Episode 16 The Industrialization of Agriculture: September 28, 2010 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past16.mp3][44:24] From 1945 to the early 1970s, technological innovations helped to transform American agriculture. The introduction of industrial chemicals and new machinery to US farm operations in the decades after the Second World War ushered in, what some historians have […]
Nature's Past
You can now listen to Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, on the radio (in Prince George)! The kind folks at CFUR 88.7, the campus radio station at the University of Northern British Columbia will be broadcasting the full series of Nature’s Past this summer. This will be the […]
Episode 15 Forestry Education in Canada: May 26, 2010 [audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/natures-past15.mp3][43:04] In 1907, the University of Toronto opened Canada’s first forestry school to undergraduate students. This was the beginning of formal forestry education in Canada and great step forward for the profession. However, the history of the Faculty of Forestry […]
Episode 14 Management of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse: April 20, 2010. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past14.mp3][42:40] North American environmental history is punctuated by notorious episodes of species extinctions, most notably the cases of the passenger pigeon and the bison. In both cases, humans exhausted what they believed were unlimited resources in the absence of […]
Episode 13 New Directions in Urban Environmental History & Abandoned Mines: March 3, 2010. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past13.mp3][49:59] Next week the American Society for Environmental History will hold its annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. Environmental historians will gather from March 10-13 to share new research and ideas, roughly surrounding the theme of “Currents […]
Episode 12 Industrialization in Subarctic Environments: January 19, 2010. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past12.mp3][24:30] Between 1920 and 1960, Canada’s northwest subarctic region experienced late-stage rapid industrialization along its large lakes. These included Lake Winnipeg, Lake Athabasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake. Powered by high-energy fossil fuels, the natural resources of the northwest […]
Episode 11 Animals, History, and Environment: November 22, 2009. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past11.mp3][55:05] Environmental history is primarily concerned with the relationship between humans and non-human nature, but the study of non-human nature holds a different set of problems and poses a different set of questions when considering non-human animals. As environmental historians continue […]
Episode 10 Digital Technologies and Environmental History: October 21, 2009. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past10.mp3][40:59] How have online digital technologies changed environmental history research, communication, and teaching? This episode of the podcast explores this question in the context of the recent NiCHE Digital Infrastructure API Workshop held in Mississauga, Ontario. Online-based Application Programming Interfaces […]
Episode 9 Environmental History Graduate Studies in Canada: September 21, 2009. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past09.mp3][34:22] After our brief summer break, the podcast returns with an episode that looks at environmental history graduate studies in Canada. Last May, we recorded a round-table conversation with four environmental history graduate students following the Canadian History & […]
Episode 8 Aboriginal People and Resource Conflicts in Canada: July 14, 2009. [audio:http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past08.mp3] [38:46] The history of the resettlement of Canada by European peoples and the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land was, in part, a struggle over natural resources. Since 1867, the federal and provincial governments of Canada […]