I am an environmental historian specializing in the history of agriculture and food systems in modern Canada. I am the recipient of the 2008 K.D. Srivastava Prize for excellence in scholarly publishing for Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia and the 2002 Prix Guy et Lilianne Frégault for best article published in the Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française. I am the Program Coordinator for the MA in History Program and a member of the Masters in Environmental Science/Studies program at Nipissing University, an Associate of the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University, and a board member of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History of the Environment). I am also, with R.W. Sandwell and Jennifer Bonnell, academic editor of the McGill-Queen’s Rural, Wildland and Resource Studies Series.

Research

My research interests are in 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.

My current project How Canadians Ate: Developing Food Systems in 20th Century Canada is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant ($74,805). 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?

Selected Publications

Subsistence Under Capitalism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (edited with Dean Bavington and Carly Dokis). Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.

Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. Winner of the K.D. Srivastava Prize for excellence in scholarly publishing.

“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.

“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).

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.