expanded role for the state in guaranteeing the prosperity and economic security of its citizens.This ideological shift pushed the government to intervene directly in the management of not only society but also the natural environment. As most arable, accessible land in British Columbia was already being farmed by 1919, the state had to undertake environmental engineering projects on a scale not yet attempted in the province. Creating a Modern Countryside examines how this process unfolded, identifies its successes and failures, and demonstrates how the human-environment relationship of the early twentieth century shaped the province as it is today.

In the early 1900s, British Columbia embarked on a brief but intense effort to manufacture a modern countryside. The government wished to reward veterans of the Great War with new lives: soliders and other settlers would benefit from living in a rural community, considered a more healthy and moral alternative to urban life. But the fundamental reason for the land resettlement project was the rise of progressive or "new liberal" thinking, as reformers advocated an expanded role for the state in guaranteeing the prosperity and economic security of its citizens.This ideological shift pushed the government to intervene directly in the management of not only society but also the natural environment. As most arable, accessible land in British Columbia was already being farmed by 1919, the state had to undertake environmental engineering projects on a scale not yet attempted in the province. Creating a Modern Countryside examines how this process unfolded, identifies its successes and failures, and demonstrates how the human-environment relationship of the early twentieth century shaped the province as it is today.

Hunting for Empire offers a fresh cultural history of sportand imperialism. Greg Gillespie integrates critical perspectives fromcultural studies, literary criticism, and cultural geography to analyzethe themes of authorship, sport, science, and nature. In doing so heproduces a unique theoretical lens through which to studynineteenth-century British big-game hunting and exploration narrativesfrom the western interior of Rupert's Land.Sharply written and evocatively illustrated, Hunting forEmpire will appeal to students and scholars of culture, sport,geography, and history, and to general readers interested in stories ofhunting, empire, and the Canadian wilderness.

Hunting for Empire offers a fresh cultural history of sportand imperialism. Greg Gillespie integrates critical perspectives fromcultural studies, literary criticism, and cultural geography to analyzethe themes of authorship, sport, science, and nature. In doing so heproduces a unique theoretical lens through which to studynineteenth-century British big-game hunting and exploration narrativesfrom the western interior of Rupert's Land.Sharply written and evocatively illustrated, Hunting forEmpire will appeal to students and scholars of culture, sport,geography, and history, and to general readers interested in stories ofhunting, empire, and the Canadian wilderness.

The Archive of Place weaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in a particular location – British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. In the mid-1990s, the Chilcotin was at the centre of three territorial conflicts. Opposing groups, in their struggle to control the fate of the region and its resources, invoked different understandings of its past – and different types of evidence – to justify their actions. These controversies serve as case studies, as William Turkel examines how people interpret material traces to reconstruct past events, the conditions under which such interpretation takes place, and the role that this interpretation plays in historical consciousness and social memory. It is a wide-ranging and original study that extends the span of conventional historical research.

The Archive of Place weaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in a particular location – British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. In the mid-1990s, the Chilcotin was at the centre of three territorial conflicts. Opposing groups, in their struggle to control the fate of the region and its resources, invoked different understandings of its past – and different types of evidence – to justify their actions. These controversies serve as case studies, as William Turkel examines how people interpret material traces to reconstruct past events, the conditions under which such interpretation takes place, and the role that this interpretation plays in historical consciousness and social memory. It is a wide-ranging and original study that extends the span of conventional historical research.

Fire is a defining element in Canadian land and life. With few exceptions, Canada's forests and prairies have evolved with fire; its peoples have exploited fire and sought to protect themselves from its excesses; and since Confederation, the country has devised institutions to connect fire and society. This book narrates the history of this saga.

Between 1821 and 1960, industrial economies took root in the North, transgressing political geographies and superseding the historically dominant fur trade. Imported southern scientists and sojourning labourers worked the Northwest, and its industrial history bears these newcomers' imprint. This book reveals the history of human impact upon the North. It provides a baseline, grounded in historical and scientific evidence, for measuring subarctic environmental change. Liza Piper examines the sustainability of industrial economies, the value of resource exploitation in volatile ecosystems, and the human consequences of northern environmental change. She also addresses northern communities' historical resistance to external resource development and their fight for survival in the face of intensifying environmental and economic pressures.

