The Once and Future Great Lakes Country: An Ecological History (Volume 2)

by John L. Riley

North America's Great Lakes country has experienced centuries of upheaval. Its landscapes are utterly changed from what they were five hundred years ago. The region's superabundant fish and wildlife and its magnificent forests and prairies astonished European newcomers who called it an earthly paradise but then ushered in an era of disease, warfare, resource depletion, and land development that transformed it forever. The Once and Future Great Lakes Country is a history of environmental change in the Great Lakes region, looking as far back as the last ice age, and also reflecting on modern trajectories of change, many of them positive. John Riley chronicles how the region serves as a continental crossroads, one that experienced massive declines in its wildlife and native plants in the centuries after European contact, and has begun to see increased nature protection and re-wilding in recent decades. Yet climate change, globalization, invasive species, and urban sprawl are today exerting new pressures on the region’s ecology. Covering a vast geography encompassing two Canadian provinces and nine American states, The Once and Future Great Lakes Country provides both a detailed ecological history and a broad panorama of this vast region. It blends the voices of early visitors with the hopes of citizens now.

Genres: History, Nature, Nonfiction, Science, Canada, Environment, American History

516 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2013

Reviews

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I now live between two of the Great Lakes – Lake Erie and Lake Huron. I lived for a time in a small town by Lake Ontario, and lived most of my life in Montreal on the St. Lawrence River which is fed by the Great Lakes. Also spent some travel time on Georgian Bay, the northern part of Lake Huron. And what Canadian hasn’t been to Toronto (or knows someone there)? And, of course, Niagara Falls is the top natural tourist attraction in Eastern North America!




Point Pelee on Lake Erie




Swimming in Georgian Bay (Lake Huron)


So this book described my “neck of the woods”.

It can get botanical and zoological, but to my liking there is a great deal of history. There is much on First Nations, the original settlers – both French and English. All transformed the landscape. With the American war of Independence came a refugee migration of thousands of colonists (called Loyalists) north to what is now Canada – they were joined by the native people who had been loyal to the British. Many of them settled in the Great Lakes area. There were many wars and skirmishes between Britain (Canada) and the newly formed U.S. states. But this ended after the war of 1812 with borders being determined (Detroit prior, was part of Canada – should we reclaim it?). Ever since, compared to many other regions of the world, peace and prosperity have existed on both sides of the border.



Georgian Bay (Lake Huron)



And during the 1800’s there began a vast European migration to both the U.S. and Canada – many (like the Irish) fleeing arduous conditions and finding ample land for cultivation. The author makes an ideological distinction between the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. was “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” none of which applied to non-Europeans; for Canada, until 1867 part of the British Empire, the motto was more subdued – “Peace, Order, and Good Government”, sometimes this applied to Native Peoples.

What is of interest is the complete 180 degree turn which has occurred during the last 60 years. When the colonists arrived, trees and forests were viewed negatively – and removed where possible - burnt, chopped down... There were reasons for this, trees were used for housing, heat, lumber for British ships, and then sold in ever increasing quantities to the U.S. When settlers arrived they viewed the forests as obstacles for transportation and cultivation – and the land as a bountiful and endless resource. Increasingly during the 20th century trees have been planted and nourished. Woodland is not just viewed as a resource – but as essential, natural, and beautiful.

As the author points out much of the forest surrounding Lake Superior has been untouched for hundreds of years – not so for the other Great Lakes.

Here are some issues I had with the book:

There is much repetition, for example we are told repeatedly of rattle snakes at the basin of Niagara Falls. It is disorganized – annoyingly it bounces back and forth chronologically in time. The maps are inadequate, I was unable to find locations cited in the book on the maps provided. The book should have been edited and shortened.

There is overuse of jargon (botanical, zoological and ecological – well it is a book on ecology...).

There is hardly anything on Lake Michigan – and not much on Lake Superior.

The author criticizes city living (Toronto) in terms of resource use. But overall the world-wide trend is towards increasing urbanization – and many immigrants view Canadian cities positively. These trends will not change in the foreseeable future. The author does not point out that resource expenditures in rural areas can be significantly higher than in the city. To maintain their rural lifestyle involves a long-distance car commute for groceries and commodities (shopping), entertainment, school... All of these are accomplished with much less energy in the city. But it is true, as the author states, that urban dwellers are artificially cocooned from the natural ecological world.

Even so, I got much out of this book despite its repetition and scientific terminology.

There was an interesting, and devastating chapter, on invasive species that have inadvertently been imported through our global economy. We have little idea of how these species will be integrated or dominate our natural world – much like the native people did not know the impact that the first Europeans would have on them.

