The Great Chicken Civil War, and Other Fowl Tales from the Farm

 

Last night I gave a public lecture as part of the Ottawa Historical Association's lecture series. You can listen to my talk here:

ORDC Seminar - The Early History of the Central Experimental Farm, 1886-1938.

This morning I gave a talk on the early history of the Central Experimental Farm as part of the Ottawa Research and Development Centre's seminar series. You can listen to it here:

CFP CHA2016: Invasions and Introductions

William Knight and I are seeking panelists for an environmental history panel on the history of plant and animal invasions and introductions (see draft panel abstract below) at the 2016 Canadian Historical Association annual meeting in Calgary, 30 May-1 June 2016. While our papers focus on plants and animals in late 19th and early 20th century Canada, we welcome contributions from different periods and geographic contexts.

If you are interested, send an email to peter.anderson@queensu.ca with a 250 word abstract for your paper as well as a 50 word summary to fit into the panel abstract. Please note that the deadline to submit for the CHA is October 15.

Panel Abstract

This panel explores the deliberate and accidental movement of plants and animals into and across environments, and their varying reception as welcome naturalization or alien invasion. Examining three examples from the late 19th and early 20th century, the panel considers the cultural and environmental reaction to species movements across different scales--physical, temporal, and conceptual. Building on Catriona Sandiland’s work on “dog stranglers in the park” (2013), these papers address the tensions between ideas of invasion and introduction, as well as the agency of plants and non-human animals in environmental history. Peter Anderson examines botanical exchanges between Canada and Great Britain and the ways in which botanists disciplined knowledge across imperial boundaries in an attempt to effect large-scale botanical introductions essential to colonization projects. The multi-directional movement of plant material within the British Empire redefined the meaning of individual plants in diverse geographical contexts. William Knight uses the introduction of bass to British Columbia to discuss both the large-scale reshaping of global fish faunas and the intensely local scale of impacts and reactions. Bass, for example, were perceived as either a welcome product of naturalization or aggressive invader depending when and where they were found.

Sandilands, C. (2013) “Dog Stranglers in the Park?: National and Vegetal Politics in Ontario’s Rouge Valley.” Journal of Canadian Studies. 47.3, Fall 2013. 94-122.

My Articles on the 60 Acres Published Elsewhere

This list includes my writing on the transfer of 60 acres at the Central Experimental Farm published elsewhere, as of 6 October 2015. For a periodically updated summary of reactions to the 60 acres, please go to this page.

2015-10-06: "How Relocating a Hospital Could Compromise Canada's Agricultural Innovation." The Food Chain, TVO.
2015-07-17: "Experimental Farm Plan a Call to Action." The Ottawa Sun.
2015-06-22: "The Central Experimental Farm's Inclusion on Endangered Heritage Place List a Call to Action." ActiveHistory.
2014-11-20: "Vacating Science and Forgetting History at the Central Experimental Farm." ActiveHistory.
2014-11-13: "Protect the Central Experimental Farm." Ottawa Citizen.

Domains of Literature - Introduction and Context

Every university, every department, has its own practices regarding comprehensive and qualifying examinations. Usually these include "fields" or "domains" of literature which are either standardized across the department or completely open. In my department the individual PhD committee has great leeway in deciding what goes into the domains and my committee challenged me to come up with a base list, which they then commented on and added to.

This is harder than it seems. Sure in being given latitude to decide I had the chance to stack the list, so to speak, with works I was already familiar with. But, as my supervisor said, I should pay attention to my committee and the journals they publish in, who they cite in their work and teach in their courses, who they would put on the list if they were creating it.

Beyond the literature I already knew, my committee's publications, and the every increasing fractal search cross referencing common citations brings, I found online syllabi and lists of departments and other individuals who've completed their exams extremely useful. In that spirit, I have reproduced my lists here for those who may be going down the same rabbit hole as me.

Domains of Literature - Historical Geographies of Canada and Agricultural Colonialism

This is part of a series of posts related to the domains of literature I covered in my qualifying exam. I am sharing it in hopes that it helps other students creating their lists. Please see the introductory post in the series for more details.

