Category: New thinking

In the Canadian Spatial Times (October 5,2021) there is notice for a Statistics Canada workshop on ’Measuring Access to Services: International and Canadian Experiences in Rural Analysis’ to be held on October 13th.

This reminded me that several years ago, there was a provincial agency called ’Community Counts’ which provided detailed access to census data.

In these COVID times, there is a demand for educational institutions to offer a mix of online and in-person courses. This spurred me to ask the faculty at COGS how they have changed their curriculum to meet these new demands. Hopefully, in a few weeks, I will be able to report on the changes in curriculum and courses, as educational institutions address the changing demands. There would seem to be new opportunities for collaboration, and thus, to resurrect the role of ’community counts’ in the overall equation.

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From Chapter 1, Bernie Francis:
“Our language is verb oriented. We naturally see, and act, with the world differently than the speakers of English and French, both groups speaking language from the Indo-European stock.”

From Chapter 2, The Sentient Landscape and the Language of the Land:
”The Land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right.The land looks after us.The land looks after people.”

From a Cibecue Apache quote collected by Keith Basso.

This contrasts strongly with the Indo-European view of Herman Hesse in his ’Description of a landscape’ (see previous blog).

Acknowledgements

Jon Murphy for his good work at GoGeomatics. Dave MacLean at COGS for his encouragement. Edward Wedler supplied the graphics and links. Heather Stewart shares the journey.

References

Canadian Spatial Times. October5, 2021.

Trudy Sable and Bernie Francis, 2012, The Language of this Land, Mi’kma’ki, Cape Breton University Press, (Bill Jones contributed the maps of land use and occupancy).

Wednesday morning I walked along Highway #201 (Carleton Road) from our house to Lawrencetown Lane. I noticed the change in civic addresses at the Paradise/Lawrencetown boundary. In Paradise, they are four digits e.g. our house is #6326; in Lawrencetown they are three digits e.g. Lunn’s Mill Beer Company is #515.

On my growler of Brickyard Red, I find the following history of Lunn’s Mill.

”In 1760, this beautiful part of the Annapolis valley was known as Lunn’s Mill, named after the major industry in the area, a bustling saw mill owned by John Lunn. Around this time the Charming Molly (another beer) set sail from New England carrying the first New England Planters. These intrepid people helped expand the community with farms and shops and in 1822 it was renamed Lawrencetown.”

Within this context, I received an email from David Raymond, retired Cartography instructor at COGS. He now operates MapAtlantic from his home in Smith’s Cove.

”I have been working on a project for Dr. Paul Armstrong (Maritime Institute for Civil Society) since early 2020 that involves bringing the nineteenth century AF Church maps into a GIS database. The next phase involves matching the 1871 census records to those in the database.”

David put me in touch with Paul Armstrong. They want me to speak at a small gathering in Truro later in August. This will lead to my undertaking some background research on Historical GIS in the next couple of months.

Meanwhile, this week, in the Chronicle Herald, there was a further update on the MapAnnapolis project.

These connections serve to illustrate the relationship between COGS, Cartography and our appreciation of the the geography of the Annapolis Valley. It is a tribute to the work of Walter Morrison, John Wightman and John Belbin and their successors. It also illustrates the value of the map collection at the college.

Can you imagine a historical GIS system where you could operate a slider through time, and see the changes in the land use and land ownership?

Postscript

Last night, Heather and I watched the TVO documentary ‘From Earth to Sky’ produced by Ron Chapman. Watch it, and imagine thé Mi’kmaq perspective on this changing landscape.

Acknowledgements

David Raymond and Paul Armstrong for reaching out to me. I look forward to the research. David Colville for forwarding the end of year address by Don Bureaux, President at NSCC. Edward and Heather for their ongoing support.

References

Lunn’s Mill Beer. Check the label for a short history lesson.

Chronicle Herald. June 23,2021. C6. Digital Mapping chronicles Annapolis Co’s history.
Paul Pickrem.

David Raymond, MapAtlantic, Smith’s Cove.

Paul Armstrong Ph.D Historical Sociology, President, Maritime Institute for Civil Society, Chair, KITH Observatory Inc., Treasurer, Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia.

