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Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 052: Hydro-Power and War(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2016-03-22) Kheraj, SeanWhat fuels war? The total war of the Second World War placed enormous demands on the resources and environment of Canada. Manufacturing equipment for the war and harvesting natural resources for production were some of the most substantial contributions Canadians made to the war effort on the home front. And most of the electricity that powered that effort came from falling water. As Matthew Evenden writes in his new book Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-Electricity During Canada’s Second World War, “Canada’s war economy was mobilized on the banks of rivers as well as people.” During the course of the Second World War, the federal government, provinces, and private corporations coordinated in the expansion of Canada’s hydro-electric capacity. By the end of the war, Canada was a hydro-electricity superpower. On this episode of the podcast Matthew Evenden discusses his new book on the role of energy and environment in Canada’s Second World War. Book Cover: Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-Electricity During Canada's Second World War.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 051: Has Environmental History Lost Its Way?(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2016-01-27) Kheraj, SeanLate last year in December, Lisa Brady, the editor of the journal, Environmental History, posted a provocatively titled blog article, “Has Environmental History Lost Its Way?” In that article, she reviews a round table panel from the most recent annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in which Mark Hersey, a historian from Mississippi State University challenged the audience to consider whether or not environmental history has broadened too widely in its scope and drifted from its methodological roots. Two years earlier, Liza Piper, a Canadian environmental historian from University of Alberta, wrote a similarly provocative article in History Compass in which she argues “that Canadian environmental historians, even as they foreground nature as an historical actor, nevertheless continue to focus their attention and orient their investigations around questions of how human social, cultural, economic, and political power reshaped both nature and human experience in the past.” These arguments garnered lots of attention online as environmental historians shared the link to Brady’s article via online social networks and discussed its arguments. Others have now written response articles attempting to answer her question. The discussion has focused on the question of whether environmental history should emphasize materialism and the use of environment as an analytical lens or proceed as a “big tent” that incorporates a wide range of scholarship regardless of methodology. On this episode of the podcast, Lisa Brady, Mark Hersey, and Liza Piper discuss this question and further explore whether or not environmental history has lost its way.Item 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.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 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 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 046: Historical GIS Research in Canada(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2015-01-26) Kheraj, SeanIn recent years, environmental historians and other historians have been working with maps in new ways. Specifically, they have been using HGIS software, that is, historical geographic information systems. You may have heard a bit about this already. HGIS has allowed historians to take historical data and visualize and analyze it spatially. This allows one to present evidence in new ways, but perhaps more significantly, it provides researchers with novel approaches to the analysis of historical data. We can see things in the data with HGIS that we couldn’t see before. HGIS research has taken off in the field of environmental history. More researchers have been using HGIS as part of what some have called a “spatial turn” in scholarship. Census data, municipal assessment rolls, and aerial photographs, just to take a few examples, can be analyzed and presented in new ways spatially with HGIS software. Getting started with HGIS can be intimidating and it often requires collaboration among historians, geographers, librarians, and other scholars. To help researchers in the field of environmental history get acquainted with the uses of this technology, the University of Calgary Press and the Network in Canadian History and Environment have published a new book called, Historical GIS Research in Canada. You can read our review of the the book here. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with the editors of this new book, Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin as well as a couple of the contributors. Please be sure to take a moment to review this podcast on our iTunes page.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 045: The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2014-10-29) Kheraj, SeanIt cuts through the centre of the continent linking all of the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Long the ambition of governments, industry, and continentalist visionaries, the St. Lawrence Seaway fulfilled the mid-century modernist dream of transforming the Great Lake cities of North America into international seaports. Between 1954 and 1959, Canada and the United States jointly constructed a series of canals and locks to create a single navigable system from the port at Montreal through the Great Lakes. Building upon previous navigational improvements, including the various Welland Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened for business in 1959. It was both an ecological and a diplomatic breakthrough. The history of the seaway is one of tremendous Earth-moving high modernism and complicated international diplomacy. And Daniel Macfarlane’s new book, Negotiating a River: Canada, the US, and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, takes readers through the fascinating environmental and diplomatic history of the St. Lawrence Seaway. