Podcast: The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada, Liza Piper, University of Alberta

In Episode 12 of the Canadian Environmental History Podcast Series sponsored by the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), Professor Liza Piper discusses her new book, The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada, from UBC Press.

Between 1920 and 1960, Canada's northwest subarctic region experienced late-stage rapid industrialization along its large lakes. These included Lake Winnipeg, Lake Athabasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake. Powered by high-energy fossil fuels, the natural resources of the northwest were integrated into international commodity markets and distributed throughout the world. Whitefish from the large lakes found their way onto dinner plates in New York while uranium from Canada's northwest fueled the world's most destructive weapons, atomic bombs.

This book explores a region unfamiliar to most Canadians and how that space was transformed through industrial processes in the twentieth century. Rather than finding industrial technologies dominating the landscape of the northwest, Professor Piper found that humans used those technologies to assimilate nature.

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