The Historical Geography Of Canada

This classic study in modern historical geography reflects the changing regional character of that part of North America that was to become Canada. "A pioneering bench-mark for future researchers, recognized for its scholarly as well as its literary qualities." Journal of Historical Geography.

In this richly documented work, Serge Courville tells the geographical history of Quebec from the appearance of the first humans through to the present day. This detailed and erudite book maps major stages of Quebec’s development, providing a geographical record of the many social relationships that over time created a sense of place. Landscape, Courville shows, is the keeper of memory, the record of successive changes, and a witness to the genesis of the new. Places that were once agricultural, then left to waste and ruin, are today revivified by tourism. Areas that now house office buildings were long ago open playgrounds where children ruled. Drawing on vast research, Courville shows how, in spite of the turbulence Quebec often endures – or perhaps because of it – the land itself may be seen as an important participant in the history of its peoples. Quebec: A Historical Geography was originally published by Les Presses de l’Université Laval as Le Québec: Genèses et mutations du territoire.

Fundamentally concerned with place, and our ability to understand human relationships with environment over time, Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) as a tool and a subject has direct bearing for the study of contemporary environmental issues and realities. To date, HGIS projects in Canada are few and publications that discuss these projects directly even fewer. This book brings together case studies of HGIS projects in historical geography, social and cultural history, and environmental history from Canada's diverse regions. Projects include religion and ethnicity, migration, indigenous land practices, rebuilding a nineteenth-century neighborhood, and working with Google Earth.

Ontario is the most populous and most prosperous province in Canada. One-third of the nation's population lives here. They produce more than one-half of Canada's manufactured goods, one-quarter of her output from mines and forests, and one-third of the farm income. Accompanying this economic pre-eminence is a majestic primeval geography. Ontario extends through sixteen degrees of latitude and a distance of over 1600 kilometres from barren tundra along a saltwater shoreline in the north to fertile lowlands bordering freshwater lakes in the south. Productivity and size, two of the basic elements in the geography of the province, stand in contradiction to one another. The former is concentrated in a very small area with an identity and even a name of its own, 'Southern Ontario,' a portion of the province that is as overwhelming in its concentration of activity as the remainder is in its areal extent. The recognition of this distinction is a prerequisite to the further study of a subject which has been widely neglected, both in Ontario and in the rest of Canada. Writers and artists, historians and geographers have paid little attention to the province. It is a baffling region, one which 'has achieved a significant place in the Canadian sun, but no one quite knows what the place is, even though other areas would like to achieve the same position' (Warkentin 1966). The purpose of this short volume is to contribute to an understanding of Ontario, to point out something of what it is both to those who are already acquainted with the province and to those who are being introduced to it for the first time.

This study is one of the first in the field of historical geography to be published in Canada. Written after exhaustive research, it uses a particular approach to the study of historical agricultural geography which concentrates on the use of basic distributional evidence for the description and interpretation of the changing character of any region through any period of time. By the analysis of over 1200 maps, some of which form part of the text of the book, Professor Clark studies agriculture as the dominant economic activity of Prince Edward Island and traces with remarkable clarity through the changing patterns of land culture throughout the province. The book begins with a description of the natural geography of the Island which, despite its small size, shows surprising variety. It goes on to prove the necessity for careful consideration of the background of habit and prejudice of groups of different origin when studying the changing geographies of land use. The settlement of the Island is traced from the time it was used as a summer campground by the Micmac Indians. Details of the arrival of the first Acadians, the transfer to British rule, and the subsequent influx of Scottish, Irish, Loyalist, and English stock are given together with evidence of the effect their coming had on the agriculture of the region. One hundred and fifty-five maps and sixteen tables to illustrate the distribution of population by area and origin, changes in kind and distribution of crops, census of livestock, etc., from the early eighteenth century to the present day, and from the days when the potato was unknown as a crop through the fur-farming era. The author presents this study as part of his life-work, a programme of research on the settlement overseas in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries of the people from the British Isles. He is descended from Prince Edward Island settlers and writes of the province from a background of personal knowledge of, and affection for, the land of his forbears.