Innate Terrain: Canadian Landscape Architecture 9781487527235

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INNATE TERRAIN: CANADIAN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Edited by Alissa North With a Foreword by Ron Williams

INNATE TERRAIN Canadian Landscape Architecture

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

©  University of Toronto Press 2022 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4875-2721-1 (cloth)   ISBN 978-1-4875-2724-2 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-2722-8 (paper)   ISBN 978-1-4875-2723-5 (PDF)

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Innate terrain : Canadian landscape architecture / edited by Alissa North ; with a foreword by Ron Williams. Names: North, Alissa, editor. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220282161 | Canadiana (ebook) 2022028220X | ISBN 9781487527211 (cloth) |   ISBN 9781487527228 (paper) | ISBN 9781487527242 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487527235 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Landscape architecture – Canada. Classification: LCC SB470.55.C3 I56 2022 | DDC 712.0971–dc23

We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This book has been published with the assistance of the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF), the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Aco Systems, North Design Office, Stur Design, and the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA).

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for its publishing activities.

Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Foreword  xv Ron Williams

Acknowledgments  xix Introduction: Consequent of the Land  3 Alissa North and Peter Jamie Reford

PART ONE: NATIVE LAND Physical-Human-Geographical Regions / Land Use / Land Claims / Land Management 1 Collaboration with the Keepers of Traditional Knowledge  13

Grant Fahlgren

2 Nouveaux Paysages: Contemporary Installations by Canadian Landscape Architects  43

Adrien Sun Hall

3 Resolve: Negotiation and Implementation of Land Claims  65

James C. Thomas

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Contents

4 Landscapes of Culture: Inuit Traditional Knowledge Applied  91

Chris Grosset and Marla Limousin

5 Working in the Wild: Landscape Architecture in Canada’s National Parks  115

Shelley Long

PART TWO: TRUE NORTH Regionalism / Critical Regionalism / Resources / Cultural-Biological Resources 6 Nature  141

Alissa North

7 The Power of Local in East Coast Landscapes  171

Matthew A.J. Brown, Stéphane LeBlanc, James Allan MacDonald-Nelson, and Andrea Mantin

8 L’anarchie resplendissante – Resplendent Anarchy: Towards a Quebec Regionalism  199

Marc Hallé and Yannick Roberge

9 Wide Open Space: Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture  223

Karen Wilson Baptist

PART THREE: FAR AND WIDE Cities / Megalopolises / Urbanity / Urban Conurbations / Urban Ecology 10 Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture  253

Fadi Masoud, Matthew Spremulli, and Shadi Ramos

11 Landscape Verified as Infrastructure: Toronto’s Waterfront Transformation  277

James A. Roche

Contents

12 The Right Tree in the Right Place  297

Michael Ormston-Holloway

13 Supernatural: An Account of Vancouver’s Post-Industrial Landscape  317

Susan Herrington

14 Urbanization and Large Canadian Parks in the Nineteenth Century and Today  345

Sandra A. Cooke

Contributors  369 Index  373

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Illustrations

I.0 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9

The Bentway, Toronto, Ontario  2 Roper Regional Wetland, Edmonton, Alberta  12 First Nations reserves and treaty boundaries map, Canada  19 First Nations tall grass prairie map, Lakes St. Clair and Erie, Ontario  23 First Nations watersheds and waterways map, James Bay, Quebec  26 La Grande dam, Quebec  27 La Grande River, Quebec  27 Estuarine garden rendering, Fraser River delta, British Columbia  31 Tidal marsh vegetation section, Fraser River delta, British Columbia  32 Fraser River delta, British Columbia  33 First Nations reserves of the Fraser watershed map, British Columbia  34 Soft infrastructure fishing weir rendering, Shoal Lake, Manitoba  36 Weir scaffolds rendering, Shoal Lake, Manitoba  37 Toronto Botanical Gardens, Ontario  42 Sun Tunnels, Great Basin Desert, Utah  46 MoMA Roof Garden, New York, New York  47 Tiny Taxonomy, Jardins de Métis, Quebec  50 The Drive, Art Gallery of Guelph, Ontario  51 Floating Forest, London, England  52 Core Sample, Jardins de Métis, Quebec  54 TOM II, Montreal, Quebec  55 Lipstick Forest, Montreal, Quebec  56 Boustrophedon Garden, Quebec City, Quebec  58

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Illustrations

2.10 Big Sky, Calgary, Alberta  60 3.0 Oodena Celebration Circle, Winnipeg, Manitoba  64 3.1 Historical and modern treaties map, Canada  67 3.2 Treaties One, Two, and Three map, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario  69 3.3 St. Peter’s Reserve overlay map, Red River, Manitoba  72 3.4 Former Long Sault Reserve 12, Rainy River, Ontario  74 3.5 Former First Nations reserves map, Rainy River, Ontario  75 3.6 Ecological analysis for replacement reserve land, Gates Ajar, Ontario  78 3.7 Surrender Claim agreement procession, Rainy River First Nations, Ontario  79 3.8 Agricultural history and capability analysis maps, St. Peter’s Reserve, Manitoba  81 3.9 Agreement signing celebration, Peguis Reserve, Manitoba  82 4.0 Riverworks, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan  90 4.1 Reconstructions in landscape, Kekerten Island Territorial Park, Nunavut  97 4.2 Inukshuks, Southampton Island, Duke of York Bay, Nunavut  98 4.3 Land use planning consultations, Duke of York Bay, Nunavut  99 4.4 Whalebone qammaq frame reconstruction, Kekerten Island, Nunavut  102 4.5 Whaling station frame reconstruction, Kekerten Island, Nunavut  103 4.6 Whaling era materials, Kekerten Island, Nunavut  104 4.7 Silhouette of reconstructed whaling station, Kekerten Island, Nunavut  105 4.8 Entrance ways, Iqaluit Square, Nunavut  106 4.9 Tundra planting beds, Iqaluit Square, Nunavut  106 4.10 Winter, Iqaluit Square, Nunavut  106 4.11 Performance platform, Iqaluit Square, Nunavut  106 4.12 Opening Ceremony, Iqaluit Square, Nunavut  107 4.13 Land use planning consultations in the field, Duke of York Bay, Nunavut  108 4.14 Archaeological resources documentation, Duke of York Bay, Nunavut  109 4.15 Land use planning consultations at former qammaq, Duke of York Bay, Nunavut  110 4.16 Interpretive sign, Qaummarviit Territorial Park, Nunavut  111 5.0 Red Deer County Open Space Master Plan, Alberta  114 5.1 Canadian National Railway promotional advertisement, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario  118 5.2 Early days bathers and golfers, Banff National Park, Alberta  120 5.3 Picnickers, Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia  122 5.4 Campers, Prince Edward Island National Park, Prince Edward Island  122

Illustrations

5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9

National Parks of Canada scaled comparison map, Canada  124 “Trail and Backcountry Design Guidelines” sections, Canada  127 Lake Louise Promenade in 1959 and 2008, Alberta  128 Giant Cedar Boardwalk Trail, Mount Revelstoke National Park, British Columbia  130 Jasper Outwalk, Jasper National Park, Alberta  131 Wildlife overpass crossings, Banff National Park, Alberta  132 McMichael Gallery Trail, Kleinberg, Ontario  140 Freshly stacked four-by-four lumber, Ontario  142 Truck with scrap wood for reuse, Toronto, Ontario  142 Geometric insect evidence in wood, Ontario  144 Lichen-covered branch, Ontario  144 Water-weathered wood, Ontario  144 Tree covered in lichen and ice coated, Ontario  144 Taiga Garden, Ottawa, Ontario  149 East Three School, Inuvik, Northwest Territories  150 VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia  151 Green roof, VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia  152 Berczy Park, Toronto, Ontario  153 Don Valley Brick Works, Toronto, Ontario  154 Lonsdale Public Plaza, Vancouver, British Columbia  157 The Verdant Walk, Cleveland, Ohio  158 Macro/Micro/Myco, Jardins de Métis, Quebec  160 Kingsway trellis structure, Toronto, Ontario  161 TBD exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Ontario  164 Stormwater wetland, Moncton, New Brunswick  170 Greenwich Day Use Facility, Prince Edward Island  177 Squish Studio, Fogo Island, Newfoundland  180 Path, Fogo Island, Newfoundland  181 Structures, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia  183 Local landscape materials, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Nova Scotia  184 Sailcloth, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Nova Scotia  185 Lookout tower, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Nova Scotia  186 Historical traces, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Nova Scotia  187 Evening glow, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Nova Scotia  188

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Illustrations

7.10 The Culture of Outports, Brigus, Newfoundland  189 7.11 In Transit, Saint John, New Brunswick  190 7.12 Graphics, In Transit, Saint John, New Brunswick  191 7.13 Details, In Transit, Saint John, New Brunswick  192 8.0 Palais de Congrès, Montreal, Quebec  198 8.1 Evolving silhouette, Montreal, Quebec  202 8.2 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario  203 8.3 Paving crosses, Square Dorchester, Montreal, Quebec  204 8.4 Sliced fountain, Square Dorchester, Montreal, Quebec  205 8.5 Fountain with woodpecker, Square Dorchester, Montreal, Quebec  206 8.6 Historic suspended cross image series, Place d’Armes, Montreal, Quebec  207 8.7 Pixelated poppy and Blue Stick Garden, Jardins de Métis, Quebec and Taunton, England  208 8.8 Expo 67, Montreal, Quebec  209 8.9 Place des Festivals, Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal, Quebec  210 8.10 Fountain, Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal, Quebec  210 8.11 Les Balançoires, Montreal, Quebec  212 8.12 Luminous Pathway, Montreal, Quebec  213 8.13 Quai des flots, Promenade Samuel-De Champlain, Quebec City, Quebec  214 8.14 Loading dock area, Espace GO, Montreal, Quebec  215 8.15 Pink Balls and Memorama, Montreal, Quebec  216 8.16 18 Shades of Gay, Montreal, Quebec  217 8.17 Sugar Beach, Toronto, Ontario  218 9.0 Waterfront Drive, Winnipeg, Manitoba  222 9.1 The search for prairie, Allan, Saskatchewan  225 9.2 Pre-colonization prairie grasslands range map, North America  226 9.3 Farmhouse, Deloraine, Manitoba  227 9.4 Author’s mother at Cassils’ farm, Deloraine, Manitoba  227 9.5 The industrial prairie, Bienfait, Saskatchewan  231 9.6 Levels of the western plains, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba  232 9.7 Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan  233 9.8 Abandoned grocery store, Orkney, Saskatchewan  234 9.9 Pathway, Nose Hill Park, Calgary, Alberta  236 9.10 Trail marker, Nose Hill Park, Calgary, Alberta  237 9.11 River Landing Riverfront, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan  240

Illustrations

9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9 11.10 11.11 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 13.0

Riverwalk Promenade, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan  241 Shed, Charleswood, Manitoba  243 Prairie journey map, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba  244 Shade structure and workshop, Living Prairie Museum, Winnipeg, Manitoba  245 Grasses, Living Prairie Museum, Winnipeg, Manitoba  246 PCL Centennial Learning Centre Court, Edmonton, Alberta  252 3-D data map, Toronto, Ontario  255 3-D-printed model, Toronto, Ontario  256 Immersive working environment, Centre for Landscape Research, Toronto, Ontario  259 Large-scale terrain analysis, Toronto, Ontario  262 Decoding Water – Recoding Urbanism project, Phoenix, Arizona  264 Design competition drawing, Sugar Beach, Toronto, Ontario  270 Phantom Ecology project, Athabasca oil sands, Alberta  270 Roseau River Valley project, Dominica  271 HtO, Toronto, Ontario  276 Toronto Waterfront central zone map, Toronto, Ontario  280 Former waterfront edge condition, Simcoe Street Slip, Toronto, Ontario  281 Simcoe WaveDeck, Toronto, Ontario  282 Reconfiguration of right-of-way, Queens Quay, Toronto, Ontario  283 Promenade, Queens Quay, Toronto, Ontario  284 Fountain, Sugar Beach, Toronto, Ontario  286 Umbrellas, Sugar Beach, Toronto, Ontario  287 Stormwater treatment, Sherbourne Common, Toronto, Ontario  288 Landscape diagram, Sherbourne Common, Toronto, Ontario  289 Underpass Park, Toronto, Ontario  290 Landform construction, Corktown Common, Toronto, Ontario  291 Don Valley Brick Works, Toronto, Ontario  296 Tree maturity growth paradigm, Toronto, Ontario  299 Quantifying value of tree maturity, Toronto, Ontario  301 Tree conditions, Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario  304 Post-planting, Distillery District, Toronto, Ontario  306 Planting plan, Goderich Courthouse Square, Ontario  308 Tree age/size class distribution model, Toronto, Ontario  310 Richmond City Hall, British Columbia  316

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13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8 13.9 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 13.14 13.15 13.16 13.17 13.18 13.19 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9

Illustrations

Vertical landscape levels, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  319 Interior, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  320 Construction during the twentieth century, Coal Harbour, Vancouver, British Columbia  327 View from Harbour Green Park to Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  328 Harbour Green Park, Vancouver, British Columbia  329 Plan, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  331 Planted roof, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  331 Invented nature, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  332 Path, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  333 Switchback, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  334 Details, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  335 The Digital Orca, Vancouver, British Columbia  336 Grass seen from inside, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  337 North Plaza, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  337 Pavilion at North Plaza, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  338 Subspace west of North Plaza, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  338 Structural reefs, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  339 Detail of structural reefs, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  339 View of secondary roof, Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia  340 Wascana Bank Restoration, Regina, Saskatchewan  344 Historic parks locations, Canada  347 Driving as a popular pastime in large parks, Vancouver, British Columbia  352 Forest after Hurricane Juan, Point Pleasant Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia  353 Aerial view looking south, Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario  355 Upper pond, Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario  358 Orchard, Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario  359 Open space with food production rendering, Blatchford Field, Edmonton, Alberta  360 Stewardship, Rouge Park, Ontario  362 Prescribed burn, High Park, Toronto, Ontario  364

Foreword Ron Williams

Innate Terrain is a broad-ranging exploration of Canadian landscape architecture, focusing on the first two decades of the new millennium while placing current developments in our field in historical perspective. During this period, the natural and cultural contexts in which landscape architecture has been carried out have changed rapidly. The Canadian landscape – particularly that of the North – is evolving before our eyes in response to global climate change, while the impacts of the digital revolution, immigration and demographic change, and global dynamics dramatically affect our everyday lives in myriad unpredictable ways. This book takes account of these transformations in its choice of themes and discussion of specific projects. Its structure and philosophy are based on one central tenet: that “Canadian landscape architecture is intrinsically linked to the innate qualities of the surrounding terrain.” Hence the title, Innate Terrain. The book is a collection of in-depth, well-illustrated essays written by twenty-two authors (sometimes in collaboration), edited and with an Introduction by Alissa North, Associate Professor of Landscape

Architecture at the John H. Daniels Faculty of ­Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto. Each chapter explores a particular aspect of contemporary landscape architecture in Canada while making a contribution to a mosaic-like overall portrait of the subject. Writing a book about Canada, a vast country with great regional differences, one is faced with a conundrum: whether to approach the subject matter by regions (a common procedure, as seen in the Oxford University Press’s six-volume Illustrated History of Canada series, 1998–2014) or to adopt a pan-Canadian approach that emphasizes those aspects of the subject that have some broader commonality. This book, wisely, does both. Some chapters describe an original design approach located or originating within a particular region of the country – thoughtful reinterpretations of landscape and building archetypes in Atlantic Canada, of envelope-stretching new design innovations by landscape architects from Quebec, and of the rebirth of Toronto’s urban waterfront – while others provide a national overview: new approaches to the design and management of National Park landscapes across

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Foreword

the country and to contemporary challenges facing traditional and recently established large urban parks. The individual essays seldom overlap; but they often reinforce each other – and occasionally present contrasting viewpoints, providing multiple perspectives on related problems and situations. Innate Terrain offers a unique vision of Canadian cultural specificity. With each succeeding generation, landscape design in Canada is becoming less derivative of foreign inspirations and is increasingly establishing a unique Canadian personality. A central component of this specificity lies in the increasing recognition of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and their contribution to Canadian culture and the Canadian landscape, both historically and in the present day. It is no accident that many of the essays in this book emphasize the Traditional Knowledge base and cultural heritage of Canada’s Indigenous people, and the debt owed to them by landscape architecture. Other central preoccupations of the book concern the conservation and protection of the natural environment, and the understanding, preservation, and sensitive repurposing of outstanding existing works of Canadian landscape architecture.

Precursors This book complements and relates to a number of overviews of environmental design that have appeared in Canada over the last quarter-century, beginning with George Kapelos’s Interpretations of Nature, published by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 1994. Kapelos’s book presented some forty then-recent

projects by Canadian designers from across the country – architects, landscape architects, city planners – projects chosen “because they demonstrate significant aspects of the understanding of nature in Canada and its interpretation in built form.”1 Lisa Rochon, in her 2005 book Up North: Where Canada’s Architecture Meets the Land, emphasized the same point: “In this country, architecture grows out of the landscape. And the ­Canadian landscape is mythic … in scale and power.”2 Many books on landscape architecture published during the last twenty-five years have featured the remarkable achievements of individual landscape architects and firms based in Canada, including studies of the work and life of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, our most distinguished practitioner, by Susan Herrington and several other authors; and books on Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (PFS) of Vancouver, edited by Kelty McKinnon, and on Claude Cormier + Associés of Montreal, also by Susan Herrington, in collaboration with Marc Treib. Few books, however, have been published on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century founders of landscape architecture in Canada, in marked contrast to the situation south of the US border, where any number of books on Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux have been published, and the Library of American Landscape History has produced or collaborated on many books about leading landscape architects and outstanding projects of the period. In contrast, Canadian design work “from coast to coast to coast” in both architecture and landscape architecture has been explored in a smaller number of very thick books. Hal Kalman’s two-volume A History of Canadian Architecture (Oxford, 1994) was the first detailed and in-depth study of architecture across the

Foreword

country (nobly preceded by Alan Gowans’s Looking at Architecture in Canada of 1959, a somewhat anecdotal and episodic, yet brilliant, analysis). A 2012 anthology edited by UBC professor Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, Architecture and the Canadian Fabric, explored the evolution of Canadian architecture and urbanism in a multi-viewpoint kaleidoscopic approach. Two decades after Kalman’s magnum opus, my own book Landscape Architecture in Canada/Architecture de paysage du Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press and Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014) was meant to provide a similar large-scale overview of the development of our own field of landscape architecture, seen from a broad geographical and cultural perspective. My goal was to describe the full range of projects, people, and ideas that animate and constitute the landscape architecture of this country; and like many of the books mentioned above, I emphasized the inspiration of the natural landscape of Canada on the work of Canadian landscape architects and other design professionals. Unfortunately, few books have focused on the longterm evolution of landscape architecture at the regional or provincial scale; a splendid exception is Catherine Macdonald’s CD-ROM Making a Place: A History of Landscape Architecture and Landscape Architects in Manitoba (Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects, 2005).

The Modern/Contemporary Era While the “big picture” has thus been documented, the scholarly situation with regard to the modern and contemporary era is very different. This period (roughly beginning in 1940 and continuing to the present day)

xvii

was particularly significant for landscape architecture in Canada. The second half of the twentieth century saw a vast expansion of the number of members of the profession (compared to the tiny handful of dedicated pioneers who established it in the pre–First World War period), the creation of university-level educational programs in Canada, and the founding of provincial associations to regulate and organize the profession: in short, the emergence of landscape architecture as we know it today. It would seem essential that these critical developments be fully documented in book form. But unfortunately, this has not been the case. Certainly, scholars have been prolific in spotlighting the Canadian architectural achievements of this era. Beginning in the late 1980s with Trevor Boddy’s Modern Architecture in Alberta, many books have brought to public attention the heritage of modern architecture at the scale of provinces and regions, including Newfoundland, the Atlantic provinces, and Quebec (France Vanlaethem’s Patrimoine en devenir: l’architecture moderne du Québec), while cities across the country, including Winnipeg, Lethbridge, Toronto, and Vancouver (Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe’s The New Spirit, 1997), have also benefited from the publication of serious book-length presentations of their modern architectural work. Ambitious Canada-wide perspectives have also been published, including the ubiquitous professor Windsor-Liscombe’s collaboration with Michelangelo Sabatino, Canada: Modern Architecture in History (2016). The most recent such book is the 2019 anthology Canadian Modern Architecture, edited by Elsa Lam and Graham Livesey. The seventeen contributing authors chosen by Lam and Livesey home in on particular themes

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Foreword

within modernism, describing both made-in-Canada cultural trends and international influences inspiring new creative waves in our largest urban centres, seeking to define a regional or Canadian identity. In the United States, landscape architects have been quick to document modernist ideas in landscape design at the national level. Peter Walker and Melanie Simo’s Invisible Gardens (1996) and Marc Treib’s 2014 anthology Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review are outstanding examples. But in Canada, no book-length volume had heretofore been published. This was one of three major gaps in the scholarly analysis of the development of landscape architecture in Canada, along with a dearth of works on our illustrious pioneers – Frederick Todd, the Dunington-Grubb and Stensson families, Louis Perron, Helen Kippax, et al. – and on landscape work generally at the provincial and regional level. This is one of the reasons that this book, Innate Terrain, is so important and timely. It goes a long way to filling the modern/contemporary literary gap, and provides the profession with a well-illustrated, multi-dimensional view of what is going on today. It is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Canadian landscape architecture, and will provide both the profession and the general public with a most valuable means of understanding this rapidly evolving field.

The Contributing Authors Professor North’s choice of authors is as broad as the range of subjects discussed. The multi-generational writing team she has assembled includes experienced public and private practitioners of landscape

architecture and related professions, some of whom are now approaching retirement; mid-career academic practitioners with a wealth of research experience; Indigenous authors and established professionals who have worked closely with members of First Nations; and young recent graduates who are just now embarking on academic or professional careers. The diversity and eclectic range of this group of authors provide a variety of different perspectives. And as Alissa North has pointed out, the authenticity of their viewpoints is enhanced by the fact that most are writing about the environments that they originally hail from and/or are practising in. Her selection of both practitioners and academics as authors ensures that the writing reflects how we educate landscape architects in Canada, as well as how we build in Canada. As mentioned above, the opinions of the authors sometimes reinforce each other and occasionally present contrasting views; this is most appropriate in a study of contemporary projects and issues, where the jury is still out and the judgments of the future are unknown.

NOTES My analysis of Canadian landscape architecture’s literary context owes much to Trevor Boddy’s study of the literature on Canadian architecture in his book review (Canadian Architect, November 2019) of Canadian Modern Architecture: A Fifty-Year Retrospective. 1 George Kapelos, Interpretations of Nature (Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1994), 19–20. 2 Lisa Rochon, Up North: Where Canada’s Architecture Meets the Land (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2005), 23.

Acknowledgments

This book could only have been realized with the authors’ insights and support. They were generous with their participation, sharing unique perspectives about their landscape architectural experiences in their specific locations. They remained beyond patient throughout the production of this book, and their commitment is vastly appreciated. Thank you to University of Toronto Press and to its acquisitions editor, Mark Thompson, who provided essential feedback on manuscripts and facilitated the blind peer review; to Siobhan McMenemy, who encouraged the first proposal; and to the peer reviewers, whose comments were of great value. Pamela Capraru deserves special thanks for her stylistic and line editing, as well as Judy Williams for final editing, which transformed the chapters into a cohesive manuscript. Innate Terrain benefited from an Annual Grant from the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF), which included funding from the Northern Research Bursary. Enormous thanks to the LACF for supporting this project. Immense gratitude goes to the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Aco Systems, North Design Office, Stur Design, and the

Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA), whose funding also supported the realization of this publication. Professional photographers Tom Arban, Brett Ryan Studio, Industryous Photography, Nic Lehoux, Neil Fox, and Jean-François Vézina donated their works, which beautifully enriched the book. Student research assistants from the University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture program did important work on key aspects of the book. They include Shelley Long and Grace Yang, who provided interesting preliminary research; James MacDonaldNelson, who assisted with early editing; Rachel Salmela, who assisted with research verifications and tracked down references and figures; Jordan Lypkie, for editing, and for provocative discussions about the unique qualities of Canada’s landscapes; Peter Jamie Reford, who meticulously combed through each chapter and provided, along with editing, research and insights that revealed important content to help with the book’s completion; and Bhavika Sharma, who created the index. Charles Waldheim was instrumental in encouraging and mentoring the initiation of this topic as a general research agenda, and in supporting the symposium

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Acknowledgments

and exhibition that facilitated the book. All the participants in the Innate Terrain symposium and exhibition also deserve many thanks. They include the speakers, exhibitors, students, staff, and landscape architecture professors from the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. Sincere thanks for the Foreword go to the late Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who originally agreed to write for the book, and then recommended the expertise of Ron Williams. They both provided needed and ongoing

encouragement. Constant gratitude, extending far back, goes to Pierre Bélanger for continuing to clear the path. As always, I am indebted to Pete North, my best companion in all things related to life and landscape, and to our children, the greatest reminder of what is truly important. I am thrilled that they love and appreciate the Canadian terrain as much as I do, and I look forward to our continued discovery of its wonder. – Alissa North

INNATE TERRAIN

Introduction: Consequent of the Land Alissa North Peter Jamie Reford

The imaginary of the Canadian landscape is often tied with wilderness. When picturing the designed landscapes of Canada – works created by landscape architects – does this same image stand? With landscape architecture as a predominantly urban practice, the visualization cannot be identical, but the visualizer will likely notice that the majority of Canadian designed landscapes are deeply influenced by their context and their pre-urban conditions, referencing or rebuilding the prevailing ecosystems of Canada’s innate terrain. Some works of landscape architecture will reference natural features or processes through design forms and material uses, while others support or implement functioning ecologies. The works range from conservation and naturalization strategies to the implementation of landscape technologies and green infrastructure, and many landscape architecture projects accomplish both. Regardless, the works are directly related to the terrains in which they reside, and this book reveals that, in Canada, they are designed as being consequent of the land. The reconstituted granite rock monoliths of Toronto’s Sugar Beach and Yorkville Park; the Taiga Garden at the entry of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, with pines “installed at an angle to give a windswept appearance” depicting “the rugged terrain of Canada’s wild landscapes”;1 the timber structures and walks, and impressive granite blocks of Quebec City’s Promenade Samuel-De Champlain, aligned to promote regeneration of the pre-colonial shoreline and upland ecologies; or the green systems

Fig. I.0.  The Bentway, Toronto, Ontario, 2018, by Public Work. Source: Photo Nic Lehoux.

of the Vancouver Convention Centre and landscape, which convey the geological forces of mountains with a massive green roof suggesting an alpine ecology – these are all Canadian projects, designed by Canadian landscape architects, powerfully evoking nature or performing naturally, or doing both. This book is an edited volume of papers written by Canadian landscape architectural scholars and practitioners, documenting the breadth of contemporary practice from across the country. The chapter authors use these works of landscape architecture to theorize a particular approach practised by Canadian landscape architects in their national context. The book’s central argument is that Canadian landscape architecture is distinct because of the unique qualities of the Canadian terrain and the particular relationship that Canadians have held, and continue to hold, with the landscapes of our nation. While the position of Canada’s landscapes on the wilderness gradient continues to provoke debate, the notion of wilderness remains a sustaining identity for Canadians at home and abroad. For the latter, the subtleties of domestic regionalism tend to be muted to foreign observers, rendering Canada almost synonymous with nature on the international stage. This book addresses these varied perceptions of Canada’s natural terrain, framing the discussion in the context of landscapes designed by Canadian landscape architects. The content of each contribution aims to capture the distinct regional qualities rooted in the broader context of the Canadian landscape, which Canadian landscape architects and academics of landscape architecture use directly in shaping their research, theories, and projects, and in developing new landscape technologies. This collection of chapters, and the symposium and exhibition that initiated its

Introduction

publication, are linked by an argument suggesting that Canadian landscape architecture is intrinsically linked to the innate qualities of the surrounding terrain.

Theorizing Connections to Terrain Since time immemorial, humanity has been shaped by the landscapes within which it resided. Beyond fulfilling the basic requirements for human existence, habitable landscapes spurred the rise of civilizations, each characterized by a distinct dependency on its terrestrial surroundings. Such relationships were – and remain – innumerable and complex, seeding invention, strategies of governance, and spiritual interpretation. However, whether through chance or merit, Western civilizations of notable longevity share a unifying characteristic: each was able to eschew the “nasty, brutish, and short” qualities of life outlined by Hobbes in Leviathan, one of the seminal texts on social contract theory. This line of reasoning led to a situation in which, by prioritizing ordered human existence over all else, people lost individual freedoms in return for the benefits of this political order – understandable when the contemporary European landscape was transforming under mounting pressures of densification. It is perhaps fitting that Canada’s original peoples rejected the notion of nature brought to heel, instead forming intricate civilizations that sought to operate in mutuality with the natural world. Altered by the numerous external influences that define this country, many of the underlying factors specific to humanity’s original relationship with the landscapes of Canada have nonetheless managed to remain intact, in spirit if

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not in body. In making a case that Canadian landscape architects practise in a manner that is tied to the innate qualities of the Canadian terrain, this book also recognizes the cultural and practical demands informing the resultant body of work. This merger provides an alternate interpretation of Hobbes’s civilizational antithesis, with connection to landscape as a medium through which modern societies can and should develop. In grounding this sweeping observation in landscape theory, we bring critical regionalism to mind. The term “critical regionalism” was coined in 1981 by architectural theorists Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre, and was further developed and disseminated by architect Kenneth Frampton in his 1983 essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” It appears that Frampton has an attentive audience in Canadian landscape architects, as his espousal of design that emphasizes and engages the local geographical context of light, climate, and topography is practised in Canada with direct honesty. In his essay, Frampton writes, “The fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism is to mediate the impact of universal civilization with elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place. It is clear from the above that Critical Regionalism depends upon maintaining a high level of critical self-consciousness.”2 Along with its indisputable relevance to Canadian landscape architects, Frampton’s position alludes to a mentality espoused by Canadians and writ large. Acknowledging the stereotype of Canadians as polite, reserved, and overly apologetic, we nonetheless tend to reflect a strong sense of pride in our distinguishing national characteristics. Renowned journalist, television personality, and author on Canadian history and Canadiana

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Pierre Berton outlined frontier settlement differences between Canadians and Americans in his book of 1978, The Wild Frontier, writing, “The American frontier was pushed steadily westward, but the Precambrian presence blocked a similar kind of movement to our own North West … Because of the Shield, Canadian expansion lagged a generation behind that of the United States. The Americans had built three rail lines to the Pacific before we finally bridged the Precambrian barrier … The gap has not been closed, and that, too, is a legacy of our geography … Our barriers have been largely environmental … Canadian frontier literature deals with starvation, loneliness, long portages, crushing pack-loads, exhausting climbs, the tracking of canoes, and the natural hazards of the trail.”3 American writing is more often about human violence. Berton surmises that the challenging wildness of the Canadian frontier is what has shaped the sober personality of Canadians, so much so that Frampton’s “peculiarities of a particular place” still endure as an embedded Canadian trait. An understanding of this underlying basis for Canadian landscape design would not be complete without appreciating its conceptual connections to nature, and its physical associations with the landscape. An overview of the theoretical framework to nature is therefore a necessary preamble. Notions of landscape domination versus landscape accord follow, to foreground the conditions of contemporary landscape architecture in this book.

Concepts of Nature If we track the etymology of “nature” from its Latin origin to its contemporary definition, the consistency

of the word’s meaning over time becomes apparent, understood as “essential, with inborn qualities or characteristics.” Its Latin root is both verb – nasci, to “be born” – and common noun – natura, translated as “character” – evoking both birth and quality. Until the end of the sixteenth century, it was employed almost exclusively in contexts relating to humans and their place in the universe. It was not until the seventeenth century that “nature” encompassed its new meaning entirely separate from the human experience, as a “material world beyond human civilization or society.” Earlier understandings relating to inborn qualities and characteristics were once again brought to the fore towards the end of the eighteenth century, reframed as principal tenets of the emergent “nature versus nurture” philosophical debate.4 Popular conceptions of nature remain disjointed from humans, largely understood as “the forces and features of the earth that exist independently of human activities.” Despite fundamental similarities between the word’s origins and its contemporary meaning, the scope and context of its application have changed, raising important questions. Chief among these: how and why was the human experience removed from implicit understandings of nature? In antiquity, Stoic philosophical ponderings provide interesting insights into lineages of thought regarding models of the human relationship to the world. This tangential relation to philosophy underscores an attempt to trace and explain humanity’s theoretical positioning and understanding of landscape, providing context for the various contributions to this book. The Stoics identified the distinct capacity of humans as our “innate endowment – the ability to reason,”5 further outlining that happiness arises from “a good flow of

Introduction

life” or “living in agreement,” and specifically “living in agreement with nature.”6 While the Stoics reflect advanced thinking concerning the processes of nature, they nevertheless needed to break down these universal processes into small components to facilitate observation, analysis, and comprehension. Notwithstanding the inherent value often derived from distilling complex subject matter to its essence, it appears that the theorizing and naming of the component parts of nature’s whole prompted binaries that remain with us in popular culture today. Contemporary academics and theorists of landscape architecture are working towards the dissolution of these binaries as outmoded vestiges of early philosophical thought.7

Domination over Landscape Ultimately, Stoic values were absorbed into Neoplatonism – a tradition of philosophy from which elements were integrated into Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologies. Stoicism is reflected upon as a “philosophy for the few, because the basis of its ethics was intellectual … Christianity, on the other hand, appealed to the masses. It did so by relating all classes of people to a personal Savior with moral power.”8 Whether through self-inspired zeal or forced practice, the rampant spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire under the reign of Constantine the Great (AD 306–37) marked a widespread departure from Western civilization’s direct connection to conceptions of nature. The peoples encompassed in this vast empire walked out of Eden when they jettisoned their pagan religious practices. By the time European

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colonial powers began to vie for control of the “New World,” European interactions with nature were defined by God-granted conquest rather than harmony. This religious ethos, continuing in its colonial import to Canada, imposed a legacy that we are only recently beginning to comprehend and address. In his book Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada, author John Clarke writes, “If society was ordered socially, if Upper Canada had, by divine providence, been placed within the British Empire and constitution, and endowed like no other area, it followed that Upper Canadians, heirs to the Judaic-Christian tradition, viewed the new garden of Eden as equally orderly. God had given mankind domination over the earth; indeed, the earth’s purpose was to serve humanity. If its order was properly understood, nature would respond in a predictable and rewarding manner. What appeared chaotic was ‘a mere surface attribute concealing an ordered reality that man could discover and profitably exploit.’”9 The earliest practising landscape architects in Canada imported these domination ideals, where formally laid out gardens and allées with globally imported vegetation held landscape controlled and in order.

Accord with Landscape Indigenous communities have sustained life in this territory for millennia, through their practice of harmony with landscape, where changing landscapes were understood and valued for the co-benefits these dynamics offered between people and the ecologies they inhabited. The value of this relational thinking and growing comprehension of landscape process began to take hold in the profession of landscape architecture,

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as the discipline was coming into its own, and particularly as awareness of environmental issues grew. With homegrown landscape architects as the next influential generation, North American landscape architects who are discussed in other chapters of this book departed from the ordered formal schemes of their predecessors. Through research, analysis, and design, many of the landscape architects featured in this book continue to offer challenges to remaining antiquated relationships with landscape. Several of the authors have collaborated with Indigenous communities, or are themselves Indigenous landscape architects, respecting and rediscovering methods attuned to natural processes. Among this ancient knowledge and progressing disciplinary trajectory lies a resilient path forward for reimagined conceptualizations of our relationship to terrain, an approach that can further shape contemporary Canadian landscape architectural theory and practice. Terrain is understood as land that possesses a particular quality; it also refers to the physical features that engender certain characteristics across it. Innate, as a word, is defined as intrinsic, intuitive, instinctive, inherent, or natural – also, inborn, inherent, and unlearned. Innate Terrain suggests that while Canadian landscape architects are producing transformative work, they are doing so in direct conversation with their surroundings, in ways that reflect the characteristics of the country they call home. Although this is something all landscape architects do – contextual and site inventory, and analysis, which informs the design process – the initial findings derived from this approach tend to remain clearly visible within finished designs in the Canadian context. With fewer layers and interactions on the land, the inherent landscape

becomes more directly legible. This enables Canadian landscape architects to relay the particular qualities of a place with direct design intent. Rather than imposing something entirely new, they delve into elements of geology, tradition, mythology, ecology, history, and culture, deriving designs with elements that relay this knowledge overtly and through more subtle means.

The Collected Chapters Innate Terrain aims to expose these landscape myths, ideals, and legibilities through the lens of landscape architecture as practised by Canadians, complemented by the perspectives of academics in the discipline. In essence, through the words of the contributing authors, this book captures the distinct qualities of Canadian contemporary landscape practice and theories, emphasizing the importance of Canada’s landscape conditions. Landscape architecture is a rapidly growing discipline in Canada, with the impact of landscape design increasingly evident in both urban and rural contexts. It is shaping the Canadian landscape, and over the past quarter-century Canadian landscape architects have gained significant attention in international circles. It is also important to outline and distinguish the academic work of the discipline. Canadian landscape architecture academics have framed the issues contemporary to the discipline, analysing projects and theoretically defining progressive developments with their writings, pushing digital tools used in the discipline to international acclaim, developing landscape technologies necessary for supporting vegetation in

Introduction

tough urban environments, and pushing policy makers to address a multitude of cultural and technical landscape issues, currently tackling climate change, by proving the science behind the benefits of landscape infrastructure. Of particular note, many landscape architecture academics also practise, where research and built works productively and directly inform one another. The hope is that this volume, with all perspectives, contributes a written collection of contemporary Canadian landscape architecture research, theory, and practice to share with audiences at home and farther afield. As a means of investigating the works and ideas of Canadian landscape architects, connected by region or type, a Canadian landscape architectural scholar and/or practitioner has written each chapter. The authors chose representative landscape interventions to document the breadth of contemporary practice across the country, using these works to provide a theoretical foundation that outlines the distinct design approach Canadian landscape architects practise in their national context. The chapters often reference one another, but they also make many references to universal theories, recognizing the global scope and derivative nature of landscape design. As a further guide to readers, the book is divided into three parts: “Native Land,” “True North,” and “Far and Wide.” The “Native Land” chapters are concerned with human, physical, and geographic regions, where Canadian landscape architects have participated in developing land use policies, land claims agreements, and land management strategies, making use of traditional cultural knowledge and lore to guide their designs. The “True

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North” chapters examine regions and their peoples, and investigate related biological and cultural resources in order to posit the role of Canadian landscape architecture in shaping ideas of regionalism. The authors chose projects that demonstrate how landscape architects leverage their work to espouse fresh and renewed visitor appreciation for landscape. The “Far and Wide” chapters focus on urbanity and the role of Canadian landscape architects in guiding and transforming cities. The first chapter in this section introduces a broader, more theoretical scope, while the following chapters make specific use of landscape architecture projects, which gain in scale in each subsequent chapter and tend to move across the country from east to west. Together, they demonstrate the evolving role of landscape architects in providing sustainable, resilient strategies for the development of urban realms. As a whole, these chapters invoke recurrent themes involving the qualities and importance of nature in Canada, each imbued with national and local sensitivities. Several authors share their ideas and ideals about First Nations Traditional Knowledge, revealing some of the earliest human interactions with nature in this country. Most of them draw connections between landscape and the unique cultures it engendered, including the idiosyncrasies of urban dwellers and the inhabitants of larger rural regions. Compiled and cross-referenced, the volume aims to provide further provocation about the identity of Canadian landscape architecture. The work of Canadian landscape architects on their home ground demonstrates sensitivity, practical problem solving, and environmental consciousness through thoughtful design that reveals the innate

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characteristics of site and context. While we continue to globalize, landscape appears to be the one enduring element that will keep our regions distinct, as communicated through geology, climate, ecology, and human habitation. Seeking a better understanding of inherent and designed landscapes on a domestic level is therefore a necessary point of departure in addressing the salient issues that shape global design discourse. This book intends to demonstrate that Canadian landscape architects will continue to make consequential contributions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sincere thanks to Alissa North for the opportunity to participate in the writing of this Introduction and the editing of this volume, a task that deeply expanded my knowledge of and appreciation for Canadian landscape architecture. I also want to thank my uncle, Alexander Reford, who was largely responsible for piquing my interest in the profession. – Peter Jamie Reford

NOTES 1 Susan Herrington, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 166. 2 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), 21. 3 Pierre Berton, The Wild Frontier (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2005), 13. 4 “Nature,” Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www .etymonline.com/index.php?term=nature. 5 William O. Stephens, “Stoic Ethics,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/stoiceth/. 6 Dirk Baltzly, “Stoicism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Spring 2014), http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/. 7 For more on binary thinking in landscape architecture, see chapter 6 in this volume. 8 Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 369. 9 John Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada, 1st ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 55–6.

PART ONE: NATIVE LAND Physical-Human-Geographical Regions / Land Use / Land Claims / Land Management

CHAPTER ONE

Collaboration with the Keepers of Traditional Knowledge Grant Fahlgren

The story of Canada is a brief chapter in the great epic of humanity. However, narratives of this land reach back millennia. The keepers of these narratives are repositories of vast situated knowledge, accumulated through direct engagement with local environments across countless generations. Throughout this great expanse of time, Canada’s First Nations have witnessed and adapted to environmental and ecological change. The lessons distilled from this connection, collectively known as traditional ecological knowledge (Thomas, chap. 3, and Grosset and Limousin, chap. 4, this volume), have been passed down from generation to generation and are embedded in Indigenous cultural perspectives. This repository of information is invaluable towards gleaning a true understanding of current and future ecological conditions, and the extent to which we shape them. As our environment succumbs to climatic shifts – marks of the Anthropocene – landscape architects and allied professionals are confronted with a myriad of related challenges. Moreover, the mandates of the professions in question have expanded in response to these shifting conditions, and are increasingly concerned with mitigating their impact on infrastructure and natural ecologies at every scale. Unique conditions in Canada present opportunities to build relationships between holders of traditional ecological knowledge and landscape architects, introducing the potential to build collective capacities for adaptation. The basis for such frameworks predates Confederation. Indeed, Canada was founded on partnerships Fig. 1.0.  Roper Regional Wetland, Edmonton, Alberta, 2006, by EIDOS Consultants / Landscape Architect Robert Gibbs. Source: EIDOS Consultants / Photo Robert Gibbs.

between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. These are manifest in the treaties signed by First Nations and the Crown, outlining the “promises, obligations and benefits for both parties.”1 For too long, the history of this nation has been defined by a failure to honour these treaties. The transfer of Traditional Knowledge and the very existence of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and their cultures have been threatened by the devastating impacts of colonialism. Disease, residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the dispossession of traditional lands have afflicted Indigenous families and communities for generations. Throughout this onslaught, many First Nations have continued to practise their traditional ways, at times in contravention of Canadian law.2 The legacy of colonial influence and the persistent failure of federal policy-makers to address its impacts remains evident in the social and economic inequity experienced by First Nations today – violations and injustices that demand recognition and recompense. In 2008, sitting prime minister Stephen Harper offered an apology on behalf of the Canadian government for the treatment of Indigenous peoples in residential schools. In doing so, the process of reconciliation was officially initiated.3 Burgeoning attempts at reconciliation risk being eclipsed by a global crisis that increasingly threatens Indigenous cultures and Traditional Knowledge: climate change. While common notions of the term “traditional” evoke images of practices fixed in a distant past, ethnoecologist Fikret Berkes dispels this misconception. Berkes suggests that “new ideas and techniques may be incorporated into a given tradition, but only if they fit into the complex fabric of existing traditional practices and understandings. Thus, traditions are enduring adaptations to specific places …

Collaboration with the Keepers of Traditional Knowledge

the products of generations of intelligent reflection tested in the rigorous laboratory of survival.”4 Previously, radical advancements in traditional ecological knowledge have arisen in response to environmental disturbance. While this capacity for adaptation reveals the historical resilience of Indigenous cultures in the face of adversity, accelerated alterations to the global climate have introduced dire challenges to the sustained capacity of Indigenous cultures to cope with rapid and unanticipated ecological changes. The Assembly of First Nations and its members are keenly aware of this threat, identifying “the rapid rate at which global temperatures are rising, and the [resultant] effects on the environment” as primary concerns. Specifically, they worry that an “understanding of the environment as a system will be challenged due to the high variability brought about by climate change.”5 These impacts are amplified in Arctic and subarctic regions, where they are already felt by Indigenous communities who rely on the formation of sea ice as a conduit to vital hunting grounds and as a means through which to uphold traditional practices.6 It is only a matter of time before populations farther south experience similar tangible effects, threatening our shared heritage and the true wealth of the nation: the environmental capital of our lands and waters. Exacerbating the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation stemming from systemic industrialization and an exponential increase in urbanization have strained ecological resilience, elevating the risks of both intermittent and sustained devastation. Nevertheless, Canada remains an anomaly in many ways, as its territorial vastness, national wealth, and low average population density relieve some of the

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pressures inflicted by the above-mentioned vectors. This does not minimize the host of threats facing Canada’s immensely varied natural ecologies. Climate change and ecological degradation have stirred deep meditations in the field of landscape architecture, causing a substantial realignment towards the performance of designed landscapes and their ability to mitigate negative externalities associated with urban living. This shift is rooted in the work of formative landscape architects and theorists, who pioneered strategies that envisioned an “ecological approach to the design of cities … supported by scientific knowledge about the place of cities in the natural world and the role of humans in shaping the environment.”7 This vision arose from a lineage of thinkers. Patrick Geddes was a mentor to Lewis Mumford, who in turn inspired Kevin Lynch and Ian McHarg, thereby influencing generations of future landscape architects. The foundational tenets of contemporary practice were thus established, offering strategies for critically reading landscape through all of its dynamic spatial and temporal qualities. Despite these early beginnings, it was not until the third wave of the environmental movement, in the 1980s and 1990s, that ecological approaches to design gained mainstream appeal. From these common origins, the theories of ecological urbanism, landscape urbanism, and landscape infrastructure were formulated as arguments for the design of urban environments, based on the integration of natural systems. This methodological shift within landscape architecture challenges the typical dichotomy between city and nature. It also reflects a willingness among practitioners, theorists, and academics to adopt both new and enduring modes of thought as a means for creating and implementing strategies in this brave new world.

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Contemporary Theories in Landscape Architecture Ecological urbanism was conceived as a way to wed “the theory and practice of city design and planning, as a means of adaptation, with the insights of ecology – the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environment and the processes that shape both.”8 Harnessing these intricate relationships as definitive informants of designed landscape intervention is the ultimate goal. Mohsen Mostafavi explains that “by focusing on the processes that shape and structure the environment, designers and planners can accommodate dynamic change” and “make connections among seemingly unrelated elements and issues.”9 For generative interventions to be successful, a holistic understanding of ecology’s temporal interdependencies is necessary. These relationships are not delineated by the same boundaries of site and city that have traditionally informed the practices of landscape architecture and urban design. In ecological terms, the definitive determinant of boundaries – the ecosystem – is based on the network of relationships between situated organisms in specific habitat conditions. By assessing urban environments in this way, we can judge the construction, operation, and maintenance of cities for their influence on the function of the urban ecosystem as a whole. This perspective embodies a fundamental alteration to the strategies employed when intervening in urban spaces. As suggested by renowned ecologist Fritjof Capra, “ecosystems sustain themselves in a dynamic balance based on cycles and fluctuations, which are nonlinear

processes … Ecological awareness, then, will arise only when we combine our rational knowledge with an intuition for the nonlinear nature of our environment. Such intuitive wisdom is characteristic of traditional, non-literate cultures, especially of American Indian [sic] cultures, in which life was organized around a highly refined awareness of the environment.”10 In his reference to intuitive wisdom, Capra is alluding to traditional ecological knowledge. While such an ethos remains alien to contemporary conventions of design in the urban context (and to Western culture generally), ecological urbanism takes tentative steps towards closing this gap. Landscape urbanism emerged as a “response to the failure of traditional urban design and planning to operate effectively in the contemporary city.”11 Its proponents argue that cities should be designed to function as part of the larger ecological systems in which they are embedded. This constitutes a realignment in the practice of city making, shifting from urban development driven by the construction of discrete elements to a focus on the formation of networks, which requires an expanded perspective of both scale and time. Landscape as a medium is “uniquely capable of responding to temporal change, transformation, adaptation, and succession,” states Charles Waldheim. It is “suited to the open-endedness, indeterminacy, and change demanded by contemporary urban conditions.”12 Through the centrality of landscape, urban environments would become more flexible, gaining the ability to accommodate the flows of natural systems. Understanding the inherent indeterminacy of this approach requires “an open, differentiated, and

Collaboration with the Keepers of Traditional Knowledge

non-dogmatic reading of landscape, where both past traces and potential futures can be grasped synchronously,” writes Christophe Girot, who explains that “a site should be thought of within an evolving self-­ referential frame … meant to qualify and strengthen natural potential of a city over time. The quest for such a comprehensive vision of landscape is, however, almost impossible to attain with the current means at our disposal. We know that our conventional tools for recording and projecting landscape deliver [only] an extremely partial and reductive glimpse of the world.”13 For thousands of years, traditional ecological knowledge has served as just such an “evolving self-referential frame.” This is not merely a by-product of engagement with local environments. Rather, this repository of embedded knowledge has arisen from a purposeful approach, one bound in complex cosmology and holistic understanding. Evidence of this can be seen in the Iroquois and Anishinaabe “Seven Generations Principle,” which calls on its people to respect the wisdom of the seven generations that came before and consider the impacts of their actions on the seven generations that will follow.14 Far from a reductive glimpse, this teaching affords a broad perspective through a tangible connection to ancestral knowledge. Oral traditions and narratives that communicate Traditional Knowledge have allowed complex ideas and understandings of environments to percolate through centuries of contextual adaptation. Landscape infrastructure describes ways of implementing ecological approaches to design, intervening through an “expanded operating system for contemporary economies where the full complexity of biodynamic processes and resources is visualized and deployed in

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the re-figuration of urban infrastructure.”15 Engaging infrastructure requires an examination of the apparatus that funds its construction, and the ways in which capital is leveraged to shape cities and their regions. Landscape infrastructure simultaneously proposes the urban field as “both process and projection of power.”16 While generic interpretations may be applicable on a superficial level, every locale contends with its own set of conditions, stakeholders, and gatekeepers. Meaningful application of this theory must penetrate beyond the reconfiguration of the physical characteristics of infrastructure, necessitating precursory disruption to the administrative structures governing its installation and maintenance. “Departing from conventional bureaucratic and centralized forms of civic administration, this contemporary formulation foreshadows a more flexible, cooperative and processdriven agency for the design disciplines.”17 Such a departure involves a seismic shift in administrative procedure, requisite for any meaningful transition from standardization towards “the strategic design of ‘infrastructural ecologies,’ a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as urban infrastructures.”18

Convergence. Adaptation. Resistance. The Traditional Knowledge of First Nations is meant to guide their relationship with local environments. This encompasses stewardship, management, and, at times, intervention. These interventions include, but are not limited to, regenerative burning of the land, plant associations in cultivation, and the expansion of

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shellfish beds and estuarine marshes. Such practices are predicated on fundamental and comprehensive understandings of the environment, harnessing natural capacities for enhanced production without inflicting serious damage to underlying ecosystem networks.19 Interventions informed by traditional ecological knowledge often manifest themselves in approaches that amplify natural processes without diminishing their sustained abundance. Contrary to modern modes of production, which tend to emphasize efficiency as the mechanism through which singular, concentrated benefits are delivered, traditional First Nations landscape interventions tend to create sets of conditions from which many benefits can be delivered.20 Building on the theoretical landscape architecture frameworks outlined above, let us now situate ourselves within the varied contextual realities that shape and define the Canadian landscape. As previously noted, ecological urbanism, landscape urbanism, and landscape infrastructure converge on several key principles. Each theory is premised on ecologically informed design, acknowledging indeterminacy as an essential factor. Genuine appreciation for their intended scope also demands expanded perspectives of both temporal and scalar conditions. Certain distinctions are also important to note, manifested through each theory’s call to action. Ecological urbanism seeks to foster relationships between organisms and constructed landscapes by engaging existing biological and environmental processes, whereas landscape urbanism envisions landscape as a platform upon which urban processes should be shaped. A subtle difference, to be sure, but one that is meant “to render a more precise and delimited focus

on ecology as a model and medium for design.”21 Perhaps the most tangible of the theories discussed, landscape infrastructure focuses on appropriating existing means of intervention, i.e., infrastructure, to recalibrate physical environments as well as the power structures through which they are funded and managed. It is also the only theory that operates beyond the urban realm, a crucial factor when considering possible mergers between landscape architectural theory and traditional ecological knowledge. Indeed, one only has to glance at a map to recognize that the vast majority of Canadian cities are concentrated within two hundred kilometres of the southern border. In contrast, Indigenous communities are broadly distributed across the entirety of what is now commonly recognized as the Canadian territory (fig. 1.1). These diverse First Nations cultures developed Traditional Knowledge particular to the environment and ecosystems of their respective territorial ranges, ranges that have been partitioned and drastically reduced through colonial policies. From the earliest instance of European settlement, Indigenous peoples in Canada have been dispossessed of their right to manage their own lands, waters, and resources. Redress for these violations has not been forthright, but after many long, hard-fought legal battles, First Nations have gradually regained greater control over their lands. Through the formation of new policy and governance structures, they have won the right to opt out of forty land-related provisions of the Indian Act. The First Nations Land Management Regime has been crucial to this end, granting bands the authority to enact laws with respect to land, environment, and resources by instituting a “land code.”22 As of January

Fig. 1.1.  National map locating First Nations reserves, treaty boundaries, and areas of focus. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

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2019, 153 out of the 634 First Nations communities in Canada had entered the Land Management Regime process and were at various stages of developing and implementing their own land codes.23 In addition to these new administrative and legislative structures, a growing number of First Nations communities are initiating Comprehensive Community Plans, which identify needs and goals while providing future directions for development, conservation, and management of First Nations lands.24 This increased autonomy is backed by investment from the federal government. The 2016 budget “propos[ed] to invest $8.4 billion over five years … to improve the socio-economic conditions of Indigenous peoples and their communities and bring about transformational change.” The investments were made in education, infrastructure, social and cultural programs, and skills development. These commitments included $2.24 billion for green infrastructure to improve the quality of drinking water and waste treatment on reserve, $518 million for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and $76.9 million for cultural and recreational infrastructure.25 While this funding constituted a significant investment, some critics expressed concerns that it does not adequately address the education funding gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, or the housing and health crises faced by First Nations communities.26 Furthermore, much of the funding was back loaded, with the largest amounts of investment falling in the fiscal year following the 2019 federal election. Such political manoeuvring undermines ongoing efforts to establish some semblance of trust between First Nations and the federal government, a prerequisite

that has yet to manifest in this traditionally one-sided relationship. However, one line item in the budget indicated potential positive progress in this regard: $96 million directed towards capacity building for Indigenous representative organizations to engage the federal government in direct negotiations. Trust will be essential to meaningful future negotiations within this new policy framework. Similarly, collaboration between Traditional Knowledge holders and landscape architects must be built upon a foundation of trust and mutual respect. Traditional ecological knowledge is sensitive ancestral heritage that often passes solely between relations. The looming threat of climate change and the dwindling number of fluent speakers of Indigenous languages is causing some knowledge keepers to reassess who can receive this knowledge and how it is shared. While the broad geographical distribution of knowledge holders and the far-reaching environmental histories passed down through oral traditions can inform efforts to address climate change, non-Indigenous practitioners need to recognize that this resource is not open to unsanctioned co-opting. Valuable organizations have already been established with the intent of providing guidance on this matter. The Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER) is a non-profit organization working to unify the efforts of First Nations communities by using “the best of western and Indigenous knowledge to create a world that is in balance and supports the well-being of all living things.” Founded by leaders of several Indigenous communities, CIER works to “assist Indigenous peoples to build their capacity to solve environmental problems affecting their lands

Collaboration with the Keepers of Traditional Knowledge

and resources.”27 So far, this organization has worked on over 450 projects that have focused on education, research, and skills building. While individual projects may have seemingly insignificant impacts, their aggregation, at the ecosystem or watershed scale, can generate significant improvements. In the realm of professional practice, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) has voiced its support for renewed relationships with First Nations. Similarly, it has identified the importance of alternative perspectives, particularly those of Traditional Knowledge holders. The Canadian Landscape Charter recognizes the importance of “increasing the awareness and understanding of the traditional values, ecological knowledge and practices of the various Canadian communities, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples, which relate to customary stewardship of the land,” and urges consideration “of these values and practices in both management and design.”28 In support of these stated principles, the CSLA board of directors voted unanimously to support the creation of the Indigenous Issues Task Force in 2016, with the mandate to guide the development of policies and actions that support reconciliation efforts by its membership. In 2018, the Indigenous Issues Task Force was renamed the Reconciliation Advisory Committee and became a standing committee, reflecting a long-term commitment by the CSLA to the process of reconciliation. While relationships with First Nations are often framed in the context of consultation, the Reconciliation Advisory Committee and CSLA, through its action plan and national statement, acknowledge Traditional Knowledge as a form of practice in its own right. Moving forward, the focus

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should emphasize long-term strategies for ecological restoration, environmental adaptation, and capacity building. Landscape urbanism, landscape ecology, and landscape infrastructure espouse this trajectory. Despite clear differences, these theories complement traditional ecological knowledge in various ways. Holders of traditional ecological knowledge can address gaps in the application of landscape architectural theory through their extensive experience and understanding of local environments, capacities for adaptability, and traditional implementation of subtle, integrated landscape interventions. In return, landscape architects offer a comprehensive design skill set at the nexus of design, ecology, and engineering, assets that can help Indigenous communities regenerate local and regional ecologies damaged by commercial activity. Notwithstanding the potentially invaluable impact stemming from such collaboration, the applicability of its underlying structural facets relies on a strong motivation for the redistribution and/or decentralization of power. This has already proven to be a source of contention, as relevant interventions are met with complex, deeply entrenched political and economic structures. As the scale of a project increases, so does the potential for opposition, particularly when an uncertain outcome is proposed through the use of a process-based design framework. Climate change has yet to invoke a sense of urgency among institutional gatekeepers who are sufficiently acute to provoke this necessary shift in the status quo. Thus, while many recent interventions partially exemplify aspects of the theories discussed, few achieve the full extent of their designers’ vision. Exceptions are typically born from disastrous circumstances. The winning projects of the Rebuild by

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Design competition (created in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012) integrated ecological understandings of the aquatic and littoral environments surrounding New York to simultaneously regenerate ecosystems and protect the city from future devastating storms. Regardless, if we wait for calamitous events to validate the merits of our work, the increasing volatility of the global climate risks overwhelming our collective ability to react and adapt. The following section details three ways in which we might focus our efforts. The Past centres on regeneration of lost and diminished ecosystems. The Present examines the productivity of our environments and ways to modify means of production to limit our impacts. The Future anticipates challenges and combats them through adaptive and emergent interventions.

Past: Regeneration The resilience of Canadian ecosystems has faced stress due to urban expansion and the growing demand for the resources required to satiate this phenomenon. An important measure to lessen the impacts of climate change is the regeneration of lost or diminished ecosystems, with the goal of improving their ability to withstand disturbance. The Great Lakes basin has been particularly affected by these trends, as rampant urbanization and industrial growth have largely occurred at the expense of regional ecologies. This region, the most densely populated in Canada, contains 18 per cent of the world’s surface fresh water, and it supports 33 million people between Canada and the United States.29 Industrial activity and

the pressures of urban development have severely degraded water quality throughout the Great Lakes basin and its surrounding watersheds, constraining the performance of ecosystem services. According to the 2012 update to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the governments of Canada and the United States acknowledge the urgent necessity to “strengthen efforts to address new and continuing threats to the quality of the Waters of the Great Lakes.” It goes on to state that “restoration and enhancement … cannot be achieved by addressing individual threats in isolation, but rather depend upon the application of an ecosystem approach.”30 In accordance with these declarations, the governments of Canada and Ontario have formed strategies outlined in the Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health. Establishing partnerships with First Nations is highlighted as a priority, encompassing aspirations to “identify and support a pilot project … to demonstrate the use of Traditional Knowledge in contributing to understanding and addressing Great Lakes issues.”31 The importance of these waters and the implications of their deterioration make restoration of their ecologies a critical issue for the long-term environmental, social, cultural, and economic resilience of the Great Lakes basin. The Anishinaabe of Walpole Island are at the epicentre of these efforts. Situated in southwestern Ontario, on the northern shore of Lake St. Clair between Lakes Huron and Erie, their territory is among the most ecologically rich sites in Canada (fig. 1.2). “It is believed that Walpole Island First Nation, with only .002 percent of Canada’s landmass, contains 12 percent of the country’s designated species at risk,” while “its

Fig. 1.2.  Map of Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie locating First Nations, tall grass prairie, and areas of environmental concern. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

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6,900 hectares [17,000 acres] of wetlands is one of the largest in the Great Lakes Basin.”32 Walpole Island band members have taken an active role in environmental advocacy and restoration. At the forefront of these efforts is the Walpole Island Heritage Centre, established in 1989, whose initial mandate focused on historical and cultural research. Work related to land claims put forward by the band was also within its purview. This mandate has evolved over time, eventually leading the centre to become a locus of cultural and social agency in addressing environmental concerns through the formation of a “community-of-practice.” In this capacity, the centre has worked to set forth policy directions, and it has supported projects by community members and organizations. One key achievement was the Ecosystem Recovery Strategy, which seeks to “promote traditional practices and values, arrest habitat loss and promote better stewardship, combine western science and Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge to protect and enhance the natural environment, develop strategic partnerships for environmental restoration, protection and stewardship to implement locally developed strategies and remedies and build local problem-solving capacity.”33 In September 1995, Walpole Island First Nation was recognized by the Friends of the United Nations and selected as one of fifty exemplary communities in their use of collective approaches to address environmental issues.34 They have upheld this legacy by undertaking numerous conservation and restoration projects. Encouraged by these efforts, the Ontario Ministry of Transport approached Walpole Island First Nation during the early planning stages for the Detroit River International Crossing study. This consultation

evolved into a “dedicated partnership with a shared vision,”35 and it has led to the regeneration of tall grass prairie ecosystems through the construction of the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway. Of the nearly 300 acres (120 hectares) of green space created, 110 acres (44.3 hectares) consisted of tall grass prairie habitat.36 A further 86 acres (35.1 hectares) of tall grass prairie was restored in adjacent areas, which improved habitat for several species at risk. Walpole Island First Nation’s role far surpassed consultation. Danshab Enterprise, based on the island, supplied a workforce for restoration projects, made up of band members who had grown up living within and learning about tall grass prairie ecosystems. This participation and expertise enabled band members to recommend that the parkway team “consider the protection of the entire shared ecosystem, not just individual species”37 deemed at risk. In addition to their ecosystem perspectives, Walpole Island First Nation members’ cultural perspectives “also played a key role in shaping some of the aesthetic elements of the Parkway Landscape Plan.”38 For this project, Traditional Knowledge was coupled with digital analytical tools, such as hydrodynamic modelling software, which was used to define design flows, control post-development peak flow rates, and establish a stormwater management plan “designed to accommodate the change in climate.” The project creates connections between the original and restored environments, forming an extensive habitat network that enhances the biodiversity of existing ecosystems. In 2012, the parkway was recognized with a CSLA National Honour Award. The press release detailing the announcement states that the parkway’s “legacy will be its lasting contribution as a safe and efficient

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international trade and transportation route within a contiguous and sustainable ecological corridor.”39 The process left a legacy of its own – in the improved perspective, knowledge, and partnerships of its participants – with its success likely to inspire future partnerships. Walpole community members have identified that the problems they face include dimensions that ecologists and biologists cannot address through conventional restoration practices. For them, it means more than restoring their physical environments; the restoration of pathways for the perpetuation and generation of traditional ecological knowledge is also of utmost importance. The Walpole Island species at risk report, prepared by the Walpole Island Heritage Centre, makes this clear, stating that “it was our traditional values and practices that were the largest contributing factors responsible for sustaining the different habitats and associated plants and animals within our territory. It is therefore equally important to retain these values if there is hope to protect and retain the species at risk. Reconnecting in more holistic terms will certainly further our efforts to protect our plant and animal relations and help us deal with wildlife conservation and recovery.”40 Landscape architecture is uniquely suited to support Walpole Island in its pursuit of long-term ecological and cultural resilience. An understanding of the connection between society, culture, and place, along with the capability of working to regenerate ecological systems, situates the profession to create platforms that enable the perpetuation and continued generation of traditional ecological knowledge through landscape design. Walpole Island is a leader among First Nations in Canada, and others have visited the nation to learn how

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they can develop their own environmental planning policies.41 This means that projects undertaken here can act as catalysts, extending influence beyond the ninety-one square kilometres of the Walpole Territory. Regenerating ecosystems will improve the Walpole Island First Nation’s ability to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change. In addition, developing and perpetuating Traditional Knowledge harbours further benefits, increasing future generations’ ability to confront uncertainty and adapt to change.

Present: Production The urban metabolism depends on the resources of vast territories. Moreover, the concentration of political and social power in cities has imposed a territorial hierarchy that favours urban areas over rural, at times resulting in the ecological degradation of rural territories that possess the capacity to meet industrial demands. In recent years, the highly concentrated distribution of the majority of Canada’s population, coupled with the nation’s wealth of natural resources, has ensconced the balancing act between commercial demand and ecological health as a persistent source of contention. The James Bay hydroelectric complex, which provides 17,418 megawatts of generating capacity and 48 per cent of the energy consumed by the province of Quebec, exemplifies this issue.42 This infrastructure behemoth, referred to as the “Project of the Century” by then premier Robert Bourassa, involved a dramatic reshaping of hydrologic regimes in the traditional territory of the James Bay Cree (fig. 1.3). The touted logic supporting the construction of such megaprojects stems

Fig. 1.3.  James Bay Project map locating First Nations, watersheds and tributaries, dams and reservoirs, and watershed diversions. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

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from the large generating capacity and relatively low carbon dioxide emissions produced by hydroelectricity versus fossil fuels. However, these projects have their own ramifications, the interruption of seasonal flow patterns chief among them. The construction of La Grande 1 and La Grande 2, the first phases of the James Bay Project (fig. 1.4), has wreaked havoc on the seasonal flow patterns of the La Grande River (fig. 1.5). “Winter flow has gone from 500 to 5,500 m3/s, while the spring flood has decreased from 5,000 to 1,500 m3/s.”43 This reversal in seasonal flows reflects energy demands in Quebec, which are typically much higher in winter. The consequences include a reduction in suitable fish-spawning habitat, alterations to ice formation, and changes to salinity levels in the mouths of affected rivers. It is not only the La Grande River that has been reshaped, however, as an area of approximately thirteen thousand square kilometres was flooded to greatly increase flows.44 While the impacts of these projects may be distant from their beneficiaries, they are no less significant. The deleterious effects on local ecologies inflicted by the James Bay Project have also caused numerous social impacts for the approximately twelve thousand Cree who live within the impacted watershed. The project’s construction has interrupted hunting, fishing, and trapping by Cree and Inuit. Changes to the surrounding ecology have forced Traditional Knowledge holders to adapt their reading of the local environment to include new factors, which exist outside their understanding of natural patterns and processes. Additional direct impacts involved the uprooting of entire communities to accommodate this expansive project. For some of the remaining communities, water became

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Fig. 1.4.  La Grande dam in winter. Source: P199, Creative Commons 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LG2.jpg.

Fig. 1.5.  Sunset on La Grande River. Source: fargomeD, Creative Commons 2.5, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande _River#/media/File:La_Grande_Rivière2.jpg.

