Elizabeth L. Jewett Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island, edited by Edward MacDonald, Joshua MacFadyen and Irené Novaczek (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016). As I read Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island, my mind cast back to a scene from Anne of Green Gables,… Continue Reading
Latest in: Environmental History
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This is the third of a three-part conversation between historians Claire Campbell, Alexandre Dubé, Jeffers Lennox, and Christopher Parsons, on being “early Canadianists” in the United States. You can find the rest of the series here. Borealia: We have talked about what you bring to your U.S. setting from a Canadian background, but what about the… Continue Reading
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About a year ago, Christopher Parsons suggested the idea that Borealia host an online conversation about being “early Canadianists” in the United States. He observed that there are a growing number of such cross-border historians, and still more Canadian PhDs are looking for jobs at American schools. It would be interesting, he said, to compare… Continue Reading
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Loren Michael Mortimer In September of 1759, great armies were on the move through the upper St. Lawrence Valley. Not the military forces under the command of Montcalm and Wolfe en-route to their climactic showdown on the Plains of Abraham, but an army of black bears migrating en-masse southward from Canada into Britain’s Atlantic colonies.… Continue Reading
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Editor’s note: This is the final post in a joint series of posts on early Canadian environmental history by The Otter~La loutre and Borealia. The entire series is available here. After providing posts for the early Canadian environmental history series, the three participants – Colin Coates, Jason Hall, and Anya Zilberstein – sat down at… Continue Reading
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Colin M. Coates Some species are better to “think” with than others. Environmental activists often draw attention to their causes through reference to “flagship” or “charismatic” species. Invocations of the threatened habitat of the marbled murrelet helped galvanize opposition to logging in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s, just as the Kermode bear subspecies has… Continue Reading
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Jason Hall Rivers have been foundational to the development of historical thinking since the Greek philosopher Heraclitus coined the expression “no man can cross the same river twice,” 2,500 years ago. Many scholars have subsequently encouraged students to “think like rivers” to recognize the inherently transient nature of the world. My dissertation, River of Three… Continue Reading
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Anya Zilberstein Not long after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau handed winter coats to Syrian refugees arriving in Toronto this past December, reports about the immigrants’ problems began appearing in the press. Rent gouging by dishonest landlords. Frustration at delays in receiving permanent housing and full access to medical care. And, of course, that obligatory storyline:… Continue Reading
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Sean Kheraj and Denis McKim Welcome to a series on early Canadian environmental history, jointly hosted by Borealia and The Otter ~ La Loutre, the blog of The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). This joint series provides environmental historians of Canada the opportunity to reflect upon the state of so-called “pre-Confederation” history in the field. As was evident… Continue Reading
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Denis McKim Donald Wright’s Donald Creighton: A Life in History is a splendid biography of one of English-speaking Canada’s greatest historians. The objective of this essay, which draws on Wright’s book, is twofold. First, it seeks to illuminate major aspects of Creighton’s writings on northern North America before the consolidation of Confederation, including the importance… Continue Reading
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