Shannon Stunden Bower
That is the sixth publish in a collection in regards to the Nice Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental historical past. The posts on this collection are cross-posted with NiCHE.
In The Nice Acceleration, J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke proposed 4 paired ideas as avenues into the worldwide transformations they see as defining the interval from the tip of World Battle II to the early Nineteen Seventies: power and inhabitants, local weather and organic variety, cities and the economic system, and Chilly Battle and environmental tradition.1 I’d wish to suggest science and information as a pair of ideas with potential to make clear vital dimensions of Canada’s Nice Acceleration. What follows are however some preliminary and scattershot ideas on these issues; I’d welcome dialogue and corrections within the feedback to this publish.
Elevated curiosity in science and know-how is a attribute of Canada’s mid-twentieth century. The questions raised by World Battle II and, later, the Chilly Battle have been taken by some political leaders to demand solutions that have been not less than partly scientific in character. On this context, we see the operation of what Alex Souchen and Matthew S. Wiseman have recognized as Canada’s military-industrial advanced.2 Science served as a method by means of which the state consolidated authority and management over each human communities and non-human nature, with some social scientists and pure scientists exercising their experience in service of what they conceived as the general public curiosity, whereas others labored in private-sector contexts the place revenue was a main motivator. As Blair Stein has proposed, mid-century scientific and technological advances like air journey affected individuals residing in northern North America not simply by means of the brand new prospects these afforded but additionally by means of how these reshaped prevailing concepts of distance and atmosphere – or, phrased extra broadly, of human risk on this time and place.3
A research of science in Canada’s Nice Acceleration can take cues from latest scholarly examination of the relation between science and capitalism at transnational scales. Lukas Rieppel, Eugenia Lean, and William Deringer have proposed an analytic give attention to the ways in which science and capitalism have co-produced one another, arguing that the relation between these two is finest understood in evidence-based analyses of explicit historic contexts.4 From this angle, we’d take into account how science and capital got here collectively beneath the actual situations prevailing in mid-twentieth century Canada, within the understanding that such research would possibly intersect in productive methods with efforts to probe interconnections between science and capital in several historic contexts or at totally different analytic scales, together with the worldwide or planetary. Research of Canada’s Nice Acceleration might help to light up the intersections between science and capitalism, on the one hand, and colonialism or imperialism, on the opposite – intersections that Rieppel, Lean, and Deringer determine as significantly in want of research.
Science is perhaps understood because the difficult infrastructure underpinning Canada’s Nice Acceleration. By the mid-Sixties, quite a lot of methods of interested by and with science have been coming to the fore in Canada. Some federal leaders considered science as a instrument that had but for use to its full potential, seeking to the prospect of a Canadian science coverage as a manner to enhance issues.5 And science underpinned the amplification of this era’s environmentalist critiques, with activists (together with some scientists) marshalling scientific insights in efforts to spotlight what they noticed because the alarming ecological modifications related to the Nice Acceleration. Whereas it facilitated the environmental transformations attribute of this era, science additionally served as a lightning rod for anxiousness on the a part of political leaders and skilled decision-makers, and it empowered rising critiques of the accelerated environmental exploitation attribute of the mid-twentieth century.
The historical past of science is each a longtime discipline of research in its personal proper and an vital sub-theme in lots of works of Canadian environmental historical past. And historic work partaking with science is supported in a Canadian context by numerous vital establishments, together with the journal Scientia Canadensis, the Canadian Science and Expertise Historic Affiliation (CSTHA), and Ingenium, a crown company that entails three museums centered on the historical past of science and know-how in Canada. Expanded engagements with science in mid-twentieth century Canada are wanted not solely to generate insights on Canada’s Nice Acceleration, but additionally to amplify and enrich vital work already underway on the histories of science and know-how in a Canadian context.
