This article is a transnational history of anthropogenic alterations to the St. Clair waterscape shared by the United States and Canada. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the three connected waters with the appellation “St. Clair” – river, delta, and lake – have been repeatedly engineered to facilitate deep-draft shipping as well as alter water levels in the Laurentian Great Lakes. After dredging and channel creation began in the 1840s, new canals were dug through the St. Clair Delta – the world’s largest freshwater delta. In the early twentieth century, there was a great deal more dredging and channelization, as well as mining of the riverbed for sand and gravel. Two major channelization projects took place in the 1930s and 1960s. Since then, maintenance dredging has continuously kept the shipping channels at sufficient depth. Dredged material was repeatedly formed into new infrastructure, such as islands, dikes, and confined disposal units. All this had severe consequences for the St. Clair’s aquatic ecology and lowered the levels of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. At various times engineers and officials therefore sought to modify the St. Clair’s waters in ways that could influence not only navigation but also the levels of these two Great Lakes. To do so, experts relied on hydraulic scale models to plan control works such as submerged weirs or sills, and this study explores their approach to “disguised design”. My analysis of modelling and hydraulic processes reveals how the St. Clair was transformed into a hybrid envirotechnical system that blended the natural and the artificial.

Reviewed by: Rouge River Revived: How People are Bringing Their River Back to Life ed. by John H. Hartig and Jim Graham Daniel Macfarlane John H. Hartig and Jim Graham, eds. Rouge River Revived: How People are Bringing Their River Back to Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. Pp. 219. Bibliography. Index. Maps. Photographs. Paperback: $19.95. The Rouge River flows through three different counties in southeastern Michigan, as well as part of Detroit, on the way to its confluence with the Detroit River. Its lower reaches are heavily urbanized and industrialized— enough so that the Rouge was reputedly the most polluted river in Michigan and one of the most polluted in the United States. Rouge River Revived, an edited collection of essays, surveys the many degradations heaped upon this river and, as the book's subtitle suggests, emphasizes its contemporary recovery and rehabilitation. Long considered a "working river," the Rouge and its banks have hosted the Ford Motor Company's flagship factories, as well Henry Ford's estate, along with myriad other sources of pollution, including municipal effluent. The Rouge River infamously caught fire in 1969, though this was overshadowed by the conflagration of the same year in the nearby Cuyahoga River, and in [End Page 94] the 1980s a man perished after falling into the river and contracting rat fever. The mid-1980s marked a turning point for the Rouge. Friends of the Rouge, an environmental group, was formed in 1986, at about the same time that the Rouge River received an Area of Concern (AOC) and Remedial Action Plan (RAP) designation under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Today, this river is in much better shape than it was a few decades ago. The two editors provide an introduction and a conclusion, and one of them (Hartig) contributes to a number of the other chapters. After the introduction, several brief chapters provide background and history. One introduces the reader to the physical setting of the river. Subsequent chapters examine the Indigenous history, the fur trade era, agriculture, urban developments, and industrial history. Henry Ford was involved in damming and manipulating the river both for his vehicle company and his personal estate, though there is potentially some greenwashing of his and his company's legacy as far as the Rouge is concerned. This collection then turns to chapters on green infrastructure, citizen scientists, environmental education, and recreational opportunities (paddling, fishing, hiking). These chapters are primarily penned by those who have been directly involved in the Rouge's recovery. Complex scientific and policy processes are clearly explained and best practices identified. The penultimate chapter focuses on Jim Murray who, through his various roles, earns the title of Rouge River champion. The concluding chapter summarizes the book's findings and contributions, attributing the current health of this waterway to factors such as the ecosystem approach, community engagement, and strong leadership from individuals and institutions. This book dabbles in environmental history, though it is probably best classified as environmental studies, plus it is aimed at a popular audience more than an academic one. And that is one of the main attributes of this book: that it provides an accessible account of the remarkable recovery of the Rouge River. The contributors are an interdisciplinary mix, more practitioners than academics. Rouge River Revived should be read by anyone living within its watershed, and can be profitably engaged by those elsewhere looking to restore their local waterways. [End Page 95] Daniel Macfarlane Associate Professor Western Michigan University Copyright © 2024 Historical Society of Michigan

"Against the Tides: Reshaping Landscape and Community in Canada’s Maritime Marshlands." History: Reviews of New Books, 51(2), pp. 34–35

This paper reviews the history and evolution of Canada-United States transboundary water quantity politics (hydroelectricity, canals, irrigation, etc.) over the last 75 years: megaprojects on the St. Lawrence, Niagara, and Columbia Rivers during the early Cold War, a wide variety of transborder water issues stretching from coast to coast during the latter half of the twentieth century, and then recent hydropolitics concerning diversions from the Great Lakes basin. Utilizing an environmental history approach, and drawing from other fields such as historical geography, water policy, and political ecology, I show that Canada and the United States cooperatively manipulated border water environments on a large scale. Despite this coordination, there was often significant political and diplomatic controversy. I argue that coordinating or dealing with the United States deeply influenced the development of hydroelectricity in Canada, as well as the related hydraulic engineering expertise and technology. Moreover, transborder water politics also influenced many aspects of Canadian economic and political development, including federal-provincial relations. I explore themes such as Canada as a hydro state, the role of the Boundary Waters Treaty and the International Joint Commission, and concepts such as hydraulic nationalism and hydraulic imperialism.

Nesta lição aprenderá como georreferenciar mapas históricos para que possam ser adicionados a um SIG como uma camada raster.

