Kheraj, Sean. “Episode 22: A Century of Parks Canada.” Nature’s Past: Canadian Environmental History Podcast, May 16, 2011. MP3, 33:16. http://niche-canada.org/2011/05/16/natures-past-episode-22-a-century-of-parks-canada/.
On May 19, 2011, Parks Canada celebrated its 100th anniversary, commemorating its founding in 1911 as the world’s first national parks service. Preceding the creation of the National Park Service in the United States by more than five years, the federal government of Canada created a new unit within the Department of the Interior, known as the Dominion Parks Branch, to oversee and administer the country’s forest reserves and a nascent assemblage of western national parks. Over the course of the next century this government agency would, as Canadian historian Claire Campbell writes, “convince Canadians that in their national parks resided the true wealth of a kingdom.” In recognition of this occasion, the Network in Canadian History and Environment sponsored the publication of a new edited collection called A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011 that explores episodes of Canada’s national parks history from coast to coast. Listeners can download a digital copy from the book’s website.
The book features the work of leading environmental history researchers who met to circulate papers covering a range of topics in Canadian national parks history, including wildlife management, archaeology, Aboriginal peoples and parks policy, population displacement, auto-tourism, and hunting. On this episode of the podcast the editor of A Century of Parks Canada, Claire Campbell, and two of the contributing authors, George Colpitts and Gwynn Langemann speak. (From Nature’s Past)
A Century of Parks Canada (30.46 MB)
Music credits: “Potato” by The Spark that Thought, “A Driving Rain” by The Spark that Thought, “Introspection” by Fireproof_Babies
Nature’s Past podcasts are posted on a monthly basis on the website of the Network in Canadian History & Environment / Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l’environnement (NiCHE). The podcasts contain discussion about the environmental history community and research in Canada. They are hosted by Sean Kheraj, an assistant professor in the Department of History at York University in Toronto, Canada.
