Environmental History of Atlantic Canada

3 credit hours · Graduate

This seminar course examines the changing ways nature has been viewed and transformed in Atlantic Canada before and after European settlement, surveying environmental history up to the mid-20th century. Topics include the role of natural history in the struggle for empire; historic aboriginal resource use; ecological patterns of colonial land use and settlement; changing frontier ecology; historical issues in agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining, and urban development; the early conservation movement; local natural history and emerging science; early natural resources policy; and cultural perceptions of nature and the landscape.