The theme of CHESS 2015 is Ottawa: Environmental Capital, an invitation to consider the relationship the environment has to Ottawa’s role as the nation’s seat of government. The summer school will bring together graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members and others to observe the many ways in which longstanding contestations and competing claims over land and water in the Ottawa region connect to the ‘capital-ness’ of the city.
The summer school will open at the Carleton University Art Gallery, where Ian Badgeley, NCC Archeologist, will talk about the archeology of Canada’s capital region. On Saturday a field trip will take participants from a tour of the Chaudiere Falls and former E.B.Eddy/Domtar mills by David McGee (Canada Science and Technology Museum) and Greg Searle (Bioregional North America) , to a tour of Gillies Grove, Arnprior, by Art Goldsmith (former Parks Canada naturalist) and then the Diefenbunker, in Carp, where Andrew Burtch (Canadian War Museum) will speak on the Cold War.
Sunday starts with a tour of the Central Experimental Farm by Pete Anderson (Queens), Joanna Dean (Carleton), and Will Knight (Canada Agriculture and Food Museum), a talk on Ottawa’s Macdonald Gardens by Susan Ross (Carleton), a discussion of capital cities by Anne Dance (Memorial University) and Nari Shelekpayev (Universite de Montreal), and a roundtable discussion by Jennifer Bonnell (McMaster), Colin Coates (York) and Alan MacEachern (Western).
CHESS is sponsored by the Network in Canadian Environment and History (NiCHE), and provides a forum where graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members, and others who are interested in historical approaches to the environment can interact and exchange ideas.