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undrinkable, while in others mercury levels in fish rose above acceptable limits for human consumption. Perhaps the most contentious issue of all is how the project was undertaken, lacking sufficient consultation with Cree and Inuit communities and comprehensive environmental and social impact studies.45 At the moment of its conception, the vision for the James Bay Project was far larger in scale than what exists today. The opposition of the Cree and Inuit of James Bay managed to overcome Hydro-Québec’s desire to develop and reshape a further two rivers. Respect for the territory and its voices was espoused by Canadian landscape architect and academic Peter Jacobs as far back as 1983, when he served as chairman for the Kativik Environmental Quality Commission. The commission was tasked “to review and assess the environmental and social impacts of projects proprosed in the territory of Quebec situated north of the fifty-fifth parallel.” Jacobs directed this important environmental initiative and consultation process with the James Bay First Nations. His annual report outlined principles for evaluation that included “the protection of the hunting, fishing and trapping rights of the Inuit, as well as their other rights, in the territory … the projection of the environment and social milieu … reducing as much as possible for the native people the negative impacts of the activities connected with projects affecting the territory … the protection of the native people, of the societies, communities and economy … the protection of the wildlife, of the physical and biological milieu and of the ecological systems of the territory … [and] the participation of all the inhabitants of the territory in the implementation of the environmental and social protection regime.”46 More contemporaneously, a need

for change in the approach to developing infrastructure was recognized by Canadian landscape architect and academic Pierre Bélanger. In his work, Bélanger states, “Whereas in the past, industrial economies were forced to contaminate or destroy the environment in service of economy, today that equation has been effectively reversed. Mutually co-dependent, the economy is now inseparable from the environment, and so are modes of production.”47 The dualism of environment and economy is increasingly challenged within an expanding network of professionals and activists, inciting a growing movement towards the creation of new models capable of reconciling the two. Despite the flawed process that led to the construction of the James Bay dam, positive developments in the “nation to nation” relationship between James Bay Cree and the provincial and federal governments did occur. While the Cree could not halt construction of the project’s first phases, they did negotiate a more equitable path forward. The development of future infrastructural projects within Cree territory is now subject to the terms of the Paix des Braves, an agreement between the leaders of Cree communities in northern Quebec and the provincial government, which ensures appropriate consultation and increased opportunities for economic development. “The parties to the Paix des Braves understood the foundational principles required to reach agreement on a new developmental model … these principles provide the basis upon which Canada and the provinces can create a respectful and sustainable relationship with Indigenous peoples that also will ensure their survival as viable cultural entities.”48 Still, this was one of the few examples within the La Grande development where Indigenous

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perspectives had influence, showing the benefit of this new framework. The collapse of estuarine fisheries was foreseen in the project’s early phases, caused by the interruption of flow in the fall, which allowed salt intrusion to quickly advance upriver and eliminate a pocket of fresh water below the dam site, a critical habitat for overwintering fish. Pressure from the affected Indigenous communities convinced Hydro-Québec to maintain a minimum flow until ice could form on the river’s surface, protecting this habitat, as informed by Traditional Knowledge. “The case study of La Grande estuary fish shows the effectiveness of mitigation action based on interdisciplinary understanding cognizant of local priorities.”49 The policy developments that followed the construction of the James Bay Project have influenced the ensuing plans. The construction of another dam that will drain into Hudson Bay is planned by Manitoba Hydro. The Keeyask Project will be built along the Nelson River, with an estimated generating capacity of 695 megawatts.50 The involvement of Keeyask Cree Nations, beginning with planning in the early 1990s, shaped the project in several important ways. In 1996, an agreement was struck that eliminated the option for a high-head generating facility. In lieu of the original plan, a single low-head development was proposed, thus limiting the flooding of traditional lands.51 In 2001, War Lake First Nation, York Factory First Nation, and Fox Lake Cree Nation became involved in the process. Their input included an evaluation of the project’s effects on their communities. This contained “Traditional Knowledge relevant to the Partnership’s response to the environmental impact

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statement guidelines.”52 From these recommendations, the Keeyask Cree Nations, along with biologists and engineers, worked to create measures to address the project’s effects on aquatic and terrestrial environments, resource use, and heritage resources. The report by York Factory First Nation, titled Kipekiskwaywinan, was co-authored by community members and the landscape architecture firm HTFC of Winnipeg. It took a unique approach in its compilation and how it developed recommendations, giving voice to individual band members through a series of community sharing circles. The CSLA recognized this document with a national merit award in 2015, for how it gave the members of York Factory First Nation a sense of “ownership and authorship,” and how community members’ involvement lent the report “a unique and powerful authenticity.” Kipekiskwaywinan demonstrates the “craft of landscape interconnections of people to the land, defining how the relationship can be sustained in the modern context of industrial resource development.”53 The project marked the first time a First Nation had been presented with a CSLA award as an author/creator.54 The ensuing hydroelectric project will affect local ecosystems in vastly different ways from its predecessors. Construction of hydroelectric dams now requires the inclusion of landscape infrastructure that promotes and sustains the health of existing ecological systems. In the case of the Keeyask dam, these include the creation of spawning habitats, channels for overwintering fish to mitigate oxygen depletion in the water column, channels that connect to large water bodies and prevent the trapping of fish in pools, nesting platforms for terns and eagles, and the construction of

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additional wetlands.55 Involvement from the various First Nations affected by the construction will continue throughout the project’s life cycle. York Factory First Nation states that “it is important that our community representatives, Elders, youth, resource users, and knowledge holders continue to participate in the Keeyask Project’s next phases, including construction, operation, environmental monitoring and adaptive management.”56 The negative externalities of fossil fuel–based generation are driving global demand for hydroelectric projects, particularly in Canada, which has a wealth of powerful rivers.57 Today there is growing pressure to achieve a balance between our ever-increasing demand for energy and ecological health. Pierre Bélanger has outlined strategies to reconcile these seemingly opposing forces, positing that “the coupling of different flows and the calibration of different processes bears the potential for transforming mono-functional structures into poly-functional infrastructures … Thus, if social networks can be understood as latent, urban infrastructure, then the design of softer, leaner, ecological systems can reform, protect and drive contemporary spatial morphologies, as well as emerging regional economies.”58 The Paix des Braves Agreement and the Keeyask Project planning initiative introduce frameworks that can guide similar large-scale industrial projects, as the growing influence of First Nations values and perspective shapes future development. In this new model, hydroelectric installations could be conceived as elements that function as part of larger ecosystems, intentionally attuning their operations to these surrounding ecosystems. Current models of energy generation,

even those perceived to be more sustainable, such as hydroelectric projects, create unintended impacts on local environments. Understanding these changes through the lens of traditional ecological knowledge may uncover hidden possibilities for design and stewardship.

Future: Adaptation The two previous sections focused on concrete issues and various strategies to address them. This final section departs from that framework, shifting focus towards speculative works that both propose soft infrastructural approaches to create emergent conditions. These projects, completed contemporaneously and without consultation between their respective designers, reflect the dissemination of informed design throughout the nation in the context of traditional ecological knowledge. Coast Salish have lived around the southern coast of British Columbia for more than nine thousand years, long enough to have witnessed the very formation of the Fraser River delta.59 Their culture and teachings have attuned them to the patterns and fluctuations of sea level and tides. The physical manifestation of this knowledge is visible in the remnants of estuarine gardens found near salt marshes along coastal waters (fig. 1.6). The tidal and salt marshes associated with these gardens are a critical component of estuarine ecosystems. At the mouths of the rivers along Georgia Strait, they play an important role in salmon migration, while providing habitat for a multitude of diverse aquatic species and migratory birds (fig. 1.7). As a

Fig. 1.6.  Rendering of estuarine garden, 2016, University of British Columbia Master of Landscape Architecture Program. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

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Fig. 1.7.  Tidal marsh section showing estuarine plant distribution relative to elevation. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

by-product of their seasonal cycles, salt marshes contribute to carbon sequestration, the result of organic materials collecting along the sea floor and forming a perennial carbon sink.60 Ethnobotanists Nancy Turner and Douglas Deur have undertaken extensive studies to document these estuarine conditions. They have found evidence that “the peoples of this coast repeatedly modified estuarine soils, plants, and hydrology in anticipation of a predictable outcome: qualitatively and quantitatively enhanced output of root foods.”61 The estuarine gardens of the Coast Salish were created to increase the overall area of these marshes through the construction of small retaining walls of stone or wood. These interventions would increase the production of carbohydrate-rich rhizomatous plants to supplement their fish-based diet. Beyond enhancing the agrarian productivity of this natural system, these interventions simultaneously increased the habitat for migrating salmon and other aquatic species (fig. 1.8).

However, the conditions that allow these symbiotic ecosystems to thrive may soon be altered by rising sea levels. There is resilience within these systems that enables adaptation in response to gradual sea level rise through sediment capture, but as rates of sea level rise increase, the system approaches a tipping point beyond which the capacity for adaptation is overcome. As estuarine plants are increasingly submerged, their ability to photosynthesize is reduced to the point where they can no longer survive. When this happens, sediment formerly secured by the plants’ root networks becomes susceptible to the erosive qualities of tidal flows, effectively forming a feedback loop.62 A collapse of intertidal marshes would have devastating impacts on dependent aquatic species. Moreover, the effects of sea level rise are compounded by the pressures of urbanization around the Fraser River delta (fig. 1.9). These pressures have brought government attention to estuarine environments in

Fig. 1.8.  Regional map showing engineered dams, glacial sediments, and tidal marsh environments of the Fraser River delta. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

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Fig. 1.9.  Fraser watershed map identifying First Nations reserves. Source: Grant Fahlgren.

the Lower Mainland and Port Metro Vancouver in particular. This Crown corporation oversees shipping in Metro Vancouver and is responsible for its effects on the region’s surrounding waterways. In adherence to its mandate, Port Metro Vancouver has funded marsh restoration efforts.63 The Lower Mainland is somewhat unusual, in that Metro Vancouver was built and has expanded around a number of First Nations communities who have occupied the land for thousands of years. Despite the current intense urban conditions of the surrounding landscape, their connections to these lands have persisted. In light of mounting environmental concerns for the sustained health of the Fraser River delta, these First Nations communities have growing influence on the restoration efforts of Port Metro Vancouver. The marshes that have survived explosive regional development constitute an important link between local First Nations and their ancestral heritage. They should also serve as cues to non-Indigenous residents in the flood plain of the Fraser River and Georgia Strait, highlighting natural mechanisms that reduce the impacts of storm surges and flooding.64 Current conditions afford an opportunity to utilize the traditional ecological knowledge of Coast Salish and the scientific understandings of hydrological and sediment patterns to inform future design. Interventions designed to capture sediment through harnessing the flows and currents of the Fraser River and Georgia Strait could vastly increase the resilience of nested ecologies. Such spaces could also serve to revive harvesting traditions and as a platform for knowledge transfer, effectively closing the loop on design informed by traditional ecological knowledge.

Collaboration with the Keepers of Traditional Knowledge

Moving east, a separate case study offers similar outcomes. One hundred and thirty-five kilometres separate Winnipeg and Shoal Lake, but in 1919 the two were connected via an aqueduct. A vital infrastructural element, the aqueduct forging this link supplies all of the City of Winnipeg’s potable water and has done so since its construction. In connecting Winnipeg to its current water supply, this project also served to isolate Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.65 Originally situated along Shoal Lake’s northwest shoreline, Shoal Lake 40 was uprooted to make way for the aqueduct and relocated to a large peninsula south of their former community. On completion of the project, the narrow strip of land connecting the peninsula to the mainland was subsequently severed by the installation of a diversion channel.66 Throughout the past century, the quality of life for Shoal Lake 40 First Nation has decreased considerably. The community has been under a boil-water advisory for the past eighteen years, leaving no option but to import bottled drinking water.67 Community elders have noted “declining water clarity over several decades,” observing that “where it was once possible to see the lake bottom quite clearly … increased colouration, suspended sediment, and algae have since reduced the depth of light penetration.”68 Studies suggest that increases in sediment suspension and deposition and the growth of aquatic weeds “have adversely and progressively impacted … water quality.”69 The thesis work of Emma Mendel, a graduate from the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Toronto, addresses many of the environmental concerns expressed by Shoal Lake 40 First Nation. The project proposes “alternative infrastructure solutions based on First Nations traditions and culture, rather

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than on standard models of design.”70 The proposed intervention leverages traditional ecological knowledge and “soft” infrastructural interventions intended to foster bioremediation through the emergence of plant communities. Strategically deployed fishing weirs double as scaffolds for the growth of aquatic plants. The intent of establishing aquatic plant beds on site is to reduce the suspension of sediment in the water column through the retentive capacities of their root structures, enabling deeper light penetration. In addition, the proposal foresees diminishing nutrient loads and suspended organic content as a result of aquatic plant growth, further improving water quality over time (figs. 1.10 and 1.11). Beyond remediating the ecological health of the aquifer, the project addresses three points of disconnection faced by the community: a dike that diverts contaminated runoff into the band’s source of drinking water, the canal that severs their connection to the shore, and the ice road that only allows seasonal access. These issues are addressed through the reconfiguration of existing elements and the construction of an isthmus that integrates a permanent road and areas “for planting medicinal and ceremonial crops, including sweetgrass, wild rice, tobacco, and cedar trees.”71 The function of the landscape is improved through the project’s proposed interventions; so, too, are the capacities for engagement for Shoal Lake 40 First Nation members. The addition of a deck and dock extends the educational experience for Shoal Lake children from the classroom to the surrounding environment, while canopied spaces create places for ceremony, celebration, and the passage of Traditional Knowledge. “These proposed, alternative infrastructure designs seek to open a space [of dialogue] between western

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Fig. 1.10.  A soft infrastructure fishing weir intervention based on traditional ecological knowledge fosters bioremediation of the polluted Shoal Lake, 2015, University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture thesis. Source: Emma Mendel.

science and Traditional Knowledge, infrastructure and ecology, and land and water.”72

Reflections Conditions for collaboration between design professionals and guardians of traditional ecological knowledge in Canada have improved. There is growing political and social will to address the issues of climate change, complemented by an increased recognition

of Indigenous rights and title. Collectively, this has fostered broad support for partnerships with First Nations communities. Policy has been implemented across all levels of government and by First Nations, laying a foundation upon which landscape architects can build to fulfil mutually held goals and ensure ecological resilience in the face of climate change. Adaptation is no longer an option. It is a necessity. The increasing severity of storms, droughts, and loss of sea ice are all signs that our planet is already succumbing to significant environmental shifts.

Fig. 1.11.  Rendering of weir scaffolds proposed as a means of healing the environmental degradation imposed on the territorial waters of the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, 2015, University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture thesis. Source: Emma Mendel.

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Contemporary theoretical discourse in the field of landscape architecture argues for an expanded operational territory and timescale, with the hope that this additional depth of analysis will translate itself into practice. However, the scope of discourse remains overly reductive in several respects. Additional steps need to be taken to establish organizational structures and partnerships for implementing regional strategies. This is the only way in which the totality and complexity of these systems can be engaged. Partnerships between Traditional Knowledge holders and landscape architects will be elemental to this end, helping to bridge the chasm between theory and practice. As discussed, tremendous latent opportunities exist in Canada, where such partnerships would have substantial positive impact. Encouragingly, a growing number of precedents already exemplify these benefits. To fully realize the potential of these relationships, interventions should not be limited to addressing immediate concerns. Rather, our collective focus needs to encompass a long-term vision capable of adapting to environmental change for generations to come.

NOTES 1 Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, “Peace and Friendship Treaties,” 10 December 2015, www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100028589 /1539608999656. 2 Bob Joseph, “Potlatch Ban: Abolishment of First ­Nations Ceremonies,” Indigenous Corporate Training, 16 October 2012, https://www.ictinc.ca/the-potlatch -ban-abolishment-of-first-nations-ceremonies.

3 Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, “Statement of Apology to Former Students of Indian Residential Schools,” 11 June 2008, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac .gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1571589171655. 4 Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2012), 4. 5 Assembly of First Nations, “How Climate Change ­Impacts the Physical, Social and Cultural Aspects of First Nations,” March 2006, 34. 6 Ibid., 22. 7 Anne Whiston Spirn, “Ecological Urbanism: A Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities,” Landscape Research 30 (2005): 4. 8 Ibid., 1. 9 Mohsen Mostafavi, “Why Ecological Urbanism? Why Now?” Harvard Design Magazine, April 2010, http:// www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/32/why -ecological-urbanism-why-now. 10 Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 41. 11 James Corner and Alison Bick Hirsch, “Landscape Urbanism,” in The Landscape Imagination: Collected ­Essays of James Corner, 1990–2010 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 292. 12 Charles Waldheim. “Landscape as Urbanism,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 39. 13 Christophe Girot, “Vision in Motion: Representing Landscape in Time,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 94. 14 Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Bharath Sriraman, ­Indigenous Innovation: Universalities and Peculiarities (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2015), 84. 15 Pierre Bélanger, “Is Landscape Infrastructure?” in Is Landscape …?: Essays on the Identity of Landscape (New York: Routledge, 2016), 190–227, here 215. 16 Ibid.

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17 Ibid. 18 Pierre Bélanger, Landscape Infrastructure: Urbanism b­ eyond Engineering (Wageningen: Wageningen ­University, 2013), 9. 19 Nancy J. Turner, Douglas Deur, and Dana Lepofsky, “Plant Management Systems of British Columbia’s First Peoples,” BC Studies, no. 179 (September 2013): 107–33. 20 Ibid. 21 Charles Waldheim, Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 22 Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, “First Nations Land Management Regime,” 26 June 2013, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1327090675492 /1327090738973. 23 Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, “First ­Nations Land Management Regime,” 28 February 2019, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/13270906 75492/1327090738973. 24 Jeffrey Cook, “Building on Traditions of the Past: The Rise and Resurgence of First Nations CCP,” Plan ­Canada (July 2008): 13–16. 25 Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, “Budget 2016 Highlights – Indigenous and Northern Investments,” 22 March 2016, https://www.aadnc-aandc .gc.ca/eng/1458682313288/1458682419457. 26 Josh Dehaas and Sonja Puzic, “Mixed Reaction to $8.4B Budgeted for Indigenous People,” CTV News, 22 March 2016, http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics /mixed-reaction-to-8–4b-budgeted-for-Indigenous -­people-1.2828119. 27 Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER), “History,” 2016, http://www.yourcier.org /history.html. 28 Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, Canadian Landscape Charter (Ottawa: Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, 2015), http://www.csla-aapc. ca/sites/csla-aapc.ca/files/downloads/1.2%20CLC -CCP%202015%20notes.pdf.

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29 Environment and Climate Change Canada, “Great Lakes,” 5 July 2013, https://www.ec.gc.ca/grandslacs -greatlakes/default.asp?lang=En. 30 International Joint Commission, “Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement – 2012,” 15 April 2012, http://ijc .org/en_/Great_Lakes_Water_Quality. 31 Environment and Climate Change Canada, “CanadaOntario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health, 2014,” 12 February 2015, http:// ec.gc.ca/lcpe-cepa/default.asp?lang=En. 32 Clinton L. Beckford, Clint Jacobs, Naomi William, and Russell Nahdee, “Ecological Justice and Stewardship on Walpole Island, Ontario: Continuity and Change in a Canadian First Nations Community,” Canadian Journal of Native Studies (January 2012): 194. 33 Walpole Island Heritage Centre, Species at Risk on the Walpole Island First Nation (Walpole Island: ­Bkejwanon Natural Heritage Program, 2008). 34 “Heritage Centre,” Walpole Island First Nation, http://walpoleislandfirstnation.ca/operations /heritage-centre/. 35 Ministry of Transportation Ontario, “The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway ‘A Parkway in a Prairie,’” ­TAC-ATC, http://www.tac-atc.ca/sites/default /files/conf_papers/foster.pdf. 36 Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway Project Team, “Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway and Walpole Island First Nation: A Valued Friendship,” Herb Gray Parkway, 9 December 2013. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, “The WindsorEssex Parkway Landscape and Trail M ­ aster Plan | CSLA,” 2012, http://www.csla-aapc.ca/awards-atlas/the -­windsor-essex-parkway-landscape-and-trail-master-plan. 40 Walpole Island Heritage Centre, Species at Risk on the Walpole Island First Nation, 60. 41 Robert Van Wynsberghe, “Organizing a Community Response to Environmental Injustice: Walpole Island’s

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Heritage Centre as a Social Movement Organization,” The Organizational Response to Social Problems ­Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 10 March 2015, 221–43. Hydro-Québec, “Hydroelectric Generating Stations,” http://www.hydroquebec.com/generation/centrale -hydroelectrique.html. Raymond Coppinger and Will Ryan, “James Bay: Environmental Considerations for Building Large Hydroelectric Dams and Reservoirs in Quebec,” in Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, ed. James F. Hornig (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). Chris Scott, “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t,” Briarpatch Magazine, http://briarpatchmagazine .com/articles/view/damned-if-you-do-damned -if-you-dont. Stanley Warner, “Cree People of James Bay: Assessing the Social Impact of Hydroelectric Dams and Reservoirs,” in Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay ­Hydroelectric Project. Peter Jacobs, “Kativik Environmental Quality Commission: Chairman’s Annual Report 1982–1983,” Kativik Environmental Quality Commission Publications, March 1983, https://www.keqc-cqek.ca/wordpress /wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1982–1983_eng1.pdf Bélanger, Landscape Infrastructure, 242. Thibault Martin and Steven M. Hoffman, Power Struggles: Hydro Development and First Nations in Manitoba and Quebec (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2008). Fikret Berkes, “The Intrinsic Difficulty of Predicting Impacts: Lessons from the James Bay Hydro Project,” Environmental Impact Assessment Review 8, no. 3 (­September 1988): 201–20. Keeyask Hydro Power Limited Partnership, “Keeyask Generation Project: Project Description,” Keeyask, June 2012, 1–9, http://keeyask.com/wp-content /uploads/Keeyask_EIS-Project_Description_SV.pdf. Ibid., 1–2.

52 Ibid., III. 53 James C. Thomas, “Kipekiskwaywinan: Our Voices,” Landscapes | Paysages 17, no. 3 (October 2015): 38–9. 54 HTFC Planning and Design, “Kipekiskwaywinan Wins National Merit,” 12 March 2015, http://www .htfc.mb.ca/kipekiskwaywinan-wins-national-merit/. 55 Keeyask Hydro Power Limited Partnership, “Keeyask Generation Project: Project Description,” 2–42. 56 York Factory First Nation and HTFC Planning and Design, KIPEKISKWAYWINAN: Our Voices (York Landing, MB: York Factory First Nation, 2012), 19. 57 Ashley Csanady, “‘These Are First Steps towards ­Creating a National Grid’: Ontario in Talks to Buy Power from Newfoundland,” National Post, 20 July 2015. 58 Bélanger, Landscape as Infrastructure: A Base Primer (New York: Routledge, 2017), 37. 59 Musqueam, Musqueam Community Profile: Knowing Our Past, Exploring Our Future (Vancouver: Ecoplan International, 2007), 4. 60 Carlos Eduardo Quintana-Alcantra, Carbon Sequestration in Tidal Salt Marshes and Mangrove Ecosystems (San Francisco: University of San Francisco, 2014). 61 Douglas Deur and Nancy J. Turner, Keeping It Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 300. 62 Matthew L. Kirwan, Glenn R. Guntenspergen, Andrea D’alpaos, James T. Morris, Simon M. Mudd, and Stijn Temmerman, “Limits on the Adaptability of Coastal Marshes to Rising Sea Level,” Geophysical Research ­Letters 37, no. 23 (December 2010). 63 Hemmera, “Existing Ecological Conditions at Proposed Point Grey Tidal Marsh Project: PMV Habitat Enhancement Program,” prepared for Port Metro Vancouver, 2014, http://www.portvancouver.com /wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2014-05-26-03-200 -HEM-Point_grey_eco_conditions-RevE.pdf. 64 James Tempest, “Salt Marsh Plants Key to Reducing Coastal Erosion and Flooding,” University of

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66 67

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Cambridge, 2 October 2014, http://www.cam.ac.uk /research/news/salt-marsh-plants-key-to-reducing -coastal-erosion-and-flooding. More on the details of the aqueduct can be found in Adele Perry, Aqueduct: Colonialism, Resources, and the Histories We Remember (Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2016). Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, “About Shoal Lake #40,” Shoal Lake #40, 2011, http://www.sl40.ca/about.html. CBC News, “Shoal Lake 40 and Winnipeg’s Drinking Water: What’s at Stake?” 11 August 2015, http:// www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/shoal-lake-40 -and-winnipeg-s-drinking-water-what-s-at-stake -1.3185733. Shoal Lake Watershed Working Group, Shoal Lake Watershed Management Plan: Recommended

69 70

71 72

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Strategies and Actions for Maintaining Ecological Integrity and Environmental Quality, Sustaining Watershed Communities and Resources, Guiding Future Development: A Report to Governments Prepared by the Shoal Lake Watershed Working Group (Winnipeg: Manitoba Conservation, 2002). Ibid., 34. Emma Mendel, “Fluid Reciprocity: Alternative Infrastructure to Ensure Access to Clean Drinking Water at Shoal Lake 40 First Nation,” Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, 21 October 2016, http://oala.ca /ground_issue/ground-35-edges/fluid-reciprocity -alternative-infrastructure-ensure-access-clean-drinking -water-shoal-lake-40-first-nation/. Ibid. Ibid.

CHAPTER TWO

Nouveaux Paysages: Contemporary Installations by Canadian Landscape Architects Adrien Sun Hall

The French word for landscape, paysage, carries with it a sense of nationhood (pays – country, region, nation) and cultural identity (paysan – peasant, ruralite); notions of landscape and place are deeply embedded in who we are. Landscape architects are often intermediaries in this relationship, analysing the physical and cultural characteristics of a site to gain an understanding of just what a place is before formulating solutions that involve shaping the land. However, critics have identified a growing disparity between landscape and cultural narrative, the fissure attributed to an obsessive emphasis on technologic and performative measures that all but forgets the “metaphysical and mythopoetic qualities integral to the meaning of place.”1 This chapter examines the emergence of art installations by Canadian landscape architects as a response to this cultural condition and as a mode of work that critically explores Canadian cultural identities related to landscape. In recent years, we have seen an increasing number of installations – at garden festivals and art events, and in everyday urban contexts. By critically questioning how we relate to place, these projects have become integral to the revival of landscape as an artistic medium.2 Commencing with a brief history, the chapter details the relationship between landscape and art, the garden as a subject of aesthetic exploration, and the emergence of installation projects. It then examines recent installation projects through three predominant themes that reflect a progression of

Fig. 2.0.  Toronto Botanical Gardens, Toronto, Ontario, 2006, by PMA Landscape Architects. Source: PMA Landscape Architects.

Canada’s cultural landscape identities: wilderness myths, nature and artifice, and shifting landscapes.

The Garden as Art Despite a rich history of associations between the garden and romance, philosophy, and artistic expression, landscape as a medium was left out of the dialogue and practice of art institutions for most of the twentieth century. Instead, the role of landscape was confined as static subject matter for painting, or as a medium through which romanticized versions of nature were reproduced. Critical cultural inquiry in the fine arts of the twentieth century stemmed predominantly from the works of painters, sculptors, musicians, poets (who often employed landscape to convey allegorical meaning), and, to some extent, architects.3 Further, the production, curation, and appreciation of fine arts was limited to the walled gallery spaces of elite institutions and private collections.4 Put simply, gardens were excluded from the institutionalized art world for the same reasons that fine art was largely excluded from daily life and the landscape. The land art movement of the 1970s disturbed this imposed dichotomy, with such artists as Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Walter de Maria, and Mary Miss creating works of conceptual art outside the walls of galleries, using the land itself as a medium. With most works located in remote desert areas of the American southwest, however, the disconnect between these interventions and the general public persisted. Access to these installations thus largely remained within the realms of privileged and dedicated art connoisseurs. This period also witnessed the concurrent emergence of conceptual art. Acclaimed

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artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell created large-scale installations intended to engage with the sensory perception of elements of lived space (distance, light, temperature, atmosphere, etc.), albeit in an extremely controlled, vacuum-like gallery setting (fig. 2.1). Meanwhile, popular landscape and garden design remained relatively unchanged throughout most of the twentieth century. Compared with the drastic changes taking place in artistic fields such as architecture and painting, landscape and gardening remained steadfastly rooted in tradition. Even the modernist movement of landscape design in the 1930s evaded characterization as a “cataclysmic breach with the past.”5 As Marc Treib describes it, “[Landscape] retained, for the most part, the materials and many of the conceptual structures of previous eras: the site as the point of departure for the design, for example.”6 This would all change in the 1980s, when cues taken from the conceptual art movement provoked an important departure from landscape tradition in the revival of “the garden as a subject of aesthetic exploration.”7 Despite limited recognition from the art world, the work of landscape architects such as Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz gained wide attention and was the subject of heated public discourse in the 1980s and 1990s. Schwartz in particular challenged the use of conventional garden materials and the site of the garden itself, applying a conceptual art approach to mostly non-plant-based gardens in urban contexts. While heavily criticized by some landscape architects, Schwartz’s work continues to have a lasting influence. One of Canada’s most influential landscape architects, Claude Cormier, studied under Martha Schwartz and later worked in her New York office. Students of Schwartz were reportedly advised to

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look to contemporary artists for inspiration in their studies, including the conceptual artworks of Robert Irwin, Robert Morris, Carle Andre, and Andy Warhol.8 The influence of conceptual art on garden design has continued, instigating significant change throughout the practice. The garden is no longer conceived as a permanent fixture, dominated by flora, or located in a tranquil countryside setting. This is perhaps best exemplified by Ken Smith’s 2004 plantless roof garden for the Museum of Modern Art in New York (fig. 2.2). In place of live plants, 185 plastic rocks, 560 plastic boxwoods, 300 pounds of crushed glass, and 4 tons of rubber mulch were used to create a super-scaled graphic of the camouflage patterning found in hunting and military clothing, commenting on the popular use of landscape to camouflage signs of man-made intervention through the mimicry of nature. Today the majority of projects invoking the artistic reinvention of landscape architecture have emerged from beneath the umbrella of garden design, with many notable works appearing at avant-garde garden festivals such as the annual International Garden Festival at the Château de Chaumont in France, the year-round Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma, California, and Quebec’s own annual International Garden Festival at the Jardins de Métis. Despite its avant-garde leanings, contemporary landscape installation as a practice remains rooted in the art of garden design, whose long history has been studied at great length.9 In Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, John Dixon Hunt draws on two historical definitions of nature coined by Cicero: first, nature as untouched and primal wilderness; second, nature as landscape shaped by humans for survival or habitation, as in agriculture and urban settlement. Hunt

Fig. 2.1.  One of the iconic representations of land art is Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Great Basin Desert, Utah, 1976. Source: “Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1973–1976” by Retis on Flickr, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Fig. 2.2.  The influence of conceptual art can be seen in the work of Ken Smith, in his MoMA Roof Garden, New York, 2009. Source: Peter Mauss/Esto.

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introduces the concept of a third nature, or the garden, as one created by humans for a higher purpose: highly designed, sophisticated, and deliberate landscapes combining art and nature. Third-nature landscapes are unique in that they may also make reference to the first two natures. In this way, works of garden design and landscape architecture are capable of a “tripartite nature,”10 representing all three zones of nature at once by referring to the wild and cultural landscapes embedded in our collective memory and imagination. Perhaps to separate themselves from the realm of garden design, landscape architects have more recently begun using the term “installation,” borrowed from art, to describe temporary, artistic, or unconventional works. This marks a departure from the conventional constraint of working within the idea of a garden. The term “installation” helps landscape projects shed the decorative, sophisticated, and private notions associated with the history of garden design and associate more closely with conceptual approaches of public art. In doing so, landscape architects are also provided the venue to practise critical design – to pose questions instead of answering pre-framed problems, critically engaging the social, political, and cultural programs that operate in a society. Accordingly, venues for temporary, experimental, and artistic landscape projects are no longer limited to garden festivals. The works discussed in this chapter were created across a range of scales and contexts, including pedestrianized street festivals, indoor exhibitions, and permanent parks. Regardless of whether defined as garden or installation (and the terms are often interchangeable), the works outlined below exhibit references to the storied history of garden design as well as a critical questioning of our

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relationship with landscape, offering fresh interpretations of landscape identities past, present, and future.

Wilderness Myths Within the Canadian landscape narrative, the idea of wilderness holds particular influence. To understand this relationship and how it affects interaction with the land, let us refer to William Cronon’s ideas of the “sublime” and “frontier,” two concepts at the very core of settler Canadian identity.11 The sublime is evident in the romantic notions of wilderness portrayed by this land’s storytellers, writers, and artists. For most of the early twentieth century, Canadian art was focused on the wilderness painting movement, led by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, who, rather than using landscape as a setting for allegory and biblical lore, represented wilderness landscapes in ways that celebrated their inherent beauty. In capturing the innate landscape of the country, the Group also sought to create a national art, and in doing so crafted a vision of Canada that was a supposed departure from its colonial British roots.12 The Group’s awe-inspiring paintings of glaciers, boreal forests, deciduous lowlands, freshwater lakes, icebergs, and tundra came to represent a national visual identity and cultural narrative closely linked to the land. Despite critiques of the Group’s depiction of a vast and largely uninhabited landscape that effectively erased evidence of Indigenous peoples, the first-nature wilderness depicted by the Group of Seven continues to form the backdrop for what is accepted and understood as “Canadianness” to this day.13

The sheer territorial vastness and proximity to tangible wilderness are facets of the Canadian landscape that are unique in the northwestern world. Certainly, compared to western Europe, which has a long history of intensive agricultural and urban development over a relatively small land mass, the “pristine” natural landscape of Canada is vast. European conceptions of nature and landscape have long been inextricable from the intensive development of empire, and the distinction between second and third natures is deeply understood. French and English cultures, in particular, have strong traditions of gardening. In colonial North America, however, John Dixon Hunt describes how European-style pleasure gardens were more or less unheard of until the nineteenth century, with horticultural publications of early American settler colonies rarely discussing issues of ornament. Mention of gardening was typically confined to kitchen and herb garden plots. To this day, most contemporary second- and third-nature landscapes in Canada reference European landscapes rather than our own. Despite wilderness’s strong hold on our cultural identity, Canadian cultural landscapes generally exhibit a kind of landscape colonialism, typified by the pastoral ideal of lawns and a preference for non-native, ornamental species. However, these borrowed traditions are being supplanted by increased use of native plant species and, in some places, a shifting aesthetic from manicured landscapes to something more rugged and naturalized. In place of an established ornamental garden history, contemporary artistic approaches to landscape and gardens in Canada present a unique landscape identity, a hybrid landscape culture between European garden traditions and wilderness myths.

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Tiny Taxonomy is a garden that explores the wonder of native landscapes through a Victorian way of catalogue and display. The installation, created by Rosetta Sarah Elkin, has appeared each year since 2010 at the Métis International Garden Festival in Grand-Métis, Quebec. Inspired by the festival’s boreal forest setting on the St. Lawrence River, the garden is composed of native plants of the forest floor, planted on reflective cylindrical pillars raised to different eye levels (fig. 2.3). By elevating and highlighting elements of the forest that are normally ignored underfoot, Elkin invites us to take a closer look at tiny and delicate species, highlighting the “beauty and frailty of nature’s most inconspicuous players.”14 Despite their critical role in forest succession, these shady species are generally overlooked in favour of the more grand and large-scaled elements of the forest – trees in particular. Elkin’s use of inconspicuous native plants stands in direct contrast to the pleasure garden traditions of western Europe, whose aesthetic was highly cultivated and reliant on exotic species imported from around the globe. By introducing a new scale and regional palette to the garden, this installation departs from aesthetics borrowed from English and French gardening histories while implementing a familiarly Victorian approach to examination. In addition to the sublime of untouched wilderness, the notion of frontier holds an equally strong influence on the founding of a Canadian landscape identity, rooted in the resource-oriented perspectives of European settlers. For these people, the Canadian wilderness was a source of fear and mystery, a landscape that, “in its raw state, had little or nothing to offer civilized men and women.”15 The wilderness of the new world was a place to be tamed, an opportunity for “national renewal”16 and the

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forging of a new national identity through agrarian and habitable development. As affirmed in 1905 by American conservation ethic forester Gifford Pinchot, “Next to the earth itself the forest is the most useful servant of man. Not only does it sustain and regulate the streams, moderate the winds, and beautify the land, but it also supplies wood, the most widely used of all materials.”17 Natural resource–based industries such as logging and trapping provided the economic engine for the founding of settler Canada, the ephemera of log runs and fur traders immortalized as the subjects of folklore. Quebec’s St. Lawrence River and its adjacent lands were dominated by logging and trade routes during early European settlement, when lumberjacks travelled by canoe through networks of rivers and streams to the boreal forests of the “New World.”18 Just as the Group of Seven’s images of pristine wilderness (North, chap. 6, this volume) left an indelible mark on the collective Canadian imagination, so did images of log runs and clear-cut forests (fig. 2.4). Today over 50 per cent of Canada’s ancient boreal forest – the largest wilderness forest in North America – is registered as industrial forestlands.19 Many landscape architects have been inspired by both the mythic beauty and the massive destruction of the boreal forest, a theme that is explored in installation works today.20 Much of the work originated by Montreal landscape architecture firm NIPpaysage celebrates the boreal forest while challenging the idea of Canadian wilderness as an untouched landscape. The studio’s founders have cited their respective upbringings near remote forested areas as having a major influence on their work. The relationship between landscape, resources, trade, and colonialism in Quebec is explored in their installation Floating Forest in 2012 at the Chelsea Fringe Festival

Fig. 2.3.  Rosetta Sarah Elkin’s Tiny Taxonomy, representing a Victorian approach to examination. International Garden Festival at the Jardins de Métis, 2010. Source: Jardins de Métis/Louise Tanguay.

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It is clear that both installations are informed by context – both cultural and physical. Indeed, Canada’s landscape mythos as a wilderness has been the subject of much aesthetic exploration in the arts, to the point of becoming a national mythology that often overshadows Canada’s landscape reality.

Nature and Artifice

Fig. 2.4.  Tom Thomson, The Drive, 1917. Source: Ontario Agricultural College purchase with funds raised by students, faculty, and staff, 1926, University of Guelph, Collection at the Art Gallery of Guelph.

in London, England. For the piece, 450 slices of a tree trunk are laid, floating on the surface of water, in an orderly pattern evoking a horizontal interpretation of a dense forest. The ephemeral installation brings to mind the historical floating wood landscapes of log runs in Canada and references a long-standing export relationship with the United Kingdom. Set in a canal in a formerly industrial area of London, the project effectively exports the cultural idea of one type of industry – forestry in Quebec – to the formerly industrial site of a London building. This is significant, given that much of the timber used for the surrounding nineteenth-century buildings was likely milled from eastern white pine trees logged from Quebec’s boreal forest. The rectilinear grid pattern in which the slices are set highlights the variation of the trunks’ sizes and silhouettes, emphasizing their natural beauty (fig. 2.5).

A number of academics have identified problems with the idea of wilderness – even questioning its true existence – given that the idea of wilderness is a profoundly human (and colonial) creation. Wilderness presupposes that nature, to be natural, must be pristine and completely untouched by the human hand; that “the place where we are is the place where nature is not.”21 The paradox herein is that we can never truly experience nature; upon our arrival in a pristine environment, it can no longer be considered pristine. John Dixon Hunt points out that as inhabitants of a developed country, most of us live primarily in a world of second nature, where the land has been visibly and irrevocably modified for purposes of commodification and habitation. As he describes it, wilderness is a nature that, in the late twentieth century, “survives primarily in the minds of those who want it to exist.”22 A national landscape identity predicated on the idea of wilderness is clearly fraught with contradictions. William Cronon has argued that our obsession with pristine landscapes may actually be harmful, in that it allows us to privilege some landscapes while devaluing others. He points to the rise of the national parks movement of the early 1900s in the United States and

Fig. 2.5.  In Floating Forest, the Canadian boreal forest is connected to historic industrial London in the 2012 work of NIPpaysage, Chelsea Fringe Festival, London. Source: NIPpaysage.

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Canada (Long, chap. 5, this volume), in which large natural areas came under federal protection during a period when more landscapes were destroyed by settlement and industrialization than ever before. The dichotomy between “natural” and “man-made” is perpetuated today in popular thinking, in which the general public continues to associate landscape only to that which is “natural” and assign value to places as such. As active shapers of the land, landscape architects have long recognized the ecological complexity of landscape as a medium constructed of both natural and man-made materials. Human interaction with landscape is increasingly driven by scientific research and performance measures, a phenomenon explored by North Design Office in their installation Core Sample, installed at the Métis International Garden Festival in 2006. The garden explores subterranean methods of collecting and sampling material as a way of analysing and understanding landscape. Dozens of tall, slender acrylic tubes stand in a rectilinear grid, mimicking the cores harvested for geological sampling (fig. 2.6). Core samples are commonly used to analyse what lies beneath the earth’s surface, revealing the unique layers that make up a given landscape. In turn, the composition of the core samples informs the design and construction of man-made landscapes. The installation uses the metaphor of geological investigation as a way to investigate the surrounding landscape, displaying living and non-living materials of the region suspended in a water-based solution. The project represents the wonder of natural landscapes, but it also brings attention to the engineered and man-made tools that enable a greater understanding of the landscape.

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Landscape is a medium that is constructed both physically and mentally. Our perception of place is based on our experience of a multitude of sensory stimuli, processed and corroborated with experience and memory to yield an interpretation of place that is often richer than the sum of its parts.23 Indeed, a place’s identity is not limited to a specific site or materials; it also exists in landscapes of the imagination and memory. A number of landscape architects have played with this idea, asking whether the experience of a place can be created apart from its original site, even without the use of natural materials. This is perhaps most evident in the work of Montreal landscape architecture firm Claude Cormier et Associés. In their 2013 installation TOM II, six thousand TOMs (traffic overlay markers used for the temporary delineation of driving lanes) were installed on Montreal’s l’Avenue du Musée in a tight, offset grid pattern of red, green, and white, offering a somewhat pointillist representation of a field of poppies as depicted in the similarly titled painting by Vincent van Gogh. Set on the slope of Mount Royal, the small but very public lane beside one of the city’s largest art institutions created a tilted perspective from which a field of colour could be viewed from the bottom of the hill, set against the treed backdrop of McGill University and Mont Royal (fig. 2.7). The installation (like its predecessor, TOM I) was intended to evoke the notions of freedom associated with a stroll through a flowering meadow, offering an opportunity for pause within the everyday urban bustle.24 Here, we see a utilitarian object associated with the technical execution of roadway construction reconfigured to evoke memories and cultural perceptions of a natural landscape. Alternate to a likeness in

Fig. 2.6.  Geologic exploration investigates and reveals the surrounding landscape in North Design Office’s Core Sample, International Garden Festival at the Jardins de Métis, 2006. Source: Jardins de Métis/Louise Tanguay.

Fig. 2.7.  In the work of Claude Cormier et Associés, TOM II, Montreal, 2012, roadway markers are used to evoke a flowering meadow. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

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Fig. 2.8.  Fabricated nature in Claude Cormier et Associés, Lipstick Forest, 1999, Palais des Congrès de Montréal. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

materiality and ecological integrity, this installation derives its power from the successful recreation of a landscape captured in our imagination and memory, the cultural idea of a landscape. The interplay between real and artificial is a theme employed throughout the work of Claude Cormier et Associés. Central to the studio’s philosophy is an understanding that landscapes are constructed – composed of geological, hydrologic, biotic, and cultural strata – and that they should not try to appear otherwise.25 The studio embraces the human-made nature of landscapes and frequently incorporates non-naturally occurring materials as primary design features, including concrete, fibreglass, bright colours, super-scaled elements, and whimsical patterns. Cormier has distinguished the contemporary garden as a place for invention and experimentation, stating, “The garden is about experience, not plants.”26

For 1999’s Lipstick Forest, Claude Cormier et Associés was commissioned to create a winter garden inside Montreal’s Palais des Congrès. Shirking convention, the studio created a garden that drew from the vernacular natural and cultural landscape of Montreal. Inspired by the grand hundred-year-old maples dotting the city’s avenues, the studio installed fifty-two oversized concrete tree trunks painted lipstick pink between the concrete floor and ceiling of the ground-floor gallery.27 The density of the “planting” creates the feeling of a forest grove, evoking a sense of mystery as views are hidden and revealed while visitors walk through the space. The project draws on the collective memory of an iconic Montreal landscape while making reference to the success of the city’s cosmetic industry, effectively weaving together local narratives of landscape and culture (fig. 2.8). Lipstick Forest challenges the notion that the work of landscape architects must be associated with or mimic

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nature. Nature can certainly be a powerful source of inspiration, but it needn’t be the end result.28 Cormier compares Lipstick Forest to the late nineteenth-century work of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who used nature as a reference but understood his work as a fabricated element in the built environment. Public perception lags in this regard, still dominated by the perceived dichotomy between “natural” and “man-made.” Highly engineered works of Olmsted’s, such as Central Park in New York, co-opted the appearance of nature so well that today’s general public is unaware of the complexity and craft underpinning such constructed landscapes. Pandering to this cultural framework, a surplus of contemporary landscape projects still attempt to hide their artifice; sadly, these attempts often yield confusing and poorly constructed results in their attempt to stand in for natural processes. Cormier combats this notion, striving to create landscapes that are “artificial but not fake.”29

Shifting Landscapes One of the unique features of landscape is that it is constantly in flux. Gardens are sites of continuous transformation, sites of “life and death” and “resistance and anticipation”;30 flowers bloom, seeds spread, leaves fall, colours change. The soil, atmosphere, precipitation – all interact to create shifting conditions in which the garden is never the same. The dynamic nature of landscape is unique among media for the arts.31 Ironically, the shifting nature of landscape and gardens is perhaps why the medium has been left out of critical discussion in the contemporary art world. Unlike the reproductions in photographs and videos

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through which many viewers experience original works of art, the ephemeral qualities essential to a garden’s characteristics remain completely beyond the reach of photographic and cinematographic representation. The garden has a sensory milieu and experiential quality that cannot be represented through any medium other than landscape itself. Even in artistic representations of gardens (photographs, videos, and models), none can replicate the myriad ephemeral qualities of the gardens “in which we like to walk, dream or look for the first spring blossoms.”32 Boustrophedon Garden, designed by Plant Architect in the Ephemeral Gardens as part of Quebec City’s four-hundredth anniversary in 2008, is both garden and measuring apparatus, a representation of the ephemeral and shifting features of landscape (fig. 2.9). Boustrophedon is named for the alternating strip pattern of tilling farmland with oxen practised by les habitants, the early French settlers of Quebec. It is also the name of an ancient form of writing.33 Linear strips of planting reference both the seigneurial system of land division in New France and Samuel de Champlain’s early agricultural experiments and recordings. The garden’s life-sized graph is composed of overhead ropes that reflect plant height measurements for the rows of vegetables and herbs below, recorded weekly on a calendar along the site’s perpendicular length, to represent the axis of time. Over the weeks, as the overhead ropes are pulled down to mark significant life cycle events, such as bloom and harvest, a threedimensional landscape “cloth” is created, “registering growth and change in its warp and weft.”34 After the plants die, the life-sized graph is left as a record of the garden’s life over the season, similar to the journals kept

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Fig. 2.9.  Plant Architect’s Boustrophedon Garden recorded growth and change, at the Ephemeral Gardens of Quebec City’s four hundredth anniversary, 2008. Source: Jessica Craig.

by gardeners. It is an attempt to visualize the usually invisible processes of living matter in continual flux. Afterburn is an installation that explores how landscapes change at the scale of years and decades. Installed by Civilian Projects at the 2014 edition of the Métis International Garden Festival, the garden explores three phases of destruction and regeneration in natural boreal forest succession: fire, its aftermath, and the ensuing renewal. Charred spruce posts marked with bright orange bands stand upright in a rectilinear grid above an ash-rich soil. Below, the pioneer species of a new forest begin to take hold: coniferous saplings and herbaceous species that will soon fill existing bare spots, themselves ultimately replaced by other species in the

natural process of succession. While forest fires started by lightning are a natural process of forest regeneration, a greater number of forest fires are started by human means. The project highlights the regenerative and transformative power of plants despite – and sometimes in lieu of – anthropogenic influence.

Conclusion Landscape works are informed by a complex array of environmental and cultural contexts. Despite a relatively young ornamental garden tradition in Canada, a unique landscape identity is emerging. As

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evidenced by many examples in this chapter, new forms of landscape and garden design have perhaps been best explored in Quebec (Hallé and Roberge, chap. 8, this volume). A large number of sites for garden festivals and ephemeral installations have surfaced along or near the banks of the St. Lawrence River – the Métis International Garden Festival, Quebec City’s four-hundredth anniversary, and the many perennial installations in Montreal. Many of the (mostly young) landscape architects creating installation works today are Québécois, sometimes referred to as the Next Wave of Québec35 within landscape architectural discourse. While references to the province’s boreal forest landscape are clearly visible, Quebec’s strong arts culture has been instrumental in informing these critical investigations of landscape. In a country so vast, a picture of Canadian landscape identity from coast to coast to coast is hard to grasp. Further, the professional makeup in the field of landscape architecture does not yet represent the rich ethnic and cultural diversity of Canada. Generally speaking, landscape architecture in Canada is still practised from a post-colonial perspective, heavily influenced by contemporary European and American counterparts. Perhaps the most glaring void in the emergent dialogue surrounding landscape installation is the perspective of Indigenous peoples, who have such long traditions of living closely with and tending to the land. One can only hope that the profession welcomes more voices reflecting Canada’s diversity, and that a more complete rendition of the many influences shaping Canada’s national identity will emerge. It is important to note that many of the more well-known landscape architects featured in this chapter originally gained recognition because of their early installations. Initially, Claude Cormier et Associés was perhaps best

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known for such installation works as Blue Stick Garden and For the Blue Tree, the ensuing international acclaim likely facilitating significantly larger public works projects, such as Toronto’s HtO Park in collaboration with Janet Rosenberg and Studio, and Sugar Beach. The same may be said for NIPpaysage, who began their practice with installations and have since been awarded more traditional long-term design contracts. In the past twenty years, landscape installations have enjoyed an increasingly warm reception from the public, with a greater number of garden festivals, art parks, and pedestrian festivals serving as venues for temporary and non-traditional forms of landscape. Municipalities are beginning to understand that the value of improvements to the public realm lies not only in attracting private development but also in capturing the landscape imagination and collective memory of the people who live in cities. This is evident in the installation- and art-based approaches that now inform the design of such permanent public spaces as Sugar Beach and June Callwood Park in Toronto and Olympic Park Plaza in Calgary (fig. 2.10). The success of these projects also points to an increasing recognition throughout Canada of the value of accessible art and creative expression in the public realm. Although the subject is not covered in this chapter, it should also be noted that a growing number of landscape installations are undertaken by architects and artists who lie outside of the traditional landscape and garden design disciplines, a sign of the renewed interest in landscape as an artistic medium, and of the garden’s potential as a site for critical cultural discourse. One only has to look at the biographies of designers at recent editions of the Métis International Garden Festival (Hallé and Roberge, chap. 8; and

Fig. 2.10.  “Pixels” evoke the expansiveness of the prairie sky in the work of North Design Office, Big Sky, Olympic Park Plaza, Calgary, 2010. Source: North Design Office Inc.

Contemporary Installations by Canadian Landscape Architects

North, chap. 6, this volume) to see that the interest in creating landscape installations is not limited to landscape architects or traditional gardeners. Realistically, installations are still somewhat exceptional in the relatively conservative profession of landscape architecture, and while growing interdisciplinary interest is undoubtedly good for the medium, one also hopes that a growing number of landscape architects will continue to participate in the critical production of installations. Not doing so would leave landscape architects behind in an emerging cultural dialogue. While Canada is a vast country, its contemporary landscape identity remains emergent. Its cultural landscape narrative is primarily a hybrid between colonialist European traditions, wilderness myths (Long, chap. 5, this volume), and an expanding urban public realm. Installations by landscape architects have been integral to formulating an understanding of a contemporary identity, creatively reflecting on the collective memory and imagination of our diverse population. While a greater diversity of cultural voices needs yet to be heard, the revival of the garden as an artistic medium has proven critical to understanding how we relate to the land and how we identify as a nation. Equally, installations have proven critical to the profession of landscape architecture, offering a venue for artistic exploration and self-reflective criticality.36 Through the ephemeral and ad hoc nature of installations, Canadian landscape architects have challenged the somewhat predefined spectrum of outcomes and questions posed by the everyday design environment, exploring fundamental questions about Canadian history, the nature of landscape, the role of its people, and, ultimately, what it means to live on this land.

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NOTES 1 James Corner, “Three Tyrannies of Contemporary Theory,” Landscape Journal 10, no. 2 (1991): 159. 2 James Corner, “Recovering Landscape as a Critical Cultural Practice,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 1–26. Corner describes how landscape had become a neglected medium at the end of the twentieth century, largely looked to by the public for reproductions of “nature” rather than new experimental forms and ideas. Ultimately, this reflected a greatly reduced conception of the idea of landscape to one of purely ecological function or, in the case of cultural imagery, a pastoral ideal. Despite these shortcomings, Corner argued for a belief in the capacity of landscape to “critically engage the metaphysical and political programs that operate in a given society” as an “active instrument in the shaping of modern culture.” 3 Susan Herrington, “When Art Is a Garden: Benny Farm Garden by Claude Cormier,” in Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creations and Interpretations, ed. Michael Conan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2007), 25. Allen Carlson speaks of the twentieth-century loss of landscape as an important subject of philosophical inquiry. 4 Ibid. 5 Marc Treib, Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review, ed. Marc Treib (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), ix. 6 Ibid. 7 Herrington, “When Art Is a Garden,” 26. 8 Josée Labelle and Mélanie Mignault, “NIPpaysage,” Innate Terrain: Canadian Work of Established and Emerging Canadian Landscape Architecture Practices (Conference, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, 1–12 February 2010), DVD.

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9 John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 51–75. 10 Ibid. 11 William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), 69–90. 12 Erin Manning, “I Am Canadian: Identity, Territory and the Canadian National Landscape,” Theory & Event 11, no. 2 (2000): 11. 13 John O’Brian and Peter White, Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007). 14 Rosetta Sara Elkin, “Tiny Taxonomy,” accessed 8 October 2014, http://rse-landscape.com/work /tiny-taxonomy-publication/. 15 Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” 70. 16 Ibid., 75. 17 Peter Jacobs, “Folklore and Forest Fragments: Reading Contemporary Landscape Design in Quebec,” Landscape Journal 123, no. 2 (2004), 86. 18 Ibid., 85. 19 Ibid., 86. 20 Ibid. 21 Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” 11. 22 Hunt, Greater Perfections. 23 James Corner, “Representation of Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium,” Word & Image 8, no. 3 (1992): 250. Corner speaks at length of the phenomenological qualities of landscape and the difficulties of representation in other mediums than the landscape experience itself. 24 “TOM,” Claude Cormier + Associés, accessed 4 August 2014, http://www.claudecormier.com/en/projet/tom/.

25 Nancy Chater, “Claude Cormier, OALA, in Conversation with Nancy Chater, OALA,” Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly 16 (Winter 2011–12): 8–13. 26 Claude Cormier, “Manifesto for the 75th,” Landscapes | Paysages: Landscape Architecture in Canada 11, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 36. 27 “Lipstick Forest,” Claude Cormier + Associés, accessed 4 August 2014, http://www.claudecormier .com/en/projet/lipstick-forest/. 28 Chater, “Claude Cormier, OALA.” 29 Ibid. 30 Herrington, “When Art Is a Garden,” 29. 31 Ibid. 32 Michael Conan, “Introduction: In Defiance of the Institutional Art World,” in Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creations and Interpretations, ed. Michael Conan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2007), 3. 33 Plant Architect, “Boustrophedon Garden,” accessed 13 August 2014, http://www.branchplant.com /landscape/boustrophedon.html. 34 Ibid. 35 Lola Sheppard, “Quebec Pastorale,” Canadian Architect, modified 1 May 2007, accessed 2 December 2014, https://www.canadianarchitect.com/features /quebec-pastorale/. 36 James Corner, “Critical Thinking and Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Journal 10, no. 2 (1991): 45. Corner writes, “The landscape imagination is a primary form of critical action in society, embodying creative reflection on the inheritance, context and potential of designed landscapes.” Furthermore, “there can be no significant landscape architecture without robust living and ongoing critical thought.”

CHAPTER THREE

Resolve: Negotiation and Implementation of Land Claims James C. Thomas

Broken treaties must become a thing of the past. 1

– James Anaya

In 2017, Canada celebrated 150 years since Confederation: the joining in 1867 of the colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the United Province of Canada (the future provinces of Quebec and Ontario) to form the Dominion of Canada. Over many years following Confederation, the Dominion grew, adding provinces and territories until it achieved its current configuration, with the addition of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1949 and the creation of the Territory of Nunavut in 1999. While certainly not the youngest of nations, Canada is an infant when viewed through the eyes of the First Peoples of the North American continent. Indigenous landscapes of Canada have existed for thousands of years, at least from the time the massive ice sheets and glacial waters began to recede some eleven thousand years ago. Canada was built on and made possible through treaties between “the Crown” and Indigenous peoples2 (the “Crown” initially being the sovereigns of France and Great Britain, then, after Confederation, the government of Canada). Encompassing the vast majority of the Canadian land mass,3 the treaties include agreements made before Confederation in 1867, the “numbered treaties” made between 1871 and 1930, and the modern treaties made since 1975, such as the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (fig. 3.1).4 The treaties form an integral part of the Canadian legal fabric, with Aboriginal and treaty rights recognized

and affirmed in Canada’s Constitution.5 The treaties acknowledge and affirm the Indigenous landscapes that lie underneath and are interwoven with the contemporary and historical landscapes of the “newcomers.” They provide a foundation and framework for settlement and development. As stated in the summary report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), “It is important for all Canadians to understand that without Treaties, Canada would have no legitimacy as a nation. Treaties between Indigenous nations and the Crown established the legal and constitutional foundation of this country.”6 But Canada’s record of honouring and implementing the treaties is appalling.7 HTFC Planning and Design (HTFC), a firm of landscape architects and planners based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Treaty One territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, works with First Nations to negotiate and implement land claim settlements (Fahlgren, chap. 1, and Grosset and Limousin, chap. 4, this volume). The work has been undertaken with many different First Nations over more than forty years. This chapter describes some of that work with reference to three claims: the Peguis 1907 Surrender Claim, the Peguis Treaty Land Entitlement Claim, and the Rainy River First Nations Surrender Claim.

Treaties One and Three I would like to have the proposition made, turned over and over before me. How are we to be treated? The land cannot speak for itself. We have to speak for it; and want to know fully how you are going to treat our children. – Chief Henry Prince, Mis-Koo-Kee-New, 18718

Fig. 3.0.  Oodena Celebration Circle, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2004, by HTFC Planning and Design. Source: HTFC Planning and Design.

Those words were spoken by Henry Prince, MisKoo-Kee-New (Red Eagle), who signed Treaty One on

Fig. 3.1.  Map of Canada showing historical and modern treaties. Almost all of Canada is covered by one or more treaties. The majority of the remaining areas are affected by unsettled treaties or agreements and unresolved claims. This map is for illustration purposes, as boundaries are approximate. The map does not illustrate treaties, agreements, or claims that were unresolved at the time the map was created (March 2017). Drawn by HTFC Planning & Design. Sources: Land Claim Agreements Coalition (LCAC), Modern Treaty Territories; Legal Surveys Division, Geomatics Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Treaties and Comprehensive Land Claims in Canada (May 2004 edition); Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) 02/11/15, Modern Treaties and Self-Government Agreements; Natural Resources Canada, Historical Indian Treaties, 2007.

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behalf of the “St. Peter’s Band” (now known as Peguis First Nation)9 at Lower Fort Garry on 3 August 1871. Treaty One was the first of eleven “numbered treaties” between the Crown, representing the newly created Dominion of Canada,10 and the Indigenous peoples residing in the vast territory between the western border of Quebec and the western mountains, and north to the Mackenzie River delta (fig. 3.2). The new nation of Canada was anxious to see a treaty concluded at Red River to open the way for settlement and immigration and to help quiet disputes over land and resources in the region.11 First Nations were also motivated to enter into a treaty, as there was unrest in the territory, concerns about the influx of outsiders, and great uncertainty about land rights and interests.12 The province of Manitoba had been created the previous year in 1870, and it was essential to determine the status of “Aboriginal title” held by both Métis and “Indians” to make way for the imminent wave of settlers expected to flood into the country.13 Treaty One covers the fertile prairie region surrounding the lower Red River and the present-day city of Winnipeg. The area of Treaty One is roughly the same as that of the “postage stamp” province of Manitoba as it was formed in 1870. To the east of the Red River region sits the territory covered by Treaty Three (also fig. 3.2). That region, spanning from the Lake Superior watershed to the prairies, predominantly consists of a mosaic of rocky uplands, wetlands, rivers, and lakes. Canada began preliminary treaty discussions with the Anishinaabeg14 of the region that is now covered by Treaty Three as early as 1869 or 1870,15 but Canada and the First Nations could not reach agreement on terms, and the treaty

commissioners moved west to Red River, concluding Treaty One and Treaty Two in 1871. Treaty Three was finally signed on 13 October 1873. Because of the overlap, the negotiations of Treaties One, Two, and Three influenced one another. Those treaties also established the basic framework for the other numbered treaties negotiated over the next five decades.16 The official written version of Treaty One is lean, with few specific rights and obligations listed or described. That is remarkable, given the importance of the document and the wide range of topics discussed during eight days of negotiations. But records show that the original written document does not include the full scope of the negotiations or all the terms of agreement. The absence of several specific “promises” in the written treaty is one reason Treaty One was later amended in 1875 by way of a “memorandum.”17 Treaty Three is also a sparse document but contains a bit more detail, and it has a number of terms that are more “generous” than those in Treaty One, and several others not included in the earlier treaty. But the Anishinaabeg of Treaty Three, like the Treaty One First Nations, say the treaty as recorded by Canada does not accurately or completely capture what was negotiated and agreed upon. That is recorded not only in the oral history of the Anishinaabeg but also by an alternative written version of Treaty Three, known as the Paypom Treaty, which differs from Canada’s “official” version.18 While it is clear that there is content missing from Canada’s versions of the treaties, the differences between First Nations’ understandings of the treaties and those of the Crown are more profound. The Crown

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Fig. 3.2.  Map of Treaties One, Two, and Three; Peguis, St. Peter’s and Rainy River Reserves; Province of Manitoba 1870 boundary, and the current boundaries of the provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. The locations of the current and former reserves of the Rainy River First Nations are shown, as are the locations of the former St. Peter’s Reserve and the current Peguis Reserves 1A, 1B, and 1C. The map also shows the “postage stamp” province of Manitoba, as it existed when Treaties One, Two, and Three were signed. Drawn by HTFC Planning & Design.

understood the treaties to include the sale and transfer of land ownership. That interpretation is reflected in the language of the written version of Treaty One, which states, “The Chippewa and Swampy Cree Tribes of Indians and all other the [sic] Indians inhabiting the district hereinafter described and defined do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever all the lands included within the following limits.” Treaty Three contains similar language.

First Nations assert, however, that they never sold or surrendered the land. They understand the treaties to be agreements to share land and resources with the newcomers and allow the settlers to use the land for agriculture. In Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty, Aimee Craft explains how Anishinaabe inaakonigewin (law) made it impossible for First Nations to surrender title to their land in Treaty One: “It was not in their power to do so, as they did not own it. In their eyes they were in a sacred relationship with the land, endorsed by the

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Creator.”19 The TRC explains the different interpretations of the spirit and intent of the treaties by Aboriginal peoples and the Crown: “Generally, government officials have viewed the Treaties as legal mechanisms by which Aboriginal peoples ceded and surrendered their lands to the Crown. In contrast, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples understand Treaties as a sacred obligation that commits both parties to maintain respectful relationships and share lands and resources equitably.”20 Craft, and others, assert that treaties must be viewed and understood from the perspectives of both or all parties. Rulings by Canadian courts have affirmed this principle and the requirement to resolve ambiguities in treaties in favour of Indigenous parties.21

opened up to settlers. The purpose of the reserves was to provide for agriculture and settlement and other resource use, enabling First Nations to participate in the modern agricultural economy that was expected to burgeon in the years ahead. Lieutenant-Governor Adams George Archibald explained the reserves in his opening remarks at Treaty One: Your Great Mother, therefore, will lay aside for you “lots” of land, to be used by you and your children forever. She will not allow the white man to intrude upon these lots. She will make rules to keep them for you, so that as long as the sun shall shine, there shall be no Indian who has not a place that he can call his home, where he can go and pitch his camp, or, if he chooses, build his house and till his land. These reserves

Ishkonigan: “We Left This Land Aside for Ourselves”

will be large enough, but you must not expect them to be larger than will be enough to give a farm to each family when farms shall be required. They will enable

One common provision of the numbered treaties is the obligation of Canada to “lay aside” reserves for the “sole and exclusive use” of each First Nation, the amount of reserve land being determined on a per capita basis. Treaty One provides for “one hundred and sixty acres [65 hectares] for each family of five, or in that proportion for larger or smaller families,” or 32 acres (13 hectares) per capita. The per capita land entitlement in Treaty Three is four times that of Treaty One, 640 acres (260 hectares) per family of five, or 128 acres (52 hectares) per person. This provision is known as the Treaty Land Entitlement (TLE). At the Treaty One negotiations, the reserves were presented as a means by which land would be set aside for First Nations prior to the territory being

you to earn a living should the chase fail, and should you choose to get your living by tilling …22

While the wording in the treaty makes clear that the intent of the reserves was to provide First Nations with a land base for settlement and farming, Canada’s negotiators also assured them that they would not be required to settle on the reserves until they chose to do so: Your Great Mother wishes the good of all races under her sway. She wishes her Red Children, as well as her White people, to be happy and contented. She wishes them to live in comfort. She would like them to adopt the habits of the whites – to till land and raise food,

Negotiation and Implementation of Land Claims

and store it up against a time of want. She thinks this would be the best thing for her Red Children to do; that it would make them safer from famine and sickness, and make their homes more comfortable. But the Queen, though she may think it good for you to adopt civilized habits, has no idea of compelling you to do so. This she leaves to your choice, and you need not live like the white man unless you can be persuaded to do so with your own free will.23

Neither did the establishment of reserves mean that First Nations were expected to give up traditional harvesting activities. For example, the text of Treaty Three, as recorded by Canada, states that First Nations have the “right to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing throughout the tract surrendered.”24 While similar language is not included in the Treaty One document, Lieutenant-Governor Archibald assured First Nations during the negotiations that they would be free to continue traditional pursuits, using lands not required for farming: When you have made your treaty you will still be free to hunt over much of the land included in the Treaty. Much of it is rocky and unfit for cultivation, much of it that is wooded is beyond the places where the white man will require to go, at all events for some time to come. Till these lands are needed for use, you will be free to hunt over them, and make all the use of them which you have made in the past. But when lands are needed to be tilled or occupied, you must not go on them any more. There will still be plenty of land that is neither tilled nor occupied, where you can go and roam and hunt as you have always done …25

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The idea of “lots of land” for farming was not a new concept for the members of Peguis First Nation, many of whom were already engaged in agriculture on parcels of land along the banks of the Red River. Indeed, the members of the First Nation had been farming on the lower Red River since their arrival in the area, sometime after 1790.26 In the treaty negotiations, the First Nation was intent on protecting its existing agricultural settlement and increasing its capacity to engage in the modern agricultural economy. In addition to securing good land for farming, the negotiations included provision of agricultural implements and livestock. Chief Henry Prince is recorded as saying, “Then again, it is said, the Queen wishes the Indians to cultivate the ground. They cannot scratch it – work it with their fingers. What assistance will they get if they settle down?”27 The original Treaty One text is silent on this topic, but the records show that the Crown representatives agreed that farm implements and livestock would be supplied. That “outside promise” was later included in the 1875 memorandum that amended Treaty One.28 Peguis First Nation selected land for reserve along both sides of the Red River surrounding the area where they were settled. This was some of the most desirable land in the Red River settlement, with fertile soil for growing crops, extensive native hay lands and furbearer habitat, proximity to markets, and good access to water for consumption, fishing, and transport. A second, much smaller reserve (Reserve 1A) was selected some years later on the shore of Lake Winnipeg, near the mouth of the Red River, as a fishing station (fig. 3.3). As with Treaty One, enhancing capacity to participate in the modern farm economy was also, ostensibly,

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Fig. 3.3.  Satellite image showing the boundaries of the former St. Peter’s Reserve overlaid on current land use and land cover. The outlined horseshoe-shaped area was the “Claim Land” for purposes of surrender claim negotiations and does not include most of the lots adjacent to the Red River. At the time of the Treaty One negotiations, the lots adjacent to the Red River were owned and occupied by members of the “St. Peter’s Band,” and other settlers. Following the signing of Treaty One, disputes and uncertainty arose about the status of the river lots, with Canadian officials insisting that they were not part of the reserve. These disputes and disagreements eventually led to the illegal “surrender” of the St. Peter’s Reserve. Peguis Reserve 1A was set aside as a fishing station for Peguis and remains a reserve today. Other small parcels of reserve remain within the boundaries of the former St. Peter’s Reserve. Note the City of Selkirk to the immediate south of the reserve and cultivated farm fields. The Netley Marsh, with its extensive native hay lands and furbearer habitat, is located at the north end of the former reserve. Drawn by HTFC Planning & Design. Sources: Satellite image Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, I-Cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, Swisstopo, and the GIS user community.

a key objective and provision of Treaty Three. The text of the treaty includes a specific Crown undertaking “to lay aside reserves for farming lands, due respect being had to lands at present cultivated by the said Indians …”29 Treaty Three also includes specific commitments to supply agricultural implements, seed, and livestock. In contrast to the land in Treaty One,

however, most of the land in Treaty Three territory is rocky, covered with thin soil, or swampy (muskeg). But, as acknowledged in the treaty, First Nations were engaged in agriculture at key locations where the soil and microclimate were favourable. One area of Treaty Three that was particularly suitable for arable agriculture was the fertile plain along the Rainy River to the

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west of Fort Frances, where the seven Rainy River First Nations were residing (fig. 3.4).30 In 1873, the Rainy River First Nations selected land for seven reserves totalling approximately 52,000 acres (21,000 hectares): six for farming and another, Wildlands Reserve 15M, set aside for their shared use for hunting, gathering, and hay production. (One reserve at Manitou Rapids was shared by two First Nations: Manitou Rapids 1 and Manitou Rapids 2) (fig. 3.5). An Anishinaabe term for reserve is ishkonigan. That term is sometimes translated as “leftovers,” implying that reserves are like scraps remaining after a meal. But as Elder Harry Bone explains in Un-tuwe Pi Kin He – Who We Are: Elders’ Teachings, “Ishkonigan [does not mean] ‘leftover’ to us, ishkonigan means gigii-mii ishkonaamin in other words ‘we left this land aside for ourselves’ not leftover.”31 Peguis First Nation and Rainy River First Nations took advantage of the TLE provision by securing some of the best land available in their respective treaty areas, so as to position themselves to participate effectively in the post-treaty economy and new social order. How this strategy would have unfolded we will never know. Soon after signing, the treaties quickly began to unravel owing to bureaucracy, misadministration, prejudice, deception, and unlawful actions on the part of government. We have kept our part of the Treaty, is it not hard that the government should not keep theirs? – Petition of Lake of the Woods Chiefs on 18 July 189232

One of the very few specific obligations stated in Treaties One and Three was the requirement of the

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government to complete an accurate census of the members of each First Nation. The population number was essential to determining the amount of the reserve entitlement. Canada’s “census” of the Peguis First Nation, undertaken after the signing of Treaty One, failed to include all members, and, as a result, the area of reserve to be provided to the First Nation was underestimated. The government also failed to properly consider the lots within the St. Peter’s Reserve area already occupied and held by members of the First Nation (also fig. 3.3). During the treaty negotiations, the Crown commissioners agreed that the land provided as reserve would be in addition to those lots.33 When the St. Peter’s Reserve was surveyed, the amount of land in the reserve fell well short of the entitlement. Based on the First Nation’s population at that time, the reserve should have been 60,000 acres (24,280 hectares), but the reserve land received was less than 40,000 acres (16,180 hectares).34 Furthermore, there was major confusion about which lands constituted the reserve, and conflicts arose about land tenure and the status of numerous parcels. Canada failed, repeatedly, to clarify the reserve boundaries, confirm the status of land holdings, or remedy the TLE shortfall. The story of how the shortfall came about and how the government failed to resolve the matter is too long and complicated to present here. The reader can find a summary account in the 2001 report prepared by the Indian Claims Commission concerning its inquiry into the Peguis TLE claim.35 It is a shameful tale of deceit, bureaucracy, and negligence. In a nutshell, not only did Canada fail to meet its minimum legal obligations to the First Nation, but also the Crown took other actions that led eventually to a “surrender” of the St. Peter’s

Fig. 3.4.  Photo of the former Long Sault Reserve 12; a view of a portion of the former Rainy River First Nations (RRFNs) Long Sault 12 Reserve. This land adjacent to the Long Sault Rapids on the Rainy River contains ancient burial mounds and is part of the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung National Historic Site of Canada, managed by RRFNs. A portion of the Long Sault Reserve 12 has been returned to reserve status. RRFNs are working to have the remainder of the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung land returned to reserve status. Source: T. Hogan and HTFC Planning & Design.

