Landscape Links with little comment

It’s a shame, I still have all my Google Alerts set up for this blog, and every week when the alert shows up in my email, I look it over, click on the links that interest me, and then leave those web pages open, waiting, for weeks, until I finally close them in defeat, knowing I will never get around to sharing them. The time and thought that I feel is necessary to make even a simple post of links “worthwhile” has been holding me back. But not today! Two links, with almost no comment, that are related to the Nova Scotia landscape:

• This one is about an urban planning association looking for the public to vote on the best public spaces in Canada. Nova Scotia has a few nominees. Here is the link to the cbc’s article, and the link to the competition website.

• This is a link to an article about the architecture firm MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, their recent awards, and the goals for one of the firm’s partners (Talbot Sweetapple). I like that it’s an interview with Sweetapple, since Brian McKay-Lyons is the higher profile partner. MacKay-Lyons formed his firm in 1985, and joined with Sweetapple in 2005. I may have talked about my appreciate for this firm’s Nova Scotia work before – they are celebrated for their modern designs that are built with a real appreciation of the surrounding landscape and sense of place.

So there you go! Finally, after all this time, I was able to get over myself just enough to share some links. If I can make a habit of it, we might be back in business.

*The image is a model of a MacKay-Lyons house that I built for a first-year landscape architecture class in 2009.

Book Review – McKay strikes again

I have had this link in a Firefox window for at least a month; I reload it every time I shut my computer down and start it up again. So while I sit here at the airport waiting to fly home to Nova Scotia for Christmas, I may as well post it. The link is to a book review for In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia by Ian McKay and Robin Bates.

Frankly, I got so much Ian McKay exposure during my MA thesis that I haven’t been able to bring myself to borrow this book from the school library yet. Besides, based on the review, I’ve already seen firsthand most of the primary material the book draws from, and it doesn’t sound like McKay has really developed his previous work on the topic much further. That said, if you’d like to know what one of the few scholars who work(ed) in the field of Nova Scotia tourism history says about the subject, this review is an excellent summary. The reviewer, Dr. Paul W. Bennett, also raises some of the primary problems with McKay’s analysis, mainly McKay’s emphasis on Premier Angus L. Macdonald as being a primary instigator of the provincial mythos, as well as the idea that the tourism impulse resulted in a united sort of provincial image.

The article is here.

Cape Breton – Elizabeth Bishop

I was reading the Complete Works of poet Elizabeth Bishop last night, and was struck again with how perfect Bishop’s poem “Cape Breton” captures what I always thought construction season must have been like on the island during mid-century (and I thought about that quite a bit while I was writing my thesis). In the poem, the construction of the coastal road, abandoned on Sunday, serves to enhance the mystery of the interior. It’s all ocean and hill and mist and road and then a little bus rolls down the dusty road packed with people going about their Sunday business (including “today only two preachers extra, one carrying his frock coat on a
hanger”).

The entire poem is after the jump:

Conflicting Conservations?

Wind Turbing in Pubnico, NS. Photo c. Andrew d'Entremont, used under Creative Commons license

One of the topics we addressed a few times over in my landscape architecture classes this year is the issue of our current landscape values and how new technologies may conflict with them. This was again brought to mind for me this week when I saw two news reports on the CBC – one announcing Nova Scotia’s latest commitment to renewable energy, and the other out of Lunenburg about the conflict between heritage planning values and energy conservation values.

A couple in Lunenburg want to put solar panels on their roof; this is against against Lunenburg’s heritage conservation bylaws, which are designed to preserve the town’s internationally recognized historical landscape.   It’s a conflict that we might see a lot more of in the coming years, particularly if the province’s new energy initiative has tangible results. Do solar panels work against the integrity of heritage landscapes? Are wind turbines an ugly blight on our landscape, a utilitarian sight that is merely acceptable, or an icon of sustainability and therefore, potentially, attractive? And if our landscape and coastline is transformed by these new energy endeavours, how are we going to reconcile it to our own vision of what Nova Scotia’s landscape looks like, as well as with our current tourism approach?

Revised Expectations

The tulips say "spring".

I guess it was rather (okay, extremely) optimistic of me to assume that a Masters of Landscape Architecture degree would provide absolutely any time for composing thoughtful blog posts on the Nova Scotia landscape during term. So here I am on a Saturday night at the end of term, a school year away from my most recent post. I finally have time to think about a topic that still occupies an inordinately prominent place in my thoughts (just ask my fellow students – I can’t shut up about Nova Scotia).

If this job search continues very long, I may just have time to get in a few posts this summer. And it will be more useful for the homesickness than before, as it is looking more and more likely that I will be spending my time here in Ontario. Is there a set of lyrics to “Farewell to Nova Scotia”  for Bluenosers who are landlocked?

In the News: Art and Architecture edition

I’ve been neglectful, but my google alerts have also been rather bereft lately – news of tourism business partnerships between Nova Scotia and Stirling, Scotland, while fascinating, are generally only  tangentially related to landscape, and I try to stay on topic (although, as an aside: the description of the visit to Scotland is incredibly evocative of every single tourism trade mission to Scotland of the past 80 years).

In a bit of self-promotion, my thesis was listed on the NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment) website, probably thanks to my excellent thesis adviser. Neat!

Here’s an interesting article about Peter Gough, a landscape artist whose artistic imagination is captured by Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A snippet:

Having roots in both is the best of two worlds, he says. While they are culturally and geographically close, the prevailing elements of their landscapes are quite different: Nova Scotia, practically surrounded by the sea, feels almost like an island to Gough, while, to him, the dominant feature of New Brunswick is its extensive, storied river systems.

