Event Date: Jan 22 2009 – Mar 19 2009
Event Website:  Event Webpage
City: Vancouver, BC
Country: Canada

Please join us for the following talks in the Green College Coach House, UBC. All talks start at 5:00 pm.

January 22, 2009

“A Paradox of Abundance: The Great Lakes in North American Environmental History”
Lynne Heasley, Department of History, Western Michigan University

An archived version of this presentation is available in our Audio Archive.

*Please note, Heasley’s talk will be held in Geography Rm 214

With 20% of the world’s freshwater, and ecosystems under severe stress from toxic pollution, invasive species, land use pressure, and global climate change, the Great Lakes basin has received intense public attention in Canada and the United States. The region is also in a fragile economic condition, a virtual Rust Belt of dislocation as manufacturing has moved to other parts of the world. The region’s current ecological and economic vulnerability is, paradoxically, a consequence of its tremendous abundance. Professor Heasley will discuss the opportunities, costs, and problematic outcomes for a border region and vast inland maritime system seemingly blessed by infinite resources. She will focus on the development of joint U.S.-Canadian management of the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, and its significance in North American environmental history.

February 26

“Higgins’ Bush and Madame Groulx’s Cedars: Foxhunting and British Power in the Montreal Countryside”

Darcy Ingram, post-doctoral fellow at the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises, Université Laval

Organized foxhunting in the Montreal countryside began in the 1820s with the formation of the Montreal Hunt. This talk explores the social and environmental contexts in which the Hunt operated, from its management of foxes and fox habitat to its dealings with local farmers on the island of Montreal. Together these and other issues allow us to see how this distinctly British institution served for the club’s English-speaking Protestant membership as a means of maintaining the British identity of their majority French Catholic city and its hinterlands. By shedding light on the material relationship of the hunt to the Montreal countryside, they also allow us to approach foxhunting as yet another layer of the built environment.

March 19

“Elusive Sanctuaries: Developing an Environmental History of Migration”

Robert Wilson, Department of Geography, Syracuse University

How have people affected animal migration? How have they developed landscapes to sustain migration, both now and in the past? In this talk, Bob Wilson will lay out at an approach for studying migration in environmental history drawing on his research about the history of migrating birds and wildlife refuges in western North America. He recently finished a book manuscript on this subject titled Seeking Refuge: An Environmental History of the Pacific Flyway (University of Washington Press).

For more information about Nature/History/Society events, contact: Matthew Evenden (mevenden@interchange.ubc.ca) or Eagle Glassheim (eagle.g@ubc.ca).

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Featured image: Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash.