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
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….
Personal Environmental History – St. Malo, Manitoba and the Red River Colony
October 17, 2022 By: Isabelle La Roche
I was born and raised in North Vancouver, British Columbia, between Upper Lonsdale and Lynn Valley. My mother was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario. Her parents both came from England and immigrated to Ontario after the Second World War. I believe they both lived in London, England, and I remember my Grandmother telling me stories of the war as a little girl. Her family owned a little shop, and she would have to hide in their little bomb shelter in the basement during overnight bombings. She told me about the massive rats that would crawl…
My Personal Environmental History
October 16, 2022 By: Rao Fu
My family environmental history involves multiple migrates, which means I have experienced various culture and background shift from my childhood till now. My grandparents were from the Inner Mongolia province, a territory located on the northern part of China. Inner Mongolia has a traditional pastoral economy, the relationship between livestock and pasture began thousands of years ago. Sheep and goats were the most effective ways to maintain sustenance and obtain profitability within the wide prairie of low productivity and harsh orographic climate conditions [1]. Due to substantial land cultivation, Inner Mongolia came to play an increasingly important role in the…