Fig. 3.5.  Rainy River District map showing the former RRFNs Reserves: “Claim Land,” and First Nations’ remaining reserve, Manitou Rapids IR11. Also shown are areas of provincial Crown land selected by First Nations as replacement reserve (designated as reserves in February 2017). The RRFNs are engaged in a decades-long process of purchasing additional replacement reserve land in the district. Reserves belonging to other Treaty Three First Nations are shown in light grey. Drawn by HTFC Planning & Design.

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Reserve on 24 September 1907, and the displacement of the “Band” from the Red River settlement. Under the terms of the 1906 Indian Act, land on a reserve could not be “sold, alienated or leased” unless the land was “released or surrendered to the Crown” by the First Nation as “assented to by a majority of the male members of the band of the full age of twenty-one years, at a meeting or council thereof summoned for that purpose, according to the rules of the band …”. The St. Peter’s Reserve surrender process, conducted by Canada’s representatives, did not comply with the rules set out in the Indian Act, or with the rules and customs of the First Nation. The voting process was a sham, and the First Nation and its supporters contested the surrender process, immediately disputing the outcome of the vote. Notwithstanding widespread criticism of the surrender vote, the Crown persisted in selling off the reserve and relocating the people to a new reserve some 190 kilometres to the northwest, in the Interlake Region of Manitoba (also fig. 3.2). The story of the Rainy River First Nations reserves is equally disgraceful. At the time of the treaty, Canada and Ontario did not agree on the location of the western boundaries of the province. Ontario asserted that land could not be set apart for reserve in the Treaty Three area without its consent. A legal decision in 188836 supported Ontario’s position, and the province made the surrender of six of the seven Rainy River reserves a condition of its agreement to enact legislation confirming all the remaining Treaty Three reserves in the province. The provincial and federal governments eventually negotiated an agreement in 1914 (without consulting the Treaty Three First Nations) whereby Canada would

obtain a surrender of six of the Rainy River First Nations reserves (as well as the surrender of the Sturgeon Lake Reserve in Quetico Provincial Park). Canada proceeded to coerce the Rainy River First Nations to purportedly surrender the six reserves in votes taken in 1914 and 1915. Like the St. Peter’s Reserve surrender, the votes were not conducted properly, and the First Nations disputed the outcomes. Despite this, Canada proceeded to take the reserves, then subdivide them and sell the land. Five First Nations were relocated to the Manitou Rapids Reserve to join the two First Nations already residing there (also fig. 3.5).

The Rainy River First Nations Surrender Claim The Rainy River First Nations never accepted the legality of the surrenders and continued to dispute the actions of Canada and Ontario. The governments persisted in the position that the First Nations did not have valid grievances and there were no outstanding legal obligations. In September 1982, the Rainy River First Nations filed claims with Canada and Ontario for the wrongful taking of the reserves. The First Nations also claimed damages for their relocation to Manitou Rapids Reserve and the misadministration of the proceeds from the sales of the surrendered land. After extensive research and legal review, Ontario accepted the claim for negotiation in January 1987, but Canada refused. The First Nations initiated a lawsuit in 1989 against Canada and Ontario. Canada eventually accepted the claim for negotiation in April 1994, and the lawsuit was deferred.

Negotiation and Implementation of Land Claims

HTFC first became involved in the Rainy River First Nations Surrender Claim in 1993, when the Council of the First Nations and James R. McLeod, lead negotiator and legal counsel, retained the firm to complete a study to analyse and define the scope and elements of the claim. Over the next twelve years, HTFC worked closely with the First Nations negotiating team, legal counsel, and various specialist advisers and consultants to research, analyse, and evaluate losses associated with the taking of 46,269 acres (18,724 hectares) of reserve, and to help formulate and negotiate a settlement. On behalf of the three parties to the negotiations (the First Nations, Canada, and Ontario), HTFC coordinated a series of studies undertaken by independent experts that assessed the current and historical value of the land and resources. Those studies, and other loss valuations, undertaken in collaboration with Ontario and Canada, as well as other independent studies completed for the First Nations, provided a basis for a financial settlement. Information obtained from archival records, historical surveys, and oral history was integrated with historical and contemporary biophysical data in a geographic information system (GIS). That information was then used to verify, estimate, and quantify historical land and resource use for loss valuation purposes. As part of the claim settlement, Ontario agreed to provide parcels of provincial Crown land, selected by the First Nations, for replacement reserve. HTFC and representatives from the First Nations undertook a collaborative process to identify, assess, and select parcels of provincial Crown land to include in the settlement. The land selection process involved consultation with

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Elders and other First Nation members, “desktop” site analysis, and site visits (fig. 3.6). Representatives of the First Nations, Canada, and Ontario signed a settlement agreement on 24 May 2005. The agreement included approximately $71 million in compensation, contributed equally by Canada and Ontario. The settlement entitles the First Nations to 46,269 acres (18,724 hectares) of new reserve to replace the reserves taken in 1914 and 1915. The replacement reserve includes 14,990 acres (6,066 hectares) selected from “provincial Crown land,” with the balance to be purchased from private landowners in the district. The settlement also includes financial compensation for economic losses incurred by the First Nations due to the taking of the reserves. The Crown land selections were finally set aside as reserves in February 2017 (fig. 3.7). Following the settlement, HTFC assisted the Rainy River First Nations to prepare a land use plan for the new Crown land reserves. That work included more detailed analyses of the land, and preparation of interim land use and resource management policies. As of February 2017, the Rainy River First Nations had purchased over 10,700 acres (4,330 hectares) of privately held land.

The Peguis Claims The taking of the St. Peter’s Reserve, and the shortfall in TLE, caused enduring resentment and bitterness among the members of Peguis First Nation. Peguis eventually filed legal claims against Canada for outstanding TLE in 1978 and again in 1983, the latter under Canada’s

Fig. 3.6.  Ecological Site Types analysis of RRFNs Replacement Reserve Land selection at Gates Ajar, illustrating site analysis undertaken by HTFC and RRFNs during the process of selecting provincial Crown land as replacement reserve. That process involved meetings and interviews with First Nations members, “desktop” site analysis, and site visits. Drawn by HTFC Planning & Design. Sources: R. Sims, W. Towill, K. Baldwin, and G. Wickware, Ontario Forest Resources Inventory; Field Guide to the Forest Ecosystem Classification for Northwestern Ontario (Sault Ste. Marie: Canadian Forestry Service, and Thunder Bay: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 1989); K. Baldwin and R. Sims, Field Guide to the Common Forest Plants in Northwestern Ontario (Sault Ste. Marie: Canadian Forestry Service, and Thunder Bay: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 1989), 344.

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Fig. 3.7.  Procession to the ceremonial signing of the RRFNs Surrender Claim agreement. In May 2005, ninety years after the purported surrender and following more than a decade of negotiations, the RRFNs, Ontario, and Canada signed an agreement to settle the First Nations’ Surrender Claim. Source: T. Hogan and HTFC Planning & Design.

new Specific Claims Policy.37 But Canada rejected both claims, denying any legal responsibility. There was no movement towards resolution until September 1994, when the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) agreed to conduct an inquiry. During that process, in June 1995, the First Nation submitted a separate claim to Canada seeking resolution of the illegal surrender of the St. Peter’s Reserve. After several “planning conferences,” but before the ICC began a formal hearing, Canada agreed, in June 1998, to accept both the TLE claim and the surrender claim for negotiation. The province of Manitoba joined as a party to the TLE claim negotiations.

Peguis First Nation retained James R. McLeod as legal counsel and lead negotiator, and HTFC was retained as technical adviser to the negotiating team. Over the next twelve years, HTFC worked closely with the Peguis negotiating team, McLeod, and other advisers to Peguis, providing advice, analysis, and strategic planning for both the TLE and surrender claims negotiations. The work was extremely varied and complex, involving analysis and valuation of the former and current reserve land, the surrounding regions, and related resources, as well as analysis of historical economic losses and benefits spanning a period of more than a hundred years.

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Specialist consultants were retained jointly by Canada and the First Nation to undertake independent studies of current value and historical economic loss. HTFC collaborated with authorities in various disciplines, including ethnohistory, forestry, geology, biology, agriculture, accounting, and land appraisal, to review and analyse those valuations and complete independent assessments for the First Nation. The results were used to formulate and evaluate compensation and settlement proposals. HTFC applied classic methods of landscape analysis to reconstruct and model historical land use and environmental conditions, to assess the development capability and economic value of land (fig. 3.8). Data obtained from archival documents and records were combined with information obtained from interviews and consultations with First Nation Elders and other members. That historical information was integrated with topographic, soil, drainage, vegetation, habitat, land use, and land ownership data in GIS to reveal patterns of land capability, utility, and value. The firm completed assessments of the “Nature, Quality and Characteristics” of the St. Peter’s Reserve (the “Claim Land”) and Peguis Reserves 1B and 1C (the “Replacement Reserves”). HTFC also assisted and supported the First Nation negotiating team and First Nation staff to consult and communicate with members during the claim negotiations and settlement ratification processes. In April 2008, more than 136 years after the signing of Treaty One, and following 10 years of study, negotiation, and consultation, an agreement on Peguis’s TLE was concluded by the First Nation, Canada, and Manitoba (fig. 3.9). The TLE settlement gives the First Nation the right to an additional 166,794 acres (67,499

hectares) of new reserve, with approximately onethird (55,038 acres, or 22,273 hectares) being selected from Manitoba Crown land, and the other two-thirds (111,756 acres, or 45,226 hectares) being purchased from willing sellers. The agreement entitles the First Nation to considerably more reserve than the shortfall at the date of first survey, in part to compensate the First Nation for not having the use and benefit of all its reserve entitlement since the signing of the treaty. The settlement includes total financial compensation of $64,425,000, the majority for a land purchase fund of $51,400,000, with other funds to finance claim implementation and a community trust and to reimburse costs of negotiations. Two and a half years after settlement of the TLE claim, in October 2010, Peguis First Nation and Canada concluded a settlement agreement for the surrender claim. That settlement included a total of $126,094,903 in financial compensation for economic loss, and reimbursement of claim negotiation costs. The financial compensation was for net loss. That is, the settlement considered, and was in addition to, the value of land and income accruing to the First Nation from the replacement reserves (Reserves 1B and 1C). Funds from both the TLE and surrender claim settlements were placed in separate trusts managed and controlled by the First Nation. HTFC continued to work with Peguis First Nation on land planning and claim implementation following the claim settlements. A land use plan for the existing Peguis Reserves was completed in 2016. The firm also assisted the TLE Implementation Office and the Peguis Land Selection and Acquisition Advisory Committee with technical analysis of potential new reserve land and with the planning process to identify additional lands.

Fig. 3.8.  Claim negotiations were informed by analysis of historical land uses and values of the Hay Lands at St. Peter’s Reserve. These images show analysis of agricultural capability and historical agricultural land use on the reserve. GIS was used to integrate information from diverse sources, including oral history, archival records, historical surveys and field notes, air photography, and soil surveys. Drawn by HTFC Planning & Design. Source: National Air Photo Library of Canada.

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Fig. 3.9.  Celebration at Peguis Reserve following the ceremonial signing of the Peguis TLE Agreement by Peguis First Nation, Canada, and Manitoba, July 2008. Source: T. Hogan and HTFC Planning & Design.

Resolution; Restitution; Reconciliation Miinigozii’onan: The Spirit and Intent of the Treaty The Rainy River and Peguis claim settlements were, at the time, three of the largest settled under Canada’s Specific Claims policy.38 They provide significant financial resources to the First Nations to acquire new and replacement reserve land and compensate for economic losses. Proceeds from the settlements, placed in trusts controlled by the First Nations, are being used to buy land and to fund programs and projects beneficial to members.

But are the settlements adequate? Do they fairly compensate the First Nations for their losses? This is certainly debatable. The surrender settlements fall short of full restitution, i.e., placing the First Nations in the positions they would have been, but for the takings. The reserves that were taken will not be returned, and while the First Nations can buy land in the former reserves from willing sellers, it will not be feasible to reassemble the reserves and make them whole. The financial compensation, while significant, is for “collective loss” and does not cover all losses incurred by individual members.

Negotiation and Implementation of Land Claims

New and replacement reserves will be created with unencumbered Crown land and with land purchased from private owners. Most of the best-quality Crown land was acquired by settlers many years ago. That which remains available for selection is typically less productive or too remote. Privately held land must be purchased in relatively smaller parcels, from owners scattered through the settlement areas. It will be a challenge for the First Nations to assemble good-quality land: the process of purchasing land for reserves is expected to take decades. There are concerns that the funds available may not be sufficient for the First Nations to acquire their full entitlements. Furthermore, the settlements only deal with economic loss; they do not address the social and cultural impacts of the governments’ actions. The treaties are viewed by the First Nations not simply as real estate transactions or contractual agreements, but as sacred covenants.39 The actions of the Crown were fundamental breaches of the covenants and betrayals of solemn commitments. These have left deep wounds. Despite their limitations, the claim settlements are significant positive steps towards fulfilling treaty obligations and addressing longstanding grievances. They are an acknowledgement of past wrongs and will enable the First Nations and the Crown to move forward, renewing the treaty relationship. As stated by Chief Glenn Hudson at the signing ceremony, “The signing ceremony for the Peguis Treaty Land Entitlement Agreement is one element of the sacredness of Treaty. It is the fulfilment of the treaty promise to land, and now we can begin the process

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of implementation, resulting in a greater land base for all Peguis members.”40 At the signing of the Rainy River First Nations Surrender Claim agreement, Chief Albert Hunter also evoked the spirit and intent of the Treaty when he said: In signing this agreement, we honour our past by remembering our ancestors and relatives who endured. We honour our present by paying homage to our community, our people, our leaders, and our elders who remain steadfast and proud. We honour our future by sustaining the future of our children, grandchildren, and those yet [to be] born. We say to all that the legacy of the Rainy River First Nations will endure and flourish, that the spirit of renewal, of our determination, and of our autonomy will likewise endure and flourish. We will continue to contribute to secure, sustainable economies and to the shared values of our own citizenry and to those of our neighbours.41

It is important to understand that the Peguis and Rainy River agreements concern only one element of the treaties: the reserve land. The reserves are gigii-miiishkonaamin, the “land we set aside for ourselves,” but they are not “all that is left” of the landscapes of the First Nations. In signing the treaties, the First Nations did not give up all their interests in their traditional lands. Indeed, Elders tell us that the First Nations only agreed to share the land and resources with the newcomers.42 There are underlying and persisting Indigenous rights to land and resources that were not extinguished by the treaties. The relationships between the First Nations and their ancestral lands persist, even where urban development, agriculture,

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resource extraction, the Indian Act and other legislation, residential schools, and other interventions have stressed those relationships. Indigenous landscapes exist and are maintained through the complex, profound, and sacred relations between the people and the land, as explained by the Treaty Elders of Manitoba in Ka’esi Wahkotumahk Aski – Our Relations with the Land.43 Susan Buggey and others have also helped us understand and appreciate Indigenous landscapes as associative landscapes, “distinguished by their associations with the natural environment rather than by their material evidences, which may be minimal or entirely absent.” The relationship between people and place is conceived fundamentally in spiritual terms rather than primarily material terms.44 Indigenous landscapes persist, even where they may be obscured or invisible to others. Some criticize reserves as anachronisms that contribute to the ongoing suppression of Indigenous peoples, impeding growth and development. Others see reserves as having practical social, cultural, and economic value and providing opportunities for economic development. Reserves also have important symbolic value as tangible manifestations of the treaties. By fulfilling and restoring the treaty entitlements to land, we honour the treaties and support reconciliation between the Crown and the First Nations. In the words of James Anaya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “Full respect for treaties, agreements, and other constructive arrangements is a crucial element in advancing toward reconciliation with indigenous peoples … and

in addressing persistent, deep-rooted problems related to historical wrongs, failed policies of the past, and continuing barriers to the full realization of indigenous peoples’ rights.”45 Article 37.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states, “Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements concluded with States or their successors and to have States honour and respect such treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements.” When the Declaration was brought before the UN General Assembly in September 2007, Canada was one of only four states that voted against the resolution. Canada remained an objector until 10 May 2016, when the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, appeared before the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to announce that Canada is “now a full supporter of the Declaration without qualification.” The minister continued, “We intend nothing less than to adopt and implement the Declaration in accordance with the Canadian Constitution.” That announcement was a significant step in the path towards reconciliation between the government, non-Indigenous, and Indigenous peoples of Canada, and it responds directly to the following Call to Action (#43) by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: “We call upon federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation.”46

Negotiation and Implementation of Land Claims

But … Is It Landscape Architecture? In 2012, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects recognized HTFC’s work on land claims with a National Honour Award. This represented a gratifying affirmation of many years of practice dedicated to the resolution of land claims. As stated on the CSLA website, “This project demonstrates pioneering work by landscape architects and excellence in the application of landscape architectural knowledge, skills, and values to non-traditional areas of professional practice.” Mis-Koo-Kee-New said, “The land cannot speak for itself. We have to speak for it.” As landscape architects and planners, we can help Indigenous peoples in Canada speak for the land, by supporting the implementation of treaties and engaging in the ongoing struggle to recognize, protect, and sustain Indigenous rights and landscapes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter would not have been possible without the opportunities and privilege of working with the Rainy River First Nations and Peguis First Nation on the negotiation and implementation of their claims. I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Elders, members, staff, Chiefs, and Councils of the First Nations for your leadership, guidance, and patience, and for sharing your wisdom and knowledge. Thank you also to James (Rod) McLeod, Tim Hogan, and my other colleagues at HTFC Planning and Design, Leo Waisberg, David Rannard, and the many other advisors and experts who collaborated in the processes of claim assessment, valuation, negotiation, and implementation. It has been a distinct honour to know you and work with you all.

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NOTES 1 James Anaya, “Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” August 2013, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages /DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13614&LangID=E. 2 Indigenous peoples in Canada are the descendants of the original inhabitants of North America. Indigenous peoples are referred to as “aboriginal peoples” in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada Act), which defines “aboriginal peoples of Canada” to include the “Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.” The term “First Nation” is used generally in place of “Indian” to refer to both Status and nonStatus Indians. It is commonly used in place of “Indian Band.” http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const /page-15.html. 3 All parts of Canada are covered by at least one treaty, with the exception of most of British Columbia, southern Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and a small part of the Northwest Territories. 4 There are approximately seventy recognized pre-1975 treaties that form the basis of the relationship between 364 First Nations, representing over 600,000 First Nations people, and Canada. In addition, twenty-four modern treaties are currently in effect; Anaya, “Special Rapporteur.” 5 Treaty rights are recognized and affirmed in section 35(1) of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982. 6 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015), 195. 7 Canada Communication Group, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, vol. 1 (November 1996), 162–4. 8 D.J. Hall, “A Serene Atmosphere? Treaty One Revisited,” in Manitoban, 5–12 August 1871, reprinted

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9

10

11

12 13

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in Canadian Journal of Native Studies 2 (1984): 353, http://www3.brandonu.ca/library/CJNS/4.2/hall. pdf. Chief Henry Prince, Mis-Koo-Kee-New, was the son of Chief Peguis, the leader of the Anishinaabeg and Cree who settled along the shores of the lower Red River and Netley Creek in the late 1790s. Upon P ­ eguis’s death in 1864, his son became leader. The p ­ eople ­represented at Treaty One by Henry Prince were identified as the “St. Peter’s Band” on the Treaty One document. Today the people call themselves Peguis First Nation. The Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867 by the confederation of the United Province of Canada (formerly the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada) and the colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Province of Manitoba joined the Dominion in 1870. Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories: Including the Negotiation on Which They Were Based, facsimile reprint of the 1880 edition published in Toronto by Belfords Clarke (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1991), 26. Ibid., 25. Aimee Craft, Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty: An Anishinabe Understanding of Treaty One (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2013), 42–3; Morris, The Treaties of Canada, 37; Indian Claims Commission, Peguis First Nation Inquiry Treaty Land Entitlement Claim (March 2001), 8–10; J.R. Miller, “Compact, Contract, Covenant: Canada’s Treaty-Making Tradition,” Miller-Keenan Lecture, 2007, 21–2, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca /obj/g4/11/780973431612_13244st.pdf. In this chapter, the term “Anishinaabe” is used to identify the Indigenous people who were represented at Treaty Three. This is one term used by the Rainy River and Peguis First Nations to

15

16 17 18

19 20 21

identify themselves. Other terms and spellings are used in place of “Anishinaabe” including “Ojibwe,” “Ojibway,” “Saulteaux,” and “Chippewa” (the term used in the Treaty One document). Peguis First Nation members include people of Ojibway and Cree descent. The written text (as recorded by Canada) of Treaty One refers to “Chippewa and Cree Indians,” while Treaty Three refers to the “Saulteaux Tribe of the Ojibbeway Indians.” In the Ojibway language, the people call themselves Anishinaabe (or Anishinabe) (singular) and Anishinaabeg (plural). Cree people use the term Ininew (singular) and Ininewak (plural) to identify themselves in their language. Brian Walmark, “Alexander Morris and the Saulteaux: The Context and Making of Treaty Three, 1869–73,” MA thesis, Lakehead University, 1994 (Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 2001), 5, http://www .nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ52083.pdf; Wayne E. Daugherty, “Treaty Research Report Treaty Three (1873),” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (1986), 5, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/11001 00028671/1100100028673. Ibid. Hall, “A Serene Atmosphere?” 328–9. Grand Council Treaty #3, “We Have Kept Our Part of the Treaty,” The Anishinabe Understanding of Treaty #3 Booklet (7 November 2011), 2, https://www .kenoraonline.com/images/stories/newsphotos /2018/September/We-Have-Kept-Our-Part-Of -The-Treaty-Booklet.pdf. Craft, Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty, 99. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 196. CanLII, “R v. Badger [1996], 1 S.C.R. 771, 1996 CanLII 236 (SCC) File No.: 23603,” 1, 2 May 1995; 3 April 1996. Supreme Court of Canada, https://www.canlii.org/ en/ca/scc/doc/1996/1996canlii236/1996canlii236.

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34

html; CanLII, “R. v. Sioui, [1990] 1 SCR 1025, 1990 CanLII 103 (SCC), File No.: 20628,” 31 October, 1 November 1989; 24 May 1990. Supreme Court of Canada, https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc /1990/1990canlii103/1990canlii103.html. Morris, The Treaties of Canada, 28–9. Hall, “A Serene Atmosphere?” 338. “Treaty No. 3, 1873,” http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca /eng/1100100028675/1100100028679. Morris, The Treaties of Canada, 28–9; Hall, “A Serene Atmosphere?” 339. Indian Claims Commission, Peguis First Nation Inquiry Treaty Land Entitlement Claim, 6. Hall, “A Serene Atmosphere?” 327. Morris, The Treaties of Canada, 126. “Treaty No. 3, 1873,” http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca /eng/1100100028675/1100100028679. The Rainy River First Nations include seven First Nations: Hungry Hall 1, Hungry Hall 2, Little Forks, Long Sault 1, Long Sault 2, Manitou Rapids 1, and Manitou Rapids 2. First Nations were administratively amalgamated by Canada in the 1960s. Doris Pratt, Harry Bone, and the Treaty and Dakota Elders of Manitoba, with contributions by the AMC Council of Elders, Untuwe Pi Kin He – Who We Are: Treaty Elders’ Teachings Volume 1, 2nd ed. (Winnipeg: Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba and Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Secretariat, 2014), 77. Grand Council Treaty #3, “We Have Kept Our Part of the Treaty,” 4. Indian Claims Commission, Peguis First Nation Inquiry Treaty Land Entitlement Claim, 13. The area set aside as the St. Peter’s Reserve was difficult to determine, given inaccuracies in the original survey and uncertainty about which lands were within the reserve. Following extensive historical research and analysis, Canada and Peguis

35 36

37

38

39 40

41

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First Nation agreed to use 39,393 acres (15,942 hectares) as the area of the reserve for negotiation purposes. According to a population analysis completed for the First Nation by the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights Research Centre of Manitoba in November 1983, the original population of the Peguis First Nation was 1,875 persons, entitling the First Nation to 60,000 acres (24,280 hectares) of reserve land (1,875 persons x 32 acres) at the date of the first survey in 1873. Indian Claims Commission, Peguis First Nation Inquiry Treaty Land Entitlement Claim, 13. Ontario’s beneficial interest in the lands of Treaty Three had been determined in 1888, in the case of St. Catharines Milling and Lumber Company vs. the Queen (Ontario) [1888] UKPC 70 (12 December 1888). The term “specific claims” generally refers to claims made by a First Nation against the federal government that relate to the administration of land and other First Nation assets and to the ­fulfilment of Indian treaties, although the treaties themselves are not open to renegotiation (­INAC-AINC, 2009). Canada has never agreed to identify the Rainy River First Nations Surrender Claim as a “specific claim,” but the claim negotiations and settlement were conducted as if the claim was a specific claim under Canada’s policy. Miller, “Compact, Contract, Covenant.” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, “Canada, Peguis First Nation and Manitoba Reach Land Claim Settlement,” Market Wired, 17 July 2008, http://www. marketwired.com/press-release/canada -peguis-first-nation-and-manitoba-reach-land-claim -settlement-880175.htm. “Land Claim Signed,” Rainy River Record, http:// www.rainyriverrecord.com/node/1862; www

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.aboriginalaffairs.gov.on.ca/english/news/2005 /news_050520.pdf. 42 Craft, Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty, 42–3; Morris, The Treaties of Canada, 37; Indian Claims Commission, Peguis First Nation Inquiry Treaty Land Entitlement Claim, 8–10; Miller, “Compact, Contract, Covenant.” 43 D’Arcy Linklater, Harry Bone, and the Treaty and Dakota Elders of Manitoba, with contributions by the AMC Council of Elders, Ka’esi Wahkotumahk Aski: Our Relations with the Land: Treaty Elders’ Teachings, vol. 2 (Winnipeg: Treaty Relations Commission of

Manitoba and Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Secretariat, 2014). 44 Susan Buggey, An Approach to Aboriginal Cultural Landscape, Historic Sites and Monuments Board, 1 March 1999, http://www.pc.gc.ca/docs/r/pca-acl /index_e.asp. 45 Anaya, “Special Rapporteur.” 46 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action,” 2012, http://www.trc.ca/websites /trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action _English2.pdf.

CHAPTER FOUR

Landscapes of Culture: Inuit Traditional Knowledge Applied Chris Grosset Marla Limousin

Cultures that live in close contact with the land, as Inuit have for millennia, require a relationship with the land, resources, and the forces of nature for their survival. Inuit do not perceive the environment as an external force, nor have they traditionally viewed resources of the land as commodities. In this context, people and the environment have always been inseparable, a relationship that defines the fundamental aspects of Inuit culture. In the past, learning from the land was experiential, with knowledge passed between the generations through spoken word, and through demonstration and observation of harvesting techniques and resource utilization specific to season and geography. All Indigenous cultures have a form of Traditional Knowledge unique to the group, their location, and their experiences. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or IQ, refers to the Traditional Knowledge of Inuit and their landscape that is handed down through generations, as the means of survival and cultural awareness. It is an accumulated body of knowledge about the Arctic and the resources of the land. As an oral tradition, IQ covers all aspects of culture, spirituality, cosmology, technology, and nature, reflecting the inseparability of these tenets. In the more than fifty years since Inuit moved off the land into static communities, their culture has experienced rapid modernization, threatening their once steadfast connection to the land and the generational transfer of IQ. The current generation of Inuit Elders were the last to learn IQ in direct contact with the land and its resources. Younger generations have

Fig. 4.0.  Riverworks, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 2003, by Crosby Hanna & Associates. Source: Crosby Hanna & Associates.

increasingly turned to more external mediums of knowledge transfer, as territorial education systems, television, and the Internet have superseded traditional modes of transferring IQ. Despite these changes, many Inuit Elders desire to renew an emphasis on the generational transfer of IQ to enhance community understanding of landscapes and their cultural significance. Recognizing the value in maintaining the link to the landscape through IQ, Inuit and others are looking to new documentation methods, planning, and design as ways of preserving, celebrating, and using their knowledge of the landscape. Mariano Aupilaarjuk, from Kugaaruk, notes, “The living person and the land are actually tied up together, because without one the other doesn’t survive and vice versa. You have to protect the land to receive from the land. If you start mistreating the land, then it won’t support you … To survive from the land, you have to protect it. The land is so important for us to survive and live on; that’s why we treat it as part of ourselves.”1 Over the course of the past century, scientific research and documentation of the Arctic has expanded rapidly. The same cannot be said for IQ, as conventional documentation methods do not accommodate oral traditions, including tangible and intangible ideas of resources and land use. This challenge is compounded because IQ-related information is difficult to collect, quantify, analyse, and incorporate. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released its final report on the history and legacy of residential schools, and the ensuing impacts on Indigenous peoples and cultures across Canada. The commission defines the objective of reconciliation through “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful

Inuit Traditional Knowledge Applied

relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country. For that to happen, there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour.”2 For non-Indigenous people, reconciliation requires the development of cultural awareness. Achieving this is a journey, perhaps without start and end points, and it necessitates a willingness to accept that perspectives differ between cultures, an effort to work towards understanding Indigenous perspectives, and a fundamental respect for the principles of Indigenous culture that are shared through Traditional Knowledge. Identifying a methodology for the planning and design of landscapes in Nunavut that respects Inuit culture has engaged communities, organizations, and landscape architects for over a decade. To harness the power of IQ in landscape architecture requires an awareness of the principles and values that inform the relationship between Inuit and their environment, and the norms surrounding collaboration when solving complex problems. The resulting projects range from research through design. The precedents highlighted in this chapter demonstrate the application of IQ principles, and the infinite potential of IQ to enhance our awareness of Nunavut’s landscapes of culture.

The Nunavut Context Nunavut was officially inaugurated as a territory on 1 April 1999, when the Nunavut Agreement3 came into effect. The territory covers approximately one-fifth of Canada’s land mass, with more than 95 per cent of the

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landscape above the treeline. There are no roads to connect the communities or the territory to the rest of Canada; the landscape varies dramatically across its vast expanse. Some thirty-five thousand people live in the territory, in twenty-six communities, and the population is 85 per cent Inuit. Non-Inuit are called Qallunaat in the Inuktitut language. In the territory, Qallunaat are the minority culture. However, the structures of government and planning are heavily influenced by Qallunaat systems that have been introduced from outside. For example, the concept of “park” doesn’t exist in Inuit culture, because Inuit did not traditionally set aside bounded parcels of land for dedicated use. Harvesting practices are the primary driver of local culture, and the land was sustainably used based on seasonality and availability of resources. Locations are never fixed, changing from month to month or year to year. Recognition of this inherent dichotomy between Inuit and Western culture is crucial to the work of landscape architects. When placing landscape architectural practice within any cultural context, it is interesting to consider different perspectives, and this can yield tremendous insight. Working in a cross-cultural setting requires landscape architects to recognize and check any unconditioned responses to place, which may stem from their individual world views and embedded perspectives regarding the landscape. Generally, our instinctive response to the land is determined by our culture and our position within it. In this vein, Canada was settled according to Euro-American schools of thought regarding community planning. The vast majority of contemporary communities within Canada reflect this heritage. However, in an Indigenous context the application of Euro-American planning and design practice onto

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existing cultures has had a very different implication, forcibly constraining deep connections to the land. For Inuit, the settlement of communities in the 1950s and 1960s across the Arctic forced a new pattern of permanent habitation upon a population that had for centuries maintained an itinerant relation to their landscape. The landscape architects currently practising in Nunavut (all of whom are Qallunaat) recognize that, as a minority, we have a duty to adapt our perspectives and approaches to what is innate in the Inuit landscape, beginning with the values and principles of Inuit culture that we work within. The Nunavut Agreement identifies the rights of Inuit, and defines the principles and processes that will guide the territory in all areas, including the development and use of wildlife, land, water, and natural and cultural resources. The agreement recognizes that development and conservation in Nunavut shall be undertaken by incorporating both scientific and Inuit Traditional Knowledge, stating that “people are a functional part of a dynamic biophysical environment, and land use cannot be planned and managed without reference to the human community; accordingly, social, cultural and economic endeavours of the human community must be central to land use planning and implementation.”4 It further elaborates that planning processes “shall ensure land use plans reflect the priorities and values of the residents,” with specific reference to Inuit values. The agreement establishes a baseline requiring landscape planning and design practices to be in alignment with Inuit culture, respecting its profound and complex relationship to the land. It indicates that Inuit Traditional Knowledge (Fahlgren, chap. 1, this

volume) is to inform the design of future landscape interventions (parks, conservation areas, or projects that contribute to land use development).

Inuit Traditional Knowledge Inuit have always lived in a harsh environment. Their survival has relied on innovation, adaptation, working together, and passing on life skills and principles for living through knowledge transfer (IQ). The complexity inherent within IQ is not to be understated or undervalued, as it is continually updated to reflect contemporary conditions. The circumstances under which Inuit live have changed dramatically over the past half-century, and the principles of IQ continue to be used to guide the people of Nunavut towards their future. IQ touches on all aspects of culture, technology, and nature and is an accumulated body of knowledge about the Arctic and the resources of the land, and the principles of IQ5 reflect the inseparable nature of Inuit culture and the landscape. IQ is very complex – defined by ecological knowledge, individual experience, storytelling, and legends – and it is grounded in specific principles that must be adapted to the present day to be used in the context of contemporary work and life. One such example, Avatittinnik Kamatsiarniq, demands respect and care for the land, animals, and the environment by acknowledging that humans are a component of the environment. This mode of thinking espouses a continual balance between Inuit land use and harvesting practices and the health of surrounding ecosystems, maintaining this relationship in perpetuity.

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Current development initiatives throughout the Arctic have introduced new and challenging dimensions to the fundamental culture informing IQ. Resource extraction, increased Arctic shipping, persistent pollutants, and global shifts in climate are the dominant disruptive forces. Adherence to the principles of Inuit Traditional Knowledge has not always occurred with Arctic development projects, due to failures of Qallunaat to acknowledge and/ or understand the rights of Inuit to the land and its resources, or the significance of IQ principles to work towards balance. Further difficulties stem from often strained attempts to integrate information presented as IQ through oral history with scientific data that is quantitative and/or quantitative. Sometimes scientific data is dismissive of IQ as unreliable. In some cases the cyclical and abstract nature of Inuit storytelling, or the blending of tangible and intangible that is captured in oral histories of the landscape, makes it difficult to align IQ data with scientifically rendered data (Thomas, chap. 3, this volume). The following anecdote exemplifies these challenges in communication. Rachael Attituq Qitsualik explains the nuanced meanings embedded within the Inuktitut word sila, which has a specific definition in English but a broader meaning in Inuit culture: Sometimes, the explanation for the lack of communication is classic shyness, or an inability to adequately express oneself, but most often it is that Inuit have unconsciously followed cultural tendencies of old, based upon ancient cosmological ideas that what is spoken is given substance, and that what has substance may pose danger, and what may pose danger must be treated with

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respect. Although translated today as “air” or “weather” or even “outside,” the modern translations of sila only convey to us non-Inuit ideas associated with English words. When I speak of the “air” to a southerner, what immediately comes to his or her mind is the idea of invisible, breathable gas: the nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases that make up Earth’s atmosphere. Today, the vast majority of Inuit will think of the same thing, as well as wind and weather. This is a small tragedy, for in old Inuktitut, sila is much more than simple air. Sila is the breath that circulates into and out of every living thing. Inuit, in their rich hunting history, have developed intimate cultural ties to life and death, a deep understanding of the relationship between living and dead: without the death of the living, there is no life whatsoever, so the dead are the foundation upon which life exists. Sila is the substance of life.6

The effort to document and integrate IQ into future consultation and analysis is a stipulation of the Nunavut Agreement, a significant effort to keep the land-based knowledge of Inuit alive, allowing it to inform the future land use planning and design work of landscape architects in the territory (Hall, chap. 2, this volume). Landscape architectural practices, particularly in the fields of cultural landscape planning and design, are well suited to bridging the knowledge bases of IQ and scientific data. Landscape architects in Nunavut are identifying a methodological framework to document, analyse, and prepare recommendations for Inuit cultural landscapes, while engaging communities, organizations, and other fields of professional practice in science or development. Encouragingly, a variety of

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local projects already demonstrate the application of the principles of IQ in planning and design, resulting in united perspectives on landscape. The Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, a branch of Nunavut’s territorial government, manages and protects parks embodying Nunavut’s natural and cultural heritage. Recent legislation, like the Territorial Parks Act, Nunavut Agreement, and Umbrella Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement for Territorial Parks (IIBA),7 identify the creation of a co-management framework with Inuit as a requirement. The IIBA stipulates that management partnerships address the rationale, process, and content of Inventories of Park Resources, Master Plans, and Management Plans for territorial parks. To achieve these objectives, Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division contracted Chris Grosset,8 landscape architect and co-author of this chapter, to research, develop, and document these frameworks premised on a Nunavut-specific cultural landscape approach (figs. 4.1 and 4.2). As a point of departure, the international and national standards for cultural landscapes were reviewed, to identify ways in which standards could be adopted and adapted to the Nunavut context. Specifically, objectives sought to integrate the context of Inuit and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit into a set of standards that would inform all future park planning process requirements. This involved working directly with Inuit in each region of the territory to identify a planning approach, terminology, and culturally appropriate methodologies for identifying sites of significance to local communities. Along with the recognizable landscape features of rivers, travel routes, and good camping or hunting

areas and connected wildlife, Inuit oral history has also identified intangible characteristics that bring the landscape to life through stories, legends, and lessons about life and survival that lend spiritual significance to specific places in the landscape. Traditional place names are an essential indicator, providing subtle insight regarding local geography and history. The origins of these place names are derived from a variety of sources, as descriptions of the physical characteristics of a location, or to identify the significance of the place, such as its harvesting potential, its association with a family group, or a spiritual importance distinguishing it from the broader landscape. The cultural landscape approach adopted by Nunavut Parks and Special Places as a guide to park planning and management documents place names and other resource knowledge through the collection of both IQ and scientific data to provide an understanding of both natural and cultural resources associated with the landscape, thus evaluating the significance of the place. Nunavut Parks and Special Places operate through an iterative process prescribed by appropriate community engagement techniques to work with Elders, harvesters, and other knowledge holders to capture the tangible and intangible resources and features in the landscape. The process follows the IQ principle of Pilimmaksarniq/Pijariuqsarniq, referring to the development of skills through observation, mentoring, practice, and effort. Techniques include individual interviews, group mapping activities, fieldwork, and research focused on data collection. All data is extensively reviewed by the community to add additional layers of understanding. In some cases, as with legends, each family may have their

Fig. 4.1.  Kekerten Island Territorial Park landscape, cultural experience elements to share oral history begun in 2004. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut.

Fig. 4.2.  Duke of York Bay, Southampton Island landscape, where historical inukshuks mark an important fishing and camping area. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut/Chris Grosset.

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Fig. 4.3.  Duke of York Bay land use planning consultations, with Mr. Mikitok Bruce (left) and Mr. Johnnie Ningeongan. Source: Marla Limousin/Hamlet of Coral Harbour.

own variation on a story, subtle distinctions that must be captured. IQ and scientific data are evaluated in the community by an appointed committee, the Community Joint Planning and Management Committee, to determine the level of significance of each resource in order to establish a hierarchy applicable to the master planning and ensuing management of a park (fig. 4.3). Working to understand and develop a Nunavutspecific cultural landscape approach has required Nunavut’s landscape architects to become immersed in the environment and culture. Under the guidance

of Elders and people who have grown up on the land, we acquire a deeper appreciation of the significance of the plants, animals, and built features in the landscape associated with each community. We learn about Inuit culture and the link between cultural practices and the land-based resources unique to each region in the territory. Professional practice also informs discussions, helping to span the chasm between Traditional Knowledge and contemporary design standards. The exchange of perspectives on the landscape fosters a deeper appreciation of how land development can reflect local culture, thereby securing a future for the

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sustainable development of Inuit communities and providing a platform through which park visitors can learn about these landscapes and develop a greater awareness of the culture. The IQ principle of Qanuqtuurniq, encouraging innovation and resourcefulness, has been instrumental to this end. During the preparation of a land use plan, Mr. Mikitok Bruce, an Elder in Coral Harbour, declared, “we must listen to the land”9 – a seemingly simple statement that encompasses the very essence of IQ. In order for any development to truly work with the land in a synergetic manner, there needs to be an understanding of a place and a conveyance of the principle that the land should be respected as it always has been by Inuit culture. In the same project, another Inuk resident of Coral Harbour indicated a desire for Qallunaat to “see and experience the Arctic as Inuit see it … [to be] challenged to use imagination to experience the place and all that is connected to the place that cannot be seen.”10 This is a direct reference to Avatittinnik Kamatsiarniq, another IQ principle discussed earlier in the chapter, which recognizes that both the seen and unseen elements of the landscape are entwined, and that any development on land within the planning area would affect the landscape beyond what we, as humans, can see with our eyes. The desire to leave the land untouched, and yet allow people to use and benefit from it, must be balanced. In addition to incorporating the IQ principles mentioned above, Nunavut Parks and Special Places requirements must accommodate services for recreation, visitor safety, increased economic development potential for neighbouring communities, and fragile

ecologies – all while providing educational opportunities for all park visitors to increase their appreciation of Inuit culture. To meet all of these requirements and respect the landscape, it is necessary to exercise restraint while still achieving appropriate park planning and design applications. The landscape architects and clients work through a process with communities to understand the significance of the landscape and its resources, and then define a project design response based on the principle of Qanuqtuurniq. The following final section engages with three precedents, to illustrate this complexity in physical form.

Rehabilitation Based on Heritage Resources and Values Protection and Preservation: Kekerten Whaling Station Kekerten is an island in the Cumberland Sound, situated roughly fifty kilometres south of Pangnirtung and separated from the mainland by a three-hour boat ride. From the early 1840s through to 1914, Kekerten was at the epicentre of a thriving bowhead whaling industry. British were the first to harvest in the area, soon followed by American whaling fleets. Inuit from the surrounding region moved to the island, assisting in whaling endeavours while the station was active. A permanent community with a population of more than one thousand inhabitants was settled on a 1.4-kilometre strip of land, making Kekerten the first multicultural community in the eastern Arctic. During its peak of industrial activity, the island encompassed numerous seasonal dwellings (tents in warmer months, called tupiit; subterranean sod

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houses for cold months, called qammaq), and several buildings built by the whalers. “Quite often you could see one, two, three whaleboats coming up the fjords with whales in tow, an oarsman singing. Rowing and singing … That’s how it was in the old days. Whalers and Inuit would hunt together. They worked hard, but they had good times too,” observed Markoosie Pitsualuk of Pangnirtung in 1978.11 Today only remnants of this once vibrant community remain (figs. 4.4 and 4.5). When the population of bowhead whales in Cumberland Sound crashed early in the twentieth century, the station was soon abandoned. Wood and metal components of value were disassembled and taken by the whalers as they moved to new territories. Most of what remained was recycled and reused by Inuit when they returned to their outpost camps closer to their traditional harvesting areas. Dwellings at Kekerten, constructed of natural materials, returned to the earth. The only remaining landscape markers of permanent occupation were the footprints of former dwellings, burial sites of Inuit and whalers, and items useless or too cumbersome to salvage. However, oral histories of the site remained, preserved among Inuit of the region. Kekerten has since been designated as a Territorial Park, and interventions therein have been directly informed by oral histories of the island, detailing the former way of life of both Qallunaat and Inuit residents. Kekerten’s heritage teaches us about the change in Inuit nomadic life and practices. During this brief period, Inuit residents of Kekerten lived and worked alongside foreign whalers, often remaining at the station throughout the year rather than moving according to seasonal harvesting patterns. In exchange for their labour, the whalers gave Inuit a host of manufactured

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items, including rifles, telescopes, knives, needles, and kettles. These items were adopted into their harvesting practices and changed their way of life. This period of cohabitation had its challenges. Inuit suffered desperately from their interactions with the whalers, as they were highly susceptible to the diseases borne by foreigners. By 1857, some seventeen years after their initial contact with the whalers, the 1,000 Inuit of Cumberland Sound had witnessed a huge reduction in their population, to fewer than 350 individuals. Exacerbating the problem, sustained contact with the whalers had drastically altered traditional subsistence patterns, and many families failed to cache adequate food stores for times of shortage. Starvation was a regular outcome. In 1857–8, the first missionaries arrived at Kekerten, sowing conflict among local families and between Inuit and non-Inuit community members, as some Inuit retained their shamanistic practices while others converted to Christianity. When the idea of designating the island as a park was broached, the original master plan for the site included an interpretive program and a walking trail. This would permit visitors to access sites of historical and cultural significance on the island in a controlled fashion, ensuring that buried remains would be undisturbed and preserved. Beginning in 2004, the site program was expanded to address the story of Kekerten as told through Inuit oral history and archival documents from the whalers. The design process was directed by a team of landscape architects12 led by Ehrler Limousin and Associates, and it hinged on two objectives: achieving a balance between preservation of the island’s cultural and physical landscape and the program objectives, and providing an enriched

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Fig. 4.4.  Reconstructed whalebone frame of a qammaq, at Kekerten Island Territorial Park. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut.

experience of the landscape by introducing visitors to Kekerten through exposure to the site’s layered history (figs. 4.6 and 4.7). The work on this remote landscape was influenced by a strong connection with the local Inuit, who provided essential input on the interpretation and protection of their own heritage. The initial proposal to fully reconstruct one of the whaling station buildings was modified because of community concerns that such a structure would dominate the landscape, visually and symbolically eclipsing the site’s Inuit history and a reconstructed qammaq (winter house). Using local IQ, a committee of

advisers from Pangnirtung worked with the designers to enhance the team’s understanding of the connection between the spiritual world and related histories at Kekerten. Commenting on the site’s complexities, one of the Elders involved with the project quipped, “The rabbits sit by the foxes here.”13 This phrase sums up the profound, unusual relationships and tension that existed between Inuit and Qallunaat whalers on the island, and how these have been translated into design. Informed by IQ, the intervention ultimately delivered a balanced, interactive, and layered experiential solution. The approach to the site’s physical development

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Fig. 4.5.  Kekerten Island Territorial Park, with the reconstructed frame of the whaling station. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut.

was minimal, and the concept for interpretation was animated, like a stage set, by Inuit guides and outfitters. The skeletal frameworks of historically and culturally important features were rebuilt to reveal their former volumes and relationships. Represented through iron perimeter beams and columns, the frame of a whaling station building was reconstructed on its original foundation. The building form is transparent and does not overpower the historical Inuit presence. Rather, it complements the frameworks of nearby qammaq, reconstructed from whalebone, sod, and stone. In addition, the island trail weaves past rusty remnant hoops of wooden barrels

and the skeletal remains of the once highly sought after carcasses of bowhead whales. The interpretive story “Life at an Arctic Whaling Station” that accompanies this project celebrates the history of Kekerten, from Inuit and Qallunaat, equally and in balance.

Iqaluit Square Iqaluit was chosen as the capital of Nunavut in the 1990s, resulting in a construction boom as the necessary infrastructure for the seat of government

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Fig. 4.6.  Kekerten Island Territorial Park, with whale blubber rendering pot and other whaling era materials. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut.

was built. Recognizing the need for public places in this new capital, a volunteer group of residents, the self-dubbed Iqaluit Beautification Society, committed itself to creating open space and parks throughout the city. Two members of this group are landscape architects who belong to the Nunavut Association of Landscape Architects (NuALA), John Laird and Chris Grosset, co-author of this chapter. The group’s first successful project resulted in a square built in front of the Elders’ Centre in 2001, with volunteer labour and donated materials (figs. 4.8 and 4.9). The City of

Iqaluit recognized the value of this public space initiative and committed itself to the idea of expanding open spaces for community events, ceremonies, and larger territorial events, such as Nunavut Day. The Iqaluit Core Area and Capital District Redevelopment Plan (2002–3) proposed the creation of Iqaluit Square. The project was planned and designed14 in 2004 under the guidance of landscape architect and local resident John Laird. The design featured a network of pedestrian and snowmobile trails in the city core radiating out from Iqaluit Square, an ellipse of stone

Fig. 4.7.  The reconstructed frame of the whaling station at Kekerten Island Territorial Park in silhouette. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut.

Fig. 4.8.  Iqaluit Square, 2004, entrance ways, drainage corridor, and dry-laid stone walls for seating. Source: Mary Crnkovich/ Touchstone Masonry.

Fig. 4.9.  Iqaluit Square tundra planting beds, gathering areas, and performance platform. Source: Mary Crnkovich/Touchstone Masonry.

Fig. 4.11.  The performance platform at Iqaluit Square. Source: Mary Crnkovich/Touchstone Masonry.

Fig. 4.10.  Iqaluit Square in winter. Source: John Laird.

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Duke of York Bay Land Use Management Strategy

Fig. 4.12.  Iqaluit Square during the opening ceremony. Source: Mary Crnkovich/Touchstone Masonry.

and boulders that points north. The ellipse, sixty metres in diameter, forms a ceremonial gathering place, with ample space for seating along a low dry-laid stone wall. A stone podium inside the ellipse provides further seating, doubling as a ten-metre-wide stage for events. The entire space’s elliptical shape follows the form of the qammaq, and larger rings of boulders signify spaces historically used for big groups during special ceremonial gatherings. The largest boulder in the wall that defines Iqaluit Square marks the northern point, as both a geographical reference and a symbol rooted in Inuit cosmology. The square is situated in a prominent location within the city, and the walls are punctuated with openings to welcome the community, reflecting the IQ principle of Tunnganarniq – fostering good spirit by being open, welcoming, and inclusive (figs. 4.10, 4.11, and 4.12).

For designers operating in a cross-cultural setting, it is essential to understand the roots and limitations of their own world views and to respect those of the people who use their interventions. As a quote from Larry Audlalak of Grise Fiord illustrates, the way we see our environment is informed by our cultural perspective: “People of the south see ice as frozen water. Inuit see water as melted ice.”15 Southampton Island, on northern Hudson Bay, has an area of over forty-one thousand square kilometres and is the ninth largest island in Canada. The only community is Coral Harbour, with a population of 950, mostly Inuit who rely on natural resource harvesting for sustenance. Critical wildlife species include a herd of caribou, several species of geese, fish, polar bears, whales, walruses, and seals, but the community only controls a small percentage of the island and its resources. Territory beyond the municipal boundary is Crown land, managed by the government of Nunavut, or Inuit-owned land, managed by the regional Inuit Association. The people of Coral Harbour believe development should respect their economic, environmental, cultural, and social values, and the Hamlet of Coral Harbour has worked for many years to promote sustainable economic development on Southampton Island. Their desire is to encourage a stewardship approach to mineral and gas resource development across the island that respects these values and ensures that the wildlife they depend on will be preserved for the future. At the island’s northern tip is Duke of York Bay, a territory rich in mineral resources, wildlife, and culturally

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Fig. 4.13.  Duke of York Bay land use planning consultations in the field, 2010–11, here with Mr. and Mrs. Angootealuk mapping cultural resource knowledge. Source: Chris Grosset/Hamlet of Coral Harbour.

significant sites. Inuit residents returning to the land consider it an important destination where they can practise traditional harvesting, seek recreation, and rest. A gravel road is being developed from Coral Harbour to Duke of York Bay to open up the northern portion of the island. Recognizing that the roadway would increase development opportunities, the people of Coral Harbour sought an approach to land use that would ensure the careful management of resources with the area around Duke of York Bay (figs. 4.13, 4.14, and 4.15). The Duke of York Bay Land Use Strategy, prepared by the Hamlet of Coral Harbour with co-author Chris Grosset,16 set out the vision, values, principles, and

criteria for future land use, along with the goals to guide future land use activities and management based on the principles of IQ, such as Aajiiqatigiinniq (decision making through discussion and consensus) and Pijitsirniq (serving and providing for family today and in the future). The land use strategy outlines six distinct management areas within the Duke of York Bay region, identified via community consultations, research, and fieldwork that took place throughout 2010 and 2011. The management areas were defined based on the resource knowledge of Coral Harbour Elders. For example, the Elders identified the key locations and seasons in the life cycle of the caribou. This data was overlaid with areas of potential

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Fig. 4.14.  Documenting archaeological resources during Duke of York Bay land use planning consultations. Source: Marla Limousin/Hamlet of Coral Harbour.

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mineral extraction, scientific data on sensitive wildlife habitat, known archaeological sites and travel routes, and preferred outpost camping and cabin sites. Based on the zones of overlap, land use criteria for each management area were identified, such as the time of year when non-renewable resources could be extracted, enabling development to minimize disturbance to the caribou’s critical habitat and life cycle events. One unique feature of the land use plan is that the management areas address the ice zones within Duke of York Bay. This recognizes that the bay is frozen for most of the year, and that the ice shelf provides critical habitat for various species. Both humans and wildlife use the ice in the same way they use the land, as a travel conduit, a harvesting place, and a feeding zone. The conditions and management considerations for the land and ice in each zone specify regulations based on legislation and policy, but also in accordance with the integrated IQ sourced from community Elders and hunters, who identified acceptable and prohibited activities based on impacts to the land and ice. The management actions require all proposed and ongoing projects to engage the community in planning that considers the seasonal use patterns of wildlife species, harvesting criteria, respect for cultural sites, and deference to the people’s historical and spiritual connections with particular locales (fig. 4.16).

Conclusion Working in a culture other than one’s own requires an awareness of how to express professional strategies for manipulating and managing the landscape with

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Fig. 4.15.  Duke of York Bay land use planning consultations, with Mr. Mikitok Bruce sharing stories at the site of the qammaq he lived in as a young man. Source: Marla Limousin/Hamlet of Coral Harbour.

regard for the cultural context. In Nunavut, Inuit values and IQ can be used together with landscape architectural practice to plan, manage, design, and develop places that respect Inuit principles and their cultural landscape through the informed inclusion of Traditional Knowledge. Continued collaboration is essential for the subtleties of Inuit culture, language, and IQ to be appropriately applied to landscape architectural planning and design. One of the challenges of working outside of one’s culture is ensuring strong communication with the client and the audience. Channels of communication often

involve translation, which may result in a loss of clarity and nuance in the message. This can be referred to as the “opaque lens,” which denotes the loss of context that occurs as information passes through translation. Even the smallest omission or error can have serious, detrimental impacts on a project, particularly where embedded cultural complexities must be taken into consideration. Resident landscape architects in Nunavut strive to better understand how to work within IQ principles. This is a complicated task, and additional collaboration with Elders and local communities is required to

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landscape architects and clients to undertake projects that follow a cultural landscape approach grounded in Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, utilizing this knowledge in concert with the principles of professional practice.

NOTES

Fig. 4.16.  Qaummarviit Territorial Park: Nunavut Parks program for archaeological site reconstruction and interpretation. Source: Nunavut Parks and Special Places Division, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut/Chris Grosset.

improve the process and results. A truly comprehensive understanding of IQ will likely involve a lifetime dedicated to continuous learning and engagement with local practices. However, the success of future projects throughout the territory resides with the budding generation of Inuk landscape architects and planners. The innate connection between traditional culture and the landscape is challenged by the rapid rate of development and change. Because fewer Inuit have experienced living on the land, their cultural landscape connection will diminish. If culture defines a world view, and experience influences culture, then IQ offers a link for future generations to protect, understand, and celebrate their cultural landscape. In the absence of an Inuk landscape architect, it is incumbent on Qallunaat

1 John Bennett and Susan Rowley, Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s ­University Press, 2004). 2 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: Reconciliation, vol. 6 of The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 3. 3 The Nunavut Agreement is a land claim between Inuit of the Nunavut Settlement Area and the Government of Canada. 4 Government of Canada, Nunavut Land Claims ­Agreement (1996), Section 11.2.1. 5 Government of Nunavut, Tamapta: Building Our Future Together (Iqaluit: Government of Nunavut, 2009), 7. The principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit presented in this article are adapted from Tamapta, but they only reflect a selection of IQ principles. 6 Rachel Attituq Qitsualik, Word and Will – Part Two: Words and the Substance of Life (Iqaluit: Nunatsiaq Press, 1998). 7 The Nunavut Agreement required that an Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement (IIBA) be negotiated by the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, and three Regional Inuit Associations prior to development in the territory. This included, for the establishment of any new park, a promise to provide the details of all matters connected with the proposed project that would have a detrimental impact on Inuit, or that could reasonably confer a benefit on Inuit

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8

9

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e­ ither on a Nunavut-wide, regional, or local basis. The IIBA was signed in 2002. Government of Nunavut Department of Environment, Frameworks for Inventories of Park Resources, Master Plans and Management Plans for Nunavut Territorial Parks and Special Places (Iqualit: Government of N ­ unavut, 2012); Aarluk Consulting Inc. (Chris Grosset, NUALA, CSLA). Excerpt from transcript of interview conducted at Duke of York Bay, Southampton Island, 2002. Recorded by Marla Limousin. Ibid. Excerpt from transcript of public meeting held in Pangnirtung, 1978. Recorded by Marc Stevenson.

12 Ehrler Limousin and Associates, Kekerten whaling station, 2004–10, Kekerten Island. 13 Excerpt from transcript from a public meeting in Pangnirtung, 2004. Recorded by Ehrler Limousin and Associates. 14 John C. Laird and Associates, Iqaluit Square Project, 2004, Iqaluit. 15 Excerpt from a transcript of an interview in Grise Fiord, 2009. Recorded by Marla Limousin. 16 Hamlet of Coral Harbour, Duke of York Bay Land Use Strategy (2010–2011); Aarluk Consulting Inc. (Chris Grosset, NUALA, CSLA), landscape architect, with Ehrler Limousin and Associates (Marla Limousin ­NUALA, CSLA).

CHAPTER FIVE

Working in the Wild: Landscape Architecture in Canada’s National Parks Shelley Long

Why National Parks? The foundations of a Canadian approach to landscape lie in an image of the wild, sublime hinterlands that cover so much of our country. A commonality shared by all of our national natural landscapes is that their current features derived entirely from the last glaciation.1 Modes of representation in art and popular culture, from Group of Seven paintings to Molson Canadian commercials, propagate images of hinterlands preserved in a pristine or unchanging state. It is often said that the Canadian identity is strongly tied to an innate connection to the “landscape.” This does not refer to the city squares of urban centres, but to the backcountry experiences of regional-scale parks. In 2016, Parks Canada announced that all national parks, historic sites, and marine conservation areas would offer free admission in 2017 to attract tourists and Canadians to celebrate the nation’s 150th birthday, well ahead of celebrations in urban settings. People were so enthusiastic about ordering their complimentary Discovery Passes that the agency’s website crashed.2 National parks feature in travel guides and global rankings of Canada as a place to both visit and live. As macro-regional landscapes, they act as accessible repositories of the image and identity of the backcountry, and as the counterpart to – or often the basis for – more urban interventions. However, the vast natural landscape has received little attention in landscape architectural discourse

Fig. 5.0.  Red Deer County Open Space Master Plan, Red Deer, Alberta, 2008, by EVDS Urban Lab / Sandalack + Associates, and Dillion Consulting. Source: Beverly Sandalack.

when compared with its urban counterparts, which are defined by their integration with city-scale infrastructure and subject to urban microclimates and the impacts of human-centric inhabitation. The current emphasis of discourse on landscape urbanism and urban practice is fundamentally grounded in an understanding of regional ecologies, and formative cultural and geological histories of “what once was” to best recreate and express these as part of an urban system. Natural monuments often provide inspiration for smaller-scale interventions – a rock face or a wall referencing a mountain, a water feature likened to a river, or a grove representing the forest – while also providing “base conditions” as a measuring stick for performance. In the words of Charles Waldheim, “Landscape architects are working to construct images of the [wild] that are going to be consumed by populations of us who live in what is primarily urbanized Canada.”3 When we cannot escape to the wild as a regenerative life force, it is brought to us.4 National parks must address the fundamental issue of preserving ecological states for people to experience, while paradoxically contending with the inevitability that increased human access accelerates their degradation. In reference to BDA Landscape Architects’ work in PEI National Park, Waldheim states, “The idea that one would set up a way to on the one hand, protect but equally interpret ecological conditions is itself a trope that is fundamentally what landscape architecture does; it’s what it’s called upon to do. It represents that kind of distancing, the kind of prophylactic relationship between the subject and the landscape, but equally it acknowledges that if all of us were to consummate our desire to go there and consume that landscape in situ, and somehow in an unmediated form, we would in

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fact, in the act of our consumption, destroy the place.”5 Landscape historian Ron Williams hypothesizes that “many of our natural landscapes are famous and impressive – the Rockies, the Great Lakes, the gates of the Saguenay in Quebec; they don’t need our design efforts to be magnificent. Few works of Canadian landscape architecture are as well known internationally as our natural heritage. Many of our best works are brilliant exploitations of already outstanding natural landscapes.”6 If national parks have been instrumental in influencing the practice of landscape architecture, how has landscape architecture influenced the development and design of national parks? The mandate of Parks Canada is to “protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage, foster public understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment in ways that ensure the ecological and commemorative integrity of these places for present and future generations.”7 To accommodate this vision, design interventions must balance the preservation of ecological and natural features with the urban effects and needs brought by visitors. Parks Canada now provides free Wi-Fi at specific locations in campgrounds.8 In addition to seeking inspiration and understanding of “natural” conditions, Canadian landscape architects have been and continue to be directly involved in designing and planning national parks, since their inception in 1885. Our parks are an outstanding example of the various factors that make Canadian practice unique, operating at the intersections of Indigenous land use, resource management, cultural history, and ecological management. The ability of landscape architects to synthesize and visually represent complex layers of information allows them to address these various

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factors at a land use planning scale. They are also able to create smaller-scale interpretive interventions that thoughtfully expose natural monuments in ways that appear simple and incisive, even though they are highly orchestrated. Portrayal of the magnificence of natural wonders requires restraint, remaining subordinate to existing natural conditions in order to preserve their aesthetic, symbolic, and ecological integrity. This sensitivity has fostered a Canadian approach to landscape design, bolstered by our proximity and ability to access and interpret the regional ecologies represented throughout our national parks. American national parks were the first of their kind in the world, providing a foundational context for the creation of the Canadian system. Astonished by the lack of preserved green space in many industrializing American cities, landscape architects of the late 1860s advocated for the preservation of natural spaces for public enjoyment. Frederick Law Olmsted and his associates were some of the most notable proponents of this view, and democracy factored widely in their arguments. Supporters of a federally managed park system felt that all people – not just the wealthy, with their rural estates – should have access to fresh air and nature, as cities increasingly failed to provide such spaces within their limits.9 American supporters of a national park system adopted this attitude long before it became prevalent in Canada. In 1872, after lobbying against threats of private development, America’s first national park, Yellowstone in Wyoming, was “dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”10 Contrary to the democratic ideals that informed early national parks in America, the first Canadian national parks owe their existence to a shift in public perception

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towards unknown western and northern lands through art and imagery, and to booming industrial economic growth. As the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was constructed to expand the western frontier, images, artistic renderings, and stories of the mountains and their surroundings (often CPR commissions) spread to the east (fig. 5.1). While some artists were commissioned to create pieces to entice settlers farther west, established Canadian writers and poets were shifting public perception, forming what Eric Kaufmann calls a “Naturalistic Nationalism,” through their musings and reflections on a growing country: “Writers and poets by the 1880s were no longer ‘bemoaning the inhuman and un-poetical nature of the Canadian Landscape’ but began instead to celebrate it.”11 A decade after Confederation, Canadians were increasingly concerned with identifying their country as separate and distinct from its imperialist roots. Before Confederation, the attitude towards the untamed wild was steeped in fear and colonial greed. It expressed a desire to tame the landscape, to abolish its unknowns.12 However, proliferation of artistic expression, coupled with the denaturalization and industrialization of urban centres, provoked what Waldheim calls a “symptom of loss” – essentially, that “landscape architecture becomes possible, and in fact necessary, when we’ve lost any actual natural or authentic relationship or embeddedness in the ecological contexts that we are referring to.”13 Large tracts of unowned land were relatively scarce in Ontario and Quebec, so when hot springs were discovered by CPR surveyors in Alberta in 1885, the Rocky Mountains Park of Canada, now known as Banff and Jasper National Parks, was created by the federal

Fig. 5.1.  Canadian National Railway promotional advertisement from 1924. Source: Library and Archives Canada.

Landscape Architecture in Canada’s National Parks

government to prevent private development of the springs.14 It became the third national park in the world.15

National Parks as Backdrop to Recreation In the early years of their existence, the Canadian national parks were a playground for the affluent, accessible only by rail and lacking any official ecological mandate. The 1887 Rocky Mountains Parks Act echoed American sentiments regarding the services a park should provide, emphasizing recreation as a primary objective. The document stated: “The said tract of land is hereby reserved and set apart as a public park and pleasure ground for the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of the people of Canada.”16 The CPR and the federal government sought to create a “grand, prestigious tourist resort, aimed at an affluent clientele” who would presumably attract investment and settlement to the west.17 After reviewing American hot springs planning documents, George Stewart, a Dominion land surveyor and future superintendent of Banff National Park, was tasked in 1886 with surveying the entire area for the Canadian Pacific Banff Springs Hotel and the Banff Townsite. Although a surveyor by trade, he was also described as “a civil engineer and a clever landscape architect,” providing insight into the responsibilities of landscape architects and modes of landscape architectural expression in national parks at their outset.18 With the Banff Springs Hotel came the first traces of infrastructure and recreational landscape typologies: bridle paths, carriage roads, bridges, bathing pools, and tennis courts.19 As a multidisciplinary designer, Stewart had a vast scope of responsibilities, which included land

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surveying and lot division, road and bridge alignment, demolition and building, land leasing, forest clearing, fire management and fire breaking, and programmatic land allocation.20 The sheer scope demonstrates the extent of his influence on this project throughout its early stages. His plans for Banff followed a grid, laying out smaller lots north of the Bow River and larger lots to the south. The larger lots were designated for institutional buildings, hotels, and wealthy visitors, demonstrating little response to the local landscape and instead responding to activity and class.21 The luxury and high recreational value of the Rocky Mountains Park led to the commissioning of professional architects to design the recreational facilities in Stewart’s plan. New York architect Bruce Price designed hot springs amenities and the Banff Springs Hotel in the late Victorian château style, and Calgary resident Walter S. Painter, chief CPR architect, worked on an addition to the Chalet Lake Louise (now Chateau Lake Louise) and the Cave and Basin hot springs, the site credited as the founding place of Rocky Mountains Park.22 Banff Springs Golf Course is another example that conveys early principles of landscape design in the context of national parks. Commissioned in 1927, it was the first design of Toronto native Stanley Thompson, who would go on to become Canada’s most renowned golf course architect. Throughout his long career, he was “adamant that nature always be the architect’s model. A golf course must blend harmoniously with its native surroundings, [he] insisted, and lines throughout a course should not be sharp or harsh, but easy and rolling.”23 The first of Thompson’s design principles indicated an interest in the aesthetic qualities of a site: “Select a

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site with unforgettable views, natural features such as trees and lakes, and of course, good soil.”24 Rather than asserting a visibly strong hand, this aesthetic approach demonstrates a sensitivity and subservience to the existing features, typical of most design in national park settings. Thompson set the standard for golf courses in Canada’s national parks and went on to design golf courses for eight other Canadian parks in his career.25 His work exemplifies the presence of highly orchestrated design in a setting preserved for views, with little concern for ecological value. A park vernacular known as the “rustic” style took form in Banff’s 1930 Administrative Building, by architect Harold C. Beckett, who also designed accompanying formal gardens called the Cascades of Time. Facing Cascade Mountain, they were a “simplistic representation of the geological history of the Rockies,” an approach often used in landscape design in close proximity to a recognizable natural feature.26 Canadian national parks followed the recreational model set out by Rocky Mountains Park for decades to come. Recreational standards defined excellence in landscape design, and architecturally a stylistic approach of mixed Swiss alpine and English picturesque principles composed a foundation for the classic image of Canadian parks (fig. 5.2).