The historical past of information, which has not too long ago emerged as an vital scholarly discipline, provides a framework by means of which to have interaction Canada’s Nice Acceleration with out implicitly confirming scientific chauvinism by means of an unique give attention to the work of so-called consultants. A strong illustration of the explanatory potential of the historical past of information in a Canadian context is Elsbeth Heaman’s award-winning work on taxation, which Heaman describes as “a social historical past of politics grounded on a social historical past of information.”6 Heaman’s strategy to learning a interval antecedent to the Nice Acceleration provides an vital methodological instance to information analysis on what Heaman phrases “the development of objectivities” – or intersubjective consensus – in Canada’s publish 1945 interval.7
Students involved in contemplating Canada’s Nice Acceleration from a perspective knowledgeable by the historical past of information can take cues from students like John Sandlos, Arn Keeling, Caitlynn Beckett, and Rosanna Nicol, who’ve grappled with the sharing of details about industrial air pollution throughout generations inside the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.8 Additionally helpful would be the work of Pleasure Parr, who proposed an analytical give attention to embodied information in her research of Ontario communities dealing with radical panorama change.9 Students may also orient themselves round key rules defining the worldwide discipline of the historical past of information, which embody a give attention to practices by means of which information is generated, on the avenues by means of which information is circulated, and on the methods during which disparate knowledges are entangled.
Research of Canada’s Nice Acceleration which might be outlined by rules within the historical past of information will find insightful factors of encounter, even battle, between totally different genres of information. This attitude would possibly inflect ongoing examination of excessive modernist state undertakings – an space of energy inside Canadian historic scholarship – by additional underlining how each these undertakings and the often-fervent opposition to them amounted to materials expressions of distinct sorts of knowledges. This attitude may also place us to acknowledge anew the significance of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (MVPI), often known as the Berger Inquiry after commissioner Thomas Berger, as a sign second of Canada’s Nice Acceleration – an occasion the place state processes ran up towards Indigenous peoples’ knowledges and have been obliged, not less than for a time, to alter course. A latest NiCHE collection on the MVPI included numerous posts that activate concepts of information, together with Crystal Gail Fraser’s piece on her grandmother, Julienne The’dahcha, and Dinjii Zhuh “sovereignty, information, and love for the Land.”
So far, the Nice Acceleration has usually been outlined by way of key biophysical or ecological indicators like charges of species extinction or diploma of freshwater eutrophication. A give attention to information broadens prospects for the qualitative research of the Nice Acceleration, an emphasis which may make it much more productive to combine histories of northern North America with scholarship on the Nice Acceleration. Works by historians of Canada have positioned us to understand many dimensions of the social and labour historical past of the mid-twentieth century. Engagements with Canada’s Nice Acceleration will profit from this substantial physique of labor whereas extra carefully coupling histories of consumerism or manufacturing to the attendant environmental prices. On the identical time, an vital focus in such works would be the switch of wealth and energy away from communities – which included buyers and staff, after all – and the focus of those within the arms of the few.
From this angle, in coming to phrases with the Nice Acceleration, we might monitor flows of cash in addition to fee of species decline or focus of vitamins, contemplating whether or not wealth switch or revenue accumulation would possibly quantity to a definitive attribute of this historic interval. We might examine the historical past of algae blooms in Lake Winnipeg, for example, in ways in which take into account the profit-seeking conduct of multinational firms that produce agricultural inputs, the decision-making of upstream farmers who apply the inputs that assist develop the meals and in addition drive the blooms, the water monitoring actions of each locals and consultants, the advocacy efforts by these affected whether or not instantly or not directly, and any regulatory actions by state brokers. We’d take into account the sluggish violence of eutrophication in ways in which centre not simply ecological but additionally cultural and social causes and results. Amongst results, explicit consideration is because of disruptions to conventional lifeways and harvesting practices inside close by Indigenous communities, recognizing that mid-twentieth century accelerations are associated to ongoing colonial processes. Moreover, we’d monitor shifts to longstanding patterns on the a part of some Manitobans of spending summers on the lake, a historical past that intersects totally with questions of race, gender, and sophistication.10
A satellite tv for pc picture of Lake Winnipeg. The lake is strikingly inexperienced, suggesting in depth eutrophication.
