Making a modern wilderness: Conserving wildlife in twentieth-century canada

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 82, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 91-121

  Loo, Tina ^a  

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EID: 67650184892     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: 17101093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/CHR.82.1.91     Document Type: Review

References (173)

1. According to the Globe and Mail, Deer Hunter was not only the most popular computer game in the pre-Christmas shopping months of November and December 1998, but the most popular piece of PC computer software sold that year (including 'serious' ones like the Windows 98 Upgrade). See 'Success in video games remains a hit and miss affair,' Globe and Mail, 4 March 1999, T5.
2. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1990)
3. It also led to clashes between rural people and the armed urban tourists who came to the countryside for hunting holidays. But that is a different subject and the focus of another essay. It is explored in my 'Of Moose and Men: Hunting for Masculinities in the Far West,' Western Historical Quarterly, forthcoming.
4. Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press 1991)
5. Janet Foster, Working for Wildlife: The Beginnings of Preservation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1978; reprinted 1998)
6. For instance, Foster herself alludes to the role played by local naturalists in lobbying for the Migratory Bird Convention and in establishing Point Pelee National Park. Working for Wildlife: The Beginnings of Preservation in Canada Ibid., 197
7. The Halifax-based Game and Inland Fishery Protection Society, established in 1853, was the second-oldest such organization in North America.
8. At least, this is my impression. In Nova Scotia, members included clergy, smaller businessmen, and prosperous farmers.
9. Sylvain Gingras, A Century of Sport: Hunting and Fishing Clubs in Québec (St-Raymond: Les Éditions Rapides Blancs 1994), 23;
10. and Paul-Louis Martin, La chasse au Québec (Montreal: Éditions Boréal 1990), 84-126
11. For instance, deer were introduced to Nova Scotia in 1894, 1896, and 1910 by private individuals. See the Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, Nova Scotia Sessional Papers (NSSP 1917, 1;
12. and the Annual Report of the Department of Lands and Forests (which took over responsibility for wildlife management in Nova Scotia), NSSP, 1931, 62.
13. Hungarian partridges, pheasants, and bobwhite quail from Kansas were introduced to British Columbia by private individuals. See the Annual Report of the Provincial Game Commissioner, British Columbia Sessional Papers (BCSP) 1906, D12-13.
14. In 1927 the game commissioner reported that the local fish and game club at Vernon was responsible for the destruction of 1300 magpies and 300 crows, and that the Kelowna Fish and Game Association was active in organizing crow shoots. See Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1928, J21.
15. Their work was particularly visible in Ontario, where they played an important role in convincing the provincial government to establish a royal commission to investigate the province's fish and game situation in 1892. For that work and their somewhat earlier initiatives, see Gerald Killan, Protected Places: A History of Ontario's Provincial Parks (Toronto: Dundurn Press in association with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources 1992), 6-8.
16. On the work of sportsmen and their associations in conservation, see John Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1977);
17. Richard Judd, Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1997);
18. and Bill Parenteau, '"Care, Control, and Supervision": Native People in the Canadian Atlantic Salmon Fishery, 1867-1900,' Canadian Historical Review 79 (1998): 7.
19. The practice was codified in 1885. Statuts refondus du Québec, 48 Vict., c. 12, art. 5493, Acte pour faciliter la formation en cette province de clubs pour la protection du poisson et du gibier. Wildlife conservation is another example of the different configuration of the Quebec state, of a very different political culture. In other provinces, most notably British Columbia and Nova Scotia (where I've found examples), there was vehement opposition to the government's creating private leaseholds. To Canadians outside Quebec, crown lands were supposed to be accessible to all. Unrestricted hunting and fishing on crown land was a powerful symbol of North American and new world democracy.
20. Martin, La chasse au Québec, 99.
21. In the 1960s and 1970s, Quebec nationalists and the Front de Libération du Québec fastened onto these private hunting and fishing preserves as a symbol of anglo colonialism: 'We have had our fill, as have more and more Québécois, of a government which performs a thousand-and-one acrobatics to charm American millionaires into investing in Quebec, La Belle Province, where thousands and thousands of square miles of forests, full of game and well-stocked lakes, are the exclusive privilege of the almighty twentieth century lords.' 'FLQ Manifesto, 8 October 1970 [translated],' in J. Keshen and S. Morton, eds., Material Memory: Documents in Post-Confederation History (Toronto: Addison Wesley 1998), 309.
