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Research

I am a Canadian historian whose research gravitates to topics on humans' past relations with nature: environmental history. To me, this is a field too pertinent to present-day concerns, and too interesting, to stay within the academic domain. My attempt to describe and lobby for the field can be found in "An Introduction, in Theory and Practice," in Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (2009).

Much of my time these days is spent as director of NiCHE, which works to assist Canadian environmental history researchers in developing their projects, to facilitate collaboration, and to make the field better known to governments, public history organizations, environmental groups, and the public.

I am also involved in two environmental history book series. I am editing a new Canadian History & Environment series for University of Calgary Press. Notably, the books are being produced simultaneously in print and as free, open-access online publications; the first book in the series is A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011.  I am also on the editorial board of the University of Massachusetts Press's new The Environmental History of the Northeast series. If you are interested in developing a book for either series, please contact me.

Teaching

In 2011-12, I am teaching His2201E Canada: Origins to the Present with Prof. Robert Wardhaugh at the undergraduate level and His9833A Environmental History at the graduate level. I am currently supervising Ph.D. student Michael Del Vecchio, whose topic is to be determined. I have supervised fields in Modern Canada and Environmental History, and am also available to supervise in Public History.

In all the courses I teach, I want students to come away interested in some small part of past human experience, able to develop an argument and realize why doing so has value in life, believing that good writing is important and recognizing what that writing looks like, and understanding that even if they never spend their careers or their spare time "doing" history, it is still worth thinking about the past and its role in the present.

Publications 

[Forthcoming] "'War is Waged ...to a Reasonable Extent,'" Canada's History, 2012.

[Forthcoming] "Popular by Our Misery: The International Response to the 1825 Miramichi Fire," Environmental Histories of Atlantic Canada, eds. Claire E. Campbell and Robert Summerby-Murray, 2012.

[Submitted] "Canada's Best Idea? The Canadian and American National Park Services in the 1910s."

[Submitted] with Ryan O'Connor, "Children of the Hummus: Growing up Back-to-the Land on Prince Edward Island."

"A Polyphony of Synthesizers: Why Every Historian of Canada Should Write a History of Canada," ActiveHistory.ca blog, January 2012.

"A Little Essay on Big: Towards a History of Canada's Size," in Big Country, Big Issues: Canada's Environment, Culture, and History, a special issue of Perspectives 2011 no.4 (Munich: Rachel Carson Center, 2011).

"Conservation," The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2011.

"Nature within reach of Canadians," The Globe and Mail, 12 May 2011.

"Little we see in Nature that is ours: PEI National Park and Aerial Photography," part one and part two, The Otter group blog, March and May 2011.

"M.B. Williams and the Early Years of Parks Canada," A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011, Claire E. Campbell, ed. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2011).

"J.E. Bernier's Claims to Fame," Scientia Canadensis 33 no.2 (2010).

with Ryan O'Connor, eds., Talking Green: Oral History and Environmental History, a special issue of Oral History Forum d'histoire orale, December 2010.

"Do you remember where you were?" The Globe and Mail, 4 March 2010.

"A Far Different Place,” University Affairs 50th anniversary issue, November 2009.

with William J. Turkel, eds., Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2009).
~ "An Introduction, in Theory and Practice"
~ "Lost in Shipping: Canadian National Parks and the International Donation of Wildlife"

with Ryan O'Connor, "Back to the Island: The Back-to-the-Land Movement on PEI," 2009.

with William. J. Turkel, The Programming Historian, 2007-08.
~ a second edition of this open-source, open-access textbook is underway. See here.

"Writing the History of Canadian Parks: Past, Present, and Future," proceedings of the Canadian Parks for Tomorrow: 40th Anniversary Conference, 2008.
~ podcast (20.1 Mb)

"The Academic Alphabet" column, University Affairs, 2006-08.

with Matthew Evenden, eds., a special issue on Canada, Environmental History, Oct 2007.

Utopian U: The Founding of the University of Prince Edward Island, 1968-1970 (Charlottetown: University of Prince Edward Island, 2005).

The Institute of Man and Resources: An Environmental Fable (Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 2003).

"The Conservation Movement," Canada: Confederation to Present CD-ROM, Bob Hesketh and Chris Hackett, eds. (Edmonton: Chinook Multimedia, 2003).

Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 2001). 
 ~ available online as part of the OCUL Canadian Public Policy Collection