I liked Gough’s emphasis on the full sensory experience of being in the landscape – I think the landscape should be more than what we see, even if the medium we will ultimately use (e.g. painting) is a visual medium.

The Chronicle Herald published an article on the architect Brian McKay-Lyons, his annual architectural project/retreat called Ghost, and this year’s project to reassemble a historic octagonal barn from Annapolis County on his own property on the South Shore. I find McKay-Lyons’ work interesting for his attempt to bring modern yet place-specific architecture to his projects, and I respect his commitment to live in Nova Scotia even when it may not always be professionally advantageous.

However, so far as our cultural/historic landscape goes, I’m not really sure how much value this gesture holds. Taking a building away from its original place turns it into more of an artifact than an object in the landscape – however the cumulation of all these preserved built “artifacts” can still be useful in picturing historic and/or vernacular architecture. While I cringe at the assumption that “saving” an old building by moving it is by definition virtuous and right – and the collecting impulse that accompanies it – I do like the idea that re-using old buildings if worthwhile if only for the purpose of reducing waste. What do you think? Are any of you as conflicted as I am?

Blogging on Nova Scotia’s landscape – from Guelph, Ontario

Well, I’m moved in and mostly unpacked at my apartment in Guelph.

I’ll be blogging about Nova Scotia from Ontario for the next two or three years at least. I hoped when I started this blog that it would serve as a way for me to stay connected to Nova Scotia while I bide my time doing this latest degree (which I am taking with hopes of being able to return to Nova Scotia as soon as possible with good career prospects). I hope this blog will help alleviate the homesickness and keep me tuned in to Nova Scotia’s landscape and environmental issues while I am 1,900 km away.

And of course, I am writing this post from Guelph because I finally finished, defended, and formally submitted my MA history thesis! It’s called The Road to Yesterday: Nova Scotia’s Tourism Landscape and the Automobile Age, 1920-1940. You can take a look at it in the Killam Library at Dalhousie University some time after October.

Thesis Relief/Relief Map

It’s been a while! I submitted my thesis to my defence committee on Wednesday, and I now have two weeks to prepare for a move to Upper Canada. I have a number of posts saved in my draft folder, but none that are ready to  be shared yet. So, until I have a little more time to finish those posts, I thought I might share a little excerpt from my thesis with you. Sorry about the super-long paragraphs; that’s thesis writing for you – nothing so short and snappy as the blog style. The excerpt is below the jump.

In the News – Woods and wastelands

Nova Scotia loses over 1/10th of its forest in 17 years. (link may expire)

“It is a concern because certain species require intact forests for their best survival,” said Cheng. “It is significant that this amount of landscape can change, especially this quickly, when in other forest management zones across Canada it is much lower.”

The Forest Products Association of Nova Scotia deflects by claiming that Hurricane Juan cleanup, as well as “parking lots and highways,” could have been a significant portion of the forest, half the size of Cape Breton, that has disappeared since 1990.

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Nova Scotians might be concerned to hear that we are harvesting our forests at twice the rate of places like Northern Ontario and inland British Columbia. If there is a good reason this is being done, and if the forestry companies are taking measures to restore the forest sustainably (and not just for harvesting in another 20-30 years), tell us. Don’t pretend parking lots are the villain.

If you’d like to read Global Forest Watch’s report, you can read the press release here. A link to download the report can be found here.

To be fair, this more detailed response of the Forest Products Association is better phrased and raises some good questions about the report’s methods.

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If you go for a hike on the Eastern Shore, you might find that wooded path has become a 485-hectare clearing. Harvesting wood for biomass, the new up-and-coming energy source which really means, “first we clearcut, then we strip and chipper every last bit of branch and twig and add it too a pile until we’re ready to burn it in a giant furnace” is causing concern among environmentalists.

If you read the comments section of any cbc.ca article, I always advise you use the “agreed” comment sorting option, and pay attention to how many people voted “agree” or “disagree” on the comments. It will make you feel better.

NS in Art – Adolf Fassbender

It’s no secret that much of the inspiration f0r this blog comes from my history studies. While editing my thesis last week, I came across a reference in a tourism brochure to a prominent photographer, “Mr. Passbender,” who extolled the beauties of Nova Scotia as a world-class destination:

“‘Nova Scotia possesses outstanding subjects for pictorial photography,’ writes Adolf Passbender, F.R.P.S., of New York, one of the foremost authorities on photography in America. Every year a small army of artists and photographers come to Nova Scotia. They know that the quaint little seaside villages with the fishermen’s homes built amongst granite boulders offer excellent studies. “

(From Canada’s Ocean Playground, 1939)

“Passbender” was actually a spelling mistake, as I discovered when I googled the name. Adolf Fassbender was a German-born photography instructor and pictorial photographer whose most important artistic years were in the 1930s and 1940s. Fassbender did not believe in absolute accuracy in photography or in anything like “the ugly truth.” Fassbender believed that the photographer was supposed to find – and create – the beautiful and picturesque.

Here are a few of Fassbender’s Nova Scotia images (The photo at the top of the post is “Cape Breton Beacon”):

Fishermen's Menace

Crooked Mile

Before the Storm

This final image is somewhere on the South Shore of Nova Scotia (here). It is different from his other NS subject matter – fishermen and fog and lighthouses – but the common element of the ocean is still there.

Apparently Fassbender’s major publication of his images includes lengthy captions written by the photographer which address the technical aspect of the photo and Fassbender’s personal thoughts about the setting. I would love to be able to read those captions, to get some kind of insight into how he approached and modified the Nova Scotia landscape in his images.

Sources:

• The Pictorial Artistry of Adolf Fassbender book review.
• Live Auctioneers listing
• Reference to A. Fassbender in book, The Appalachian photographs of Earl Palmer
• Adolf Fassbender at photogravure.com