Picture credit score: NASA, by way of Wikimedia Commons – public area. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AlgaeLW.jpg
In Canada as in lots of different nations world wide, from roughly the Eighties, the general public funding of science was rendered more and more suspect by ascendant neoliberal concepts.11 Within the a long time since, rules of individualism have turn out to be established in lots of quarters as one thing like a commonsense – what Elsbeth Heaman would possibly time period an objectivity. Over latest a long time, historians have participated in efforts to lift alarm about insufficient state assist for establishments basic to the technology and preservation of information, corresponding to archives and entry to data applications. And historians have struggled with the deficiencies which have resulted from state underfunding. In 2026, historians are concerned within the newest of those battles. Environmental historians like Tina Lavatory have been significantly concerned in pushback towards cuts affecting businesses of explicit curiosity to them, like Parks Canada. What some have known as the battle on science is clearly a battle of attrition.12 Understanding the Nice Acceleration as a specific interval within the historical past of science and information leaves us higher positioned to acknowledge the distinctive dimensions of the information regime that now prevails, a regime that’s in some methods hostile to the wants and issues of many historians.
Notably contemplating the tensions and issues round experience in a recent period characterised by misinformation, disinformation, and generative AI, it’s an opportune second to think about anew the historically- and geographically-specific dimensions of science and experience in Canada, in addition to the roles of all kinds of knowledges and knowledge-holders in driving ahead, variously navigating, and elevating issues in regards to the social and ecological modifications characterizing Canada’s Nice Acceleration.
Shannon Stunden Bower is a Professor of Historical past within the Division of Historical past, Classics, and Faith on the College of Alberta. Her analysis focuses on the Canadian Prairies, and addresses questions associated to water administration (with explicit concern for the extremes of flood or drought) and authorities establishments (whether or not at nationwide, provincial, or native scales).
1. J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Nice Acceleration: An Environmental Historical past of the Anthropocene since 1945 (Belknap Press, 2016).
2. Alex Souchen and Matthew S. Wiseman, Silent Companions: The Origins and Affect of Canada’s Navy-Industrial Advanced (UBC Press, 2024).
3. Blair Stein, “‘One-Day-Huge’ Canada: Historical past, Geography, and Aerial Views at Trans Canada Air Strains, 1945-1955,” Scientia Canadensis 40, no. 1 (2018): 19–43.
4. Lukas Rieppel, Eugenia Lean, and William Deringer, “Introduction: Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories,” Osiris vol. 1, no. 33 (2018): 1–24.
5. Science Council of Canada, First Annual Report, 1966-67 (Queen’s Printer, 1967), 1, 22.
6. Elsbeth A. Heaman, Tax, Order, and Good Authorities: A New Political Historical past of Canada, 1867-1917. (McGill-Queen’s College Press, 2017), 15.
7. Heaman, 15.
8. John Sandlos, Arn Keeling, Caitlynn Beckett, and Rosanna Nicol, “There’s a Monster Beneath the Floor: Commemorating the Historical past of Arsenic Contamination at Big Mine,” Papers in Canadian Historical past and Setting, no. 3 (October 2019): 1–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.25071/10315/36516
9. Pleasure Parr, Sensing Modifications: Applied sciences, Environments, and the On a regular basis, 1953-2003 (UBC Press, 2010).
10. Dale Barbour, Winnipeg Seaside: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort City (College of Manitoba Press, 2011).
11. Janet Atkinson-Grosjean, Public Science, Non-public Pursuits: Tradition and Commerce in Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (College of Toronto Press, 2006), 5.
12. Chris Turner, The Battle on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper’s Canada (Greystone Books Ltd, 2013).
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