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Daniel Macfarlane about his new book on the history of the St. Lawrence seaway and power project.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 043: Environmental Scholarship and Environmental Advocacy(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2014-07-03) Kheraj, SeanEnvironmental history has been both friend and foe to environmentalism. Historians can provide important context for understanding contemporary environmental issues, but they can also offer a critique of environmentalism that could undermine the political and social goals of activists. This is the subject of a recent review essay I wrote for Acadiensis. In that essay I ask, are all environmental historians environmentalists? How should environmental scholarship relate to environmental activism? Should advocacy for environmental issues shape historical scholarship on the environment? Can history always inform contemporary environmental issues? On this episode of the podcast, we explore these questions with a group of scholars from the Toronto Environmental History Network. acadiensis spring 2014 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 042: The Right to a Healthy Environment(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2014-03-19) Kheraj, SeanCanadians value their natural environment. Nine out of ten worry about the impacts of environmental degradation on their health. Nine out of ten are concerned about climate change. Eight out of ten believe that Canada needs stricter environmental laws and regulations. And 95 percent of Canadians consider access to clean water a basic human right. So, do Canadians actually have a constitutional right to live in a healthy environment? According to David Boyd, the answer is no (at least, not exactly), but he explains why they should in his new book The Right to a Healthy Environment: Revitalizing Canada’s Constitution. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with David Boyd about Canadian environmental rights. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 041: Closing Federal Libraries(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2014-02-03) Kheraj, SeanIn 2012, the Canadian federal government began closing and consolidating many of its departmental libraries. More than a dozen research libraries have closed at Parks Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Foreign Affairs, Citizenship and Immigration, Human Resources and Skills Development, the National Capital Commission, Intergovernmental Affairs, Public Works and Government Services, Canada Revenue Agency, Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and Canadian Heritage (click here for a timeline of closures). In December, the government began to close all but four of its eleven Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries. News reports across the country showed startling images of books and other documents lying in dumpsters with rumors that others may have been burned. The culling of these libraries involved what has been described as a haphazard free-for-all with members of the public and industry scooping up abandoned books and valuable so-called “grey literature,” unique internal government publications. The process of library consolidation and closure seems to have happened so quickly that books that were still out on loan were never recalled. And beyond the loss of material, we still do not know the extent of the personnel losses. As library staff get laid off, valuable human knowledge vanishes along with the books. One thing that stands out in this troubling story is the degree to which the library closures have targeted scientific and environmental research branches of the government. These libraries housed historical research materials of great relevance to Canada’s environmental history. As such, they are likely to have a detrimental impact on our ability to know about the past. We decided then to find out more about this issue by speaking with Andrew Nikiforuk, a writer and journalist for thetyee.ca who has written extensively on this topic. I also sat down with a panel of environmental historians to get their take on the potential impact these closures might have on Canadian 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 040: Environmental History of Atlantic Canada(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-11-06) Kheraj, SeanCanada is a country of regions and from a biogeographic perspective, it can be useful to take a regional approach to exploring its environmental history. In 2004, BC Studies published a special issue on the environment of Canada’s Pacific region and earlier this year, Acadiensis Press published Land and Sea: Environmental History in Atlantic Canada, an anthology of essays edited by Claire Campbell and Robert Summerby-Murray that explores numerous aspects of the environmental histories of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, parts of Quebec, and Newfoundland & Labrador. The history of Canada’s Atlantic coastal region offers a number of important insights into environmental history that are both representative of the greater nation-state of Canada and unique to the particular biogeographic conditions of the region. In some ways, Atlantic Canada shares much in common with the rest of the country as a British settler colony, formerly colonized by the French, and originally inhabited by a long-standing population of indigenous North Americans. From the sixteenth century to the early twenty-first century, Atlantic Canada experienced significant ecological transformations as different human communities inhabited the region and exploited its resources over the centuries. This is the broad subject of Land and Sea, and to learn more I spoke with the editors and one of the authors from this new anthology. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 039: The Environmental History of Stanley Park(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-10-02) Kheraj, SeanIn 1888, the City of Vancouver officially opened its first urban park to the public, Stanley Park. The park lies adjacent to downtown Vancouver, encompassing a nearly 1,000-acre peninsula. It is one of the best-known parks in Canada and its history has shaped the city of Vancouver for more than a century. Since the mid-nineteenth century, North American city officials have created parks for leisure and recreation within urban environments. The shape, meaning, and idea of city parks has changed over time. