Canada's Enviromental History

This course investigates the long, complex, reciprocal relationship between nature and humans.

To explore it, three areas developed by historians are examined:  how Indigenous Peoples and settler Canadians have thought about the natural environment and colonized landscapes, how resource development and industrialization/urbanization have had short- and long- term effects, and how Canada’s conservationists and environmentalists have responded to issues that have arisen. From their study, students should be able to place the dynamic interplay between the environment and people into perspective and come to better understand the development of that relationship over time.