We are pleased to announce the launch of Canada’s Year Without a Summer, an online exhibit & teaching resource.
The site offers images & transcriptions of 120+ newspaper, diary, & government sources documenting how Canada experienced the wild weather of 1816 that followed the 1815 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora, by far the largest eruption in recorded history. Canada’s Year Without a Summer is a story of weather & of climate, but it’s also a story of food, farming, poverty, & charity in early Canada.
And of historical sources & the ability today to locate, copy, & share them online. If in the course of your own research you come across 1816 or 1817 primary sources about the weather or Canadians’ response to it, share them with us, and we’ll post them too.
Alan MacEachern and Michael O’Hagan
Dept. of History, University of Western Ontario
Alan MacEachern
Latest posts by Alan MacEachern (see all)
- Job – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Sustainability & the Social, Western University - August 2, 2023
- Online Event – Firebreak: How the Maine-New Brunswick Border Defined the 1825 Miramichi Fire - May 17, 2023
- Storms of a Century: Fiona (2022) & Five (1923) - November 10, 2022
- Climate at the Speed of Weather - October 5, 2021
- Restricted Clientele! Everyday Racism in Canadian National Parks - September 9, 2020
- Material World: Exhibiting the Anthropocene - May 4, 2020
- CHESS 2020 ~ keep the dates! - October 4, 2019
- Well-Grounded - July 10, 2019
- ICEHO Bulletin 19 - March 28, 2019
- Review of Mannell, Living Lightly on the Earth - February 6, 2019
Here a pair of Indigenous references from the far NW to do with 1816 summerlessness.
https://www.telefilm.ca/en/catalogues/production/two-winters-tales-above-earth
Carol Geddes (Teslin, Yukon film maker) produced this film based upon a Yukon First Nation about the year with two winters. (We don’t always get a summer here so that title doesn’t carry as much weight as two winters) Carol connected the story with the Tambora event. I’ve had her in my classes to show and talk about the film.
http://soundprint.org/global_perspectives/nature_in_balance/two_winters.phtml
references a similar Inupiat story from south of present day Nome, Alaska.
Cheers,
David Neufeld
Very interesting, David, thank you. I’m going to look for Two Winters.