Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century

by Neil Forkey

Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century provides an ideal foundation for undergraduates and general readers on the history of Canada's complex environmental issues. Through clear, easy-to-understand case studies, Neil Forkey integrates the ongoing interplay of humans and the natural world into national, continental, and global contexts. Forkey's engaging survey addresses significant episodes from across the country over the past four hundred the classification of Canada's environments by its earliest inhabitants, the relationship between science and sentiment in the Victorian era, the shift towards conservation and preservation of resources in the early twentieth century, and the rise of environmentalism and issues involving First Nations at the end of the century. Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century provides an accessible synthesis of the most important recent work in the field, making it a truly state-of-the-art contribution to Canadian environmental history.

168 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2012

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Forkey provides a brief, but interesting, look into environmental issues in Canada, and I enjoyed to relation of environmental issues to art and popular culture. However, this book would have been better if more information was provided - it was a very surface level exploration.

While I read this, I was also reading "Down to Earth" by Ted Steinberg, which provides a more detailed look at the many of the same issues. Perhaps if I had read Forkey's book without reading Steinberg's I would have enjoyed it more, but at the same time, I may not have understood the references and events that Forkey briefly mentioned, without having the background knowledge I had acquired through Steinberg.

[Munawar Mobin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the textbooks from my Environmental History of Canada course at Carleton University this year. At first Forkey's body seemed a tad bit too wordy but then it really picks up. The author speaks about Canadian environmental issues from the early 1600s till recent times – it is riddled with information both about the immigrant settlers in Canada at the time and the aboriginal people. The piece is structured in an easy to read manner and presents information in subcategories which makes it relatively simple to read, albeit coming off quite dry and tedious at times. There is also a lot of information that is present in the reading that directly compares the Canadian government’s knowledge and idea on certain things versus the first nations – some of these reveal awful facts such as the outlawing of the spear techniques used by the Mi’kmaqs (38) while others reveled surprising information, such as the part where Forkey speaks of aboriginal people ‘frequently sounding the clarion call”.

The most interesting bit about the book is the fact that it uses specific cases from history to help the reader understand the situation better. The conclusion of the reading left a little to be desired, but it did speak on ‘social hierarchy’ and tried to convince one that conservation means different things to different people on such a hierarchy.

[Niki Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Although we share this planet with other living things, ultimately humans alone possess the intellect to overcome the environmental problems we have created."

[Jessica DeWitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forkey's work is a concise synthesis of Canadian environmental history literature. It offers a straightforward and readable explanation of the significant trends in Canadian environmental history, and I can see it being a useful accompanying text for an undergrad environmental history course.

For the seasoned environmental historian, however, Forkey's accompanying bibliography will prove more useful than the actual text.