Gulf Ecologies 2024 Abstracts and Links
Return to The 2024 Gulf Ecologies Meeting page.
| Margaret Augustine and Dr. Lauren Beck |
| L’nu Tacos, a Recipe from Mitji-Let’s Eat!: Mi’kmaq Recipes from Sikniktuk (Nimbus Publishing, 2024) |
| Dr. Lauren Beck and Natasha Simon |
| Place Stories and Identity in the Gulf |
| Dr. Jack Bouchard |
| Creating ‘The Gulf’: European mental geographies and the early fishery, 1505-1650 Abstract: From what date can historians speak of a Gulf of Saint Lawrence? The body of water is clearly there on our maps and photos, but five centuries ago had to be created and adopted by European colonizers. Between 1505 and 1600 European fishworkers established a permanent presence in the northwest Atlantic. This was a period of sustained contact and exchange with Indigenous communities, who experienced their own history of migration, exchange, and adaptation to new colonial conditions. Yet during this formative period, European and Indigenous thinking about maritime and coastal spaces was markedly different from later generations, and challenges our contemporary understanding of the Gulf of St. Lawrence as a distinct and coherent space. This essay will reconstruct the evolution of European elite spatial thinking and how it led to the creation of “The Gulf” only at the end of the sixteenth century. It will also argue that the Gulf of Saint Lawrence was not used by, or important two, the two communities on the ground in the northwest Atlantic: European fishworkers and Algonkian-speaking First Nations. All of this suggests that historians must be creative and careful in how they describe space in the northwest Atlantic, and to emphasize the artificial, even accidental, nature of the geographic concept we call the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. |
| Dr. Laurie Brinklow |
| Who’s Your Mother? Women making art on Prince Edward Island |
| Dr. Claire Campbell |
| Urban Environmental History in the Gulf (and Atlantic Canada) Abstract: This presentation will consist of an update on a forthcoming monograph on urban environmental history in Atlantic Canada, particularly as it concerns the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For a summary of the chapter on Charlottetown see C. Campbell (2022), “Hardened water: The remaking of a coastal city,” Coastal Studies & Society https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26349817221128407. For a related contribution to coastal studies from an Island perspective see C. Campbell (2020), “Shore/lines: Mapping Coastlines on Isle Saint-Jean.” The Otter ~ la loutre, NiCHE https://niche-canada.org/2020/08/17/shore-lines-mapping-coastlines-on-isle-saint-jean/ |
| Dr. Lisa Chilton |
| The colonial state and the management of immigrants in nineteenth-century New Brunswick |
| Jesse Coady |
| ‘Inhabitants,’ ‘Indians,’ and Others ‘Not of This Government’: The Social History of a Late-Eighteenth-Century Fishing Ordinance in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence |
| Charles Ferris |
| From Gulf Fishery Patrols to Atlantic Naval Convoys: Adapting to the Geopolitics of War Abstract: At first glance, the First World War simply maintained Canada’s status, continuing its centralization and negotiation with the imperial powers of the U.S and the U.K. However, a closer inspection reveals that the great Gulf port of Montreal played a central role in advancing Canadian interests at the conclusion of the war. As overseas shipping to Europe exploded, the Gulf of St. Lawrence found itself in the centre of Canada’s contribution to military victory on the western Front. While the Canadian economy had previously favoured the west, centring its economy around railway and immigration, it was forced to balance these interests with a new prioritization of port and shipping infrastructure. The resulting Naval Service’s Overseas Transport organization made a significant contribution to the Allied victory. Yet it was not only the successful shipping of the Overseas Transport that strengthened the Gulf’s international significance. To protect the Transport, the Gulf Fisheries Patrol was transformed into the Royal Canadian Navy’s Gulf of St. Lawrence Patrol. This metamorphosis provided Canada with a measure of naval autonomy in the context of Britain’s overwhelming naval dominance. Such an exceptional infrastructural wartime contribution, together with Canada’s remarkable Canadian Expeditionary Force investment, made Canada a major player in the First World War. This in turn granted Canada an authoritative voice at subsequent international negotiations, from the fisheries negotiations to the 1917 Imperial War Conferences, the 1919 Peace Conference, and beyond—ultimately playing a crucial role in its negotiation of independence. |
| Dr. Matthew Hatvany |
| Overcoming Peripherality on Anticosti Island: Selling Wilderness as a Sporting Paradise |
| Dr. Glenn Iceton |
