Sustaining the West

Description

Western Canada’s natural environment faces intensifying threats from industrialization in agriculture and resource development, social and cultural complicity in these destructive practices, and most recently the negative effects of global climate change. The complex nature of the problems being addressed calls for productive interdisciplinary solutions. In this book, arts and humanities scholars and literary and visual artists tackle these pressing environmental issues in provocative and transformative ways. Their commitment to environmental causes emerges through the fields of environmental history, environmental and ecocriticism, ecofeminism, ecoart, ecopoetry, and environmental journalism.

This indispensable and timely resource constitutes a sustained cross-pollinating conversation across the environmental humanities about forms of representation and activism that enable ecological knowledge and ethical action on behalf of Western Canadian environments, yet have global reach. Among the developments in the contributors’ construction of environmental knowledge are a focus on the power of sentiment in linking people to the fate of nature, and the need to decolonize social and environmental relations and assumptions in the West.

Sujets

• Western Canada
• Eco-art
• Sustainability
• Ecocriticism
• Environmental history
• Environmental studies
• Literary criticism
• Environment
• Art
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554589258
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

SUSTAINING THE WEST

SUSTAINING THE WEST
CULTURAL RESPONSES TO CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTS
Liza Piper Lisa Szabo-Jones, editors
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sustaining the West : cultural responses to Canadian environments. Liza Piper and Lisa Szabo-Jones, editors.
(Environmental humanities) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-55458-923-4 (pbk.).-ISBN 978-1-55458-924-1 (pdf).- ISBN 978-1-55458-925-8 (epub)
1. Human ecology-Canada, Western. 2. Environmental sciences-Social aspects-Canada, Western. 3. Environmentalism-Social aspects-Canada, Western. 4. Canada, Western-Environmental conditions. I. Piper, Liza, 1978-, editor II. Szabo-Jones, Lisa, 1969-, editor III. Series: Environmental humanities series
GF512.P7S88 2015 304.209712 C2014-905564-1
C2014-905565-X
Cover design by Daiva Villa, Chris Rowat Designs. Front-cover image Archipelago , 2008 (detail); photo by Mark Freeman. Text design by Angela Booth Malleau.
2015 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Excerpts in Chapter 8 ( Poetry, Science, and Knowledge of Place ) from Apostrophe, Astonished - and First Philosophies, from Strike/Slip by Don McKay, copyright 2006 Don McKay, reprinted by permission of McClelland Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Excerpt in same chapter from Oh Lovely Rock, from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Volume 2, 1928-1938 , edited by Tim Hunt, copyright 1938, Garth and Donnan Jeffers, renewed 1966, used with permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org . All rights reserved. Excerpts in same chapter from Mapmaking, On a Mountainside, and The Words from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poem s, copyright 1999 David Wagoner, used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.
This book is printed on FSC certified paper and is certified Ecologo. It contains post-consumer fibre, is processed chlorine free, and is manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
What if the Problem Is People?
Liza Piper
PART 1: ACTING ON BEHALF OF
CHAPTER 1
Grass Futures: Possibilities for a Re-engagement with Prairie
Trevor Herriot
CHAPTER 2
Wastewest: A State of Mind
Warren Cariou
CHAPTER 3
Sustaining Collaboration: The Woodhaven Eco Art Project
Nancy Holmes
CHAPTER 4
A Natural History and Dioramic Performance: Restoring Camosun Bog in Vancouver, British Columbia
Lisa Szabo-Jones David Brownstein
CHAPTER 5
A Subtle Activism of the Heart
Beth Carruthers
CHAPTER 6
Sublime Animal
Maria Whiteman
CHAPTER 7
The Becoming-Animal of Being Caribou : Art, Ethics, Politics
Dianne Chisholm
INTERLUDE
Creating Metaphors for Change
Lyndal Osborne
PART 2: CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER 8
Poetry, Science, and Knowledge of Place: A Dispatch from the Coast
Nicholas Bradley
CHAPTER 9
Deception in High Places: The Making and Unmaking of Mounts Brown and Hooker
Zac Robinson Stephen Slemon
CHAPTER 10
Escarpments, Agriculture, and the Historical Experience of Certainty in Manitoba and Ontario
Shannon Stunden Bower Sean Gouglas
CHAPTER 11
Whatever Else Climate Change Is Freedom: Frontier Mythologies, the Carbon Imaginary, and British Columbia Coastal Forestry Novels