The first domain, the historical geography of Canada and agricultural settler colonialism, provides the national and international contexts of the Farm. As stated above, the Farm played an important role in the Canadian colonial project within the wider British Empire and with the backdrop of the expansion of the United States to the south. This domain looks beyond historical geographies of Canada to include readings in the growing fields of settler colonial studies, environmental history, and envirotechnical history. Uncovering the connections between agriculture, the environment, science, technology, Aboriginal communities and settlers, these readings provide the basis for a critical understanding of the Farm’s place in Canada as well as Canada’s place in wider imperial and colonial narratives.

This post has two main parts:
(1) The domain itself; and,
(2) A syllabus created as a thought experience while studying the list.

Op-ed: Protect the Central Experimental Farm

Central Experimental Farm looking towards the Windfield Towers, Personal Photograph.

My op-ed arguing against the development of the Central Experimental Farm, even for a hospital, can be found at the Ottawa Citizen. Please leave any comments on the original post.

/Kitchen Literacy/ in "The Westward-Moving House": A Joint Review

 

• Ann Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy: How we lost knowledge of where food comes from and why we need to get it back. (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2008.) Book Website. 
•  John Brinckerhoff Jackson, “The Westward-Moving House: Three American Houses and the People Who Lived in Them.” Places Journal, July 2011: Online. [Originally printed in Landscapes (2.3), Spring 1953.]

Food is essential to life. These two works, Ann Vileisis’s Kitchen Literacy and John Brinckerhoff Jackson’s “The Westward-Moving House,” focus on the social histories and cultural geographies of people and places at seemingly opposite poles of eating: the cooks and the farmers. This observation obscures the deep similarities in the important stories Vileisis and Jackson tell about how we have come to rely on distributed supply chains for our daily sustenance.

Rambling at the Farm: Walking Tours, History, Digital Humanities

I recently took my friend Kendall, a PhD candidate in history at Queen's University, on a rambling tour through the Central Experimental Farm. Over the course of an hour and a half and covering 6.5km, we jumped through the Euro-Canadian history of the site. While I didn't have a firm plan about where we'd go and what stories I'd tell, the route wound through some of my favourite spots and included an interweaving of apocryphal local legends, histories of the Farm system and of the city, descriptions of archival collections I've already worked with, and a discussion of the various methodologies I hope to apply as I get into my dissertation research.

Key Points and Questions for NICHE New Scholars Discussion, Wednesday, November 27, 2013: Wilderness and Waterpower: How Banff National Park Became a Hydroelectric Storage Reservoir by Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles

(Note: This is a guest post by Jessica DeWitt discussing Armstrong and Nelle's book Wilderness and Waterpower.) 

In preparation for Wednesday's discussion I have organized a list of the points and arguments that struck me as most important in relation to Armstrong and Nelles' new book. To facilitate discussion I have attached most of these points to a possible question. I look forward to hearing other peoples' takes on the book.

1. Armstrong and Nelles open the book with a claim that hydroelectric power had as much of a effect on the development of Banff National Park as the CPR. After reading the book, do you think that they illustrated this claim effectively or is it an overstatement?

2. Two main questions that Armstrong and Nelles are seeking to answer:

a. "Why did Banff National Park have to be significantly altered to accommodate hydroelectric storage?" (vii)

b. "More broadly, how did the production and consumption of electricity in sourthern Alberta shape Canada's premier national park?" (vii)

3. The story is one that is supposed to illustrate the battle between "path-dependent technology" and public policy.

-"The phrase path dependence," they write, "describes a familiar predicament: early choices in system design virtually determine downstream incremental change." (viii)

Can we think of other examples of path dependence in environmental history? Is this a useful analytical concept for other studies?

4. Armstrong and Nelles emphasize that this is not a story of pre-determinism and that the results were the outcome of various decisions made by different factions.

