A Place for the People: Canada's National Parks, 1911-2011
But ideals seldom remain the same for that long together. They grow and develop and change, like everything else, with the passing years. An anniversary merely affords a convenient moment to stand back and look at the design and see how it is working out.
In 1911 Canada became the first country in the world to establish an agency devoted to the management of its national parks. Over the past century, these parks have witnessed, and mirrored, important debates about the place of nature in Canadian nationhood, as well as changing relationships between its diverse ecosystems and communities. A Place for the People: Canada’s National Parks, 1911-2011 brings together leading historians to reflect on the evolution of our national parks under the aegis of Parks Canada.
Entrance to Kluane National Park, 1995
Photo © Parks Canada/J. Butterill
Despite their image as protected wilderness space, parks have always been designed and managed “for the benefit, advantage, and enjoyment of the people,” as the 1887 Rocky Mountains Park Act stated. “It is a place for the people,” thundered John Diefenbaker about Prince Albert National Park in 1971. So this collection focuses on the Branch’s philosophical and practical dilemmas in attempting to manage parks for nature and for humanity.
Most literature on national parks has concentrated, understandably, on the original Rocky Mountain parks in their earliest decades: conjuring images of elite railway hotels and Victorian mountaineering. This project expands that research in both time and place.
While some essays discuss the Branch’s formative years, in the 1910s and 1920s, many deal with the postwar era, to explain the origins of the park landscape more familiar to Canadians today: the contradictions of busy highways and summer campgrounds alongside nature programs and ecological zoning.
Camping on Beausoleil Island, Georgian Bay Islands National Park, 1986
Photo © Parks Canada/Barrett & MacKay
In addition, this book profiles sites from across Canada - boreal parkland, arctic watersheds, Laurentian shield - moving us far from Banff and Jasper (although it has these, too!) and demonstrating the enormous regional variations within the national system.
By introducing a number of new subjects, emphasizing historical context and the Branch’s dealings with local communities, and with new attention on the north - the “new frontier” of park policy in recent decades - we are pushing the boundaries of park research.
Highway 10 through Riding Mountain National Park, 1935 Photo © Parks Canada
Some of the key themes of the collection include:
- park creation in an age of automobile-based tourism
- institutionalizing archaeology and ecological science in park management
- the role of aboriginal communities, and introducing the concept of cultural landscapes
Preservation from humanity, preservation for humanity: in either case, parks are designated for the purposes of public good. But which purpose? Which public? When has it worked? What have we learned?
The Process of Writing Collaboratively
A Place for the People capitalizes on the vibrant new sense of community in environmental history in Canada, thanks in large part to the structure and work of NiCHE. It represents a remarkable kind of collaboration between university-based and public historians from across Canada, from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, and from all stages of their careers
We wanted the book to reflect this sense of community and conversation. The writing team has read each others’ work, and met twice, intensively: first at the Parks for Tomorrow Conference in May 2008 at the University of Calgary, to discuss the spirit and direction the collection should take; and a year later, at the CHA at Carleton, to review working drafts of the essays. Both meetings were supported by the Landscapes cluster in NiCHE, headed by Colin Coates, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Cultural Landscapes.
Table of Contents
- Agencies of Nature: Writing about Canada’s National Parks
Claire Elizabeth Campbell, Dalhousie University - M.B. Williams and the Early Days of the National Parks Branch
Alan MacEachern, University of Western Ontario - Nature’s Playgrounds: The Parks Branch and Tourism Promotion in the National Parks, 1911-1929
John Sandlos, Memorial University - "A Questionable Basis For Establishing a Major Park": The Politics of Parks and Roads in the Mountains of British Columbia, and the Double Failure of Hamber Park
Ben Bradley, Queen’s University - "A Case of Special Privilege and Fancied Right": The Shack Tent-Portable Cabin Controversy in Prince Albert National Park
Bill Waiser, University of Saskatchewan - Banff in the 1960s: Divergent Views of the National Park Ideal
C.J. Taylor, Parks Canada - Banishing “Highway Bums” from Canada’s Parks: Finding Space for Tourists and Bears in National Park Films in the 1970s
George Colpitts, University of Calgary - Chasse, Exploitation forestière et beautés précambriennes : La réinterprétation scientifique des paysages du Parc National de la Mauricie, 1969-1975
Oliver Craig-Dupont, Université de Montréal - Kouchibouguac: Representations of a Park in Acadian Popular Culture
Ronald Rudin, Concordia University - Creating the National Park Reserve: Resource Exploitation, Indigenous Interests and the cultural roles of National Parks
David Neufeld, Parks Canada/Yukon College - "Negotiating a Partnership of Interests": Inuvialuit Land Claims and the Establishment of Ivvavik National Park, 1968-84
Brad Martin, Northwestern University - Archaeology in the Rocky Mountain National Parks
Gwyn Langemann, Parks Canada - Culturing Canadian Wilderness: Reintegrating First Nations and Métis into the “Playground” of Jasper National Park?
