Nature's improvement : wildlife, conservation, and conflict in Quebec, 1850-1914

This dissertation presents a new perspective on the history of conservation in North America. In contrast to historiography that locates conservation-oriented approaches to the North American environment as the product of late-nineteenth-century concerns within Canada and the United States, this study links wildlife conservation in Quebec directly to longstanding European land tenure, estate management, and associational strategies. Through a range of materials including state documents, associational records and personal and family papers, I show how advocates of fish and game protection in the province drew heavily on Old World customs and traditions, particularly those of British landowners, who displayed in their varied social, economic, and political commitments an ongoing engagement with improvement. These 'patrician sensibilities,' I argue, formed the basis of the regulatory system that developed in Quebec during the period 1850-1914, first on the remote salmon rivers of the north shore and Gaspe peninsula, and by the First World War on the bulk of the province's best and most easily accessible hunting and fishing territories. In addition to the regulatory strategies that developed during this period, the dissertation deals with forms and limits of resistance on the part of aboriginal and non-aboriginal subsistence, commercial, and sport hunters and fishers. The dissertation's major contribution lies in its demonstration of the longstanding patterns that underpinned the development of conservation strategies in North America. Class and gender are central to the project, and it also has important implications for our understanding of civil society and state formation.

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