Foresters and Forestry in Canada : Beginnings and Development of an applied Science in the eastern Provinces (1880s-1940s)

Beginning in the 1880s, foresters around the world faced problems such as forest fires, pest infestations, and the shrinking of timber resources. This stimulated the intensification of research activities on forest environments and brought about a large-scale globalization of forestry science. Distinct scientific spaces and specific competencies emerged from a transnational dialogue characterized by exchanges and appropriations, but also by scientific disputes shaped by a variety of approaches towards nature and landscapes, as well as confrontations with complex forest environments.This thesis retraces the ways in which forestry knowledge and practices circulated in eastern Canada (Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick), at the crossroad between European and American influences, from the 1880s to the 1940s. It sheds light on the forces that contributed to their transformation into a transatlantic science, as well as on the process of blending theories and practices on the ground. Studying the development over time of the science of forestry in eastern Canada uncovers the reasons behind the importation of foreign forestry practices on the Canadian soil, but also the economic, cultural, and ideological limits of those transfers. More broadly, it contributes to the literature examining the ways sciences evolve, the manner in which they are constructed, and their geographic contingencies. In the first half of the 20th century, eastern Canadian forestry emerged as a hybrid discipline pursuing its own economic and scientific agenda. It selected from various external sources the elements it judged relevant and combined them with methods developed on its own soil.

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