CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Author : Grek Martin, J.
Date : 2004.
Title : George Mercer Dawson and the scientific legibility of the Canadian West.
Publication : 2004 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers. Tuesday, May 25 – Saturday, May 29, 2004. Jointly organised by Université de Moncton and Mount Allison University. Moncton, New Brunswick.
Issue :
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Abstract
Recent geographical scholarship has illuminated the diverse practices and discourses employed by modern states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to make their territories legible. For a newly-formed nation-state such as Canada, establishing epistemological control over an extensive and heterogeneous territory was a critical first step toward achieving vital administrative control over the land and its peoples. In the late nineteenth century, no Dominion agency did more to assert Canada’s epistemological control over its newly-acquired western territories than did the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). In this paper I will analyze the notebooks, maps and published reports that George M. Dawson-the GSC’s most prominent field scientist-produced in relation to his scientific field work in British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon, between 1875 and 1895. Through his maps and descriptions of topography, geology, natural history and native peoples, Dawson made Western Canada scientifically legible and, thus, effectively governable for the first time. By examining Dawson’s field practices and discursive strategies, then, I will demonstrate the central-yet largely unheralded-role that the GSC played in extending the Dominion’s administrative control over the vast and distant territories of the Canadian West.
Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology