Family Environmental History
February 10, 2022 By: Benjamin Carson
For this paper I will focus on my grandfather on my mom’s side as he left behind an autobiography. His early childhood was spent in Mossbank, Saskatchewan. His time there can be traced to when the region was opened to homesteaders in 1907 during the latter part of the Laurier boom.[1] By then the area had been cleared out of both First Nations and buffalo. The place names that greeted them were a testament of the ecological impact that had already occurred. For instance, Old Wives Lake owes its name to the Old Wives Massacre, when a Blackfoot tribe killed several Cree women as payback for hunting buffalo in their territory.[2] The lake was temporarily renamed Johnstone Lake in commemoration of Frederick Johnstone, a buffalo trophy hunter.[3]
The location of the town was chosen by the Canadian National Railway. My grandpa wrote that he remembers the town people gathering as they anticipated the arrival of the train.[4] The economy was dependent on the railway and Mossbank’s three grain elevators and lumber mill were strategically located to service it.[5] My grandfather and his father were not directly involved in agriculture (e.g., my great-grandfather was a principal and not a farmer). That said, I believe they still engaged directly with, and altered their environment. As I recall, my grandfather had somewhat of an obsession with us kids learning how to use the axe. Perhaps this was his way of passing down a tradition that he learned himself out of necessity.
My grandfather, maybe because he was a historian, wrote about Palliser’s triangle in his autobiography. He writes, “in a report to the British government in 1863 [Captain John] Palliser stated that a triangular portion of the southern parries was a northern extension of the arid, central desert of the United States.”[6] Palliser furthered that it “can never be expected to become occupied by settlers.”[7] Reflecting on his own experience, my grandpa declared that “Palliser was right.”[8] The drought that started in 1929 would persist and by 1931 the wind lifted the topsoil into clouds of dust.[9] Promises of a return to normalcy became ever more far fetched as grasshoppers, hail, and frost devastated crops.[10] While the area was prone to drought, as was evident by Palliser’s assessment, human activities such as clearing the land of trees and monoculture food production presumably would have made it worse. Saskatchewan would go bankrupt. As the paycheques stopped coming in, my family became what Ted Steinberg referrers to as a “dust bowl refugees.”[11]
My grandfather continued to live in rural settings until going to school and settling down in Toronto after my mom was born. His transition to urbanity followed the status quo; as modernity hummed along, Canadians became increasingly urbanized. According to environmental historian Sean Kheraj, the move from organic energy (e.g., animals, wood) to mineral energy (e.g., oil, coil) fundamentally transformed the lives of everyday Canadians and their relationship to nature.[12] Energy sources could then be centralized and piped or transported in. This development was “the lynchpin for a high energy fossil fuel society.”[13] As such, my mom did not have a direct relationship with the natural environment growing up. With mineral energy transported in, they never had to cut down trees for heating or cooking purposes. Food followed a similar pattern, and the increasing commodification of products was no doubt a conceptual barrier between food and where it came from (e.g., cereal advertisements). Similarly, the clothes she wore were more likely to be derived from petroleum products than from animals. This pattern would continue as she grew older and raised a family of her own.
My parents decided to raise their family in suburban Edmonton, as it was closer to my dad’s side of the family and space was plentiful. Every year we would move further and further away from the core of the city and into bigger lots. Eventually we found ourselves at the very edge of the city, with a forest behind us. Our dog fought coyotes there. We saw this conflict through an anthropocentric lens, somehow believing that the coyotes and bats were intruding into our space rather than vice versa. Thinking about it now, the living arrangement was ironic. We were so close to nature, yet we never harnessed resources from it directly or knew anyone who did. Automobiles were a necessity. Our family had two of them—three if you include the go-cart. As we drove everywhere and passed our time watching the aptly named Oilers, we were completely oblivious to the impact that our fossil fuel-centric lifestyle was having on the environment.
This lifestyle though was also fueled by our social status. Between my father’s career in medicine and our European ancestry, we were typical inhabitants of a community that had a carbon footprint which I can only assume was well beyond the Canadian average. However, after my father’s death we downsized substantially and moved into Toronto’s inner core. This was more about realigning with my mom’s side of the family than tied to environmental concerns, however. But as climate change became more of a talking point, it was clear that our seemingly distant relationship with nature was actually better for it than our previous years in suburbia (e.g., we used public transportation).
The kind of relationship I wish to have with my environment is one that speaks to my family history in Saskatchewan and Toronto. Living in Nelson, BC, I find myself in a somewhat dense living arrangement which allows for minimal car use. Nelson did not really go through the postwar spawl phase, as its geography wouldn’t allow it. It is the best of both worlds: urban living in a rural environment. These days, I try to support local farmers as best as I can. In this regard I am much more attuned to where my food comes than when I or my mom was growing up. While my grandpa had a better idea, the difference is that now it is a conscious decision and is no doubt fostered by societal concerns (e.g., reduced carbon footprint of the hundred-mile diet). That said, I am only beginning to become aware of the ecological impact that invasive species has on the area. If we are not careful with the plants we are growing and how we grow them, we too could become ecological refugees.
[1] John Saywell, Autobiography: A Chronicle of My Public Life, (Toronto: self-pub, 2010), 2.
[2] Peters Hammerson, “The Legend of Old Wives Lake,” Mysteries of Canada, March 10, 2021. https://mysteriesofcanada.com/saskatchewan/the-legend-of-old-wives-lake/.
[3] Marilyn Lewry, “Old Wives Lake,” The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan, accessed February 9, 2021, https://esask.uregina.ca/entry/old_wives_lake.jsp.
[4] Saywell, “Autobiography,” 3.
[5] Ibid., 1-3.
[6] Ibid., 1-2.
[7] Ibid., 2.
[8] Ibid., 5.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ted Steinberg, “Consuming Nature” in Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History 4th ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 167.
[12] Sean Kheraj, “What Impact do Oil Pipelines Have,” Thompson Rivers University, Vide File, https://barabus.tru.ca/history1221/hist1221_sk_u4_03.html.
[13] Ibid.