By Joshua MacFadyen and Nolan Kressin*, University of Prince Edward Island

For the full lesson on the historical GIS methods and tools described in this post, see the new tutorial in the Geospatial Historian Methods of Visualizing Temporal Data, by Nolan Kressin and Joshua MacFadyen.

The movement of commodities has been an important study within Canadian scholarship since Harold Innis wrote The Fur Trade in Canada (1930), but many forget that in his earlier thesis on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Innis also focused on the goods that these lines carried to market each year. By examining the records of the CPR, Innis painstakingly summarized the freight capacity and the market conditions that shaped this chapter in Canadian environmental history. Innis was well-known as a “dirt” researcher, digging into archival collections and often cutting-and-pasting his notes across manuscripts (literally, with scissors) to organize the enormous amounts of information he collected. As historians turn to more focused studies of individual commodities, we can parse large historical datasets with tools beyond scissors and glue. In this piece we discuss new ways to take some of the same historical railway data and focus on resources like firewood and lumber in their natural environments. In theory, we could even use the railway locations to focus on forest types (softwood) or even species. Perhaps if he had these digital tools, Innis’s first book after the CPR study might have been called the “Fir Trade in Canada.”

“There is no crop on your farm which can so ill bear delay at this time as your turnips, and unless you can afford to throw away the labour you have expended, and to forgo the benefit of a good supply of turnips for your stock, do this when it should be done, and do it well. If you are shorthanded, get every man woman and child who can lift a hoe, or pull a weed, go to work in earnest, and the job will soon be accomplished; and what is more your children will become expert at turnip culture on which all successful farming in this island will before long depend: and remember that a good turnip hoer never takes his eyes from the ground until called to dinner; recollect this yourselves, and impress it on the children, and there will be no stopping to talk, nor ceasing work to gaze at every passerby, by which so much time is often lost.“

Source: James Horsefield Peters, Hints to the Farmers of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown: JJ Pippy, 1851), p32.

The Guardian Charlottetown. May 5th, 1951.

“During the past ten years the production of ranch mink in the United States and Canada has rapidly increased. Over four times as many mink are now raised on Canadian and American fur farms as ten years ago. From 1940-1945 the average yearly production in the United States and Canada was 525,000 and the estimated 1950 production is close to 2,000,000 in the United States and 350,000 or more in Canada. About ten years ago the first mutation mink made their appearance but in very small quantities, Standards being the vast majority of the pelts to reach the auction companies. Today the situation is different as more mutations were produced last season than the standard dark mink type. A number of these different colors have been popular with the trade and profitable to the breeders but some have not been a paying investment and have been bred at a loss.” 

Source