24- 26 Sept, 2009: How have rivers been put to work? What technologies have transformed their flow regimes? In what ways do rivers serve as the sanitary systems of cities? These are some of the questions which frame and upcoming conference on the comparative industrialization of rivers organized by Stephane Castonguay and supported by the water history project and a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada . The conference addresses particular cases in North America and Europe and will build a broad comparative perspective. Bringing together invited participants from North America and Europe, the conference will travel to meeting sites and field locations in Montreal, Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan as well as places in-between.
Category Archives: water history
Welcome to the Canadian Water History blog
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Spuzzum Creek, flowing in the Fraser River
Can water have a history? Is there such a thing as Canadian water?
This blog aims to present occasional posts on how people have interacted with the hydrological world over time. Water problems have become some of the most pressing environmental issues of our times. But why? What historical conditions have produced water problems? The reasons cannot be deduced from current events. They need to be examined with the benefit of historical perspective.
Water also knows no country, despite the claims of nation-states and the precedents of international law. Water falls and flows, evaporates and seeps, and despite our best efforts we can’t contain it. But since most of my work centers on Canada, I will give the blog a national focus, while keeping an eye to international scholarship and events. Some of the most interesting topics in Canadian water history, after all, have occurred at the country’s borders. Canadian water history makes little sense outside a wider, international context.