User:Cljim22/Canadian environmental history

Canadian Environmental History

Canadian environmental history is a national sub-field of environmental history. While Canadian historians have long been aware of the significance of the geography in the human history of northern North America, few of these historian self-identified as environmental historians until the early 1990s. In the past two decades environmental history has emerged as a increasingly important component of Canadian history and Canadian historical geography. Canadians are now a relatively large component of the annual American Society of Environmental History conference and a large number of Canadians presented at the first World Congress in Environmental History in 2009.

Environmental history in Canada remains an eclectic field with major works on everything from the evolution of environmental politics in the 1960s to the much longer history of aboriginal relationships with different landscapes. The field overlaps with social, political and cultural histories. The major contribution it makes to these broad themes in Canadian history and geography is close attention to the role of nature in historical processes. This is not simply a new approach to natural history, as environmental historians remain equally concerned with the human histories; the field is most interested in the relationships between humans and nature.

• • • Much Canadian environmental history reacts to and revises established generalizations about human relationships with nature in North America. It is a response to older Canadian historigraphical traditions (Staples Thesis) or American and Global environmental history theories (Ecological Imperialism). (Is this a valid statement? Anya made a similar statement ""The environmental history of Canada, in policy and practice, has been a colonial, North American, or Atlantic—rather than a strictly national—phenomenon." in her recent review essay; but is there a clear way to include something about outside influences in this introduction section?)

Historiography

From Innis to Nelles

Long before Roderick Nash coined the term environmental history in the early 1970s a number of leading Canadian historians contemplated the significance of Canada's geography and natural resources in the development of the country. Innis' staples thesis... During the 1970s and 1980s another generation of leading historians continued to focus attention on the significance of natural resources in Canadian history and they contributed important foundations for the developpment of Canadian environmental history, even though they remained removed from the early formation of the field in the United States.

Alan MacEachern: "In a sense, of course, Canadian history has long been associated with nature. Think Innis on beaver and cod; Lower on trees; Creighton on rivers; Morton on the frontier generally. These foundational historians recognized that nature was a constant contributing factor in what drew Europeans (or, for that matter, Paleoindians) to Canada, what determined their survival, what defined their settlement and what eventually shaped the national identity. But by the 1960s, historians were treating nature as they had long treated Natives – as an opening chapter of the national narrative, worthy of an introductory mention but not to be spoken of again. We were content to pass off any matters of nature and the past to historical geography, a strong field in Canada made stronger by our surrender to it. Though there would always be a few historians writing on environmental topics from the 1970s through the 1990s – John Wadland, Bruce Hodgins, H.V. Nelles and Janet Foster spring to mind – they were voices crying in the wilderness."

Post-1990 Environmental History in Canada

AM: "By the early 1990s, more Canadianists were taking a renewed interest in the role of nature in Canada’s past. This was in part due to the rise of environmental history in the United States. Some Canadian scholars were attending conferences there, treating them like spiritual retreats and coming home hungering for revival. But many Canadianists knew little or nothing of the new field, and were drawn to environmental topics through the environmental movement of the era, or simply from a realization that there was good history to be written."

AM: "These are the practical reasons for siding with environmental history, yet all this ignores what gives the field its theoretical and narrative strength. Environmental history is distinct from earlier work by historians like Innis and Lower not because it promotes the study of nature over that of humans – it does not – but because it takes occasion to focus on nature itself, recognizing that this is necessary for a better understanding of nature’s place in human affairs, and thus ultimately of human affairs itself. Those writing "around" environmental history in Canada would do well to involve themselves in a single field with a single literature, and recognize why environmental history, well-established in the United States and increasingly so worldwide, has become that field.6 The increase in Canadianists defining themselves as environmental historians suggests this is already underway."

Anya Zilberstein: "The recent increase in books and articles on the history of the Canadian environment is a rejoinder. In the past five years, besides the eight titles reviewed here, numerous studies, research chairs, collaborative grants, databases, and websites have been produced or sponsored by Canadian funding agencies, universities, and publishers—princi- pally the University of British Columbia Press and its Nature/History/Society Series, under the general editorship of Graeme Wynn. The October 2007 special issue of Environmental History, the journal of the American Society of Environmental Historians, was entirely devoted to Canadian topics. More projects are in the works."

AZ: "The environmental history of Canada, in policy and practice, has been a colonial, North American, or Atlantic—rather than a strictly national—phenomenon."

Current Practice

In recent years environmental history emerged as a major growing sub-field in Canadian history. Concentrations of professors and graduate students developed at the University of Western Ontario, University of British Columbia, York University, McMaster University and the University of Alberta and numerous other history and geography departments have at least one environmental historian. The Network in Canadian History and Environment facilitates the growth of environmental history through workshops and a significant digital infrastructure including their website and podcast. NiCHE's membership has grown to move than four hundred members, including hundreds of professors, graduate students, and public historians in Canada and dozens of international members.

Major Themes

I've started adding sources for these major themes, but I need some help writing short paragraphs on these Major Themes (JC).

First nations and the environment

Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination

Perceptions of Nature in Canada

Claire Elizabeth Campbell, Shaped by the West Wind: Nature and History in Georgian Bay (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005) Tina Loo, States of Nature

Conservation and Environmentalism

19th Century Conservation? Greenpeace and Pollution Probe

Parks

Alan MacEachern

A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011 (University of Calgary Press, 2011), ed. Campbell

Nature's Economies

Staples Thesis

Innis Nelles, Politics of Development

Forest History

Stephen Pyne Richard Rajala, "Clearcutting the British Columbia Coast: Work, Environment and the State, 1880-1930," in Jeremy Mouat and Cathy Cavanaugh, eds., Making Western Canada: Historical Essays (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1996), pp. 104-132. Wynn

Rivers

-should this section be "Water and Hydro-electricity" rather than just "Rivers"?