22. Also see Henri Poupart's tract on the same subject, Le scandale des clubs privés de chasse et pêche (Montreal: Éditions Parti Pris 1971).
23. With regard to the importance of rod and gun clubs to the enforcement of the game act, see the Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1906, D6;
24. BCSP 1919, S11.
25. Examples of the kinds of activities undertaken by British Columbia's various game associations include the McBride Rod and Gun Club planting duck feed in the local lakes, destroying vermin, and operating a fish hatchery, and the vermin shoots conducted by the local game associations around Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, 1936, N23, N25.
26. While British Columbia's game associations had always advised the government on its wildlife management policy, and particularly the issue of open and closed seasons, that advice tended to reflect local interests and local conditions. In 1931 they organized themselves into a more effective lobby/advisory group, coming to a consensus themselves on what needed to be done before advising Victoria. See the Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1932, H5-6.
27. Indeed, in 1933 the game associations in the province's interior began holding an annual convention to discuss matters of common interest, perhaps presaging the first provincewide meeting of the same sort. See the Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1933, J8,
28. and the Annual Report of the Fish and Wildlife Branch, BCSP 1948, L8.
29. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the Province of Alberta, 1940 (Edmonton: King's Printer 1940), 57
30. See Frederick K. Vreeland, 'Prohibition of the Sale of Game,' in Canada, Commission of Conservation, Committee on Fisheries, Game and Fur-Bearing Animals, Conservation of Fish, Birds, and Game, Proceedings at a Meeting of the Committee, 1 and 2 November 1915 (Toronto: Methodist Book and Publishing House 1915), 93-99
31. See Patricia Jasen, Wild Things: Nature, Culture, and Tourism in Ontario, 1790 - 1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995).
32. The Doctor, 'The Look-em Deer Club at Play,' Rod and Gun in Canada 9, 8 (1908): 711
33. See T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1981)
34. See Ian McKay, The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1994).
35. See Jasen, Wild Things.
36. W.E. Playfair, 'The "Simple Life" on the Rideau,' Rod and Gun in Canada 7, 4 (1905): 403
37. L.O. Armstrong, 'Boredom and One of Its Antidotes,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid. 6, 5 (1904): 241
38. Wahnipitae, 'A Woman on the Mississauga,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid. 6, 5 (1904): 221
39. On the relationship between manliness and civilization, see Gail Bederman's book of the same name, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995), 227-32,
40. and E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books 1993), 252-254
41. Thomas Johnson, 'Nature's Elixir - and It Is Not Work,' Rod and Gun in Canada 9, 8 (1908): 736
42. The Saguenay Club, Fifth Season, 1915. Quebec 1915, 7 (McLennan Library Rare Book Division, McGill University)
43. 'The Haunts of Big Game,' Rod and Gun in Canada 7, 5 (1905): 503
44. Prospectus of the Triton Fish and Game Club (Quebec: Np 1894), 14,
45. McLennan Rare Book Division, McGill University. For more on Triton Club members, see Martin, La chasse au Québec, 106-114
46. 'Notes by E.E.,' Rod and Gun in Canada 2, 4 (1900): 331
47. A.L. Phelps, 'In the Woods,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid., 6, 9 (1905): 492
48. Emphasis in the original. Dr Franklin Hawley, 'Scientific Deer-Hunting,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid., 8, 5 (1906): 324
49. On the role of the CPR in creating a particular identity for Canada built around its scenery, see E.J. Hart, The Selling of Canada (Banff: Altitude Publishing 1983).
50. On hunting and the making of masculinities, see my 'Of Moose and Men.'
51. This reading of outdoors products was inspired by Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge 1995), and her idea of 'commodity racism.'
52. See R.G. Moyles and Doug Owram, Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views of Canada, 1880-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1988).
53. Phil Moore, The Castle Buck: Hunting and Fishing Adventures with a Nova Scotia Hunting Guide (Toronto: Longman, Green 1945), ix
54. Aldo Leopold, Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1933), 391
55. Aldo Leopold, Game Management Ibid., 21
56. Aldo Leopold, Game Management Ibid., 19
57. Aldo Leopold, Game Management (Ibid., 3 and 21
58. Aldo Leopold, Game Management Ibid., 3
59. Aldo Leopold, Game Management 3 Ibid.
60. This observation has frequently been made in the literature on exploration and 'discovery.' It argues that imperialism is, or at least begins, with an act of imagination. Seeing new world landscapes as empty and the territory as terra nullius, or 'virgin land,' obliterated the indigenous presence and allowed Europeans to claim first 'discovery.' Their ownership was further inscribed in their choice of names for these newly discovered places. Placenames such as the Strait of Georgia, Victoria, New Westminster, and Halifax linked these far-flung, disconnected places into an imperial whole, creating an imagined community. The fundamental text here is Edward Said's Orientalism (New York: Vintage 1979) and his idea of 'imagined geographies.'
