Nature Place By Claire Campbell Summary

Claire Campbell's book Nature, Place, and Story: Rethinking Historic Sites in Canada is an engaging and thoughtful book that seeks to transform our understanding of Canada's historic sites, and in the process, connect these historic sites and their stories with current environmental issues in Canada. To accomplish this task, Claire Campbell retells the story of five key Canadian historic sites, namely L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the Grand-Pré in Nova-Scotia, Fort William in Ontario, the Forks in Manitoba, and the Bar U Ranch in Alberta. In her retelling of these histories, Campbell often provides insights into the historical forces that led to their creation and later designation as Canadian historic sites, historical forces that frequently relate to national identity, modernity, regional politics, and the status of First Nations peoples in Canada. As a result, Campbell's work not only expands our understanding of Canada's historic sites and their connection to environmental issues but also the history of Canada since 1945.

One the book's key strengths is Campbell's use

of a wide range of sources, ranging from academic periodicals,scholarly books, government agency archives, and data provided by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Her use of the provided data is logical, persuasive, and shows a command of the subject matter, which further bolsters the author's and the book's credibility.
Campbell's arguments are not only well sourced but are also buttressed by sterling academic credentials. Campbell holds a Ph.D. in history, has been honoured with two fellowships, one at the University of Alberta and the other at McGill's Institute for the Study of Canada, and has received a startup grant from Dal's College of Sustainability.
Moreover, Campbell's book is written with relatively little jargon and evocative prose. The book provides photographs of historical documents and excellently chosen quotes that effectively capture the author's main points. Based on the subject matter and the way it is written, it is clear Campbell targeted her book squarely at anyone interested in Canadian environmental history. Although this may limit the scope of her books potential audience, the book touches on many topics beyond environmental history and could be of interest to anyone interested in politics, colonial history, and Canadian regional histories.
Starting with an introductory chapter, Campbell provides a brief overview of the topics she plans to address and the challenges of writing a book on environmental history. She describes her upbringing in Canada and the time she spent as a child sightseeing with her family and exploring some of Canada's most famous historic sites (3). Campbell's love of Canada's vast natural environment and our country's historic sites are the inspiration behind her desire to re-tell this history. Her hope in writing this book on the environmental history of Canada historic sites is to create a 'braided history' that blends natural history, culture, and political choices (4). Fuelled by a passion for the subject, she acknowledges the challenges she will have in attempting to re-frame Canada's natural history and points to the difficulties Canadian historians of all stripes have had in penetrating the public's contentiousness with their work (17). According to many in her field, Canada's recent move towards a more diverse and specialized accounts of history, often focusing on region, class, and gender, has harmed historians ability to connect with the general public (14). These internal debates on region, class, and gender reflect cultural changes Canada has undergone since 1945, particularly with the increasing prominence of the woman's movement and separatist movements in Canada's political sphere. Although she doesn't appear to agree with many of her colleagues on the supposedly problematic role these cultural changes have had on our telling of Canadian history, Campbell's description of her academic field is relatively pessimistic and underscores how difficult her task in writing this book will be.
Neatly organized into five chapters, the book begins in Newfoundland with the L'Anse aux Meadows historic site, which was designated a national historic site in 1968 25). Campbell provides a brief history and explains how L'Anse aux Meadows connection to early Viking settlers provides an exciting backdrop for a relatively sparse and unremarkable piece of land. For Campbell, the site is much more interesting when re-framed as a site of environmental history. She cites Iceberg alley, a body of water where ice flows southwards, as a potential means of engaging tourists in conversation about climate change and its role in melting polar ice caps (37).
Furthermore, Campbell provides strong historical evidence that highlights the role racial attitudes in Canada's recent past have played in the Canadian government's interest in the historic site. For example, Campbell cites a desire among Anglo-Canadian nationalists to link the Norse blood of L'Anse aux Meadows early Viking settlers with the current Canadian population. To make her case, Campbell quotes Robert Grant Haliburton who said :
We are the sons and the heirs of those who have built up a new civilization, and though we have emigrated to the Western world, we have not left our native land behind, for we are still in the North...and the cold north wind that rocked the cradle of our race, still blows through our forest, and breathes the spirit of liberty into our hearts, lends strength and vigour to our limbs...We must be a hardy, a healthy, a virtuous, a daring, and if we are worthy of our ancestors, a dominant race. (27)

Haliburton's quote is a startling one and demonstrates how Anglo-Canadian nationalist beliefs may have fuelled an interest the L'Anse aux Meadows historic site and how it could be used by some to claim a false Canadian racial identity, a natural right to Canadian territory, and to create a national history that excluded indigenous peoples from Canada's national narrative (26).
The place of indigenous peoples in Canada's history is a topic that often emerges in Campbell's book. For example, in chapter five, she notes that the hunting patterns of early ranchers in Alberta's Bar U Ranch led to a rapid drop in the area's buffalo population, which destroyed the grasslands and forced the local First Nations population to purchase food from colonial ranchers or face potential famine (111). These glimpses into Canada's racial past helps illustrate how Canadian racial attitudes have evolved in recent decades, especially in light of the introduction of multiculturalism as a national policy, and also provide examples of how deeply tied early Canada's national identity was to race. For anyone seeking to expand their understanding of Canada's racial history, this book offers surprising insights, fascinating information and powerful examples of Canada's complex racial history.
Campbell's book also connects the debate over Canada's national identity with regional tensions and disputes that have plagued the country since its founding.

For example, the book's discussion of Fort William notes the site's role in reinforcing Ontario's self-image as the largest and most central player in Canada's federation due to the sites historical status as the epicentre of Canada's fur trade and as the “buckle” of Canada's east and west (77). Moreover, the book notes fear of American cultural encroachment and commercial competition from similar American historical sites were also motivating factors in the government's decision to reconstruct Fort William and designate it a national historical site. The theme of Canada's multicultural and often fractious national identity surfaces often in Campbell's book, and the countries dilemma is perfectly captured in the following

passage:
A history in this kind of landscape had given us a sense of territory and character - two essential elements of nationhood, and priceless for a country that, in the 1970s, was as anxious as it would ever be over disunity between east and west, English and French, on the one hand, and its ability to exist as the northern part of North America, as not-American, on the other (86).

In a later chapter related to the Forks historic site in Manitoba, Campbell once touches upon Canada's struggle with identity and regionalism once again when she quotes a federal report from 1982 on cultural resources which states: “Interests, aspirations and sensitivities differ widely from region to