Balancing the Environment and the Economy, and a Park for Every Province Since the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) was not founded until 1934, thirteen of the fortyfour national parks predated the professionalization of landscape architecture in Canada. The preceding

Fig. 5.2.  Bathers and golfers in Banff’s early days. Source: Albertype Company/Library and Archives Canada/PA-057215 and National Parks Branch/Library and Archives Canada /PA-057215.

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historical survey of early parks reflects one of two typical development frameworks. In the first model, a surge in automobile ownership following the First World War meant that more families owned cars and were able to retreat to the parks, whose access was formerly limited to the affluent, on account of exclusive and expensive rail journeys. Alan MacEachern’s idea of “recreational democracy” – a founding factor in the American parks system – was introduced to Canada through the automobile, which “brought about a wider and more democratic use of the parks.”27 As a continuum for this democratic approach, a national park was designated in each province: Point Pelee in Ontario in 1918; Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1928; Riding Mountain, Manitoba, in 1929; and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1937. A surge of auto-bound weekenders necessitated the creation of cabins, campgrounds, trails, highways, and lodges, the design of which mimicked the rustic style. Architects, civil engineers, surveyors, and forestry specialists (who often assumed roles as superintendents or park wardens) were responsible for the bulk of the ensuing landscape work. During this era, parks adopted conservation as a guiding principle for the first time: Wood Buffalo in Alberta and Northwest Territories and Elk Island in Alberta were both established with single-species large mammal conservation in mind, and Point Pelee was created because of the area’s significance as a migratory bird stopover.28 Additionally, “extractive activities” were banned, although this stipulation was never explicitly included in national park policy. This conservation-minded ethos restricted some First Nations groups from hunting and gathering, an example of how the proliferation of parks and the stringent conservation legislation that eventually accompanied

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them impacted First Nations’ way of life in many, often adverse, ways.29 Design interventions typical of this era were simultaneously rooted in fledgling concepts related to wildlife preservation, combined with automobile access to formerly remote regions, such as the drive-in buffalo viewing enclosure in Wood Buffalo National Park, which allowed visitors to see the protected animals in their “natural” habitat from the safety of their cars.30 In the second model of early parks development, several projects also acted as economic stimulus projects for skilled tradesmen throughout the Depression. The East Gate in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, is one such example, constructed between 1933 and 1936 with funding from the federal government’s Depression Relief Program.31 A steady stream of park development in eastern Canada, a region acutely susceptible to economic woes in the wake of the Depression and both world wars, was ignited by the new National Parks Act of 1930. Parks were seen as a potential economic stimulus, creating construction jobs and attracting tourism, ultimately fostering longterm opportunities for local stewards and park staff.32 The planning and construction of the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, in Nova Scotia, illustrates the prioritization of economic growth over environmental protection and local history, typical of national parks in the Maritimes of that era. Two engineers, a forester, and the chief of the National Parks Architectural and Landscape Service, W.D. Cromarty, all without training in wildlife matters, were responsible for surveying animal population range and variety.33 The Parks Branch, believing that “no place in the region had wildlife that satisfied the national park ideal,” adhered to a design framework of “non-intervention”

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Fig. 5.3.  Picnickers on the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia, 1952. Source: Image courtesy Library and Archives Canada; author’s rights: Government of Canada.

Fig. 5.4.  Campers in Prince Edward Island National Park, PEI, 1953. Source: Library and Archives Canada; author’s rights: Government of Canada.

in Cape Breton that represented a departure from the conventional design strategies deployed in Point Pelee, Elk Island, and Wood Buffalo.34 Cape Breton began construction with its two most important amenities: a vehicular access road and a golf course, again designed by Stanley Thompson. The Cabot Trail (fig. 5.3) is still considered one of the most scenic drives in Canada: “Road building was a central reason for the province to want a park in the first place.”35 Road and golf course construction was intended to provide employment for people who had been displaced through land expropriation for the park. While this produced short-term benefits, the long-term job prospects never materialized beyond the two years required to complete both projects. Furthering a recreational parks mandate and a community dependent on local economies proved difficult.36 The proliferation across the country of the

rustic architectural style, and the construction of utilitarian facilities in a uniform language accompanied by landscape typologies suited to recreation, characterized the wartime era of national park development. From a planning perspective, the economic and environmental benefits of the new park system jostled for priority in the eyes of the federal government. Meanwhile, expanding populations were taking advantage of these parks, conveniently located in every province (fig. 5.4).

The 1960s: Planning and the Continuing Struggle to Reach Balance Decades of heavy use of campsites, wharfs, visitors’ centres, roads, washrooms, trailer parks, playgrounds, parking lots, cabins, cottages, and hotels generated a

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need to revisit park planning for the sake of preserving the natural features the parks were founded to protect. A wave of consultation with professional planners and landscape architects to re-strategize the planning for new and existing parks accompanied a boom in demand for landscape architectural services in cities. Landscape architects trained in the United States were hired to meet the demand before graduates of the first Canadian programs entered the market, in the early 1970s. The increase in public projects triggered a new parks policy under the discretion of the revamped federal department, which was renamed Parks Canada in 1964. The new policy “implied that parks should be planned so as to focus the visitor’s attention on their important natural features, and that they should not provide facilities that did not contribute to the realization of the goal – that is, they should no longer ‘provide recreational facilities of an urban character.’”37 This was the era of Design with Nature (Ian McHarg’s influential 1969 book), when landscape architecture curriculum focused heavily on site analysis and land use planning. Older parks underwent planning and zoning exercises: Point Pelee in 1964, Banff and Cape Breton in 1970, and Jasper in 1971. Newer parks, such as Gros Morne in Newfoundland, Forillon in Quebec, and Kouchibouguac in New Brunswick, were all subject to evaluations of their principles and goals, in line with the new environmental mandate, and received “provisional master plans.”38 As well, the interest in planning was a response to “rigorous selection criteria” set out by Parks Canada’s in-house professional staff, including landscape architects, specialized biologists, geographers, geologists, and civil and forestry engineers.39 The need to reconcile cultural and human

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history and use with ecological and environmental preservation set the stage for this interdisciplinary approach. Parks Canada consulted with landscape architects Sasaki, Strong, and Associates, and later Hough Stansbury Associates, both from Toronto, to create land use plans for Point Pelee.40 Public consultation influenced these plans, necessitating internal revision by the new Planning Division of Parks Canada. The park’s proximity to Toronto and other major urban centres may explain the reasoning behind the ongoing consultation of landscape architects in the process. Environmental planning superseded cultural history in this instance, and many residents on lands newly established as national parks were displaced as a result.41 This adjusted policy framework, instituted with the aim of creating an ecologically conscious parks model, initiated a new norm for national parks throughout the country.42

Representative Landscapes and Ecological Mandate In 1972, Parks Canada introduced a policy of “representative landscapes,” stating that each of the country’s unique thirty-nine terrestrial and nine marine biophysical regions would be represented by at least one national park.43 The approach gave the parks an ecologically diverse equivalent to a federal multicultural policy. Previously, geographical features such as mountains or rivers, and cultural artefacts such as land lot acquisition, had determined the borders of each park (fig. 5.5), blatantly disregarding broader theories of ecological integrity put forth by the likes of Richard

Fig. 5.5.  Scaled comparison map of national parks showing size, ecological zone, province, and year of founding, completed as a University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture thesis, 2015. Source: Shelley Long.

Landscape Architecture in Canada’s National Parks

Forman in Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions. Prominent landscape architect Michael Hough has explained that “after Banff was established in 1885, most people assumed that protected areas were safe for all time from the advancing tide of human development. The significance of this perception, and how wrong it has been … was illustrated in a 1987 survey of major mammal populations throughout the western North American parks. It revealed how dramatically park boundaries are failing to protect the diversity of species originally found in the regions in which the parks were established.”44 In 1998, the Panel on the Ecological Integrity of Canada’s National Parks, of which Hough was a member, studied thirty-seven parks and found that 60 per cent were suffering from major or severe losses of ecological integrity.45 Among the committee’s recommendations was the need to emphasize regional approaches to prevent the creation of ecological islands, again prioritizing ecological integrity over human use.46 Ten years later, Parks Canada published a follow-up report that outlined ongoing ecological integrity (EI) monitoring, which reflected the success of collaborative educational and conservation work in national parks. The most recent edition of the National Parks System Plan indicates that the “representative landscapes” process is currently 60 per cent complete – but much work remains to be done.47 One aspect of the agency’s ecological stance focuses on programs designed to prevent non-indigenous plant species from taking hold within park boundaries, a strategy dubbed “integrated pest management.”48 Even though major highways and roads transect most parks, a large part of the policy’s scope is geared towards preventing

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the spread of noxious weeds and invasive species introduced by vehicles and visitors.49

Contemporary Projects: Master Planning and Management Plans As of 2000, all parks must now undergo master planning processes involving public consultation to develop a management plan within five years of their creation. An addendum extends the requisite consultation time frame to once every decade for parks preceding the act. The resulting plan must contain “a long-term ecological vision for the park, a set of ecological integrity objectives and indicators and provisions for resource protection and restoration, zoning, visitor use, public awareness and performance evaluation.”50 In contrast to parks with primary mandates of preservation, and few to no visitor facilities, those that have demonstrated an objective to balance human use and cultural history with environmental protection have become the focus of detailed master plans by landscape architects who lead multidisciplinary teams. Those parks, which originally commissioned landscape architects, continued to consult with them for future planning, as at La Mauricie (Quebec) and Point Pelee.51 In addition, landscape architects have led the way in efforts to preserve marine areas, with “marine spatial planning” in Fathom Five (Ontario) and Gros Morne National Marine Parks fostering collaborations with marine biologists and ecologists.52 One hundred years after their founding, the original mountain parks remain central to contemporary

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landscape design work. Banff continues to be the most visited national park in Canada, which contributed to the City of Banff’s official incorporation in 1990, making it the first municipality within a national park. Of all the national parks within the country, Banff contains the most programming reflective of an urban environment, evidenced by the city’s most recent community plan. The work of Brent Harley & Associates, an interdisciplinary team specializing in mountain and ski resort planning, it was published in 2008. It details criteria typical of urban centres (the “highest quality architecture, landscape architecture, environmental and urban design”), in addition to guidelines for solid and water waste management and energy consumption targets.53 O2 Planning + Design of Calgary has also completed community and landscape master plans for the towns of Field, British Columbia, in Yoho National Park, Lake Louise, Alberta, in Banff National Park, and Jasper, Alberta.54 These towns are by-products of their respective parks, where landscape architects have led planning teams to recommend approaches to land management, aesthetics, and growth limitation strategies in the face of increased tourism and development. The master plans address the two components supporting Parks Canada’s mandate: visitor access (including circulation, view corridors, pathways, and parking) and ecological preservation (revegetation, open space zoning, and land reclamation). As well, O2 Planning + Design is responsible for the creation of design policy guidelines for Parks Canada, including “Trail and Backcountry Design Guidelines in the Mountain Parks” and “Design

Guidelines for Outlying Commercial Accommodation in the Mountain Parks.” Both documents use graphic and drawing conventions from landscape architecture to illustrate a best practices manual for specific types of construction (fig. 5.6).55 While typical of urban design guideline manuals or municipal construction documents, they are nonetheless unique in their backcountry subject matter, and illustrate a potential internal knowledge gap that requires external consultation. From the postwar period to the late 1980s, Parks Canada made a point of employing its own landscape architects on design teams with architects and engineers in each of their regional offices.56 Landscape architects were largely responsible for the design of campsites and trails, the rehabilitation of sites created in the 1950s and 1960s, planning day use areas, reclamation and rehabilitation of disturbed areas, and roadwork.57 In the late 1980s, design professionals were moved from the agency’s employ to the jurisdiction of the federal Public Works Department. Most of this original cohort of landscape architects in the public service have since retired.58 At the time of writing, only two landscape architects work in Parks Canada’s Architecture and Engineering Department to oversee technical, detailed design in all national parks. They also contribute to internal policy decisions, pilot projects such as the introduction of micro-cabins as a visitor experience, and design standards for such components as trails and campgrounds. Other landscape architects employed by Parks Canada belong to a variety of teams in other departments, performing project, design, and construction management.59 As a result, external consultants more often do the

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Fig. 5.6.  Sections from “Trail and Backcountry Design Guidelines.” Source: O2 Planning + Design.

work formerly undertaken by internal staff, such as, for example, writing the design guidelines for trails and backcountry. This change indicates a potential internal knowledge gap, coupled with increased urban amenities in national parks, which has led to firms such as PFS Studio from Vancouver, which focuses on urban practice, completing projects as part of a more traditional, proposal-driven external consultant model.60 In recent years, Parks Canada has awarded a limited number of five-year standing offers for teams of consultants, including architects and engineers, to provide design services for new works or upgrades to existing amenities in the national parks, organized regionally by province.61 Among the successful proponents are landscape architecture offices O2 Planning + Design, PWL Partnership, and McElhanney Consulting Services.62 This model allows greater flexibility for parks staff to familiarize

themselves with the consultants and the potential work, develop strategies and budgets, and begin projects when funding becomes available without having to initiate additional rounds of proposals.

Contemporary Projects: Site-Specific Scaled Design Much like the master plans they fit into, built interventions occur where human use meets ecological preservation. National parks are more famous for breathtaking photographs of natural features, and not necessarily for the boardwalks, platforms, or trails from which they are taken (fig. 5.7). Landscape interventions in parks have the unique responsibility of acting as access routes but also as barriers for conservation, an interpretive and educational device that paradoxically

Fig. 5.7.  Lake Louise Promenade, 1959 and 2008. In 2007, O2 Planning + Design created detailed construction drawings and a renewed design for the timeless promenade foregrounding the world-famous view of Lake Louise consistent with the design guidelines provided in their own landscape master plan. Source: Library and Archives Canada; O2 Planning + Design.

Landscape Architecture in Canada’s National Parks

intrudes into the landscape it engages with. In contrast to more architectural typologies – interpretive centres, washroom facilities, and hotels – landscape interventions compose the bare bones of the backcountry, requiring attention to alignment, views, and topography, while attempting to achieve the lowest impact possible on the surroundings. Highways, trails, boardwalks, and lookouts are examples of this type of “anonymously designed” subtlety in the face of natural monuments (fig. 5.8). Williams describes the Route Promenade in La Mauricie in exactly this way, proclaiming it “a masterpiece of alignment and grading, its trajectory through the park carefully integrated with the natural topography, aligned so as to reveal and frame interesting views, yet located in a manner as to be invisible from the dozens of lakes within the park.”63 Other times, interventions project from the existing terrain to play up the extreme nature of their setting, which is often the case with bridges or outlooks of a more structural nature, such as the Jasper Outwalk, designed by Sturgess Architecture and opened to the public in 2014 (fig. 5.9). The most sensitive ecosystems are the ones that require urgent attention on site; point source treatment is of particular importance, owing to the lack of highly developed stormwater and waste management infrastructure, as in cities. Several combined building and landscape architecture projects for Parks Canada in recent years have demonstrated leadership in green design; for example, the Gulf Islands National Park Visitors’ Centre (British Columbia), and the Fathom Five Interpretive Centre and Boardwalk.64 This type of work tends to harbour interpretive qualities, such as BDA Landscape Architects’ PEI

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National Park Greenwich Day Use Facility (Brown et al., chap. 7, this volume). The site contains low-impact buildings of a local vernacular and features a boardwalk that extends into the natural areas of the park itself. The project serves as an example of an interpretive landscape typical of national parks: only building in the most disturbed areas, following Parks Canada’s policy to restore native plant life, and using light construction on a sensitive dune system to immerse visitors in a landscape while actively reclaiming it.65 In addition to designing interpretive landscapes with a focus on viewing, landscape architects have taken on aesthetic roles in otherwise utilitarian civil engineering and environmental science projects. As an aesthetic tool, the design strategy of blending engages visitors in the natural environment, but it also serves wildlife by increasing biodiversity and reducing habitat fragmentation, as illustrated by the wildlife crossing structures in Banff National Park. As part of design-build contracts during the Twinning of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH 20) project, completed in four phases over thirty years, six overpasses and thirty-eight underpasses were built. In order for wildlife to cross, the structures needed to be spacious enough to encourage animals to trust them, and they needed to be barely noticeable from the highway or buried completely to preserve the iconic drive through Banff. The initial phase of TCH 20 engaged Lombard North Group as part of a multidisciplinary team to address road alignment and the sequential experience of the highway widening for visitors. New GIS (geographic information system) methods assisted with location of the optimal route, and visualizations illustrated the much broader views that four lanes would provide

Fig. 5.8.  The Giant Cedar Boardwalk Trail in Mount Revelstoke National Park, British Columbia. Source: Shelley Long.

Fig. 5.9.  The Jasper Outwalk designed by Sturgess Architecture, opened in 2014 in Jasper National Park. Source: Robert Lemermeyer.

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Fig. 5.10.  One of Banff’s four wildlife overpass crossings. Source: Rob Ament, Western Transportation Institute.

compared with the original two-lane highway. Later phases placed more emphasis on reducing the highway’s impact on wildlife ecology, and landscape design was limited to planting strategies for wildlife passage, and naturalization of overpasses with boulders and roadside planting. The integrated passages have been the focus of rigorous studies that show increased biodiversity and animal populations through curtailing habitat fragmentation, as well as reducing “traffic-related mortality of all large mammals on the [Trans-Canada Highway] by more than 80 percent.”66 This project’s success has contributed to the study of road ecology, specifically data collection and impacts on animal populations. The structures, inspired by Dutch and French precedents, led to an international design competition for animal road crossings, which featured work by landscape architects around the world (fig. 5.10). Parks Canada is now playing a part in the creation of a new typology at the confluence of conservation ecology and urban environments: the urban national

park. In 1999, Downsview Park in Toronto was slated to be the country’s first urban national park. It differed from all other national parks, which are created by land acquisition to preserve or “set aside” an area of ecological significance, in that the federal government already owned the land, and it wanted to transform the former military air base into a public space with ecological significance, through the processes of reclamation.67 Owing to political and economic factors, the development slowed,68 and Rouge Park, whose Carolinian forest ecosystem is also entirely contained within the Greater Toronto Area, became the first national urban park in 2015. This designation puts Rouge Park in the same company as a host of other iconic urban national parks throughout the world, such as the Golden Gate and Gateway National Recreational Areas in San Francisco and New York, respectively, and Stockholm National City Park, where megacities or micro-regions have taken over or share borders with parks. Rouge Park’s boundaries help protect an urbanized watershed, accommodating agricultural uses on its edges, yet it is ironically home to the Toronto Zoo, a bastion of natural artifice. Given Parks Canada’s mandate for representative landscapes, the consideration of Downsview and Rouge National Urban Parks through an ecological lens is consistent with the emergence of anthromes, or anthropogenic biomes, as a classification of biome characterized by human land use.69 With urban spaces designated as national parks and Wi-Fi zones provided throughout remote campsites, society’s jumbled and often contradictory demands are increasingly reflected throughout park space, in effect shortening the conceptual spatial gap between the city and the wild (North, chap. 6, this volume).

Landscape Architecture in Canada’s National Parks

Conclusion If “large parks” (Cooke, chap. 14, this volume) reflect the transformation of historical peri-urban sites into recreational areas, then national and regional parks embody the steadfast preservation of a specific ecological type and “unimpaired state” within an accessible and protected boundary. National parks serve as a repository for base ecological conditions, and they preserve an image of the wild through naturalized design approaches, native plantings, and interpretive landscapes. Yet as urban populations grow, greater numbers of city dwellers will seek recreational and leisurely refuge in the natural settings of the park system. In the pursuit of a more “natural” experience, they still demand the services found in urban environments. It is critical that designers balance management of the built environment between human use and ecological integrity, which extends far beyond park borders. At the same time, the existence of large preserved areas should not negate the important work of landscape architecture to continue creating and restoring nature in cities, to provide areas of recreation, retreat, and awe in places closer to where people live. Landscape architects are well positioned to contribute to the ongoing design and planning of old and new parks by synthesizing ongoing issues of ecological management, First Nations consultation, tourist economies, and the expression of natural and cultural features. This is especially true for Canadian designers, who have relatively easy access to natural spectacles, working in the legacy of a world-famous and forward-thinking national park system.

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The need for landscape architects’ involvement in protected areas has become more pressing than ever. As new understandings of ecology reveal that setting arbitrary borders to protect landscapes fails them ecologically, parks face increased pressures from visitors, such as those who turned out for Canada’s 150th birthday. The national parks’ popularity and accessibility present the opportunity to foster more nuanced understandings of nature, landscape, and the parks’ evolving role for a wider audience. As a federally managed program, parks are inevitably subject to the political and economic flows of election cycles and funding. Their rates of adaptation are slow, and they simply cannot match the pace of development in urban centres. New models of management, such as the multi-stakeholder partnerships involved with American National Recreation Areas, could be considered in a Canadian context. In doing so, park advocates from various backgrounds can help drive projects forward based on changing needs and knowledge about the parks, in the same way that community members take ownership over local public spaces. To further the relationship between urban nature and national parks as interconnected systems of managed landscapes, more research and design from the social and scientific points of view are needed. Wilderness has long stood as a foil to cities and settlements, which is symbolic of a problematic separation of nature and culture in the Western world. As we revisit the more than one-hundredyear-old national park idea, both protected areas and small urban spaces hold joint responsibility and deserve attention as the products and stewards of forward-thinking landscape design.

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NOTES 1 Ron Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), 16. 2 “How You Can Celebrate Canada’s 150th Anniversary,” Maclean’s, 21 December 2016, http://www .macleans.ca/news/canada/how-you-can-celebrate -canadas-150th/. 3 Charles Waldheim, “Keynote,” Innate Terrain: Canadian Work of Established and Emerging Canadian Landscape Architecture Practices (Conference, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, 6 February 2010), DVD. 4 Cronon, as cited by Nancy P. Edward, “Rickson Outhet: Bringing the Olmsted Legacy to Canada: A Romantic View of Nature in the Metropolis and the Hinterland,” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 44, no. 1 (2010): 137–83, accessed 4 November 2015, http://muse.jhu.edu. Rickson Outhet, Canada’s first Canadian-born landscape architect, spoke of his cabin in Lac Tremblant, Quebec, as an “antidote to the ills of an overly refined and civilized modern world … [to be re-infused with] a vigour, an independence and creativity,” an élan vital (vital force). 5 Waldheim, “Keynote.” 6 Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 6. 7 Parks Canada, “The Parks Canada Charter,” modified 8 March 2011, http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/agen/chart /chartr.aspx. 8 Parks Canada, “Update on Wireless (Wi-Fi) Internet Access in Our Parks,” modified 6 November 2014, http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/agen/ne/index/wi-fi .aspx. 9 Rolf Damiant, “The Olmsteds and the Development of the National Park System,” National Association for Olmsteds Parks, accessed 22 June 2014, http://www .olmsted.org/the-olmsted-legacy/the-olmsted-firm /the-olmsteds-and-the-development-of-the-national -park-system. The Olmsteds, Sr. and Jr., were both

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lifetime advocates of the national park system. Prior to Yellowstone’s founding, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. argued “that portions of natural scenery be properly guarded and cared for by the government.” He also cautioned that these places not become playgrounds of only the privileged few. There should be a sacrosanct commitment to make them widely accessible “for the free use of the whole body of the people forever,” a sentiment echoed by Olmsted Jr. and enshrined in the mandate of the American national park system. William Fergus Lothian, A Brief History of Canada’s National Parks (Ottawa: Environment Canada, Parks, 1987), 22. Erick Kaufmann, “Naturalizing the Nation: The Rise of Naturalistic Nationalism in the United States and Canada,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 4 (1998): 683, doi:10.1017/S0010417598001698. Ibid. Waldheim, “Keynote.” Lothian, A Brief History of Canada’s National Parks, 16–22. Yoho, Glacier, Waterton, Selkirk, and Revelstoke, all considered the “western mountain parks,” were soon to follow in the next decade. Lothian, A Brief History of Canada’s National Parks, 23. Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 240. House of Commons Debates, 6th Parliament, 1st Session: Vol. 1, 1887: 244, http://parl.canadiana.ca /view/oop.debates_HOC0601_01. Thomas White, minister of the interior at the time, said of Stewart, “He was selected because he was considered eminently qualified for work of that kind” (to be done in Banff’s early days). Initial plans for the town of Banff included a museum, a small animal paddock or zoo, and superintendent/ park warden quarters. Anthony Roger Byrne, “Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area before 1911” (PhD diss., University of Calgary, 1964), 117. Ibid.

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22 “History of the Fairmont Banff Springs,” Fairmont Banff Springs, accessed 16 November 2019, http:// mountain-resorts.fairmont.com/108/banff-springs -history. The hotel’s style became so influential that “it was the only acceptable architectural method for government structures at the time.” 23 Jeff Mingay, “Stanley Thompson,” Golf Course Architecture, no. 4 (April 2006), accessed 13 July 2014, http://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/Article/Stanley -Thompson/1074/Default.aspx#.U8KnvY1dVvB. 24 Stanley Thompson, “Stanley Thompson Design Principles,” Stanley Thompson Society, accessed 4 November 2015, http://www.stanleythompson.com /stanley-thompson/architecture/design-principles. 25 Stanley Thompson Society, “Stanley Thompson’s Courses,” http://courses.stanleythompson.com /courses. The golf courses were located in Elk Island National Park, Jasper Park Lodge (Alberta), in 1925; Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park (Saskatchewan), in 1935; Highland Links in Cape Breton National Park (Nova Scotia), in 1939; Green Gables in PEI National Park, in 1938; Fundy National Park (New Brunswick), in 1950; and Waterton Lakes (Alberta), in 1951. 26 Ed Fife, Pleasance Crawford, and Ina Elias, “Landscape Architecture,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, last updated 16 December 2013, http://www.thecanadian encyclopedia.ca/en/article/landscape -architecture/. 27 Commissioner James Harkin in 1925, as cited by Robert J. Burns and Michael J. Schintz, Guardians of the Wild: A History of the Warden Service of Canada’s National Parks (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1999), 64. 28 Lothian, A Brief History of Canada’s National Parks, 85–7. 29 Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 252–3. For further reading, see Claudia Notzke, Aboriginal Peoples and Natural Resources in Canada (North York, ON: Captus University Publications, circa 1994).

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30 Lothian, A Brief History of Canada’s National Parks, 51. 31 Parks Canada, “Riding Mountain Park East Gate Registration Complex National Historic Site of Canada,” Canada’s Historic Places, accessed 19 July 2014, http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu. aspx?id=10550&pid=0. 32 Cape Breton Highlands, in Nova Scotia (1937); Prince Edward Island (1938); Fundy, in New Brunswick (1948); Terra Nova, in Newfoundland (1958); Kejimkjiuk, in Nova Scotia (1968); and Kouchibouguac, in New Brunswick (1969). The last two of these parks overlapped with an era of activism in North America that began to prioritize the environment over people, and people were displaced from their homes to create new parks. 33 Alan MacEachern, Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada 1935–1970 (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2001), 192–263. James Smart later became superintendent of Cape Breton National Park. 34 Ibid., 192–3. 35 Ibid., 65–6. 36 Ibid., 67. 37 Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 255. 38 Landscape architects and design firms involved in planning projects at this time include Donald W. Graham and Associates; Project Planning Associates Limited; Johnson Sustronk Weinstein and Associates Limited (Tunnel Mountain Camping Plan, Maligne Lake Visitors Centre); Achim Jankowski (park landscape architect); Neil Dawe (park warden, former president of CSLA); and Peter Hecht for Gros Morne National Park. 39 Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 255. 40 Lothian, A Brief History of Canada’s National Parks, 90. “Point Pelee National Park: A Comprehensive Site Development Plan” included such recommendations as updates to campsite locations, recreation, and picnic areas, and proposed relocation or limitation of vehicular access in parts of the park. “Point Pelee: A Natural Resource Atlas,” by Hough Stansbury Associates, was completed in 1978.

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41 Ronald Rudin, “Kouchibouguac: Representations of a Park in Acadian Popular Culture,” in A Century of Parks Canada 1911–2011, ed. Claire Elizabeth Campbell (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2011), 209–10. 42 According to Parks Canada, in the 1960s most of the buildings and developed land near Radium Hot Springs in Kootenay National Park were demolished to “return the area to a more natural environment.” Kootenay was one of the original mountain parks and the first in British Columbia. 43 Environment Canada, Parks Service, National Parks System Plan, 2nd ed. (1990) and 3rd ed. (1997), accessed 12 July 2014, http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs /v-g/nation/nation1.aspx. 44 Michael Hough, Cities and Natural Process: A Basis for Sustainability (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 253. 45 Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 261. 46 Ibid. 47 Environment Canada, National Parks System Plan, 3rd ed., http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs/v-g/nation /nation3.aspx. There are currently forty-four national parks representing twenty-nine of thirty-nine ecological regions. In the past ten years alone, several large Arctic parks – almost solely focused on ecology with few to no facilities for human use – have been created. The Arctic ecology parks include Aulavik, Auyuittuq, Ivvavik, Mingan, Nááts’ihch’oh, Nahanni, Quttinirpaaq, Sirmilik, Tuktut, Ukkusiksalik, Vuntut, and Wapusk. 48 Parks Canada, “Non-Native Plants: Rooting Out the Invaders,” modified 4 January 2013, http://www .pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/mtn/feuveg-fireveg/veg-veg /envahisseurs-invasives.aspx. 49 Terry McGuire, former project director, TCH 20, in conversation with the author, 30 July 2014. 50 Parks Canada, Canada National Parks Act – S.C. 2000, c. 32 (Section 11), 2000. 51 Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 258. During its establishment in 1970, La Mauricie National Park

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in Quebec received early consultations from town planner Georges Robert and landscape architect Daniele Rouaboule, who completed a master plan, supported by conceptual plans for different areas. La Mauricie also underwent master planning under the project management of landscape architect Charlotte Simard in 2010. Andrew B. Anderson, “From Coast to Coast: A Conversation with James Dobbin, OALA,” Ground 9 (Spring 2010): 24–5. Continuing the work of landscape planners in the 1970s, Richard Strong and Steven Moorhead with James Dobbin (who also worked on Fathom Five) created a park management plan for Gros Morne. It was an unprecedented approach that necessitated wide coordination, and “the project proposed extending the boundaries of the park offshore to establish a marine protected area parallel to the shore line. This soon led to the management plan and classification and ‘marine spatial planning’ and zoning of offshore areas.” Motivated by the work in Gros Morne, Dobbin went on to pursue research on marine and offshore planning in his Master of Landscape Architecture work at Harvard University and founded an industry-leading practice of offshore and marine planning and conservation. Town of Banff, Banff Community Plan (Banff, 2008). Douglas Olson, “Canada Panel Part 2,” Innate Terrain: Canadian Work of Established and Emerging Canadian Landscape Architecture Practices” (Conference, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, 6 February 2010), DVD. Douglas Olson, in conversation with the author, July 2014. O2 Planning + Design, “Trail and Backcountry Facility Design Guidelines,” accessed 15 July 2014, http://www.o2design.com/trail-and-back-country -facility-design-guidelines. Names of some of the more well-known landscape architects for Parks Canada include Otis Bishopric

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(CSLA, nominated for fellowship in 1964); Roman Fodchuk (CSLA); Denis Major (parks planner); Reinhart Petersmann (CSLA, APALA); and Otto Hammer, Liz Baker, and Larry Patterson, who all worked in the Calgary office; Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 257; McGuire, in conversation with the author; R.H. Knowles, “The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects,” from CSLA 1984 Congress Program, 1984. McGuire, in conversation with the author. Ibid. Karina Verhoeven, landscape architect, Parks Canada, in conversation with the author, 16 February 2017. Canadian Wood Council, “Operations Centre: Gulf Islands National Park Reserve,” accessed 15 July 2014, http://cwc.ca/wp-content/uploads/publicationscasestudy-Operations_Centre-GulfIslands.pdf. Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (PFS), from Vancouver, has been a consulting landscape architect on the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve Visitors Centre and a bridge in Banff with Fast + Epp; Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 259. Parks Canada, “Request for Standing Offer – ­Architectural Consulting Services, Various National Parks in Alberta and British Columbia,” Request for Standing Offer, PDF, 2016. BC Bid. Parks Canada, “Disclosure of Contracts over $10,000: Reports,” accessed 30 January 2017, http://www .pc.gc.ca/apps/pdc/index_e.asp?oqYEAR =&oqQUARTER=. Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada, 259. Andrew Frontini, “Fathom Five National Park Visitor Centre: Public Building a Model of Self-Sufficiency,” SAB Magazine, 6 May 2007, http://www.sabmagazine .com/blog/2007/05/06/self-sufficiency/. PFS designed the landscape surrounding Canada’s first LEED Platinum building in Gulf Islands National Park, using on-site stormwater management

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techniques and native plantings; and a similarly LEED -accredited building by Shore Tilbe & Partners in the Fathom Five Interpretive Centre and Boardwalk, completed in 2006, which uses geothermal and on-site sewage and water treatment. Tina Beers, “Emerging Canadian Practitioners Panel,” Innate Terrain: Canadian Work of Established and Emerging Canadian Landscape Architecture Practices (Conference, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, 6 February 2010), DVD; Innate Terrain: “PEI National Park Greenwich Day Use Facility,” DVD; Innate Terrain: Canadian Work of Established and Emerging Canadian Landscape Architecture Practices, exhibition publication, 2010, http://www.daniels .utoronto.ca/sites/daniels.utoronto.ca/files/old /Innate_Terrain.pdf. Anthony P. Clevenger, “Highways through Habitats: The Banff Wildlife Crossings Project,” TR News, March–April 2007; Anthony P. Clevenger and Nigel Waltho, “Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Wildlife Underpasses in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada,” Conservation Biology 14, no. 1 (February 2000): 47–56, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library .ubc.ca/stable/2641903. Detlef Mertins, introduction to CASE: Downsview Park Toronto, by Julia Czerniak (Munich, London, and New York: Prestel Verlag, 2001), 25. Alissa North, “Processing Downsview Park: Transforming a Theoretical Diagram to Master Plan and Construction Reality,” Journal of Landscape Architecture 7, no. 1 (2012). Erle C. Ellis, “(Anthropogenic Taxonomies) A Taxonomy of the Human Biosphere,” in Projective Ecologies, ed. Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister (New York: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2013), 168–83.

PART TWO: TRUE NORTH Regionalism / Critical Regionalism / Resources / Cultural-Biological Resources

CHAPTER SIX

Nature Alissa North

Fig. 6.1.  Freshly stacked four-by-four lumber. Source: Alissa North.

Fig. 6.2.  Truck with scrap wood for reuse. Source: Alissa North.

Nature is a word that landscape architects should unabashedly employ. Not “nature” shackled by quotations, as an anxious disclaimer mired in confusion or scepticism. Rather, nature – an unfettered claim on disciplinary expertise. This semantic distinction aims to invoke a permanent shift away from the polarizing dialectics so prevalent in landscape architecture, of nature/culture, art/science, wilderness/city, human/ machine, ecology/society, landscape/technology – a prevailing inheritance that continues to confuse and obscure the territorial expertise of landscape architecture. As lateral thinkers, landscape architects understand the complexity of systems inherent to the practice, and it seems that nature – a word that has caused so

much angst in our field – may be the concept and the construct that ultimately frees us from our inability to publicly define what contemporary landscape architects do: We design nature. This approach of understanding nature in its broadest sense, as a sustaining system, and making use of this principle in landscape architecture to inform design practice, is proposed as the idea of operative landscapes.1 The notion of designing nature is therefore meant as the design of a sustaining system. While landscape architects have always striven for this, our knowledge and materials base continue to mature, and therefore our works still require non-renewable inputs, and they create outputs that result in waste that cannot be reused or recycled (fig. 6.1). In moving towards operative landscapes, practitioners envision making use and sense of everything related to the physical world, from geological materials, vegetation, living organisms

Fig. 6.0.  McMichael Gallery Trail, Kleinburg, Ontario, 2018, by North Design Office. Source: North Design Office.

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(including humans), cities, and infrastructures, to the Internet and artificial intelligence, as one continuum of nature (fig. 6.2). The approach draws on principles of interconnectedness, to design a life on earth that builds ecological integrity rather than destroying it. Working within one of the world’s most iconic natural realms, Canadian landscape architects in particular have a unique opportunity to position themselves as leaders in the theoretical framing and design of nature.2 The notion of designing operative landscapes is further outlined below, followed by a tracing of the binaries that, this chapter argues, have bifurcated the field into two camps, art versus science. In an attempt to merge these binaries, several examples of contemporary Canadian landscape architectural works are illustrated, as integrated with contemporary thought from several disciplines, demonstrating a general trend towards operative or process-based approaches, which are emerging in multiple fields of study. The last of these fields is technology, which is then equated to forests, to bring the discussion back (or hopefully forward!) to the topic of nature, with the goal of repositioning landscape architecture as most effective when it is operative.

Designing Nature: Towards Operative Landscapes Landscape architects practise within an epoch when the negative impacts of human activity have increasingly shaped the status of climate and ecological health on a global scale. The cumulative result of these forces has precipitated varying degrees of ecological devastation, evidenced (and compounded) by global warming

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and a pronounced loss of biodiversity, among other repercussions. Humanity’s survival thus depends upon moving earth’s materials in ways that perpetuate life and minimize waste. Maintaining pristine, or at the very least intact, wilderness is a laudable and necessary ideal; but nature is popularly understood as it versus us, and it will take much more disciplinary thought and action to overcome this. However, the central ideal of an encompassing nature, proposed as the prime medium of landscape architects, must function far beyond opposing limitations. In this comprehensive understanding and theoretical formation of nature, collecting all possibilities and all potentialities, practitioners can be freed from dialectic silos, and instead design nature as continually operative (fig. 6.3). The reconsideration of all biological, abiotic, and human material inventions as falling along a constant, circulating continuum positions the theory of operative landscapes that are fully functioning and continually having effect (fig. 6.4). The idea promotes landscape architecture as a discipline that guides nature towards needed productivities, where productivity is defined by a project’s capacity to promote, support, and maintain the ecological processes of a diverse community of organisms – including humans. It is an approach that recognizes the power and success of landscape architecture as an all-encompassing long-term vision of nature (fig. 6.5). Operative landscapes are complex and layered, to sustain ecological viability, while incorporating the forms and meanings derived by humans over millennia, to ensure our sense of relevance in a system we might otherwise disregard as nature without us (fig. 6.6). The approach builds on the core strength of landscape architecture as a lateral-thinking discipline, one that

Fig. 6.3.  Geometric insect evidence found while splitting wood. Source: Alissa North.

Fig. 6.5.  Water-weathered wood. Source: Alissa North.

Fig. 6.4.  Lichen-covered branch. Source: Alissa North.

Fig. 6.6.  Tree covered in lichen and coated with ice from a storm. Source: Alissa North.

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recognizes the value of relatedness. While much of the practice is based in logic and standards, solving problems through design is a creative process, where inventiveness rather than convention leads to solutions. This unique skill set makes landscape architects particularly good at creative problem solving via multiple means of reasoning. The overuse of convention has landed us in our current environmental predicament. In this time of global challenges, where the very survival of nature is at risk, the design of landscapes as operative is vital.

Binary Tracings in Landscape Architecture Widely read within the discipline are the prolific and influential writings of Professor John Dixon Hunt. A landscape historian who focused on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he was the director of studies in landscape architecture at Dumbarton Oaks research institute in Washington, DC, followed by his role as the chair of landscape architecture and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1994 to 2000. He defines landscape architecture as exterior place making, which is fundamentally an art of milieu – the physical or social setting in which people live. Through his books and papers, Hunt has effectively shifted writings on garden history from descriptions of design and style to an appreciation of garden meaning and the theories by which landscapes are conceived. By doing so, he positions garden design and landscape architectural practice within the realm of art. Hunt refers to Cicero’s De Natura Deorum in the context of the text’s assertion of a “first nature” (natura

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deorum), interpreted as a primal nature, wilderness, the sublime, hostile territory, an unmediated nature prior to human augmentation, and the territory of the gods. Cicero furthers his argument by outlining a “second nature,” alteram naturam, which he positions as the cultural landscape, encompassing agriculture, towns, roads, bridges, ports, and other infrastructure.3 In his essay “Paragone in Paradise: Translating the Garden,” Hunt expands on Cicero’s musings, stating that, to the best of his knowledge, Bartolomeo Taegio in Milan and Jacopo Bonfadio in Tuscany separately coined “the phrase terza natura: garden art, they claimed, as a ‘third nature.’”4 This includes gardens that go beyond the cultural landscape, where pleasure outweighs utility, and “where the utmost resources of human intelligence and technological skill were invoked to fabricate an environment where nature and art collaborated.”5 Hunt attributes the appeal of this form of place making to gardens’ ability to “reorganize our thinking, especially about the natural materials from which they are crafted.” He concludes that “a garden is itself a consequence of fresh perceptions of second and first nature.”6 In Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, he expands on the earlier notion of a third nature, noting that the “seventeenth century was particularly engaged in understanding how landscape was experienced. Among writers, draftsmen, and especially professionals engaged with the land (geographers, cartographers, military engineers), the fascination with distance becomes marked at the time,” which “fuels a corresponding concern to understand and name its component spaces.”7

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Mapping, marking, and naming have been critical to understanding nature. Further, distinguishing the various degrees of nature has proven effective in framing theories for the purpose and production of garden making as an art. This has had parallel impacts in promoting related aspects of landscape architecture. However, practitioners should remain critical of propagating divisions, in particular the emphasis on placing landscape design in the art camp (or any other camp). While a necessary precaution to avoid pigeonholing landscape architecture, this lack of committed allegiance remains a challenge to positioning it as a lateral yet specific discipline. Theorist and landscape designer Charles Jencks has further termed “zero nature” as the spheres of the earth: geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. Narrowing categorizations rather than developing encompassing ones seems to further bifurcate any potential for landscape architects to claim a justified ownership stake in a broad definition of nature as their prime medium of operation. Encouragingly, Hunt’s contributions provide a method for understanding the cultural breadth of our medium, revealing deep and useful insights into specific areas of our work. He reasserts this methodology in conversation with Mark Laird during a talk at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, during which he responds to a question posed by Mohsen Mostafavi (dean of the GSD) in the following way: “The idea of the garden is some sense of a designed and controlled, and in some ways formalized and finite place that nevertheless bleeds into other landscapes, and the idea of being in that space, whether as a participant, also bleeds into the activity of living as a person in modern cities.”8

Returning to a slightly earlier study of nature ideals in landscape architecture, a specific and influential text can be found in Hal Foster’s The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Published in 1983, it was widely read, at the movement’s nascence at schools of landscape and architecture, as a primer situating the range of postmodern cultural production. Perhaps the most relevant contribution to the book was Rosalind Krauss’s essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” a reprint of her article first published in 1979. Through this volume, it found widespread distribution via the reading lists of design courses, most notably in landscape architecture. In the essay, Krauss structures an argument that historians and critics had constructed elaborately expanded genealogies for the field of sculpture, so that sculpture itself had become somewhat obscured to the point of collapse.9 Of interest to landscape architecture was the inclusion or mention of works by Alice Aycock, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Robert Irwin, Sol LeWitt, Mary Miss, Richard Serra, and Robert Smithson – the Land Art masters, who were also immortalized in John Beardsley’s Earthworks and Beyond, first published in 1984. These artists were important influences on such designers as George Hargreaves, Martha Schwartz, and Michael Van Valkenburgh, whose early works blurred the lines between land art and landscape architecture. Krauss positions postmodern sculptural works as “not-landscape” and “not-architecture,” which she theoretically and diagrammatically constructs via a Klein group, a mathematical concept premised on binary operations and symmetric difference. The effect of Krauss’s diagram for landscape architects was of an expanded field of sculpture that implicated landscape

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and architecture, but in a manner that placed art between structured binaries “organized instead through the universe of terms that are felt to be in opposition within a cultural situation.” Developing her diagram further, on another axis between “not-landscape” and “landscape” are marked sites, as physical manipulations of site or impermanent marks captured with drawing or photography.10 Thus, while Krauss argues for an expanded field for sculpture, she does so by first positioning sculpture in relation to supposed binaries, beginning with the binary of not-landscape and not-architecture. Looking back one more generation, to the 1960s, we encounter landscape architect Ian McHarg, best known for his map-overlay method of site analysis to determine “high” or “low” development suitability, which he espoused as a design decision-making process to reveal the truth. McHarg’s contributions belong to the early phase of an environmental agenda in landscape architecture, one that emerged in the context of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Through the promotion of science (which was situated via the theory of “fitting”), McHarg felt that the facts of nature would be revealed to humans, providing the truth meant to underlie informed design. Often deemed the most influential text for landscape architecture, McHarg’s 1969 Design with Nature opens with the following: “The world is a glorious bounty. There is more food than can be eaten … more beautiful girls than can be dreamed of, more children than we can love, more laughter than can be endured, more wisdom than can be absorbed.” He then asks, “How can we reap this bounty?” He outlines that the book is his investigation into “the place of nature in man’s

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world.”11 With his view of the “city as the antithesis of nature,” he espoused these strong oppositional views. Subsequent generations of landscape architects – many his own students, such as Anne Whiston Spirn and Michael Hough – have countered his ideas by finding that cities are brimming with nature,12 while another influential protégé, James Corner, claims that McHarg’s “project remains radically underdeveloped and incomplete.”13 Although considering these statements in the context of McHarg’s time, Corner grants that what McHarg initiated, importantly, is the use of ecology within landscape architecture to demonstrate a complex, integrated world of dynamic interactions – nature as operative.14 While the aforementioned defining texts continue to serve landscape architecture, demonstrating the long-standing tradition of pulling the discipline between art and science, it is even more important to understand these oppositional pieces embedded with their respective contexts. With a comprehension of the discipline’s progression as a multivalent entity, landscape is understood and manipulated as operative, where operative landscapes are simultaneously functioning, in effect, and having effect. Similar to Bruno Latour’s ideal of establishing a continuity of the world’s entities,15 it is a disciplinary model that no longer promotes oppositions, but rather a design approach that recognizes the value of landscape’s power and success as operative. By owning and operating the entire range of our field, we can avoid the futile arguments over which camp we should align with. The recognition of the expansive cultural thickness of landscape architecture, and an understanding of the necessary

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multiplicities, conceptually aligns with the complexity that is an ecosystem. Interaction among agents promotes ecosystem diversity, which is responsible for evolution. Evolution is necessary for adaptation to changing environments. This holds true for the profession of landscape architecture as much as for the natural world. The mixing of ideas and ideals is taking place across many disciplines. Paired with technological progressions and planetary urgency, an explosion of new possibilities has occurred. We are collecting and creating exponential amounts of data that might just be able to cohesively re-link the answers to sustaining life on earth. Landscape architecture is participating variously in our digital age (Masoud et al., chap. 10, this volume), and some exemplary projects are outlined in the following chapters. These are framed by broader disciplinary movements that have found productivity by developing their thinking through relating with other fields.

Relating Fields to Canadian Landscape Architecture Health, Social Factors, Psychology, Phenomenology … Beyond generating fodder for theoretical and philosophical contemplation, in capacities often problematic for landscape architecture, the separation of humans from nature has been adopted as a topic of reconciliation among other fields. The health sector, and specifically psychology, is recognizing that the classic nature/nurture dichotomy does not

allow for the qualitatively innumerable ways that nature, as living matter, and culture interact. As noted by Colombia University professor Frances Champagne, “Genes and environments are always interacting.”16 In medicine, parallel realizations have led to a seismic shift in treatment strategies, predicated on the recognition that symptoms cannot be treated in isolation, but rather through an understanding of people and their environment. Thanks to his research on the state of education in medicine, Professor Brian D. Hodges, of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine, is preparing the next generation of physicians by teaching that medical education and practice require a more holistic approach, which considers “the relevant social, political and economic challenges and social determinants of health.” Hodges also notes that Health Canada calls for social responsibility from medical schools with respect to the health concerns of the communities, regions, and nations they have the responsibility to serve.17 Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander likewise intertwined social and environmental health. Her Taiga Garden (fig. 6.7) at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, completed in 1988, references “the raw strength and rugged terrain of the Canadian Shield.” Reminiscent of the Group of Seven’s landscape paintings, displayed inside the gallery, the Taiga Garden creates a landscape of native Arctic vegetation, including stunted pines, in downtown Ottawa.18 In her East Three Schools landscape in Inuvik, she seamlessly joined creative play opportunities, salvaging and reusing vegetation mats that held the future seeds of birches and other bog plants

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Fig. 6.7.  Taiga Garden, 1988, at the National Gallery of Canada, by Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Source: Alissa North.

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(fig. 6.8). Inuvialuit Elders’ knowledge of relationships between people and plants, as well as seed collection and propagation, sensitive building siting, wind and snow modelling, tree sourcing from the local forest, pruning roots a year ahead, in preparation of transplant, to ensure survival, and food security were all addressed in her design for the 16-acre (6.5-hectare) site.19 At the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver (figs. 6.9 and 6.10), Oberlander influenced the building form by sharing the work of Scottish botanist Archibald Menzies, who documented and published his writings about the coastal vegetation on his expeditions with Captain George Vancouver. The landscape and the green-roof building work in balance, as with the reuse of grey water and capturing of precipitation to be cycled through the rainwater garden.20 In an academic context, University of Manitoba professor of landscape architecture Karen Wilson Baptist connects the meaning of the prairie in its transition from a complex ecosystem to a productive agricultural landscape with a phenomenological approach (Wilson Baptist, chap. 9, this volume). As a result of these landscape endeavours, these practitioners and academics are making evident the importance of physically and psychologically connecting to the evolving landscape. Culture, Economics, Sociology, Creativity, Art, Activism, (Pop) Culture, Global Mainstream … Using his now renowned Creativity Index, Richard Florida, director of cities at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, points to the relationship between economic growth and a city’s ability to attract the creative class. He notes that more than one-third

Fig. 6.8.  East Three School, 2012, Inuvik, by Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Source: Taylor Architecture Group and Ihor Pona.

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Fig. 6.9.  Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden, 2011, by Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Source: Brett Hitchins of Brett Ryan Studios.

of the Canadian workforce is in creative industries, spanning technology, the arts, architecture, engineering, education, and entertainment. By recognizing that the creative class holds significant economic impact, ultimately determining which cities will thrive, Florida identifies the creative knowledge economy as a key force in urbanism and its future prosperity. Influential activist and magazine editor Kalle Lasn mixes ideas, writing, protest, illustration, activism, prank, and design to subvert consumer capitalism. In an interview, he explained his aim of using “mass media to sell ideas, rather than products.” On a

similar tangent, journalist and activist Naomi Klein underscores the failings of capitalism in her fourth book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, which posits strategies to combat the impacts of global warming by considering its close relationship with the broken model of free-market capitalism. As a critic of corporate capitalism, Klein sits on the board of 350.org, a global grassroots climate movement. She is an advocate for the unification of the Occupy and environmental movements, stating her belief that close collaboration between the two will better equip them to combat uncontrolled corporate greed.

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Fig. 6.10.  The green roof of the VanDusen Botanical Garden, 2011, by Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. Source: Brett Hitchins of Brett Ryan Studios.

In the search for the embodiment of these various knowledge streams within the practice of landscape architecture, Claude Cormier comes to mind. Through his steadfast pursuit of clarity, expressed as singular, broad, culturally framed ideas, he positions his project concepts via intense mixing of the conflicting and entangled realities of a site (fig. 6.11). For Cormier, this process has enabled the extrication and distillation of a clear, simple idea with which to encapsulate a given site. His office celebrates human-generated nature, inviting a fresh look at one’s surroundings and provoking an authentic appreciation of nature’s

reinterpretation. As Cormier reflects, “[The] work may be artificial … it’s also anything but fake.”21 Science, Environment, Systems, Metrics, Logics … Within environmental disciplines, Neil Evernden, a former professor at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, treats “nature” as a dangerous word, mainly because of the risk of appropriation or flawed application resulting from its multiple interpretations. In an attempt to distinguish its use, and to avoid inventing a new word, he uses “nature” in

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Fig. 6.11.  Berczy Park in Toronto, 2017, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Industryous Photography.

lower case to clarify its colloquial meaning (a nature that does not include humans), employing the word as a proper noun to convey “Nature as a system of regularities bound by ‘scientific’ law,” essentially the way nature must behave.”22 The latter necessarily situates humans within the scope of nature’s definition. Evernden writes of humankind and the environment as relational fields of influence, promoting an understanding of being through a region rather than as the physical self in relation to discrete objects in the environment. He positions this “as a normal attribute of the human mind, with its need to form categories out of continua,” demonstrating our natural proclivity for the

creation of boundaries.23 As a summation of his work, Evernden has remarked that “it is more than a little strange to think of people accepting as normal a view of nature from which they are excluded.” Transplanted from Ireland to Canada, Diana Beresford-­Kroeger, a scientist and author, thinks along similar lines through the espousal of her bioplan as the “web that keeps each creature in balance with its neighbour,” as a realignment of the garden as a natural habitat, stating that “to survive as a species ourselves, we must put nature back together.”24 Within the discipline, legendary Canadian landscape architect Michael Hough has stated, “I believe

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Fig. 6.12.  Don Valley Brick Works, designed by Michael Hough, with subsequent involvement from several landscape architecture practices, including Planning Partnership, Claude Cormier et Associés, and DTAH. Source: Alissa North.

in the necessity of cities as sentinels of global-regional change, and the need to characterize them as urban landscapes. Ecology is urbanization and urbanization is ecology.”25 Hough dedicated his career to evolving the ideals of the link between cities and nature (fig. 6.12), as detailed in his seminal publication Cities and Natural Processes. In Going Live: From States to Systems, Montreal native Pierre Bélanger, a former professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, outlines the shift in landscape architectural theory as starting in the early 1990s, when static thinking starts to move towards ideas of indeterminacy and non-linear open systems. He notes that “staging uncertainty and harnessing contingency become the new imperatives; time becomes a dimension of slow but enduring spatial programming for systemic

decentralization, racial recombination, class desegregation, and spatial layering. This intellectual form of landscaping combines new sources and resources as intellectual fodder and feedstock to drown out and let go of outdated, ideological old growth, trimming down dogmatic overgrowth, and make space for spontaneous innovation and intellectual rejuvenation.”26 Academic Jane Hutton has focused her research on material flows in relation to the construction of works of landscape architecture. In an article on granite, she notes that “by linking labor, remote localities, and urban construction, the material flow of granite sheds light on the non-contiguous and complex forces of urbanization,” while relating this notion of the smoothness of granite-paved streets as “facilitating the flow of capital, rapid construction

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of buildings and landscapes, in-turn promoting greater speed, efficient transactions, and a structured social life.”27 In Projective Ecologies, Sandford Kwinter, the Canadian-born, New York–based writer and architectural theorist, documents his thoughts on what he calls a “harvesting of a different type of order, that which we call information.” He writes this in response to an intense personal experience in a thorn-scrub African landscape, where he observed animal herds descending to a watering hole in rhythmic turns, and later learned that the organized patterns were regulated by a pride of hunting lions and his own presence. From this, he concludes: “The landscape in its entirety is a dynamic material world and is a product of invisible algorithmic forces and logics that shape and direct it in accordance with, and in accommodation of, all other forces and logics present within it. When we study these relationships with reference to the forms that they produce, we call it evolutionary theory, but we also, and increasingly, call it ‘ecology.’ This connection is extremely profound, still incompletely acknowledged, and paramount. It is one that is necessary to grasp today.” From his experience, Kwinter also notes: “Every emotion and startle that had passed through me in witness to the flow of life that amazing afternoon had been a product of sensations transmitted to me within a web of communicative actions and interactions.” In his moment of focused awareness, he recognized “the need for ever-more subtle ways of reading, remembering, and interacting with the environment,” as important for “discovering ever-new opportunities within it.” He writes of the human capacity to harvest

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information from nature, and the essential communicative webs formed and distributed among species, allowing transference of a network of invisible logics, such that all can be attuned to one another’s actions on the environment.28 It is this attunement that makes a viable natural continuum possible. Species that fail to attune face extinction.

Technology (or towards a Flat Nature) Not long ago, people had to think about grabbing their mobile phones as they left the house, and if they forgot they’d be lost without them. Those days of independence from personal communications technology now seem like relics of a distant past, replaced with a vital, ingrained link to technology at all times, everywhere. Our devices have morphed into appendages for cerebral function, underscoring an unprecedented level of dependence and how functioning without them feels so disorienting. Innumerable tasks once performed by our brains have moved to the cloud, enabling us to remember more and know more.29 Technology warrants its own heading in the context of this chapter, not because it is more important than the above subheadings of Health …, Culture …, or Science …, among other significant fields left uninvestigated, but because technological innovation, in conjunction with social behaviour, has transformed our understanding of and activities in the world, and therefore our potential to overhaul our erroneous past actions. Technology, rightly or wrongly serving as our new doctrine, seems like the most viable path towards global repair. The rewiring of our computers will continue to hasten the rewiring of our brains. The idea of a flat nature follows the line of

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thinking originated by author Thomas L. Friedman in The World Is Flat, where he suggests that due to twentyfirst-­century technological innovations, the competitive field for global knowledge work has been levelled or flattened. He outlines how more people can compete, and collaborate from all over the world, on an equal footing than at any time in history; and that this flattening connects all planetary knowledge into one global network, with the potential to usher in amazing innovation and prosperity.30 Accepting the premise of this theoretical flattening ideal, in recognition of and combined with billions of years of nature’s knowledge, the following section aims to reinforce and elucidate our potential as an attuned species within the natural continuum. Geoffrey Hinton, a computer science professor at the University of Toronto and a distinguished researcher at Google, is a world leader in the branch of artificial intelligence (AI) known as deep learning, where computer programs act as virtual neurons. For decades, he has been working towards constructing truly intelligent machines. Hinton asserts that only very recently have such advances as sophisticated voice and pattern recognition been possible, first evidenced in 2012, when he and his students won a visual recognition challenge in which they created a program that rivalled human accuracy, a first for his field. Promoting the idea that artificial intelligence will soon transform almost everything humans do, Hinton outlines that with our understanding of genetics and microbiology, in particular the structure and function of DNA, the notion of a distinction between living and non-living matter has faded away. As he explains, “Living matter, it turns out, is just like non-living matter, except for being organized in a particularly complex manner.”31 In addition to his

research, he promotes the equal funding of hard sciences and social sciences to determine how best to use AI. Landscape architects are undertaking similar lofty goals with the aim of solving relevant issues at a global scale, which increasingly takes place through the use of and experimentation with contemporary technologies. In Canada, it is primarily emerging through the next generation of landscape architecture offices, which are coupling the application of technology with ecology. For its Lonsdale Public Plaza, Hapa Collaborative of Vancouver proposed the Megabench (fig. 6.13), a multifaceted, sinuous structure. It was collaboratively designed in the office through the iterative use of multiple types of 3-D software,32 then realized as a laser-cut scale model, which led to 1:1 mock-ups of the various seating configurations. Following iterative shop drawings between Hapa and the fabricator, the contractor built the bench on site, referencing the laser-cut model.33 The Megabench bridges an “intertidal parterre garden that captures and filters stormwater before returning it to Burrard Inlet,”34 and provides the seating from which to observe this phenomenon. In its Mall B installation in Cleveland, North Design Office of Toronto integrated flexible solar panels into fabric coverings with illuminated internal LED sources, which silhouetted the irregular 3-D-modelled forms of bent CNC tubes (fig. 6.14). These were set among strips of prairie grasses, chosen for their urban rooftop location, supporting a new ecology of birds and insects on the site. At the 2015 Métis International Garden Festival in Quebec (Hall, chap. 2, and Hallé and Roberge, chap. 8, this volume), one of the firm’s founding partners, Pete North, led a

Fig. 6.13.  Lonsdale Public Plaza Megabench in Vancouver, by Hapa Collaborative, 2018. Source: Hapa Collaborative.

Fig. 6.14.  The Verdant Walk, 2008, by North Design Office. Source: North Design Office Inc.

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group of University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture students in their Macro/Micro/Myco installation, in which mushrooms met CNC milling (fig. 6.15). It traversed scales from the macro-territories of connected biological networks supported by mycelia to the micro-size of the individual organisms.35 Another next-generation Toronto practice, Public Work, is experimenting with new structural forms in its Kingsway commercial neighbourhood project, engaging with a median too narrow for trees. The firm used a CNC-repeated flat-bar steel module (fig. 6.16) arrayed to create an organic-looking three-dimensional structure that supports climbing vines.36 With their wilderness backyard as territory for exploration, Canadian landscape architects can dramatically expedite a technology-nature flattening. Landscape architecture programs at Canadian universities adopted computer technologies in the early 1980s, and were recognized as world leaders in pioneering software and digital representation and visual evaluation techniques specific to the discipline. Through the Centre for Landscape Research (CLR) at the University of Toronto, led by Professors John Danahy and Rob Wright, landscape-specific 3-D software was developed and used in a consultative capacity. The emerging software supported the work of local practices, notably in relation to planning guidelines for Canada’s Parliamentary Precinct in Ottawa, with this pioneering visualization work still resonating in guidelines today. Under the umbrella of the CLR, Liat Margolis, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Toronto, has been using the rooftop of the faculty to conduct multidisciplinary collaborations through the Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory,

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or Gritlab, where the “goal is to investigate the environmental performance associated with ‘green’ and ‘clean’ technologies such as green roofs, green walls, and photovoltaic arrays.” Testing different growing media, depths of media, planting, and irrigation variables rigged up with a weather station, a roof cam, irrigation controls, sensors, infrared radiometers, and data loggers to capture information at five-minute intervals, Gritlab aims to promote knowledge transfer and innovation, and ultimately influence policy and guidelines.37 Concurrent with the CLR’s technological developments, independent and collaborative research groups at the University of British Columbia undertook a range of innovative projects emphasizing perception testing and interactive visualization to promote public awareness, participation, and collaboration opportunities for sustainability issues related to planning. UBC’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) was spawned from this early research, affiliating such leaders in the field as professors of landscape architecture Cynthia Girling and Ronald Kellett, and resulting in their creation of Elementslab, which works “with interactive neighbourhood scale planning and design tools.”38 In addition to the CIRS, UBC Forestry and Landscape Architecture member Stephen Sheppard has founded the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), where he focuses on interactive virtual climate change modelling. Landscape architects must not lose sight of the interconnectedness of nature and technology, as “technology only ‘works’ because certain configurations of the social, the technological, and the natural are in place. Nature’s particular recalcitrance, nature’s

Fig. 6.15.  Macro/Micro/Myco installation, 2015, at the Métis International Garden Festival, designed by University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture students under the advisement of Professor Pete North. Source: Jardins des Métis and Martin Bond.

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Fig. 6.16.  Kingsway flat-bar trellis structure, by Public Work. Source: Public Work.

evident bounty, partly and complexly, rest on the conduct of networks of humans and technologies and natures.”39 As the first book to position theory and practice alongside responsive technologies, Responsive Landscapes suggests that for the discipline, technologies can serve “as a composite product of our interactions and … series of systems,” enabling landscape architects “to operate as active agents within an assemblage of biotic and abiotic agents … no longer in opposition to the operation of ecological systems we can assume the roles of curators and manipulators of processes.”40 Foreseeing environments based on machine intelligence, practitioners can “develop means to intersect, interrupt,

and align responses,” so that real-time connections can develop truly operative landscapes.41

Forest Technology: Trees Talk What is most interesting about the applicability of technology for landscape architecture is the simultaneous emergence of a clearer awareness of the impressive networked qualities that already exist in nature. Practitioners are adapting their designs to encompass “landscape technologies,” an apt subheading that refers to such functional design features as constructed

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wetlands and retention ponds, vegetative buffers and bioswales, green roofs and walls, and soil specification and remediation methods. While many of these elements have been adapted to take cues from current technological capacities, their core functions have been implemented for quite some time. Taken as a whole, such developments are an indication that, despite the apparent dichotomy between landscape and technology, we are only now coming to a precise knowledge of how amazingly technological nature has always been. The ability to track, often in real time, what our landscapes and our interactions within them are telling us has provoked a seismic shift in the profession, aided by the use of tools and information such as sensors, IoT (the Internet of things), lidar, data, big data, and spatial data. As affirmed by Charles Waldheim, landscape architecture is increasingly recognized “as the most relevant medium through which to construct a viable model for contemporary urbanization.”42 Informed by context and the profession’s developmental trajectory, the next step should be to engage with entire systems at a global scale. As environmentalist Paul Hawken has stated, “There is no such thing as life without networks.” Moreover, while renowned mycologist Paul Stamets in the 1970s was already finding similarities between mycelia and the United States Department of Defense’s ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), many more academics and professionals across an array of fields are seeing the parallels and possibilities between networks of biological organisms and the World Wide Web. Going back to this idea of a global flattening, and the connection of all planetary knowledge into a single global network, the

concept envisaged here frames the likely eventuality wherein biological networks and the World Wide Web gradually merge into a single entity. Stamets believes that the “task that we face today is to understand the language of nature … the fact that we lack the language skills to communicate with nature does not mean that it is not intelligent … it speaks to our lack of our skillset for communication.”43 As the rural exodus proliferates around the globe, concentrating populations in urban centres, we have almost lost the collective ability to read the landscape – a sobering dénouement to our collective inability to communicate with nature, a development that crystallized long ago (Fahlgren, chap. 1, and Grosset and Limousin, chap. 4, this volume). In attempts to fill this void, the knowledge we are now seeking to gain from nature is made increasingly available via technological means. Further, the transmission of this knowledge is being transferred into biological matter. In 2015, scientists at Sweden’s Linköping University succeeded in forming “sufficiently homogeneously ordered hydrogel wires occupying the xylem tubular channel” within the stem of a garden rose. This demonstration of “integrated organic electronic analog and digital circuits manufactured” in a living organism is significant for future organic electronic technologies combined with plants, which will be able to provide feedback on plant physiology. Such information would provide invaluable frameworks for future design interventions, also engaging with a much wider array of potential applications (i.e., moving away from genetically modified agriculture, or using plants as fuel cells to store electricity produced through photosynthesis).44

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Based on our intrinsic dependence on technology for survival, merging the remarkable capabilities derived from technological advancement with the entangled biota that has been in development on earth for 3.8 billion years may yield powerful contributions in our attempts to mitigate and reverse the impacts of humanity’s capacity for destruction. Suzanne Simard, professor of forest ecology at UBC, explains that “nature wants to fill in space, nature wants to heal itself … trees are trying to create a homeostasis.” Humans should endeavour to think this way. For the most part, landscape architects already do. Simard explains that with trees, their networked method of communication is accomplished through mycelia, which they use as a pathway to feed and support one another. Simard has studied how “mother” plants recognize their own kin, changing the environment within their immediate surroundings to increase their probabilities of survival.45 Mother trees are the dominant ones in the forest, networked through complex, varied relationships with all other trees. Simard outlines that trees are not individuals, but rather a community interacting with one another, shuffling carbon and nitrogen back and forth through their network, depending on which organism needs it most for survival. Diversity of structure in the forest ensures resiliency; mother trees act as overseers, helping move valuable resources to the next generation.46 Peter Wohlleben, a forester, supports Simard’s findings through his decades of work, publishing, among other nature revelations, The Hidden Life of Trees. Also researching in this territory, plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso reveals that plants communicate in a variety of ways, with many able to warn of impending danger

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such as an insect attack by sending chemical signals to fellow plants.47 This growing research base has resulted in the term “wood wide web” as a description of the innumerable fungal communications that take place throughout plant communities.48 Instead of a single brain, Mancuso suggests that plants have computing structures that function in complex networks, which enables them to survive even after losing 90 per cent or more of their biomass. With their decentralized intelligence and no single organs, plants can tolerate predation without losing functionality. He suggests that as humans, we have the same needs as plants; we have just evolved differently. Mancuso goes on to suggest that humans respond in the same way and to the same impulses as plants, but that we are just more fragile, dependent organisms.49 Adding to Mancuso’s claim, what we are in fact dependent on is forests. Around the globe, only three significant swaths of Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL)50 have survived the Anthropocene epoch. These reside within a band that runs across central Russia; in a broad swath throughout the Amazon basin (encompassing Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname); and across a small section of Alaska and a much larger portion of Canada. Within Canada, the Alaska Range and the Rocky Mountains (Long, chap. 5, this volume) define the western boundary of this intact forest area, which stretches southeast, loosely bounded at its southern extremity by the fiftieth parallel, until it reaches the Atlantic coast (Brown et al., chap. 7, this volume).51 While such areas increasingly fall outside the typical definitions of “pristine” or “wilderness” (Hall, chap. 2, and Long, chap. 5, this volume), IFLs make fundamental contributions to the sustained

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health of the biosphere, including carbon sequestration, supporting biodiversity and biomass, and provision of renewable resources – all operating at scales and levels of complexity only somewhat understood by current research. These vast swaths of forest permit the existence of human life on earth. Without us, the forests will still exist and, indeed, thrive. Without the forests, we as a species cannot survive. Furthermore, unlike other ancient cultures that flourished until their demise, Canada’s First Nations, Métis, and Inuit populations have sustained life, water, and forest for thousands of years on this land (Fahlgren, Thomas, and Grosset and Limousin, chaps. 1, 3, and 4, this volume). With Canada being the fastest-growing country in the G7 – while emphasizing its place as the world’s leading exporter of pulp, paper, and sawn timber52 – and amid reconciliation to right the wrongs done to the Aboriginal pillar of our society, Canadian landscape architects have an innate responsibility to establish concepts that reflect contemporary nature, and to ensure the endurance of the global forest, the land, and healthful life on it (fig. 6.17).