| The Bay on the Gulf: The HBC, Settler Colonialism, and Extractivism on the Gulf of St. Lawrence Abstract: Several years after the 1821 merger of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC), the operations of the King’s Posts passed to the HBC. Under the HBC, the posts became nodes of both extractivism and settler colonialism. As the HBC acquired leases for the administration of King’s Posts, they were granted exclusive trading, hunting, and fishing rights. Additionally, by 1842, HBC could grant tracts of land within the King’s Posts for the purposes of settlement and agricultural pursuits. Even as the HBC was granted certain rights, other colonial endeavours challenged their operations. The HBC had lost lands as a result of granting of timber leases. Additionally, settlers began participating in the fur trade with Indigenous peoples, cutting into the HBC’s profit margins. Within this context, the HBC occupied a unique position with respect to extractivism and settler colonialism. While the HBC promoted and participated in the extraction of natural resources as well as the promotion of settlement within their King’s Posts, the HBC’s operations and profitability was threatened by timber extraction and the arrival of settlers who then turned to the fur trade. Focusing on the Gulf of St. Lawrence region, my paper will examine the HBC’s ambivalent role in the promotion and pursuit of settler colonialism and extractivism. Additionally, I will examine the tensions between extractivism and settler colonialism and how this informed interactions between the HBC and Indigenous peoples. |
| Daria Kass & Bowei Liu |
| Land Use changes in Prince Edward Island watersheds from 1960 to 2020 Abstract: Land use change in Prince Edward Island has a broad historical context influenced by various factors such as settlement expansion, economic growth, and environmental constraints. The transformation began with the expansion of Acadian settlers in the 18th century, which transformed coastal land use for agricultural purposes. In the period following World War II, the island’s agriculture underwent significant shifts due to industrialization, mechanization, and changes in economic policies. As agriculture highly relies on a stable freshwater supply, this transition put new pressures on the island’s groundwater resources. To comprehensively track alterations, we introduce the Socio-Ecological Metabolism (SEM) Profile method, examining the agroecosystem at the watershed scale. As historians like Brian Donahue demonstrated in The Great Meadow (2004) Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) allow us to examine a single system over the long run. By integrating the SEM Profile method with HGIS, the approaches will reveal patterns in agricultural land use and freshwater resource management practices across space and time. Analyzing SEM profiles at the watershed scale presents a new and innovative approach to studying land use and water change. Unlike traditional approaches that consider only political boundaries, the watershed scale considers socio-ecological systems. The historical information produced by SEM profiles demonstrates possible trade-offs to stakeholders as they work toward a more sustainable agriculture. |
| Dr. Katherine Knight |
| The Sneakboat of Merigomish Abstract: A century-old sneak boat from the collection of Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, artifact #M85.63.1, takes center stage in this interdisciplinary, creative project of discovery and interpretation. What can this unique artifact tell us? Seeking a multifaceted portrait of this singular object—a boat designed for hunting waterfowl—a group of disparate experts and laypeople gather to exchange points of view. Collectively they create a detailed and broad story of this artifact. Where does this story take us? |
| Dr. Helen Kristmanson and Erin Montgomery |
| Epekwitnewaq Mi’kmaq Archaeology on Prince Edward Island Abstract: As the indigenous people of Epekwitk, or Prince Edward Island, the Epekwitnewaq Mi’kmaq have an inherent interest in the island’s archaeological record. For decades they have initiated or participated in local archaeological activities and provided support to various archaeological projects. With the recent establishment of an archaeology division in L’nuey, the Mi’kmaw rights initiative under the Epekwitk Assembly of Councils, the Epekwitnewaq Mi’kmaq have considerably strengthened their archaeological capacity. This development is part of a broader journey and represents decades of hard work and commitment by the Mi’kmaq Epekwitnewaq Kapmntemuow (Mi’kmaw Nation Government of PEI), the Mi’kmaq Confederacy of PEI, and most recently, L’nuey. This brief presentation introduces our new archaeology division and shows how the Epekwitnewaq Mi’kmaq are, through formal mechanisms with the federal and provincial governments, taking an incremental and cooperative approach to the management of their archaeological affairs and the development of an archaeological research program. |
| Dr. Nicholas Landry |
| Occuper les côtes du Golf : établissements acadiens de la Post-Déportation, 1760-1830 Abstract: This presentation limits itself to the Acadian Migration and Establishment phenomenon around the Gulf from about 1760 to 1830. But not all the Acadians are included, because our basic criteria are to be living off the Ocean to an important extent. The establishment of the Acadians around the Gulf is more complex than what our traditional Historiography has though us so far. We must not forget that not all the Acadians became British Subject during that era. Those who chose Miquelon Island became French Subject and those few living on the Southwest Coast of Newfoundland, were not under formal colonial control before 1850. This paper aimed at explaining how Acadians were going through this reestablishment process according to at least two different patterns. Those objectives also try to follow up on two of the main themes of the Gulf Project which are similarities