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
Latest Posts
Local Environmental History – Salmon Arm
February 28, 2022 By: Elizabeth Beattie
I live just up the hill from the heart of Salmon Arm, the largest town in the Shuswap are of British Columbia, Canada. Unfortunately, my neighbourhood up the hill, that is shown in the picture attached, was all forested mountain throughout the early history before and for a long time after it was settled by Europeans; therefore, I will focus on the town of Salmon Arm. The First Nations Secwepemc people habited the entire Shuswap area first though before European settlers arrived; they hunted and fished this area through the bodies of waters and forests (1). As we have seen…
Exercise #1
February 27, 2022 By: TAORUI LIU
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…
Local Environmental History
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…
Nelson, BC
February 10, 2022 By: Benjamin Carson
**This photo is not my house but I chose it because highlights the sort of dense living arrangements that are common. This is a duplex, with two additional legal suites. People often live on top of each other here and new construction tailors to this. As similar duplexes continue to be built the population is rising on my street.** I live in the Rosemont neighbourhood in Nelson, BC, on a new street called Perrier Lane. It is tucked behind Selkirk College’s Silverking campus with no through road between the highway and the rest of the neighbourhood. The first houses on…
Local Environmental History
February 7, 2022 By: Yimeng Chen
I live in Kerrisdale in Vancouver, British Columbia. My neighborhood is on the west side of Vancouver and consists mainly of old bungalows and newer houses, various condo apartments, and low and mid-range rentals. Kerrisdale’s population comprises mainly migrant Asians and native and indigenous Caucasian Canadians. West 41st Avenue has a shopping district that is a significant social sector of this region. The southwestern part of Kerrisdale rests on a floodplain of the Fraser River and is characterized by a rural feel with many horse stables, agricultural farms, and ranches. Majury identifies that the first inhabitants of the city of…