Land and Sea: Environmental History in Atlantic Canada ed. by Claire Campbell, Robert Summerby-Murray (review)

Land and Sea: Environmental History in Atlantic Canada is a multidisciplinary collection of essays on the knowledge and use of nature, conservation and environmental management, and sustainability and resilience. It includes work by established and new scholars and the foci of its articles reflects what contributor John Luedee, following Arthur McEvoy, refers to as the “‘ecological character’ of the human experience.” (282) Economy, ecology, and culture are interdependent “dynamic historical forces” and are experienced thus in the life of individuals, as well as at larger levels. Most of the contributors to Land and Sea live and work in the region; their work reflects their relationships to the “immense multi-generational investment that survives in the places around us.” (5) Land and Sea reflects trends in environmental history and Atlantic Canadian history, including a growing interest in understanding the tensions between diverse and changing perspectives held by people in the same place across time and in a shift away from declensionist portrayals that highlight human degradation of nature and regional dependency. Analyses of policy implications in the concluding paragraphs of many of the articles demonstrate this shift in approach. Maps, photographs, and illustrations ground the articles in place, and provide visual stimulation that animates the text.

The book is divided into three sections. The first, entitled “Understanding the Natural World,” consists of four essays focused on identifying and making use of diverse aspects of nature, and economic, political, and cultural struggles for power over resource development. They include Heather Macleod ’s, “Responding to the Land: Experiencing Nature in Nova Scotia, 1607–1900,” Allan Dwyer’s “Liminality and Change in an Atlantic Borderland: Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland in the 18th century,” “Colonizing Nature: Titus Smith Jr. and the Making of Nova Scotia, 1800–1850,” by Richard H. Field, and Ed Macdonald’s, “A Landscape … with Figures: Tourism and Environment on Prince Edward Island.”

The second section, “Experiments in Conser vation and Environmental Management” focuses on tensions between ecological and economic motivations for the conservation of species and landscapes, the challenges conservation measures can pose to working peoples’ ways of life, and changing regional attitudes towards science and ecological relationships. The articles include John Luedee’s “‘Bare Rocks instead of Fish’: Local Fishers Respond to Resource depletion in the Bay Bulls Inshore Fishery, 1855–1863,” Josh MacFadyen’s “Drawing Lines in the Ice: Regulating Mussel Mud Digging in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence,” Bill Parenteau’s “‘Making Room for Economy, Efficiency and Conser vation’: Progressive Forest Conservation in New Brunswick 1900– 1918,” and Mark McLaughlin’s “Green Shoots: Aerial Insecticide Spraying and the Growth of Environmental Consciousness in New Brunswick, 1952–1973.”

“Historical Sustainability: Community Response and Resilience,” the third section of the book, is written by a multi-disciplinary panel of contributors. “Sustainability” is broadly conceptualized and refers to the perpetuation of human and ecological communities through economic, collaborative, and environmental measures and processes. “Community” encompasses colonial, regional, local, geographical, political, ecological, and corporate definitions. The contributions include Alan MacEachern’s “‘Popular by Our Misery’: The International Response to the 1825 Miramichi Fire,” David Duke and Allan Macdonald’s “Bad Blows and Big Storms: Severe Weather and Community Response in the Annapolis Valley,” Jacqueline Holmes and Justin Hollander’s “Regenerating Devastated Landscapes in Moncton, New Brunswick, and Sydney, Nova Scotia,” and “Using Tree Ring Analysis: The Environmental History of Eastern White Cedar in Nova Scotia,” by tree ring scientists Lara Campbell and Colin Laroque.

Historical geographer, Graeme Wynn’s “Reflections on the Environmental History of Atlantic Canada,” situates the work of the other contributors within a brief regional history highlighting changing dynamics between humans and their environments over time. He provides “perspective on the challenge of shaping sustainable futures,” as well as on the attitudes of settlers and their descendants who took up this challenge using the resources and knowledge available to them in their own lifetimes. (236) Thus, Wynn argues there was “a strong and widespread commitment...