and differences. The Acadians pursuing property between 1760 and 1830 were experiencing similarities and differences in this process. During the first phase (1760-84), Acadians are submitted to influent and rich British Landowners in South-East NB, PEI and on the Magdelaine Islands. Some of them are benefiting from special permissions to occupied and work some land. In those cases, they usually had an agreement with the owners. Some were entering into some sort of business partnership or became hired labor. But Acadians taking those paths had to take the plea Oath of Alligence to the British Crown. That is what my own ancestor Alexis Landry did, to do business with British Merchants from Nipisiguit and Lower Canada. Contraintes au processus d’établissement acadien autour du Golfe. Examples include St-John Island (changing to PEI), DesBarres on both side of the Isthmus of Chignectou, the North Cost of the Chaleur Bay (Murray wished to reserve lands for British Settlers), the Magdalen Islands, and Miquelon Island (a French possession from which Acadians were displace three times). During the second phase (1784-1815), getting access to property became much more formal and manage by Colonial Authorities. It started with group land concessions in certain regions like Caraquet and Chéticamp. S’établir en territoire libre d’accès? Examples include Cape Breton, the North-East Cost of NB, and the West Coast of Newfoundland (no administrative presence except during the fishing season by British Navy ships). That approach allowed us to identify a network of relationships, sharing and exchanges. Let’s limit ourselves to two examples: Acadians from both sides of the Bay of Chaleur meet regularly and intermarried, as well as those from Cap-Breton with Miquelon. From PEI, a certain number of Acadians move to Magdalen Islands or Miquelon. The situation or status of Miquelon gives the Acadians the option to be French Subjects and in a certain way, become estranged to their relatives from the British Colonies all around them. Our second example is to be classified as trans-national between Acadians entrepreneurs from South-West Nova Scotia and British merchants from Massachusetts. And theoretically, the same scenario prevailed in those contacts between the French own Miquelon and the British own Newfoundland. One might ask if this Acadian establishment process near their former colony of Acadia \ Nova Scotia, could be considered as the first step toward a reappropriation of a lost country? Even if more wars (Revolutionary and Napolean, 1777-1815), worsen the already problematic access to land in Miquelon and on the Southwest Coast of NFL. Despite of this prolonged Geopolitical uncertainty, the period under study must be considered as one that created a first Acadian Diaspora around the Golf. Their members are sharing a certain number of characteristics such as being French-Catholic, having survive the Expulsion and above all; being subjected to three external forces with which they deal to the best of their ability: Anglo-protestant and Jerseymen are controlling the economy and politics, while French and Canadian missionaries tend to impose their strict religious restraints on the Acadians. At this point we could use an expression from Jeffers Lennox (2022:125) that we’ve translated to “Triangulation des pouvoirs extérieurs”. Triangulation of External Powers. In my paper I have used a sample of 16 cases of Acadians journey between 1750-1818, to illustrate various destinies. I put forward my own ancestor Alexis Landry from Caraquet. His commemorative park and monument are about five minutes’ walk from my place, so why not him? He was born in Grand Pré in 1721, move to Beaubassin in 1743 and married the widow Marie Thériault in 1745. By the time of the attack of Fort Beauséjour in 1755, they had closed to 11 children, counting the four from Marie’s first marriage. According to an 1755 census, Alexis and his family are settled closed to the fort and the family tradition is quite assertive that he was in the militia within the fort when it fell to Monckton’ troops. Following that ordeal, Alexis and his family moved to Cocagne at the Ruisseau des malcontents during the following winter. From there they went to the camp de L’Espérance in Miramichi where the family lost 4 young children. During the spring of 1757 it is time to move to Caraquet, accompanied by four other families. It seems they had a small schooner, but peace was short live. Soon they had to flee to Miscou to escape the famous Roderick McKenzie’s raid of 1761-62. They had to wait until 1769 to finally settled down in Caraquet. In conclusion, this paper shows the establishment process in two distinct phases. During the first one (1860-1780), the Acadians were mainly squatters trying to make those lands productive before claiming formal ownership from the Colonial Authorities. Then, the next phase (1798-1815) demonstrates two types of access; one where the Acadians are still submitted to British and owners and one where those type of obstacle are absent and allowed them to get group land deeds. During this last phase, the second generation of settlers around the Gulf is already facing a lack of fertile lands and must form new communities. But not forget that during this era, the wars (1798-1815) forced more displacement along the Saint John River, in SPM an in the Gaspe. |
| Anne-Marie Lane-Jonah |
| Sable Island, Erosion Management 1890s-1950s |
| Dr. Alan MacEachern |
