Before the fall of Imperial Rome, priests cast the guts of sacrificial animals on the temple floor, claiming to be able to divine the future from these entrails. By probing the remains of Alberta’s past sacrifices (reading the entrails), the author believes we might dimly see an apparition of Alberta’s future. This controversial book vividly portrays the history of land and life in Alberta …
How do we understand the boundaries of individual creatures? What are the systems of interdependency that bind all living creatures together? Plants were among the the first to colonize the planet. They created the soil and the atmosphere that made life possible for animals. They are some of the largest and oldest life forms on Earth. In spite of their primacy, Western cultures have traditional…
Northern Canada’s distinctive landscapes, its complex social relations and the contested place of the North in contemporary political, military, scientific and economic affairs have fueled recent scholarly discussion. At the same time, both the media and the wider public have shown increasing interest in the region. This timely volume extends our understanding of the environmental history of …
Environmental Activism on the Ground draws upon a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship to examine small scale, local environmental activism, paying particular attention to Indigenous experiences. It illuminates the questions that are central to the ongoing evolution of the environmental movement while reappraising the history and character of late twentieth and early twenty-first environ…
China’s Arctic Ambitions and What They Mean for Canada is one of the first in-depth studies of China’s increasing interest in the Arctic. It offers a holistic approach to understanding Chinese motivations and the potential impacts of greater Chinese presence in the circumpolar region, exploring resource development, shipping, scientific research, governance, and security. Drawing on extensi…
When Canada created a Dominion Parks Branch in 1911, it became the first country in the world to establish an agency devoted to managing its national parks. Over the past century this agency, now Parks Canada, has been at the centre of important debates about the place of nature in Canadian nationhood and relationships between Canada’s diverse ecosystems and its communities. Today, Parks Cana…
Studies of the radical environmental politics of the 1960s have tended to downplay the extent to which much of that countercultural intellectual and social ferment continued into the 1970s and 1980s. Canadian Countercultures and the Environment adds to our knowledge of this understudied period. This collection contributes a sustained analysis of the beginning of major environmental debates in t…
How have our interactions with animals shaped Calgary? What can we do to ensure that humans and animals in the city continue to co-exist, and even flourish together? This wide-ranging book explores the ways that animals inhabit our city, our lives and our imaginations. Essays from animal historians, wildlife specialists, artists and writers address key issues such as human-wildlife interactions…
A geographer with extensive research experience in the Canadian North, Jack D. Ives has written a lively and informative account of several expeditions to Baffin Island during the “golden age” of federal research. In the 1960s, scientists from the Geographical Branch of Canada’s Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources travelled to Baffin to study glacial geomorphology and glaciology. T…
New initiatives recognize that resource wealth can provide a means, when properly used, for poorer nations to decisively break with poverty by diversifying economies and funding development spending. Extractive Industries: The Management of Resources as a Driver of Sustainable Development explores the challenges and opportunities facing developing countries in using oil, gas, and mining to achi…