Don Bureaux, June 23, 2021, President’s Update. Year End Message.

As part of the sale, we had to clean out the attic of the farm house. There were several totes, containing possessions from Andrew, Julia and Julia’s Dad. They proved to be a literary treasure chest.

A separate box contained thirty volumes of Granta, a quarterly paperback magazine of new writing, published by Penguin, from #21 to #69. For example, #21 The Story-Teller includes contributions from Bruce Chatwin, Oliver Sacks and Primo Levi (1987).

The icing on the cake was the Signet classic, George Orwell, Animal Farm with a new Preface by Russell Baker(1996).

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Thank you, to Brent Hall, who responded to the link on Lonnie Donegan and skiffle (see blog post HERE), with two additional links showing the trajectory from Donegan via James Page to Led Zeppelin.

Via Brent Hall, check out Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line“, “Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore” and “Led Zeppelin“.

Wonderful entertainment !

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Postscript

We rescued the Hunter chest from the wood shed and returned it to the rightful owners, the Hunter family.

Acknowledgements.

Through gifting links, we find a sense of community. The above books represent only a subset from the ‘treasure chest’. En route, I appreciated the feedback from Jane, Peter, Andrew Ronay and others overseas. Heather and Edward enjoyed the results with me.

References

Roald Dahl, 1990, Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, Penguin.

Roald Dahl, 1986, Boy: Tales of Childhood, Puffin.

Roald Dahl, 1983, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Bantam.

Farley Mowat, 2002, High Latitudes. An Arctic Journey, Steerforth Press.

Colin Fletcher, 1989, The Man who walked through time., Vintage Books.

George Orwell, 1956, Animal Farm, Signet Classic.

Granta 21 The Story-Teller. Spring 1987.

’The Story-Teller. What does it suggest? Folk-tales, myths, sea voyages, a cartoon campfire. In short, a way of writing that is distinctly “unmodern”.

Yesterday (Wednesday) Heather and I participated in the Winter Bird Count, coordinated by David Colville.

The traverse from the river to the top of South Mountain brought memories of our local geography.

What would we learn if we made the traverse, once a month? Or four times per year?

This led, naturally to questions of citizen science. Previously, when employed at AGRG, we had climate stations on the property. What would we learn, if we had say, 4-6 stations in a transect from the river bank to the southern edge of our property on the mountain? What is the temperature and humidity profile along the transect? At different times of the year?

If we maintained the network, we would be able to monitor climate change in the region.

As a citizen scientist I would welcome the opportunity to participate in developing our understanding of the local climate, it’s relationship to the landscape, and to the other species which share this landscape.

As a citizen scientist I would welcome the opportunity to participate in developing our understanding of the local climate, it’s relationship to the landscape, and to the other species which share this landscape.

A note sent to me from Orion Magazine on the loss of contributing editor, Barry Lopez.

 the world is losing a lot of light. Let us hope others will take it up and shine it brightly in 2021

— SANDRA BARRY

Acknowledgements

To David Colville for including us in the bird count. Heather for sharing the forest walk. Sandra Barry for forwarding the note on Barry Lopez. Edward for his magic touch.

References

Mary Ellen Hannibal, 2016, Citizen Scientist: Searching for heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction. The Experiment.

Article on Barry Lopez (1945-2020) in Orion Magazine, December 31, 2020.

Some of my previous blog post links to Citizen Science:
A Proposal: Crowdsourcing and Citizen Scientists
We are all Geographers
Citizen Scientist…
Community Information Utility: it’s time has come.

By the time this blog is posted, we shall know the results of the Municipal Election in Annapolis County. We shall know in the words of The Reader editorial whether ‘Small Things Matter’. We will see the impact of online voting. At this critical juncture, I wonder whether we need electoral reform.

Do we need eleven Councillors in Annapolis County?
Do we need separate elections for the towns, e.g. Annapolis Royal, Middleton?
Is the management of the natural resources in this province independent of the municipalities?

In the past, I have expressed concern about the management of our landscape, and its relation to climate change.