61. These districts were, as far as I can tell, set out without reference to ecological zones. they were usually units of governance, of management - in British Columbia they were police districts (the Office of Game Warden, though a separate department, was under the Provincial Police).
62. On the influence of the sport hunting lobby in establishing provincial game preserves and parks, see Killan, Protected Places, chap. 1;
63. Martin, La chasse au Québec, 132-148 Wildlife conservation and management within the park system, both provincial and federal, is beyond the scope of this study.
64. It is interesting to compare these game maps to the maps produced by Aboriginal peoples which also see the landscape in terms of the seasonal cycle of resource exploitation - that is, in terms of consumption. Where they differ, though, is in the mechanism of their production. Most of the Aboriginal maps were produced by non-Aboriginals through interviews with Native peoples. Aboriginal peoples conveyed this knowledge to each other much more tacitly, in the course of actually hunting and gathering. The relationship with the landscape that was created in this way was much less narrowly bounded, integrated as it was in the complexities of everyday life. As Hugh Brody shows so well, many things could be learned in the course of a trip to pick blueberries or to hunt moose. It was also a relationship in which the individual was much less alienated - apart - from and superior to the natural world. See Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1983).
65. See the Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1910, J13;
66. BCSP 1929, H27;
67. the Annual Report of the Department of Lands and Forests, NSSP 1930, 61.
68. The Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1933, J8, noted that capercailzie were first imported to Vancouver Island in 1906.
69. The Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, Ibid., BCSP 1915, J16.
70. The Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, Ibid., BCSP 1914, N8;
71. BCSP 1930, H9.
72. Annual Report of the Game and Fisheries Department, Ontario Sessional Papers (OSP), 1934, 3, notes that elk from western Canada were introduced to Pembroke, Burwash, Golais River-Ranger Lake, and the Chapleau and Nipigon-Onaman districts.
73. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1928, J19;
74. BCSP 1931, D12
75. See Darrin McGrath, 'Salted Caribou and Sportsmen- Tourists: Conflicts over Wildlife Resources in Newfoundland at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,' Newfoundland Studies 10 (1994): 208-225
76. This is the subject of Canadian director Peter Lynch's latest documentary, The Herd (National Film Board of Canada 1998). In 1929 the Canadian government attempted to help the starving Inuit of the Northwest Territories by importing a herd of 3000 reindeer from Alaska. The drive, which was supposed to have taken eighteen months, took six years to complete.
77. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1909, J13,
78. BCSP 1928, J22.
79. The Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1933, J8, notes that big horns were moved into the Okanagan in 1926. Elk were liberated near Adra in early 1927.
80. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1928, J12.
81. See, for instance, PANS, RG 20, vol.718, file 4, for 'Memo Regarding Bounties on Destructive Animals' and the bounties paid out by municipalities in 1924; and RG 20, vol.835, file 40, for reports from various municipalities on bounties paid in 1925.
82. In 1935 the BC game commissioner noted that the department had been supplying ammunition to a number of local game associations, 'on the understanding that the members of these associations would be entitled to one shell for each noxious bird destroyed.' See the Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1936, N6.
83. The Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1934, I17, noted that a successful magpie shoot was held near Kamloops, with more than 1000 birds killed. It was an extremely popular event, perhaps because local businesses contributed prizes. In 1937 Alberta's Chief Game Guardian noted with satisfaction the growing cooperation between his department and the province's fish and game protective associations in sponsoring contests for killing crows, magpies, and gophers. That year, children alone accounted for the deaths of 20,834 crows and magpies, 338,139 gophers, and 126,710 crow and magpie eggs. The numbers for their parents paled in comparison.
84. See Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture for the Province of Alberta, 1937 (Edmonton: King's Printer 1937), 38.
85. In 1940 the Quesnel Junior Game Association, with the help of the local warden, destroyed 146 crows' eggs. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1941, P28.
