Episode 26 Environmental History as Public History: 29 November 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past26.mp3][33:50] Environmental historians have recently been thinking about future directions for their sub-discipline. Last year, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society co-sponsored a workshop held in Washington, D.C. to explore such future directions and published some of […]
Nature's Past
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Episode 25 National Parks Beyond the Nation: 24 October 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past25.mp3][40:56] While Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s six-episode PBS documentary series framed national parks as “America’s Best Idea”, that idea has not been limited to the borders of the United States. The world’s first national parks service was established […]
Episode 24 Draining the Wet Prairie: September 20, 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past24.mp3][34:17] Agricultural expansion is a central component of the history of the resettlement of the Canadian prairies in the nineteenth-century. Popularly, that history has been characterized by the challenges of aridity on a dry prairie landscape. The characterization of the […]
Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, returns next week with its twenty-fourth episode. After our summer hiatus, the podcast returns with an interview with Dr. Shannon Stunden Bower, the author of the new book Wet Prairie: People, Land, and Water in Agricultural Manitoba. As we prepare for the return […]
Episode 23 The Next Chapter of Canadian Environmental History: May 26, 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past23.mp3][29:33] At the end of April 2011, a group of more than 40 researchers in the fields of Canadian environmental history and historical geography met for an extraordinary workshop in Burlington, Ontario called EH Plus: Writing the […]
Episode 22 A Century of Parks Canada: May 16, 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past22.mp3][33:16] On May 19, 2011, Parks Canada celebrates its 100th anniversary, commemorating its founding in 1911 as the world’s first national parks service. Preceding the creation of the National Park Service in the United States by more than five […]
Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, will be recording a live round-table discussion with Claire Campbell and some of the contributors to a new edited collection called, A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011, on Monday, April 11th at the University of Calgary (MLT 909, 12pm to 2pm). This event […]
Episode 21 Migratory Birds on the Pacific Flyway: March 31, 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past21.mp3][36:07] Migratory birds, by the nature of their behavior, cross boundaries. They are transcontinental species whose habitat in North America ranges from the Canadian arctic to Mexico. As such, the human conservation of these species has historically been […]
Episode 20 The 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic in Winnipeg: February 27, 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past20.mp3][46:04] Toward the end of the Great War, Canadians were struck by the most devastating influenza epidemic in the young country’s history. More than 50,000 Canadians succumbed to this virulent strain of influenza that swept the globe in […]
Episode 19 Metropolitanism and Canadian Environmental History: January 24, 2011 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past19.mp3][42:58] In 1954, Canadian historian James Maurice Stockford Careless published an influential article in the Canadian Historical Review, titled “Frontierism, Metropolitanism, and Canadian History” which offered a new approach for understanding the course of Canadian history and the development […]
Episode 18 Local and Regional Parks: November 21, 2010 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past18.mp3][45:50] The provincial government of British Columbia describes Desolation Sound Marine Provincial Park as a “yachter’s paradise” located at the confluence of the Malaspina Inlet and Homfray Channel just north of the town of Power River. The calm, warm waters […]
Episode 17 Virtual Field Trips, Automobiles, and Global Commodity Chains: October 29, 2010 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past17.mp3][24:35] Over the summer, the NiCHE New Scholars group organized a virtual environmental history workshop that invited graduate students from around the world to participate in two days of discussion and review of working papers on […]