The Greater Gulf: Essays on the Environmental History of the Gulf of St Lawrence ed. by Claire E. Campbell et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Greater Gulf: Essays on the Environmental History of the Gulf of St Lawrence ed. by Claire E. Campbell et al. Stephen Bocking Campbell, Claire E., Edward MacDonald, and Brian Payne, eds. – The Greater Gulf: Essays on the Environmental History of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. 372 p. For centuries, the Gulf of St. Lawrence has been defined by the movements and ecologies of people, commodities, and capital. First Nations, fishers, explorers, naval officers, industrialists, writers, and tourists experienced, exploited, or interpreted the region. Oysters, lobsters, and other fish defined its ecology; storms and ice, its hazards. All receive attention in this collection. Although valuable to those who study the history of eastern North America, this book would also interest those concerned with the relations between this region and other places, or who wish to understand how a collective identity was constructed that encompassed the icebergs and rocks of Labrador and Cape Breton and the gentle landscapes and shores of Prince Edward Island. These diverse points of entry into the region's history speaks to the editors' evident ambition: to assert that, far from a site of marginal interest, it belongs at the centre of larger historical conversations. Our knowledge of the region's first peoples—the Innu, Beothuk, and Mi'kmaq—is fragmentary, drawn from archaeological remains and European accounts. For perhaps ten thousand years, they moved seasonally between land and water, relying on the Gulf's rich living resources. In the sixteenth century, they traded with European fishers, their interactions still shaped by the region's seasons, climate, and geography. Eventually, however, European empires transformed the Gulf into a "contested geopolitical space," in which British, French, and Americans competed for fish and power. Numerous episodes—the evolving relations between settlers and Indigenous peoples; the formation of western Newfoundland as a fishing outpost; and British efforts to control the flow of commodities, especially cod, during the Seven Years' War, which culminated in their destruction of the fishery—bore the imprint of political, diplomatic, and economic agendas formed in distant capitals. During the nineteenth century, the region shifted from military to business affairs, as New England fishers and markets dominated the Gulf. Americans used Prince Edward Island's ports to control the mackerel trade, while canning technologies and corporate maneuvers drew profits from lobsters scattered across the Gulf. But islanders also seized the initiative: they attempted to increase oyster production by enclosing the marine commons—an effort that collided, however, with ecological, economic, and political realities. Several chapters illustrate the diverse [End Page 187] scales of fishing activity: from nets to networks, habitats to home markets. While this is a history of exploitation, conservation was also, from time to time, a matter of concern in ways that reflected environmental and economic circumstances—a useful reminder of the value of understanding conservation as a local phenomenon. The book's final section complements these ecological, strategic, and economic histories by considering how artists and writers perceived the Gulf. Many Americans sought the sublime in the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. The Gaelicspeaking peoples of Cape Breton, a seemingly isolated folk culture, formed a pleasing counterpoint to modern society. Lucy Maud Montgomery's perspective on Prince Edward Island's North Shore linked pastoral island and wilder Gulf through sailing excursions, fish, storms, and shipwrecks. In his stories, writer and boat designer W. Albert Hickman portrayed Pictou County as both an industrial centre and a place of leisure. The Gulf's identity as a refuge from modernity lingers still. The Greater Gulf fulfills its task impressively by bringing together specialist knowledge of themes as diverse as strategy, settlement, exploitation, politics, and culture, while building a larger understanding of the region. How these themes relate to the ecology of the Gulf—its abundant fish, the ways of lobsters and oysters, the connections between the St. Lawrence River, Gulf of Maine, and Gulf Stream—receives ample attention. The authors also situate the Gulf within North American history, including the transition from colonies to states and from a rural and agricultural to an urban and industrial society. In diverse ways...