Conclusion While lying outdoors in northern Ontario and gazing upward through the pines, it is incredible to note how each tree finds its rightful space within the canopy, not blocking out the others and seldom overlapping, and how each crown’s precise geometric outline resembles the xylem cells of the trees themselves. The system of growth and support demonstrated by trees is indeed highly democratic – shared values in support of the

Fig. 6.17.  TBD exhibition at MOCA, Toronto, 2014. Source: Alissa North.

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whole. Perhaps even more notable, observing with two small children, discussing everything within our view, occupies more concentrated, intense time than any activity in our concrete-asphalt territories, or on devices. We seem to possess an innate capacity to understand nature – a collective intelligence – a captivation this growth process sustains. It also provides a compelling, distinctly Canadian narrative worth pursuing (Hall, chap. 2, this volume). Nature is fascinating, complex, and resilient, and it truly holds the answers to climate change. It always has, but we have yet to heed it. The concept of nature embraces much more than its isolated sense of everything in the physical world not made by humans (this, as a commonly held definition, is absurd). Rather, it entails a comprehensive vision of nature, which includes everything we do, make, and are. This is what landscape architects can work with and uphold. Designing operative landscapes is a means towards this method. Landscape architects must remain cognizant of our lineage of thinking, to comprehend what informs and drives our disciplinary theory but, most important, to critically inform the right direction towards a productive future. In the same manner that Stoic values became common knowledge (North and Reford, Introduction, this volume), it should be the mandate of landscape architects to dissolve the divide between ourselves and nature as other. Beavers – symbols of Canadian identity, as displayed on our nickels – modify the environment through the building of their dams, prompting a substantive ecosystem adjustment. Humans do this, too. However, the beaver’s superstructures restore wetlands, cleansing water through nutrient conversion and removal and

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oxygenation. The dams increase biodiversity by creating ideal deep-water conditions for trout and salmon, allowing the fingerlings to hide from predatory birds in calm water that promotes their growth, instead of wasting energy to fight currents. The structures provide well-oxygenated water, beneficial for toad and frog populations, which encourage the migration of songbirds by creating food and habitat for these species in decline. When a beaver pond fills with too much sediment, the animal will abandon it, causing it to dry out and become colonized by meadow species, which become suitable for a biodiverse array of grazing species.53 And so the productive cycle goes on. We need to ensure that we design in a comparably holistic way. This process-based approach manifests when it puts into place “an ongoing series of systems, patterns, and interactions between living things within designed spaces,” where landscape is operational, such that it has “the ability to perform, in an intentional manner, through a dynamic rather than prescriptive design process.”54 How landscape architecture decides to use technology is a constructive next step for this agenda. Operative landscapes are designed through structuring frameworks that allow for the productive evolution of space over time. The operative landscape is nature, which includes us. It is clear that landscape technologies, both proven and yet to be imagined, are the next crucial layer to be integrated into the knowledge base of landscape architecture. How human thought will be recognized as nature may remain on the itinerary for longer. Noting that “we shape the future according to our preferences,” Nick Bostrom, University of Oxford professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and director of the Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research Centre at

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Oxford, believes that “machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will need to make and the outcome could have potentially enormous consequences.” Bostrom describes how artificial intelligence may end up generating all of the world’s new ideas, based on individual preferences. Dedicated to ensuring that “we get it right when it comes to creating super intelligent computers,” he notes that the potential transition is momentous. Once radical super-intelligence is achieved, he envisions all human intellectual labour as fully automated, likening this to the Industrial Revolution, which automated many types of physical labour. He sees AI as having profound long-term benefits that will solve humankind’s primordial challenges, including the vulnerabilities of planet earth.55 As we near human-level machine intelligence, estimated by leading AI experts to be around 2040–5, the last decades of our “reign” on earth, based on humans’ capacity for reason, should be spent wisely, to ensure that we structure the epoch beyond the Anthropocene so we can continue to operate. Despite substantial challenges, hope remains that by then we will have found that we are indeed nature.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the following people, who also remain hopeful about our future nature. They include my now graduated University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture thesis students, Jordan Lypkie, for compelling discussions about nature and for very helpful review of this chapter, and Jamie Reford, for his tireless review of this and of all chapters in this book; Brad Cantrell, for ensuring that the technology

section makes sense; and especially Aili and Owen, who have amazing, inspiring ways to think and talk about nature; and Pete, my favourite nature design collaborator. NOTES 1 Alissa North, Operative Landscapes: Building Communities through Public Space (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2012). “Operative landscapes” is a term coined by the author, and the title of her publication, which investigates communities that followed such principles. 2 After delivering a lecture to students and faculty of the landscape architecture program at the University of Toronto in 2008, Adriaan Geuze posed the following simple question over dinner to a table of eighteen faculty members (with an approximately even split between professors of architecture and landscape architecture): “Who here owns a family cottage?” Geuze was looking to validate a classic Canadian archetype, possibly in response to a recent guided sojourn via canoe through the idyllic natural beauty of Algonquin Provincial Park. In this context, cottages can be loosely defined as a second home outside of a big city, to which one aims to retreat into nature (popular definition). It turns out that cottages – a particularly Canadian and decidedly Ontarian possession – were owned by all of the faculty’s landscape architects but by only one of the architects. This disparity is perhaps reflective of the underlying values guiding the profession of landscape architecture in Canada. 3 John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 33–4; John Dixon Hunt, “Paragone in Paradise: Translating the Garden,” in Comparative Criticism: Volume 18, Spaces: Cities, Gardens and Wildernesses, ed. E.S. Shaffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 58. 4 Ibid., 56–7. 5 John Dixon Hunt, “Reading and Writing the Site (1992),” in Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader, ed. Simon Swaffield (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 132.

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6 Ibid., 133. 7 Hunt, Greater Perfections, 36. 8 GSD YouTube, “On the Future of Landscape History: John Dixon Hunt in Discussion with Mark Laird,” Harvard Graduate School of Design, published 20 ­August 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =1AEb7d7DxX8. 9 Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), 33. 10 Ibid., 40–1. 11 Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature: 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992), 1. 12 Susan Herrington, “The Nature of Ian McHarg’s Science,” Landscape Journal 29 (2010): 8. 13 James Corner, “Creativity Permeates the Evolution of Matter and Life,” in Dwelling in Nature: Conversations with Students, ed. Ian McHarg, Lynn Margulis, James Corner, and Brian Hawthorne (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 98. 14 Ibid., 97. 15 Bruno Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto,’” New Literary History 41 (2010): 484. 16 Frances A. Champagne, “Beyond Nature vs. Nurture: Philosophical Insights from Molecular Biology,” Association for Psychological Science, http://www .psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications /observer/2009/april-09/beyond-nature-vs-nurture -philosophical-insights-from-molecular-biology.html. 17 Brian D. Hodges et al., “The Future of Medical Education: A Canadian Environmental Scan,” Wiley Online Library, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi /10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03737.x/full. 18 Mechtild Manus and Lisa Rochon, eds., Picturing Landscape Architecture (Munich: Edition Topos/­ Callwey Verlag, 2006), 46. 19 Anne Raver, “Permafrost Frontier,” Landscape Architecture Magazine 103, no. 11 (November 2013): 158–65. 20 Susan Herrington, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape (Charlottesville: University of

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Virginia Press), 224–5: VanDusen Botanical Garden, “About,” Living Building, http://vandusengarden .org/about/. Claude Cormier, “Artificial, Not Fake,” Claude Cormier + Associés, http://www.claudecormier.com/en /philosophy/. Derrick Jensen, “Neil Evernden,” in Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004), 112–13. Neil Evernden, The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 37. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 2. Dale Duncan, “The Legacy of Michael Hough,” Spacing Toronto, 4 February 2013, http://spacing.ca /toronto/2013/02/04/the-legacy-of-michael-hough/. Pierre Bélanger, Pamphlet Architecture 35: Going Live. From States to Systems (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015), 11. Jane Hutton, “Range of Motions: Granite Flow from Vinalhaven to New York City,” Harvard Design Magazine, no. 38 (Spring/Summer 2014): 34. Sanford Kwinter, “Combustible Landscape,” in Projective Ecologies, ed. Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister (Barcelona: Actar; and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2014), 341–5, 351. Dominic Basulto, “Your Brain Is Being Augmented, You Just Don’t Realize It,” Big Think, http://bigthink .com/endless-innovation/your-brain-is-being -augmented-you-just-dont-realize-it. Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007), 7–8. Dan Falk, “Getting Smarter,” U of T Magazine 42, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 41–3. Shelley Long, “Active Praxis, Hybrid Practice,” Landscapes | Paysages 18, no. 2, guest ed. Alissa North (Summer 2016): 29. Shelley Long, email to author, 1 March 2016.

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34 Hapa, “Foot of Lonsdale Public Plaza,” Projects, Small Urban Spaces, http://hapacobo.com/project /foot-of-lonsdale-public-plaza/. 35 Pete North and MLA University of Toronto, Macro/­ Micro/Myco, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, http://www.refordgardens.com/english/festival /garden-139-macro-micro-myco.php?EC=1. 36 Public Work, “Projects,” Median Vertical Gardens, http://www.publicwork.ca/index. 37 Gritlab, “About,” University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, http:// grit.daniels.utoronto.ca/. 38 Ron Kellett, email to author, 8 March 2016. 39 Mike Michael, Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature: From Society to Heterogeneity (New York: ­Routledge, 2000), 1. 40 Bradley Cantrell and Justine Holzman, Responsive Landscapes (New York: Routledge, 2016), 8. 41 Ibid., 218. 42 The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 41; Charles Waldheim, “On Landscape, Ecology and Other Modifiers to ­Urbanism,” Topos 71, no. 2 (2010): 24. 43 Louie Schwartzberg and Fantastic Fungi, “The Spirit of Good,” documentary excerpt with Paul Stamets, published 23 January 2012, https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=2wzBPSbTGYM. 44 Eleni Stavrinidou, Roger Gabrielsson, Eliot Gomez, Xavier Crispin, Ove Nilsson, Daniel T. Simon, and ­Magnus Berggren, “Electronic Plants,” Science Advances, 20 November 2015, http://­advances.sciencemag.org /content/1/10/e1501136.full. 45 Louie Schwartzberg and Fantastic Fungi, “Mother Trees,” documentary excerpt with Suzanne Simard, published 28 January 2016, http://fantasticfungi.com/mother -trees/. 46 Jane Engelsiepen, “Trees Communicate,” Ecology webinar series, published 8 October 2012, http://www .ecology.com/2012/10/08/trees-communicate/.

47 Jeremy Hance, “Are Plants Intelligent? New Book Says Yes,” book review of Brilliant Green by Stefano Mancuso, published 4 August 2015, http://www .theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation /2015/aug/04/plants-intelligent-sentient-book -brilliant-green-internet. 48 Nic Fleming, “Plants Talk to Each Other Using an Internet of Fungus,” BBC Earth, published 11 November 2014, http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111 -plants-have-a-hidden-internet. 49 Hance, “Are Plants Intelligent?” 50 IFL mapping team, “Intact Forest Landscapes,” IFL spatial database, published 1 October 2015, http:// www.intactforests.org/. 51 M.C. Hansen, P.V. Potapov, R. Moore, M. Hancher, et al. “Global Forest Change,” University of Maryland Department of Geographical Sciences, published with data from 2000–14, http://earthenginepartners. appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest; USGS Land Cover Institute, “Global Land Cover,” USGS, last modified December 2012, http://edc2.usgs.gov/glcc /fao/forest_cover_image.php. 52 Swedish Forest Industries Federation, “World Leading Exporters of Pulp, Paper, and Sawn Timber,” Skogs Industrierna, 10 August 2014, http://www .forestindustries.se/documentation/statistics_ppt _files/international/world-leading-exporters-of-pulp -paper-and-sawn-timber. 53 Samuel Fall, “Beaver Facts and Natural History,” Beaver Pictures and Facts, 2007, http://fohn.net /beaver-pictures-facts/index.html. 54 North, Operative Landscapes, 6. 55 Nick Bostrom and Anna Maria Tremonti, episode transcript, CBC’s The Current, 1 February 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the -current-for-february-1-2016-1.3428298/feb-1-2016 -episode-transcript-1.3429278#segment2.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Power of Local in East Coast Landscapes Matthew A.J. Brown Stéphane LeBlanc James Allan MacDonald-Nelson Andrea Mantin

Over the past few decades, Atlantic Canada has experienced the impact of external influences, primarily through industrial modernizations, which have given way to an outward-looking, global, and acultural model of generic development that is neither determined by nor related to any specific culture. Divestment from local industries that once supported the region has resulted in out-migration and a lack of investment in communities across the East Coast. For landscape architecture, this phenomenon has been most apparent in the design of public landscapes and associated architecture. Rather than drawing powerful local influences to create works of meaning and significance appropriate to their location, design in Atlantic Canada has suffered from the generic and placeless. The oft-used summation of Canada’s territorial vastness – “from coast to coast to coast” – doubles as an allusion to a quintessential paradox, one that attempts to reconcile our perceived national unity with distinct regional tendencies. On a cultural level, Canadians have wrestled for generations with the absence of a singular national identity. A profound openness to cultural diversity has helped shape a refined notion of what it means to be Canadian, yet undercurrents of regionalism still abound. It should come as no surprise that these can be traced to the nation’s colonial history – one fraught with imperial ambitions and cultural pride. It stands to reason that some of the most deep-seated contemporary remnants of Canada’s turbulent inception continue to manifest

Fig. 7.0.  Urban Stormwater Wetland, Moncton, New Brunswick, 2002, by Ekistics Planning & Design. Source: Fathom Studio, formerly Ekistics Planning & Design.

themselves in Atlantic Canada, the epicentre of European infiltration into North America. Before delving into an abridged account of Atlantic Canada’s fraught past, it is crucial to appreciate the significance of this history in relation to nested contemporary idiosyncrasies of culture, ecology, and aesthetics. If landscape architecture is the “what” in this scenario, these contextual preconditions should determine the “why” informing regional design strategies. An appreciation of this subtle, nuanced, and often tragic contextual lens is essential for designers to move beyond what has become an increasingly generic patchwork of landscapes. Ironically, the considerable task of engaging with such complexity as a designer is vastly simplified by establishing generic analytical frameworks that aim to clarify hierarchies of information. While not an exhaustive list, three theories familiar within the realm of landscape architecture are drawn upon to guide this narrative: critical regionalism, ecological urbanism, and tactical urbanism. Each theory emphasizes the importance of understanding the specifics of a location and, through design, aims to highlight the nuances of local uniqueness. First conceived within architectural circles, critical regionalism is an overt rejection of the homogeneity evoked by the International Style,1 striving to supplant placelessness and anonymity with site-specific geographical and cultural references. In essence, the theory mediates “the impact of universal civilization with elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place.”2 Ecological urbanism imagines cities that operate in conjunction with local and regional ecologies, promoting design innovation that “incorporates and accommodates the inherent conflictual conditions

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between ecology and urbanism.”3 Considering the human role “in relation to ecological practices”4 is therefore essential. The term “ecological urbanism” was coined in 1998 by architect and planner Miguel Ruano,5 but the underlying rationale has informed the practice of landscape architecture since the early 1980s, as taught by theorist-practitioners such as Anne Whiston Spirn and Michael Hough. Through their respective publications and discourse, both espouse design frameworks that promote human and natural processes. For successful implementation, any design premised on this theory necessitates an understanding of both the local landscape and the local culture. Tactical urbanism is likely the most grounded of the theories discussed, defining practical methods for the implementation of urban and peri-urban design strategies in predominantly public spaces. It is premised on the deployment of temporary and/or low-cost installations intended to generate reaction and conversation.6 Neighbourhood improvement is the ultimate goal, once again emphasizing the unique qualities of place – only this time at a smaller scale. As a straightforward summation of the above theories: Place matters. Although the term “Atlantic Canada” broadly defines the scope of focus, a true understanding of place in this context requires detailed inquiry at the local level. This begins with history.

An Ancient Landscape – The First Frontier Thousands of years before Canada’s Atlantic coastline introduced European explorers to the New World, the receding Laurentide ice sheet shaped distinct regional geologies conducive to a host of vibrant ecologies, each

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balanced by states of constant flux. With much of the coastline framing the Gulf of St. Lawrence, dynamic currents, extreme tidal cycles, and sharp bathymetric relief combined to form a seasonal explosion of marine life. The richly oxygenated waters of the gulf supported prodigious numbers of resident and migratory birds, fish, and marine mammals. Mythic numbers of Atlantic salmon returned to their native rivers throughout the temperate months to spawn, while the mixing of the Labrador and Gulf Stream currents atop the Grand Banks (off present-day Newfoundland) established idyllic habitats for an array of North Atlantic marine life. Inland, the Acadian forest and the boreal forest’s eastern extremity sustained uncorrupted populations of native flora and fauna, and steep coastal cliffs provided refuge for nesting birds. Archaeological evidence suggests that these flourishing ecosystems have sustained human life for over six thousand years. Palaeo-Indians were likely the first anthropogenic presence on the land, and several distinct First Nations established permanent territorial ranges over vast swaths of coastal and interior land. Today the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and Passamaquoddy (Peskotomuhkati) are among the few surviving Indigenous communities in the region. These same First Nations encountered Jacques Cartier on his fabled 1534 maiden voyage, and the ensuing waves of British and French colonialists who followed. As discoveries of the New World filtered through European high society, bolstered by more accurate maps, funding for further expeditions flooded from the royal coffers of Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal. Accordingly, the number of new European settlements along the coast of Atlantic Canada proliferated, as each colonial power vied for control of the seemingly

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endless bounty of natural resources. Regional ecologies and local cultural equilibriums were thus set askew, pressured by an expanding colonial population and a burgeoning export economy predicated on natural resource harvesting and extraction. Beyond the promise of economic gain, colonizers quickly grasped the strategic value of Atlantic Canada’s geographical position, and that control over it would facilitate regulation of access into the continental interior via the St. Lawrence River. Road and rail infrastructure linking the coast to the interior soon followed, complementing but not fully surpassing the industrial and military importance of the St. Lawrence Seaway until the mid-twentieth century. As the British and French crusade for imperial dominance reached fever pitch, tensions between colonial factions within eastern Canada broke in 1756, marking the outbreak of the Seven Years War. This was the first global conflict in which two axes of European nations, mustered under the kingdoms of France and Great Britain, squared off against each other for global colonial dominance. Although the British were ultimately victorious in this struggle, which ended with the fall of Louisburg, Nova Scotia, in 1759, legions of other European settler communities continued to occupy the land. The Acadians in New Brunswick, the Scottish in the Cape Breton region of Nova Scotia, and the Irish in Newfoundland each formed cultural strongholds with distinct languages, music, crafts, and building methods. Remnants of this cultural smorgasbord persist to this day. Indeed, many communities are still defined by their economic dependence on agriculture and the fishery. Confederation in 1867 saw New Brunswick and Nova Scotia join the Dominion of Canada, forming a

stronger union against further incursions from France and the United States – a former colony that had won its hard-fought independence from the British nearly one hundred years before. Beyond bolstering territorial security, the formation of the Dominion of Canada consolidated and streamlined economic ties with Great Britain. Natural resource exports were making their way down the St. Lawrence in unprecedented numbers. Vast tracts of land were deforested by logging and to make way for agricultural production. In a bizarre twist of fate, it was the eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) that arguably made such endeavours possible. With a range extending throughout Atlantic Canada to the eastern margins of the prairies, this arboreal exemplar of good posture doubled as an ideal specimen for a ship’s mast. Indeed, by the time the age of sail was eclipsed by mechanical means of nautical propulsion, all of Britain’s naval vessels and most of its merchant fleet boasted masts of Pinus strobus. Although Prince Edward Island joined the confederation six years later, Newfoundland and Labrador remained independent until 1949,7 a shining testament to Canada’s colonial legacy and the steadfast commitment to cultural distinction typical of Atlantic Canada. Throughout this manic flux of goods and people, resident First Nations were adversely impacted. European concepts of ownership and private property were foisted on these original peoples, with little or no consultation. In typical fashion, agreements struck between various First Nations and colonial entities operating in the region fell prey to a litany of deception, coercion, and subjugation. Such was the colonial standard for contemporary policies relating to First Nations. Moreover, the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and

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Passamaquoddy peoples traditionally embraced a lifestyle predicated on hunting and gathering, necessitating an intimate connection with the land. This has provoked ongoing conflict among local property owners, provincial and federal governments, and various Indigenous communities throughout Atlantic Canada, as the untrammelled right to fish and hunt is currently restricted by various provincial and federal regulations.

Atlantic Canada Now – Uncertain Futures Throughout its precarious history, Atlantic Canada has undergone several metamorphoses – each provoked by external influences, and each leaving an indelible mark on the region. From frontier to battleground, from home to exile, from famine to home, from destination to waypoint and back again, each phase has sculpted and been sculpted by regional landscapes. For many, the Atlantic Canada of recent memory has moulted once again, exposing vulnerabilities that risk compromising the very raison d’être for many residents. Perhaps the most pivotal occurrence inciting this phase change was the infamous collapse of the Grand Banks cod fishery in the early 1990s, exacerbated by persistent overfishing and a lack of responsible federal oversight. To stave off decimation of this resource, once assumed to be inexhaustible, the federal government had no choice but to close the fishery. For the hundreds of communities that depended on their catch for commerce and sustenance, prospects were – and remain – bleak. Atlantic Canada’s predilections for natural resource– based economies would also prove problematic, as

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globalization opened cheap international labour markets to production. Mines, mills, and processing plants fell victim to new-age capitalism, prompting shutdowns and eventual closures throughout the region. This economic shift has left many communities reliant on a fraction of their original productivity.8 Few still thrive on the industries upon which they were established, and the majority confront pressing concerns of how or even if they can participate in a dynamic, tech-oriented economy. With 69 per cent of Canadians now living in metropolitan areas,9 the pressure is mounting for residents of rural communities to leave their homes in search of employment in cities within Atlantic Canada and farther afield.10 Contrary to what one might assume, such out-migration did not result in a decline in population throughout Atlantic Canada, as the exodus was countered by an influx of international émigrés. This yielded net growth in the population between 2000 and 2010,11 presenting new opportunities and uncertain futures for communities. Moreover, as regional economies have adjusted to global market trends, urban centres have experienced marked growth as new industries geared towards research, education, technology, services, and manufacturing establish footholds. Regrettably, the accelerated growth rate in cities has contributed to a generic quality of built form.12 Should this expansion continue unchecked, the region’s profound, locally distinguishable cultural and historical roots risk obliteration-by-box-store – an acute syndrome responsible for the monochromatization of Canadian urbania. Fundamental aspects of national history, conveyed through landscape and built form, have already fallen victim to this trend. Unless designers in Atlantic

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Canada can address the perilous state of their canvas through educating developers, decision makers, and clients on the importance of the local, the keystone of Canadian history risks fading into obscurity.

East Coast Revival Fortunately, a subtle but important shift is occurring. Since the turn of the millennium, design has gradually asserted itself in place-making initiatives across Atlantic Canada. The following projects should be celebrated as exemplars of cognizant intervention, each cultivating an appreciation of the region’s multi-faceted character by emphasizing specific qualities associated with place. By incorporating natural and cultural heritage, artisanship, regional humour, and locally harvested materials, these projects seek to move beyond the inert status quo. Moreover, each precedent embodies analysis and intervention rationalized through critical regionalism, ecological urbanism, and/or tactical urbanism. By revealing, respecting, and incorporating landscape into their designs, the following practitioners have inaugurated a hybridized design ethos for Atlantic Canada, one that merges a complex past with a promising future. Greenwich Day Use Facility Completed in 2000, the Greenwich Day Use Facility represents the most recent intervention within Prince Edward Island National Park. As prime consultants, BDA Landscape Architects led the design team, installing a learning centre and day use facility, both

sensitively perched atop vulnerable coastal wetlands. Underscoring the fresh, hybridized design ethos previously mentioned, this project incorporates renewable energy systems, biological sewage treatment facilities, outdoor landscape spaces, floating boardwalks, and landscape restoration strategies to fulfil its mandate.13 While the learning centre and day use facility succeed in realizing their programmatic roles, the boardwalk represents the acme of this project, subtly engaging with the site’s natural elements in ways that facilitate access without disturbing sensitive ecological conditions. Upon entering the circuit, visitors are guided across a pristine wetland, over Bowley Pond, and, after intermittent stretches of forest, find themselves confronted by a monumental sand dune, towering twenty-five metres (eighty feet) above the coastline (fig. 7.1). The addition of Greenwich Dunes to Prince Edward Island National Park in the mid-1990s signified a general shift in the mentality of Parks Canada management vis-à-vis the stewardship of its parklands (Long, chap. 5, this volume). Set aside in the 1960s, the site was earmarked as the province’s “first specific tourist attraction.”14 Consequently, the littoral ecosystems of this and other early coastal parks suffered extensive damage under the stresses imposed by seasonal visitors. By the time the Greenwich project was incorporated into the park, Parks Canada recognized the need to merge its tourism objectives with the protection of the fragile dune ecosystems.15 Any response to the issue necessitated a design strategy capable of choreographing access to maximize the site’s experiential qualities while mitigating further damage to the already compromised, fragile landscape.

Fig. 7.1.  Greenwich Day Use Facility in PEI, by BDA Landscape Architects, 2000, incorporates renewable energy systems, biological sewage treatment facilities, outdoor landscape spaces, floating boardwalks, and landscape restoration strategies. Source: ©Parks Canada.

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The proposal put forth by the BDA team resulted in a cohesive project – one that exemplifies contextually sensitive design through the preservation of the natural dune landscape and associated ecologies, yet provides a unique user experience that attracts tourists, generating revenue for future preservation and development. Moreover, the enduring successes of this project, as well as others of a similar vintage, have been instrumental in crystallizing the principal tenets of contemporary design theories such as ecological urbanism, an invaluable contribution to a region striving for renewal. The Irving Eco-Centre/La Dune de Bouctouche Another project led by BDA Landscape Architects, the Irving Eco-Centre was completed in 1997 in an effort to protect and provide strategic access to a 9.7-kilometre (six-mile) stretch of sand dunes framing Bouctouche Bay, the namesake of neighbouring Bouctouche, New Brunswick. A primer for BDA’s involvement in the Greenwich project, the Irving Eco-Centre incorporates an elevated boardwalk to manage movement through the site, providing educational and research opportunities to expand local and visitor knowledge about the importance of the coastal habitat.16 Moreover, this project exemplifies the potential for impactful development through local corporate partnerships. Irving Oil Ltd. and its sister corporation, J.D. Irving Ltd., are historically tied to the locale, as the founder of this mighty East Coast conglomerate, K.C. Irving, started his business in Bouctouche in 1924.17 Throughout the twentieth century, Irving has proven a rare example of how a corporation founded on the

exploitation of an environmentally harmful substance works to balance its negative impact through major conservation projects. Beyond its funding model, the design’s ultimate success lay in the integrated consultation process initiated by BDA during the project’s formative stages. Working in conjunction with ecologists specialized in the preservation of fragile dune ecosystems, the team employed strategies that would ensure ecological resilience post-intervention. The planting of marram grass (Ammophila) was one result of this collaboration, ensuring the stabilization of the dunes via the grass’s dense root structure, thereby abating erosion from wind and water. Preserving this typically ephemeral geological feature has been identified as a priority for reasons beyond its ecological significance; the dune also serves to protect the bay’s calm waters and salt marshes, thus allowing for the expansion of oyster cultivation and other fisheries in the surrounding inlets.18 By all accounts, the popularity of the boardwalk network has exceeded expectations, and has acted as the catalyst for a larger plan adopted by the municipality in 2006, one predicated on economic diversification through the implementation of further green infrastructure projects. This type of adaptive strategy, based on local landscape resources and actualized by projects such as the Irving Eco-Centre, plays a critical role in the survival of small towns throughout the Atlantic provinces.19 Both BDA projects are models of sustainable development, boasting eco-friendly materials and renewable energy systems. La Dune de Bouctouche has also fostered a new understanding of the diversity of marine ecosystems by bolstering a sustainable aquaculture

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industry, an oyster farm, in the lagoon to the leeward side of the dunes. This has stimulated an economic boost for the town of Bouctouche and introduced an additional point of interest. Fogo Island Inn One of the most widely published projects rooted in Atlantic Canada’s design renewal, the work of the Shorefast Foundation on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, has captured the forgotten quintessence of rural outport life for a global audience. The Fogo Island Inn and its associated artists’ studios are the vision of Zita Cobb, a successful businesswoman, who like many Atlantic Canadians returned home after years abroad to the place she felt most connected. Upon arrival, she found her community struggling, along with hundreds of others, after the collapse of the cod fishery in 1992. Unlike others, though, Cobb saw an opportunity for change, so she founded the Shorefast Foundation with her brothers Tony and Alan as a social enterprise to help revitalize Fogo Island by capitalizing on its singular culture and geography.20 Through the deployment of architecture in response to natural landscape, the project finds success in its interpretation and adaptation of critical regionalism. The foundation of Cobb’s vision is a twenty-nineroom inn perched on the edge of the Black Western Shore, a strikingly rugged volcanic rock landscape battered by tireless Atlantic waves. Newfoundland native and architect Todd Saunders, who operates a practice based in Norway, designed the inn. His mandate: Design a structure that responds to, yet stands distinct from, the surrounding landscape.

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The program needed to accommodate a restaurant, a library, a gallery, a theatre, and a spa, along with four artist-in-residence studios sited in communities around the small island. Long Studio lies across the harbour from the inn, along the trail to Joe Batt’s Point. The long black clapboard studio extends towards the Atlantic, braced on granite and gabbro rock. Farther east in the town of Tilting is Squish Studio. Hidden from the town’s view, the white clapboard structure can only be reached by hiking down Turpins Trail. On arrival, the form of the structure creates a forced perspective of distant Round Head in the Atlantic. Unlike Long Studio and Squish Studio, the third independent installation, Tower Studio, is sited at the base of Shoal Bay. A narrow twoboard-wide walk terminates at a tall, slender black-clad structure nestled amid a landscape of mosses, lichens, and grasses. The fourth studio was constructed in the community of Deep Bay. Located on the edge of the hillside overlooking an inland pond, Bridge Studio hovers lightly over the granite stones at the base of the barrens surrounding the pond. These studios rely on the landscape features, microclimates, and related vistas, capitalizing on their unique setting as the chief inspiration for the distinct character of the respective built forms. The sleek simplicity of each building’s minimalist modern design accentuates the site’s natural beauty through juxtaposition (fig. 7.2). Recognizing and respecting the integral role of powerful landscapes in successful interventions, the design team made concerted efforts to preserve existing vegetation during construction, and complex scaffolding enabled local carpenters to access the build site without disturbing the ground.21

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Fig. 7.2.  The modern buildings at Fogo Island, Newfoundland (seen here, the Squish Studio, 2011), accentuate the surrounding beauty and draw attention to the natural landscape. Source: Diamana Kolarova.

Beyond architectural design, the cumulative success of this project is rooted in local artisanship. Todd Saunders designed the studios, but the construction and detailing were executed with the skills of local carpenters, employing techniques they inherited from previous generations (fig. 7.3). Inside each structure, all furnishings and textiles were inspired and handcrafted by members of the surrounding communities.22 The colourful strip quilts that adorn the beds and the traditional hooked mats showcase local talent and design. This project has created a unique placedbased economy, the sustained operation of which

relies entirely on the skills of Fogo Islanders. All the revenue is being invested back into the community.23 By coupling contemporary design with the ancient landscape, this project has attracted international acclaim through awards and publications. However, its true success has been the revival of Fogo Island’s distinctive culture. The entire community has become involved in showcasing traditional skills. Through craft, local resource harvesting, and a reaffirmed emphasis on connecting with the land as a source of sustenance, Fogo Island Inn has provided an opportunity for renewal. Geo-tourism has strengthened the

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Fig. 7.3.  A minimal line in the landscape, serving as a path on Fogo Island, registers the rock outcrops and vegetative gradations. Source: Diamana Kolarova.

economy, harking back to deep-seated tradition while introducing essential authentic characteristics. Although the inn continues to fill its rooms, providing locals with steady employment, this is a difficult model to replicate. The necessary investment to initiate such a radical transformation, driven by passion, is atypical in rural Atlantic Canada. However, the project demonstrates that Atlantic Canada’s culture can be made profitable and sustainable through creative, thoughtful planning and design. Designers should therefore be inspired by the Fogo Island Inn as an example of what can be built upon

the foundations of a passionate vision, a strong leader, and a committed community. What was formerly a tired, antiquated fishing outport has become a global destination, a place to witness, celebrate, and share a distinct culture shaped by its relationship with the landscape. The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste On Nova Scotia’s northern shore, along the Bay of Fundy’s dramatic coastline, a project of a different sort is progressively taking shape. The Uncertain Centre

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of the Mary Celeste represents an unusual approach to commemorative place making (fig. 7.4), one that holds the potential for community revitalization through the reimagined use of the local landscape. The project, based in a strong critical regionalism, has been ongoing since 2006, evolving organically out of a collaborative effort between the Dalhousie School of Architecture and the community of Spencer’s Island.24 Led by Professor Roger Mullin,25 and built by students alongside local craftspeople, the project is one of a series of workshops conducted each summer through the school of architecture. One of the original instalments in this series is the Ghost Project, the brainchild of Nova Scotia architect Brian MacKay-Lyons (fig. 7.5). Built incrementally over the course of thirteen workshops, the project culminated in an important gathering of international architects and scholars, including Kenneth Frampton, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Glenn Murcutt, who were all interested in the critical role of local architecture, place making, and community in modern design practices.26 With the Mary Celeste workshops, the collaboration has led to the creation of a place that commemorates the town’s history of shipbuilding, but also serves as a gateway and a gathering space. Located at the entrance to town, along a scenic maritime drive, the project emerges from the land as a monument that simultaneously acknowledges the area’s past, present, and future. While other museums and interpretation centres around the region attempt to ground their records and artefacts in quantifiable fact, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste belongs to another tradition: one of storytelling and myths. Spencer’s Island, a small community founded in the

eighteenth century, was an important shipbuilding centre during the period known as the Age of Sail, when wooden sailing vessels dominated the oceans (fig. 7.6). In 1861, the Amazon, later renamed the Mary Celeste, was the first large ship to come out of the town’s shipyard. It later gained notoriety when it was found mysteriously abandoned off the coast of Portugal, with no crew aboard and no signs of what had happened.27 The mystery of the Mary Celeste was fictionalized in a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and has since been integrated into the regional folklore. Pairing the oral traditions of storytelling with physical place making is a classic strategy, yet the origins of this project and the emerging, modern aesthetic qualities it evoked mark a departure from the typical manifestation. Similar to tendencies for progressive variation in oral storytelling as content is passed from one person to the next, biennial additions of new built form to the project continually change, thereby reinterpreting the landscape. With each installation, students have descended on the site, populating the land with stone walls in the form of ships, elevated viewing platforms reminiscent of the widow’s walks found in the surrounding historical houses, and a tower-like beacon that serves as a projection shed for community film nights (fig. 7.7). The resulting array of built form is conceptually grounded in tradition, yet it incorporates the present needs of the community and introduces future possibilities through planned additions of an artist’s residence, a gallery, and teaching spaces. Although community integration and program amenities have yet to be fully developed,28 the tactical nature of the project, with its symbolic gestures on the

Fig. 7.4.  The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste has been a collaborative effort between the Dalhousie School of Architecture and community members from Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia, since 2006. Source: Roger Mullin.

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Fig. 7.5.  Representing an unusual approach to commemorative place making, The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste revitalizes community through the use of the local landscape and its materials. Source: Roger Mullin.

land, already evokes a distinctly Maritime character – one that speaks of resilience and survival (fig. 7.8). The area, much like others described in this chapter, has seen the return of people who had moved away and have now come back to set up locally sourced restaurants, inns, mills, and other small-scale enterprises. The reintegration of community members with those who never left shows a renewed commitment to bring the local heritage into a modern model that espouses a thriving, sustainable place to live. The metaphorical association of the project with the mysterious tale of its namesake is a reminder that the undetermined

future of the region, the town, and the project are all intrinsically tied to its history and folklore (fig.7.9). Culture of Outports ERA Architects and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal have tackled the issue of out-migration in Newfoundland through a program called Culture of Outports. Since the program’s inception in 2010, Philip Evans of ERA has partnered with teams of architecture students from Toronto Metropolitan and Dalhousie Universities, working each year with communities

Fig. 7.6.  Sailcloth registering the wind at The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste. Source: Roger Mullin.

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Fig. 7.7.  Lookout tower at The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste. Source: Roger Mullin.

in Newfoundland and Labrador to identify opportunities, traditions, and characteristics as potential catalysts for rehabilitation through the development of place-based economies.29 The program objectives are to research, learn, work, design, document, publish, and imagine30 – all critical processes in rethinking rural communities in Atlantic Canada. Ultimately, students and community members partner in the construction of an intervention that leverages site-specific opportunities identified during the project. Traditionally, outports were small, fisheries-based coastal communities in Newfoundland – some of the

oldest European settlements in the area. Throughout the colonial era, massive quantities of cod were caught in the surrounding ocean and shipped to Europe. To preserve the fish for haulage across the Atlantic, fisherman heavily salted their catch. The salt extracted all moisture from the cod flesh, extending its shelf life and reducing its volume. This allowed for more fish to be loaded onto each vessel, a boon for the merchants. The salting process would typically take place in an outport community, where the “wet” catch would be salted prior to shipment on flanks adjacent to local fishermen’s stages.31 Outports have been on the front lines of the gradual economic decline and out-migration that resulted from the decline in cod stocks. This project endeavours to counter the slide. In Brigus, the design intervention was constructed on a forgotten lighthouse trail. The bright red viewing deck combined methods of pier and boardwalk construction, calling attention to a piece of local history through strategic intervention. The colour selection references the lighthouse, and the seating along the path invokes a desire for tourists and locals to linger on site, prompting further revitalization of the trail (fig. 7.10). In Port Union, the program led to an intervention at the core of the town centre. Foundations Square was designed as a playground, fire pit, seating area, and boardwalk, to become a gathering place that signifies positive change and the necessity of continued participation to a declining community. Lastly, in Botwood on the Baie Verte Peninsula, a shelter, dubbed “Viewfinder,” was erected on the site of a former weather station. The square wooden structure intentionally frames a singular vista, reminiscent of the

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Fig. 7.8.  Historical traces at The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste. Source: Roger Mullin.

site’s past and a cue to the area’s potential for renewal. Countering lack of identity and placelessness, these projects adopt critical regionalism as a key informant, the final designs making use of local building techniques, sites, and materials.32 Tactical urbanism comes into play here as well, as Culture of Outports also uses the design process to induce community involvement and self-actualization. The program incorporates particular skill sets for fostering income-generating economies. From the outset, community involvement has been imperative to the project’s success. In the initial stages of research, local people contribute to the

students’ analysis through formal and informal meetings and gatherings. Others become involved by hosting students in their homes, giving them a genuine introduction to daily life and culture. It is within such contexts that the rich histories of place are passed down through storytelling. Each of these interventions has proliferated new investment through an unveiling of history as told by the community. Beyond historical reference and responsive design, these initiatives highlight the intrinsic value embedded within united communities. In the professions of planning and design, participatory planning is critical to fostering engagement and pride

Fig. 7.9.  The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste aglow in the evening. Source: Roger Mullin.

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Fig. 7.10.  The bright red lookout deck of the Culture of Outports project initiated in 2010, orchestrated by ERA Architects and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal, lies along a lighthouse trail in Brigus, Newfoundland, and has played a significant role in re-engaging the community. Source: ERA Architects.

of ownership. These interventions stand as testaments to the inherent resilience of outports and as manifestations of their promising futures. In Transit “Small projects can change the world.” – Brian Mackay-Lyons33

In contrast to the other projects in this chapter, In Transit is located in an urban core, harbouring strong ties to

tactical urbanism (fig. 7.11). In the east end of Saint John, New Brunswick, this project by Acre Collective, constructed in 2010, centres on a challenge to the aesthetic of conventional transit infrastructure. Drawing inspiration from the “make-do” mentality ubiquitous in Atlantic Canada, this intervention repurposes the common traffic sign.34 In New Brunswick – known as the “drive-through” province – road signs hold a dominant place in the landscape, their coloured graphics strikingly visible against the grey, often foggy maritime scenery (fig. 7.12).

Fig. 7.11.  In Transit, by Acre Collective, 2010, is located in the east end of Saint John, New Brunswick. Source: Acre Collective.

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Fig. 7.12.  The coloured graphics of the In Transit project stand out against the grey and often foggy maritime scenery. Source: Acre Collective.

In keeping with contemporary roadway planning priorities, New Brunswick’s main highway was designed as a fast, efficient conduit between Quebec and Nova Scotia, cutting through densely forested tracts of land, effectively bypassing most towns and cities. Historically, the Trans-Canada Highway meandered through towns and villages, inviting vacationers to participate in the local culture and economy. However, in response to increasingly choked roadways, the 1980s and 1990s saw a shift in policy regarding highway infrastructure, which resulted in a faster, more direct conduit to the neighbouring provinces.

Visitors destined for Quebec or Nova Scotia now quickly traverse the province, having seen little beyond coniferous forests, highway signs, and the occasional Big Stop travel centre. The ever-present and colourful roadside attractions of the 1970s and 1980s – the Giant Blueberry, Animal Land, and Magnetic Hill – are now far removed from dense traffic, and have fallen into varying states of disrepair. In Transit is an installation consisting of a series of large panels affixed to a massive concrete retaining wall that fronts the city’s transit headquarters. The panels meet to form a distinctive bus stop with ten segments

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land without regard for natural features, sustainable development, or potential regenerative processes.35 With the return of young designers previously displaced from the region, joining forces with a strong base of creative and innovative locals, In Transit hints at a shift towards a new vision for the area, one predicated on a repurposing and reintegration of the old with the new. These designers, including Acre Architects, are actively engaged in using design as a revitalizing force in the city. This effort comes complete with a campaign to reframe Saint John as a “Renaissance City,”36 public art commissions, and funding from the local transit authority and other municipal agencies. Though small in scale, In Transit injects colour and energy into the street, conveys a Maritime sense of humour, and has the power to inspire other local design interventions that counteract more generic influences. Fig. 7.13.  Details of the In Transit project demonstrate both playfulness and practicality. Source: Acre Collective.

Conclusion

cleverly modified into bench seating (fig. 7.13). The retaining wall maintains its purpose, while the installation invigorates the streetscape. Transformed into a quirky twenty-first-century folk art installation, the project disrupts an otherwise generic and mundane space, in a city whose heyday as an industrial centre has passed. For years, as with many Maritime communities, Saint John suffered from the lack of a clear development strategy, which has resulted in the decline of the downtown core. A movement towards suburban housing development and massive big box retail properties has claimed huge swaths of undeveloped

As in other regions of the world, the towns and cities of the Atlantic provinces are vulnerable to the influences of global commercialism. The development of prosaic urban planning – in the form of banal retail outlets, big box stores, endless parking lots, and suburban tract housing – threatens to erase formerly vibrant and complex communities, replacing them with an impoverished, mediocre public realm. The neglect of cultural heritage and the infringement of the generic has the potential to adversely affect the landscape and economy of the East Coast. Furthermore, the effect on these communities is significant, in that the loss of a recognizable culture in one’s surroundings can

The Power of Local in East Coast Landscapes

undermine the potential for emotional and economic investment on a local scale. The continued neglect of natural heritage systems signals a bleak future for the region, a part of Canada already known for its mismanagement of natural resources. Although the repercussions of globalism are widely visible throughout North America, the effect on the landscape in Atlantic Canada has been particularly acute. With a precarious economic situation lingering throughout the region, communities have grown vulnerable and desperate. As a result, community builders are forced to accept second-rate urban design and valueless built form, executed with cheap materials, producing the architectural equivalent of fast fashion. Even areas that have enjoyed a boom from the influx of global industries, such as Moncton, New Brunswick, and St. John’s, Newfoundland, have experienced growth so rapid and ill considered that the character of new construction is in no way related to its context, offering little long-term value to the communities when the bust cycle returns. In his canonical text on critical regionalism, Kenneth Frampton writes: “It is evident that modern development favours the optimum use of earth-moving machinery so as to achieve a totally flat site which is almost regarded as a precondition for the rationalization of construction. Here again, one touches in concrete terms the fundamental opposition between universal civilization and autochthonous culture. The bulldozing of an irregular topography into a flat site is clearly a technocratic gesture which aspires to a condition of absolute placelessness.”37 Fortunately, the projects examined in this chapter all push beyond the imposition of the quick and easy;

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each offers a specialized approach for revitalizing communities and landscapes without resorting to crass development or exploitative resource extraction. Each project employs devices from the past and present – traditions, landscape characteristics, heritage, renewable resources – that can help communities adapt to the volatile ebb and flow of Canada’s resource economy. Design practices in Atlantic Canada have long invoked historical preservation techniques, but they tend to rely on the stereotypical imagery associated with the East Coast to draw tourists. These projects often evoked quaint scenes of Anne of Green Gables or fishing villages, rather than a current picture of life in the coastal region; essentially, a version of the “sentimental regionalism” that Kenneth Frampton has warned against.38 Tradition is an important part of Maritime culture, yet strict adherence to tradition can be stifling. Quoting Octavio Paz, Brian MacKayLyons has said, “Taken alone, tradition stagnates and modernity vaporizes. Taken together, modernity breathes life into tradition, and tradition responds by providing depth and gravity.”39 Progress through design can and should now draw inspiration from established theories like ecological urbanism, critical regionalism, and tactical urbanism, where appreciation of the local becomes a form of response and resistance. As described by Kenneth Frampton – and put into practice by such architects as Brian Mackay-Lyons in Nova Scotia, Todd Saunders in Newfoundland, and Acre Architects in New Brunswick – thoughtful, cultural, heritage-derived design practices offer ways to move forward through a carefully choreographed marriage of the old and the new.

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At varying scales, the professions of landscape architecture, planning, urban design, and architecture can all work to protect and highlight the uniqueness of the local environment and expand beyond the status quo, which is largely generated by the tourism industry. Design theories, with intentions of illuminating and/or enhancing local conditions, can be employed to positive ends, as exemplified in this chapter. Projects such as the Greenwich Day Use Facility and the Irving Eco-Centre/La Dune de Bouctouche use ecological urbanism as an organizational force that offers community-building strategies for Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, while enhancing important ecological functions. Fogo Island Inn and The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste draw on critical regionalism in their curation of traditional and modernist aesthetics, highlighting the rugged coastal beauty of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia as they generate new modes of locally relevant economic activity. Culture of Outports also takes a critical regionalism approach and, with In Transit, engages tactical urbanism methods to make provocative places in Newfoundland and Labrador and in New Brunswick, where local knowledge and vernacular collide to engage community and community building. All of these projects progressively indicate a means of resisting the advancement of the generic developments that threaten the distinctive characteristics and cultural identity of Atlantic Canada. These design strategies can continue to stimulate tourism and preserve communities, while making use of contemporary landscape design practices to promote new layers of meaning and economic viability, where the distinctive cultural characteristics and natural coastal landscape remain as a foundation. The

unfamiliar contrast of contemporary design, alongside an awe-inspiring coastal landscape, has proven to be a plausible design-based solution for the economic revival of rural communities. Although perhaps not a model for all of Atlantic Canada, diversification of industries, with a true understanding of local conditions, needs be considered for the entire region to thrive once again. Without a plan and a vision that move beyond the contradictory goals of extraction or pure preservation, the identity of Atlantic Canada is destined to continue its decline. The projects highlighted in this chapter demonstrate a subtle but critical strain of resistance, by revisiting important historical or physio-geographic characteristics of place, while others provide insight into the cultural attributes of the East Coast. Some show the ways in which landscape can be used to invigorate economies, and others allow selective preservation of site and landscape. As described in Brian Mackay-Lyons’s writing on the role of local architecture, design should be intent on “improving the world rather than using it up.”40 Critical thinking about the intrinsic value of the local is already taking place in Atlantic Canada, but this discourse needs to be encouraged further among designers. The region’s cultural and natural heritage is rooted in the landscape and will continue to support the future of the eastern provinces, which is why landscape architects have an important role. Both urban and rural sites across Atlantic Canada have experienced the benefits of contemporary design thinking, by promoting the hyper-local, and by employing a diverse range of contextually rooted strategies. Sites across the East Coast are seeing the benefits by promoting

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the unique, rather than the generic, as the overriding aesthetic. It is clear that the discourse of landscape is evolving in Atlantic Canada.

NOTES 1 Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997). 2 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), 21. Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre are credited with coining “critical regionalism”; however, several architects are noted for developing the theory. Landscape architects tend to align their thinking with that of Kenneth Frampton, understood via his 1983 text “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” 3 Mohsen Mostafavi, “Why Ecological Urbanism? Why Now?” in Ecological Urbanism, ed. Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), 17. The theory of ecological urbanism was first defined in Mohsen Mostafavi’s 2010 article “Why Ecological Urbanism? Why Now?” and is credited to urban planner Mike Lydon, circa 2010. 4 Mostafavi, Ecological Urbanism, 22. 5 Miguel Ruano, Eco-Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements, 60 Case Studies (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1998). 6 Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia, Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action for Long-Term Change (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2015). 7 Margaret R. Conrad and James K. Hiller, Atlantic Canada: A History (Toronto: Oxford University Press Canada, 2010). 8 Ibid., 145.

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9 Statistics Canada, “The Canadian Population in 2011: Population Counts and Growth,” accessed 20 June 2013, http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement /2011/as-sa/98-310-x/98-310-x2011001-eng.cfm. 10 David Chaundy, “Atlantic Canada’s Economic Outlook: Key Trends and Opportunities,” accessed 20 July 2013, 29, http://www.apcfnc.ca/en/economicdevelop ment/resources/APEC-EconomicOutlook.pdf. 11 Statistics Canada, “Focus on Geography Series, 2011 Census,” accessed 20 June 2013, http://www12 .statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/fogs-spg /select-Geo-Choix.cfm?Lang=Eng&GK=PR. 12 Industry Canada, “Archived – Atlantic Canada – An Economic Overview,” accessed 5 June 2013, https:// www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ich-epi.nsf/eng/02064.html. 13 BDA Landscape Architecture – Site Engineering, “Greenwich Day Use Facility,” accessed 16 April 2015, http://www.bdaltd.ca/greenwich-dunes.html. 14 Claire Campbell, “Lessons of Time, Place, and an Island,” in Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island, ed. Edward MacDonald et al. (Montreal and Charlottetown: McGill-Queen’s University Press and Island Studies Press, 2016), 198. 15 Ibid., 198–9. 16 Jim Sackville, “A River Flows through It,” Landscapes | Paysages 11, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 33. 17 “Kenneth Colin Irving,” Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed 2 August 2018, http://www.thecanadianency clopedia.ca/en/article/kenneth-colin-irving/. 18 Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, “Keeping Business Afloat,” accessed 16 April 2015, http:// www.acoa-apeca.gc.ca/eng/Pages/BouctoucheBay Industries.aspx. 19 Sackville, “A River Flows through It,” 32–3. 20 Shorefast, “Our Projects – Our Approach,” accessed 15 April 2013, http://www.shorefast.org/?page_id =1056. 21 David Craig and Katherine Knight, Strange and Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island, documentary, directed

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24

25 26

27

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by Marcia Connolly and Katherine Knight (Toronto: Sitemedia, 2014; released 2015), film. Fogo Island Inn, “In Between,” accessed 14 February 2014, http://www.fogoislandinn.ca/in-between. Shorefast, “About Us – Shorefast Foundation,” accessed 15 April 2013, http://shorefast.org/about-us /overview/. Roger Mullin, “The Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia, Canada,” Welsh School of Architecture 6 (2010): 69. Ibid., 73–5. The Ghost Freelab projects, including related essays, lectures, and conference, have been published in various publications, including Brian MacKay-Lyons, Local Architecture: Building Place, Craft, and Community, ed. Robert McCarter (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015), and Brian MacKay-Lyons, Ghost: Building an Architectural Vision (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008). Jess Blumberg, “Abandoned Ship – The Mary Celeste. What Really Happened Aboard the Mary Celeste?” Smithsonian, November 2007, accessed 23 March 2017, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history /abandoned-ship-the-mary-celeste-174488104 /?scrlybrkr=&page=1. Roger Mullin, interviewed by Andrea Mantin and Stephane LeBlanc, 22–3 June 2013. Philip Evans, interviewed by Matthew A.J. Brown, 20 October 2014.

30 ERA Architects Inc., “Culture of Outports,” accessed 20 April 2013, http://www.eraarch.ca/topic /erainitiatives/outports/. 31 Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), ix, 157–87. 32 “Culture of Outports,” Communities, accessed 20 April 2013, http://cultureofoutports.com. 33 Thomas Fisher, “Seeing the World Whole,” in Local Architecture, ed. McCarter, 17. 34 Acre Architects, “Acre – Projects – In Transit,” accessed 20 July 2013, http://theacre.ca/2011/03/01 /in-transit-2009/http://theacre.ca/2011/03/01/in -transit-2009/. 35 Beatrice Paez, “Whose Renaissance? Saint John’s Future,” Spacing Atlantic, 17 November 2015, accessed 16 January 2017, http://spacing.ca/atlantic/2015/11/17 /whose-renaissance-saint-john-future/. 36 Ibid. 37 Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism,” 26. 38 Ibid., 20. 39 In an interview, Brian Mackay-Lyons quotes Octavio Paz, from his Nobel lecture, 1990: “I always felt the need to be modern. The person who said this best is Octavio Paz: ‘Taken alone, tradition stagnates and modernity vaporizes. Taken together, modernity breathes life into tradition, and tradition responds by providing depth and gravity.’” 40 Fisher, “Seeing the World Whole,” 15.

CHAPTER EIGHT

L’anarchie resplendissante – Resplendent Anarchy: Towards a Quebec Regionalism Marc Hallé Yannick Roberge

Quebec’s creative expression across a broad range of cultural milieus – from cinema, circus arts, dance, and literature to visual arts, architecture, fashion, and design – manifests a unique, consistently coherent regionalism, embodying the profound transformations that have unfolded across Quebec society since the 1960s. The shift of the French majority, from its antiquated, oppressed margins to the centre of its own modern self-determination, resulted in an unprecedented critical dialogue and urgency to construct a renewed identity that could accurately represent and generate its new social reality. Contradictions underlying this collective leap towards emancipation may be discerned as a remnant of the forces of social cohesion and control that once prevailed. Sensual austerity, a dialectic of progress and tradition, individual desire and social responsibility – these are common themes in the work of the Québécois avant-garde that have been crafted into tangible expression. In this chapter, a review of selected examples from Québécois creative achievement informs a hypothesis about how the formal expression of a specific cultural and historical milieu, isolated in the context of North America, can be observed in contemporary public space making (Hall, chap. 2, this volume). As the reciprocities between culture and design continue to shape one another, landscape architecture is in a position, similar to that of other creative milieus, to participate in the active construction of a contemporary Québécois identity. By mapping the layers that comprise the Québécois

Fig. 8.0.  Esplanade of the Palais de Congrès, Montreal, Quebec, 2002, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés / Photo Jean-François Vézina.

experience, and cross-referencing examples in other fields of creative achievement, a local exploration into landscape architecture articulates an emerging critical regionalism. And just as many of these achievements in other areas have received widespread acclaim beyond local borders, it is curious how the expression of this regionalism in landscape architecture outside Quebec also serves to build and affirm this evolving identity. This exploration into Quebec regionalism does not pursue a conclusive definition about what distinguishes creative output in Quebec. Rather, it is an earnest exploration based on observation and experience by one author of this chapter, who has lived all of his life in Quebec, and the other, who migrated to Quebec from English-speaking Canada. Guided through the perspective lens of landscape architecture, we approached this study as a balance of points of view from within and outside Quebec, in an effort to understand some of the key social qualities that make up the distinct regional expression, and how these are manifested in recent works of landscape architecture.

L’expérience québécoise (1960–2000) Distinguished from the rest of North America by a specific cultural narrative that is relatively consistent across the French-speaking majority, the contemporary Québécois experience stems from a collective defiance and self-determination against economic disadvantage and imposed, arbitrary ecclesiastical power, unfolding across a period that has come to be known as the Quiet Revolution. Beginning in the late 1940s, with the avant-gardist group of artists Les Automatistes and their influential anti-religious and anti-establishment

Towards a Quebec Regionalism

manifesto, Le Refus global (Total Refusal), the unprecedented shift in the forces that underlie Quebec society – from the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s to separatist politics since the 1970s – has established an urgency for a creative dialogue to construct and articulate the emerging social values that compelled a complete transformation towards a renewed contemporary Québécois identity. The popular rejection by the French-speaking majority of the arbitrary spiritual, political, educational, and economic control of the Catholic Church awakened a determination towards collective emancipation and full participation in the project of North American modernity. The migration of rural Québécois to the city not only supplanted steeples with skyscrapers on the skyline of Montreal but also, as the city doubled in population from 1941 to 1971,1 resolutely tipped the balance that predisposed the English as potentates of Montreal in favour of the French (fig. 8.1). Parallels can be drawn with other post-colonial social movements that resulted from the transfer of power to the regional majority, and the subsequent dialogue, defining a renewed social identity in the shadow of the one previously imposed. This discussion gained momentum as once disparate Québécois, now geographically united in the modern metropolis that Montreal was rapidly becoming in the 1960s, gave voice to the emerging phenomenon of contemporary Quebec through narrative arts such as theatre and literature (the seminal works of Michel Tremblay), chansons (the songs of Robert Charlebois and Diane Dufresne), cinema (the films of Gilles Carles, André Forcier, and Denys Arcand), and comedy (as demonstrated by humorist Yvon Deschamps). But in addition to the wilful and euphoric transition towards modernity, how has the emerging contemporary Quebec been materialized

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in visual arts and design? Like the constructivists for the emerging Soviet order, or Tropicalia for a modern Brazil, or Gutai in Japan, or the cultural explosion in post-Franco Spain, has there been a similar aesthetic iconography that embodies this new Quebec culture, and has it managed to shape the culture in return? Le Refus global, authored in 1948 by artist Paul-Émile Borduas and co-signed by fifteen other artists, appealed to the Québécois to break away from the parochial inwardness that had for so long upheld their isolation. This seminal manifesto is recognized as one of the sparks that lit the Quiet Revolution. Of the numerous positions it put forth, three can be linked to a regionally specific approach to creativity. The first is a respectful yet iconoclastic demystification and refamiliarization of Québécois history. The second is a call for full participation in the change and progress unfolding in the world. The third emphasizes an appeal to “not willingly neglect our spiritual side,” recognizing that historical abuses of arbitrary power do not diminish the enduring priorities of community, social justice, and collective responsibility. Even though commitments to social justice were being made elsewhere in Canada concurrent with the dissemination of values that informed the Quiet Revolution, significant differences have prevailed. Federal priorities emphasized individual liberty and multiculturalism, in contrast with the view held by many in Quebec, which highlighted the democratic right for collective self-determination.2 A hypothesis about the aesthetic ramifications of Le Refus global must consider the work of Paul-Émile Borduas. He is credited with richly textured yet austere paintings that confidently assume the power of abstraction to manipulate memory and the subjective weight of the past, expressing optimism for universal

Fig. 8.1.  Montreal’s evolving silhouette. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

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Fig. 8.2.  Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Waterloo, Ontario, 2004, by Saucier et Perrotte Architects. Source: Marc Cramer.

values of freedom and an open society. His later works are characterized by lush, broad, square trowel strokes in black and white, a rich, decadent minimalism that seem to communicate intense contradictions latent in the history of the Québécois experience: indulgence of service through ecclesiastical excess, a sensual monasticism, austerity and ecstasy, and abandoned restraint. The aesthetic manifestations of these extreme contradictions reinforce a dialectic of mystères objectifs (objective enigmas) underlying the dialogue and exploration that culminated in a social identity. In architecture, the decadent minimalism in the works of

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Saucier et Perrotte, with predominantly black, simply articulated textures applied to thoughtful, captivating forms, acquires its intensity as much from intentional restraint as from its flourish (fig. 8.2). In fashion, another expression unfolds in Denis Gagnon’s work, where a similar baroque austerity embodies the inherent contradictions of garments that articulate the impenetrability of armour while harnessing extremes in sensuality and femininity. In film, one such example of outstanding achievement is the celebrated oeuvre of Xavier Dolan, whose repertoire portrays the courage to defiantly assert truths against the hopelessness of constructed social reality. The power of these and other kinds of work by the avant-garde lies in its capacity to transcend the limits of reason by revealing an uncommon humanity. Extending this notion to the design of public space, where a characteristic Quebec approach confidently asserts the power of design, it is noteworthy because the public domain can be such a charged terrain, oscillating between polarized entitlements and expectations, easily surrendering to politicized fear, contextual inertia, and the risk of expediently placating the lowest common denominator by acquiescing to the status quo. “Le passé dut être accepté avec la naissance, il ne saurait être sacré. Nous sommes toujours quitte envers lui.”3 The past is the birthplace of the future, it is far from sacred. We owe it nothing. – Le Refus global

Despite indictments against the constraints imposed on Québécois society before the Quiet Revolution,

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references to the past are not overshadowed by resentment. A delicate tenderness is implied in the relationship of the Québécois with their history, which still survives as a collective memory that avoids indulgence in nostalgia. This intuitive freedom breathes a vital relevance that becomes meaningful to contemporary attitudes. Landscape architect Claude Cormier engages this intuitive approach to history through careful mapping that maintains factual integrity while creatively manifesting the palimpsest of place for contemporary perspectives by incorporating optimism and a sacred irreverence. Such creative liberties towards history can be seen in two recent schemes in Montreal. The first is the master plan and restoration of Square Dorchester, one of the city’s pre-eminent public spaces, constructed in 1876 in the centre of what was once the affluent Golden Square Mile. Established over a cemetery that still contains the remains of thousands of corpses, this Victorian square was revitalized after decades of neglect. The latent presence of the graves became embedded into the final form of the park’s restoration, tangibly expressed by the random distribution of black cross motifs in coarse Peribonka granite, reminiscent of the cross symbols that mark cemeteries on maps, inlaid across the granite pavers of the restored walkways. This subtle reference, far from arbitrary, activates an invisible layer of history into a living archaeology that frames the park’s contemporary narrative (fig. 8.3). The latest completed phase of the Square Dorchester revitalization is the restoration of the Victorian diagonal pathways, which were truncated in the 1950s by the construction of an underground parking garage below the park. The main paths that link to the park entrances nearest rue Ste-Catherine were interrupted by two

Fig. 8.3.  Crosses at Square Dorchester, Montreal, 2010, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

access ramps descending to the garage, eroding the integrity of the park and the singularity of the space. Two Venetian-style arched bridges now lift pedestrians over these ramps, restoring the pathways’ diagonals and providing a vantage over the park and the surrounding architecture. The centrepiece is a ten-metre custom-cast fountain in verdigris copper. This equisetum-inspired colossus maintains a classical integrity when viewed in full three-dimensional relief from the park. The opposite side, however, is disrupted by a street that required the fountain to be sliced, which resulted in a contemporary, two-dimensional silhouetted alter ego facing the park. Embellishing the sliced volume, a perched pileated woodpecker playfully reminds visitors of an enduring, transcendent, and infinite nature. (figs. 8.4 and 8.5).

Fig. 8.4.  Sliced fountain at Square Dorchester, Montreal, 2019, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

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Fig. 8.5.  Nature endures at Square Dorchester, Montreal, 2019, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

Another reinterpretation of historical architecture is Cormier’s unbuilt proposal to create a contemporary vestige in the revitalized Place d’Armes, at the heart of Old Montreal. The main architectural signature is the monumental façade of Notre-Dame Basilica, constructed between 1824 and 1829. An earlier church, one of the first in North America when it was built in 1672, was located in the centre of rue Notre-Dame, which passes through Place d’Armes. This was once the Chemin du Roy, the main route that connected the French settlements bordering the St. Lawrence River. The original cross atop the church steeple was intended to be seen from great distances along the central axis of the chemin. Today the traces of the old church are marked by a granite outline over the early foundations, mainly visible from the upper floors of the surrounding buildings. Cormier’s proposal aims to bring this important historical, site-specific memory into the tangible present by suspending a delicate illuminated cross at the precise location of the original, its quiet daytime presence to be transformed when illuminated at night. Similar to the city’s iconic cross, atop Frederick Law Olmsted’s Parc de Mont-Royal (Cooke, chap. 14, this volume), and other illuminated crosses devotionally erected throughout Quebec before the Quiet Revolution, the cross at Place d’Armes would incorporate a contemporary gesture, embodying a key moment of the region’s history (fig. 8.6). This free play with memory accommodates a creative freedom in fusing the historical with the contemporary. The Blue Stick Garden, also by Claude Cormier, was first installed at the International Garden Festival at the Jardins de Métis in Gaspésie in 2000. The piece mixes site-specific icons from the existing gardens into

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a quintessentially modern installation. The form and structure of the Blue Stick Garden are taken from the historical English border garden, which Elsie Reford, the founder of the Métis estate, adapted for her property in the early twentieth century. The axis passes through a setback abstraction of the English border garden, where shorter plants along the pathway gradually transition to taller ones at the back and outside edges. The other icon of the Jardins des Métis is the Himalayan blue poppy, which Reford successfully adapted to the microclimate of her estate. The camaïeu of the poppy was scanned, then translated into pickets that pixelate this English garden antecedent with geometric precision, while maintaining an organic looseness that is resolutely perceptible to twenty-first-century audiences (fig. 8.7). The orange hue taken from the poppy’s centre is applied to the fourth face of each rectangular stick, creating a sudden optic art effect, with the chromatic interplay between orange and blue on the exit from the garden compressing the experience in four dimensions. The sweeping, blooming sequence typically seen across an entire season is here reduced to a single moment through the active engagement and movement of the viewer. “Il suffit de dégager d’hier les nécessités d’aujourd’hui. Au meilleur demain ne sera que la conséquence imprévisible du présent.”4 The present will inevitably give way to the future. We need not worry about the future until we happen upon it. – Le Refus global Fig. 8.6.  Place d’Armes, historical plan and view with suspended cross, Montreal. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

Another important quality of the Québécois experience that can be perceived in an approach to

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Fig. 8.7.  Pixelated poppy and garden, first installed at the International Garden Festival at the Jardins de Métis in 2000, here at Hestercombe Gardens, Taunton, England, in 2004 by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

design has been the openness and euphoric optimism towards full participation in the project of modernity, particularly throughout the 1960s. The lifestyle of American modernity was embraced as the vehicle by which emancipation would be achieved. An almost naïve leap into the promise of modernity was rooted in the stunning success of the Expo 67 world exposition (Herrington, chap. 13, this volume) in Montreal (fig. 8.8). Unimaginable feats of design and construction, still captivating today for their audacity and exuberance, demonstrated the creative potential

that modernity could deliver in Quebec. Expo 67 was a shock infusion against the lingering memory of the past, an exercise in memory and myth making for a secular future, reinforced through dazzling modern form and international validation. This initial expression of modernity at a mass scale cultivated an enduring fearlessness of modern form. Two examples of recent work that reflect this seismic shift in Québécois identity have come from Montreal-based architecture firm Daoust Lestage: the revitalizations of the Quartier International, beginning in 2000, and the Quartier des Spectacles in 2009 (figs. 8.9 and 8.10). These two significant projects embrace an unapologetic modernism and an optimism for invention, without being subjugated to historical reference or contextualism. In the Quartier International, both Place Riopelle and Square Victoria communicate a modern monumentality, made human through scale, vegetation, and effects to enhance the experience. The two signature public spaces and newly developed streetscapes do not respond directly to their edge conditions or history. Rather, they collectively guide the development of a new on-site character, defining the transformation of this district from an open-trench expressway to infill opportunities of an emerging finance and business district. Square Victoria spans two blocks, united by a shallow linear splash fountain finely detailed in cut black granite. The sober forms in rich materials aligned along the fountain axis create an austere space replete with tactile expression, from the crafted details in stone and wood to the capricious splash of the water. The same material austerity is used at Place Riopelle, the other major public space in this urban

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Fig. 8.8.  Expo 67, Montreal. Source: Bill Dutfield ([email protected]).

design ensemble. Here, however, there is a looser interplay in forms, as seen with the shallow circular basin and the richly varied bosque of hardwood trees planted over the buried expressway in the middle of the city, which combine to establish a more organic character. La Joute, the sculpture-fountain by Jean-Paul Riopelle commissioned for the 1976 Olympic Games, is the park’s showstopper. This piece exaggerates the experience of duplicity between the rich yet sober mood of the space during the daytime and the highly theatrical setting and ephemeral intoxication of fire, water, and all-engulfing mist for the benefit of soirée pedestrians at night. The contradiction between cool

material and formal austerity is transformed into a seductive lure that appeals to mystery and desire, demonstrating a comfort with modern form and an ability to render it human through scale and the use of universal phenomena. Quartier des Spectacles, a major revitalization in the Place des Arts district that plays host to the city’s most venerable festivals, is another example of formal and material austerity as a backdrop for phenomena and tactile interaction. A series of three interlinked outdoor performance plazas (Place des Festivals, La Promenade des Artistes, and Le Parterre), populated with starkly crafted black and white granite pavers,

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Fig. 8.9.  A full-capacity event at Place des Festivals, Quartier des Spectacles, 2009, Montreal, by Daoust Lestage. Source: Daoust Lestage.

are applauded for their simultaneous exuberance and restraint. Oversized skewed light masts of white metal hover over each space, ridiculously monumental yet absurdly rational, asserting a singular identity overhead when the ground plane is inundated with crowds. Breaking through the gigantic scale and cool palette is a playfulness that – when not defined by the program and festivities – is produced by 235 interactive water fountains, choreographed with light in real time throughout the 6,100 square metres of the largest event space, Place des Festivals. The second space, La Promenade des Artistes, when not used for festivals, hosts programmed installations, including the immensely popular Les Balançoires (The

Fig. 8.10.  Fountain at Quartier des Spectacles, 2009, Montreal, by Daoust Lestage. Source: Daoust Lestage.

