NiCHE Podcasts
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Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 044: The Second World Congress for Environmental History(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2014-09-09) Kheraj, SeanFor five days this past July, environmental historians from around the world convened in Guimarães, Portugal for the Second World Congress for Environmental History. This is the main event for the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations. It brings together scholars from nearly every corner of the globe every five years to share new research in the field and to think about environmental history from a global perspective. This year, several scholars from Canada attended the conference (as they did five years ago). They took the opportunity to learn from colleagues in other national fields and they shared research findings from the Canadian context. There were dozens of panels and round tables, big plenary lectures, and a poster session, so much that no one person could see it all. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with a group of environmental historians who attended the Second World Congress for Environmental History. Please be sure to take a moment to review this podcast on our iTunes page and to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 047: Pollution Probe and the History of Environmental Activism in Ontario(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2015-04-21) Kheraj, SeanEnvironmental activism has a long history in Canada. Like others around the world, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Canadians became involved in a number of environmental non-governmental organizations. Picking up on a prevailing spirit of protest during the era, several environmental problems surfaced as popular political issues: air pollution, water pollution, solid waste disposal, among many others. Out of this came one of the first ENGOs in Canadian history, Pollution Probe. Born at the University of Toronto in 1969, the nascent group focused its efforts on new concerns regarding air pollution in Canada. It would go on to become one of the most influential environmental groups in Ontario and even shape a national environmental movement in Canada. Scholarly research on the history of the environmental movement in Canada is limited. A couple of years ago, we published two episodes of Nature’s Past on the history of the Canadian environmental movement. Now there are a handful of new books on the topic, including the recently-published The First Green Wave: Pollution Probe and the Origins of Environmental Activism in Ontario. On this episode of the podcast, author Ryan O’Connor joins us to discuss Pollution Probe and the early years of environmental activism in Canada. Please be sure to take a moment to review this podcast on our iTunes page.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 048: Ecotones and Saskatchewan History(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2015-05-27) Kheraj, SeanArguably, the predominant landscape Canadians generally associate with Saskatchewan is one filled with waving grains of wheat and broad, flat vistas. It is the land of the living skies and one of Canada’s so-called Prairie provinces. And yet so much of Saskatchewan isn’t prairie. In fact, the prairie ecological zone covers only the southernmost part of the province. What about the rest? Merle Massie confronts this matter in her award-winning book, Forest Prairie Edge: Place History in Saskatchewan. It is a book that takes readers through a different landscape in the province of Saskatchewan and invites us to think about the province’s history from a new perspective: a view from the edge. That is to say, Massie shifts her focus in Saskatchewan history away from the predominant narratives about the prairies and agricultural settlement based on the cultivation of wheat toward the province’s ecotone, the transitional zone between the prairie and the parkland, the forest edge. It is at the forest edge that Massie finds different ways of thinking about sustainability, European and Euro-Canadian colonization of the West, and other relationships between people and the rest of nature. This episode of the podcast features an interview with Merle Massie about her fascinating new book. Please be sure to take a moment to review this podcast on our iTunes page.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 049: Wildlife Conservation in Quebec(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2015-09-23) Kheraj, SeanThere is a lot of good historical writing on wildlife conservation in Canada. Historians, including Janet Foster, George Colpitts, John Sandlos, Tina Loo, and others have provided excellent and important studies of the topic. But our understanding of wildlife conservation policy history has, until now, missed a key part of the story, the case of Quebec. As one of the oldest wildlife regulatory regimes in British North America, Quebec forms a critical part North American conservation history. Conservation policy in Quebec took a unique form based around privately leased reserves, something nearly unknown in any other jurisdiction in North America. Why was this the case? What made Quebec distinct? This is the subject of Darcy Ingram’s 2014 book, Wildlife Conservation and Conflict in Quebec, 1840-1914. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Darcy Ingram. book cover Wildlife Conservation and Conflict in Quebec, 1840-1914Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 050: Canadian Energy History(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2015-11-24) Kheraj, SeanAccording to a study by Richard Unger and John Thistle, Canadians consumed 430 petajoules of energy in 1867. Combining energy from animal labour, food, firewood, wind, water, coal, crude oil, natural gas and electricity, by 2004 Canadians reached a historic peak of energy consumption at 11,526 petajoules. For reference, a petajoule is a unit of energy measurement roughly equivalent to 31.6 million cubic metres of natural gas or 277.78 million kilowatt hours of electricity. Since Confederation, Canadians have been high per capita energy consumers and our appetites for energy have grown substantially over the past 148 years. The way we consume energy has changed quite a bit over that time period too. In 1867, Canadians drew energy primarily from organic sources: animal labour, wood, and agricultural produce. Since the mid-twentieth century, we have drawn increasingly from mineral sources of energy: coal, crude oil, and natural gas. This shift in energy consumption since Confederation has arguably been one of the most consequential changes in Canadian history. It changed our relationships with one another as much as it changed our relationships with nature. The energy history of Canada is as much a concern for environmental history as it is for social history, political history, and cultural history. Energy history is an emerging field in Canada, but one with long historiographical roots. To learn more about Canadian energy history and the development of this new approach to thinking about environment, history, and society, this episode features a round-table discussion with three Canadian historians each of whom were part of an energy history working group at the University of Toronto in 2014-15.