Historical GIS Research in Canada ed. by Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin (review)

It is always exciting for a reviewer to discuss an innovative volume. This is such a case, for here we have a set of multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional studies which combine the research questionings of historical geographers and historians with the field of spatial statistics, digitisation, and geoinformatics, collectively known as Historical GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Data are acquired in digital form (e.g. by fieldwork, by the digitisation of maps, and from government and private records) and can then be analysed in a variety of spatial ways by GIS computer software. GIS is the umbrella term for the set of techniques and methodologies which have been successfully adopted in a very wide range of natural and social sciences over the past few decades. This volume explores its relevance to the academic fields of historical geography and history in Canada, and hence to important branches of the arts and humanities. This is done by an excellent scene-setting, introductory chapter, followed by ten regional/local case studies, and concluded by three examples of pan-Canadian studies. The subjects are extremely varied: race in Victorian Victoria, the Welland Canal and the St Lawrence Seaway, the Don Valley Historical Mapping Project, religion and ethnicity in Toronto, regional environmental history around Peterborough, Ottawa’s urban forest, Mohawk land practices, rebuilding in Montreal, salt marshes on the St Lawrence, and Prince Edward Island land use. The three pan-Canada examples deal with historical aspects of Chinese migration, fuel use, and census HGIS. The breadth of themes covered, from environmental history through cultural history to historical demography, is immediately clear, but geographically the case studies are overly focused on Ontario and Quebec, with no examples from the Prairies and the Canadian North (though the chapter on census HGIS does contain maps of Alberta).

This book is important for illustrating the great strides which HGIS has made in Canada over the past decade. This partly results from a ‘freeing-up’ of data in Canada, which historically has lagged behind the UK and the US because of a lack of a national-level repository, restrictions of copyright, and government and commercial attitudes. The collaborative nature of the case studies, involving historical geographers, historians, environmental scientists, and, not least, map and data librarians, will ensure that the book will be read profitably by senior-level undergraduates and Masters-level students in these disciplines. However, GIS is not a fail-safe, single technique (e.g. like C14 dating), but a family of methodologies with in-built assumptions, potentialities, and limitations. Used unknowingly, it can add little to knowledge. Given this, a chapter on what GIS can and cannot do, and how, seems to be needed here. While several chapters issue words of caution, whether in the text or in footnotes, there is a need for these evaluations to be ‘pulled-together’ somewhere. Apart from this comment, the book succeeds brilliantly in its aims. The production is of the highest quality, with a clear layout of text and illustrations, an unambiguous editing, and the superb quality of the many coloured maps and diagrams.