Looking for solace, in these difficult times, I picked up again, Daniel Botkin’s No Man’s Garden: Thoreau and a new vision for civilization and nature. In the book, Botkin identifies three types of expert (p.111):

1. Contemporary professional experts
2. The great thinkers of the past.
3. Experiential experts – local people with local knowledge based on their experience of living in an area and observing carefully.

My thesis would be that we need a combination of all three. Likewise on municipal council we need all three.

It would be a mistake, in my mind, if we focussed only on the small things, and did not understand the larger context. Or what was happening in our larger geography.

There are many good resources available. This morning, I visited Dawn Oman’s gallery in Bridgetown to ask about tickets to the Dave Gunning concert on October 24th.

While there, I had the chance to pick up the latest issue of Up Here magazine, devoted to Northern Canada.

From Celes Davar, we received the recommendation to watch Kiss the Ground , starring Woody Harrelson on Netflix. It defines the importance of the soil to our global ecosystem.
From Anne Crossman, I was sent the link to Striking Balance, a series on Canada’s biosphere reserves.

They are filming the episode on the Southwest Nova Biosphere Reserve, to be aired at the end of November on the CBC. Finally, we received an update from Larry Powell on the Gordonstoun project. This offers employment opportunities for local business. It emphasizes ‘place-based’ education. Our geography, the Annapolis Valley, fits within the Atlantic Canada bubble, as well as the Canada nation.

Acknowledgements

To all those friends who continue to share ideas and experiences: Dawn Oman, Celes Davar, Anne Crossman. Heather, who has helped shoulder the burden of a bumper apple crop in the orchard. Edward for ongoing support.

References

Daniel Botkin, 2001. No Man’s Garden: Thoreau and a new vision for civilization and nature. Island Press.

My daughter, Allison, spent much of the summer camping in Southern Ontario, close to her home. On those trips my two grandchildren created maps as one of their pastime activities. My grandson is six years old and his sister is four years old.

To place his campsite location in context within a larger geography, my grandson mapped the Great Lakes from memory — something I would have difficulty doing.

Closer to home, he mapped features that were important to him at each campground.

The features intrigued me. He names the trails and records their lengths, marks roadways and walkways, streams and green spaces, and important features to a six-year old that I cannot recognize. Tents are numerous and line well-travelled paths. Important to him (and the family) is the location of the public washrooms. This is one of about eight maps he drew at different campsites.

Of importance to his younger four-year-old sibling was the location of two blue water bodies, connecting river, and the land in between. An understandably simpler map.

I recall my many mapping conversations with former COGS instructor Konrad Dramowicz, years ago. He studied how children perceive their space and geography from maps he had them create, based on their travels to and from school.

Looking further into this topic, I was referred to Dr David Sobel in New Hampshire, and his book Mapmaking With Children, in which he discusses the crisis in geography education. The story doesn’t end here. I emailed Dr Sobel and he writes,

“Yes, some children have the mapmaking gene expressed more strongly — a great thing to encourage.  Unusual, from a developmental perspective, for a 6 year old to have internalized a map image of the scope of the Great Lakes system.“

My two older grandchildren from Nova Scotia also create maps. These maps are dynamic and strategic based on their invented game call “The Wall”. It is a game designed to see who can outwit the other, to infiltrate their opponent over, under, around or through The Wall. This game has provided hours of entertainment for them, and their adult challengers as well.

While instructing at COGS, eons ago, I did visit some elementary schools in Annapolis County to talk about Canada’s space, remote sensing and mapping programs. When bringing in some local airphotos and topographic maps to middle school aged youth their exuberance was surprisingly upbeat. Youth want to understand their geography. I hope that COGS continues to fightback the geography crisis noted by Dr Sobel.

Reference

Dr David Sobel, 1998, Mapmaking with Children: sense of place education for elementary years, Heinemann.

Postscript

For those interested in making a “collage map” watch this video from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. LINK: https://youtu.be/H1FXyFH7HrE This project is inspired by the 1975 work, “A Map of Meagher’s Grant”, by artist Evelyn Dickie.

“This is a great activity to do to celebrate the neighbourhood we live in or a home from the past that holds dear to our heart.”