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Swings), by artists Daily Tous les Jours (more on them later). In addition to the plazas and streetscape that comprise the Quartier des Spectacles revitalization, a light installation called the Luminous Pathway shines red spotlights on the sidewalks adjacent to theatres and concert halls scattered across the quartier. As a reference to the area’s having once been a red light district, it provides another example of the creative deployment of collective memory to construct an expression of history (figs. 8.11 and 8.12). “Par delà le christianisme nous touchons la brûlante fraternité humaine dont il est devenu la porte fermée.”5 We passed beyond Christianity to touch the burning brotherhood of man to which religion had barred the door. – Le Refus global

The precedent of structured social responsibility in the Québécois experience influences how public space is designed and used. This stems from a conviction that individual responsibility is a requisite for collective freedoms. The combined result of these principles acknowledges the virtues of anarchy, dissent, secularism, and a resistance to conventional morality, opening up a social order of permissiveness, which elsewhere in North America could be regarded as debauchery. Des consciences s’éclairent au contact vivifiant des poètes maudits: ces hommes qui, sans être monstres, osent exprimer haut et net ce que les plus malheureux d’entre-nous étouffent tout bas dans la honte de soi et la terreur d’être engloutis vivants.6 Our minds were energized by the poètes maudites, who, far from being monsters of evil, dared to give loud and clear

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expression to feelings that the most wretched among us had always shamefully repressed for fear of being swallowed alive. – Le Refus global

The resulting liberal attitudes have profoundly impacted the scales of social tolerance, manifested by a laissez-faire attitude about social interaction and use in the public realm. Embodied by design, these qualities may reveal distinctive form in addition to culturally relevant patterns of use and occupation in the public space. There is an inherent contradiction between the desire for freedom and the demands of society. Where modernism is valued as a vehicle for individual freedom, which is also true in Quebec, there is also a social legacy of collective responsibility that pervades the contemporary Québécois consciousness. From the mainstream appeal of co-operative banking, to government pledges of funding for the public realm, and the 2012 student demonstrations that produced daily “casserole” protests by hundreds of thousands of citizens to defend public funding commitments for higher education, a continuing evolution of collective memory endures from a socially oriented congregation of the collective past. After the ordeal of arbitrary power and imposed morality over past generations, there has arisen a sensitivity towards freedom and secularism, which depend on public tolerance. Dissent is valued for its positive role in safeguarding freedom. Part of this social identity can be hypothesized as stemming from the isolated geography of the French majority within a continent dominated by anglophones, as well as the early French settlement patterns along the St. Lawrence. The river has been perceived as the

Fig. 8.11.  Les Balançoires, Montreal, 2011, by Daily Tous les Jours. Source: Olivier Blouin/Daily Tous les Jours.

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Fig. 8.12.  Luminous Pathway, Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal, 2006. Source: Martine Doyon (available through Quartier des Spectacles, www.quartierdesspectacles.com).

common denominator of the French-Canadian population, where seigneurial plots of land were divided to equalize access to the shore. Within a forbidding climate and restrictive geography, the St. Lawrence is a symbol of a communal habitation. The inhabited terrain frequently portrayed the natural landscape as an intensely social space, in contrast to the historical convention of representation in English Canada upheld by such artists as the Group of Seven, who focused more on sublime, unspoiled nature. The paintings of Cornelius Krieghoff show picturesque settings in rural Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century, with various

forms of social activity. This social and cultural priority over natural representation in landscape painting is continued by the more contemporary expression of Jean-Paul Lemieux, whose work often juxtaposes the austerity of the landscape with an intensity of human presence. This is true for his 1968 work L’Adieu (The Farewell), where the subtle yet touching affection between the two figures becomes the focus, with the sweeping winter panorama serving as a backdrop. The social interaction is what charges the artworks. Mastery of the picturesque plays second to the representation of active social engagement. From these,

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it can be surmised that a Québécois appreciation of landscape is one that prioritizes the social intertwined with the natural, translating into a value for social sustainability in the public realm. One project that manifests this hypothesis is Promenade Samuel de Champlain in Quebec City (fig. 8.13), another undertaking of Daoust Lestage. The St. Lawrence, emblematic as a seminal starting point for the Québécois, offered little direct pedestrian access within the city. To the south, the Promenade Samuel de Champlain, a 2.5-kilometre stretch of shoreline between the Quebec Bridge and the old city, unfolds as a linear park across a series of diverse vignettes, unified by elements that pass along and through, such as the river’s constant presence, the pedestrian and cyclist promenade, and the street. The feat of Promenade Samuel de Champlain, in addition to its design, is its popular appeal. Sandwiched between the river and a high escarpment, the location is relatively difficult to access from the rest of the city. Despite this, it has been appropriated by local residents as a meaningful setting, in contrast to the historical cliché of Quebec City as a stage set for tourists more than for the values of its own citizens. And, as with the other work by Daoust Lestage described earlier, there is a courageously modern deployment of form and concept that does not bend to context, creating a space that is neither natural nor urban, but rather a curated experience of small, civilized interventions, from the small fountain and mist fields in the Station des Quais to an array of sculpture and art follies, observation stations, and customized furnishings. Similar to landscape paintings in Quebec, the value of this space appears to be largely expressed through its social activation. There

Fig. 8.13.  Quai des flots, promenade Samuel-De Champlain, Quebec City, 2008, by Daoust Lestage. Source: Daoust Lestage.

is no attempt to reconcile the naturalized face of the escarpment through to the shore of the river. This is a decisively human-made gesture that emphasizes culture and the attitudes of the society that its serves. Daoust Lestage continues this narrative for the design of Phase 3 of the Promenade, an additional 2.5 kilometres of riverfront set to be completed at the end of 2023, and which will include a grand shoreline swimming pool and an urban beach. This will continue to activate an intense social dynamic and reinforce a cultural landscape as foreground to the iconic St. Lawrence backdrop that surrounds Quebec City. Similarly, the Montreal-based landscape architecture practice NIPpaysage intertwines social experience with ecological intervention in its 2017 work at the Grand Quai du Port de Montreal (Alexandra Pier). The restoration project upgrades capabilities for cruise ships,

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Fig. 8.14.  Loading dock area of Montreal’s Espace GO, by En Masse. Source: En Masse.

while supporting constructed ecologies and providing a waterside destination for Montreal’s urbanites.7 The social orientation of public space can also extend to those who create it. The strongly held values of Quebec-style social democracy are expressed through collective art groups working in the public realm. One example is the street art collective En Masse (meaning “as a whole” or “all together”), a collaborative drawing project with nearly 170 artists creating spontaneous murals that demonstrate the monumentality achieved by many hands, through works typically executed in black and white (fig. 8.14). Another is Daily Tous les Jours, who created Les Balançoires, described earlier

at the Quartier des Spectacles, along with Memorama at the Boules Roses (Pink Balls) installation by Claude Cormier et Associés, in the gay village of Montreal in 2012 (fig. 8.15). Memorama involved several perched platforms throughout the Boules Roses installation, including two staircases that lifted visitors above the river of pink balls suspended over rue Ste. Catherine. People were encouraged to push a switch and have their photo snapped and uploaded to the Memorama website. A public version of the selfie, the accompanying website consists of tens of thousands of selfies taken over the entire summer season and available for download. This inventory adds a curious “hyperlink”

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Fig. 8.15.  Pink Balls, by Claude Cormier et Associés, and Memorama, by Daily Tous les Jours, 2011, Montreal. Source: Daily Tous les Jours/Aires Libres.

layer of public use that cultivates a virtual public portrait from the landscape, activated through the engagement of local residents and visitors. Boules Roses (Pink Balls), an annual summer installation started in 2011 and funded by the business improvement association for the gay village, is considered to have prompted a gradual improvement and revitalization of the area. Composed of thousands of strands of pink balls suspended over one kilometre of rue Ste. Catherine, Boules Roses created a moment of phenomenon and provided a common denominator that united the pedestrians ambling below. Through colour and canopy, its coherent consistency and identity created a pleasure-filled distraction for the diversity of individuals occupying the street. In 2017, a polychromatic adaptation of Boules Roses, named

18 Shades of Gay, transformed the piece from hues of pink to eighteen shades of the rainbow flag (fig. 8.16). This sort of visual preoccupation is one tool of social tolerance that saturates the senses and augments visual euphoria, provoking an unexpected experience of freedom and comfort that had not previously prevailed on this stretch of rue Ste. Catherine. It is this sort of public intimacy in shared public space that Quebec designers implicitly bring to their projects outside Quebec, as for example with the urban beaches in Toronto. The first was HtO Park and urban beach, by Claude Cormier with Janet Rosenberg and Studio, on the west side of the central waterfront (Roche, chap. 11, this volume). The inspiration behind the transformation of this post-industrial pier was the Seurat painting L’Après-midi à la Grande-Jatte, which depicts all ages, classes, and ethnicities of Parisian society coexisting within close proximity in a public park setting. The magic of this public moment is activated through the universal appeal of the shore and horizon. The subjects’ pleasure-filled distraction takes their gaze off one another and enables a freedom of individual occupation within the crowd. The same strategy was used at Cormier’s Sugar Beach (Roche, chap. 11, this volume) at the east end of Toronto’s central waterfront, where the site’s unique urban, harbour, and industrial contexts are amplified to engage the public and direct the gaze to accommodate a level of public tolerance for individual expression and behaviour (fig. 8.17). This embodies a perceived value and pleasure in dissent, in order to escape the hegemonic forces of social control, for which public spaces are critical.8 To emphasize regional priorities in public space, with respect to Sugar Beach specifically, Toronto

Fig. 8.16.  18 Shades of Gay, 2017, Montreal, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Jean-Michel Seminaro.

Fig. 8.17.  Sugar Beach, 2010, Toronto, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Nicola Betts.

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architecture critic Christopher Hume in Metropolis magazine writes: With its cringe-worthy colonial history and muddy provincial past, Toronto is not a city accustomed to the sweet pleasures of inhabitable public space and, in this case, of incongruity. Now its denizens bask in it. The tiny beach, which faces a huge sugar refinery, turns visitors into audience members in the theater of industry unfolding across the slip … In a city that has long taken pride in the paved indifference of its public realm, Sugar Beach is all the more remarkable. No benches on Toronto streets (they would only make us loiterers). Prettiness must also be distrusted, elegance eschewed … But Sugar Beach raises the stakes, replacing civic rectitude with hedonistic individualism. Little wonder Torontonians find it irresistible. It speaks of human desire. It knows the difference between what we want and what we think we should want. It’s not there to make us better citizens or prove a point; its rationale is the logic of pleasure. It’s neither good for us nor bad; it exists to be enjoyed.9

Creating places to safely accommodate the possibilities for individual transgressions reduces the need for external programming to breathe life into a space. This comes from a tradition that can be experienced in the shared public spaces of Quebec, which are not so reliant on centralized over-programming for their success. There is a setting and a structure (such as legal permission to consume alcohol in public space) that optimistically takes for granted individual responsibility, allowing and even encouraging unlimited spontaneity of use.

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The ramifications of Le Refus global’s influence on Quebec culture have extended to design through an iconoclastic and impressionistic view of history, an embrace of modernism as a vehicle for emancipation, and a force of social democracy that upholds individual freedoms through collective responsibility. As for how design can influence culture in return, the insights derived from these attitudes are captured by the powerful closing words to the Refus global manifesto: “Nous poursuivrons dans la joie notre sauvage besoin de liberation”10 – Towards the joyous fulfilment of our wild need for freedom. The notion of individual responsibility as a requisite for collective freedoms that will endure (and vice versa) may be universal in principle, but not necessarily in practice. The logic of pleasure, the universal phenomenon of desire, is a common thread throughout the projects described above, one that has the power to transcend the differences between individuals. The pursuit of joyous fulfilment through the creation of a commons that is created simply to be enjoyed addresses this primordial need for freedom, while establishing a vital infrastructure for social connectivity. The conditions that sparked a generation of transformation in Quebec in the 1960s and 1970s continue to be witnessed in other rising emancipation movements today – Canada’s First Nations for instance – where subjectivity, creativity, and even design can similarly become powerful tools of the revolution. Embedding this universal human denominator into the design of public space cultivates possibilities for encounter and intersectionality with the other, which in turn shapes the values of civic life and culture as they evolve in the face of inevitable change.

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NOTES 1 Jane Jacobs, The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2011), 12–14. 2 Peter Gossage and J.I. Little, An Illustrated History of Quebec – Tradition and Modernity (Toronto: Oxford ­University Press Canada, 2012), 259. 3 Paul-Émile Borduas, Le Refus global, La Bibliothèque électronique du Québec, vol. 93, no. 1, 26 (1948): 20. The tile of this chapter was inspired by the use of the term “l’anarchie resplendissante” from this manifesto. 4 Ibid., 20–1.

5 Ibid., 9. 6 Ibid., 8. 7 NIPpaysage, “The Port of Montreal’s Grand Quay” projects, accessed 10 June 2019, http://nippaysage .ca/en/project75-alexandra-pier.html. 8 John Beardsley, “Conflict and Erosion: The Contemporary Public Life of Large Parks,” in Large Parks, ed. Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 199–213. 9 Christopher Hume, “Urban Characters: Toronto, ON, Parkettes,” Metropolis magazine, July–August 2013, accessed 2 September 2013, http://www.metropolismag .com/July-August-2013/Urban Characters. 10 Borduas, Le Refus global, 8.

CHAPTER NINE

Wide Open Space: Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture Karen Wilson Baptist

… You don’t know if the horizon marks the end of earth and sky or their beginning, or if one rises from the other’s death like luminescent bees lifting from a badger’s shallow skull. Still, you try to get there. Every year, you’re convinced you’re closer than you were before. – Lorna Crozier1

The Great Plains grasslands form the heart of the North American continent, a massive biome covering 3.5 million square kilometres.2 Once a complex, integrated ecosystem, the prairie is now a productive landscape, its native flora and fauna extirpated, the First Peoples yoked to reservation life, and once wide open spaces sliced into the mile-by-mile sections of the Dominion Land Survey. “True” prairie has all but disappeared from this region. Of the Northern Tall Grasslands, for example, an eco-region once indigenous to Manitoba, less than one per cent remains.3 The prairie is also a terrain of innate memory; one might recall road trips to the family farm, and a small freckled arm tracing the passing power line poles in the hot summer air. Another equally vivid prairie endures through the literary imagination of such writers as Margaret Laurence,4 Frederick Philip Grove,5 and Wallace Stegner.6 What is the meaning of “prairie” for contemporary landscape architecture? One cannot know without being there, without being phenomenologically present to landscape. Distinct among research methodologies, phenomenology privileges the researcher’s presence within the lived experience of landscape.7 In

Fig. 9.0.  Waterfront Drive, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2004, by Scatliff Miller Murray. Source: Scatliff Miller Murray.

a phenomenological inquiry, there is no third-person separation between self and landscape; rather, there is a coming together, a merger of prairie flesh and human being.8 As Maurice Merleau-Ponty states, “I already live in the landscape.”9 To uncover the meaning of prairie for landscape architecture, one must dwell as Heidegger10 intended, within prairie, to become open to the fullness of a region that is “blue right down to the ground.”11 This chapter chronicles a two-week research expedition across the Canadian prairie. The ambition of the telling is, in a quixotic sense, to discern the meaning of prairie for contemporary landscape architecture (fig. 9.1).

Introduction The drouth of the 1930s suggested not only that a large part of the semi-arid Plains country was over-populated, but that those who continue to live there are probably doomed to a lower standard of living than most parts of the country enjoy. – Wallace Stegner12

This inquiry is born of the desire to understand the meaning of prairie for landscape architects. To do so, one might begin by pondering what prairie is. French fur traders, following their initial encounters with the inner continental plains, struggled to find an appropriate descriptor.13 The nomenclature resulted in the name “prairie,” which in its original Old French, praerie, described a meadow.14 The notion of this endless prairie being captured by the name “meadow,” a bounded landscape, serves as a chilling premonition of the eventual fate of the prairie – a land divided, its

Fig. 9.1.  The search for prairie, in Allan, Saskatchewan, 2013. Source: Karen Wilson Baptist.

Fig. 9.2.  Pre-colonization range of the grasslands of the North American prairie. Source: Michelle Tustin, 2015, adapted from extent of the pre-European tall grass, mixed grass, and short grass prairies on the North American Great Plains, USGS, 2006, http:// www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/counprof/usa/usa.html.

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beings hunted and starved out, its fate as an extirpated ecology all but lost in a mere two hundred years (fig. 9.2). For many, the prairie was once an innate terrain. The nations of the Blackfoot, Plains Cree, Saulteaux, and Sioux, the trappers, wolfers, whisky tradesmen, redcoats, speculators, railroaders, and men of China who lost their lives building the railways, and settlers who imported old-country names to a new landscape – Holland, Bruxelles, Balder, Orkney, Colonsay – thus forever linked disparate geographies. Engineers arrived to leash the rivers and bring water to an arid land, farmers, ranchers and merchants, hunters of upland game and ungulates, surveyors, miners, geologists, oil barons, and agri-business managers. My own awakening to prairie occurred just north of the town of Deloraine, Manitoba, where my grandmother and her eight brothers and sisters were raised. As a young girl, my mother was sent here each summer from the city to labour on the farm, and in turn she brought her children here. For us, however, summers on the farm were an unfettered experience; children were turned loose in the morning, returning only when summoned by the ringing of the dinner bell. There were kittens to discover in the hayloft, seldom-ridden horses to tame, cow-pies to overturn, magpie nests in the willows – a free-range childhood where only the dugout and the slough were verboten (figs. 9.3 and 9.4). Prairie memory is a palimpsest. Layers of occupation leave subtle traces on the land. Cart trails scar the landscape, and the cellar depressions of settlers’ homesteads leave shallow graves in fields of grass. The prairie yields these faint remains to the educated eye, and yet the landscape itself, the complex ecological systems of what was once a vast network of intertwined beings, is all but exterminated – grasslands furrowed by the plough, bison slaughtered by the million, migratory people entombed

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Fig. 9.3.  Prairie origins: The farmhouse of the author’s great-grandparents, in Deloraine, Manitoba. Source: Collection of Karen Wilson Baptist.

Fig. 9.4.  Prairie origins: The author’s mother at the Cassils’ farm, in Deloraine, Manitoba. Source: Collection of Karen ­Wilson Baptist.

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in reservations. And what of the smaller beings, the birds and insects so essential to the cycles of prairie life? Gone before we acknowledged their presence or understood their role in the prairie ecology. The endangerments continue, as abandoned homesteads and shelterbelts are bulldozed to make way for industrial-scale agricultural production, endangering the creatures that adapted to the homesteaders’ prairie. What prairie may landscape architects draw upon on in their makings: the geomorphic underbelly, the meanders of a glacial riverbed, the exterminated ecological past, the migratory landscape of the First Peoples, the grid and the homestead, the contemporary industrial farmscape, the unceasing sprawl of the prairie city, a tuft of prairie grass? Are all interpretations of prairie doomed to become a pastiche, a sentimental gesture? In discussing the need for a critical regionalism, Kenneth Frampton condemns the banality of placelessness, the planar topographic condition that heralds the ubiquitous development of contemporary suburbs on the prairie.15 Indeed, many people incorrectly identify the prairie with flatness, and in turn condemn such lack of topography as ordinary and boring.16 In many regions, the prairie is horizontal, but it is neither dull nor commonplace. The prairie I experienced is sweeping and endless, subtle in elegance and beauty, awe inspiring, terrible, and sublime. On the prairie, you are exposed to wind and earth and sky; you might think yourself insignificant within its scale, or integral within a planar infinity. A vague terrain sets the site for my field investigation: south towards the Missouri Coteau, north to the Great Sand Hills, west to the fescue foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and back east to the Tall Grass Prairie, and in between, the wild and the cultivated, a landscape

designed by nature, by humankind and machine (North, chap. 6, this volume), destroyed by accident and by deliberation. In Outside Lies Magic, John Stilgoe reminds us,17 the revelations of a phenomenological inquiry are aleatoric and thus cannot be predicted.

Methods I know, faces can be deceiving. Try the eyes. Focus on them, and ask the question again. – Warren Cariou18

A phenomenological inquiry is driven by a desire to understand the patterns and meaning of human experience within a particular context.19 While phenomenology is both a philosophy and a method,20 practising phenomenology does not entail a slavish adherence to a set of rules and methods; rather, phenomenology is, as Merleau-Ponty states, “a manner or style of thinking.”21 Contemporary phenomenologists have a strong footing in such fields as education and the health sciences, where an understanding of lived experience supplements the hegemony of quantitative research in these fields.22 Phenomenological approaches that explore the lived experience of people and landscape are perhaps of more direct relevance to landscape architects.23 In cultural geography, for example, phenomenological approaches to landscape are mutually inclusive of the presence of researcher and of landscape.24 Notions of corporeality, landscape practices, and performance within these inquiries emphasize the “direct, bodily contact with, and experience of landscape.”25 Our bodies are epistemological instruments attuned to the revelatory aspects

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of landscape experience – whether that environment is located within “natural” settings, a cultured or cultivated landscape, or the built form. Our being within landscape is ontological: “My body is a thing amongst things, it is caught in the fabric of the world.”26 Phenomenological approaches to landscape are an important means of shifting from perceptions of landscape as object, “a measurable, knowable, predictable world outside the self,” to landscape as lived, “a field of action in which the human observer participates, in which there is continual reciprocal exchange between person and world.”27 The shift from landscape as scene to landscape as dwelling implicates “a vision of nature and environment as active forces and participants in the unfolding of life, as both agents of change and that which is change – as simultaneously both the object and subject of dwelling.”28 Phenomenologists seek to describe the meaning of experiences as they are lived, in the context where they occur. All representations of landscape, even those born of phenomenological intent, are reductive activities. Equally, phenomenological representations are generative, eidetic, intentionally vivid, rich descriptions that strive to invoke experiences as they represent them. For Max van Manen, all phenomenological inquiries touch, to varying degrees, upon four existential themes fundamental to all human experience, temporality, corporeality, relationality, and spatiality.29 Additionally, phenomenological data may reveal a series of emergent or essential themes that appear indigenous to the phenomenon under study.30 While these themes are clearly subjective readings of the data that materialize in an aleatorical sense, they are a means of bracketing the data, providing a critical distance and yet “unit[ing] us more closely with what we know.”31 The themes are

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gravitational, attracting aspects of the data towards key concepts and aiding navigation throughout the phenomenological representation. Themes are intentionally generative; while they may act as expressions of the meaning or significance of the data for the researcher, they may also provide an entry point in the representational form where others may derive understanding. There is a desire in phenomenological representation, as Elizabeth K. Meyer notes, to “give rise to collective aesthetic experiences.”32 One can only ever work towards a phenomenology, for by its very nature a phenomenological inquiry is emergent, a “weak ontology” directing individuals towards an “ontological imaginary” of shifting possibilities.33

Researcher Presence, or It All Begins with Thoreau In the encounter with landscape, and with place through landscape, we do not merely encounter something apart from ourselves, but rather we come into contact with the place in and through which we ourselves come into being. – Jeff Malpas34 Distance: 0 kilometres. Blue skies herald good tidings for the beginning of a prairie adventure.35

In his playful “A Letter to Thoreau,” Edward O. Wilson pens, “Your words invite familiarity and make little sense otherwise. How else to interpret your insistent use of the first personal pronoun? I wrote this account, you say, here are my deepest thoughts, and no third person placed between us could ever be

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so well represented.”36 From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Henry David Thoreau37 to Aldo Leopold38 to John Brinckerhoff Jackson,39 “I” the writer, scribing in place, as a means to know place, has provided inspiration for landscape architects. Similarly, many students of landscape architecture arrive in studio settings with a passion for landscape born within the innate terrain of their own becoming. Something is cultivated within the individual when one feels in place, divisions between self and landscape blur, and a sense of wholeness is experienced. “And through living in it, the landscape becomes a part of us, just as we are a part of it.”40

values, and personal interests about their research topic and process.”45 Although born in the subjective gaze of the one, a phenomenological inquiry is directed towards distilling meaning and relevance for a particular body of constituents. In this, phenomenological research is both existential – directed towards making meaning – and hermeneutic – an interpretation of a given lived experience.46 Distance: 500.9 kilometres. As the landscape rolls by the vehicle windows, I reflect on time spent in Deloraine, and memories of family vacations and faces long forgotten tumble into my mind. The dramatic landscape of Turtle Mountain has stilled to a gentle, undulating topography as we advance towards

Distance: 384 kilometres. Camping in the unserviced

Saskatchewan. Later, on the crest of a hill, a roadside memorial

campground at Adams Lake (Turtle Mountain). The trees

is passed – petroform initials in red and white cobble. At Bi-

are not very advanced – verdant little leaves on the poplar

enfait, an industrial prairie, stripped and mined for coal, huge

and aspen glimmer overhead. The unfledged canopy pro-

draglines etched against dull grey skies of endless rain, ashen

vides ample opportunity to view the mating displays of the

tors of tailings. Here is another sort of prairie, a hardscrabble

abundant redstarts, their coquettish manoeuvres evoking

landscape in ruin, scrapped, drained, and emptied, only to be

an exotic dance.41

abandoned. We pull in late to camp at Wood Mountain Post, backing the Bolar into a copse of willow and maple to escape

The action of cultivating presence to landscape allows for the inscription of place-form, or what Christian Norberg-Schulz names the genius loci,42 to emerge within subsequent representations of place.43 To be present to landscape requires that the individual researcher be transparently in attendance within the research script. As Jackson states, “It is only when we begin to participate emotionally in a landscape that its uniqueness and beauty are revealed to us.”44 In phenomenological research, there is no third-person veil, for an objective distancing runs counter to the guiding principles of the method. Phenomenological writing exposes the human subject at the heart of the work, in all of their “biases,

the ceaseless wind and driving rain. A swollen stream bed runs behind the trailer. He dreams of flash floods (fig. 9.5).47

A Prairie Primer The branches will wither, the roots they will die, You’ll all be forsaken and you’ll never know why. – Margaret Laurence48

The Canadian prairie comprises five ecozones: the Northern Tall Grasslands, exclusively found in Manitoba; then, moving west in sequence, the Aspen Parklands,

Fig. 9.5.  The industrial prairie, Bienfait, Saskatchewan, 2014. Source: Karen Wilson Baptist.

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the Northern Mixed Grasslands, the Northwestern Short Mixed Grasslands, and the Foothills Fescue Grasslands.49 Forested uplands, gentle rolling hills, and deep-cut river valleys – the prairie is a landscape shaped by glaciation and the massive forces of melting ice and glacial debris.50 Clays, till, and deep fluvial deposition, in combination with climatic variations, support a vast array of plant and animal communities within several dramatic and unique morphological conditions.51 Coulees and wide, sweeping glacial river valleys incise escarpment and plateau, and kettle lakes formed by melting glacial sediments materialize as prairie potholes, crucial habitat for waterfowl. The Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Slave Lowlands form the most depressed section of the prairie, known as the First Level, a flat landscape of lacustrian clays, alluvial deposits, and ancient beach moraines.52 Proceeding west, the Manitoba Escarpment rises from ancient lakebeds.53 The Turtle, Riding, Duck, and Porcupine Mountains mark the beginning of the Saskatchewan Plains.54 Modern-day watercourses, such as the Qu’Appelle, the Assiniboine, and the Souris, occupy former glacial spillways, splendid viridian incisions that slice through treeless plateaus. The Missouri Coteau stretches south, crossing the United States border, and manifests as a series of dry low hills: the Tilt, the Cactus, and the Dirt Hills of Trevor Herriot’s ruminations.55 Finally, moving westward onto the Alberta Plain, Palliser’s Triangle,56 a vast, dry land shaped by drought, fire, plagues of grasshoppers, and diseases of plant, human, and animal.57 Even now, few roads penetrate this arid region. The deep gorges of the Red Deer and Saskatchewan Rivers are also located within this ecoregion, as are the dramatic lodgepole pine forests of the Cypress Uplands (fig. 9.6).

Fig. 9.6.  Levels of the western plains. Source: J. Brian Bird, The Natural Landscapes of Canada: A Study in Regional Earth Science, 1980 ed. (Toronto, New York, Chichester, Brisbane: John Wiley & Sons Canada, 1972), 119, used with permission of the publisher.

Distance: 1,105 kilometres. Shelterbelts surround abandoned homesteads. Piles of granite boulders dot the terrain, some singular boulders as well, evidence of glacial leavings. The landscape is mostly croplands and pasture, and here and there elevated sections yield to wide, shallow valleys. We observe rich bird life in the wetlands around the Frenchman River and spy on bison through a hilltop scope at Grasslands National Park [Long, chap. 5, this volume]. I am struck by the ecology of “big sky,” a dramatic immersion into a vast landscape (fig. 9.7).58

Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture

Fig. 9.7.  The texture of grasses, a vast vista and big sky, at Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, 2013. Source: Karen Wilson Baptist.

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Historians indicate that Palaeo-Indians were established on the North American continent approximately 11,000 to 11,500 years ago.59 These hunting peoples developed specialized stone weapons and tools to hunt the mammoth, mastodons, carnivores, and grazing animals that inhabited the ice age landscape. The fauna were much larger than present-day animals: mega-creatures such as sabre-toothed tigers, giant beaver, dire wolves, and large steppe bison.60 By AD 700 to 800, four populations were established in the region: the Plains Hunter, Plains Village, Plains Woodland, and Subarctic peoples, representing three language groups – Algonkian, Siouan, and Dene or Athapaskan.61 The largest pre-contact populations were found in areas where agrarian practices dominated; on the North American prairie, Gerald Friesen estimates a population of 15,000 to 50,000.62 The complex tale of subjugation of this landscape and its people is beyond the scope of this work; but, to grossly simplify, in the short time from the initial contact with Europeans till the slaughter of the last free-range bison, entire ecologies and ancient civilizations were destroyed. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, with the push to settle the West, the landscape was portioned out to settlers eager to go forth and prosper in a new promised land. Migratory ecologies were replaced with sedentary land patterns: reservations for First Nations people and, for the newcomers, individual homesteads on a quarter section of land. This is the prairie that most third- and fourth-generation settler folk recognize as prairie, “a colorful patchwork of fields and rangelands, where geese feed in the stubble, foxes hunt in farmyards and meadowlarks sing their hearts out on fence posts”63 (fig. 9.8).

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Distance: 1,266 kilometres. At Orkney, an abandoned grocery store with smashed windows and overturned shelves. Near Shaunavon, a feedlot in the valley, strewn with manure and hay; the cattle trample the riparian edge and foul river water. Construction and pump jacks, wind farms, a pronghorn and a coyote at Piapot. South through Maple Creek, crossing an undulating plain with range cattle. On the horizon, a dark green forest rises abruptly from the prairie. We ascend through stands of white spruce, lodgepole pine, balsam poplar, and trembling aspen on a narrow road with tight switchbacks. The air is cool and fresh, and sunlight highlights the bright greens of late spring vegetation. Ascending through the forest, we are surprised to emerge on a vast, flat plateau occupied by hundreds of yearling cattle. We have arrived at Cypress Hills.64

Fig. 9.8.  Grocery store, in Orkney, Saskatchewan, 2013. Source: Karen Wilson Baptist.

The statistics are troubling: almost 30 per cent of the arid short grasslands gone; in the Northern Mixed Grasslands, 75 per cent of the native landscape cultivated; and of the Tall Grass Prairie, a shocking 99.9 per cent exterminated. Accordingly, the survival of 464 species of plants, animals, fish, birds, and insects is at risk.65 Small, dun-coloured sparrows and pipits, thrashers, and tiny rare warblers, deadly shrikes, prairie raptors, and skittish plovers may lack the dramatic plumage of the doomed whooping cranes, but they are no less essential to the ecology of the prairie.

Broken Networks Even after great sorrow and great gladness, days flow on, and all things become the shining woof and the shadowed warp of the tapestry of the past. – Martha Ostenso66

Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture

Distance: 1,650 kilometres. Departing the Cypress Hills. Mountain bluebird boxes pace the upland highway, and we emerge from forest to grasslands, now driving through a broad valley, with the foothills topography surrounding us. Grey-green vegetation and cattle occupy fenced slopes, and homesteads are far and few between. Late afternoon, we arrive in Calgary, only to sit stuck in traffic for an hour on the Deerfoot Trail.67

Nose Hill is Canada’s largest urban park, a noble prairie fragment set within a vanquished ecology that once covered 3.4 million acres (1.4 million hectares).68 At 2,790 acres (1,129 hectares), this “ecological island” protects reserves of the endangered Foothills Fescue ecozone.69 Surrounded by dense suburban growth, the park provides an expansive encounter for visitors. While connectivity from the park to nearby neighbourhoods benefits the human community, environmentally, Nose Hill is an isolated patch in an immense broken network, lacking any robust ecological corridors in and out of the park. Broken networks are associated with poor species viability, habitat loss, and isolation.70 The ensuing loss of biodiversity can even compromise species that function well in an urban setting.71 Nose Hill is large enough to support “core habitat and escape cover” for grazers and carnivores alike,72 but impenetrable traffic infrastructure and suburban development bind the edge condition. The long “lobes” that provide infiltration into surrounding areas associated with more resilient ecologies are absent.73 Equally, Nose Hill suffers from internal splintering that compromises the viability of habitat patches within the park (figs. 9.9 and 9.10).

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In a 2005 report on Nose Hill Park, the Calgary-based firm O2 Planning + Design proposes a series of strategies to enhance visitor experiences in the park and protect the fragile ecology.74 These include wayfinding elements, benches, designated multi-use zones to ease pressure on native vegetation communities, and corridors to increase connectivity into adjacent communities, but the strongest directives concern issues regarding circulation pathways in the park. At the time of the initial studies, Nose Hill hosted over three hundred kilometres of informal pathways through the park. The proliferation of trails led to soil erosion and compaction, reduced the viability of native vegetation, and provided vectors for invasive species.75 Strategies to remedy these conditions include deploying a variety of surfacing materials and pathway widths to communicate functionality and appropriate use.76 A signage program also implores visitors to respect the new pathways and to assume responsibility in the protection of rare plant and animal communities found here. We observed many of the difficulties of managing such a popular urban park when on the Hill. Pathways through imperilled patches are tilled and replanted with native vegetation, but clearly people like to follow their favourite walking paths, crashing through barriers and compacting delicate new plantings. Although I infrequently observed people chatting together, Nose Hill is clearly a place where people go to find the sort of solitude that many urban dwellers crave. This proclivity may also contribute to the difficulty of managing the landscape, for as one visitor noted, if you find yourself on a pathway approaching others, you just cross over to another where you can be alone. By this action, park users are “softly killing” the very landscape that they love.77

Fig. 9.9.  Pathway across Nose Hill Park, in Calgary, Alberta. Source: O2 Planning + Design.

Fig. 9.10.  Trail marker, Nose Hill Park, Calgary, Alberta, by O2 Planning + Design, Calgary, Alberta. Source: O2 Planning + Design.

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River in an Empty Land The land continues to turn its tricks, for now; the river receives whatever runs downslope from the fields and the cities; and no one, or everyone is to blame. – Trevor Herriot78 Distance: 2,256 kilometres. We have departed Calgary and are driving towards the Great Sandhills region of Saskatchewan. On CBC Radio One, Edward Rutherford speaks of the need to “educate the imagination,” inspiring ruminations on representations of prairie in art, literature, and design.79

A prairie town is a place to come from or, for some, to hate – as the Weakerthans crooned in the oft-repeated refrain of “One Great City!”80 The hesitancy to represent the urban prairie in literature is attributed to “a lack of confidence,” a less than enduring trait that continues to permeate the prairie psyche.81 Guy Vanderhaeghe attributes drought, the Depression, and the two world wars as factors that led to a loss of urban prairie pride and optimism,82 but why that attitude endures even anecdotally remains puzzling. Yet optimism as a trait on the prairie is ever cautionary; perhaps in this we remain tied as a people to the fluctuating weather systems that can swiftly destroy a year’s labour on the farm. Poverty, decaying city centres, crime, the loss of industry,83 suburban developments that slither across agricultural landscapes and wetlands,84 and shale oil boom towns that inflate with unfettered growth85 – these are some of the problems that plague contemporary prairie cities. But as regular floods in cities such as High River, Calgary, and Brandon and the 2011 flood that devastated communities surrounding Lake Manitoba

demonstrate, the management of water is increasingly one of the most crucial issues for contemporary prairie cities.86 As an example, studies by David Kovacic clearly connect contemporary agrarian practices such as tile drainage, the use of drainage channels, and the denuding of sloughs and potholes in the American Midwest to declining water quality in the Gulf of Mexico.87 Surely these factors play equally into poor water quality in Lake Winnipeg.88 Water management on the prairies is proving to be a wicked problem that requires the ability to synthesize agrarian practices, water detention, flood resilience, and water issues on lakes, rivers, and streams within urban development. Distance: 2,888 kilometres. Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park. Clearly, the Siberian elms growing here are not indigenous to the region, but the release of millions of winged samaras has blanketed the earth in an enchanting, papery snow. Hiking the “Rings, Ruts, and Remnants Trail,” it strikes me what an inhabited land this once was. A river crossing gathers many people together, but today there are just us two on this windswept hillside, watching a wide silver river wind through an empty land.89

For the urbanite prairie dweller who considers access to ample park space, egress to rivers, a network of recreational trails, and cultural institutions markers of the “good life,” one can find few finer locations than Saskatoon. With over seventeen kilometres of riverfront trails, public amenities, woodlands, and lush tended gardens, the Saskatoon downtown is “flora abundant,” with quality public space and ample recreational opportunities. Studies of the state of the Meewasin Valley of the South Saskatchewan

Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture

River in the 1970s, at that time a post-industrial rupture abutting the city centre, culminated with Raymond Moriyama’s visionary development plan for the river basin, The Meewasin Valley Project: 100 Year Conceptual Plan.90 In response to the report, separate jurisdictions – the City of Saskatoon, the provincial government, and the University of Saskatchewan – collectively formed the Meewasin Valley Authority. This powerful development and conservation group has provided the city with what Wenche Dramstad, James Olson, and Richard Forman91 might observe as an enviably intact ecological corridor that also supports enhanced public opportunities. The most recent addition to the urban parklands is River Landing Riverfront, by Crosby Hanna & Associates, designed and built from 2003 to 2015. Located a short stroll west of Saskatoon’s stately Bessborough Hotel, the park brings visitors into close contact with the river while providing a graceful urban gathering place that integrates educational components, a thematic splash park, carefully considered plantings, stormwater management, and a promenade that arcs thrillingly right out over the river. The South Saskatchewan River was once the site of spectacular spring flooding, but it has since been “tamed” by a variety of control structures upstream, predominately the Gardiner Dam, leaving residents of Saskatoon to enjoy fairly consistent (or at least predictable) water levels in a stable riverscape.92 Recent flood waters from Alberta, the highest flow discharges recorded since the Gardiner Dam was built,93 exceeded the ability of the dam structures to control the excessive flows, and some walkways at River Landing Riverfront

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were breached, albeit without significant damage (figs. 9.11 and 9.12). Flood events are anticipated to grow in frequency in these once-arid lands.94 All this water runs downstream to Lake Winnipeg, where I stand upon the watershed model at River Landing Riverfront. “Watered my horse in the Frenchman, the Saskatchewan, the Oldman, the Bow, the Big Muddy” observes the Englishman’s boy.95 On this prairie sojourn, I have witnessed these rivers and seen the drainage ditches, denuded streams and potholes, and engineered croplands set within empty lands surrounding the prairie cities. From the Alberta Plains to the Missouri Coteau to the Manitoba Escarpment, the Lake Winnipeg watershed captures precipitation from one million square kilometres of prairie landscape.96 Water, once a coveted commodity on the grasslands, may become a prairie curse.

The Extirpated Landscape Analysis puts a man outside the thing he studies, while intuition puts him inside. Analysis therefore renders partial knowledge while intuition renders absolute knowledge. – Guy Vanderhaeghe97 Distance: 3,281 kilometres. Departure Saskatoon. Fragments of a prairie journey, gas at Clavet, then to Elstow, passing on by Allan, where Alison lived. Flat prairie and cropland, potholes with ducks and geese, crops are growing, so very green and lush here. Joni Mitchell sings on the radio as we pass through Plunkett. At Langenburg, Winnipeg is 399 kilometres away. Marchwell, then passing into Manitoba.

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Fig. 9.11.  River Landing Riverfront, adjacent to downtown Saskatoon, reclaims a previously undeveloped fill site, by Crosby Hanna & Associates, 2003–15, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Source: Stephanie Klyne Photography.

North on Highway 83 to spend the night at Asessippi Park. Bright lights in the night, fireflies delight.98

The flat lands surrounding the city of Winnipeg were surrendered to the plough little more than two hundred years ago. The deposits from glacial Lake Agassiz provide a legacy of rich, tillable soil that support crops of soybean, wheat, flax, oats, grain corn, sunflowers, and canola. The crops produced here on this landscape are baptized in a flood of chemicals that inflates yields, then trickles not only into our food supply but also into our

water and air.99 The value of these croplands has increased in recent times, 100 surely intensifying pressure to convert land in reserve – shelterbelts, water holes, old homesteads, and remnant prairie – into cultivated cropland. Approaching the city, one observes bedroom communities and suburbs sprawling across this fecund glacial legacy. Whereas the original grants to settlers were a quarter section, now the average “producer” manages nothing less than 1,000 acres (a quarter section is 160 acres, or 65 hectares); larger producers might control as much as 10,000 to 20,000 acres (4,000 to 8,000 hectares) of

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Fig. 9.12.  The broad, meandering Riverwalk Promenade is the primary connecting spine along the river edge, punctuated by sun shelters, rest areas, and river overviews, by Crosby Hanna & Associates, 2003–15, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Source: Meewasin.

former prairie. Land procurement companies claim even more landscape; Calgary-based Agcapita, for example, owns 60,000 acres (24,000 hectares) of Saskatchewan farmland. 101 In Saskatchewan, deregulation of farmland ownership rules has resulted in an 11.6 per cent rise in land values in just two years. In Manitoba, growing values drive an increased desire for industrial and commercial land procurements.102 CentrePort Canada is in the midst of a 645-acre (260-hectare) expropriation of farmland destined to become transportation infrastructure103 that will service 20,000 acres (8,000

hectares) for an “inland port and Foreign Trade Zone.”104

Distance: 4,313 Kilometres. Home.105 Back in Winnipeg, I visit Shed, the work of Winnipeg artist Tracy Peters.106 Since 2012, she has been transforming a humble wooden granary on a doomed acreage in South Charleswood. Drawn by the midsummer emergence of a field of foxtail barley, a native species that colonizes harrowed ground, Peters sought

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permission from the land development agency with plans to convert this 800-acre (320-hectare) woodland, wetland, former market garden, and cropland to a potential development of up to four thousand dwelling units known as Ridgewood South.107 She considers the foxtails a living metaphor for an “interspecies competition” that parallels their emergence with “the demand for suburban living.”108 Using a jigsaw, she cut into the weathered planks that clad the shed, then sliced slender strips from photographs of the nearby forest floor and wove them through the walls. The work is peaceful, contemplative, and ethereal. As they softly flutter through the empty window, the slivered images evoke a tattered curtain in an abandoned house. Forest to plank, plank to humus, timber memories are poised to return once more to earth. As Peters states, “The compost-like mixture of leaves, branches and foxtail in the photographs parallel the slow decay of the building while injecting new life into its surface.”109 She labours here slowly, alone and attuned to the life forms that are revealed to her: barn swallows nest above, tolerating her presence, and seem to delight in observing the transformation of the aged structure; a doe and her twin fawns graze in the foxtails; spittle bugs are observed in the grasses; and shamrock spiders spin death traps for unwary insects. Dwelling in place reveals subtle life forms to the patient observer. Shed awakens an ecological mourning, for erasures from this landscape, past, present, and future, are omnipresent in Peters’s work. When a child grows in Ridgewood South, I wonder what birdsong they might hear, what small natures they could observe (fig. 9.13), and what, if any, passion for landscape architecture may be born here?

Some Thoughts on a Phenomenology for Prairie As memory, as experience, those Plains are unforgettable; as history, they have the lurid explosiveness of a prairie fire, quickly dangerous, swiftly over. – Wallace Stegner110

A series of broken networks, bordered and bounded by cultivation and by culture, the extirpated prairie lies in scattered splinters across the Canadian midlands. Marc Treib states: “Like the caged animal in the zoo however, an urban prairie is hardly a prairie at all … At best, it has been reduced to a sign for what had been.”111 But prairie is much more than a pastiche; it is palimpsest of absence and of presence, once a sacred place, a post-agrarian/post-industrial landscape, now an innate terrain upon which new allegiances are formed, then shattered. Trevor Herriot writes of the resilience of landscape, noting that “networks within networks persist in the land, though they have been weakened by our efforts to transcend them, live beyond them.”112 Precarious prairie ecologies help to keep “wildness near and within”;113 the once wide open spaces presented here support rapidly diminishing ecologies and give city dwellers a welcome escape from the congestion of urban life. But the endurance of the urban prairie is dependent upon those who attend to these endangered acres in thought, in literature and art, and particularly in design. If we move collectively towards a phenomenology of prairie for landscape architecture, what values will we place on the precious few tracts of prairie remaining, how might we protect them, and in doing so can we ensure that encounters with prairie cultivate a care for

Fig. 9.13.  Tracy Peters, Shed, 2012–13. Medium: wooden granary, digital photographs on vellum, Charleswood, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Source: Tracy Peters.

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Fig. 9.14.  A journey across thousands of kilometres of wide open prairie spaces. Source: Karen Wilson Baptist and Morgan Quinn.

critical ecologies? Might new interpretations of prairie arise from the ashes of an extirpated landscape?

Epitaph, 12 July 2013 More than that, it is through my body that I make the connection with the earth. My body responds with dread or longing or joy to the physicality of Nature, to the grass, the sky, the rocks, the animals. This bodily wisdom must have a purpose, a meaning for us who must live here in the world, hovering constantly between the grass and the galaxies. – Sharon Butala114

A child sits beneath the canopy of the Shade Structure and Workshop at the Living Prairie Museum (Plain

Projects, 2013),115 his bright red hoodie contrasting with the ochre I-beams and dark reclaimed fir planks that clad the workshop. The structure stands as a threshold to the prairie, framing my view and stilling my thoughts of the long journey that brings me to this place, to this time. I move past the annexe, down mowed paths, through the grasses, my eye drawn to the splendour of flowering plants. They remain nameless to me, for I have discovered that I do not know the names of things on the prairie, neither flowers nor forbs, nor small brown birds that take flight from swaying grasses. Like the boy, my attention is drawn to the antics of a murder of young crows, joyously testing their flight feathers on the humid wind currents. A journey across thousands of kilometres of wide open spaces ends here on a captive prairie (fig. 9.14). I feel

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Fig. 9.15.  Plain Projects’ Shade Structure and Workshop, at the Living Prairie Museum, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2013. Source: Plain Projects.

overcome by the immensity of my experience, so I sit down upon a granite stone at a crossroads in the path. My notebook falls open, blotting raindrops that mingle with tears. Gazing out across the prairie, I observe caretakers weeding the prairie, alert to alien species that aggressively compete with the endangered native plants. Then it comes to me that the remnants of prairie are gardens that require our constant attendance to thrive (figs. 9.15 and 9.16). Jacky Bowring highlights the relationship of empathy to phenomenology, observing that through empathy we are able achieve intersubjectivity, “the ability to

transfer one’s own bodily awareness to the other, which enables a recognition of feelings, emotions and intentions.”116 For artists and for landscape architects, achieving phenomenological empathy with the prairie region can be a deliberate act, but, equally, interpretations may be innate and intuitive. This research has indeed opened my eyes to the prairie as a realm of empathetic possibility, an epistemological realm full of endless inspiration and possibility. The built works selected for this chapter struck a similar chord, for in their spatial, material, and phenomenological manifestations I discovered echoes of what I discovered

Fig. 9.16.  Shades of grey. Living Prairie Museum, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Source: Karen Wilson Baptist.

Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture

on my sojourn. And when I revisit them, in mind or in body, memories of prairie awaken, and I long for wide open spaces. Elizabeth Meyer reminds us that this is the potential of phenomenology for landscape architecture, to forge connections with imperilled landscapes, to foster ecological empathy, and to “redefine what it means to be part of the environment.”117 I keep to a path deep into the landscape, then discover a hollow in the grass. Compulsively, I lie down, childlike, face turned skyward. The spent seed heads of last year’s grasses form a shimmering golden mist over emerald new growth. Overhead, the famous endless blue sky of the open prairie is shrouded in shades of grey. A gentle rain falls upon my exposed face. As the sun attempts to break free of bruised purple skies, the prairie glitters, then darkness closes in and the prairie falls into shadow.

NOTES 1 Lorna Crozier, Small beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir, 2011 ed. (Vancouver, Toronto, and Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2009), 136. 2 Candace Savage, Prairie: A Natural History, 2011 ed. (Vancouver, Toronto, and Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2004), 5. 3 Ibid., 28. 4 Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel, 1993 ed. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964). 5 Frederick Philip Grove, Settlers of the Marsh, 2006 ed., ed. Alison Calder (Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1965). 6 Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow: A History, a Story and a Memory of the Last Prairie Frontier, 1966 ed. (Toronto Macmillan of Canada, 1955).

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7 John Wylie, Landscape (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 139. 8 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 1968 ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 248. 9 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1945, cited in Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997). 10 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Perennial Classics, 1971), 143–59. 11 Savage, Prairie, ix. 12 Stegner, Wolf Willow, 287. 13 Savage, Prairie, 4. 14 Ibid., 2–3. 15 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (New York: New Press, 1998), 17–34. 16 Savage, Prairie, 1. 17 John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places (New York: Walker and Co., 1998). 18 Warren Cariou, “A Field Guide to Indians in Canada,” Prairie Fire 34, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 35. 19 Max van Manen, Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (London, ON: State University of New York Press, 1990). 20 John W. Cresswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, London, and New Delhi: Sage, 2003), 15. 21 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1945), viii. 22 For sources, see Max van Manen, “Phenomenology Online: A Source for Phenomenological Inquiry,” accessed 30 July 2013, http://www.phenomenologyonline.com /sources/. 23 See, for example, Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2000).

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24 Wylie, Landscape, 2007. 25 Ibid., 141. 26 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, ed. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor, 2007 ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1961), 354. 27 Catherine M. Howett, “Where the One-Eyed Man Is King: The Tyranny of Visual and Formalist Values in Evaluating Landscapes,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, ed. Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 96. 28 Wylie, Landscape, 159. 29 Van Manen, Researching Lived Experience, 101. 30 Ibid., 106. 31 Ibid., 127. 32 Elizabeth K. Meyer, “The Post-Earth Day Conundrum: Translating Environmental Values into Landscape Design,” in Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2000), 243. 33 Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 161. 34 Jeff Malpas, “Place and the Problem of Landscape,” in The Place of Landscape: Concepts, Contexts, Studies, ed. Jeff Malpas (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2011), 20. 35 Karen Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 1 June 2013. 36 Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: ­Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), xi. 37 Kenneth Olwig, Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain’s Renaissance to America’s New World (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 192. 38 Daniel Joseph Nadenicek and Catherine M. Hastings, “Environmental Rhetoric, Environmental Sophism: The Words and Work of Landscape Architecture,” in Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. Conan, 140–2. 39 Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, eds., Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J.B. Jackson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), vii.

40 Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 191. 41 Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 2 June 2013. 42 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, 1984 ed. (New York: Rizzoli, 1979). 43 Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism, 29. 44 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, The Necessity for Ruins and Other Topics (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 18. 45 Cresswell, Research Design, 184. 46 Van Manen, Researching Lived Experience. 47 Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 3 June 2013. 48 Laurence, The Stone Angel, 188. 49 Savage, Prairie, 23. 50 Brian J. Bird, The Natural Landscapes of Canada: A Study in Regional Earth Science, 1980 ed. (Toronto, New York, Chichester, and Brisbane: John Wiley & Sons Canada, 1972). 51 Bird, The Natural Landscapes of Canada, 162. 52 Ibid., 161. 53 Ibid., 162. 54 Ibid., 163. 55 Trevor Herriot, River in a Dry Land: A Prairie Passage, 2001 ed. (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000). 56 Lisa Dale-Burnett, “Palliser Triangle,” in The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan (University of Regina and Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2006), accessed 26 July 2013, http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/palliser _triangle.html. 57 Rebecca L. Grambo and Branimir Gjetvaj, The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis (Regina: Nature Saskatchewan, 2007). 58 Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 4 June 2013. 59 Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 11. 60 Savage, Prairie, 58. 61 Friesen, The Canadian Prairies, 13–14. 62 Ibid., 15.

Towards a Phenomenology for Prairie Landscape Architecture

63 64 65 66 67 68

69

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74 75 76 77

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Savage, Prairie, 16. Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 4 June 2013. Savage, Prairie, 25–6. Martha Ostenso, Wild Geese, 1989 ed. (Toronto: ­McClelland and Stewart, 1925), 111. Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 6 June 2013. Alberta Prairie Conservation Forum, “Grassland & Parkland Natural Regions,” accessed 29 January 2017, http://www.albertapcf.org/about-prairies /grassland-parkland-natural-regions. City of Calgary, “Nose Hill Park,” 2013, accessed 29 January 2017, http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Parks /Pages/Locations/NW-parks/Nose-Hill-Park.aspx. Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T.T. Forman, Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning (Washington, DC: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, ­Island Press, and the American Society of Landscape Architects, 1996), 41. Cynthia Girling, Maria Galdón, Lara Davis, and Ronald Kellett, Green Infrastructure in Calgary’s Mobility Corridors (Vancouver: UBC Design Centre for Sustainability, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 2008), 11. Dramstad, Olson, and Forman, Landscape Ecology, 22. Travis Beck, Principles of Ecological Landscape Design (Washington, Covelo, and London: Island Press, 2013), 217. O2 Planning + Design Inc., Nose Hill Trail and Pathway Plan (Calgary: O2, 2005). Ibid., 7. Ibid. Mary Ellen Tyler and Nadine Kawata, “Killing Me Softly: A Critical Rethinking of Municipal Natural Area Management,” paper presented at the 48th International Making Cities Livable Conference, 17–21 October 2010, Charleston, South Carolina, accessed 29 January 2017, www.livablecities.org/sites/default /files/papers/Tyler-Mayr-Ellen_Kawata-(paper). pdf. Herriot, River in a Dry Land, 2.

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79 Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 9 June 2013. 80 The Weakerthans, “One Great City!” Reconstruction Site (Hollywood: Epitaph, 2003). 81 See, for example, “Winnipeg,” in Urban Dictionary, accessed 30 January 2017, http://www.urbandictionary .com/define.php?term=Winnipeg. 82 Guy Vanderhaeghe, “‘Brand Name’ vs. ‘No-Name’: A Half Century of the Representation of Western Canadian Cities in Fiction,” in The Urban Prairie, ed. Dan Ring (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery and Fifth House Publishers, 1993), 128. 83 Tom Carter and Chesya Polevychok, “Comprehensive Neighbourhood Studies: Characterizing Decline” (Winnipeg: University of Winnipeg, Institute of Urban Studies. Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Adaptation, November 2013), 37. 84 Dan Lett, “Council Can Stop Suburban Sprawl but Won’t,” Winnipeg Free Press, 24 June 2011, accessed 29 January 2017, http://www.winnipegfreepress.com /local/council-can-stop-suburban-sprawl-but -wont-122490733.html. 85 CBC News, Saskatchewan, “Estevan, Sask., Facing Challenges of Economic Boom,” 17 December 2012, accessed 29 January 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news /canada/saskatchewan/story/2012/12/16/sk-estevan -growth.html. 86 See, for example, Shannon Stunden Bower, Wet Prairie: People, Land, and Water in Agricultural Manitoba (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press), 2011. 87 Anne Raver, “The Dead Zone Starts (or Stops) Here,” Landscape Architecture Magazine 102, no. 11 (November 2012): 89–102. 88 David Suzuki, “Save My Lake,” The Nature of Things, CBC Television, 22 June 2012, accessed 29 January 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows /Shows/The+Nature+of+Things/2011-12/ID /1867857094/. 89 Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 10 June 2013. 90 Merle Massie, “Meewasin Valley Authority,” in The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan (Regina: University of Regina and Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2006),

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94

95 96

97 98 99

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accessed 29 January 2017, http://esask.uregina.ca /entry/meewasin_valley_authority.html. Dramstad, Olson, and Forman, Landscape Ecology. AldrichPears Associates, River Landing Interpretive Plan, 14 April 2005, 34. CBC News, “Saskatchewan River Expected to Flood,” 21 June 2013, accessed 29 January 2017, http://www .cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/story/2013/06/21 /sk-saskatchewan-flooding-waters-130621.html. See, for example, Sean M. McGinn, “Weather and Climate Patterns in Canada’s Prairie Grasslands,” in Arthropods of Canadian Grasslands (Volume 1): Ecology and Interactions in Grassland Habitats, ed. Joseph D. Shorthouse and Kevin D. Floate (Ottawa: Biological Survey of Canada, 2010), 105–19, accessed 26 July 2013, http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/bsc/english /grasslandsbook.htm; and Norm Henderson and Dave Sauchyn, eds., Climate Change Impacts on Canada’s Prairie Provinces: A Summary of our State of Knowledge (Regina: Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment, Alberta Environment, University of Regina, 2008). Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996), 152. Manitoba, Water Stewardship Division, “Lake Winnipeg Quick Facts,” accessed 30 January 2017, https:// www.gov.mb.ca/waterstewardship/water_quality /lake_winnipeg/facts.html. Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy, 19–20. Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 12 June 2013. David B. Donald, Allan J. Cessna, Ed Sverko, and Nancy E. Glozier, “Pesticides in Surface DrinkingWater Supplies of the Northern Great Plains,” Environmental Health Perspectives 115, no. 8 (August 2007): 1183–91, accessed 30 January 2017, http://www.ncbi .nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1940079/. Statistics Canada, Canola Area Surpassed Spring Wheat Area in Manitoba, accessed 30 January 2017,

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112 113 114

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http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/95-640-x/2011001 /p1/prov/prov-46-eng.htm. Frank O’Brien and Geoff Kirbyson, “From Farms to Industrial Sites, Raw Land Is Proving a Hot Investment across the Western Prairies,” Western Investor (April 2012), accessed 30 January 2017, http://www .hansenlandco.com/western-canada-land-values/. Ibid. Bartley Kives, “Expropriation a Bumpy Road,” Winnipeg Free Press, 29 July 2013, accessed 30 January 2017, http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local /expropriation-a-bumpy-road-217343321.html. CentrePort Canada Inc., “CentrePort Canada – The Inland Port,” 2012, accessed 30 January 2017, http:// www.centreportcanada.ca/the-inland-port. Wilson Baptist, “Field Notes,” 13 June 2013. Tracy Peters, “Photography, Video, Installation,” accessed 30 July 2013, http://www.tracypeters.ca/. As of 2017, the Shed project was finished, and construction had begun on the Ridgewood subdivision. Tracy Peters, “Artist’s Statement,” Summer 2013. Ibid. Stegner, Wolf Willow, 4. Marc Treib, “Must Landscapes Mean? Approaches to Significance in Recent Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Journal 14, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 50. Herriot, River in a Dry Land, 51. Ibid., 51. Sharon Butala, Coyote’s Morning Cry: Meditations and Dreams from a Life in Nature (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1995), 55–6. Plain Projects, “LPM Annex,” accessed 30 January 2017, http://www.plainprojects.ca/projects/# /lpm-annex/. Jacky Bowring, Melancholy and the Landscape: Locating Sadness, Memory, and Reflection in the Landscape (London and New York: Routledge), 43. Meyer, “The Post-Earth Day Conundrum,” 243.

PART THREE: FAR AND WIDE Cities / Megalopolises / Urbanity / Urban Conurbations / Urban Ecology

CHAPTER TEN

Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture Fadi Masoud Matthew Spremulli Shadi Ramos

The relationship between landscape architecture and technology is inherently tied to the processes, methods, and outcomes of landscape architectural representation. The way we measure, perceive, design, and ultimately construct landscapes is intertwined with diverse modes of representation and communication. Originating with the pictorial gaze that once dominated the image and perception of landscape through painting, the effects of technological advancement on landscape architecture have been profound. Antoine Picon writes of a “natural kinship that exists between key aspects of computation and design software, and the principles that govern landscape perception and analysis.” The algorithms of fractal geometry that shape the many elements of the landscape, from foliage to rocks, are similar to the fractal geometry that forms the basis of computer graphics. Picon further explains that “parametric variation seems especially well suited to the modeling of the often-smooth transitions of natural or man-made topography. Given these convergences, it is no coincidence that so many computer-generated images evoke landscape.”1 The link between the accumulation and intersection of data through cartographic mapping and fieldwork is both the antecedent and the basis for future design intervention. This transformation has been aided by technology, and, as it continues to evolve, some argue that landscapes and datascapes, especially at the urban and regional scales, are becoming one and the same (fig. 10.1).2 Technology has allowed time to be folded into the representation of landscape architecture. As technology

Fig. 10.0.  PCL Centennial Learning Centre Court, Edmonton, Alberta, 2006, by Carlyle + Associates. Source: DIALOG / Photo Tom Arban.

develops, designers increasingly have access to more accurate simulations of dynamic systems, from geology and hydrology to plant growth, and from economic market trends to maintenance regimes of landscapes in different time scales, seasons, and conditions.3 Our understanding of time benefits from, and is created through, software’s technological abilities to generate complex temporal patterns previously viewed as static or reductive representations that are planometric or perspectival. Using animation, film, and image sequencing, the parameter of time becomes an accessible design element, able to generate scenarios and narratives made possible through technology. The adoption and application of new digital technologies in landscape representation have been simplified to a great extent. Interfacing with technological platforms requires little mathematical knowledge, and the software is highly accessible and customizable.4 New technologies are regularly applied to modify and enhance the experience of landscapes, as well as to increase the understanding of analysis. Beyond merely digitizing a formerly analogue design process, technology has become integral to the creative process, helping landscape architects navigate complex sites and multi-faceted design requirements. Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies, by Jillian Walliss and Heike Rahmann, defines digital technologies as “the application of digital resources crossing digital media, programming tools and software applications in the design and construction process.”5 This can be applied to methods of advanced parametric modelling, 3-D rapid prototyping, augmented and virtual reality simulations, and digital 3-D modelling. While technology evolves rapidly, the principles driving its application in landscape architecture will remain relevant (fig. 10.2).

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Fig. 10.1.  DataAppeal enables users to import their generated 3-D data maps into other 3-D modelling and vector-based software programs, creating the potential for physical 3-D prints to be made from their data. Source: Nadia Amoroso, DataAppeal.

Many factors are attributed to the close relationship between the practice of landscape architecture and technological innovation. These can illustrate the historical symbiosis between landscape architecture and technology, which helps project future trajectories. The shift towards multidisciplinary practice requires landscape architects to acquire vast amounts of knowledge and learn the tools and techniques of the various disciplines. Esri’s ArcGIS software, a tool for geographers, is now indispensable to landscape architects for creating and analysing maps and data sets. Autodesk’s AutoCAD Civil 3-D, developed for civil engineers, is often used by landscape architects

for terrain modelling and analysis. Processing was created for the visual arts, to teach non-programmers how to write code, but it has been employed successfully by landscape architects to create prototypes for scenarios and simulations. Popular game engines such as Unity, Unreal Engine, and CryEngine are also used to generate immersive content, including virtual reality and interactive landscapes. This chapter explores how digital representation, shaped through the advent of technology, continues to influence landscape architecture practice and pedagogy. More precisely, it highlights the contributions of Canadian institutions and universities in digital landscape

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Fig. 10.2.  Rapid prototyping 3-D-printed model testing form and experimenting, 2015, University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture Program. Source: Gefei Pan.

representation. This dialogue captures a snapshot of the academic environment related to digital technologies and representation, compiled with selected platforms provided by seven Canadian universities with graduate or undergraduate courses in landscape architecture.

Canada’s Contribution to Landscape Technology: Visualization, Creation, and Critique New developments in technology have catalysed the design representation process for over sixty years.

Although some landscape architects still employ technologies as mere representational tools, many have harnessed their technological abilities to explore complex content since the mid-1960s. As the early pursuit of scientific knowledge required understanding and constructing landscapes, practitioners were at the forefront of employing digital technology for the accumulation and intersection of such cartographic data as topography, hydrology, geology, and botany. Meanwhile, beyond experimental application, the mid-1960s were a highly inventive period, during which landscape architects led the field in the creation

Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture

of such special tools as the Harvard University SYMAP platform, considered the precursor to modern geographic information systems (GIS).6 Within the discipline’s innovative history, Canada has made significant contributions, specifically in visualization technologies and the critical review of their application. Canadian content was predominantly generated from within (relatively young) academic institutions beginning in the late 1970s. During that era, Canadian universities’ bias for practical, projectbased knowledge was heavily influenced by the design practice, transitioning to demands for research activities and products. Pressure from universities to become academically relevant and competitive pushed faculty to develop clear research agendas, many of which would only come into fruition a decade later.7 Retrospectively, Canada’s contributions can be categorized into two major periods of focus and progress. The first stretched from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, when progress occurred in Toronto, Guelph, and Winnipeg and the focus was directed towards developing technologies of landscape visualization. This creation period was followed by a critique period that stretched from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s; work was concentrated in Vancouver, where the focus was on research that critically evaluated and refined visualization technologies.

Creation Period As several groups were experimenting with landscape visualization technology during the creation period, most notably from the University of Manitoba’s CADlab/

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Housing Research Institute in Winnipeg, the University of Guelph’s Landscape Research Group, and the University of Toronto’s Centre for Landscape Research (CLR), the most impactful research was created at the CLR.8 Developments in computer visualizations made there would not only be adopted across Canada; they were also experimentally evaluated by other prestigious institutions, including Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and the ETH Zürich.9 The University of Toronto’s motivation for creating innovative landscape visualization was rooted in the representation techniques that faculty member Jerry Englar experimented with in the 1970s. He pioneered new panoramic drawing techniques and invented an immersive 360-degree slide projection panorama theatre, amicably nicknamed the “stimulator.”10 Its purpose was to place observers within the image of the landscape, to avoid the tendency for the image to structure thinking about landscape as an “object.” Englar’s panorama theatre was inspired by an examination of nineteenth-century panorama and diorama theatres, which provided a pre–virtual reality experience for more than a hundred years before being displaced by cinema at the turn of the twentieth century.11 His work thrived in part because of Toronto’s reputation as a hub of experimental visual media, including the IMAX film/theatre technology, which was being closely followed by University of Toronto faculty, including Englar.12 His work taught at least three generations of landscape architects the importance of visual representation and the need for a total immersion into projected experience. He was the father of research that faculty members John Danahy and Robert Wright later undertook at the CLR, with specific influence

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on their work in real time and immersive computer visualizations of landscapes and urban experiences.13 By the mid-1980s, the CLR began exploring computer visualization technology as a primary research focus. The centre’s motivation lay in addressing three major concerns: to merge GIS and CAD information quickly, such that the computer serves as both an interactive and iterative tool for design planning decisions; to improve digital modelling in motion and through time as a way of better understanding landscape and change; and to provide clear visual interpretations of design planning decisions that could facilitate public participation in the planning process.14 Danahy authored a series of papers on iterative and intuitive visuals throughout the 1980s and 1990s, recording his research via the cognitive parameters of viewing and experiencing landscape. These papers argued for including both foveal and peripheral vision in landscape visualizations, as the combination resulted in a wider understanding of contextual site information. His papers also tracked the custom software and hardware developed by the CLR, reflecting on the impacts this technology would have on landscape architecture. The CLR team initiated the development of real-time visualization tools, as well as immersive and collaborative software applications that helped students and professionals understand, analyse, and design complex landscapes. Beyond applying digital media to create photorealistic renderings, the team recognized new technology’s value for analysing and understanding space (fig. 10.3). “The necessity for linking the work to other data and abstract modelling principles made it more interesting for the people collaborating with the CLR to seek multiple changes and time-based viewing

of models or phenomena. This observed preference for what we call real-time or dynamic user-directed visualization became a dominant research interest.”15 One of the principal computer visualization technologies produced by the CLR was the polyTRIM platform, the merger of two separate software packages created and modified by the CLR: “polyed” and “TRIM.” It should be acknowledged as both an achievement in software development – groundbreaking territory for landscape architecture – and a mammoth feat of collaboration, pulling together a wide network of partners who contributed actively. Danahy and Wright initially collaborated with local Toronto research groups and California technology partners. From Toronto, the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of Toronto provided computer science support, and Alias Research produced the initial digital 3-D software platform, Alias1. From California, Silicon Graphics Inc. contributed custom workstation hardware (Irises), and Apple Inc. supplied workstation hardware and image editing software.16 Although polyTRIM is fundamentally a software package, it belongs to a larger group of technologies that were created concurrently, with a series of addons (or “derivatives,” as described by Danahy) to extend its capabilities, such as CLRview, CLRpaint, and CLRmosaic.17 These technologies included the immersive panoramic projection theatres from polyTRIM, for viewing digital models. While the theatres created by the CLR were clearly inspired by Englar’s earlier experiments, the team attained a level of technical expertise that made them global specialists, and they spawned a spinoff company, Immersion Studios Inc., that installed theatres

Fig. 10.3.  Immersive working environment in a design studio instructed by John Danahy and Robert Allsopp, Centre for ­Landscape Research (CLR), 1999. Source: John Danahy.

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worldwide.18 All of this additional development was enabled by consistent investment into the platform over many years, providing a stable financial base that fostered innovation. The latest release of the software (circa early 2000s) encompassed CAD, GIS, animation, sound, hyperlinks, parametric modelling, text, and an integrated custom scripting language, all intended to streamline the complex design process of landscape architecture into a single package – effectively operating like a proto-BIM (building information modelling) platform for landscape architecture.19 A collection of Danahy’s papers, published in the early 2000s, contemplates the relative maturity of research into and software designed for immersive computer visualizations, suggesting several future directions for continued development.20 The most significant of these refers to the application of computer visualizations to visual resource management (VRM), or how computer-generated landscape visualizations can assist in communicating issues with natural and landscape resources and their management. Concurrent with Danahy’s call for fresh developmental trajectories, faculty at the University of British Columbia founded the Centre for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP). Under the leadership of faculty member Stephen Sheppard, CALP’s declared goals are to develop better ways of managing collaborative design, planning, and decision making for more sustainable large-scale landscapes and their resources.21 Sheppard and others, such as Nathan Perkins at the University of Guelph, have raised critical questions about the application of computer-generated visualizations since the late 1980s, but it was not until CALP was founded that a

dedicated group in Canada committed to researching the topic rigorously.

Critique Period The marked shift throughout the early 2000s towards research into new applications for computer visualization – along with the critical, conceptual, and ethical dimensions – led to the next phase of landscape visualization technology in Canada. Research during this period was primarily conducted at CALP in Vancouver, guided by Sheppard’s efforts for over a decade. The research produced published case studies and specialized digital visualization tools, which became extensively cited in the fields of design planning and environmental management. Sheppard’s early work with CALP examined the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural implications of creating realistic computer landscape visualizations (what we might simply call “realistic rendering”) to inform key decision makers and the general public. Sheppard explored these realistic visualizations with specific applications, including forest and water management, community planning (rural and First Nations), and climate change.22 The impact on observers was measured through user studies, where feedback was recorded through surveys and reflections from image creators, the public, targeted audiences, and critics.23 The studies were also prefaced with an extensive literature review, in which numerous perspectives on cognition and emotional response were evaluated, then extrapolated to frame the survey results.

Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture

Although many of Sheppard’s case studies were highly specific, he drew consistent conclusions between them regarding the purpose behind landscape visualizations – namely, that they should lead to a deeper understanding of the landscape and related dynamic systems, and the decision-making processes that shape them. In this context, they need to convey information beyond media that mimic reality, such as photographs or photorealistic visualizations. They also need to holistically illustrate a range of implications, to facilitate both emotional and analytical responses.24 Based on his conclusions, Sheppard also presented guidelines for creating future visualizations within the scope of their intended purpose. Some of his renowned guidelines suggest including other forms of imagery and media to complement realistic visualizations, which creates defensibility by enabling sceptical viewers to interrogate a suite of imagery and empowering them to draw their own conclusions; providing both a clear focus and general context in visualizations, through intelligent, thoughtful highlights or omissions; avoiding exaggerations of scale and effects, so as not to confuse viewers; and creating future projections and scenarios that can be compared and contrasted, which gives viewers the power of choice and control, while also providing the opportunity to build further scenarios from relevant stakeholder participation.25 By 2010, Sheppard and CALP begin expanding their critical inquiry into tools beyond realistic visualizations. They began examining popular forms of “virtual globes,” or geo-browsers, such as Google Earth. Sheppard concluded that virtual globes could not be dealt with solely as a question of spatial data and geographical information science. Virtual globe

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visualizations cross several thresholds in communicating scientific and environmental information, which engage more complex dimensions of perception. The realism, perspective views, and social meaning of the landscape visualizations embedded in virtual globes invoke emotional and intuitive responses as well as cognitive ones. Associated issues of uncertainty, credibility, and bias in interpreting imagery need to be factored in to this context.26 Sheppard’s work with CALP continues, exploring technologies and tools and considering them from different critical perspectives. This raises the question of whether Canada will push the pendulum towards another period of contemporary creation. The following section considers what the current context might yield over the next decade.

Trends in Digital Representation at Canadian Universities The following dialogue captures a snapshot of the academic environment for digital representation technologies. It was compiled with answers from seven Canadian universities that offer graduate or undergraduate courses in landscape architecture.27 Question: How are digital technologies integrated into your curriculum? Older digital technologies, such as AutoCAD and Adobe Creative Suite, are integrated into programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. These software packages are basic requirements at all seven universities. The importance of GIS in design pedagogy

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is also clear. Dalhousie University in Halifax, which inaugurated an undergraduate landscape architecture program in 2015, introduces GIS to their upper-year students. The University of Calgary’s MLA program also offers GIS training through two courses. The first, a compulsory ecology course, employs GIS as a means of inquiry and as a practical tool for evidence-based decision making. The second is an introductory GIS course, where “cartography is taught explicitly as a tool for the effective communication of multi-dimensional data.” At every university in this survey, newer digital technologies, such as 3-D modelling, digital fabrication, and parametric modelling, are typically introduced at the graduate level through tutorials, workshops, and dedicated representation courses (fig. 10.4). While many digital methods are formally introduced, students are expected to undertake advanced software learning as well. This is accomplished through assignment requirements and studio expectations at the University of Toronto, the University of Manitoba, and the University of British Columbia, all of which give students access to teaching assistants and faculty for support. Question: What digital technologies does your faculty use – GIS, 3-D printing, CNC milling, parametric modelling, augmented reality, other? GIS software is the only digital technology used at all seven institutions. For instance, at the University of Guelph, it is used in research and teaching, to assess landscape plan alternatives for ecological outcomes, and to inform agricultural policy to fulfil multiple objectives.28 Although the range of technology at each university varies, responses to this question demonstrated that landscape architecture students generally worked with parametric

Fig. 10.4.  Large-scale terrain analysis, exploring methods of digital terrain modelling, 2015, University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture Program. Source: Kaitlyn Pelletier.

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modelling, augmented reality, and 3-D printing. In most instances, such technology was more prevalent in the architecture stream, and respondents often observed that the application of these tools to landscape architecture remains limited. In the case of 3-D printing, the high cost was also cited as a barrier for student use. CNC milling techniques are also in use at all but Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph. At Dalhousie, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Toronto, employing drones for 3-D scanning is being explored. In addition, animation techniques were cited by the University of British Columbia and the University of Manitoba as methods of landscape exploration. Augmented reality was the only technology not incorporated into the curriculum of any of the universities surveyed. Question: Are digital technologies considered a technical skill, or are they taught as a complement to another subject? At all seven faculties, digital technologies are integrated into the BLA and MLA programs both as a technical skill, often taught in workshop format or visualization seminars, and as an aid to design. In the latter case, students are introduced to key concepts, and they apply digital platforms to achieve a design objective. This is mainly accomplished through design studio, where the course objectives and expectations drive the use and application of digital tools. At the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary, digital technologies are more often taught in aid of another subject. The five remaining universities have endeavoured to integrate digital technologies into their curricula, as both a technical skill and a complement to design communication.

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Question: Are digital technologies applied to spatial analysis, form generation, and model making? These are three valuable areas where digital technologies can be used by landscape architects. GIS-based analysis is generally applied at the graduate level as a method for spatial analysis. In his thesis project, Decoding Water – Recoding Urbanism, MLA student (now graduate) Matthew Perotto used parametric modelling to bridge the gap between environmental context and landscape form. Using this technological framework for spatial analysis, he proposed and evaluated design solutions to determine a site-specific urban configuration for water use (fig. 10.5). Experimentation with and generation of topographic form is often done through 3-D modelling. SketchUp, Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, and Revit are all used by graduate students to explore geometry and form. At the University of Manitoba, this is left to students’ discretion, while at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto they are pushed to explore Rhino as a 3-D modelling platform. At all of the universities, model making is integral to the program; the older method of laser cutting is still employed, but CNC milling is also gaining ground. The application of 3-D printing to landscape architecture is being explored by students and academics, and it is becoming more widespread for model making. Question: What is the relationship between digital technologies as a tool in education and their use in landscape architecture practice? Every educational institution aims to teach the tools and skills required by students once they enter practice, but the relationship is seldom straightforward.

Fig. 10.5.  Decoding Water – Recoding Urbanism thesis project, exploring the use of parametric modelling software to bridge the gap between landscape context and built form, 2015, University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture Program. Source: Matthew Perotto.

Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture

Respondents typically stated that practice tends to lag behind academia in the adoption of digital technologies beyond AutoCAD and Adobe Creative Suite, which remain the most sought after skills in graduates. However, basic 3-D modelling seems to be gaining importance as a required skill, especially at larger firms with more resources. The ability to experiment with digital technologies is often only possible in education, which allows the emphasis to be placed on their potential rather than their application. Academic institutions prioritize exposure to the possibilities of digital technologies, creating an environment where students can, as stated by the University of Toronto program, “use digital tools to innovate within the discipline, with the aim that students will take these tools to their place of employment and continue to innovate in the context of professional practice.” Question: How is students’ relationship with digital technologies? Are they eager to acquire digital tools? Do they request them? Are they well prepared to learn these skills? Students often express their eagerness to learn digital tools, because they realize that these skills are essential to job placements and advancement. Students are now adept at picking up new technologies, and they are motivated by their peers to master new tools. The University of Toronto suggests that students’ relationship with digital tools is “very much defined by the culture that they are embedded within.” Dalhousie University cites that the difficulty for students now lies in stepping back and working in analogue format with traditional drafting methods. The University of Manitoba suggests that despite an eagerness to learn, achieving competency in some newer tools, such as

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parametric modelling, can remain “impractical or unrealistic.” Question: How many members of your faculty conduct research into applying digital technologies in landscape architecture? Have they received grant funding? How many members of your faculty teach topics related to digital technologies? Research may not focus specifically on applying digital technologies, but most Canadian institutions engage in some form of research (funded or not) using digital visualization and geospatial analysis tools. At the University of British Columbia, they are integrated “to generate new insights related to climate change adaptation, low carbon futures, and community engagement mechanisms.” At the University of Guelph, research into urban data visualization tools aims to inform landscape design with deeper insights.29 In all of the Canadian landscape architecture programs, at least half of department faculty teach topics related to digital technologies and representation. The courses are primarily taught in the context of supporting frameworks for design studios or advanced research and analysis. Question: Are digital technologies replacing traditional design methods? If so, how is that altering project outcomes? It is evident that digital technologies have become key in the design process, from data collection and analysis to form making and how design proposals are represented. Digital technologies are useful for performing repetitive or complex tasks, whereas analogue methods of representation enable the rapid generation of ideas when formulating a project’s

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conceptual basis. As such, digital technologies are augmenting traditional design methods. It is crucial to teach an all-encompassing culture in landscape representation, engaging with both traditional methods and digital technologies. This approach enables students to develop mature creative abilities and communication skills for a range of scenarios. Still, many academics lament that some students can no longer grasp such fundamentals of drawing as scale and perspective, and the abundance of images found online seems to limit creativity rather than encourage it. Designs are increasingly imitated or sampled instead of generated creatively from site conditions. The sheer amount of digital data also tends to cause “analysis paralysis,” which can overwhelm students. Many also find themselves trapped in efforts to find the “perfect” digital data set, where simply tracing on an overlay of the information would suffice. Ultimately, digital tools expedite repetition and iteration in the design process. Digital technologies have made it possible to develop and test many concepts in shorter time frames. As well, they have facilitated the testing of post-design proposition studies, such as slope and runoff conditions, allowing for further iterations. Question: Is there a considerable difference between the adoption of digital technologies today and ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Do you foresee significant change in the next ten years? The pronounced influence of digital technologies, writ large over the past two decades, has drastically altered design practice. These changes are abundantly clear in landscape architecture education and practice. We are immersed in vibrant media platforms, along

with high-resolution data and images. Further, we have become accustomed to immediate feedback, operating in contexts where multi-tasking has become second nature. Faculty at Dalhousie University observed how the availability of smartphones means that “site mapping and documentation through GIS and photography are now in the palm of every student.” Their counterparts at the University of British Columbia believe that “open data, DIY, and lidar or drone mapping will continue to evolve and have opportunities to become more mainstream in both academia and practice.” Digital technologies have had a substantial impact on generating physical models, topography, 3-D surfaces, and terrain models. Through CNC milling, laser cutting, and 3-D printing, the incorporation of parametric software, digital grading and drainage, and parametric design software such as Grasshopper into the fabrication process has yielded remarkable improvements in the capacity to physically represent form. Academics in landscape architecture predict that the next wave of technological advancements will involve the incorporation of real-time metrics and the monitoring of environmental factors and material performance. This data will inform the fabrication of physical models and the creation of immersive renderings and animations, which are especially beneficial for prototyping and testing. Academics at the University of Calgary have identified the resultant “ability to put landscape architecture programs at the forefront of product development, which has been the realm of product manufacturers for quite some time in our field.” The incorporation of film, augmented

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reality, virtual reality, and animation will continue to advance, and will be crucial to the analysis, design, and communication of works of landscape architecture over the next decade. Question: Are Canadian landscape architects well situated to lead in the creation and application of digital technologies? Canada has the capacity to position itself at the forefront of digital technologies in landscape architecture. As discussed, Canadian institutions once played a major role in the advancement of early digital landscape representation. If they make it a priority, boundless opportunities for collaboration between landscape architects and our strong technology sector could be leveraged. The University of Montreal points to the City of Montreal as a plaque tournante – a hub for digital drawings, animation for games, films, and so on. “This industry is very well established here. We haven’t seen the impact of this phenomenon in our students’ work, interests, or ability, but it could happen.” The University of Toronto makes the case for Canada’s vast geography as an impetus for the advancement of mapping technologies, especially in dealing with climate change and Arctic thawing, and in engaging with the Truth and Reconciliation process.

Canada’s Future: Embark on New Challenges? To Visualize or Not to Visualize? Landscape architecture has a myriad of technologies at its disposal, from advanced visualizations such as VR/AR to digital fabrication and prototyping and responsive electronics. Canada’s contributions to the

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evolution of these technologies will depend on how both practice and pedagogy embrace digital development, and how each chooses to direct its focus. The legacies of both the CLR and CALP put Canadian landscape architecture academics and professionals in a favourable position vis-à-vis future development. However, for Canada to regain the status of global leader in the development of visualization technology for landscape design, a profound understanding of the scope and dynamic character of new software/ hardware applications needs to be fostered, building on the strong foundations laid through the work of the CLR and CALP. When considering further opportunities for advancement, high-quality real-time rendering engines (found on popular game engines, such as Unity, Unreal Engine, and CryENGINE) immediately come to mind as a viable technology for future visualization development. Studies have already documented experimental trials, workflows, and pipelines for the application of such engines in landscape architecture.30 Another viable process being tested out is BIM, often referred to as landscape information modelling (LIM), and similar to real-time rendering in game engines.31 As noted by the originators of this experimentation, though, significant ground needs to be covered when considering applications for these technologies in landscape architecture. Taking on these challenges would promote Canadian landscape architects to the forefront of technical expertise. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the array of technology available extends far beyond the realm of visualization. Several recent publications have debated the future of technology in landscape, and some argue

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strongly for the need to look beyond visualization. One such example is described by Gale Fulton in a review of the 2016 book by Jillian Walliss and Heike Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies: One of the most perplexing aspects of landscape architecture education and practice that I’ve encountered is what I’ll grossly refer to here as representation. In the nearly two decades that I’ve been a student, professional, or involved in some capacity with teaching at the university level, I can think of no other domain as consistently polarizing than the critically important area of how landscape architects generate and communicate their ideas. Perhaps one of the most pernicious aspects of this issue is the ongoing divide between digital and analogue processes – working with the computer versus hand drawing.32

Walliss and Rahmann’s book aspires for landscape architecture to leverage digital technology as a means of living up to often lofty rhetoric, positioning itself as a discipline capable of tackling such pressing issues as coastal flooding or stormwater management.33 The authors remind us that despite a rich history of interaction with digital technologies (such as the creation of SYMAP and GIS), landscape architecture has failed to pursue a wider suite of digital investigations and applications. In an earlier publication, the authors partnered with other colleagues, collectively remarking that “landscape architecture has been slow to embrace the potentials of digital technologies to expand design processes and techniques. Instead, these technologies often remain framed as an advanced representational tool, considered

to lack the intuitive capability of more traditional design processes.”34 They point to a widespread academic and professional difficulty in “conceptualizing digital technology as a creative medium.” Three reasons are given for this disjuncture: that creativity is a fundamentally human endeavour; that a direct brain-to-hand connection, as evident through drawing, provides the most insight for design; and that technology distances the designer from the real world.35 Aside from identifying several causes for technological stagnation, the article also presents an inspirational collection of built projects by landscape architects who have employed various technologies to assist in their creative processes and methods of representation. These are not isolated modes of thinking, as a host of experimental research projects from other universities illustrates a range of directions for landscape technology to embark on.36 Amid the developmental tracks available to landscape architects, it is worth keeping in mind the underlying causes that prompted earlier technological advancements, and asking fundamental questions about the strategies and contextual background that framed their successful implementation. Again, the CLR and CALP are worthy points of departure; specifically, each platform’s ability to generate focused collaboration across multiple disciplines.37 Given the possibilities for collaboration, important questions need to be asked, chief among them: should technological development be directed through the lens of academia, professional practice, or industry/ technology developers? Technologies are accelerating at an exponential rate within their respective industries, which have progressed more expediently and efficiently than pedagogy or professional practice.

Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture

To yield meaningful contributions, though, industry advancement must be reconciled with the research needs of academia and the professional demands of practice. One need only look at debates about the adoption of technologies within the field to conclude that better tools and workflows, specifically designed for landscape architecture, could be developed.38 Thus, while the general context for development may have changed since the polyTRIM era of the 1980s, it remains both advantageous and necessary for industry to involve academics in collaborative technology development. Invaluable resources that accompany university-led teams include the robust intellectual research background they provide to projects; non-competitive perspectives on intellectual property for industry partners; the ability to test technology on young designers, who can then grandfather the technology into practice; reviewing advancements with a wide group of critical faculty; attracting interest and support funding from research grants; and the capacity to foster connections with a larger network of academic research groups.

Conclusions: From Digital Anonymity to Creative Experimentation As digital technology becomes more accessible and easier to work with, it enables novices to program, code, and design using various kinds of software. Despite this, new technologies that can perform many functions have been met with caution (and in some instances, scepticism) by academics and professionals in landscape architecture. This reluctance becomes even more pronounced when compared with the incorporation of digital media in

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other creative practices. Critics have raised questions about the possibility of a diminished role for the designer, and about related design constraints that stem from software limitations. While this chapter does not speculate why this might be the case, it is important to note that such scepticism is often associated with limited understanding of digital technologies and their capabilities, diminishing them to a “virtual drawing board.”39 Although it can accomplish many routine tasks, technology cannot inspire innovative design. Creativity is born out of the designers’ intentions, enabling them to employ technology in achieving a desired outcome. New technologies such as parametric design, augmented reality, and digital fabrication have helped landscape architects understand complex environmental and social systems, design within those parameters, engage with the public, and communicate proposals. One criticism of digital representation is how it has transformed the role of the drawing from exploratory and experimental to technical or illustrative. “With the rise of technology, drawing as a significant architectural act withered away. From the mid-’90s onward … the act of drawing became increasingly anachronistic.”40 Technology enables the creation of drawings that are infinitely more precise, but also more standardized. Digital tools such as Revit and Civil3-D brought unprecedented levels of accuracy to construction detailing that could easily plug in to industry systems and protocols. But the immense processing powers of rendering software enabled landscape architects to generate images at speeds that subsumed the “drawing as a design and design through drawing process.”41 This created a generic photorealism in image montages, where the same silhouettes of characters – kids flying

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Fig. 10.6.  Sugar Beach design competition drawing, 2007. Source: Claude Cormier et Associés.

Fig. 10.7.  Phantom Ecology project, sulphur piles perspective, 2017, University of British Columbia. Source: Fionn Byrne.

Technology-Driven Shift in the Digital Representation of Landscape Architecture

kites, couples strolling near café-filled boulevards, a golden retriever fetching a Frisbee – populated renderings from design schools and multinational conglomerates. This became even more prevalent with stock catalogues of trees and vegetation, lens flares, and render filters. It generated a sameness in representations of landscape works by flattening contexts, sites, and ultimately designs. Production speed rather than creative ingenuity became the norm. As photorealism fatigue became evident, towards the end of 2010, a return to the architectural drawing style began to appear in the works of many design offices and creative practices, such as Claude Cormier et Associés, West8, LCLA, the Open Workshop, and Dogma (figs. 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8). “Instead of striving for pseudo-photo-realism, this new cult of the drawing explores and exploits its artificiality, making us as viewers aware that we are looking at space as a fictional form of representation. This is in strict opposition to the digital rendering’s desire to make the fiction seem ‘real.’”42 Even though the return of the architectural drawing in the digital age is a “reinvigoration of the tradition of drawing,” its techniques, tools, and media make it fundamentally new. Drawing in infinite space, in multiple dimensions on a screen with pixels, is technically and conceptually different from drawing on paper. Drawing digitally also means that landscape architects have access to an infinite bank of images and precedents, in addition to real-time data, metrics, and feedback responses. In a critique of digital rendering, architect Sam Jacob states that through the screen, the designer is “vibrantly connected to the world.”43 In that context, individuality and originality in representation are signs of creative identity and attainment.

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Fig. 10.8.  Dominica’s Roseau River Valley: An integrated, terrain-based approach to disaster risk management and economic development on a small, developing island state, 2017, University of Toronto Master of Landscape Architecture Program. Source: Andrew Hooke.

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The integration of new technology into the practice of landscape architecture has hardly been seamless, and a substantial gap remains between its widespread use in academia and its adoption in practice, which is still in the experimental stage. The aforementioned case studies applied technology to landscape architecture practice, although new technologies are predominantly tested in academic settings. Because most of these digital tools originated in other fields, their functions need to be recontextualized to bring value to landscape architecture. As a result, their application for landscape design is complicated. Canadian universities, along with many of their international counterparts, have set up experimental laboratories to test the capacities and adaptability of different technologies. The incorporation of new digital tools into traditional practice is inevitable, and Canadian landscape architects can significantly influence how this integration takes place. Canada’s position as a technology leader in landscape architecture can be furthered by building robust networks of regional partners under the guidance of top universities. It is exciting to consider the array of potential opportunities, depending on affiliated partners’ and leading faculty members’ willingness to collaborate.

NOTES 1 Antoine Picon, “Substance and Structure II: The Digital Culture of Landscape Architecture,” Harvard Design Magazine, no. 36 (Spring/Summer 2013). 2 Nadia Amoroso, “Nadia Amoroso Studio: Data Appeal,” 2017; Sarah Williams, “Civic Data Design Lab,” 2016.

3 Picon, “Substance and Structure II.” 4 J. Walliss and H. Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies: Re-conceptualising Design and Making (New York: Routledge, 2016). 5 Ibid. 6 Picon, “Substance and Structure II.” 7 Doug Paterson, “Landscape Architectural Research in Canada: Developing a Certain Future in Uncertain Times,” Landscape Review 14, no. 1 (1995): 6–18. 8 Walliss and Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies; Picon, “Substance and Structure II.” 9 Ibid.; John Danahy, “Technology for Dynamic Viewing and Peripheral Vision in Landscape Visualization,” Landscape and Urban Planning 54, no. 1–4 (2001): 127–38; E. Lange and W. Schmid, “Ecological Planning with Virtual Landscapes: Three Examples from Switzerland,” Landscape Journal 19, no. 1–2 (2000): 156–65. 10 Robert Wright, “In Memoriam: Jerry Englar 1936– 2016,” 5 May 2017, https://www.daniels.utoronto .ca/news/2016/05/17/memoriam-jerry-englar-1936 –2016. 11 Danahy, “Technology for Dynamic Viewing.” 12 Ibid.; W. Shaw, “New Large-Screen and Multi-Image Motion-Picture System,” SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal (September 1970). 13 Wright, “In Memoriam.” 14 Doug Paterson, “Landscape Architectural Research in Canada: Developing a Certain Future in Uncertain Times,” Landscape Review 14, no. 1 (1995): 6–18; Danahy, “Technology for Dynamic Viewing”; John Danahy, “Sophisticated Image Rendering in Environmental Design Review,” in CHI ’87: Proceedings of the SIGCHI/GI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems and Graphics Interface (1987), 211–18; John Danahy, “Dynamic Immersive Visualization: Negotiating Landscape Images,” The Real and Virtual Worlds of Spatial Planning (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 2004), 157–71; John Danahy, “A Set of Visualization Data Needs in Urban Environmental Planning

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15

16 17 18

19 20

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and Design for Photogrammetric Data,” in A. Gruen, E.P. Baltsavias, and O. Henricsson, eds., Automatic Extraction of Man-Made Objects from Aerial and Space Images (II). Monte Verità (Proceedings of the Centro Stefano Franscini Ascona) (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1997), 357–66; John Danahy, “Irises in a Landscape: An Experiment in Dynamic Interaction and Teaching Design Studio,” Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990, 363–76, https:// www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Irises-in-a -landscape%3A-an-experiment-in-dynamic-and -Danahy/db50581a4044837f9f06ae1734fb33e1 cde6221e. John Danahy, “Negotiating Public View Protection and High Density in Urban Design,” in Visualization in Landscape and Environmental Planning: Technology and Applications (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 203–11. Danahy, “Technology for Dynamic Viewing”; Danahy, “Irises in a Landscape.” Danahy and Hoinkes, “polyTRIM.” Danahy, “Technology for Dynamic Viewing”; Danahy and Hoinkes, “polyTRIM”; B. Dave and John Danahy, “Virtual Study Abroad and Exchange Studio,” Automation in Construction 9, no. 1 (2000): 57–71. Danahy and Hoinkes, “polyTRIM.” Danahy, “Dynamic Immersive Visualization”; Mark Lindquist and John Danahy, “Community Initiated Public Participation: Altering the Urban Design Decision Making Process with Real-Time Immersive Visualization,” conference paper, Vienna, Austria, 2006. Stephen Sheppard, “Faculty of Forestry: Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP),” http:// calp.forestry.ubc.ca/. Stephen Sheppard, “Making Climate Change Visible: A Critical Role for Landscape Professionals,” Landscape and Urban Planning 142 (2015): 95–105; Stephen Sheppard, “Landscape Visualisation and Climate Change: The Potential for Influencing Perceptions and Behaviour,” Environmental Science & Policy 8, no. 6

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(2005): 637–54; Stephen Sheppard and P. Picard, “VisualQuality Impacts of Forest Pest Activity at the Landscape Level: A Synthesis of Published Knowledge and Research Needs,” Landscape and Urban Planning 77, no. 4 (2006): 321–42; Stephen Sheppard, “Participatory Decision Support for Sustainable Forest Management: A Framework for Planning with Local Communities at the Landscape Level in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35, no. 7 (2005): 1515–26; J. Lewis and Stephen Sheppard, “Culture and Communication: Can Landscape Visualization Improve Forest Management Consultation with Indigenous Communities?” Landscape and Urban Planning 77, no. 3 (2006): 291–313; O. Schroth, E. Pond, P. Paar, S. Muir-Owen, C. Campbell, and S. Sheppard, “Model-Based Visualization of Future Forest Landscapes,” conference paper, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2011. Lewis and Sheppard, “Culture and Communication”; S. Sheppard, “Guidance for Crystal Ball Gazers: Developing a Code of Ethics for Landscape Visualization,” Landscape and Urban Planning 54, no. 1–4 (2001): 183–99. Ibid. Sheppard, “Making Climate Change Visible”; Sheppard, “Landscape Visualisation and Climate Change”; Sheppard and Picard, “Visual-Quality Impacts of Forest Pest Activity at the Landscape Level”; Sheppard, “Guidance for Crystal Ball Gazers”; S. Cohen, S. ­Sheppard, A. Shaw, D. Flanders, S. Burch, B. Taylor, D. Hutchinson, A. Cannon, S. Hamilton, B. Burton, and J. Carmichael, “Downscaling and Visioning of Mountain Snow Packs and Other Climate Change Implications in North Vancouver, British Columbia,” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 17, no. 1 (2012): 25–49. S. Sheppard and P. Cizek, “The Ethics of Google Earth: Crossing Thresholds from Spatial Data to Landscape Visualisation,” Journal of Environmental Management 90, no. 6 (May 2009): 2102–17, doi:10.1016

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/j.jenvman.2007.09.012. Epub 2008 Jul 3; O. Schroth et al., “Model-Based Visualization of Future Forest Landscapes.” With gratitude from the authors, the following universities participated in the 2017 survey: University of British Columbia, School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture (SALA) – Kees Lokman, Associate Professor; University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design – Beverly A. Sandalack, Associate Dean (Academic) Landscape and Planning/Professor; Francisco Alaniz Uribe, Assistant Professor; Paul Galpern, Assistant Professor; Kris Fox, Assistant Professor; Tawab Hlimi, Assistant Professor; and Enrica Dall’Ara, Assistant Professor; University of Manitoba, Department of Landscape Architecture – Jean Trottier, Associate Professor; University of Guelph, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development ­(SEDRD) – Sean D. Kelly, Program Director/Professor; University of Toronto, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design – Alissa North, MLA Program Director/Associate Professor; and Justine Holzman, Assistant Professor; Université de Montréal, École d’urbanisme et d’architecture de paysage – ­Nicole Valois, Associate Professor; Dalhousie University, Department of Environmental Sciences – Heather Braiden, Program Coordinator/Associate Professor. “Dr. Robert Corry,” faculty and staff, University of Guelph, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, accessed 9 June 2019, https://www .uoguelph.ca/sedrd/people/robert-corry. “Dr. Nadia Amoroso,” faculty and staff, University of Guelph, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, accessed 9 June 2019, https://www .uoguelph.ca/sedrd/people/nadia-amoroso. M. Herrlich, “A Tool for Landscape Architecture Based on Computer Game Technology,” conference paper, 2007. A. Ahmad and A. Aliyu, “The Need for Landscape Information Modelling (LIM) in Landscape

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Architecture,” 2012, 531–40, https://citeseerx.ist.psu .edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.470.9995&rep =rep1&type=pdf; C. Zhou, T. Zhao, and Z. Zhu, “The Application of Digital Technology in the Design of Landscape Architecture and Education Reform,” Eighth International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation (ICMTMA), 2016, 692–5. G. Fulton, “Digital Dividends,” Landscape Architecture Magazine, https://landscapearchitecturemagazine. org/2016/10/27/digital-dividends/. Ibid. J. Walliss, Z. Hong, H. Rahmann, and J. Sieweke, “Pedagogical Foundations: Deploying Digital Techniques in Design/Research Practice,” Journal of Landscape Architecture 9, no. 3 (2014): 72–83. Walliss and Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies; Fulton, “Digital Dividends”; Walliss et al., “Pedagogical Foundations.” Walliss and Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies; Walliss et al., “Pedagogical Foundations”; P. Fricker, C. Girot, A. Kapellos, and J. Melsom, “Landscape Architecture Design Simulation Using CNC Tools as Hands-On Tools,” http://www .kolleg.loel.hs-anhalt.de/landschaftsinformatik /fileadmin/user_upload/_temp_/2012/Proceedings /Buhmann_2012_41_Fricker_et_al.pdf; P. Fricker, C. Girot, and G. Munkel, “How to Teach New Tools in Landscape Architecture in the Digital Overload,” https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object /uuid%3Ae6b1c4f6-4c2c-4c32-986d-1828c89f68d5; E. Lin, K. Shaad, and C. Girot, “Developing River Rehabilitation Scenarios by Integrating Landscape and Hydrodynamic Modeling for the Ciliwung River in Jakarta, Indonesia,” Sustainable Cities and Society 20 (2016): 180–98; C. Pasquero and M. Poletto, “Biodigital Design Workflows: ecoLogicStudio’s Solana Open Aviary in Ulcinj, Montenegro,” Architectural Design 87, no. 1 (January 2017): 44–9; Bradley Cantrell and

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Justine Holzman, Responsive Landscapes: Strategies for Responsive Technologies in Landscape Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2015), 320; C. Westort, “Digital Earth Moving,” First International Symposium, DEM 2001, Manno, Switzerland, 5–7 September 2001, Proceedings, https://www.springer.com/cn/book/978354042586. 37 Following is a list of potential digital technology partners in southern Ontario, to provide a sense of what such stakeholders could offer (southern Ontario was chosen because of the authors’ familiarity with the region): Site survey/remote monitoring – robotics/ optics: 2G Robotics, Waterloo; Aeryon Labs Inc., Waterloo; Clearpath Robotics, Waterloo; Drone Delivery Canada, Vaughan; Leica Geosystems Ltd. (Canada), Scarborough; Neptec Design Group, Ottawa. Computer software research/development – digital design/analysis software: Autodesk Research, Toronto; Corel Corporation, Ottawa; Esri (Canada), North York; SideFX Houdini, Toronto. Computer hardware research/development – hardware/assemblies: AMD, Inc./ATI, Markham; Eurocom (Canada), Ottawa. Simulation and testing – physical phenomenon simulation: Civica, Vaughan; The Greenland Group of Companies, Collingwood; J.F. Sabourin and Associates Inc., Ottawa; RWDI, Guelph.

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Immersive media – VR/AR/image capture technology: Bubl, Toronto; Cordon Media, Toronto; Sulon Technologies, Markham; Zeit Dice, Toronto. Immersive media – projection/screen/theatre technology: Christie Digital, Kitchener; IMAX Corp., Mississauga; Parallel World Labs, Toronto. Video game development – i­nteractive media: Activision (Canada), Barrie; Electronic Arts (Canada), Toronto; Ubisoft (Toronto), Toronto. Physical landscape – land retention products: Maccaferri Canada Ltd., C ­ ambridge; Terrafix Geosynthetics Inc., Toronto; Nilex, Toronto. Digital fabrication – prototyping technology: AXYZ International, Burlington; Fanuc Robotics (Canada), Mississauga; Eventscape, Toronto. Walliss and Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies; Fulton, “Digital Dividends”; Walliss et al., “Pedagogical Foundations”; S. Jacob, “Architecture Enters the Age of Post-Digital Drawing,” Metropolis, https://www.metropolismag.com/architecture /architecture-enters-age-post-digital-drawing/. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Landscape Verified as Infrastructure: Toronto’s Waterfront Transformation James A. Roche

Landscape as a form of infrastructure is a topic at the forefront of the discourse about contemporary landscape architecture. This design approach takes a comprehensive regional view of organizing urban landscape systems encompassing hydrology, topography, and biomass, with the aim of shifting from conventional engineering methods that use hard infrastructure (storm drains, sewer pipe systems) towards the implementation of green systems (bioswales, constructed wetlands, green roofs and walls).1 In Harvard Design Magazine, Ian Hamilton Thompson describes this approach and offers a brief history of landscape infrastructure, noting “When the notion of green infrastructure is invoked … it is the land itself and the ecological systems it supports that provide the essential services.” Thompson goes on to say, The term is frequently used in landscape planning to refer to strategically planned and managed networks of green space that preserve ecosystem functions and provide associated benefits to human populations. J.C. Loudon was arguably a green infrastructuralist when he suggested his concentric “breathing spaces” for London in 1829; and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace in Boston, constructed from 1878 onward, can also be regarded as a successful green infrastructure project that delivered public health benefits from improved sewage treatment. Olmsted’s comprehensive vision of landscape architecture as an art that could simultaneously pursue aesthetic, social, and environmental objectives has often

Fig. 11.0.  HtO, Toronto, Ontario, 2007, by Janet Rosenberg & Studio, Claude Cormier et Associés, and Hariri Pontarini Architects. Source: Janet Rosenberg & Studio / Photo Neil Fox.

been clouded. Within the extended family of landscape architecture, it is entirely legitimate for subgroups to focus more on art than ecology, or more on social development than on aesthetics, but this should not obscure the tantalizing prospect, set out at the very inception of the profession, that all these goals can be achieved at once.2

The design of the public realm, with this comprehensive vision in mind, allows for the structuring and formation of programmable surfaces that facilitate a multitude of events and processes, which through their landscape infrastructure premise can easily continue the further adaptation and transformation of urban space. In Toronto, we are witnessing this on a grand civic scale along the city’s waterfront, with the reorganization, design, and construction of several large urban landscape projects that have begun to work together on the creation of dynamic spaces and the establishment of a new structural framework along Lake Ontario. The development of Toronto’s waterfront, as in many North American cities, involved extensive landfilling to accommodate the rapid growth of industry and commerce. The subsequent decline in shipping and a decreased reliance on railways rendered the once bustling area nearly obsolete for industrial purposes. Over the past two decades, a series of projects have been designed and constructed in relatively quick succession, all working to repurpose underutilized land into a series of catalytic spaces with greater social, economic, and ecological value. These interventions redefine the city’s relationship to the water’s edge, and in doing so they begin to highlight landscape architecture’s potential to act as an agent in restructuring the urban fabric. Furthermore, these projects, led by the Toronto Waterfront

Toronto’s Waterfront Transformation

Revitalization Corporation (also known as Waterfront Toronto) and designed by international and Canadian landscape architects, have initiated a set of organizing systems that will generate and foster innovative urban social ecologies, at the immediate local scale as well at the metropolitan level and internationally. Major planning efforts by the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto have enabled the waterfront to be redefined through the development of several new precincts. Initiatives and reports, including the Central Waterfront Secondary Plan and the Central Waterfront Public Space Framework,3 established a set of core principles and guidelines for a public space network designed to extend across the downtown waterfront. These plans, formulated by local design firm Urban Strategies, with input from various city departments, the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority, and key stakeholders, identified public space districts and destinations designated for further planning, design, and development. The reshaping and reorganization of these areas, with the goal of improved waterfront access and future development, have initiated change and, ultimately, a cohesive public realm (fig. 11.1).

Connections: Linking Disparate Spaces Strategic design work consists of precinct and master plans, including the Strategic Plan for the Central Waterfront, by West 8 and DuToit Alsop Hillier (DTAH); The Lake Ontario Park Master Plan, by Field Operations and Schollen & Company; and the master plan and environmental assessments for the Port Lands and the Lower Don Lands, led by Michael Van Valkenburgh

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Associates. Each of these design proposals addresses major infrastructure and provides organizing ideas to promote flexible, resilient frameworks, conditions, and sets of possibilities, all of which introduce surfaces, connective networks, and projects for habitation. These previously industrial areas are being envisioned and designed for innovative forms of occupation, supported by building development, parks, ecosystems, transit solutions, and pedestrian access. The West 8 and DTAH strategic plan has been implemented in stages, with a substantial amount of work already completed along Queens Quay, Toronto’s main waterfront boulevard. The plan uses a simple, cohesive system to establish a sense of order along a waterfront that previously lacked identity because of an inadequate right-of-way and disconnected, disparate spaces. For the past few decades, Queens Quay has been more of a barrier than a gateway to the lake. Despite operating as a commercial artery, it had no sense of public realm or civic thoroughfare. The master plan proposed three primary moves: a continuous promenade, a reconfigured Queens Quay, and the WaveDecks, a series of floating elements to promote marine activity. These have been executed sequentially, re-establishing connections to the lake and redefining the water’s edge. The first completed WaveDecks, at the Spadina, Simcoe, and Rees intersections, were designed to punctuate the moments where the north-south streets meet the lake, while addressing restrictive east-west pedestrian access (fig. 11.2). Individually, the cantilevered wooden structures form gathering points for pedestrians, while collectively they articulate a new, accessible image for the harbourfront (fig. 11.3). The WaveDecks represented the first step in a broader vision to establish a coherent

Fig. 11.1.  Toronto Waterfront Designated Waterfront Area, central zone plan. Source: Waterfront Toronto.

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Fig. 11.2.  Toronto’s former waterfront edge condition, Simcoe Street Slip. Source: Waterfront Toronto.

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waterside identity adjacent to the downtown core, and their unique geometries are both functional and expressive. Spatially, they widen the public promenade, and their flexible design enables them to double as destinations, bringing together the immediate community. This first piece of public realm implementation along the waterfront captured the city’s imagination, demonstrating the potential for reconnection to the lake. The second phase of the strategic plan encompassed the total reconstruction of Queens Quay, a project unprecedented in scale and scope in Toronto. This overhaul of the boulevard, from a barrier to a connective gateway, required a complete rebuild of existing services, including updated transit, a realigned roadway, and the removal of on-street parking; and it introduced an expanded public thoroughfare, with a bike trail along the south side (fig. 11.4). The overall design maximizes the programmable space, with a widened linear park that accommodates multi-modal circulation flows, links the exterior rooms formed by the WaveDecks, and connects a series of larger parks and open spaces – the Music Garden, HtO Park, Ontario Square, Sugar Beach, and Sherbourne Common – into an integrated landscape system. A rich language of materials, site furnishings, lighting, and unified signage and wayfinding builds visual continuity, as well as a cohesive character, throughout the public realm along the water’s edge. The strategy also catalysed a complete rebuild of site services and utilities for Queens Quay, in anticipation of future development. Entire sections of services were reorganized and relocated, to accommodate and maximize the installation of soil cells; the excavation provided the huge quantities of loose soil needed to support the growth of healthy

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Fig. 11.3.  Simcoe WaveDeck, 2009, redefining the water’s edge. Source: Waterfront Toronto; West 8 and DTAH.

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Fig. 11.4.  Reconfiguration of Queens Quay right-of-way, 2012. Source: Waterfront Toronto.

trees along the entire street. The Queens Quay project reaches beyond streetscape redesign. Its vision involved an infrastructural reconfiguration of the public realm and landscape systems that transformed Toronto’s waterfront (fig. 11.5).

Precincts: Structuring Development One of the major accomplishments of the new connective framework along the harbourfront is the

continued integration of unoccupied areas into the active civic realm. These former industrial lands have been identified, delineated, and envisioned as mixed communities and extensions of the adjacent urban fabric. In this context, “precinct” refers to a place or enclosure marked off by defined limits, a boundary, a community or neighbourhood and its environs. The East Bayfront precinct (south of Lake Shore Boulevard, between Jarvis and Parliament Streets)4 and the West Don Lands precinct (east of Parliament Street and south of King Street to the railway corridor)5 are both

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Fig. 11.5.  Queens Quay Promenade. Source: Waterfront Toronto.

undergoing large-scale civic works, combined with overall site cleanup and removal of impacted soil. The site works lay a foundation for infrastructural reorganization, where the introduction of dynamic public realms has already started to transform these industrial areas. Integrating these areas required greater access and civic connections, through a redefined hierarchy of streets, transit, and a robust public realm. Building the public landscape and parks first attracted progressive development to follow. The precincts accommodate new

buildings, roads, utilities, open spaces, amenities, and natural habitats. The design structures and supports a broad range of fixed and changing activities, with dynamic urban surfaces envisioned to respond to the community’s evolving needs.6 Taking advantage of the planning measures implemented when Toronto hosted the 2015 Pan Am Games, the team expedited the design and construction of the West Don Lands precinct so the site could host and house athletes. This foresight of mobilizing a global event enabled development and facilitated project implementation.

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The design targeted public accessibility, visual connections, engagement with the ground floors of buildings, and flexible spaces to accommodate multiple uses and programming, as well as overall design excellence through built form and sustainability. The development was strategically staged, based on the precinct plan’s key sites, corridors, gateways, and open spaces, allowing immediate occupation while anticipating further phased site evolution and positive influence on adjacent future development sites.7 Landscape in this precinct operates as infrastructure and as the framework for all activity: site remediation, urban development, and civic integration.

Parks and Open Spaces: Instigating Inhabitation The transformation of Toronto’s waterfront manifested with the completion of destination landscapes at HtO Park, Ontario Square, Sugar Beach, and Sherbourne Common. These significant public spaces now have an even greater impact, physically and symbolically, because of their cohesive integration with the Queens Quay reconstruction. One of the first competition-based park projects, led by the City of Toronto and completed in 2007, was HtO Park, by Janet Rosenberg and Studio in collaboration with Claude Cormier et Associés. This was soon followed by Sugar Beach (Hallé and Roberge, chap. 8, this volume), a hugely successful project by Claude Cormier et Associés with the Planning Partnership, led by Waterfront Toronto. The winning competition design was envisioned as a moment within a hierarchal system of beaches across

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Toronto. These urban beach projects dramatically reimagine the city’s relationship to the water, in their individual designs and as part of a series. Together with HtO and Cherry Beach, a natural beach in the city’s east end, Sugar Beach forms an integral part of this system, redefining ecological function, cultural accessibility, and visual identity along Lake Ontario. Sugar Beach, completed in June 2010, has transformed the city on multiple levels, exceeding the competition mandate of a neighbourhood park that serves as both a gateway to a new community and a destination landscape (figs. 11.6 and 11.7). It has also established itself in the psyche of the greater metropolitan area through the sheer volume of media coverage. The design celebrates the site’s heritage by bridging the gap between ongoing industrial functions and modern community use. The palette is simple, encompassing an urban beach, a connective promenade (informed by the designs laid out by West 8 and DTAH), and an event space with landforms that provide informal seating adjacent to a media and entertainment complex. The park’s detailing, defined by robust hardscape materials, graphic umbrella shade structures, scattered beach chairs, and large canopy plantings, stands out and resonates in all seasons. Through its scale, spatial arrangement, and view corridors, Sugar Beach has become a popular destination, an interface with existing and future development, and a vibrant link to Queens Quay and the East Bayfront precinct. It has also established a new order in the East Bayfront. Formerly a private parking lot with no access to the water, the park, in conjunction with the Corus television and radio entertainment complex, has transformed a once remote commercial zone into an event space. It

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Fig. 11.6.  Toronto’s skyline is visible beyond the sugar plant at Sugar Beach, 2010, Toronto, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Alissa North.

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Fig. 11.7.  The infamous pink umbrellas at Sugar Beach, 2010, Toronto, by Claude Cormier et Associés. Source: Alissa North.

has become a novelty, but it also serves as a node in a greater network of landscapes along Toronto’s shoreline. Its value is twofold: as a unique destination unto itself, and as an important element in the overall site system. Nearby Sherbourne Common, in the heart of the East Bayfront, is also integrated within the whole system, but in a much more functional, infrastructural way. As the largest open space in the East Bayfront, Sherbourne Common makes use of its scale, central location, and topographic position to fully integrate stormwater engineering into the design elements of landscape, architecture, and public art. Designed by PFS Studio with the Planning Partnership, Sherbourne Common provides a dramatic waterfront terminus for

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Sherbourne Street, interfacing with Queens Quay and the promenade, and connecting to Sugar Beach and a smaller park planned to the east. Most important, Sherbourne Common redefines civic infrastructure, setting a new standard for stormwater treatment in landscape architecture and the public realm (fig. 11.8). Stormwater treatment is integral to the project design, with all elements of the park involved. A grand public art installation by Vancouver artist Jill Anholt celebrates the movement of water, and forms the park’s structural spine through raised pools and channels that convey UV-treated stormwater. The landscape is configured around three main zones: forest, lawn, and water (fig. 11.9). These primary moves work with the stormwater system to organize the site’s programming while distributing pedestrian flows. The overall design is structured with landscape geometries that complement the architecture, a pavilion by Teeple Architects. While the site is notable for its integration of water infrastructure, this is mostly invisible to visitors. The park’s success comes from the varied and flexible ways it can be inhabited. The landscape consists of larger exterior rooms and spaces that facilitate the needs of the neighbourhood, while providing a sizeable event space for the adjacent George Brown University campus, a future community centre, phased residential development, and the city as a whole. Located in the heart of a proposed vibrant mixeduse area, Sherbourne Common is playing a central role in the neighbourhood’s evolution. With more than six thousand residential units planned for the precinct, Sherbourne Common will act as a destination for the emerging community. The park also performs a critical function in the public realm, through its water treatment

Fig. 11.8.  Celebrating stormwater treatment at Sherbourne Common, 2011, Toronto. Source: Waterfront Toronto and PFS Studio.

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Fig. 11.9.  Landscape as organizing framework at Sherbourne Common, with forest, lawn, and water. Source: Waterfront Toronto and James Roche.

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infrastructure and its purpose as a gathering place. These two elements were previously absent, but their introduction contributes to the greater symbolic and tangible transformation of the place. Sugar Beach and Sherbourne Common, as two new destinations, work together aesthetically and functionally to establish key nodes in the East Bayfront landscape infrastructure. Similarly, in the West Don Lands, the first phase of development involved the design and construction of several public parks and civic works. The parks and open spaces provide a structure for the proposed community while facilitating immediate access and attraction to a previously inaccessible commercial area. Two parks have been completed: Underpass Park, by PFS Studio and the Planning Partnership (fig. 11.10), and Corktown Common, by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (fig. 11.11). Both parks offer amenities and programmable space where none existed before, but they are very different in how they operate as infrastructure, and how they will enhance the current surroundings and address the future community. Physically defined by existing transportation infrastructure, the completed Underpass Park is located beneath an overpass. The site was a dark, derelict, fenced-off area filled with detritus from declining commercial activity and abandoned car parts. For the revitalization of this negative space, the design team’s vision built upon the public realm design and precinct plans for the West Don Lands mixed-use development. The space beneath the overhead highway was seen as a place to use park design as a transformative catalyst for the creation of a community. In this respect, the reconfiguration of the space beneath the roadway redefined the structure above. Three sheltered protective

Fig. 11.10.  Redefining existing infrastructure at Underpass Park, Toronto, 2012. Source: Paul Raff Studio.

Fig. 11.11.  Aerial view of multi-functional landforms at Corktown Common, with flood protection landform under construction, completed in 2012. Source: Waterfront Toronto and MVVA.

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spaces were built, each providing active and passive uses, each with its own distinctive character. Completed and opened to the public in 2012, the park contains an active zone for skateboarding and basketball; a central space with a children’s play area and a multi-purpose area for social gatherings, festivals, and programming; and a third area, envisioned as a passive neighbourhood park with a community garden. The design includes flexible spaces of various sizes with paved surfaces, enabling a broad scope of private and public uses that will evolve with the emerging neighbourhoods. Underpass Park’s inherent linear structure and strategic position within the planned development solidify the park’s critical contribution to the evolution of local identity. Underpass Park forms an infrastructural connection in its physical relationship to the roadway structure, and a strategic connection to community development. Corktown Common also operates at multiple infrastructural levels, as a regional public recreation amenity space and a stormwater mitigation landscape. The West Don Lands precinct lies within the historical Don River flood plain and is therefore prone to flooding (Ormston-Holloway, chap. 12, this volume). A riverfront park landform was proposed in the precinct plan, on the recommendation of the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority. The proposed topography is central to the organization of Corktown Common, and its landform provides primary flood control, protecting the downtown core from the flooding river. The park design is integrated with a flood protection landform (FPL), an earthwork composed of a clay core that fundamentally divides the park into two spaces, a “wet” side that allows flooding beside the river, and a “dry” side adjacent to the West Don Lands precinct, facing the downtown.

In addition to necessary flood protection, the park’s final grading includes sculpted landforms that define and organize the main features (a stormwater wetland, an open lawn area, a play hill, a multi-use playing field, and an expansive urban prairie). The earthwork accommodates a wide range of flexible programmable spaces, a hierarchy of sloping pathways and promenades, and a network of cycling routes with connections to the Don River trails, the surrounding Toronto neighbourhoods, and the Port Lands to the south. The soil and planting strategies work with the topography and the FPL design to develop a series of extensive planting areas, including a stormwater wetland and habitat where commercial industries once operated. Located along the Don River corridor, close to the shoreline of Lake Ontario and the Leslie Street Spit, the park has become a vital stopover for migratory birds, contributing to a continuous green corridor and linking some of the city’s greatest ecological assets. Both Underpass Park and Corktown Common make substantial contributions to the organization of the West Don Lands precinct and nearby communities. The relationship between circulation and public space is seen throughout the precinct design, with a hierarchy of streets, each with a distinct vocabulary of tree species, paving materials, and site furnishings. A major roadway, Bayview Avenue, was realigned to accommodate Corktown Common, allowing it to act as a terminus to a widened promenade that also provides a direct connection to downtown. The urban design layout negotiates and prioritizes connections with public spaces to the west, Underpass Park and Corktown Common to the north, the future communities in the Port Lands and East Bayfront, and the reconfigured Central Waterfront Communities.

Toronto’s Waterfront Transformation

These parks and streets provide the primary framework and structure for the establishment and evolution of communities, transit systems, and social spaces on the waterfront. What were once private, commercial, or industrial lands have now, through the strategic implementation of built form, become publicly accessible spaces that establish a new identity for the waterfront and will in turn have profound effects on surrounding properties. The visible transformation is only part of the far-reaching impact of this initial revitalization. Comprehensive economic impact analysis studies have already confirmed that the investments made to date in the design of the public realm have generated economic growth, employment, and increased land value. In this respect, the deployment of landscape design has served as a catalyst, a means to structure and inform all proceeding development, as opposed to the more conventional sense of landscape as a decorative final act. The result is a series of spaces that, through form and materiality, establish an interface with existing and emerging communities, and foster social, cultural, and ecological engagement.

Conclusion: City Transformation Toronto is witnessing the effects of this phenomenal revitalization, which has garnered global attention. The scope of social impact and corollary economic benefit on the local, neighbourhood, metropolitan, and regional levels can only be anticipated. To coordinate and accomplish these complex integrated projects, expertise and input are required from multiple disciplines, all with landscape architects taking a lead role.

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In retrospect, the incremental steps to the waterfront’s transformation have been reasonably logical, but they could only be achieved through an understanding of the landscape as an integrated and connected infrastructural system. Through planning and urban design, gaps and opportunities in the existing urban fabric were identified; key problematic areas were designed as demonstration projects, to prove their impact and viability (WaveDecks); the connective backbones were then constructed as streetscapes and transportation corridors (Queens Quay, Cherry Street); smaller parks were cohesively brought together as a linked system of public spaces (HtO Park, Music Garden, Ontario Square); public parks and open spaces were constructed (Sherbourne Common, Sugar Beach, Underpass Park, Corktown Common); larger development parcels could be initiated (East Bayfront, West Don Lands, future Portlands); and ultimately the emerging landscape is integrally connected to the infrastructural realm, further enhancing its robustness as a system. As this investment in landscape infrastructure proves valuable in promoting urban regeneration, it will only be a matter of time until the strategy reaches beyond the waterfront, elevating this once humble city and its meagre public realm into a thriving, healthy global metropolis.

NOTES 1 Pierre Bélanger, “Landscape as Infrastructure,” Landscape Journal 28, no. 1 (1 January 2009): 79, 91, 92. 2 Ian Hamilton Thompson, “Essence-less Landscape Architecture and Its Extended Family,” Harvard Design Magazine: Landscape Architecture Core, no. 36 (2013): 29–30.

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3 Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation, Central Waterfront Public Space Framework, last modified June 2003, http://thelonsdalegroup.ca/documents /PublicSpaceFramework.pdf. 4 Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation, East Bayfront Precinct Plan, last modified November 2005, http:// www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/waterfront_secretariat /files/pdf/eb_precinct_plan_sm.pdf. 5 Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation, West Don Lands Precinct Plan, last modified May

2005, http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto /waterfront_secretariat/files/pdf/wdl_precinct _plan.pdf. 6 Alex Wall, “Programming the Urban Surface,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed. James Corner (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 233–49. 7 Ibid.; Alissa North, Operative Landscapes: Building Communities through Public Space (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2012), 103–5.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Right Tree in the Right Place Michael Ormston-Holloway

Landscape as Catalyst: Shifting Dialogues and Expanding Interdisciplinary Practice The scope of work being undertaken by landscape architects in Canada is changing. As it has expanded and grown more complex, it has embraced traditional media from related professions and incorporated them into standard practice. This has shifted the nature of our work towards a much more holistic model, one that exploits interdisciplinary tendencies and positions landscape architects more often in leadership roles. In relation to the urban environment, the expanded scope has focused attention on a broader understanding of trees as a piece within a connected, constantly interacting and exchanging system. Trees only do as well as their biological potential allows; therefore, the comprehensive nature of landscape architecture positions practitioners to best address issues of urban ecologies. From this perspective, the profession is well situated to influence how urban design integrates ecology into healthy, liveable spaces.

Standardizing the Lexicon: Promotion in Unison, Speaking the Same Language Urban forestry can be a misleading term. The word “forestry” is defined as the science or practice of planting, managing, and caring for forests.1 That definition seems reasonable enough, until one examines the elements within it, particularly “forest,” generally understood

Fig. 12.0.  Don Valley Brick Works Management Plan, Toronto, Ontario, 2007, by The Planning Partnership. Source: The Planning Partnership / Photo David Leinster.

as a large area covered with trees and undergrowth.2 The meaning becomes lost here: few municipalities have any natural features that would meet the criteria. The issue identified here highlights the breakdown in communication when entire disciplines of practitioners and academics who identify as landscape architects, designers, ecologists, and urbanists are not speaking in unison. Because urban forestry is one of the most prolific and important aspects of landscape authorities’ professional domain, without unity their objectives and mandates become disarticulated, and efforts to enhance our cities’ treed spaces become diluted. However, another word better encompasses what is meant by the more common term “urban forestry” – and that is “silviculture,” broadly defined as “the growing and cultivation of trees.”3 Furthermore, it implies a collaboration between art and science in controlling the establishment, growth, composition, and quality of vegetation (fig. 12.1) that satisfies diverse needs and values.4 A successful silvicultural model requires defined management goals far beyond dense growth or timber values. A different set of priorities begins to embrace a long-term continuity of ecological function and connection, moving forward to a more holistic understanding of site constraints and opportunities. Balancing economic, ecological, and biological pressures – coupled with evolving societal attitudes, the shifting needs of landowners, and contemporary biological strategies – will provide better models for growth. In turn, this will contribute to a more comprehensive practice of establishing trees in urban areas. Silviculture, therefore, seems more prescriptive than other approaches, and it should be used as a tool of direction for managing trees in an urban context. Whether specialists identify as agents of silviculture, urban forestry, arboriculture, or landscape architecture,

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Fig. 12.1.  Tree maturity growth paradigm. Source: Michael Ormston-Holloway.

there is merit in standardizing objectives towards a more lucid process that provides transparency to the methodology through which all practitioners and academics can promote healthy tree development.5 While several disciplines share the role of “urban tree steward,” landscape architecture operates with the most influence (North, chap. 6, this volume). We should not confuse this responsibility with the ultimate authority of city foresters, or with the progressive guidance of academics. Rather, with regard to the actual specification and deployment of trees across our urban environment, landscape architects have both the responsibility and the opportunity to implement more resilient solutions.

Achieving Productivity: A Case for Soil as a Foundation for Practice Early experiences of practising community ecology and forest soil chemistry taught me invaluable lessons regarding the importance of soil.6 It became clear that a passion for tree development was impossible without a comprehensive understanding of the subsurface network of intense ecological interaction, from which all potential for above-surface biomass arises. While soils are well understood and documented in the managed forests and plantations of northern Ontario and Canada’s boreal forest,7 the same cannot be said for urban environments,8 which prompts the following

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questions: Why are urban soils not better understood? Why do municipalities not provide clearer objectives for soil procedures, both pre- and post-construction, in new developments? And, perhaps more important, why is there no accessible tool kit of methodologies and solutions for restoring or enhancing compromised and depleted soils? Is it an issue of misperceived value? Soil functions as a living, respiring resource that acts as a resource sink through an incredible network of ecological connections, and that drains and cleans our surface and stormwater.9 In densely built environments, traditional practice encases our soil systems with hardscape elements, which places natural processes out of sight, and subsequently out of mind. If they cannot be seen and interpreted as a useful, necessary part of our infrastructure by the people who live in our cities, what hope do arboriculturally progressive landscape architects have of convincing clients to spend exceptional amounts of money and resources on improving a subsurface condition that has been conveniently overlooked for so long? While the issue is indeed complex, it still has merit. Still, the conventions of developing cities often favour the allocation of finances to built form and its underpinnings. Comparable costs for landscape treatments are often overlooked and undervalued. The model of planting a ten-year-old tree, then watching it struggle and fail over the following five to ten years, is a circumstance urban dwellers have grown accustomed to and have therefore accepted.10 This situation refines and directs earlier questions, in terms of applying the aforementioned principles of silvics and silviculture to a focused set of landscape

and arboricultural management strategies meant to determine how the urban forest should develop. These strategies then provide the types of built form to support the sort of biological development that is expected, based on a set of implicit shared values. Are mature trees needed? What value do trees really bring to urban areas? And what principles need to be applied to achieve the functional aesthetic that has been determined as desirable and beneficial to the utilitarian public good? Mature trees, as a general rule, rarely exist along urban streets (certainly not on Canadian streets), and generations of pedestrians have become acclimatized to the reality of small specimens, with large trees reserved primarily for parks. It would not be such a problem if small trees were equally effective at doing what large trees do, which includes the documented benefits of significant rates of carbon absorption, highly cost-effective carbon control, improving air quality, reducing particulate level, preventing erosion by buffering stormwater, capturing significant amounts of rainwater, cooling more effectively than air conditioners, reducing energy consumption, providing habitat for native fauna, benefiting human health by helping to reduce stress, asthma, and skin cancer incidence, aiding in children’s academic and social functioning, reducing urban crime levels, encouraging careful driving, and improving property values.11 Everything trees do from an infrastructural perspective, they do better when mature (fig. 12.2).12 The present models must change, and in some ways they are doing so. This chapter is not meant to dismiss the accomplishments of those who already

Fig. 12.2.  Tree maturity quantifying value, services performed per decade. One tree: $31,250 worth of generated oxygen + $37,500 worth of recycled water + $31,500 worth of soil erosion control = $162,250 total value over a fifty-year life span. Source: Michael Ormston-Holloway.

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support an urban application of silvic principles, such as the urban soil–specific work of scientists such as James Trowbridge,13 or Philip Craul and now Timothy Craul;14 or the urban tree–specific work of academics such as Dr. Nina Bassuk, Faculty of Urban Forestry, Cornell University;15 Dr. Andy Kenney, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto;16 Dr. Jack Eggens, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Land Resource Science, University of Guelph;17 Dr. Glen Lumis, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Environmental Science, University of Guelph;18 and Henry Kock, the late plant specialist of the University of Guelph Arboretum.19 Instead, this chapter elucidates and promotes the work of Canadian landscape architects who have adopted these principles.

Changing Priorities: A Crux in Landscape Design Principles Landscape architects have at their disposal an array of contemporary technologies and published research that gives them a tool kit of accessible and, perhaps more important, affordable responses. These are based on silvicultural principles that are often applied as objectives at a project’s inception, moving towards an achievable set of guidelines that are negotiated early in the design and planning processes. The following case studies of Canadian projects highlight the work of landscape architects based across Ontario, each illustrating a holistic approach that embraces the mandated principles of silviculture in a meaningful way and enriches the integrity of our planted intentions as designers of the urban realm. They describe exemplary work, in an effort to frame urban

forest sustainability as applied to tangible, landscape architecture–driven projects in southern Ontario. Through various lenses, each with a slightly different focus, the overview of four projects demonstrates progressive landscape theory designed to strengthen the resiliency of the surrounding urban forest. The Distillery District and West Don Lands Pan Am Village, Toronto, Ontario Infrastructural Landscapes: Bio-Utilities and Rhizospheric Associations In the spring of 2011, the owners of the Historic Distillery District, a collaborative project between Cityscape Development Corporation and Dundee Realty,20 needed to find a solution for their ailing trees along Mill Street between Parliament Street and Trinity Street, and along Trinity Street between Mill Street and Distillery Lane. The commission was awarded to the Planning Partnership, which advised extensive soil testing of the tree pits around all the failing specimens. Trees along the south side of Mill Street were a monoculture of Acer x freemani (Freeman’s maple), and despite being newly planted they displayed bud desiccation and significant terminal dieback, unhealing wounds with sloughing bark, and stunted growth, particularly over the two previous seasons.21 They were trying to tell a story, and the clues were right there. The pieces needed to be assembled into a cohesive narrative that could be examined holistically to prompt a solution that would promote healthy growth. The story went as follows: The trees had basal wounds attributable to careless winter maintenance programs of snow removal. These persistently reopened wounds were chronically in contact with residual surficial sodium

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from excessive winter salt loading, which impeded the translocation of water and therefore nutrients among the trees. The conditions caused the stunted growth and likely contributed to the dehydration of the buds. Over time, the trees could no longer weather the compounding stressors, and decay began to set in at their bases, causing sloughing bark and terminal dieback (fig. 12.3).22 The solution was simple. Landscape furnishing elements were introduced along the pits, to prevent casual access near the trees, and physical damage was mitigated, but such straightforward, easily identified solutions are not so common. Landscape architects need to be much more diligent in their examination for cues that might indicate reasons for impediments to growth. The trees on Trinity Street presented a more complex scenario for analysis. The trees planted along the west side of Trinity were all of the species Zelkova serrata/serrulata (Japanese zelkova), and they had been growing well until autumn 2009. The next April, the buds swelled on schedule and developed into full, healthy leaf-out, but in June the terminal growth showed smaller than usual leaves, then in July the leaf tips browned, and the edges curled. By August, near-total leaf dieback indicated what seemed like early dormancy. It wasn’t until late August that sparse leaves reappeared, in turn resulting in other issues with extremely late bud set, which would cause insufficient buds to break the following spring. This condition deteriorated for years, until the spring of 2013, when virtually no buds opened and the trees were removed.23 The zelkovas had done well for years, achieving significant caliper growth and beginning to develop

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into the desirable arching specimens expected from the Ulmaceae family.24 But why did they fail abruptly after establishing so well? Once again, it seemed that some arboricultural investigation was needed, as there was no visible evidence to explain the demise of the trees. It was determined that the answer must have lain somewhere deeper. If the super-surface conditions did not indicate the cause of failure, the answer had to be found beneath the surface, so the project proceeded with soil tests. A small pit was made, and it began to fill with water almost immediately. A second pit was dug, and again it filled with water. A small amount of soil was sampled, and grey-blue spotting was observed throughout, beginning about ten centimetres below the surface. Soil chemistry tells us that this greying (or “gleying,” as it is referred to scientifically) arises from waterlogging and a subsequent reduction reaction with iron, which alters the soil and changes the rhizosphere’s capacity to hold oxygen, reducing all the ecological benefits. Water fills in the soil pores or void spaces, replacing the air. Whatever oxygen is present is taken up by metabolizing microbes, suffocating the trees in the long run. When the roots cannot exchange with their growing substrate, it drastically limits the potential for healthy development.25 Simply put, when waterlogging occurs, trees cannot access the nutrients essential to their long-term survival. Further soil testing revealed that the high water tables were not typical, but rather resulted from some of the wettest weather ever recorded in Toronto, leading up to and during 2010, which resulted in soil saturation and standing water,26 enough to enable a toxic growing medium and impede the rhizosphere until it killed the

Fig. 12.3.  Mill Street tree conditions. Source: Michael Ormston-Holloway.