| The Meteorological Service of Canada & A Region’s Cohesion |
| Dr. Joshua MacFadyen, Dr. Margot Maddison-MacFadyen, and Anthonia Bebiem |
| Georeferencing Henry Bayfield’s and other Maps for Agro-ecosystem Profiles and the “GeoGULF” Project |
| Dr. Margot Maddison-MacFadyen |
| Oxen: Traction before the Horse in Atlantic Canada Abstract: In the French and early English periods, oxen were vital livestock in Atlantic Canada. Not only were oxen essential for developing sustainable agriculture, but they were also used for masting, timbering, shipbuilding, road and railway construction, building construction, and transportation. After forests were cleared by powerful oxen, horses and horse equipment became standard and oxen that had once supplied masts for ships, cleared the land, and ploughed and contoured the soil were replaced by horses. Farm diaries from the 1870s describe a mix of oxen and horses, each species performing different labour. Nevertheless, the work of oxen in Atlantic Canada was eventually complete, and they all but disappeared from the landscape. |
| John Matchim |
| The Industrialization of the Gulf Seal Fishery and its Impact on Western Newfoundland, 1860-1914 |
| Dr. Colin Osmond and Michelle Francis-Denny |
| Reclaiming A’Se’k: Industrial Colonialism, Environmental Racism, and the Remediation of Boat Harbour Abstract: In December of 2019, thousands of Atlantic Canadians gathered around their TVs and radios to listen to a press conference where Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil was set to announce the province’s decision on a requested extension to the Boat Harbour Act. Five years earlier, in 2014, McNeil’s government promised to clean up Boat Harbour – A’Se’k (the “other room” in Mi’kmaw), the once bountiful resource gathering area for the Mi’kmaq – from decades of effluent from the paper mill located at Abercrombie Point by January 31st, 2020. When a clearly nervous McNeil took to the podium, Northern Pulp – the latest of several corporate entities that had operated the mill since its opening in the 1960s – had failed to provide an adequate plan to replace the outdated effluent treatment facility at Boat Harbour. They claimed they needed more time, and many believed that the McNeil government would allow it. However, McNeil stood by his commitment, and upheld the conditions of the Act. After over half a century of dumping effluent next to the Fisher’s Grant Indian Reserve, Boat Harbour would begin its long transition back to A’Se’k. This article complicates the history of Boat Harbour by situating the recent environmental destruction of the tidal lagoon as only part of the longer story of Mi’kmaw protection of A’Se’k from settler colonial incursions. We argue that a longer history of Mi’kmaw resistance to the colonial appropriation of A’Se’k – one of Canada’s worst examples of industrial colonialism and environmental racism – began centuries before the 1960s. |
| Dr. Thomas Peace |
| The Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Maritime Peninsula |
| Andy Post |
| Nitassinan’s Saltwater Frontier: The Innu Influence on the ‘First’ Labrador Boundary Decisions |
| Barbara Rousseau |
| Shifting Sands: Property and Perceptions on Prince Edward Island’s Gulf Shore |
| Dr. Daniel Samson |
| Mapping Land-Use on Isle Saint-Jean, ca.1750 Reports on an in-progress project building a database and ArcGIS map utilising the 1752 census of French and Acadian settlers on Île Saint-Jean. An exceptionally rich census, it documents in great detail families, names, ages, time in the colony, cropped acreage, and all animals, while also offering occasional subjective comment. Supplemented by descriptions found in Louis Franquet’s 1751 tour of the island, Jacques Prevost’s memoires, and Holland’s 1765 mapping of Acadian buildings, the map offers an effective visualisation of the state of mid-18th-century settlement and suggests the saltmarsh-first strategy was pushing refugees well beyond the early focus on what is today the Hillsborough River. The substantial size of some farms suggests the move toward upland farming was also already underway. |
| Dr. Erin Spinney |
| Masters of the Gulf: Admiralty Understandings of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, circa 1759-1815 Abstract: After the successful capture of Fortress Louisburg in 1758 and the Conquest of Quebec in 1760 the British became the dominate imperial power in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Yet, to exert control the British Government needed to understand the space that it now occupied. The large scale and costly surveying expeditions of Samuel Holland and J.F.W. Des Barres from 1764-1775 have been well studied by historians and historical geographers including Stephen J. Hornsby and S. Max Edelson. However, even before the establishment of the British Admiralty’s Hydrographic Office with its first Hydrographer in 1795, the Admiralty regularly instructed ship’s masters to record coastal configurations, navigational charts, and observations of the people in the places to which they were dispatched. This paper uses the reports filed by these ships’ masters held at the UK National Archives (ADM 346) to show how the British Admiralty understood the space of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, how these conceptions changed over time with familiarity, and how warfare helped to centralise the Gulf in British military and naval operations in the second half of the long-eighteenth century. |