86. The year 1946 was a notable one in predatory animal destruction in British Columbia, marking the first time the government attempted an aerial wolf kill. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1947, DD7.
87. The warden in C Division (Okanagan) experimented with trapping cougar, using catnip oil as the lure. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1938, Q22;
88. and BCSP 1939, V18 . A spirit of competition seems to have animated the province's wardens in their killing, as this report from C Division suggests: 'Game Warden Ellis led with a total of sixty-five cats. Game Warden Still destroyed twenty-six ownerless cats. Game Warden Maxon was responsible for the destruction of fifty-seven coyotes. Game Warden Jobin destroyed fifteen coyotes.
89. On crows and magpies, Game Wardens Sandiford, Still, and Cameron were high in their respective order.' See Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1941, P28.
90. On cougar hunters, see Gwen Cash, I Like British Columbia (Toronto: Macmillan 1938), 125-32;
91. Del Hall, Island Gold: A History of Cougar Hunting on Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Cougar Press 1990)
92. and Richard Mackie, 'Cougars, Colonists, and the Rural Settlement of Vancouver Island,' in R.W. Sandwell, ed., Beyond City Limits: Rural History in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998).
93. The noted Canadian conservationist Roderick Haig-Brown wrote a novel on cougar hunting based on 'Cougar' Cecil Smith. See his Panther. The BC government first seems to have engaged specialized hunters in 1925, when it hired Special Constable Shuttleworth and bought him a cougar dog to rid the area around Penticton of the animals. See Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1926, X11.
94. Others were hired for Vancouver Island in 1927. See Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1928, J7.
95. Following a reorganization of game management in 1947, the hiring and training of specialized predatory hunters (and their dogs) was formalized. Annual Report of the Fish and Wildlife Branch, BCSP 1948, L8.
96. For $110 the CPR promised to furnish the hunters with ammunition, railway fare, camping equipment, food, and guides. The equipment would belong to the hunter after the hunt. The bounty money would be divided among the sports, with the pelt going to the person who shot the wolf (if that could be determined). 'For the fagged out businessmen there is no experience, summer or winter, which will do as much lasting good in as short a time and with so much enjoyment as a winter outing on snowshoes with a well organized equipment of tents, blankets, and grub.' L.O. Armstrong, 'The Ontario Wolf Hunt,' Rod and Gun in Canada 8, 10 (1907): 891.
97. Also see L.O. Armstrong, 'Canadian Timber Wolf Hunts,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid., 8, 8 (1907): 697-9,
98. 'The CPR Wolf Hunt,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid., 9, 8 (1908): 776;
99. Rod and Gun in Canada 9, 10 (1908): 957-60;
100. and Rod and Gun in Canada 9, 11 (1908): 1034-1039
101. See, for instance, the Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the Province of Saskatchewan, 1920 (Regina: King's Printer 1920), 42-43
102. For an introduction to this and other characteristics of modernity, see John Jervis, Exploring the Modern: Patterns of Western Culture and Civilization (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell 1999), introduction.
103. See 'Of Moose and Men.'
104. Annual Report of the Game and Fisheries Department, OSP, 1938, 5
105. On the saga of the pesky elk near Penticton, see the Annual Reports of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1930, H9;
106. BSCP 1931, D12;
107. BCSP 1933, J8;
108. and BCSP 1934, I7.
109. An Act to amend and consolidate the Acts for 'The Preservation of Game,' 8 Ed. VII, c. 17, Nova Scotia, Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1908 (Halifax: King's Printer 1908). On complaints from farmers about deer doing damage to their crops, see, for instance, PANS, RG 20, vol.830, file 34, Rourke to Commissioner of Forests and Game, Falmouth, Hants Co., 12 Dec. 1925.
110. An Act Respecting Lands and Forests, 16-17 Geo. V, c. 4, s. 115 (2-3), Nova Scotia, Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1926 (Halifax: King's Printer 1926).
111. In 1935 the law changed again, dispensing with the requirement for an affidavit. However, people shooting deer that were doing damage to crops had to report the circumstances of the incident to the local game warden, who in turn had to investigate and inform Halifax. The minister could, if he thought it warranted, ask that an affidavit be filed within eight days. See An Act to Amend and Consolidate Ch. 4 of the Acts of 1926 'The Lands and Forests Act' and amendments thereof, 25-6 Geo. V, c. 4, s. 112 (2-5), Nova Scotia, Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1935 (Halifax: King's Printer 1935).