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Toronto 1975 (on Lake Ontario)




Toronto 2014 (on Lake Ontario)

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very ambitious in its scope, covering thousands of years of natural and human history in a vast area that spans two countries and numerous different aquatic and terrestrial habitats. An admirable effort but unfortunately Riley doesn't stick the landing. This book really could have benefitted from a stricter editor to narrow the scope or at least cut out Riley's tangents that put his lack of knowledge in anthropology and political economy on full, embarrassing display. The Once and Future Great Lakes Country either needed to be co-written with a historian or written as a more simple, straightforward natural history.

Riley has evidently made solid contributions in his career as an ecologist but he is sorely out of his depth when writing about settler-colonialism, often obfuscating the differences between settlers and First Nations in their relationships to 1) the land and 2) colonialism. Most bafflingly, instead of any mention of capitalism and enclosure of the commons he makes constant references to some nebulous "hunter-gatherer" instinct, to which he puzzlingly attributes settlers' overharvesting, overhunting, and extraction. To top it all off Riley makes juvenile inferences from the "tragedy of the commons" and E.O. Wilson's biological determinist nonsense. None of this actually elucidates how and why European settler society so drastically changes the Great Lakes landscape in so short a period of time. Riley is grasping at straws because he can't do historical materialist analysis to save his life.

There are some interesting anecdotes peppered here and there, and the strengths of the book are drawn from Riley's extensive experience in research, restoration and advocacy. Credit where it's due, he was the one to discover while out in the field that Metrus Development (owned by Ontario's mired-in-scandal DeGasperis family) illegally cut down 75 trees in a rare remnant of old-growth, for which they were charged. Of course Metrus got away with a $20,000 donation to tree planting efforts rather than what was supposed to be a $385,000 fine; of course Riley fails to draw meaningful conclusions from this and elsewhere in the book touts the benefit of private land ownership, despite the enclosure of the commons and imposition of the capitalist economy setting the stage for the catastrophic transformation of Great Lakes country.

An additional disappointment I had with this book was that a much more extensive story could have been told about the artificial locks and canals connecting the Great Lakes. These structures and their accompanying boat traffic changed Great Lakes ecology profoundly and I was really hoping to learn a lot more.

Trained in ecology myself, The Once and Future Great Lakes Country had enough merit to motivate me to finish, but this was a bloated, frustrating read.

tl;dr: what no historical materialism does to an MF

[Grond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's just pretend that I managed to read this book at a normal pace and move on. Riley's 'ecological history' is a sobering look at the reality of change that is so much a part of the 'natural' world as we perceive it. The history of nature in the Great Lakes region is wrapped up in the mythology of the 'forest primeval' as experienced by European colonists who were largely ignorant of the fact that the land they came to had been under constant care for millennia before the prior custodians were wiped out by war and plague and the relentless march of European hunger for land. The endless forests of the Northeastern states and both Canadas were simply the result of an intense wilding that happened when those tenants were removed from the landscape approximately 150 years before the wave of European settlement began in earnest.

This fact plays a huge, central role in Riley's look at the past (and future) of this region of the world and offers important, sobering insights into how the only constant we can honestly count on is that change is inevitable. Despite this, Riley's outlook is, if not exactly optimistic, confident that with intelligent decisionmaking we can and should be able to manage a healthy sustainable relationship with this environment that is both fragile and utterly important to us.

A well written book with perhaps a tendency to hammer home certain points with many variations of the same historical reporting and/or data.

[Horus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent history of the area, flora and fauna, surrounding the Great Lakes. There are lots of interesting details regarding the state of the land when the European explorers first arrived (and killed off many of the native tribes with smallpox and other diseases), contrasting it with what the land looked like when next explorers reached modern day Ontario. Certainly, the immigrant ancestors of our non-native population have much to answer for the extirpation of natural flora, fauna as well as the then existing, native way of life. There were surprising bits of information related to our modern conservation attempts, even on the part of some Ontario premiers. It ends, finally, on a hopeful note, which is nice, but with the demise of the EPA in the US, possibly no longer realistic.

[Christine Convery]

