This presentation was given at Concordia University in the Department of History on April 1, 2022. This is part of my ongoing research on the environmental and social consequences of the construction and operation of long-distance oil pipelines in Canada from the mid-twentieth century to the 1990s. To learn more […]
This post is part of a research log series for Silent Rivers of Oil: A History of Oil Pipelines in Canada since 1947. This series will highlight ongoing research findings associated with this project on the history of oil pipelines in Canada. Follow the series here. The Attorney General of […]
For the last five months or so I’ve been working from home. And like many of us, that work involves a lot of Zoom video meetings. Some days, I’m in Zoom meetings from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Recently, I started to polish my appearance in Zoom by adding some graphics. I […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust many university and college course instructors into the world of online teaching in relatively short order. Thousands of courses have had to make a rapid switch to online teaching and this coming summer the entire curriculum at my university will be offered online. Many course […]
“Looking for a needle in a haystack is difficult.” This is how Ron Kennedy, a reporter for the Calgary Herald, described the dangerous work of “Canada’s Pipeline Pilots” in 1959. Rough flying conditions made the work of aerial pipeline monitoring patrols “no job for a weak stomach and slow reactions.” […]
You’re sitting uncomfortably in the audience at a conference waiting for the presenter to begin. They’ve finally loaded up their PowerPoint file from an old USB flash drive and all that’s left is to set it into presentation mode. They click around aimlessly on the screen trying button after button […]
Canada is home to what was once the largest oil pipeline system in the world, the Interprovincial. Built by a subsidiary of Imperial Oil called the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company (now known as Enbridge Inc.), this pipeline system has been part of the backbone of Canada’s oil infrastructure since the […]
This is the sixth post in a collaborative series titled “Environmental Historians Debate: Can Nuclear Power Solve Climate Change?”. It is hosted by the Network in Canadian History & Environment, the Climate History Network, and ActiveHistory.ca. If nuclear power is to be used as a stop-gap or transitional technology for the de-carbonization […]
I am on the program for the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History, but I will not be traveling to Ohio. No flight. No hotel. This year, I will participate on an experimental round-table session called “Building Environmental History Networks Around the World.” The session is experimental […]
This week, I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about digital technologies and open access in the university. I’ll be addressing these issues as they relate to my field of Canadian history. We have been provided with a series of questions to address. Here are two of the most […]
On Thursday, November 15, 2018, the Department of History at York University held a teaching and learning event titled, “Making a New Canadian History Textbook: How to Use Open Educational Resources to Teach History.” I gave a short presentation about my work with Tom Peace and eCampus Ontario to produce […]
Every August, my department puts out a call for print orders for course syllabi. All course instructors are asked to submit digital files to be printed for thousands of undergraduate and graduate students. On the first day of classes, professors and teaching assistants march through the halls with large stacks […]