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with environmental historian Sean Kheraj about his new book Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History of Stanley Park.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 038: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part VIII – Tar Sands(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-05-29) Kheraj, SeanThe northern Alberta tar sands (or bitumen) resource is the most well-known environmental issue in Canada today. Representing both a significant component of the nation’s resource economy, and the single greatest threat to ecosystems across the country, the development of tar sands petroleum in western Canada has contributed to a restructuring of the nation’s political economy, a reconsideration of regulatory legislation and government oversight, and a transformation of the perception of Canada internationally. Indeed, the development of the tar sands has become a primary objective of the current government. In December 2012, representatives of the Energy Framework Initiative (who represent the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, and the Canadian Gas Association) wrote a letter to Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment, and Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources, to request “regulatory reform” of “out-dated” legislation that would allow for “timely licensing and permitting” of major resource projects in Canada’s energy sector without “duplication and overlap between federal and provincial processes.” In the letter, the National Energy Board Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Fisheries Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, and the Navigable Waters Protection Act were all listed by name as “existing laws and regulations related to energy regulation, environmental assessment, and environmental protection” that the authors felt were worthy of reform. Four months later, in April 2012, the Conservative government introduced Bill C-38, which included significant changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Fisheries Act, and the National Energy Board Act. Six months after that, in October 2012, the government introduced Bill C-45, which altered the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In many respects, the political pressure exerted by the tar sands industry is not new. As early as the 1930s, the Alberta government experienced pressure from Imperial Oil and other smaller producers to limit conservation legislation, which these companies saw as a deterrent to outside investment in the development of the province’s oilfields. After the Second World War, the development of oil resources in Alberta came to dominate the provincial economy, generating enormous revenue from royalties that allowed the government to pay off debts and provide important social services, while at the same time assuming a larger role in federal politics. By the 1970s, the oil and gas industry “accounted for almost 40 percent of all value added in the province.” [1] Throughout the early years, efforts to prevent over-production or regulate the industry came up against political expedients that saw the best interests of the province met through industry royalties. Since then, the importance of the tar sands to the provincial economy has grown considerably. For instance, between 1947 and 1967, public revenues from the industry totaled $2.25 billion. In 2010-2011, the province received $3.7 billion in revenue from tar sands production. The rapid growth of the industry in the twenty-first century has also translated into much more influence for Western Canadian interests in federal politics. When considered within a larger historical context, the close relationship between tar sands development, economic growth, and political power in the country today reflects the important place natural resources have always occupied in Canadian history. Canadian historians have long debated the importance of natural resources, or ‘staples’ (cod, fur, timber, wheat), in shaping society, economy, and politics. Bitumen seems destined to rejuvenate this historiographical debate. Indeed, a recent report on tar sands mega-development, released in early 2013 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has referred to the bitumen deposits in northern Alberta as Canada’s newest “staples trap”. While many features of tar sands development are unprecedented, the similarities with previous staples economies are striking. This episode features an interview with Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from University of Victoria and recently elected Green Party of BC Member of the Legislative Assembly. It also includes the plenary session from the 2013 American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting titled, “The Fossil Fuel Dilemma: Vision, Values, and Technoscience in the Alberta Oil Sands,” featuring Warren Cariou, Sara Dorow, Imre Szeman, and Graeme Wynn. [1] Alvin Finkel, The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 100 Image of book cover for Keeping Our Cool, Canada In A Warming World Please be sure to take a moment to review to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 037: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part VII – Agri-Food Systems, II(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-05-05) Kheraj, SeanThe history of Canadian food and agriculture is an enormous topic with both a global and deeply personal scope. All humans require food to live and agricultural products become food for our consumption, demonstrating the profound interrelatedness of food and agriculture. Beyond sheer survival, food serves social and cultural purposes for all people, from planting and harvesting, through preparation, and ultimately with consumption. Communities and families coalesce around these activities and have done so for all of human existence. Food is a source of pleasure and for many people is intricately linked with spirituality. Examining the environmental history of food and agriculture in Canada reveals the ways in which our complex relationships with nature and each other inform this most intimate aspect of our