Biography
Positions
Education
Research Interests:
Canadian food systems in the early to mid-20th century; state management of the Canadian food economy during the Second World War; Canadian environmental history; agricultural history; the history of capitalism; British Columbia; Nova Scotia
Current & Future Research:
How Canadians Ate: Developing Food Systems in 20th Century Canada (SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2025-27 ($74,805)). Co-applicant: Dr. Jodey Nurse, McGill University.
This project asks: how did Canadians get their food following the rise of industrial capitalism in the 19th century, and how did Canadians’ relationship to food and land change as the country transitioned to a market-based food system?
Publications
Canadians and Their Natural Environment: Survival from 20,000 Years Ago to the Present. Oxford University Press, 2021.
“Subsistence Production and Commodity Production in the British Imperial Food System: the Case of Nova Scotia Apples,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 54 (111) (2021), 335-358.
Subsistence Under Capitalism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (edited with Dean Bavington and Carly Dokis). McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.
“John Bull and Sons: The Empire Marketing Board and the Creation of an Imperial Food System,” in Franca Iacovetta, Valerie Korinek, and Marlene Epp, eds., Edible Histories: Towards a Canadian Food History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012).
Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia. UBC Press, 2007.
Other Publications
Review of Ronald Rudin, Against the Tides: Reshaping Landscape and Community in Canada’s Maritime Marshlands (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021). Environmental History. Forthcoming.
Expert Witness Report before the Specific Claims Tribunal, 2021.
Review of Cole Harris, A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020. Canadian Historical Review, 102 (4) (2021), 651-2.
“Introduced: An Interview with Ruth Sandwell,” Network in Canadian History & Environment, April 14, 2020 (as interviewer and editor), online.
“Defeating Pipelines Through Play,” Network in Canadian History & Environment, January 9, 2020, online.
Review of Clay Chattaway and Warren Elofson, Rocking P Ranch and the Second Cattle Frontier in Western Canada (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2019), Histoire Sociale/Social History 109(53) (2020), 686-87.
“There’s Nothing Like the Outdoor Shows,” Network in Canadian History & Environment, Nov 14, 2019, online.
“Of Tailing Ponds and Edible Forests, or, Going Out in the Field in Northern Ontario,” Network in Canadian History & Environment, April 19, 2019, online.