Richard Pickard
CHAPTER 12
Endangered Species, Endangered Spaces: Exploring the Grasslands of Trevor Herriot s Grass, Sky, Song and the Wetlands of Terry Tempest Williams s Refuge
Angela Waldie
CHAPTER 13
What Should We Sacrifice for Bitumen? Literature Interrupts Oil Capital s Utopian Imaginings
Jon Gordon
INTERLUDE
Symphony for a Head of Wheat Burning in the Dark
Harold Rhenisch
PART 3: MATERIAL EXPRESSIONS
CHAPTER 14
Propositions from Under Mill Creek Bridge: A Practice of Reading
Christine Stewart
CHAPTER 15
Understory Enduring the Sixth Mass Extinction, ca. 2009-11
Rita Wong
CHAPTER 16
Seeding Coordinates, Planting Memories: Here, There, Elsewhere in W.H. New s Underwood Log
Travis V. Mason
CHAPTER 17
Re-Envisioning Epic in Jon Whyte s Rocky Mountain Poem The fells of brightness
Harry Vandervlist
CHAPTER 18
Ware s Waldo: Hydroelectric Development and the Creation of the Other in British Columbia
Daniel Sims
AFTERWORD
Humming Along with the Bees: A Few Words on Cross-Pollination
Pamela Banting
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
4.1 Camosun Bog
4.2 Camosun Bog sign - A Community Working Together
6.1 Embryonic horse, vertical head and legs in jar
6.2 Curled fawn with spots in jar
6.3 Frog hand and body in jar
6.4 Embryonic fawns wrapped together in jar
Interlude 1 Archipelago (2008), detail
Interlude 2 ab ovo (2008), detail
Interlude 3 ab ovo (2008), detail
Interlude 4 Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2006-11)
9.1 David Douglas (1798-1834)
9.2 Douglas s 1828 manuscript, A Sketch of a Journey
9.3 The first map showing Douglas s mountain giants
9.4 Map showing Mount Brown and Mount Hooker, 1901
9.5 The summit of Mount Brown
10.1 Map of Manitoba and Ontario scarp landscapes
13.1 Memorial for killed and injured workers in Waterways, Alberta
13.2 Syncrude s Wood Bison Gateway
13.3 Bison grazing on reclaimed land at Syncrude s Beaver Creek Wood Bison Ranch
18.1 Mike Halleran on the shore of the Williston Lake Reservoir, CBC Hourglass
18.2 Waldo, BC, burning, The Reckoning
18.3 Village of Finlay Forks from the air, CBC Hourglass
18.4 Finlay Forks, CBC Hourglass
18.5 Finlay Forks, from McKay, Crooked River Rats
18.6 Tse Keh Nay rivermen, CBC Hourglass
18.7 SS Minto, The Reckoning
18.8 Houses in the Columbia River Valley, BC, The Reckoning
18.9 Houses in the Columbia River Valley, BC, The Reckoning
18.10 Muskeg in the Peace River Country, BC, CBC Hourglass
18.11 Cabin on the banks of the Williston Lake Reservoir, CBC Hourglass
18.12 Debris at low water of a reservoir in the Columbia River Valley, BC, The Reckoning
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume emerged from the workshop Cross-Pollination: Seeding New Ground for Environmental Thought and Activism across the Arts and Humanities, held in Edmonton, Alberta, in March 2011. We thank Melanie Marvin and Cheryl Williams for making the workshop happen-it would not have been possible without their hard work and commitment. We thank Martha Campiou for helping us welcome participants to Treaty Eight lands. We thank all of the participants at that original event for their contributions and involvement which shaped the direction of this volume. We would also like to thank Cate Sandilands and Alan MacEachern for their enthusiasm for this collaboration.
Financial and logistical support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; NiCHE: the Network in Canadian History and Environment; the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada; the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation; the Edmonton Nature Club; and the Faculty of Arts, the Department of History and Classics, and the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta made both the workshop and this volume possible.
Thanks to Lisa Quinn, Rob Kohlmeier, and Blaire Comacchio at Wilfrid Laurier University Press for ensuring this volume saw the light of day. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which strengthened the cohesion of this collection. Heather Green and Denny Brett provided valuable assistance on various aspects of the publication.
Conceptualizing, bringing people together, working with contributors, and ultimately producing this volume has been an inspiring, enjoyable, and truly collective effort for which we are grateful.
INTRODUCTION
What if the Problem Is People?
Liza Piper
In his The Future of Environmental Criticism , Lawrence Buell emphasizes that issues of vision, value, culture, and imagination are keys to today s environmental crises at least as fundamental as scientific research, technological know-how, and legislative regulation. 1 He makes this point in order to demonstrate the essential contributions from humanists to solving our environmental crises. Bue