Exercise #2: Family Environmental History
Instructions
For Exercise #2, you will bring the environmental concepts home by looking at your own and your family environmental history.
Our lives and present environments are products of history. Our parents and grandparents grew up in very different environments from those of today. In our study of environmental history, it is helpful to think about our families’ past environments and their meaning for us today.
- Write an informal essay, between 700 and 1100 words, reflecting on your personal environmental history going back to your grandparents, parents, and your own generation. See the Exercise 2 Samples for a guide to this exercise.
- In formulating your response, consider the environments in which they and you have lived. Where were they located? What natural resources sustained your families and their communities? To what extent were those environments “natural” or human-made, native, or exotic (that is, transformed by European or other non-native species)? How have your families helped to transform their environments? Does your own ethnic and class heritage or gender play a role in the way you and your family have related to and valued the environment? How did the relationships your grandparents and parents had with their environments differ from the ones you have had in the past and wish to have in the future?
- Post your response by clicking ‘Add Submission’ below.
- 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
Exercise #2 Family Environmental History
February 6, 2023 By: Nahian Adiba
Bangladesh, my country, is very rich in family traditions, culture, relationships, and bonding. We tend to have a very informal and strong bond among all our family members and relatives. My grandparents, the oldest generation, were born in small-town villages. Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan at the time. Prior to 1971, the overall state of Bangladesh was very different from what it is today. The whole country was under immense pressure and deprivation from the Pakistani government. Even though it was one of Pakistan’s fastest-growing regions at the time, there weren’t many resources available from the government. Agriculture has…
Family Environmental History
January 17, 2023 By: Siyuan Ge
In my family’s history, each generation starting from my grandparents has become increasingly distant from land and farming. This shift has paralleled China’s economic development and urbanization. My grandparents grew up in rural villages in Northern China and experienced the Great Chinese Famine. They valued their land and worked hard to preserve it. However, as China’s economy grew and more people moved to cities, my parents and I had less connection to farming and the land. Our move to Canada represents a further disconnection from our agricultural roots. All of my grandparents were born in the late 1940s and early…
Family Environmental History
January 5, 2023 By: Allegra Solecki
My two sets of grandparents came from very different backgrounds, but they were all born in Canada and have similar histories. We have to go as far back as my great grandparents and even great great grandparents to talk about immigration to Canada. However, for the purpose of this essay, I will only go as far back as my grandparents. On my father’s side, my grandpa Dave and grandma Nita are still alive. Dave was born to a Ukrainian family (immigration happened generations ago) in an area near Squamish, BC. He spent most of his childhood in and around…
Scott Family Environmental History – one perspective
December 29, 2022 By: Richard Scott
My grandfather emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland to Dunedin, New Zealand before the First World War. He was in the Merchant Navy and thought of better living in the southern hemisphere. His paths were laden with water – his work, his life and its directions, and future were all environmentally dependant on the world’s oceans. His life nearly ended on the Gallipoli coast in Turkey in WWI. Again, water was involved, northern Aegean Sea, where Churchill’s mistaken invasion of Turkey was a catastrophic event that led to huge loss of life. (Gallipoli to Australians and New Zealanders is the Vimy Ridge…
Ross/Duncan Family History
December 10, 2022 By: Ellen Ross T00611006 History of the Environment
I had two sets of grandparents the Duncan’s and the Cousens’s. These two families were very different in every perspective. The Duncan’s originated from Oxbow Saskatchewan. Grandfather Duncan was Clifton Edward Duncan and my grandmother was Annie Mildred Holland. Oxbow, Saskatchewan is a town in the southeast part of the province. It is located on the Canadian Pacific Railway and on Provincial Highway 18 and is near the North Dakota US border. Diverse immigrants (English, Irish, and Scottish) came to Canada and many came to Oxbow as its first settlers in 1882 my great grandparents homesteaded in the area….