| Dr. Leanna Thomas |
| “Seeing the Sea: Visualizations of Gulf Economy and Politics in Antonine Maillet’s Les Cordes-de-bois” Abstract: In the novel Les Cordes-de-Bois, that was short-listed for the Prix Goncourt in 1977, Antonine Maillet recounts in a Rabelaisian-style experiences of the fictive, Acadian Mercenaire family. In the early twentieth century, the Mercenaires live near the village of “le Pont” along the Northumberland Strait that leads to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence where, “we are all, in this country, one step away from a mercenary, a pirate, a foreign sailor stranded on our shores on a Sunday morning, between the sea that wins and the sea that loses.” Through the novel, Maillet challenges tendencies to presume the isolation of Bouctouche by underscoring its critical location near the Gulf. Maillet draws attention to differences among Acadian settlers and their histories, while also describing a Scotsman’s land acquisition and entrepreneurial trade, exchanges with traders and seafarers, and the functioning of the Catholic church under the leadership of priests from other places. Maillet depicts the sea as essential in economy and politics, as well as in shaping the memories, experiences, and collective identity of Acadians in early twentieth-century Bouctouche. |
| Zachary Tingley |
| Patrolling the Gulf of St. Lawrence: Space, Safety, and Jurisdiction(s), 1815-1867 Abstract: The Convention of 1818 extended British North American jurisdiction over three miles of territorial waters off of the coastline and restored American fishing rights outside of this limit which had been understood by the British as having been lost at the end of the War of 1812. Renewed American fishery operations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and their legal exclusion from in-shore bait fisheries legally altered the shape of fisheries and left the colonial governments of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Lower Canada to decide how to best enforce an internationally signed convention. While the imperial government provided colonies with the ability to legislate on matters involving the inshore fishery and its three-mile zone, it also reduced support for naval involvement in the patrolling of the fisheries because of the British Royal Navy’s shift to peacetime operations at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Beginning in 1818, thousands of square kilometers of colonial coastline and marine space fell under the jurisdictional responsibility of the colonies, and so too did the question of enforcing the three-mile zone in relation to American participation in the fisheries. While New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Lower Canada were limited in their ability to enforce an internationally signed convention at home, each colony responded to their jurisdictional responsibilities with the establishment of marine patrols that were responsible for the enforcement of colonial laws created in response to the Convention of 1818. The differing colonial relationships with the Gulf of St. Lawrence helped to shape the replies to the challenges of enforcing the three-mile zone and offer insight into the respective colonial understandings of space, safety, and jurisdiction prior to Confederation. |
| Richard Yeomans |
| Thomas Wright, Settler Geographic Knowledge, and the General Survey on Anticosti Island Abstract: In the fall and winter of 1766-67, Thomas Wright completed his survey of Anticosti Island as part of the General Survey of the Northern District of North American. Born in London in 1740, Wright studied mathematics and astronomy at Christ’s Hospital before travelling to Savannah in 1758 to further his education under the supervision of German cartographer and engineer John William Gerard de Brahm, the Surveyor General of Georgia. Wright drew a single, yet substantial map of Georgia and Florida before returning to England in 1763 where he received an appointment as deputy to Captain Samuel Johannes Holland for the General Survey. This paper examines the work of Thomas Wright while on Anticosti Island, the instructions he received, and the hydrographic survey and written report (later published) that he produced. Anticosti Island features prominently in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as a serious obstacle to seafaring vessels, but the island likewise occupied a space of interest in European and Euro-American imagined geographies of the Gulf. Settler extractivism in and around the Gulf of St. Lawrence required an accurate positioning of Anticosti Island because of its size, and also its perceived economic potential. Both influenced Wright’s objectives on the island per his instructions from Captain Holland. My research positions Wright’s experiences on Anticosti Island as a direct result of his training while in Georgia, which shaped his imperial career in the mid-eighteenth century. His dependence on local informants in the production of settler geographic knowledge heavily influenced the written report he produced about Anticosti Island. Wright’s survey and report both depict different sets of knowledge about the island, it’s topography and natural features, and extractable resources. This research asks whose knowledge Wright was reproducing in his survey and report on Anticosti Island, and how local knowledge was transcribed or erased for settlers in the Gulf. |