CHA 2009 Presentations

This paper uses nineteenth-century Winnipeg as a case study to examine how early city councils managed urban animal populations in Canada. When the former frontier town was incorporated as a city in 1873, Winnipeg’s earliest city councilors created the regulatory architecture for the foundation of what was intended to be a new western metropolis and gateway to the Canadian prairies. Managing the city’s non-human animal population was a vital part of this city-building process. The earliest by-law regulations in Winnipeg demonstrate that the efficient management of urban animals for transportation, labour, energy, and food was a key component of making cities in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the behaviour and autonomy of non-human animals in the past demonstrated the limits of human control. Stampeding horses, free-roaming cattle, and stray dogs shaped human actions and the making of Winnipeg in its early years.

A study of the transformation of small nineteenth-century Lake Huron villages, which had previously hoped to become major port and manufacturing cities, into summer cottage communities.

This paper raises questions about the relationship between the environmental knowledge of Aboriginal people and western scientific knowledge.

This paper looks at early French Jesuit descriptions and understandings of the biota of the New France.

This paper looks at the politics surrounding asbestos mining in Asbestos, Quebec.

This paper looks at how domestic electrification in Canada during the mid-twentieth century was limited by problems of supply and demand. It is part of a larger project that studies the ways in which fossil fuels in the home changed relationships in family life, society, and women and the environment.

This paper examines how Canadian apple production interacted with world markets - specifically Britain - as part of the creation of a global food system.

This paper looks at the disparities between scientific fisheries management and local fisherperson knowledge in the Newfoundland and Labrador cod fisheries.

This paper examines the public responses of Canadians to an important late-1960s CBC documentary on air pollution.

This paper examines Mennonites and their interest in flax cultivation, cultural separation, and self sufficiency in both Waterloo County, Ontario and the Manitoba West Reserve. It argues that these farmers grew flax for transnational markets through industrial systems and not because of cultural folkways. New markets for intermediate goods in manufacturing and urban construction stimulated demand for flax products such as cordage, rough textiles, and linseed oil for paint. Flax was not important in Waterloo or the West Reserve until non-Mennonite millers approached both communities directly and offered them contracts if they would start growing flax. Farmers also brought their own knowledge to flax production, taking some partially processed fibre home for cloth production in Waterloo and using flax as a way to increase productivity on new land in the West Reserve. Participating with industry and applying local knowledge in global markets allowed Mennonites to cultivate distinctive communities.