daily lives. On this second part of our look at agri-food systems in Canadian history, we discuss Canadian food history and we speak with the editors and authors of a new anthology from University of Toronto Press called, Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History. This round table interview features Franca Iacovetta, Valerie Korinek, Marlene Epp, James Murton, and Ian Mosby. Book cover for Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 036: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part VI – Agri-Food Systems, I(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-03-31) Kheraj, SeanThe history of Canadian food and agriculture is an enormous topic with both a global and deeply personal scope. All humans require food to live and agricultural products become food for our consumption, demonstrating the profound interrelatedness of food and agriculture. Beyond sheer survival, food serves social and cultural purposes for all people, from planting and harvesting, through preparation, and ultimately with consumption. Communities and families coalesce around these activities and have done so for all of human existence. Food is a source of pleasure and for many people is intricately linked with spirituality. Examining the environmental history of food and agriculture in Canada reveals the ways in which our complex relationships with nature and each other inform this most intimate aspect of our daily lives. A primary element of agriculture is a relationship with the earth. In order to cultivate crops to harvest and consume, humans must manipulate the natural environment. Since the arrival of Europeans to North America, agriculture has largely involved a perceived human domination of the environment including physical manipulation (tilling, seeding, deforestation, filling wetlands), technological innovation (genetically modified crops, mechanized equipment, fertilizer, pesticide), and transportation of agricultural products (railways, highways, airports, canals and seaways). Euro-Canadian concepts of liberalism have also influenced the relationship between people and the planet, promoting private property ownership as one of its foundational elements of property, liberty, and equality. The ideal of the yeoman farmer, an entrepreneurial agricultural producer, is fundamental to the Canadian founding myth. In order to create Euro-Canadian farms on the landscape, however, indigenous peoples were displaced, intertwining human relationships with the land and also with other humans. Food and agriculture require and inform our relationships with each other. In the process of colonialism, European-style agriculture was adopted by and foisted upon indigenous peoples through political mechanisms. Politics, food, and agriculture continue to be closely tied as demonstrated through food-based political movements, agricultural and food regulation and legislation, international trade policies, and even in Canada’s World War I conscription crisis. Migrations between provinces and immigration policy have been driven by agriculture, and current Canadian politics are focused in many ways on increasing the export of Canadian agricultural and food products. Regional and national dishes and crops inform Canadian identities. The power shift from producer to corporation in Canadian food systems is thought to be a factor in social inequity experienced by people across the globe. Canadian agriculture and food are crucial components to discussions about health. The quantity of food available dictates both famine and obesity, as does the quality of food. As more is known about the health effects for humans of genetically modified foods, hormone-added foods, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and food-borne infections such as Escherichia coli and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, we are changing how we interact with our food and its suppliers. Agricultural environmental practices also raise concerns about the health of the groundwater we drink and use for irrigation, as well as the air we breathe. Reviewing the history of agriculture and food in Canada helps us understand why we have the systems we do and how they came to be, as well as assess their efficacy for our contemporary needs and desires as humans always in need of nourishment. To begin this look at agriculture and food in Canadian history, we look at the case study of chicken breeding in North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On this episode of the podcast, we spoke Margaret Derry about her new book Art and Science in Breeding: Creating Better Chickens. Margaret Derry's new book Art and Science in Breeding: Creating Better Chickens. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 035: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part V – Fisheries, Regulation, and Science(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-02-28) Kheraj, SeanThe need for thoughtful histories on contemporary Canadian environmental issues has never been more critical than it is regarding the present state of the country’s fisheries. In June 2012, funding for fisheries-related research and protection was significantly curtailed as part of federal government cuts and amendments to the Fisheries Act included in the C-38 omnibus budget bill. These changes, however, are not unprecedented. By placing Canada’s fisheries and marine environments in greater jeopardy than they’ve ever been, the changes fit into a longer pattern of government undermining of the law that go back as far as the 1970s. In response, dozens of environmentalists, researchers and scientists have criticized the cuts as misinformed and dangerous. In a letter to the Globe and Mail soon after bill C-38 was announced, four former Fisheries and Oceans ministers wrote they believe these changes “will inevitably reduce and weaken the habitat-protection provisions” of the Fisheries Act. Canada’s fisheries have been subjects of controversy and sites of tension for over 200 years. On the east coast, small-scale, inshore fisheries (the norm since the seventeenth century) gave way to large-scale, scientifically-managed commercial fisheries. Technological advances, globalizing market structures, and an ever-increasing reliance on experts, created a context in which the Department of Fisheries and Oceans