Nature's Past Episode 030: Environmental Histories of Montreal

Last year, the University of Pittsburgh Press published its first book on Canadian urban environmental history titled Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal. This diverse collection of essays was edited by two leading scholars of Quebec environmental history, Stephane Castonguay and Michele Dagenais. This episode of the podcast explores some of the environmental histories of Montreal. Montreal is one of the oldest metropolises in North America with a history of Euro-American resettlement and urban development that spans more than four centuries. Prior to European colonization, the island of Montreal was home to the fortified Iroquoian village of Hochelaga. Needless to say, organizing a series of case studies of the environmental history of Montreal is no easy task. Castonguay and Dagenais decided to organize the collection along three broad themes: representations, infrastructures, and hinterlands. The essays in the first section, representations, focus on changing human perceptions of Montreal and its region beginning with the earliest observations of the Island of Montreal and Mount Royal by Jacques Cartier in the 1530s. The following section on “Infrastructures” examines socio-technical systems in the urban environment with particular focus on water systems and roadway infrastructure. In the concluding section of the book on “Hinterlands” the authors explored the changing relationship between city and countryside as Montreal developed as Canada’s leading metropolis. On this episode of the podcast, I spoke with two of the authors from this edited collection, Darcy Ingram and Daniel Rueck. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out a short listener survey here