Episode 48: Ecotones and Saskatchewan History [46:47]
Download Audio

Arguably, 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.

Visit the main page at http://niche-canada.org/naturespast and subscribe to our YouTube page here.

Guests:

Merle Massie

Works Cited:

• Massie, Merle. Forest Prairie Edge: Place History in Saskatchewan. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014.
• Harris, R. Cole. “The Spaces of Early Canada” Canadian Historical Review, 91, no. 4 (December 2010): 725-759.

Music Credits:

• “Ballad Piano” by Steinier Dominique
• “Synthesized piano” by Enriscapes
• “Vox Vs. Uke” by Kara Square

Image Credit:

• “A family of six picnic at Waskesiu, Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, 1950.” Source: Library and Archives Canada

Citation:

Kheraj, Sean. “Episode 48: Ecotones and Saskatchewan History” Nature’s Past: Canadian Environmental History Podcast. 27 May 2015.

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Sean Kheraj

Associate Professor at York University, Department of History

Sean Kheraj is the director of the Network in Canadian History and Environment. He's an associate professor in the Department of History and associate dean of programs in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University. His research and teaching focuses on environmental and Canadian history. He is also the host and producer of Nature's Past, NiCHE's audio podcast series and he blogs at http://seankheraj.com.

Latest posts by Sean Kheraj (see all)

• Top 5 Posts of 2020 - January 5, 2021
• Nature’s Past Episode 70: Environmentalism and the Company of Young Canadians - September 2, 2020
• Interview Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times - August 12, 2020
• Nature’s Past Episode 69: Environmental Racism and Canadian History - July 29, 2020
• Whose Nature? Race and Canadian Environmental History - July 7, 2020
• Nature’s Past Episode 68: Home and Environment - May 11, 2020
• Energy and Modern Canada Round Table Live - April 17, 2020
• Energy and Modern Canada Round Table Live Friday, April 17 - April 13, 2020
• ASEH 2020 Cancelled (Please Donate) - March 11, 2020
• Nature’s Past Episode 67: Science, Technology, and the Modern - March 2, 2020