shifted the purpose of fisheries from meeting human needs to meeting maximum sustainable yields and total allowable catches. The result was the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery in the early 1990s. On the west coast, the defence of the salmon fishery against hydroelectric development on the Fraser River in the middle of the nineteenth century is one bright spot in a story of over-fishing, habitat loss, and the negative side-effects of commercial-scale aquaculture. The artificial state border between Canada and the United States in the Salish Sea, which did not reflect the migratory lives of pacific salmon, created the conditions for unmanageable fish banditry. Inland, freshwater fisheries have experienced similar stories of over-harvesting, threats to fish habitat, and denial of Native resource rights. Around the Great Lakes, First Nations experienced competition from non-native commercial fishermen as early as the 1830s, spent much of the late nineteenth century resisting efforts by the Ontario government to eliminate their traditional rights, and fought a series of legal battles during the twentieth century to regain autonomy over their fisheries. While certain species have begun to recover in the Great Lakes, several species found in Canada’s coastal waters have not. According to the Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly 75% of global fish stocks are fully exploited or have collapsed. Canada has played a leading role in bringing us to the brink of global fisheries collapse. Given this scenario, insights from scholars writing on the history of fisheries in Canada is critical if further catastrophe is to be avoided. On this episode, we speak with five leading historians of Canadian fisheries, including Dean Bavington, Stephen Bocking, Douglas Harris, Will Knight, and Liza Piper. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 034: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part IV – The Canadian Environmental Movement II(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2013-01-21) Kheraj, SeanThe environmental movement is one of the most popular topics in Canadian environmental history. At present, the environmental movement in Canada is at a bit of a crossroads. Having finally moved beyond simply outlining worst practices and their consequences, the last decade has witnessed proactive solutions and workable alternatives to every kind of environmental problem. Yet, this comes at the same time as economic turmoil and ideological opposition from government. Recently, David Suzuki has even gone so far as to argue that “Environmentalism has failed.” Given this crossroads, environmental historians offer the context needed to understand the state of the environmental movement in this country today On this second part of our look at the history of the environmental movement in Canada we speak with a group of leading environmental historians, including Jonathan Clapperton, Frank Zelko, Ryan O’Connor, and Mark McLaughlin about the origins of the movement and its transformations since the end of the Second World War. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.Item Open Access Nature's Past Episode 033: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part III – The Canadian Environmental Movement I(Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2012-11-27) Kheraj, SeanThe environmental movement is one of the most popular topics in Canadian environmental history. At present, the environmental movement in Canada is at a bit of a crossroads. Having finally moved beyond simply outlining worst practices and their consequences, the last decade has witnessed proactive solutions and workable alternatives to every kind of environmental problem. Yet, this comes at the same time as economic turmoil and ideological opposition from government. Recently, David Suzuki has even gone so far as to argue that “Environmentalism has failed.” Given this crossroads, environmental historians offer the context needed to understand the state of the environmental movement in this country today. From the earliest efforts to establish national and provincial parks at the end of the nineteenth century to the more politically-conscious groups of the post-WWII era, historians of the Canadian environmental movement have demonstrated how changing ideas of nature informed non-utilitarian approaches to dealing with the non-human world. The inspiration for many of these ideas came from critiques of modernity and capitalism, which saw nature as either a set of commodities or an externality within the wider framework of progress and civilization. In response to this trend, concerned individuals and groups mobilized environmental sciences, such as conservation and ecology, to justify alternative relationships between humans and the natural world. This reaction to modern society and economy was shared with the United States, but also developed its own distinctive Canadian character, as well as specific regional approaches to environmental issues across Canada. As in the United States, the first efforts to protect the environment in Canada arose out of anxieties about the loss of wilderness and the importance of preserving an essential national character at the end of the nineteenth century. Over half a century later, the postwar environmental movement in Canada evolved alongside that of the U.S. following the publication of Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring. In New Brunswick, activists fought to stop the spraying of DDT, while in Ontario a group known as Pollution Probe used the media to raise awareness of environmental issues, and in British Columbia the provincial government was obliged to enact protective legislation in order to placate opposition from environmentalists. In each case, changing ideas about nature combined with particular Canadian political and cultural contexts to transform the way most Canadians thought about and treated the environment. On this first of our look at the history of the environmental movement in Canada we speak with Canadian environmental historian, Neil Forkey about his new book Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century. Image of Neil Forkey new book Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here.
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