112. See, for instance, An Act to amend and consolidate the Acts for 'The Preservation of Game,' 8 Ed. VII, c. 17, s. 114 (re: pits, traps, and snares) and s. 115 (re: running moose, caribou, and deer with dogs). Nova Scotia, Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1908 (Halifax: King's Printer 1908);
113. An Act for the Protection of certain Animals and Birds, c. 95, ss. 9, 16, and 42 Revised Statutes of British Columbia, 1911 (Victoria: King's Printer 1911);
114. An Act for the Protection of certain Animals and Birds, c. 98, s. 3 (2-3), 13, and 14, Revised Statutes of British Columbia, 1924 (Victoria: King's Printer 1924);
115. An Act for the Protection of certain Animals and Birds, c. 108, ss. 5, 6, 19, 20, and 22, Revised Statutes of British Columbia, 1935 (Victoria: King's Printer 1935);
116. and An Act for the Protection of certain Animals and Birds, c. 135, ss. 5, 6, 19, 20, and 22, Revised Statutes of British Columbia, 1948 (Victoria: King's Printer 1948).
117. For Ontario, see François-Xavier Ribordy, 'Histoire sociologique du droit de la chasse et pêche en Ontario,' Anthropologica 30 (1988): 155-173
118. There were similar developments in the regulation of fishing. Like hunting technologies, fishing technologies, particularly those used by Aboriginals, but not exclusively, were outlawed, at the behest of the sporting lobby. See Douglas Harris, 'The Legal Capture of British Columbia's Fisheries: A Study of Law and Colonialism' (LLM thesis, University of British Columbia);
119. J. Michael Thoms, 'Illegal Conservation: Two Cases of Conflict between Indigenous and State Natural Resource Management Paradigms' (MA thesis, Trent University 1995);
120. Nancy B. Bouchier and Ken Cruikshank, '"Sportsmen and Pothunters": Environment, Conservation, and Class in the Fishery of Hamilton Harbour, 1858-1914,' Sport History Review 28 (1997): 1- 18;
121. Parenteau, '"Care, Control, and Supervision."'
122. Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1906, D17.
123. Also see Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the Province of Alberta, 1908 (Edmonton: King's Printer 1908), 109;
124. and Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the Province of Saskatchewan, 1919 (Regina: King's Printer 1919), 45ff.
125. In 1892 the Royal Commission on fish and game in Ontario noted that illegal hunting methods (including crust-hunting, using jack-lights, dogs, and snares) were most commonly practised by farmers and settlers ('Indians' came third). There was an extended debate on the subject of running deer with dogs in Rod and Gun in Canada in June, July, and August 1907 and into the following year. John Arthur Hope of Ontario started things off by noting that 'men who hound deer advertise the fact they are neither self-reliant woodsmen, humane hunters, respectors of the laws of nature, or have any regard for the rights of others - present and to come.' 'Why Our Deer are Vanishing,' Rod and Gun in Canada 8, 11 (1907): 991
126. See Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1915, J5;
127. BCSP 1916, O5;
128. BCSP 1934, I12.
129. Because many of the needy were not always good marksmen, BC wardens were also encouraged to go out and shoot deer themselves and distribute the meat among the poor (see Annual Report of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1916, O5).
130. During the First World War, Ontario's park wardens harvested deer in provincial parks as a way of ameliorating the meat shortage. See Killan, Protected Places, 48.
131. Interestingly, while the consumption of game meat has recently resumed its elite associations in North America, soup kitchens and foodbanks in places like Winnipeg and Victoria routinely accept donations of game meat from hunters - though not without the occasional controversy. See, for instance, 'Shelter finds out gift was roadkill,' Vancouver Province, 12 Dec. 1996, A32;
132. 'Venison a feast for city poor thanks to Alberta Hunters,' Edmonton Journal, 9 Dec. 1996, A6;
133. 'New Brunswick food bank keen on roadkill,' Edmonton Journal Final Edition, 29 November 1996, A3;
134. 'Cons may get Bambi on a bun,' Vancouver Province, 19 June 1996, A22 (about convicts in Pennsylvania);
135. 'Hunters to donate venison to food bank,' Edmonton Journal, 11 Nov. 1997, B3;
136. and 'Deer meat a tasty treat for the needy,' Edmonton Journal, ibid., 18 Jan. 1997, B18.
