Tag Archives: environmental history

A Century of Petroleum Extraction at Norman Wells

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[Editor’s note: We have slightly altered the original text because our website does not yet support Dene orthographies. For a .pdf version of this post in which Dene words and place names are displayed correctly, click here.] Petroleum Histories Project Team Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories is the site of the first oil and gas operation in the Canadian… Read more »

Carving out a Collective Identity

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U.S. ship Frances sailing near Peru with the common sailor’s saying below ("Death to the living, long life to the killers, success to sailors wives, & greasy luck to whalers") engraved on scrimshaw.

Henry Jacob When artists exist outside of the canon, their names sometimes remain unknown. However, even if their personal identities fade, they may create objects that encourage future generations to better understand the time in which they lived. Occasionally, their artwork can also empower later viewers to reflect upon the collective identity of their own era. The object of this… Read more »

Catastrophic Rhetoric: False Enchantments and ‘Unprecedented’ Disasters in British Columbia’s Punishing 2021

Pine and grass ecology Nlaka'pamux land

This article is reposted, in slightly edited form and with permission, from the first issue of Syndemic Magazine: “Neo-liberalism and Covid-19.” Syndemic Magazine is a project of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University. Its second issue, “Labour in a Treacherous Time,” is also now available. By Mica Jorgensen It came suddenly, violently tearing up lives and landscapes, subjecting countless British Columbians… Read more »

Teaching the Climate Emergency in World History

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This is the ninth post in the series Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology, and Climate History Network. By Philip Gooding I recently taught a remote, intensive Summer course entitled ‘Themes in World History’ at McGill University. This course was aimed mostly at second- and third- year undergraduate students. I chose as… Read more »

Climate Resilience, Past and Present: Rural Communities and Food Systems

This is the eighth post in the series Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology, and Climate History Network. By Emma Moesswilde This summer, the raspberry crop at Daisy Chain Farm was much smaller than usual. The variable winter weather meant that abnormal freeze-thaw cycles caused the raspberry canes to lose their resistance… Read more »

Climate at the Speed of Weather

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This is the seventh post in the series, “Historians Confront the Climate Emergency,” hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology and Climate History Network. By Alan MacEachern They say that climate is what you expect but weather is what you get. Or they used to say that. Now, the climate seems to be changing as quickly and unexpectedly as weather…. Read more »

The Climate Crisis and the Canadian Classroom

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This is the third post in the series Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology, and Climate History Network. By Daniel Macfarlane We’re in a climate emergency. This isn’t just rhetorical hyperbole, but a statement backed by more than 13,000 scientists. Even the venerable publication Scientific American agreed to adopt the term earlier… Read more »

Climate History, the History of Science, and the Climate Crisis

This is the second post in the series Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology, and Climate History Network. By Dagomar Degroot Historians have always concerned themselves as much with the present as the past. Some do so explicitly, their work guided by a conscious desire to provide context for a… Read more »

Historians Confront the Climate Emergency

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This is the introductory post to the series, Historians Confront the Climate Emergency, hosted by ActiveHistory.ca, NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment), Historical Climatology and Climate History Network. By Edward Dunsworth and Daniel Macfarlane What a summer. In late June, a “heat dome” stalked the Pacific regions of Canada and the United States, pushing thermometers close to the 50-degree… Read more »

History Slam 184: The Past & Present of Strathcona Park

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/History-Slam-184.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Located on Vancouver Island, Strathcona Provincial Park was established in 1911 by the British Columbia government. Covering 250,000 hectares, the park’s architects had an initial vision of it drawing tourists escaping the stress of modern urban living. Using Banff as a model, there were discussions of how to best create an… Read more »