       -should the Great Lakes could be included under this broader category

Rivers have exerted a major influence on the shape of Canadian historical development, and on the shape of Canadian historical writing. It has been argued that water is intertwined with Canadian identity since “rivers are Canadian cultural icons; they have consistently communicated the idea of Canada, its meta-narrative of nation-building and collective identity.”From time immemorial, various First Nations groups centered their lives around Canada's many rivers. European explorers utilized the St. Lawrence River, and the initial European colonies grouped around this river. Fur trader plied various water routes leading across the continent, as did subsequent explorers. The importance of the St. Lawrence waterway was stressed in the Laurentian thesis - most prominently ascribed to Donald Creighton - with its ties to the Staples and Metropolitan-Hinterland theses. Before the Second World War, a number of historians penned prominent studies that stressed the role of rivers, canals, and lakes in shaping the evolution of the state that would eventually become Canada. Interest in the importance of water to Canada's history continued into the Second World War period. A number of Canadian rivers were features in the "Rivers of America" series, and noted writer Hugh McLennan became known for his attention to rivers.

Rising environmental consciousness in the 1960s led to studies that were perhaps less celebratory about the "improvement" of Canadian waterways. A political economy approach to resource development also became apparent. As environmental history began to grow as an identifiable field in Canada, water and hydro-electricity became one of the field's common research themes. Particularly since the 1990s, a wide range of studies on Canadian water have appeared. Several authors have done work on waterways in British Columbia, particularly those in the Columbia River basin, that have been altered because of hydro-electric development. Still in B.C., James Burton has looked at Sumas Lake and Matthew Evenden produced a monograph focused on the Fraser River, and Evenden co-authored (with Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles) a history of Alberta's Bow River. Shannon Stunden Bower has recently released a study of water in Manitoba.

Moving east into Ontario, Daniel Macfarlane covers the history of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project, and numerous other authors have examined differing aspects of the river and its environs (such as Daren Kinsey and Matthew Hatvany). The Don River in Toronto is the subject of Jennifer Bonnell's research. Book-length studies of the many canals in central Canada, such as the Welland and Trent-Severn, have been written. Stephane Castonguay has examined rivers and flooding in Quebec's Eastern Townships, and Sean McCutcheon looked at the James Bay hydro project.

St. John's River; Ottawa River;

Sean McCutcheon, Electric Rivers: The Story of the James Bay Project (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1991); Andrew Biro, “Half-Empty or Half-Full?: Water Politics and the Canadian National Imaginary,” in Karen Bakker, ed. Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007); James Murton, “Creating Order: the Liberals, the Landowners, and the Draining of Sumas Lake, British Columbia,” Environmental History, vol. 13 (1); Tina Loo, “People in the Way: Modernity, Environment, and Society on the Arrow Lakes,” BC Studies 142/143 (Summer/Autumn 2004), 161-196; Philip Van Huizen, “Building a Green Dam: Environmental Modernism and the Canadian-American Libby Dam Project,” Pacific Historical Review Vol. 79, No. 3 (August 2010), 418-453; Daniel Macfarlane, "To the Heart of the Continent: Canada and the Negotiation of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project," PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2010; Tina Loo with Meg Stanley, “An Environmental History of Progress: Damming the Peace and Columbia Rivers,” Canadian Historical Review, 92, 3 (September 2011), 399-427; Sproule-Jones, Johns, and Heinmiller, eds., Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions.

Transformations and Decline

Hunting, Fishing and Extinctions

(Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978))

Agriculture and Neo-European Landscapes

Clinton L. Evans, The War on Weeds of the Prairie West: An Environmental History (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2002) (SB613 C2E83 2002)

Industry and Pollution

Cruikshank, Bouchier

Urban Environments

While urban centres were not the focus of early environmental history, this began to change in the United States in the 1990s and in Canada during the past century. Stephen Bocking edited a special issue of the Urban History Review in 2004 on Canadian urban enviornmental history. Since then a number of Phd Dissertations focused on Canadian cities, including Sean Kheraj's work on Stanley Park and Jennifer Bonnell's project on the Don River. Joanna Dean focused new attention on urban trees, Ken Cruikshank and Nancy Bouchier made a major contribution with their numerous articles and a DVD on Hamilton and Michelle Dagenais and Stéphane Castonguay edited the first book focused on the environmental history of a Canadian city: Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal. All of these contributions challenge the prevailing idea that nature and the environment ends at the urban boundary. They focus attention on the many ways the natural environment remains ever present in cities. From the rivers, lakes and oceans, to the trees, squares and racoons, natural features of the environment remain a part of human dominated landscapes. Moreover, weather events (windstorms, floods and droughts) create instability in urban environments and threaten the health and comfort of humans. Finally, cities are centres of consumption and waste production. Urban metabolism draw in natural resources from their hinterlands (drinking water, food, and fuel) and send out pollution (smoke, sewage, and garbage).

Canada and Global Environmental HIstory

Canada in the 20th Century - References from Something New Under the Sun? From coal mines to oil sands. Canada in the rest of the world... Mining in the global south.

Textbooks and Resources

• Chad Gaffield and Pam Gaffield, ed. Consuming Canada: Readings in Environmental History, (Toronto: Copp Clark Ltd, 1995).
• Alan MacEachern and William J. Turkel, ed. Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History, (Nelson, 2009).

References

David Freeland Duke, ed. Canadian Environmental History

External links

• Network in Canadian History & Environment
• Nature's Past: Canadian Environmental History Podcast
• EHTV: Live from the Field