“Pollution Probe members holding a funeral for the Don River in 1969” Source: Tom Davey, 1969.
The environmental movement is one of the most popular topics in Canadian environmental history. At present, the environmental movement in Canada is at a bit of a crossroads. Having finally moved beyond simply outlining worst practices and their consequences, the last decade has witnessed proactive solutions and workable alternatives to every kind of environmental problem. Yet, this comes at the same time as economic turmoil and ideological opposition from government. Recently, David Suzuki has even gone so far as to argue that “Environmentalism has failed.” Given this crossroads, environmental historians offer the context needed to understand the state of the environmental movement in this country today.
From the earliest efforts to establish national and provincial parks at the end of the nineteenth century to the more politically-conscious groups of the post-WWII era, historians of the Canadian environmental movement have demonstrated how changing ideas of nature informed non-utilitarian approaches to dealing with the non-human world. The inspiration for many of these ideas came from critiques of modernity and capitalism, which saw nature as either a set of commodities or an externality within the wider framework of progress and civilization. In response to this trend, concerned individuals and groups mobilized environmental sciences, such as conservation and ecology, to justify alternative relationships between humans and the natural world. This reaction to modern society and economy was shared with the United States, but also developed its own distinctive Canadian character, as well as specific regional approaches to environmental issues across Canada.
As in the United States, the first efforts to protect the environment in Canada arose out of anxieties about the loss of wilderness and the importance of preserving an essential national character at the end of the nineteenth century. Over half a century later, the postwar environmental movement in Canada evolved alongside that of the U.S. following the publication of Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring. In New Brunswick, activists fought to stop the spraying of DDT, while in Ontario a group known as Pollution Probe used the media to raise awareness of environmental issues, and in British Columbia the provincial government was obliged to enact protective legislation in order to placate opposition from environmentalists. In each case, changing ideas about nature combined with particular Canadian political and cultural contexts to transform the way most Canadians thought about and treated the environment.
On this first part of our look at the history of the environmental movement in Canada we speak with Canadian environmental historian, Neil Forkey about his new book Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century.
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Visit the main page at http://niche-canada.org/naturespast
Suggested Readings:
- Dale, Stephen. McLuhan’s Children: The Greenpeace Message and the Media. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1996.
- Elton, Sarah. “Green Power.” University of Toronto Magazine, Winter 1999
- Emond, D. Paul. “‘Are We There Yet?’ Reflections on the Success of the Environmental Law Movement in Ontario.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal Vol.46, No.2 (Summer 2008), pp. 219-242.
- Keeling, Arn. “Sink or Swim: Water Pollution and Environmental Politics in Vancouver, 1889-1975.” BC Studies Vol.142/143 (2004), pp. 69-101.
- Keeling, Arn and John Sandlos. “Environmental Justice Goes Underground? Historical Notes from Canada’s Mining Frontier.” Environmental Justice Vol.2, No.3 (2009): 117-125.
- Killan, Gerald, and George Warecki. “The Algonquin Wildlands League and the Emergence of Environmental Politics in Ontario, 1965-1974” Environmental History Review Vol.16, No.4 (Winter 1992), pp.1-27.
- McLaughlin, Mark J. “Green Shoots: Aerial Insecticide Spraying and the Growth of Environmental Consciousness in New Brunswick, 1952-1973.” Acadiensis Vol.40, No.1 (Winter/Spring 2011), pp. 3-23.
- Mutton, Don. “Dispelling the Myths of the Acid Rain Story.” Environment Vol.40, No.6 (July-Aug 1998), pp.4-34.
- Paehlke, Robert. “Eco-History: Two Waves in the Evolution of Environmentalism.” Alternatives Vol.19, No.1 (1992), pp.18-23.
- Read, Jennifer. “’Let us heed the voice of youth’: Laundry Detergents, Phosphates and the Emergence of the Environmental Movement in Ontario.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association Vol.7 (1996), pp.227-250.
- Suzuki, David. “The Fundamental Failure of Environmentalism” David Suzuki Foundation Blog. May 3, 2012.
- Van Huizen, Philip. “‘Panic Park’: Environmental Protest and the Politics of Parks in British Columbia’s Skagit Valley.” BC Studies Vol.170 (Summer 2011), pp.67-92.
- Warecki, George M. Protecting Ontario’s Wilderness: A History of Changing Ideas and Preservation Politics, 1927-1973. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2000.
- Zelko, Frank S. “Making Greenpeace: The Development of Direct Action Environmentalism in British Columbia,” BC Studies, Special Double Issue “On the Environment”, Vol.142/143 (Summer/Autumn 2004), pp.197-239.
- Zelko, Frank S. Make it a Greenpeace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Works Cited
- Sean Kheraj, Canadian History & Environment
- Binnema, Theodore and Melanie Niemi. “‘Let the Line be Drawn Now’: Wilderness, Conservation, and the Exclusion of Aboriginal People from Banff National Park in Canada.” Environmental History 11, no. 4 (2006): 724-750.
- Forkey, Neil S. Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
- Jasen, Patricia. Wild Things: Nature, Culture, and Tourism in Ontario, 1790-1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
- Judd, Richard William. The Untilled Garden : Natural History and the Spirit of Conservation in America, 1740-1840. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Loo, Tina. States of Nature: Conserving Canada’s Wildlife in the Twentieth Century. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006.
- Sandlos, John. Hunters at the Margin: Native People and Wildlife Conservation in the Northwest Territories. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
- Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Music Credits
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