Thousands of children attended summer camps in twentieth-century Ontario. Did parents simply want a break, or were broader developments at play? The Nurture of Nature explores the history of summer camps and sheds light on a wider phenomenon: the divided consciousness that informs modern assumptions about nature, technology, and identity.Wall examines how two competing tendencies – antimodern nostalgia and modern sensibilities about the landscape, child rearing, and identity – played out in the camp's interaction with nature, its class and gendered dimensions, its engagement with emerging ideologies of childhood, and in the politics of race inherent in its "Indian" programming.The Nurture of Nature offers a fascinating discussion of the summer camp's contribution to modern social life that will appeal to students and practitioners of the history of childhood, the natural environment, and recreation or anyone who has been packed off to camp and wants to explore why.

Thousands of children attended summer camps in twentieth-century Ontario. Did parents simply want a break, or were broader developments at play? The Nurture of Nature explores the history of summer camps and sheds light on a wider phenomenon: the divided consciousness that informs modern assumptions about nature, technology, and identity.Wall examines how two competing tendencies – antimodern nostalgia and modern sensibilities about the landscape, child rearing, and identity – played out in the camp's interaction with nature, its class and gendered dimensions, its engagement with emerging ideologies of childhood, and in the politics of race inherent in its "Indian" programming.The Nurture of Nature offers a fascinating discussion of the summer camp's contribution to modern social life that will appeal to students and practitioners of the history of childhood, the natural environment, and recreation or anyone who has been packed off to camp and wants to explore why.

A history of the modern concept of water that traces how a scientific abstraction has helped to produce a global crisis.

Our bodies are archives of sensory knowledge that shape how we understand the world. But if global environmental changes continue at their present unsettling pace, how will we make sense of time and place when the air, land, and water around us are no longer familiar?Joy Parr, one of Canada's premier historians, tackles this question by exploring situations in the recent past when state-driven megaprojects such as chemical plants, dams, nuclear reactors, transportation corridors, and new regulatory regimes forced people to cope with radical transformations in their work and home environments. In each case, the familiar was transformed so thoroughly that residents no longer recognized where they lived or, by implication, who they were.Sensing Changes and its associated website, http://megaprojects.uwo.ca, make a key contribution to environmental history and the emerging field of sensory history. This study offers a timely, prescient perspective on how humans make sense of the world in the face of rapid environmental change.

The commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was once the most successful fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992 – causing the largest single-day layoff in Canadian history and irrevocable ecological damage – fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as uncontrolled harvesting as likely culprits.Examining the history of commercial cod fisheries in the region from the mid-nineteenth century, Managed Annihilation makes the case that the very idea of natural resource management caused the death of the cod. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were ostensibly managed by the state, and the fishery has still not recovered nearly two decades later. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand, predict, and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered – it has simply been transferred onto new targets.

The Canadian prairies are often envisioned as dry, windswept fields; however, much of southern Manitoba is not arid plain but wet prairie, poorly drained land subject to frequent flooding.Wet Prairie brings to light the complexities of surface water management in Manitoba, from early artificial drainage efforts to late-twentieth-century attempts at watershed management. Irregular water-flow patterns challenged the checkerboard landscape of the 1872 federal Dominion Lands Act, and homesteaders found their agricultural ambitions at odds with local environmental realities. Thus, in keeping with liberal principles, the provincial government undertook substantial drainage efforts. Flooding and drainage became the subjects of intense and persistent debate among provincial officials, drainage experts, and Manitoba residents. New alliances and rivalries emerged amid shifting social, political, and environmental contexts, with enduring consequences for both the landscapes and people of the wet prairie.This account of an overlooked aspect of Prairie environmental history traces how the biophysical nature of southern Manitoba helped shape both Manitoba society and the provincial state.