137. I am pursuing the theme of meat consumption and status by looking at game cookbooks. In general, see Nick Fiddes, Meat: A Natural Symbol (London: Routledge 1991), 2.
138. Also see Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil, Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society (London: Routledge 1997), chap. 9 and esp. 209-16.
139. On the spatial aspects of consumption, see David Bell, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (London: Routledge 1997).
140. Killan, Protected Places, 15
141. Protected Places, Ibid., 25-6.
142. For a discussion of a similar conflict in the Temagami Forest Reserve, see Bruce Hodgins and Jamie Benidickson, The Temagami Experience: Recreation, Resources, and Aboriginal Rights in the Northern Ontario Wilderness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1989), 139-144
143. Dr Wilfrid Creighton, Forestkeeping: A History of the Department of Lands and Forests, 1926-1969 (Halifax: Province of Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests 1988), 58
144. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a series of letters, many of them anonymous, in the Department of Lands and Forests records for Nova Scotia informing the chief commissioner of violations of the game act give some sense of the ease with which people could poach. For instance, John Adams from Hants County told the commissioner that 'there is an ever increasing number of people here who treat the game law as a joke and its officers with contempt ... I heard of one man who makes his brags that he killed seven cow moose in one year and he also declares that he will continue to kill any game at any time in spite of all law or law officers' (PANS, RG 20, vol. 820, file 3, Adams to Chief Commissioner of Forests and Game, 4 Nov. 1921). In W.W. Osborne's opinion, the government had to make an example of one of New Glasgow's more infamous poachers, Alex McIntosh, who, last year and Boasted of it' (ibid., vol. 824, file 42, Osborne to Knight, 2 September 1921). An anonymous Cumberland County writer told the chief commissioner that 'the game warden here has in the past not fulfilled his duty as it is a known fact among the people of this place that one man shot three moose in one day not five miles from the game warden's Home last winter [and] there was six or eight moose in about the same place shot. I am not a crank or anything of the kind but why not protect the game' (ibid., vol. 827, file 42, 'One who wishes the game protected' to Chief Commissioner, 1 Oct. 1924). In 1926 Otto Schierbeck, one of the province's chief foresters (and hence given the responsibility for game protection), noted that 'the Big Game License is a failure. Anybody going out hunting big game is supposed to take out a Big Game License but in most cases this is only done when the hunter has succeeded in killing a moose or deer. If he does not succeed, no license is paid' (ibid., vol. 718, file 12, Schierbeck to Douglas, 2 Feb. 1926). 'I find on this job of Game Warden,' Sub-Ranger J.D. Lockwood told his boss, Chief Ranger Reuben Cushing, 'that I am losing a great many friends and I get lots of hard knocks. People are not hospitable to me when they know my duties. It is might hard to get along on $50.00 and loose [sic] all your friends besides' (ibid., vol. 719, file 1, Lockwood to Cushing, 7 Dec. 1926).
145. For instance, in informing on the moose poaching going on in his community in 1925, Hugh Smith told the warden, 'Now whatever you do don't give me away, I can find out what they are doing right along if they don't suspect me, and besides I have my woodlot where they sometimes hunt, and they'd think nothing of putting it up in smoke.' See ibid., 826, file 69, Smith to Clarke, 8 April 1925. Similarly, Alex McIntosh 'made his Boasts right in a store in Sherbrooke with a Bag of fresh meat on his Back that he would fill anybody with led [sic] if they attempted to get after him' (ibid., vol. 824, file 42, Osborne to Knight, 2 Sept. 1921). See also ibid., vol.826, file 28, Burrell to Knight, 6 June 1925; ibid., vol.829, file 67, O'Dell to Harrison, 28 Dec. 1925; ibid., vol.830, file 8, Pelton to Harrison, 12 March 1926.
146. L.O. Armstrong, passenger agent for the CPR and sportsman, told the North American Fish and Game Protective Association meeting at Saint John that 'labour organizations have come out strongly against all preserves held by clubs or private individuals.' See 'How Best to Form Public Opinion as to the Need of Fish and Game Protective Laws,' Rod and Gun in Canada 6, 10 (1905): 543-4. Ontario's chief game warden, Edward Tinsley, told the League of American Sportsmen in Buffalo that he was 'opposed to wealthy men being allowed to obtain possession of large portions of the public domain for game preserves to the exclusion of the general public. The hunting and fishing instinct is as strongly inherent in the men who constitute the backbone and sinew of our respective countries as it is in the millionaires ... God forbid that the old country systems should ever prevail on this free and manhood making continent, if we desire to increase anarchy and dissatisfaction allow the rich men to acquire all the best hunting and fishing grounds in our countries, fend them from the roads, and stick up trespass notices.'