Energy and environmental diplomacy factors were a major, though often unrecognized, part of Canada-United States relations prior to the Cold War. Hydroelectricity was the most important of these factors, particularly power exported from the Canadian side of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin. The history of Canada-U.S. hydroelectricity relations, exports, and regulations offered here covers the key steps, institutions, and actors in the evolution of hydroelectricity geopolitics and governance regimes during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Most of the earliest large Canadian hydropower projects were built on or planned for border waters, which, after the creation of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, required formal coordination with the United States. Over the following half-century, prospective power projects on border waters continued to dominate the diplomatic dialogue. Federal governments or agencies established broad export restrictions, altering them occasionally, but often subnational governments, special interests, and specific power projects played as large a role in shaping the power trade. The result was a constantly shifting political and regulatory context, albeit one that generally trended toward cooperation and reduced barriers to electricity integration.

This article details Saskatchewan’s first environmental impact assessment, which took place in the 1970s over a proposed dam on the Churchill River at the Wintego Rapids. The Wintego Dam, which would have been the largest hydroelectric dam in the province at the time, was controversial because of the environmental repercussions and impacts on the local Indigenous communities, particularly the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. We show that the Blakeney ndp government did not initially intend to create a robust environmental impact assessment, and then explain how and why such an assessment was ultimately undertaken. Using archival material that was previously unavailable, the article recounts the governmental study, the Indigenous-led studies (after they rejected the governmental process), and the final Board of Inquiry report. The Wintego saga should be understood within the context of a growing resistance to northern development projects whose benefits accrued mostly to the southern white population. Ultimately, the Blakeney government decided not to build Wintego because of the economic, environmental, and social impacts, as well as concerns about unsettled treaty claims. This could be considered the first attempt – even before the Berger Inquiry – by a provincial government to fully assess the impacts of a natural resource project before final approval, and it was the earliest incorporation of Indigenous-led studies into the assessment process.

Reviewed by: Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory by Brittany Luby Daniel Macfarlane Luby, Brittany – Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020. 256 p. Brittany Luby’s Dammed is a fine-grained, intimate, and highly readable analysis of the impact of hydroelectric development on Anishinaabe communities in the Lake of the Woods–Winnipeg River watershed. Luby unpacks the ways that the costs of governmental infrastructure projects were disproportionately borne by those who lived in Treaty 3 territory—the Dalles 38C Indian Reserve, specifically— while the benefits flowed elsewhere. Power dams such as Norman and Whitedog Falls threatened the traditional lifeways of the Anishinabeg—fish, blueberries, ice roads, manomin (wild rice)—which were formally criminalized or informally circumscribed. But they were not passive victims, and Dammed foregrounds their adaptation and resistance strategies. Luby blends oral history and archival research with firsthand experience, including a process that the author calls “presence-ing” (p. 14). She rejects full objectivity as an “academic construction” borne of a Western worldview. A helpful “Note on Sources” is included at the end of the book. Luby clearly reverses the centre/periphery dyad: from the perspective of government officials in Toronto and Ottawa, the Lake of the Woods watershed was the periphery; in the Anishinaabe worldview, this basin was the centre. Early on, Dammed establishes the processes that led to the creation of Treaty 3 reserves. For a confluence of reasons, and in distinction to other parts of Ontario, the First Nations there were initially able to mostly hold onto and maintain control over their water resources. But this was short-lived. After the growth of hydropower and rise of Ontario Hydro, First Nations water resources in the Lake of the Woods basin were recast by the state as outside of the borders and jurisdiction of the reserves. The author reveals ways that Anishinabeg resisted, including relocation, and “maintained competing definitions of space—particularly their interconnectedness with water” (p. 38). Luby gets into the ways that dams affected ice road mobility in the early twentieth century. Experiential knowledge about the reliability of ice routes was changed by water control infrastructure, while the inability to rely on these roads in the same way had various ripple effects for local subsistence strategies. Chapter 2 [End Page 668] shows how the people who actually inhabited the Lake of the Woods basin were cut out of governmental decision-making about the basin. For example, the only “nations” the International Joint Commission recognized were Canada and the United States. The related discussion of material awareness, seasonality, multi-sensory evidence, and spatial knowledge is illuminating. Dammed then turns to Ontario Hydro (also known as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, or HEPCO). The Whitedog Falls Generating Station, opened after the Second World War, flooded out manomin. Luby compares the ways HEPCO negotiated water control and compensation with an industrial mill, which was much different than the way it consulted—or did not consult—the local Indigenous communities. The second half of the book looks at the latter half of the twentieth century. Labour, employment, health, and varying responses to economic and food insecurity are major themes. For the affected Anishinabeg, taking employment at the generating stations or allied industries undermined traditional subsistence activities and the attendant cultural patterns, yoking them instead to the rhythms of wages and market capitalism. But given the lack of employment activities in the area, this type of local employment allowed the possibility of staying on the reserve year-round; HEPCO was reluctant to hire those from the reserves on a permanent basis, however. In a further irony, participation in dam construction further changed river conditions and, in turn, socio-economic conditions on the reserves. Traditional subsistence practices, such as harvesting manomin, had been hurt by dams as far back as the First World War. But the larger post-1945 power dams had more severe impacts, since manomin is very sensitive to water level fluctuations. Chapter 5 delves into changing water quality, waste, and pollution. The blasting of the Dalles Rapids in the 1950s, as part of the Whitedog Falls Generating Station, changed both water...