Ian MacLaren, University of Alberta - A Century of National Parks: From People as the Problem to People as the Solution
Lyle Dick, Parks Canada
Parkway through La Mauricie National Park, 1996
Photo © Parks Canada/J. Pleau
Writing for Impact
The authors are committed to producing a readable, well-illustrated, and engaging work that will appeal to a wide audience. We recognize the importance of national parks in the Canadian imagination, and the unique ability of the environmental historian to speak to people about their places and their histories.
At the same time, there is a surge of energy among historians intent on engaging in public discussion and public policy. Each of these essays raises questions that directly relate to the state of the parks, whether as an historical legacy or a current practice.
The University of Calgary Press was selected to publish the book for its existing relationship with NiCHE and its Parks and Heritage Series, and is very enthusiastic about the project.
Watch for it in 2011!
Claire Campbell
Dalhousie University
Landscapes Project Goals / Objectifs du chantier paysages
[français suite]
This sub-group of the NiCHE project exists to encourage reflection on the environmental history of common and public landscapes. Since the publication of Garrett Hardin's essay on the "Tragedy of the Commons" in 1968, scholars and activists have debated the degree to which land held in common is fated to environmental mismanagement. Hardin maintained that in some circumstances private ownership of property was more likely to ensure sustainability than common ownership.
In much earlier periods, similar arguments justified the enclosure of the agricultural commons in places like early modern England and early nineteenth-century Quebec. In the twentieth century and today, landscapes held by the state (whether municipal, provincial or federal in the Canadian context) sometimes are the subject of similar discussions. Broad debates surround the environmental role of parks controlled by all levels of government. Furthermore, new kinds of public spaces such as shopping malls, although privately held, are the sites for fascinating appropriations of the landscapes, and this group also considers the role of the built environment in discussions of common landscapes.
Colleagues involved in this sub-group are specialists in the ecological, political, architectural and cultural history of parks, common lands and public spaces. We wish to engage a broad audience in the environmental legacy and future of these locations.
Objectifs
Ce chantier de NiCHE vise à encourager la réflexion sur l'histoire de l’environnement des paysages communaux et publics. Depuis la publication de l’essai de Garrett Hardin "Tragedy of the Commons" en 1968, chercheurs et activistes ont débattu de la mauvaise gestion environnementale des terres communales. Hardin affirmait notamment que, dans certaines circonstances, la propriété privée s’avère plus durable que la propriété communale.
Par le passé, des arguments semblables ont justifié le cloisonnement de terrains communaux agricoles à certains endroits, notamment en Angleterre au 16ème et 17ème siècles et au Québec, au 19ème siècle. Au 20ème siècle et aujourd'hui, les paysages appartenant à l'État (municipal, provincial ou fédéral dans le contexte canadien) sont parfois sujet de discussions semblables. Le rôle environnemental des parcs contrôlés par le gouvernement à tous les échelons suscite de grandes discussions. En outre, les nouveaux espaces publics tels que les centres commerciaux, bien que propriétés privées, représentent des sites d’une appropriation fascinante du paysage. Le chantier « Paysages » rend donc également compte du rôle de l'environnement bâti dans ses recherches sur les paysages communaux.
Les collègues impliqués dans ce chantier sont des spécialistes de l'histoire écologique, politique, architecturale et culturelle des parcs, des terres communales et des espaces publics. Nous souhaitons rejoindre et impliquer des personnes de tous horizons qui s’intéressent au legs environnemental et l’avenir de ces espaces.