Jasper National Park is an international travel destination, world heritage site, and icon of Canadian identity. Although national parks occupy a prominent place in the Canadian imagination, we are only beginning to understand how their visual imagery has shaped and continues to inform our perception of the natural world, ecological issues, and ourselves.In Manufacturing National Park Nature, J. Keri Cronin draws on visual images such as postcards and tourist snapshots to show that popular forms of picturing nature can have ecological implications that extend far beyond the frame of the image. Adopting an ecocritical approach to visual culture, she reveals that packaging Jasper as a series of breathtaking vistas and adorable-looking animals masks the real threats to the park's ecosystems. In telling the story of how various groups have used photography to shape our ideas about nature, this book sets the stage for a re-examination of protection policies and acknowledgment of environmental damage in national parks.

Jasper National Park is an international travel destination, world heritage site, and icon of Canadian identity. Although national parks occupy a prominent place in the Canadian imagination, we are only beginning to understand how their visual imagery has shaped and continues to inform our perception of the natural world, ecological issues, and ourselves.In Manufacturing National Park Nature, J. Keri Cronin draws on visual images such as postcards and tourist snapshots to show that popular forms of picturing nature can have ecological implications that extend far beyond the frame of the image. Adopting an ecocritical approach to visual culture, she reveals that packaging Jasper as a series of breathtaking vistas and adorable-looking animals masks the real threats to the park's ecosystems. In telling the story of how various groups have used photography to shape our ideas about nature, this book sets the stage for a re-examination of protection policies and acknowledgment of environmental damage in national parks.

Despite the popular assumption that wildlife conservation is a recent phenomenon, it emerged over a century and a half ago in an era more closely associated with wildlife depletion than preservation. In Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, Darcy Ingram explores the combination of NGOs, fish and game clubs, and state-administered leases that formed the basis of a unique system of wildlife conservation in North America. However, these early strategies were not as forward-focused as they appear. Ingram traces the emergence of a lease-based regulatory system that blended elite forms of sport and conservation. Applied first to British North America's prized salmon rivers, this system came to encompass the bulk of Quebec's hunting and fishing territories. Inspired by a longstanding belief in progress, improvement, and social order based on European as well as North American models, this system effectively privatized Quebec's fish and game resources, often to the detriment of commercial and subsistence hunters and fishers.

Despite the popular assumption that wildlife conservation is a recent phenomenon, it emerged over a century and a half ago in an era more closely associated with wildlife depletion than preservation. In Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, Darcy Ingram explores the combination of NGOs, fish and game clubs, and state-administered leases that formed the basis of a unique system of wildlife conservation in North America. However, these early strategies were not as forward-focused as they appear. Ingram traces the emergence of a lease-based regulatory system that blended elite forms of sport and conservation. Applied first to British North America's prized salmon rivers, this system came to encompass the bulk of Quebec's hunting and fishing territories. Inspired by a longstanding belief in progress, improvement, and social order based on European as well as North American models, this system effectively privatized Quebec's fish and game resources, often to the detriment of commercial and subsistence hunters and fishers.

Temagami's Tangled Wild traces the processes and power relationships through which the Temagami area of northeastern Ontario has become emblematic of Canadian wilderness. In this sophisticated analysis, Jocelyn Thorpe uncovers how struggles over meaning, racialized and gendered identities, and land have made Temagami a site of wild Canadian nature. Despite the fact that the Teme-Augama Anishnabai have for many generations understood the region as their homeland rather than as a wilderness, the forestry and tourism industries, as well as Canadian law, have refused to acknowledge this claim. Instead, the concept of wilderness has been employed to aid in Aboriginal dispossession and to create a home for non-Aboriginal Canadians on Native land.An eloquent critique and engaging history, Temagami's Tangled Wild challenges readers to acknowledge how colonial relations are embedded in our notions of wilderness, and to reconsider our understanding of the wilderness ideal.

In the 1970s, Hydro-Québec declared in a publicity campaign "We Are Hydro-Québécois." The slogan symbolized the extent to which hydroelectric development in the North had come to both reflect and fuel French Canada's aspirations. The slogan helped Quebecers relate to the province's northern territory and to accept the exploitation of its resources.In Power from the North, Caroline Desbiens explores how this culture of hydroelectricity helped shape the landscape during the first phase of the James Bay hydroelectric project. Policy makers and citizens did not, she argues, view those who built the dams as mere workers – they saw them as pioneers in a previously uninhabited land now inscribed with the codes of culture and spectacle. This insightful work shows that if Quebec hopes to engage in truly sustainable resource development, all actors must bring an awareness of their cultural histories and visions of nature, North, and nation to the negotiating table.

