History Personnel
Teaching - Fall/Winter 2022-23
HIS 2201E - Canada's Past: A Critical History from the Origins to the Present
HIS 3723F - The Anthropocene: History of a Human Planet
HIS 9833A - Environmental History
Supervision
Master's & Doctoral Level supervisory privileges
Related Links
NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment /Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l'environnement
Alan MacEachern
PhD, Queen’s University, 1997
Telephone: 519-661-2111 ext. 84993
Email: amaceach@uwo.ca
Office: Lawson Hall 2268
Office hours: Tuesdays, 9:00- 11:00 am
L.M. Montgomery Institute Visiting Scholar at the University of Prince Edward Island, 2021-23.
Twitter: @alanmaceachern
Research Interests
Professor MacEachern teaches & researches Canadian history, with an emphasis on environmental & climate history.
Teaching Philosophy
A healthy society spends most of its energies trained on the present & the future. But a healthy society also devotes some of its energies to remembering & understanding the past. The historian's job is to tell or remind people today about the lives of others in the past. That's it. Doing so goes a small way to fulfilling the obligation that people of the past are not forgotten. And it holds a promise & a threat to people of today, that they won't be forgotten either.
I am available at the coordinates above, and welcome hearing from you.
Major Research Projects
I am completing a book on “The Webbs of Green Gables,” about the PEI farm family that lived for the first half of the 20th century in what was in the process of becoming the most famous house in Canada: the one said to have inspired Anne of Green Gables. I am also in the early stages of writing a book on the history of the Meteorological Service of Canada’s weather observation program, using the Environment Canada & Climate Change meteorological history collection at Western.
I was the founding director of NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment, and am the editor of the Canadian History & Environment series at University of Calgary Press.
Selected Publications
Books
(with Edward MacDonald) The Summer Trade, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022
The Miramichi Fire: A History, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020.
(with Robert Wardhaugh) Origins: Canadian History to Confederation, 8th ed., Nelson, 2017.
(with Robert Wardhaugh) Destinies: Canadian History since Confederation, 8th ed. Nelson, 2017.
(with William J Turkel) Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History. Nelson, 2009. Includes "An Introduction, in Theory and Practice" and "Lost in Shipping: Canadian National Parks and the International Donation of Wildlife."
The Institute of Man and Resources: An Environmental Fable. Island Studies Press, 2003.
Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.
Recent Chapters & Journal Articles
- Terence Young, Alan MacEachern, and Lary Dilsaver, “From Competition to Cooperation: A History of Canada-US National Park Relations,” Environment and History.
- “J.E. Bernier and the Historical Record,” Polar Record 53 no.1 (Jan 2017), 102-4.
- “Banff is …Hell? The Struggle of Being Canada’s First, Most Famous, and Most Visited National Park,” Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History no.10 (Summer 2016).
- Edward MacDonald and Alan MacEachern, “Rites of Passage: Tourism and the Crossing to Prince Edward Island,” Histoire sociale/Social History, vol.49 no.99 (Juin/June 2016), 291-308.
- “Canada’s Best Idea? The Canadian and American National Park Services in the 1910s,” National Parks Beyond the Nation: Global Perspectives on ‘America’s Best Idea,’ eds. Adrian Howkins, Jared Orsi, Mark Fiege (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 51-67.
- “The Landscapes of Tourism: Scenic Images in Prince Edward Island Tourism Literature,” Time and a Place: The Environmental History of Prince Edward Island, eds. Edward MacDonald, Josh MacFadyen, and Irene Novaczek (Kingston-Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 246-63.
- “Children of the Hummus: Growing up Back-to-the-Land on Prince Edward Island,” Canadian Countercultures and the Environment, ed. Colin Coates (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2016), 259-85.
Recent Public & Digital History Projects
- (with Edward MacDonald) “The Summer Trade” museum exhibit, Confederation Centre of the Arts. Charlottetown, PEI, Jun - Sep 2022.
- “Observing Weather, Revealing Climate, Knowing Nature,” part of RCCGlasgow exhibit, COP26, Glasgow, Scotland, Nov 2021.
- “The Rainmaker,” Canada’s History, Aug-Sep 2021, 28-34.
- “Forecasting Trouble,” Canada’s History, Aug-Sep 2021, 34-5.
- Occasional historical posts on the Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Weather App, Jan - Dec 2021.
- “MB Williams: Living & Writing the Early Years of Parks Canada.” Environment & Society Portal, Virtual Exhibitions 2018, no. 3. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.
- “Bear vs. Groundhog: The Battle for February 2,” Canada’s History, Feb-Mar 2019, 44-7.
- “Missing the Island” museum exhibit, Confederation Centre of the Arts. Charlottetown, PEI, May - Sep 2018.
- Alan MacEachern and Edward MacDonald, “Collecting Memories,” Canada’s History (Dec 2017 - Jan 2018), 42-6.
- Edward MacDonald and Alan MacEachern, “Unwanted Guests: Postwar Tourism and Racism on Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine 82 (Fall/Winter 2017). 35-8.
- “The Big Chill: The ‘Year Without a Summer’ in Canada,” Canada’s History, Aug-Sept 2016, 52-5.
- Alan MacEachern and Michael O’Hagan, “Canada’s Year Without a Summer” online exhibit and teaching resource, Jan 2016.
Conference Organization
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Co-organizer, “L.M. Montgomery and Re-vision,” L.M. Montgomery Institute, UPEI, Charlottetown, PEI, 22-26 June 2022.
Awards and Distinctions
- Visiting Scholar, L.M. Montgomery Institute, University of PEI, Charlottetown, PEI, 2021-23.
- Visiting Professor, School of Architecture & Urban Planning, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, 2017.
- Carson Fellow, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, 2016.
- SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Clusters grant, principal investigator, 2007-15.