I skimmed the last 3 chapters so will not give a rating, but the reason I skimmed is that this book is meandering and repetitive. For 250 pages I waited to understand what story the author was trying to tell or argument he wanted to make but alas I could not. Plenty of interesting examples of indigenous-european encounters and how the landscape looked different over the time they were recorded, but there was no overarching narrative in the history. An impressive amount of research but not digestible for me as a reader.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Foreword by renowned historian Ramsay Cook summarizes the great achievement that is this history of the environment of the Great Lakes region. Riley has used an enormous number of sources to create a very extensive summary of what the great lakes basin was like as reported by explorers, government officials, land developers, settlers, botanists, foresters… over the past 400 years, plus archeological findings going back 14000 years. He also details what happened to the wildlife, the forests, the prairies, alvars, cliffs, bogs, fens and other wetlands. Unfortunately, since many of those sources said similar things, albeit at different times and in different places, it can come across as repetitive in places. Although it does cover all the Great Lakes, and parts of the Atlantic seaboard, the focus is on upstate New York and southern Ontario, but the ecological implications apply to a larger area. In addition to the often depressing history of deforestation and ruining of the land for farms and cities, and invasive species ruining what nature remains, there is also an account of hope from someone who has been intimately involved in saving land from development through the Ontario government, Ontario Nature, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and others. So don’t miss the last couple of chapters and especially the Afterword.
Key point - Because contact with Europeans caused the death from European diseases of most of the aboriginal inhabitants, followed by social breakdown and war, the landscape that was managed by natives – mainly fire to keep the understory clear for hunting and clearing for crops – turned into a closed canopy forest over the 150 years that followed before extensive settlement occurred.
Many delightful tidbits, eg: The Creeping Thistle from Europe came to the USA from Quebec, so they called it Canada Thistle. Why do North American botanists perpetuate this mistake – it is Creeping Thistle; there is no such thing as Canada Thistle.

[Mike Parkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Riley is known to Ontario nature conservation geeks as the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and the author (as a botanist) of many detailed technical reports prepared for the purpose of identifying candidates for parks and protected areas in Ontario, based on their biological distinctiveness and populations of rare or endangered species. Here, he writes for a much wider audience, telling the ecological history of the “Great Lakes country” (the watersheds that eventually drain into the lakes), focusing mostly on the Ontario side. More time is spent on the terrestrial landscape than the Great Lakes themselves.

While the book is about nature, it is a history as well, and documents the impacts that humanity has had on the ecology of the Great Lakes country. As you might expect, these impacts have been mostly negative, but Riley’s writing is not all doom and gloom, and takes the long view. Riley will make you sad for the abundance of wildlife that we have lost, but also leave you convinced that nature has a future in the Great Lakes country. A wonderful treasure.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provided a new perspective on the ecological history of the region. Not sure I'll ever look at the places around me the same. Main theme is that we basically destroyed the ecology of the region with the low point around 1910.

Lots of progress made since but still a long way from pre-contact abundance. Restoration and preservation have made great strides.

But don't obsess with recreating a "primordial" ecology. The regions ecology has been in constant flux.

Riley gives practical advice. Preserve as much of what exists as we can, and we are lucky in the great lakes region because there is still much worth preserving. Focus on local, because if you take care of the local the global will benefit. If doing restoration work, encourage growth of local species, not because they are superior, but because bringing in new species as unpredictable effects, often negative.

Good book. Also sprinkles hints of his tremendous experience in working in this space in creation of impressive ecologies.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing! It took me 5 months to read because it was so dense with research and history that it was too much to take in a sitting while respecting the effort that went into it. John has been a crucial force in conservation in Ontario for decades and this book was a testament to his involvement and the hard work of others that has resulted in the network of conservation areas, land trusts, provincial parks, etc. It was great to hear the stateside experience throughout the generations as well. There are a number of areas that have now been added to my ‘gotta see’ life list. What an incredible book!

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for N American ecologists.

[Dunrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riley discusses myths and reality about Great Lakes country.

The myths include a primeval forest at European contact where a squirrel could run in the treetops from the ocean to the East to the Mississippi to the West - not true.

Riley covers landscape management by First Nations prior to European settlement of the area, the effects of wars and disease on the landscape management and rewilding between first contact and large-scale settlement/clearance. He touches on how the two countries--Canada above the lakes and the United States below--had different histories and policies over time.

He details the loss of species including passenger pigeon, caribou, elk, cougar, lynx, and more. He discusses recent rewilding, and the ongoing threat from invasive species - on land and in the water.

This book has been prodigiously researched and is exceptionally detailed. This wasn't a page turner for me, at least in part because the losses are so difficult/sad....but the topic and the thoroughness and the scientific rightness its perspective (nuanced, unflinching) brought it to 4 stars.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide ranging and personal view of the changing landscape and ecology of the country surrounding the Great Lakes by a deeply informed botanist who understands the historical record. The changes he describes from the "original conditions" are staggering and, in a sense, unexpected in that the "original conditions" were not al about the climax forest as conventionally understood, but rather something involving a mix of managed forest, prairie, farmland and expansive rich shallows and wetlands around the edges of the lower Great Lakes. This book is a real revelation and underscores how little we really know about and appreciate the place 40 million of us call home.

[Marnie Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a long read, but so comprehensive in covering the ecological history of this place we live and important things we need to understand to protect this earth and survive as a species. Love it. I shall return to this as a reference often.