Exercise #1: Local Environmental History
Instructions
For Exercise #1, you will bring environmental concepts home by looking at your neighbourhood’s environmental history.
- Using the submission form, post a photo of your area (Google Street View if you do not want to show your home) on this interactive map and explain the ecological history of this space, as per this example.
- Write a 700 to 1100 word of the ecological history of this physical environment, including where applicable: pre-contact use and settlement; wildlife past and present; early settlement and resource extraction; invasive species; urban development; stewardship actions (urban stormwater retention systems; community gardens; composting facilities).
- You must show where you found your information, either through footnote citations or with links embedded in the text, or a combination of both.
- The writing can be informal, as per the Exercise 1 Sample (you may even use first person, which definitely will not fly with your historiography and major essay projects!) but correct spelling and grammar are expected.
- In most cases, given the readily available information online, this exercise need not take more than 6–8 hours to complete. It is meant to help you think historically about your environment—to read it through an ecological lens. If you live in a rural area or small town, you may think that there is less to say than what you read in the sample based on a Vancouver neighbourhood, but this is not the case. The environmental history will be very different, and you might focus far more on, say, the settlement period of the late nineteenth century, or the implications of the introduction of cattle or irrigation and less on events of the 1960s and 70s.
- Please note, you should write and edit your submission in a separate file then copy and paste it into the submission box. Once submitted to the HIST 3991 trubox site, you will not be able to edit your post.
Are you a student of HIST 3991? Click here to add a submission to this assignment.
Submissions
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Maillardville, Coquitlam BC
April 11, 2022 By: Charlotte Knudsen
I live in Maillardville in Coquitlam which is in Vancouver, British Columbia. I feel that it is important to acknowledge that the original and earliest known residents of this area were the Coast Salish people and the beginnings of European settlement began sometime during the 1860’s [3]. The city of Coquitlam recognizes that the land was originally the territory of the Kwikwetlem First Nations. The name refers to a type of salmon that was once abundant in the rivers and there is evidence to prove that the Kwikwetlem First Nations lived here for four thousand years at a minimum. People…
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March 24, 2022 By: Christopher Anyadubalu
I live in the ancestral land (a reserve) belonging to the First Nations Indigenous People – York Landing, Northern Manitoba. The traditional language found here is Cree Language. They are widely known as the Cree Indigenous people and refer themselves as such. My local environment is relatively new, and it replaced a small island of bushes and trees surrounded by a big lake. According to Wikipedia, it is located along the Eastern bank of the Nelson River, roughly halfway between Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay. Also, it is estimated to be 116 kilometers away from Thompson, Manitoba.[1] The community was…
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February 28, 2022 By: Elizabeth Beattie
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Exercise #1
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Vancouver’s settlement history dates back to the late 1400s. The first people to discover the area were the Spanish, who were passing by as they cruised to explore Canada’s west coast. The Spaniards had claimed the west coast region based on the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. It is for this reason that the city still has some Spanish street names such as Cordova, Cardero, Valdez, and Narvaez. However, it was in the year 1792 that the British explorer Captain George Vancouver visited the city, and it began its route to development. The captain explored the inner harbor gave British…
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February 26, 2022 By: Zhuorui Ye
My present area of residence is Kerrisdale, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Kerrisdale is primarily a residential area with old bungalows and newer houses, consisting of high-rise buildings and condos for both residence and business. The primary residents are of Caucasian and Asian communities. The residential streets in Kerrisdale are lined with sweeping grand old trees.[1] Majority of the people in the residential area visit the Kerrisdale village for shopping. Such a shipping village is touted as the first to introduce specially designed street furniture and beautify its main shopping streets.[2] Regarding the physical location of my area of…