It was a megaproject half a century in the making -- a technological and engineering marvel that stands as one of the most ambitious borderlands undertakings ever embarked upon by two countries. The planning and building of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project is one of the defining episodes in North American history.The project began with transnational negotiations that spanned two world wars and the formative years of the Cold War and included a failed attempt to construct an all-Canadian seaway, which was scuttled by US national security fears. Once an agreement was reached, the massive engineering and construction operation began, as did the efforts to move people and infrastructure away from the thousands of acres of land that would soon be flooded.Negotiating a River looks at the profound impacts of this megaproject, from the complex diplomatic negotiations, political manoeuvring, and environmental diplomacy to the implications on national identities and transnational relations.

Encompassing millions of hectares of globally rare coastal rainforest, the Great Bear Rainforest in coastal British Columbia is home to ancient trees, rich runs of salmon, and abundant species, including the elusive white "spirit bear." The area also supports small human communities, particularly First Nations. Once slated for clear-cut logging, large areas were protected in 2006 by the signing of one of the world's most significant and innovative conservation agreements.Tracking the Great Bear traces environmentalists' efforts to save the area from status quo industrial forestry, while at the same time respecting First Nations' right to economic development. Adopting a novel theoretical approach from science and technology studies, the book explains environmentalists' success as a result of their deployment of a powerful actor-network within British Columbia's land-use decision-making process.This book makes a significant contribution to social scientific analyses of natural resource management. Bridging the gap between interpretivist and social structural analyses, it demonstrates how the Great Bear Rainforest was made – or, rather, recreated – out of uncertain and contested links among an improbable assemblage of actors and elements.

In The First Green Wave, Ryan O'Connor traces the rise of the environmental movement in Toronto, home to one of Canada's earliest and most dynamic communities of environmental activists, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. At the heart of the story is Pollution Probe, an organization founded in 1969 by students and faculty at the University of Toronto. Living up to its motto ("Do it!") in its first year of operation, Pollution Probe confronted Toronto's City Hall over its use of pesticides, Ontario Hydro over air pollution, and the detergent industry over pollution of the Great Lakes. The organization's successes inspired the founding of other environmental organizations across Canada and led to the development of initiatives now taken for granted, such as waste reduction and energy policy. This book describes the heady days of Canada's early environmental movement and examines the forces that reshaped the activist landscape in the 1980s.

Oil and gas companies now recognize that industrial projects in the Canadian North can only succeed if Aboriginal communities are involved in decision-making processes. Are Aboriginal concerns appropriately addressed through current consultation and participatory processes?Where the Rivers Meet is an ethnographic account of Sahtu Dene involvement in the environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a massive pipeline that, if completed, would have unprecedented effects on Aboriginal communities in the North.Carly A. Dokis reveals that while there has been some progress in establishing avenues for Dene participation in decision making, the structure of participatory and consultation processes fails to meet the expectations of local people by requiring them to participate in ways that are incommensurable with their experiential knowledge and understandings of the environment. Ultimately, Dokis finds that the evaluation of such projects remains rooted in non-local beliefs about the nature of the environment, the commodification of land, and the inevitability of a hydrocarbon-based economy.

Oil and gas companies now recognize that industrial projects in the Canadian North can only succeed if Aboriginal communities are involved in decision-making processes. Are Aboriginal concerns appropriately addressed through current consultation and participatory processes?Where the Rivers Meet is an ethnographic account of Sahtu Dene involvement in the environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a massive pipeline that, if completed, would have unprecedented effects on Aboriginal communities in the North.Carly A. Dokis reveals that while there has been some progress in establishing avenues for Dene participation in decision making, the structure of participatory and consultation processes fails to meet the expectations of local people by requiring them to participate in ways that are incommensurable with their experiential knowledge and understandings of the environment. Ultimately, Dokis finds that the evaluation of such projects remains rooted in non-local beliefs about the nature of the environment, the commodification of land, and the inevitability of a hydrocarbon-based economy.