5. They state that "there is no necessary incompatibility between power generation and a national park." Our conception of what a park is has evolved over time, what is deemed unsavory development today was considered a legitimate development at the turn-of-the-century. Do Nelles and Armstrong effectively demonstrate this evolution? They use the term "Doctrine of Usefulness" to explain why Calgary Power was able to dig its claws into Banff. Does their use of the "Doctrine of Usefulness" agree with Robert Craig Brown's original definition or are they trying to apply it in a broader manner? Does the doctrine work in this instance?

6. Armstrong and Nelles state that a increased demand in power was a result of a kind of social gospel status surrounding electrification. Is this factor given enough attention in the book? Or does it get lost behind a story of decades of political manoeuvring? 

7. They mention that much of this situation can be attributed to Canadians ambivalence towards the natural world in which they live. Since I'm not Canadian, I would love to hear some Canadian opinions on this assertion, which I have run into in numerous Canadian environmental histories.

8. What do you think of the definition of wilderness that Armstrong and Nelles choose to work with?

"The problem of wilderness is that creating an imaginary separation between humanity and nature masks the essential humanness of its construction." (xiii) <-I like this quote.

9. They mention that waterpower exists in a cultural context. Not every waterfall, they say, is dammed. Society makes culturally informed decisions about what happens to each waterfall and how it will meet its energy requirements.

10. They emphasize that the reengineering of the Bow was necessary if it were to be used for waterpower because of the unreliability of its flow (heavy during Spring thaw, low at other times of year).

11. I saw a lot of parallels between their treatment of hydroelectric power development on the Bow and Nelles' The Politics of Development, particularly in regards to discussions of possible provincial and private cooperation. Have the rest of you read The Politics of Development and if so do did you notice the similarities? Also, perhaps we could discuss the connection of this book to their earlier work, The River Returns.

12. Nelles and Armstrong state that they are using the concept of second nature. How effectively did they apply this concept to their narrative? Could they have given this idea more attention? (I say, yes)

13. I found it interesting how the hydroelectric developments and other development were deemed acceptable if they were hidden. Although there is an assertion that resistance to such development in parks has developed since the mid-twentieth century. Is it true that the out of sight, out of mind attitude is still alive and well in our parks and protected areas?

14. I especially enjoyed the portion of the book that dealt with the Spray Lakes. Concluding this portion of the story, they write, "the argument that hydroelectric development should not take place within national parks, a point of view that seemed to gain wide public acceptance, when forced through the sausage machine of federal politics in the late 1920s, led to the remarkable conclusion that such places should not be within national parks in the first place." (115)

I looked at a current map of the region in order to gain a better understanding of where the Spray Lakes were and the positioning of the four national parks that were made out of Rocky Mountains National Park in order to cut out those pieces of land that were natural resource rich. What I found most interesting is that the Spray Lakes which were cut of Banff are now surrounded by 4-5 provincial parks. This relates directly to my research on provincial parks. What does this tell us about the values/expectations we place on national vs. provincial parks?

15. This book also fed my growing fascination with Canadian and American's acceptance of dams. So many parks, particularly at the provincial and state level are designed around an artificial lake, treating the lake as a natural landmark. What does this say about our understanding of nature and the relationship between recreation and the natural world?

16. In their conclusion, Armstrong and Nelles talk once again about the way in which people reconstructed their conception of nature in order to accept the presence of hydroelectric technology in their parks. They also reassert that humans are a part of nature and that the Bow was not "natural" before the hydroelectric development. This development, they state, was "relative rather than absolute change"

As I finished the book I found myself wishing they had put more emphasis on these two themes instead of going into the minutiae of the political and economic events surrounding the hydroelectric development.  Did anyone else come to the same or similar conclusion?

-Well, I could go on--and on--but I'll wait until Wednesday.

Thoughts on Nature's Metropolis

Bill Cronon's Nature's Metropolis is a long, layered book. Just shy of 400 pages (plus numerous insets that are interesting though would be more so if they were incorporated into the work), Cronon provides a detailed environmental history and historical geography not just of the city of Chicago but of the vast regions of the American west that became its hinterland during the latter two thirds of the nineteenth century. I've heard numerous scholars and graduate students cite this work as their gateway into environmental history and after reading it I'm left feeling that if I wasn't already part of the choir, I'd also be one of its converts.