147. See 'Spring Shooting,' Rod and Gun in Canada ibid., 8, 6 (Nov. 1906): 460.
148. On local opposition to private preserves in British Columbia, see the Annual Reports of the Game Commissioner, BCSP 1928, J32;
149. BCSP 1930, H28;
150. BCSP 1931, D28-9;
151. BCSP 1945, W9;
152. and BCSP 1946, GG10.
153. On one particular conflict over the creation of a private preserve in Nova Scotia, see 'Medicine Bag,' BCSP ibid., 10, 8 (1908): 770.
154. On another in New Brunswick, see 'Hunting and Fishing in New Brunswick: The Attempt to Organize a Private Preserve, and the Government's Action Thereon,' BCSP ibid., 8, 6 (1906): 499-500.
155. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press 1986),
156. and his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Transcripts of Power (New Haven: Yale University Press 1990).
157. For an examination of rural ecological protest, see Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Berkeley: University of California Press 1993),
158. and Richard H. Grove, 'Colonial Conservation, Ecological Hegemony, and Popular Resistance: Towards a Global Synthesis,' in J. Mackenzie, ed., Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1990).
159. On local ecological knowledge (or what used to be called 'traditional ecological knowledge), see, for instance, Milton M.R. Freeman and Ludwig N. Carbyn, eds., Traditional Knowledge and Renewable Resource Management (Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, University of Alberta, 1988);
160. Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management (Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis 1999)
161. Douglas L. Medin and Scott Atran, eds., Folkbiology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1999);
162. and Virginia D. Nazarea, Ethnoecology: Situated Knowledge/Located Lives (Tucson: University of Arizona Press 1999).
163. The season for caribou did not take into account the migratory habits of the animal. Often the season was closed before the beasts had made it all the way to the Great Northern Peninsula, where they were an important part of the residents' staple diet. See McGrath, 'Salted Caribou.'
164. Rev. Douglas Hemmeon thought that the location of the game sanctuary in western Nova Scotia was a matter of politics rather than what we'd now call environmental assessment. PANS, RG 20, vol.723, file 57, Hemmeon to Knight, 21 Feb. 1925; and ibid., Knight to Hemmeon, 25 Feb. 1925. See also ibid., vol.718, file 4, Clarke to Goucher, 2 March 1926.
165. Another example of Schierbeck's lack of understanding came early on in his tenure, when he dismissed the government's plans to import Newfoundland caribou and resettle them on a sanctuary in Guysborough County. He wrote that 'the caribou is a migratory animal not adapted for the Province of Nova Scotia.' Ibid., vol.718, file 4, Schierbeck to Goucher, 19 Feb. 1926. This view was incorrect. Caribou were indigenous to the province, but their numbers diminished through hunting and perhaps through competition with other animals. For a refutation of Schierbeck's views on the caribou and other things, see ibid., Clarke to Goucher, 2 March 1926.
166. This account is based on Ila Bussidor and Üstün Bilgen-Reinart, Night Spirits: The Story of the Relocation of the Sayisi Dene (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press 1997),
167. and Virgina Petch, 'The Relocation of the Sayisi Dene of Tadoule Lake,' background paper prepared for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1995.
168. See A.W.F. Banfield, 'The Caribou Crisis,' The Beaver, spring 1956.
169. For an early discussion of the need to put wildlife management on the same scientific footing as forestry and agricultural management, and for a critique of the reliance on local knowledge, see P.A. Taverner, 'Scientific Advice for Wild Life Conservationists,' Canadian Field Naturalist 40 (May 1926): 105-106 Taverner was the ornithologist at the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa.
170. P.A. Taverner, 'Scientific Advice for Wild Life Conservationists,' Canadian Field Naturalist 1926: 40, 105-106 Ibid.,
171. and see Martin, La chasse au Québec, 181-183
172. Emphasis added. Cited in Hodgins and Benidickson, The Temagami Experience, 142
173. Carl Berger, Science, God, and Nature in Victorian Canada: The Joanne Goodman Lectures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 3.