The Right Tree in the Right Place

specimens. While the hydrologic-rhizospheric dynamic was magnified in this part of Toronto, it was not isolated to the Distillery District; the condition was prolific south of Front Street. This area is understood to be an earlier shoreline for Lake Ontario, where extensive infill – which continues with the buildup of the Leslie Street Spit and Tommy Thompson Park – has created an artificial landscape upon which a significant part of the city was developed. The case entailed a complete rethinking of appropriate species to deploy. It was determined that they would have more in common with flood plain species, capable of tolerating low oxygen and saturated soils, rather than with traditional urban varieties that could weather typical stressors, such as salt loading, air pollution, and compaction. The city’s Urban Forestry department was not yet ready to deploy the new and subsequently unfamiliar species in the public realm, but the Distillery District sat on private land, which meant the strategy could be implemented. Urban Forestry would watch the trees develop over a few years, with the intention of revising the species palette for the entire West Don Lands Pan Am Village and the adjacent Canary District, to the north and east of the Distillery, and potentially adding approved varieties across the city.27 The case in the Distillery District, the West Don Lands Pan Am Village, and the Canary District rendered satisfactory results derived from silviculture, marking a victory for designers. Through the application of science, landscape architects identified the problem, rationalized a method with measurable variables to be tested, then determined causality and proposed solutions. Toronto now has a streetscape throughout the Distillery District planted with weeping white willow,

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Salix alba “Tristis”; limbed-up European larch, Larix decidua; northern catalpa, Catalpa speciosa; grey dogwood, Cornus racemosa; black gum, Nyssa sylvatica; yellow poplar, Liriodendron tulipifera; trembling aspen, Populus tremuloides; and two varieties of Dutch elm disease–resistant elms, the Princeton elm, Ulmus americana “Princeton,” and the Triumph elm, Ulmus “Morton Glossy” (not an exhaustive list). Taking the case as a whole, one might argue that Toronto is approaching a new paradigm shift in planning its urban forest (fig. 12.4).28 Tornado Rebuild, Goderich, Ontario Landscape Economics: Bioplanning and Development Stratification On 21 August 2011, at 3:45 p.m., an F3 tornado hit the town of Goderich, expanding exponentially as it moved across Lake Huron before carving a swath through the centre of town. At times reaching 1.5 kilometres wide, with wind speeds up to 280 kilometres per hour,29 it destroyed virtually everything in its path – the strongest tornado Ontario had seen in over fifteen years. While it only lasted twelve seconds, it levelled most of the buildings in Goderich and uprooted or split almost every tree, leaving a place the Queen once called “Canada’s prettiest town”30 in a state of devastation. Years later, it is still recovering. In response to the destruction, Goderich reacted with an extremely progressive mindset, for a town of just over 7,500 people, proceeding to issue a request for proposal (RFP) and looking to the larger Canadian design community for ideas. The mandate: propose innovative ideas to frame the rebuilding of a town that was determined to view a cataclysmic event as an

Fig. 12.4.  The Distillery District’s Trinity Street, post-planting. Source: Michael Ormston-Holloway/The Planning Partnership.

The Right Tree in the Right Place

opportunity. Employing principles of contemporary urban design, the objective set out to foster an innovative community while preventing the starvation of the downtown core. Several firms from across Canada responded to the RFP, and the project was awarded to the Planning Partnership, which undertook a comprehensive master planning process informed by an interdisciplinary approach. It built a team around contemporary planning policy, including rezoning efforts, architectural control, and a landscape strategy for establishing a canopy that would connect in an exceptionally brief time.31 Because the Planning Partnership applied progressive theory around urban forestry, and worked closely with the town’s Engineering and Urban Forestry Divisions, it succeeded in convincing them of the proposed strategies’ merits and viability. The big idea was to exploit ideas of growth rate stratification, which involved an extremely diverse species palette.32 It not only ensured better ecological resiliency, thus spreading the potential liability of species failure throughout an intrinsically armoured palette, but it also meant that the town of Goderich would become a veritable municipal-scale arboretum. As a part of the Goderich Rebuild process, the same team that handled the master planning led a redesign of Courthouse Square Park, the green jewel at the centre of downtown. It became the model for a strategy that, if effective, would catalyse the reforestation of the entire town and surrounding area.33 While the idea of planting species with significant growth rate stratification was unconventional, it was also simple, which sped up the approval process for realizing a park and streets planted with varieties that grow several

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metres each year, and a canopy that reconnects in five to ten years rather than fifteen to twenty (fig. 12.5). Some species have the intrinsic potential to grow rapidly, while others develop more slowly. This can be attributed to the innate strategies used by different species to compartmentalize their rates of growth through carefully assembled building blocks. Hardwoods such as oaks and hickories compartmentalize slowly, producing slow, deliberate growth. Softwoods such as poplars and alders compartmentalize quickly, then produce biomass at exponentially faster rates, resulting in trees that mature in far less time, in a rather more haphazard manner.34 Although relying on fast-growing varieties might not always be the best strategy, as trees that develop rapidly often have more fleeting lifespans, the objective was to regreen in a meaningful way, reconnecting tree canopies quickly by considering specimen spacing and species attributes through a dynamic model particular to the needs of the town and its residents. Bloor Street East and West, Toronto, Ontario Design Resiliency: Shifting Climates and Species Diversity In the early 1900s, the pathogenic fungus Cryphonecteria parasitica appeared in North America. While many exotic fungi had been introduced, none had ever proven so catastrophic to the urban landscape. The fungus became the principal agent causing chestnut blight, which devastated American chestnut tree populations in urban areas across North America. American chestnut, Castanea dentata, was at the time one of the most prolifically planted species along city streets, owing to its significant tolerance of many urban stressors.

Fig. 12.5.  Goderich Courthouse Square planting plan, 2011. Source: The Planning Partnership.

The Right Tree in the Right Place

However, planting the trees as monocultures left city streets devoid of trees after the blight, and significant replanting efforts were needed.35 The lesson of the poor resiliency of monocultural streetscapes should have been learned, but the main response to the loss of the American chestnut was to replant with white elm, Ulmus americana, leading to even more catastrophic consequences. In 1930, two pathogenic fungi, Ophiostoma ulmi and Ophiostoma nova-ulmi, entered North America from Europe, piggybacking on shipments of unpeeled veneer logs and devastating the continental population of white elm. The impact of the blight extended beyond urban streetscapes, crippling the associated construction industries; white elm, one of the most abundant species in North America, was a significant raw material for the lumber industry. Consequently, Dutch elm disease has proven to be the most destructive shade tree disease the continent has known.36 The lesson remains consistent: it is imperative to approach landscape design with a polycultural model, to avoid catastrophic losses that result in streets and neighbourhoods devoid of significant plantings. It is now understood that value exists in increasing the resiliency of our urban landscapes through species diversity, which is critical to building the potential for mature trees along streets. A more progressive scheme of urban trees can shade streets, clean the air, and detain stormwater, serving a utilitarian and, perhaps more important, an infrastructural purpose, which is seriously lacking in Toronto, where we have achieved nowhere near the recommended age and size class distribution in any given municipality (fig. 12.6).

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If trees can be perceived as a utility, their intrinsic value increases exponentially, and the amount of money allocated to harness their infrastructural capacity can be rethought and increased beyond typical landscape allocations. Beginning in 2007 and completed in 2010, the Bloor Street Revitalization project re-envisioned a stretch of Bloor Street between Church Street and Avenue Road, readdressing the public realm in the city’s premier shopping district. The sidewalks and curbs were repaved with granite, rights of way were renegotiated, and financial allocations to streetscape greening strategies were entirely rethought. Trees were perceived in part as a utility, with all the aforementioned infrastructural capacities, so that an unusually large amount of money could be justified for preparing the subsurface soil conditions to support the potential for mature tree growth. A more comprehensive understanding of trees’ role in our urban landscapes was one of the principal merits of the project. Structural soil cells were used to achieve ample soil volumes through connected trenches, and they were armoured to minimize soil compaction, retaining soil pore space for air and water.37 The project was envisioned as a dream landscape architecture initiative that would set a precedent and justify the unconventional expenditures. However, one significant problem remained: the entire street was planted as a monoculture. The client, the Bloor-Yorkville BIA (Business Improvement Area), was convinced that a monoculture was acceptable, as the proposed tree species constituted the best living example of hybrid vigour. The same variety lined the streets of New York, Paris, and most of Europe, with the magnificent allées that Canada had not seen since the loss of the arching

Fig. 12.6.  Tree age/size class distribution model, with ideal proportions shown in pie charts on the left, and City of Toronto proportions listed as percentages on the right. Source: Michael Ormston-Holloway.

The Right Tree in the Right Place

elms. The species was the London plane tree, Platanus x acerifolia. If there were ever a single variety to plant exhaustively in urban areas, this would be it.38 The lesson has been learned and well documented that if one new variable disrupts a delicate environmental balance, it can lead to the complete loss of a street’s canopy, along with the intrinsic infrastructural benefits. The issue, it would appear, lies in the fact that while the London plane tree thrives in New York and Paris, it is a newcomer to the Canadian landscape, responding in less than favourable ways.39 The species has been planted here before, but in more sheltered conditions, or in landscapes with slightly different microclimates. While the climate has indeed been changing, it hasn’t changed at the same rate everywhere, and Toronto is warming much more slowly than Edmonton, Regina, or Ottawa.40 Designers must remain wary of newer varieties, often Carolinian species, which are being zealously deployed across the Canadian urban landscape at rates surpassing science’s capacity to determine their suitability. Ontario nurseries cannot even agree on the London plane tree’s preferred hardiness zone (a rare occurrence), with a range listed from zone 5 all the way to zone 9.41 The result was a streetscape of stunted growth, spurring frequent replacements as major public events approached that showcased the street, such as the annual Father’s Day event and Yorkville Exotic Car Show, which closed Bloor Street along the entire corridor. A series of arborist reports42 determined that the London plane tree’s suitability was inflated through a misperception of its hardiness, which resulted in fundamental, persistent discomfort for the species. The stressors led to an increased susceptibility to

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anthracnose, a combination fungal pathogen consisting of Apiognomonia errabunda and Apiognomonia veneta, which causes leaf curling and wilting as well as dark, sunken lesions,43 weakening the tree enough to make it vulnerable to other atypical stressors, such as the sycamore leaf folder, Ancylis platanana.44 Monocultural planting has crippled what was imagined as a seminal model for urban forestry as landscape infrastructure (Fahlgren, chap. 1, this volume). The opportunity was missed to plant a polyculture that represented an ideal of landscape resiliency and scientific methodology. Over time, such an approach would illustrate which species thrive and which ones fail, providing further insight into future strategies better informed by scientific observation, and constantly challenging the idea of the right tree in the right place.

Conclusion As the range of work undertaken by Canadian landscape architects continues to change and expand – taking on complex projects that require interdisciplinary expertise – it is imperative for landscape architects to understand and uphold contemporary principles of silviculture, as opposed to the limited traditional tenets of forestry, so that a chain of analytical action can be implemented to create integrated, meaningful, and operative landscapes.45 As landscape architects are primarily responsible for establishing the form and composition of Canada’s urban forests, it is incumbent upon them to foster viable growth, moving beyond the notion of trees as placeholders for five to ten years,

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towards holistically integrated models that embrace the design of productive public spaces as components of ecological function. 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge a few people whose support and guidance has been important to me and my work. First and most important, my family, for being sympathetic to my cause, and the time and effort it takes to fuel it; second, my firm, The Planning Partnership, for always believing in me and supporting my work; third, Tyler Bradt for his incredible graphic ability, and for his commitment to the never-ending quest to improve the urban forest; and last, Alissa North for including my paper in this publication. It is a privilege to contribute to this effort, and an honour to be a part of a book with such important and timely ideas.

8

9

10

NOTES 1 Lesley Brown, ed., “Forestry,” in The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, vol. 1 of 2 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1003. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 2865. 4 Ralph D. Nyland, Silviculture: Concepts and Applications (Long Grove: Waveland, 2002), 4–5. 5 Ibid., 6–8. 6 Michael Ormston-Holloway began work as a forest ecologist and soils chemist in the mid-1990s at the University of Guelph. He was employed by the Faculty of Environmental Biology, as well as the Faculty of Land Resource Science, where his work focused on soil chemical analysis of various forest types towards the development of biological prescriptions for increased biomass productivity in otherwise depleted

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forest soils. During this time, he also worked on sustainable agroforestry initiatives, further promoting his understanding of the importance of soil in resource conservation and ecological restoration. Shelley L. Hunt et al., “Understory Vegetation in Northern Ontario Jack Pine and Black Spruce Plantations: 20-Year Successional Changes,” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 33 (2003): 1791–1803. Timothy A. Craul and Phillip J. Craul, Soil Design Protocols for Landscape Architects and Contractors (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), 20–3; Pam Hazelton and Brian Murphy, Understanding Soils in Urban Environments (London: Earthscan, 2011), 1–11. Nyle C. Brady and Ray R. Well, The Nature and Properties of Soils (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 2–10. Craul and Craul, Soil Design Protocols, 271; Peter J. Trowbridge and Nina L. Bassuk, Trees in the Urban Landscape: Site Assessment, Design, and Installation (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), 1–3; Jesse Auspitz and Michelle Sawka, “A Street Tree Survival Strategy in Toronto,” Clean Air Partnership, accessed 21 October 2015, http://www.cleanairpartnership. org/files/StreetTrees%20Final.pdf. Citygreen Urban Landscape Solutions, “Booklet 1: A Guide to the Benefits of Urban Trees,” in Green Building Reference Manual (Citygreen Urban Landscape Solutions, 2012), 4–10. G.M. Moore, “Managing Trees during Climate Change,” Arborist News (December 2009): 30–4; Richard J. Hauer, Jessica M. Vogt, and Burnell C. Fischer, “The Cost of Not Maintaining the Urban Forest,” Arborist News (February 2015): 12–16. Trowbridge and Bassuk, Trees in the Urban Landscape. Craul and Craul, Soil Design Protocols. Jason Grabosky and Nina Bassuk, “A New Urban Tree Soil to Safely Increase Rooting Volumes under Sidewalks,” Journal of Arboriculture 21, no. 4 (1995): 187–201.

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16 W. Andy Kenney, Phillip J.E. van Wassenaer, and L. Alexander Satel, “Criteria and Indicators for Strategic Urban Forest Planning and Management,” Agriculture & Urban Forestry 37, no. 3 (2011): 108–17. 17 G.P. Kohlmeier and J.L. Eggens, “The Influence of Wear and Nitrogen on Creeping Bentgrass Growth,” Canadian Journal of Plant Science 63, no. 1 (1983): 189–93. 18 Calvin Chong, Glen P. Lumis, and Robert A. Cline, “Shade Tree Growth and Nutritional Status as Influenced by Fabric Container and Trickle Fertigation,” Journal of Environmental Horticulture 9, no. 4 (1991): 187–91. 19 Henry Kock, Paul Aird, John Ambrose, and Gerald Waldrow, Growing Trees for Seed: A Practical Guide to Growing Native Trees, Vines, and Shrubs (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly, 2008). 20 Cityscape Developments purchased the Distillery lands in 2001. Dundee Realty joined as Cityscape’s partner in 2004. Tracy Hanes, “Spirits Rising at the Old Distillery,” Toronto Star, 23 June 2007, accessed 21 October 2015, http://www.thestar.com/news/2007/06/23/spirits _rising_at_the_old_distillery.html. 21 Michael Ormston-Holloway, “Distillery Tree Condition,” memorandum to David Leinster and Jamie Goad, 2010. The author of this chapter has been the arborist for the Distillery District and the West Don Lands neighbourhoods from 2010 to the present. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 John Laird Farrar, Trees in Canada (Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2011), 353. 25 Robert White, Principles and Practice of Soil Sciences: The Soil as a Natural Resource, vol. 4 (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), 184–5; Agriculture and Agri-food Canada – Research Branch, “Chapter 7: Gleysolic Order,” in The Canadian System of Soil Classification (Ottawa: NRC Research Press, 1998), 81–95. 26 Government of Canada, “Daily Data Report for June 2010,” accessed 21 October 2015, http://climate

27

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30 31

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.weather.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html ?timeframe=2&Prov=ON&StationID=5097&mlyRange =1937-01-01%7C2012-12-01&cmdB2=Go &Year=2010&Month=6&cmdB1=Go#. Karen Leasa, “Cherry Street Coordination – Tree Substitution and Conditions,” memorandum to Rasoul Basiri and Stephen Bryberg, 2013. Citygreen Urban Landscape Solutions, “Historic Distillery District in Toronto – Providing Best Soil Volumes for Healthy Trees,” Specifier Update, no. 14 (2013): 6–7. Trinity Street in the Distillery District was replanted in May 2012. Susanna Reid, “Building Community Resilience in Huron County: Lessons from the 2011 Goderich Tornado,” in Planning for Rural Resilience, ed. Wayne J. Caldwell (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015), 21–44. Alan Tucker, The Berlitz Travellers Guide to Canada (New York: Berlitz, 1994), 462. The Planning Partnership, “Town of Goderich Downtown Core Master Plan,” 2012. The Planning Partnership facilitated a series of meetings with the business improvement area, stakeholders, and the public on 12–14 January 2012 that established the town’s trajectory for rebuilding. Paul Cluff, “Circle of Life Begins, Again, at Courthouse Square,” Goderich Signal Star, 7 November 2012, accessed 21 October 2015, http://www .goderichsignalstar.com/2012/11/07/circle-of-life -begins-again-at-courthouse-square. Dominique Milburn, “Downtown (Re)Beautification Projects Awaiting Master Plan Debut,” Goderich Signal Star, 1 February 2012, accessed 21 October 2015, http://www .goderichsignalstar.com/2012/02/01/downtown -rebeautification-projects-awaiting-master-plan-debut. James Urban, “Principle 7 – Select the Right Tree,” in Up by Roots: Healthy Soils and Trees in the Built Environment (Champaign, IL: International Society of Arboriculture, 2008), 321–57.

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35 Susan Freinkel, American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree (Oakland: University of California Press, 2009), 81. 36 D.F. Karnosky, “Dutch Elm Disease: A Review of the History, Environmental Implications, Control, and Research Needs,” Foundation for Environmental Conservation 6, no. 4 (1979): 311–22. 37 Trowbridge and Bassuk, Trees in the Urban Landscape, 73–9; Craul and Craul, Soil Design Protocols, 20–38; James Urban, “Principle 8 – Establish Reasonable Tree and Soil Budgets,” in Up by Roots, 375–80. 38 A. Wayne Sinclair and Howard H. Lyon, Diseases of Trees and Shrubs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 2. 39 Edward Sibley Barnard, New York City Trees (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 154. 40 Jens Hesselberg Christensen and Bruce Hewitson, “Regional Climate Projections,” in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, ed. Susan Solomon, Dahe Qin, Martin Manning, Melinda Marquis, Kristen Averyt, Melinda M.B. Tignor, Henry LeRoy Miller Jr., and Zhenlin Chen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 847–941.

41 M. Putzer Hornby Nursery, 2014 Trade List (Hornby: M. Putzer Hornby Nursery, 2014), 44; Dutchmaster Nurseries Limited, Wholesale Price List 2014 (Brougham: Dutchmaster Nurseries Limited, 2014), 92; Connon Nurseries, NVK Wholesale Catalogue 2015 (West Flamborough: Niel Vanderfruk Holdings, 2015), 65. 42 Michael Ormston-Holloway, “Bloor Street Planting Strategy: London Plane Tree Assessment and Future Strategies,” Planting Strategy Report, The Planning Partnership, 2013; Michael Ormston-Holloway, “London Plane Tree Condition on Bloor,” memorandum to David Leinster and Harold Madi, 2010. 43 Maria-Luisa Tello, Marek Tomalak, Ryszard Siwecki, Jan Gaper, Emma Motta, and Eloy Mateo-Sagasta, “Biotic Urban Growing Conditions: Threats, Pests and Diseases,” in Urban Forests and Trees: A Reference Book, ed. Cecil C. Konijnendijk, Kjell Nilsson, Thomas B. Randrupp, and Jasper Schippersijn (New York: Springer, 2005), 325–65; Sinclair and Lyon, Diseases of Trees and Shrubs, 102–3. 44 US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Insects of Eastern Forests (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1985), 158. 45 North, Operative Landscapes, 6, 7, 11, 13, 168.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Supernatural: An Account of Vancouver’s Post-Industrial Landscape Susan Herrington

From Stanley Park, it almost appears subterranean with ample use of grass and terracing on top of the structure and sloping downwards. Inside, the feel is entirely different. It’s as if it was designed by the folks from Jenga. – Jim U. from Washington, DC, yelp.ca (figs. 13.1 and 13.2)

Vancouverism, a controversial planning model adopted by the City of Vancouver, has been lauded for its commitment to dense urban living and walkability, yet critiqued for the homogeneity of built form and its tendency to concentrate wealth in the downtown core. One facet of this planning model deserves special attention: the numerous landscapes it has fashioned. Since the late 1970s, local landscape architects have been crucial to the city’s quest for a liveable, ecologically sensitive urbanity. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s thoughtfully choreographed and heavily planted Robson Square (1978–2011) provided one of the earliest inroads for Vancouver’s transformation. This opening act was followed by Sharp and Diamond’s adaptive reuse of Granville Island (1978–98), converting a former industrial area into a site populated by markets and recreational, playground, and community facilities. Next, Expo 86 provided a unique venue for landscape architects to demonstrate their virtuosity in devising a temporary event site that would have a lasting impact on the shores of False Creek and beyond.1 By 2008, PWL Partnership Landscape Architects had reconceived the area around Southeast False Creek for the Olympic Village, providing rainwater harvesting, a 650-metre-long

Fig. 13.0.  Richmond City Hall, Richmond, British Columbia, 2000, by PFS Studio. Source: PFS Studio.

continuous waterfront park, and Habitat Island. The development would soon be connected to Olympic Village Plaza, an installation by PFS Studio featuring colossal sparrow sculptures and sinuous lighting fixtures, equally large in scale. As these projects demonstrate, Vancouver’s landscape architects have been at the vanguard in realizing publicly accessible landscapes that employ natural systems to reduce the ecological impacts of urbanization. The Vancouver Convention Centre at Coal Harbour takes these measures a step further by adopting the supernatural. Layering a thick set of programs – from landing seaplanes, to travelling tourists and locals milling along the seawall, to the 24,281square metres of planted roof space – the convention centre provides an ambitious example of natural and structural systems combined. Moreover, this convergence of landform and built form is furthered by the centre’s diverse aspects. From the seawall, it resembles a grassy mountain, the product of geological forces, while from the street it presents a soaring edifice of glass and concrete. According to Thorbjörn Andersson, the “supernatural” is one of six characteristics that define landscape architecture over the past twenty years. Given British Columbia’s own claims in its marketing to tourists, it is no surprise that this project strives to attain the supernatural. For Andersson, the supernatural in landscape architecture “represents an edited version of real nature, constructed, engineered, and aimed to satisfy the demands of the growing megalopolises in the world. The supernatural is a piece of invented nature, placed in an urban context with a social density exceeding the city itself.”2 This chapter provides an overview of landscape architects’ contributions to some of Vancouver’s most complex

Fig. 13.1.  A matrix of the vertical levels of building and landscape at the Vancouver Convention Centre, 2009. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.2.  Interior of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

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urban environments, and it traces the development of the convention centre at Coal Harbour from its inception as a transportation terminus and pier to its latest transformation as an example of supernatural landscape architecture. By examining the project’s intentional formalism and optical strategies, it also probes why the designers gravitated to the supernatural, and how this attitude is situated within the city’s own brand of urbanism: Vancouverism.

Laying the Groundwork for Vancouverism Long before Vancouverism emerged as an urban design model, the city had embarked upon plans to make its downtown more liveable. Landscape architects made a key contribution to this endeavour. In a Time magazine article from 1979, architect Arthur Erickson proclaimed, aptly, “We must think of our cities as places to live in and enjoy rather than places to work in and get out of.”3 The first realization of these plans was the design of the Provincial Law Courts, Robson Square, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, situated downtown on three adjoining blocks. The genesis of this project, commonly referred to as Robson Square, can be traced to a series of urban studies conducted by Erickson and Massey as part of a larger redevelopment scheme for the greater downtown core. Erickson shared the findings of this study in 1968, identifying blocks 51, 61, and 71 as the site for a civic and judicial complex.4 The three blocks would accommodate new law courts, repurpose the old courthouse, and provide a park-like open space atop a cultural and commercial structure at its centre block.

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Erickson was later commissioned in 1973 to commence design work on these blocks. A truly groundbreaking dimension of his schematic vision was the treatment of the urban surface as an integrated series of architectural and landscape architectural programs. In contrast to other proposals for the site, such as the fifty-five-storey Bennett tower, Erickson’s design conceived the project as a skyscraper lying on its side. He envisioned “a three-dimensional civic park with the existing courthouse accommodating various cultural facilities at one end and a new provincial courthouse at the other end of the three-block project.”5 His proposal for open spaces, with extensive planting on all roof surfaces throughout the centre block, stirred debate among city council members. Was a planted roof a landscape? Did Erickson possess the technical knowledge to pull off such an idea?6 To realize this civic building complex as a landscape scheme, he hired landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander in 1974. Oberlander’s exhaustive research on growing mediums, waterproofing, irrigation, and plant material culminated in the planting of more than fifty thousand shrubs, a series of waterfalls, and a fruitful collaboration with the architect Willy Bruegger that yielded the site’s acclaimed stramps, a combination of steps and ramps. Oberlander’s method of conceptualizing the numerous interior and exterior programs is noteworthy as well. By creating a matrix between the vertical levels of building and landscape, the design team was able to identify the varying features of every elevation and the sensory experiences each level would afford. This method enabled the designers to conceive the entire project as both landscape and architecture.7 Revisiting Robson Square ten years after its completion, the architectural historian Marco Polo remarked that the

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space “is essentially conceived of as a transformation of landscape into built form.”8 People marvelled that an exterior water basin doubled as the ceiling for the interior judicial spaces, or that when they sat on the grassy mound they were actually perched atop the tourism offices. The topographical surfaces appear to be carved from the depths of the ground plane, linking the logic of the structure with the heavily planted areas, watercourses, and plazas above and below.9 In Programming the Urban Surface, Alex Wall identified a “renewed interest in the instrumentality of design … the term landscape no longer refers to prospects of pastoral innocence but rather involves the functioning matrix of connective tissue that organizes not only objects and spaces but also the dynamic processes and events that move through them.”10 Referring to the Yokohama International Port Terminal, by FOA (Foreign Office Architects), Wall notes that the design “produces a continuous yet differentiated surface as a means of reconciling the complexity of programing … designers provided the city with a project that is at once private and secure and public and open.”11 While the Port Terminal loosens the static boundaries between landscape and building with a continuous wooden surface, the porous intersection of building and landscape had found earlier expression in the performative spaces of Robson Square. Another Vancouver landscape that served as a precursor to landscape strategies employed today is Granville Island, where designers intentionally retained elements of an industrial past as mnemonic markers. Originally a series of mud flats along False Creek,12 the Granville Island site was historically used for fishing by the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh,

and Squamish First Nations. In 1913, the Vancouver Harbour Commission began filling in the flats to create the 37-acre (15-hectare) peninsula as it stands today. Machine shops and other light industrial uses soon colonized the area.13 These contributed to the network of facilities that lined the shores of False Creek, land uses that would be abandoned in the late twentieth century and make the area surrounding this shallow body of water a prime site for redevelopment.14 As observed in many Canadian cities, by the mid1970s many industries had moved out, and remnant structures and railway lines of a bygone era sat abandoned. Fortunately, Vancouver-based architect and planner Peter Oberlander had been appointed the inaugural secretary (deputy minister) of the federal Ministry of State for Urban Affairs (1970–3). While in office, he devised a consultation process that would bring together representatives from the local, provincial, and federal governments to repurpose defunct urban federal lands. This consultation led to the redesign of Granville Island in Vancouver, as well as Harbourfront in Toronto. With Granville Island’s ownership later transferred to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the stage was set to transform the island. The landscape architect Randy Sharp, working with Hotson Bakker Architects, was key to Granville Island’s reinvention, taking it from a polluted, partially abandoned industrial site to one of the city’s most cherished landmarks. Sharp, who joined the design process in 1977, is credited with concepts for the site’s outdoor civic spaces, including the extremely popular water spray park. While the architects salvaged and repurposed the tin-clad buildings as marina facilities,

An Account of Vancouver’s Post-Industrial Landscape

artists’ studios, restaurants, and shops, Sharp incorporated many of the defunct elements (such as the overhead piping) into his landscape design. This desire to retain the remnants of old infrastructure built upon the emerging post-industrial park model originated by the landscape architect Richard Haag at Gas Works Park in Seattle, which opened in 1975. The Gas Works Park redevelopment benefited from large commercial structures, yet the marrying of industrial features and public programming at Granville Island is far more integrated, and part of the island’s daily use. This was an exemplary fulfilment of Vancouver planner Harland Bartholomew’s visionary 1928 Plan for the City of Vancouver, which advocated for securing public access to the entire commercial waterfront. Sharp was also responsible for the project’s many trees, which have now matured and contribute to the island’s ecological reclamation. The successful repurposing of Granville Island spurred further transformations of brownfield sites along False Creek, including Expo 86 (Hallé and Roberge, chap. 8, this volume). The Bureau of International Expositions considered numerous Vancouver sites for the event, including Coal Harbour and the fairgrounds of the Pacific National Exhibition. However, the north shore of False Creek was selected for its proximity to the proposed stadium and Advanced Light Rapid Transit system, notwithstanding its derelict status as a wasteland of abandoned railway tracks, lumber mills, and factories.15 Site planning for Expo 86 was initially entrusted to the project’s chief architect, Bruno Freschi, but by early 1983 master planning activities were turned over to the in-house design team, then led by the landscape architect Richard Strong. Cynthia Girling, a professor

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of landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and landscape architect for the project, recalls the extensive work required to build a 177-acre (72-hectare) temporary city in three years. The site plan required extensive hand drawings (threemetre-long renderings submitted for weekly review by the Expo 86 executive committee); as well, it was among the earliest projects in Vancouver to employ AutoCAD in the process.16 The time frame for design development and construction documentation was so accelerated that these tasks had to be undertaken by the ’86 Landscape Collaborative, formed by Don Vaughan and Claude Muret, which involved nine different landscape architecture firms.17 Although Expo 86 had a brief run, taking place from May through October 1986, it spurred numerous permanent legacies. As Girling concludes in her article “Expo 86: Landscape as Stage Set,” in Landscape Architectural Review (which was almost exclusively dedicated to the event), “more importantly, Expo 86 [was] an opportunity to expose the abilities of the profession of landscape architecture to the world.”18 Certainly, no prior event in Vancouver had assembled so many Canadian landscape architects to work co-operatively and showcase the fruits of their collaboration for an international audience. Another, more unusual legacy of Expo 86 was its concept. Girling describes how a theatrical metaphor was translated throughout the design process, “so that the site of the landscape becomes the stage set, the play is the exhibitions and performances, and people participating in the landscape become the audience.”19 Moreover, the landscape features became the props, which found second lives after Expo 86 closed. Several

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of the buildings were preserved and converted for new uses (the former Expo Centre, for example, repurposed as the Telus World of Science); however, only vestiges of the landscape remain in situ, as most of the elements were recycled elsewhere. Everything from benches to mature trees was intentionally designed to be removed and relocated to other parts of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.20 Expo 86 was also considered one of the major catalysts for Vancouver’s dense urban growth into the twenty-first century.21 Approximately twenty-two million people visited the exposition, giving the city unprecedented attention as a tourist destination and, increasingly, as a vibrant place to live. The afterlife of the site was part of this catalyst as well. In 1988, the Expo 86 lands, spanning approximately 205 acres (83 hectares), were purchased by Hong Kong–based Concord Pacific Developments for a dense mixeduse housing scheme.22 Concord Pacific has since constructed high-density residential units, with 42 acres (17 hectares) of parks and recreational space, and a public walk- and bikeway along the northern edge of False Creek, from the base of the Granville Street Bridge to the Telus World of Science.23 Northeast False Creek is still in the planning stages, with James Corner Field Operations and PWL Partnership designing the Vancouver Park Board’s new Northeast False Creek Park. In light of this fresh wave of development, it should be recognized that the plan for North False Creek laid the groundwork for the transformation of South False Creek, Coal Harbour, and other areas of the downtown core. According to the architecture critic Trevor Boddy, Concord Pacific’s Hong Kong template – tall, thin residential towers,

affording water views and surrounded by parkland – became the signature template for Vancouverism, and its origins can be traced back to the creation of this post-Expo site. Another major event, the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, spurred further high-density development along False Creek to the south. During the intervening years between the build-outs of North False Creek and South False Creek, there was a growing awareness of climate change among Canadian landscape architects, who considered their work an important aspect of the ecological solution to urban development, in light of sea level rise and habitat disruption. Our Common Future (also referred to as the Brundtland Report), issued by the 1987 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, established the ground rules for Agenda 21, an action plan for sustainable development. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, working with architect Eva Matsuzaki and mechanical engineer Jeanette Frost, was one of the first practitioners to translate these plans into a constructed landscape, through her work on the C.K. Choi Building on the UBC campus, which commenced in 1992. Setting a high bar for sustainability, the research facility was operated independently from the electrical grid and the university’s stormwater and sewer system. Its structure, mechanical systems, and landscape performed as an integrated water recycling system. Post-completion monitoring revealed its water consumption metrics to be half those of the average campus building.24 In 2000, the C.K. Choi Building was designated by the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment as one of the top ten green buildings in North America. The project’s

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integrated approach inspired landscape architects, engineers, and architects, as well as the public. Changes were also afoot in how the Olympic Organizing Committee (OOC) selected host cities. In 1999, it adopted the Olympic Movement’s Agenda 21, which specified that cities bidding to host the Games had to produce a strategic environmental assessment as part of the process. According to science writer Charles W. Schmidt, these assessments described “environmental commitments around energy use, water consumption, waste generation, and sustainable building construction, in addition to social commitments to include local communities in the planning process … If you look at who won the last three Olympic bids – Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010, and London in 2012 – you see environmental assessments played a major strategic role in that success.”25 Once the city’s bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics was secured, landscape architects engaged in numerous related projects. The brownfields of Southeast False Creek were selected in 2006 to accommodate Vancouver’s Olympic and Paralympic Village. PWL Partnership was hired to design the landscape. Founding principal and landscape architect Margot Long was quick to recognize the ecological potential of the project, which would eventually house a community of sixteen thousand people and provide open park spaces.26 As with Granville Island and North False Creek, former industrial development on the site had eradicated the natural shoreline. PWL sought to design the required parks as part of restoring the aquatic riparian habitat and wetlands. By creating five ecologically viable parks – the Seaside Greenway, Habitat Island, Hinge Park, East Park, and Pocket Park – PWL synthesized

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urban needs for play and recreation with goals to filter surface runoff and provide animal habitat. As Margot Long observed, “The whole storm system is visible. It’s a landscape feature, it’s an amenity. You don’t need the pipes, so we’ve brought them up and used them for something else. There’s the idea of reuse, that you don’t have to throw things away, ideas away. For me it’s ultimately a real sense of discovery.”27 Long’s design for Habitat Island has garnered the most attention. As construction of the Olympic Village required large amounts of fill to extend the buildable area, regulations from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans required compensation for the lost shoreline, even though it was industrial. Long conceived a literal fragment or mimesis of the shoreline with a 1.5-acre (0.60-hectare) island made from sixty thousand cubic metres of sand, rock, cobble, gravel, and boulders. It was planted with native trees, shrubs, and grasses.28 Visible from the Seaside Greenway, Habitat Island, with its wild grasses and craggy terrain, is a unique sight in an urban environment. Long gives public tours of the island, and other animals besides humans are attracted to the site. As early as 2008, Environment Canada reported that Pacific herring (an indicator species of healthy intertidal habitats) had returned to spawn along the reclaimed shoreline of Southeast False Creek.29 Throughout this evolution, from Robson Square downtown to the radical transformation of False Creek’s brownfields, local landscape architects have played a strategic role in introducing a green dimension to Vancouverism. By the turn of the millennium, one of the last remaining tracts of waterfront brownfields in Coal Harbour was re-envisioned as the new Vancouver

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Convention Centre. For the design, landscape architects and architects accentuated the exchange between landscape and structure to attain the supernatural.

Machine in the Garden: Coal Harbour The discovery of coal seams gave Coal Harbour its name, and its deep waters, protected shore, and proximity to the Pacific Ocean prompted the creation of the city later named Vancouver. Initially, the western terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was slated for the mud flats of Port Moody. However, by 1885 Coal Harbour proved to be the better option: CPR president William Van Horne acknowledged that it was the “perfect site for a commercial city, since it was accessible at all stages of the tide by the largest vessels afloat.”30 Over the next sixty years, the harbour was transformed into an unfettered industrial hub linking Canada to the offshore markets of the Pacific Rim.31 A train depot, railway workshops, and a wharf linked materials and labour moving between land and water. By the spring of 1891, the Union Steamship Company had bought three prefabricated steamships from Scotland, commencing the development of shipbuilding yards.32 Twentieth-century Coal Harbour (fig. 13.3) saw the building of sawmills, commercial piers, propeller shops, tugboat companies, a Boeing airplane factory, and a submarine construction yard. Machines capable of atmospheric flight were added to the equation on 3 March 1919, when a mailbag containing sixty letters was flown from Coal Harbour to Seattle on a modified First World War Boeing Model C trainer,

marking North America’s first international airmail flight. By the start of the Second World War, “Coal Harbour became one of the busiest seaplane bases in the world,”33 as “loggers, miners, and fisherman took to the air.”34

Embracing the Escarpment: Green Harbour Park Coal Harbour’s industrial operations experienced a sharp decline during the postwar years. Vancouver’s new container port system, which dramatically increased vessel capacity and prompted the merging of multinational carriers, replaced Coal Harbour’s port operations. Eventually, its passenger and freight rail services were abandoned as well.35 Moreover, by the 1970s, waterfront landscapes such as Coal Harbour’s were reassessed for their potential to contribute to the city’s economic redevelopment. Within the spatial logic of this restructuring – which hedged its future on tourism, real estate, and service industries – strategies for a liveable, densely populated urbanity unfolded. The reclamation of the Coal Harbour waterfront as a source of public amenity began on the western edge in 1960, with construction of the Bayshore Hotel Resort on the former site of a bankrupt sawmill.36 By 1985, Canada Place – a convention centre and cruise ship dock that also served as Canada’s pavilion for Expo 86 – was built to the east. Between the two lay the remnants of the harbour’s machine past. The landscape architect Don Wuori recalls that, at the time, Coal Harbour’s waterfront was a jumble of barges (including one that housed WAG, the Waisman Architectural Group), with

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Fig. 13.3.  Coal Harbour, Vancouver, circa 1950. Source: Vancouver Public Library 81376A.

dilapidated structures, railway tracks, and abandoned piers serving as ad hoc truck parking areas.37 The Vancouverism that materialized over the next several decades is often touted for its mixed-use residential glass towers; however, designed landscapes would emerge as an essential foil to these structures. Concurrent with accelerating development throughout the downtown core, a wave of young landscape architects was relocating to the city in hopes of participating in innovative experimentation. In 1989, Jeff Philips, Don Wuori, and Margot Long formed PWL Partnership, which would eventually create the extraordinary landscape surrounding the Olympic

Village on Southeast False Creek. Coal Harbour Phase One was one of the firm’s early projects, initiating a twenty-year transformative process that would yield a new waterfront neighbourhood with a series of parks and a seawall promenade connecting Stanley Park (Cooke, chap. 14, this volume) to the downtown core (fig. 13.4). Planning for Coal Harbour included mixed-use residential towers, a hotel, a community centre, retail facilities, a four-hundred-berth marina, and the 6.4acre (2.6-hectare) Harbour Green Park. In keeping with Vancouverism, these projects were made possible through a combination of private and public capital.

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Fig. 13.4.  View from Harbour Green Park to the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Rick Hulbert.

Conceived in 1993, a key programmatic issue for the park involved linking Stanley Park to the west with Canada Place to the east. Wuori remarked that an underlying goal of Harbour Green Park was to celebrate a natural feature that, after decades of industrial development, could not be effaced: the site’s escarpment. For Wuori, the design response to Harbour Green Park needed to “embrace the escarpment” literally and figuratively.38 Thus the escarpment, ten metres high in some places, was exploited to accommodate and differentiate bicycle lanes from pedestrian paths, as part of the east–west movement along the seawall. According to Wuori, each grade separation marked the shifting tides of Coal Harbour, a metaphor he would later bring to the convention centre. To connect north–south movement, a garden parterre starting at Bute Street linked a plaza café, a water spray play area, and the seawall.39 The built structures of Harbour Green Park, for which PFS Studio provided detailed design and construction documentation, paid homage to Vancouver’s art deco buildings: the Marine Building, and City Hall in particular. Art deco’s blending of classic motifs with machine age imagery and materials provided a fitting source of inspiration (fig. 13.5). Yet Wuori maintained that “people don’t need to know these exact references.” Rather, they served as a generator for design, helping Wuori “think past conventions.”40

Conceiving the Supernatural: Convention Centre Expansion Harbour Green Park catapulted PWL into the city’s urban design transformations, and it inspired the convention

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Fig. 13.5.  The built structures of Harbour Green Park, 1997–2002. Source: Turner Wigginton.

centre expansion plans a decade later. From a hotel resort to a Las Vegas–style casino proposed by Steve Winn to an international competition (won by PWL’s team), the last railway pier on Coal Harbour was the subject of many schemes during the final years of the twentieth century. By the early 2000s, the province became convinced that the best use for the site was to build upon the success of Canada Place. Although it was profitable, it lacked the requirements for a Class A exhibition space. Thus the City of Vancouver established design guidelines in 2002 for the convention centre expansion (now called the Vancouver Convention Centre), identifying a complex set of programming requirements.

In addition to the exhibition and meeting spaces, the proposal called for extensive retail space, outdoor public facilities to accommodate art and performance, and the retention of view corridors. The project would also incorporate the newly relocated Vancouver Coal Harbour Seaplane Base. Linkages to the existing urban fabric included transit and vehicular access. Connections to Green Harbour Park were established with an integrated pedestrian, cycling, and inline skating corridor. Underscoring this charged program, the guidelines requested that the convention centre site be “a visual image of landmark quality” and a continuation of the Harbour Green Park experience.41

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Along with LMN Architects, PWL won the contract, and early investigations by the design team revealed that the convention centre would do more than connect to Harbour Green Park, becoming a landscape in and of itself – a visually and functionally constructed nature. The idea to conceive of the interior and exterior spaces as folded landscapes emerged early in discussions about the project’s formal logic. The concept of folding in architectural theory dates back to the Baroque period. In the early 1990s, several architects applied folding as an operational depiction of architectural algorithms in form generation and fabrication. According to the architectural historian Mario Carpo, an algorithm offered “a parametric function which may determine an infinite variety of objects, all different (one for each set of parameters) yet all similar (as the underlying function is the same for all).”42 For the convention centre design team, folding adopted a striking experiential quality inspired by geological forces. As part of their vision statement, entitled “Folded-landforms,” they identified distinct design parameters, with folds to determine views of a roofscape, interior and exterior views, daylight access, and minimum mass planes.43 Wuori’s observations of marine landforms, such as coastal terraces along British Columbia’s varied littoral landscapes – with specific reference to Triangle Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island – gave further impetus to the concept of folding. Coastal terraces, or perched coastlines, are defined by upper terraces running parallel to the water’s edge and steeply ascending slopes on the seaward side. Their formation results from the thrusting and folding that occurs when tectonic plates shift. Marine terraces are used to estimate the tectonic activity in a region, and for the design team “[their]

form and typology [could] be drawn upon to affect the built form.”44 A sustainability advisory committee was established in 2004 to recommend goals for the project. Approximately 40 per cent of the centre’s precast concrete deck extended over the water, prompting the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to request a constructed marine habitat to replace ecologies displaced by the project. With the conception of the entire development as a landscape, LMN and PWL worked to vertically integrate building systems from the marine floor to the green roof. Their treatment of the horizontal plane rendered the project an “ecotone between urban and natural ecologies,” connecting Harbour Green Park to Canada Place, and the city streets to the fluctuating tides of the harbour.45 The result yielded a truly integrated design (fig. 13.6).

Roof Terrain One of the largest, most complex features of the convention centre is its roof. PWL partner Bruce Hemstock was responsible for determining and arranging the 750,000 plants that now live atop its surface. Highlighting the roof’s invented nature, Hemstock notes that the planting scheme was based loosely on coastal grasslands, “because it’s difficult to recreate a coastal grassland on a roof … we tried to create a roof that looks like that and functions like that.”46 Extensive research and testing went into determining the planting scheme. In March 2008, a model of the roof was created at New Brighton Park, approximately six kilometres east from the convention centre along

Fig. 13.6.  Plan of the Vancouver Convention Centre, with the conception of the entire project as a landscape. Source: Don Wouri.

Fig. 13.7.  View of the planted roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Rick Hulbert.

Fig. 13.8.  View of the planted roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre, highlighting its invented nature. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.9.  Walking down the roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.10.  Walking up the roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

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biorunnels, three-hundred-millimetre-wide channels filled with rocks, divide the roof’s surface into individual drainage panels. Functioning like a grassland terrace, the sloping, planted panels collect and retain stormwater. According to Wuori, the planted roof was also intended to reduce noise migrating into and originating from the convention centre, while offsetting the heat island effect produced by large buildings (fig. 13.13).

Plaza Spaces

Fig. 13.11.  Details of the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Vancouver Harbour. Eight trays, measuring 3.6 metres square, were planted with varying types of coastal grassland plants. These test plots were oriented and angled to mimic the slopes proposed for the building, and models of the surrounding structures were constructed to replicate their influence on the site’s microclimate. The final plant list was derived from this study (figs. 13.7–13.12).47 Conceived as a constructed watershed, the roof performs as a dynamic landscape, with drainage panels approximating subwatersheds and biorunnels mimicking a stream and channel network. The

At street level, the building’s shape was generated by the horizontal lines of the Thurlow Street and Burrard Street view corridors, preserving sightlines to the water, the mountains, and seaplanes from both southern entrances to the site. The new convention centre more than tripled the event capacity for Coal Harbour.48 Unfortunately, for security reasons, the public is not allowed on the highest points of the roof. This prompted the designers to increase the publicly accessible open areas at street level. According to Wuori, the plaza was made “big enough to accommodate three hockey rinks,” and it is sometimes used for pickup hockey games.49 This substantial outdoor civic space at the water’s edge also features Jack Poole Plaza and the Olympic Cauldron from the 2010 Games. As at Green Harbour Park, Wuori referenced tidal action with linear bands of paving on the plaza floor, echoing the changing water levels of the harbour (fig. 13.14). As well as providing a setting for such Hollywood blockbusters as RoboCop and Mission Impossible: Ghost

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Fig. 13.12.  The Digital Orca, 2009, by Douglas Coupland, adds visual interest to the site at the Vancouver Convention Centre’s West Building. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Protocol, the plaza has attracted large-scale events. In August 2012, twelve hundred attendees participated in Diner en Blanc, a pop-up picnic. They dressed in white and brought their own food, drink, and seating, transforming the urban plaza into a monochromatic tableau of white. The plaza encompasses numerous subspaces, scaled to accommodate smaller groups and individuals seeking respite from the bustle of surrounding activity. These are some of most popular areas for pause, where people can be found reading, relaxing, or simply enjoying the view (figs. 13.15 and 13.16).

Structural Reefs The entire structure is elevated on 826 steel piles driven into the harbour floor.50 The extension over the water encourages “the effects of tidal action within the building footprint,”51 and it provides for a seawater pumping system to uptake water from the harbour, heating the building in winter and cooling it in summer. As part of the marine restoration program, a fivetiered concrete framing system steps down from the lowest decking (at the exhibit hall and loading dock levels) to form a habitat apron. Appearing like a set of

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Fig. 13.13.  Grass seen from inside the Vancouver Convention Centre. The roof provides habitat for the thousands of European honeybees housed on its upper reaches. Source: Susan Herrington.

building-length stairs with frames in their risers, this 46,000-square-metre structure is home to barnacles, seaweed, and other aquatic life. Given that the apron extends through the intertidal, subtidal, and deeper subtidal zones, portions of the structure and its habitat are visible at low tide (figs. 13.17 and 13.18).52

Why Supernatural?

Fig. 13.14.  View of the North Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Rick Hulbert.

Inspired by local geological formations and coastal grasslands, the building appears as a landscape from the west, with a series of planted slopes and circulation

Fig. 13.15.  Resting and enjoying the views from the North Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.16.  Subspace west of the North Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.17.  Underwater habitat: structural reefs, Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.18.  Habitat detail: the apron extending through the intertidal, subtidal, and deeper subtidal zones, Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Turner Wigginton.

Fig. 13.19.  View of the secondary roof, Vancouver Convention Centre. Source: Rick Hulbert.

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continuing from the park. In addition to this optical strategy, the Vancouver Convention Centre is maintained like a landscape, its roof periodically mowed and weeded. With building and landscape functioning as one, and from some viewpoints appearing like a landscape (in particular from Stanley Park), the convention centre undoubtedly conforms to Thorbjörn Andersson’s description of the supernatural as “invented nature placed in an urban context.” Moreover, it embraces the basic idea of the supernatural as a realm or system that transcends nature to create something unexpected and beyond reason. Reflecting on the historical trajectory of landscape architecture in Vancouver, certain questions arise. Namely, why have local landscape architects gravitated to the supernatural? Why have they consistently striven to push design boundaries beyond sustainable landscape standards? The philosopher Jesse J. Prinz argues that emotions (rather than reasoning) form the basis for our moral judgments, and that these are passed on through culture. For Prinz, “Moral values are often conveyed through myths with supernatural elements, and this probably increases the chances that the values will be shared with others.”53 His genealogy of morals concerns conventional, widely recognized myths. Yet his tacit linkage between the construction of moral attitudes and imagination, emotion, and culture suggests that, in order to pass on the ecological messages of landscapes, their designs should pull at our emotions and prompt imagination (fig. 13.19). From this perspective, designing landscapes based on parameters limited to sustainability is simply not enough. They must be extraordinary, supernatural – a state that the Vancouver Convention Centre has achieved.

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NOTES 1 Cynthia Girling, “Expo 86: Landscape as Stage Set,” Landscape Architectural Review (Canada) 7, no. 3 (July 1986): 14. 2 Thorbjörn Andersson, “Landscape Architecture in Transit. 20 Years of Topos: Six Tendencies in Landscape Architecture in the Past 20 Years,” Topos: European Landscape Magazine 80 (2012): 42. 3 Arthur Erickson, “Architecture: Vancouver’s Dazzling Center,” Time 114, no. 14 (October 1979): 51. 4 Community Arts Council of Vancouver minutes, 1966–9, UBC Library Box 2. 5 Robert Sarti, “49 Storeys off Bennett Tower: ‘Civic Park’ Complex Unveiled,” Vancouver Sun, 14 March 1973, sec. C1, 2. 6 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, “An Oasis in the City: Robson Square and the Law Courts,” Landscape Architectural Review 2, no. 2 (June/July 1981): 7. 7 Susan Herrington, “Robson Square,” in Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 122–38. 8 Marco Polo, “Canadian Modern Landmarks Revisited: Robson Square and Law Courts,” Canadian Architect 39 (1994): 44. 9 Alex Wall, “Programming the Urban Surface,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory, ed. James Corner (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 233. 10 Ibid., 243–4. 11 Herrington, “Robson Square.” 12 False Creek was named by Captain George Richards in 1859, when he attempted to reach Burrard Inlet through the waterway but came to a dead end. 13 “Granville Island,” The History of Metropolitan Vancouver, accessed 10 February 2017, http://www .vancouverhistory.ca/archives_granville.htm. 14 The Ocean Concrete factory still operates on Granville Island.

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15 Eriks V. Eglite, “Planning the Unpredictable,” Landscape Architectural Review (Canada) 7, no. 3 (July 1986): 7. 16 Cynthia Girling, interviewed by author, 27 February 2014. 17 Don Vaughan, “Expo 86, Vancouver B.C.,” accessed 10 February 2017, http://donvaughan.wordpress.com /landscape-architecture/urban-design/expo-86 -vancouver-b-c. 18 Girling, “Expo 86,” 17. 19 Ibid., 16. 20 Girling interview. 21 John Mackie, “Expo 86: The Biggest Single Catalyst for Dramatic Change in Vancouver,” Vancouver Sun, 6 May 2011, http://www.vancouversun.com/story _print.html?id=4742442&sponsor=. 22 Trevor Boddy, “New Urbanism: ‘The Vancouver Model,’” Places 16, no. 2 (2004): 18. 23 “Millennium Water,” The Challenge Series, http:// www.thechallengeseries.ca/chapter-01/history/. 24 Susan Herrington, “C.K. Choi Building,” in Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, 183–7. 25 Charles W. Schmidt, “Putting the Earth in Play: Environmental Awareness and Sports,” Environmental Health Perspectives 114, no. 5 (2006): A289. 26 City of Vancouver, “Olympic Village,” accessed 19 July 2008, https://vancouver.ca/home-property -development/olympic-village.aspx. 27 “Parks + Waterfront,” The Challenge Series, accessed 4 November 2015, http://www.thechallengeseries.ca /chapter-03/parks-waterfront/. 28 City of Vancouver, “Habitat Island,” accessed 4 November 2015, https://cfapp.vancouver. ca/parkfinder_wa/index.cfm?fuseaction=FAC. ParkDetails&park_id=241. 29 Environment Canada, “Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Village: A Profile in Biodiversity of the Surrounding Area,” accessed 4 November

2015, https://www.ec.gc.ca/pbjo-bpog/default. asp?lang=En&n=5F0CA7DE-1. 30 Lisa Smedman, Vancouver: Stories of a City: A History of Vancouver’s Neighbourhoods and the People Who Built Them (Vancouver: Vancouver Courier, 2008), 54. 31 Coal Harbour was at the time a seasonal camp for the Squamish Salish Nation. Patricia E. Roy, Vancouver: An Illustrated History (Toronto: Lorimer, 1980), 12. 32 Martin J. Wells, Coal Harbour Recollections (Vancouver: Cordillera Books, 2007), 13. 33 Ibid., 77. 34 Ibid., 159. 35 Lance Berelowitz, Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Publishers, 2005), 101. 36 Wells, Coal Harbour Recollections, 163. Coal Harbour’s transformation was protested during the 1960s, as young people set up temporary campsites that attempted to block the building of towers on Vancouver’s defunct industrial lands. 37 Don Wuori, interviewed by author, 7 June 2013. 38 Ibid. 39 This included the Official Development Plan, Avila and Bauhinia Residential Towers, Coal Harbour Community Park, and Harbour Green Park Phase 2. 40 Wuori interview. 41 LMN Architects, Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project Design Booklet, 18. 42 Mario Carpo, “The Fall of the Identicals,” in The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 40. 43 LMN Architects, Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project Design Booklet, 27. 44 Downs Archambault & Partners Architects, Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, and LMN Architects, Complete Development Permit Application, 14. 45 Ibid., 13.

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46 “City’s Signature Roof,” Vancouver Sun, 17 May 2008, accessed 4 November 2015, http://www.canada.com /story_print.html?id=bb5c3953-26a4-468b-8b31 -4c1794d5f10e&sponsor. 47 Wuori interview. 48 Harold Kalman and Robin Ward, Exploring Vancouver: The Architectural Guide (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Publishers, 2012), 143. 49 Wuori interview. 50 Kalman and Ward, Exploring Vancouver, 143–4.

51 Downs Archambault & Partners Architects, Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, and LMN Architects, Complete Development Permit Application, 36. 52 “Artificial Reef Takes Shape on the Waterfront,” Vancouver Sun, 19 February 2008, accessed 4 November 2015, http://www.canada.com/story. html?id=d980ef1a-91d0-4259-9402-4ba11d812dc0. 53 Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 220.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Urbanization and Large Canadian Parks in the Nineteenth Century and Today Sandra A. Cooke

In a report from 1881 presented to the commissioners of Mount Royal Park in Montreal, Frederick Law Olmsted, the American landscape architect who designed the park, wrote: The possession of charming natural scenery is a form of wealth as practical as that of wholesome air, pure water, or sunlight unobstructed by smoke and fog; as practical, then, as that of sewers, aqueducts, and pavements. And whatever of sensible purpose there was in your selection of the mountain property for a park, was a purpose to increase your common wealth in that form.1

In the same report, Olmsted went on to warn the commissioners: If you attempt anywhere to have … a fair quality of turf, trees, and shrubs, and yet shrink from attempting to control the movements of people on the ground, you will find the losses from filching and from injuries through carelessness, discouraging and disheartening. The natural flowering plants, except a few coarse weeds, will gradually disappear; choice trees will be sickened; often their bark will be cut or bruised, sometimes girdled and their limbs broken down in such a manner as to establish disease from which they never recover.2

In these statements, with remarkable foresight, Olmsted has touched upon two facts that confront the owners, operators, and designers of large urban Fig. 14.0.  Wascana Bank Restoration, Wascana Centre Authority, Regina, Saskatchewan, 2007–9, by Ingrid Thiessen Landscape Architect. Source: Ingrid Thiessen Landscape Architect.

parks to this day: first, that large parks,3 as a form of infrastructure, are of tremendous value to cities, critical to the process of urbanization, but also as landscapes with contributing roles in the overall ecological health of much more extensive networks; and second, the paradox that human use – a common measure of success for urban parks – can be detrimental to the very ecologies that make them both attractive to users and effective as ecological infrastructure. In the late nineteenth century, Canadian cities benefited from a proliferation of large parkland dedications, among them Mount Royal in Montreal (Hallé and Roberge, chap. 8, this volume), Stanley Park in Vancouver (Herrington, chap. 13, this volume), High Park in Toronto, and Point Pleasant Park in Halifax. A modern resurgence of large park development has focused on Downsview Park and Rouge Park in the Greater Toronto Area, and Blatchford Park in Edmonton. One common element among them is that at the time of their dedications they occupied sites well outside urban centres (fig. 14.1). As for the nineteenth-century parks, they enabled cities to create a public use for sites on the periphery that were otherwise poorly suited to development, because of difficult topographical or shoreline conditions, and to give residents an escape from the rapidly growing city. Typically, these sites consisted of minimally disturbed wooded areas, though seldom untouched forest. Historically, with few exceptions, the creation of a large park in Canada can be understood as an act of conservation, preserving an existing rural or pre-development condition, as opposed to active design of the landscape. Improved access, trails, and amenities completed the transformation of these sites into urban parks. A closer look at the nineteenth-century examples reveals that, true

Fig. 14.1.  At the time of their dedication, many nineteenth-century parks were situated at the urban periphery, well outside city centres or at the edge of developable lands. Source: Sandra Cooke.

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to Olmsted’s predictions, they have contributed to the intensification of their respective cities, and that the outcomes, including increased human occupation, have compromised their ecological integrity. Urban parks are once again appearing at the city’s edge, often occupying extensive tracts in suburban communities, once the domain of industrial uses that also required large areas. One implication of these previous land uses is that the original ecologies of many contemporary parks have all but disappeared, necessitating significant efforts in the complete design of new urban ecological frameworks. In addition to establishing new ecologies, designers are actively engaging the human component of urban ecological systems, whether through influencing surrounding land development or through consideration of programming and management as part of the planning process. Park design is influencing these human and urban forces in a much more intentional fashion. The first and second waves of large parks both take place in the context of immense pressures on Canadian cities; in the late nineteenth century, industrialization and rapid growth caused poor living conditions for residents. It is no coincidence that this era marked the emergence of the parks movement, led by Olmsted, the establishment of urban planning and landscape architecture as disciplines, and nascent environmental conservation movements in North America. Now we once again face rapid expansion, combined with sprawl, climate change, and associated environmental problems. Like their predecessors, landscape architects and urban planners are looking to parks as part of the solution, in the same way city builders view better transportation networks, sewers, and other infrastructure. For parks

to thrive, they need to be treated in the same manner as more traditional forms of infrastructure, as systems that require investment, planning, and management. Discourse from the inception of the parks movement in North America points to early thinking about parks as part of a larger urban system, providing services to urban dwellers that ranged from improved physical and mental health to social benefits.4 The greatest obstacle to these historical parks’ long-term success in Canadian cities appears to have been a failure to put into practice some of the strategic, long-term, multi-scalar thinking that was evident in the writings of such prominent luminaries as Olmsted. Modern practitioners use terms like “green infrastructure” and “ecosystem services” to describe the function of parks in the urban landscape, bringing to the mainstream a concept that was familiar to nineteenth-century advocates.

Large Parks in the 1800s Throughout the nineteenth century, the number of large park dedications in Europe and North America points to the rise of a movement that sought to capitalize on the qualitative and quantitative value that natural open spaces contributed to rapidly industrializing cities, and the same concepts took hold in Canadian cities. Industrialization was fuelled by rapid population growth: between 1867 and 1910, Canada’s population doubled from three and a half million to seven million,5 and between 1871 and 1891 the proportion of Canadians living in urban areas increased from 19 per cent to 31 per cent.6 Parks were recognized for their vital role in the design of cities as

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they grew, with proponents primarily citing the social, health, and economic value that public open spaces conveyed. Rooted in the theories of such advocates as Olmsted7 was the belief that parks could counteract the poor living conditions that the working class endured by benefiting their moral, mental, and physical health through contact with nature.8 The perceived economic value of parks to cities had more to do with their effects on the value of surrounding properties. Speculators promoted the preservation of parklands in the interest of limiting the availability of land for development, thereby increasing its value, as with Stanley Park.9 They were also viewed as positively affecting the image and identity of growing cities, serving to attract workers and feed local economies.10 Whatever the motivations for creating large parks, sites were generally selected at the edges of cities, where parcels existed that either were unsuitable for development or had specific natural features that made them particularly suitable for parks. Mount Royal and Point Pleasant possessed both characteristics. Mount Royal’s dramatic topography made it sublimely suited to a picturesque park yet difficult to develop. By 1870, Montreal’s gridiron street pattern had reached the foot of the mountain, and its population was approaching 120,000. Although some of the land on the mountain was privately owned, it was expropriated by the city for an overall cost of $1 million, bringing the total area to 430 acres (174 hectares).11 Point Pleasant was established in 1866, at the southern tip of the Halifax peninsula. At the time, the city had a population of 30,000.12 The park comprised 185 acres (75 hectares) of land, which, when Halifax was settled, was abandoned by newcomers because of shallow water conditions along the ocean

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shorelines (prohibitive for boats) and a lack of fresh water.13 The land was owned by the imperial government and held for defence purposes until 1964, but leased to the directors of Point Pleasant in 1873, formalizing a use that residents had been discovering since the 1840s.14 Stanley Park and High Park did not necessarily present such challenges for settlement, but both sites were located well outside their respective city centres and therefore presented opportunities to protect valuable forests against the advance of urbanization. To early city dwellers, the forests had, as David Bain writes, “become a source of nostalgia … It did not seem to matter if they were altered, or indeed if they had to be rebuilt into some resemblance of the former landscape, they now became worth preserving.”15 This sentiment coincided with movements across North America to conserve sensitive landscapes.16 At the time of Stanley Park’s dedication, in 1887, Vancouver’s population was only 2,600, most of whom resided in Gastown, a neighbourhood located a fair distance from the park.17 The 1,000-acre (400-hectare) site had been designated a government reserve by the Dominion of Canada, which halted logging activities on the site and conserved its mixed coastal forests of western hemlock.18 High Park was similarly envisioned by John Howard, the original landowner, to be preserved as a natural area,19 as it was home to a significant black oak savannah vegetation community.20 It originally comprised 165 acres (67 hectares), sold by Howard to the City of Toronto in 1873; then, through further land purchases, it was expanded to 406 acres (164 hectares) by 1930.21 When High Park was created, Toronto had a population of over 56,000, concentrated in the city centre, well east of the site.22

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These landscapes allowed for escape from urban conditions, but only for those with the means to get there. As Robert A.J. McDonald writes, “Stanley Park did not have to be created; it merely required some modification to improve access.”23 Bain writes of High Park that “the greatest barrier to success was the park’s isolation.”24 Large parks’ inaccessibility was seen as a problem whose solution lay in bringing the city to the park. Furthermore, the design of the urban form around and within the parks was as important to their success, if not more so, than the design itself. The democratic desire to increase access for all citizens led to the creation or improvement of access points, internal and external roadways, parking lots, and public transit.25 Property values of adjacent lots rose, and development soon began to reach the park edges.26 Whether directly or indirectly, in aspiring to attract as many visitors as possible, large parks have influenced both the form and sequencing of urbanization, setting a precedent for the current notion in landscape architectural and urban design discourse that public space can become a catalyst for intensification. It followed that as park use increased, various demands led to such modifications as new recreational facilities and other “improvements,” at the behest of citizen groups or individuals and trends of the day, rather than according to any overarching vision or master plan. At Stanley Park around the turn of the twentieth century, the board agreed to install sport and play facilities, driven in large part by reform movements and calls from the middle class for recreational space.27 In 1917, under the direction of superintendent W.S. Rawlings and master stonemason James Cunningham, construction began on the Stanley

Park seawall, which was intended as an erosion protection measure, but also as a marine walk – again prioritizing human uses.28 At Point Pleasant in the 1890s, the directors used the limited funds available to gradually implement pathways, fencing, seating, and picnic areas, as well as to remove dead trees and plant seedlings (primarily Norway spruce, Scotch fir, and elm) imported from Scotland or grown on the park’s nursery grounds.29 Other facilities were added in the 1950s and 1960s, including a canteen, improved roadways, and parking areas.30 By 1890, Olmsted’s plan for Mount Royal had been partially implemented by the park’s commissioners, but certain liberties were taken, resulting in harsher roads, steeper grades, and less effective circulation than what Olmsted intended.31 Meanwhile, at High Park, John Howard remained as the resident surveyor, designer, and superintendent until the 1880s, urging the city “to spend but little money in artificial adornments, which would be malapropos to the native beauty of the whole surroundings.”32 By the 1950s, however, a new commissioner, George Thomas Bell, imposed his own philosophy on the park’s mandate, which prioritized recreation and cultivated landscapes over the preservation of natural features, with construction of the hillside gardens, washroom and restaurant facilities, and widened roads.33 The tendency of park authorities to stray from an initial vision and implement design strategies in an ad hoc fashion has weakened each of these landscapes’ abilities to withstand the pressures of human use. Had the spirit of conservation prevailed, the ongoing design and management of these nineteenth-century parks might have taken a much different direction. Allowing human activities to guide their design and

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management over time has led to site-scaled problems, such as the introduction of invasive species, soil compaction from off-trail activities, vegetation patches fragmented by roads and trails, and destruction of riparian habitats through the construction of water body edges (fig. 14.2). Besides the designs of the parks, external influences have had a tremendous effect on each one’s ecological integrity. With the growth of cities around them, sites that were once on the periphery and connected to larger systems are now isolated from adjacent waterways and vegetation corridors. Grenadier Pond in High Park, once directly connected to Lake Ontario, is now cut off at its south end by Lake Shore Boulevard and the Gardiner Expressway, hydrologically connected only through an outflow weir.34 The urbanization of surrounding watersheds has all stormwater collected in upstream catchment areas and conveyed via sewer to Grenadier Pond, West Pond, and Spring Creek, which causes rapid fluctuations in water levels, scouring of stream banks, and high concentrations of phosphorus, bacteria, and heavy metals.35 In terms of terrestrial habitats, the introduction of invasive species in each of these parks has impeded biodiversity and natural habitats. Poor forest management practices have resulted in even-aged forest stands and monocultures. At Point Pleasant, for instance, by the early 2000s, the forest was mostly even-aged with mature trees, 90 per cent of which were red spruce. This made the forest ecosystem particularly vulnerable when an infestation of brown spruce longhorn beetle led to the removal of 3,500 trees in 2001. Ten thousand more trees were destroyed that year during an ice storm,

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and in September 2003, further destruction caused by Hurricane Juan (fig. 14.3) led to the park’s temporary closure.36 Stanley Park and Mount Royal have suffered similar degradation affecting both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. At a superficial level, these places still function as “natural” oases within the city, but, according to studies and ecological reports, they will require significant intervention if they are to persist with any sort of resilience. Olmsted and his nineteenth-century colleagues may not have articulated resilience as a goal in the design of large parks, but they seemed to understand the factors that could contribute to a more robust open-space system in the face of changing urban conditions, such as connectivity to other green spaces, and planning in concert with land development and grey infrastructure, as well as active restoration of ecologies.37 The failure by Canadian planners of large parks to design according to these principles, and to anticipate and account for the effects of intensification, seems to have contributed to the decline of these parks. The concept of resilience continues to guide our thinking about parks and landscapes, no matter their age. Julia Czerniak, professor of architecture at Syracuse University in New York, summarizes resilience of an ecosystem as the ability to adjust and adapt following a disturbance or “challenging condition,” as experienced at Point Pleasant.38 Nina-Marie Lister, professor of planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, describes resilient ecologies as “self-organizing” or “selfsustaining,” implying that a lower level of intervention is necessary for an ecosystem to continue functioning in a “state of health.”39 Beyond ecological disturbance, both Czerniak and Lister maintain that resilience can

Fig. 14.2.  Driving was a popular pastime in large parks, one with significant ecological impacts. Source: City of Vancouver Archives.

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Fig. 14.3.  Point Pleasant Park forest, after Hurricane Juan. Source: Sandra Cooke.

also apply to a park’s ability to maintain identity in the face of “diverse and shifting social, cultural, technological, and political desires.”40 Czerniak goes on to explain that “a park’s capacity for resilience lies in the strategic design of its organizational systems and logics – whether infrastructure, form, or modes of operation – that enables it to absorb and facilitate change yet maintain its design sensibility.”41 With the nineteenth-century parks, the very organizational systems and forms (internal and external) that developed over time often became the primary challenges to their ecological, social, and infrastructural health, flexibility, and identity.

Large Parks in the Twenty-First Century The current conditions for planning and developing large parks are very different from those of a nineteenth-century city. This can be attributed to the planning frameworks that guide development in cities in general, as well as to the ecological state of prospective park sites. Taken together, these two factors just might enable park planners to avoid the challenges that plagued their predecessors, by promoting resilience through reciprocal relationships between parks and neighbourhoods as they are developed in concert (as with Downsview and Blatchford Parks), or by

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establishing stronger protections through legislation to govern urban intensification (as with Rouge Park). All of these examples take steps towards establishing parks’ status as infrastructure, by considering their relationships with adjacent land development, grey infrastructure, human uses, financing, and long-term management, as evidenced by well-documented strategic visions, management plans, and development plans. Downsview and Blatchford are both situated on former industrial lands within existing suburban communities. Downsview occupies 572 acres (230 hectares) northwest of Toronto’s downtown core (fig. 14.4), a former De Havilland aircraft manufacturing site and airfield since 1929, then the CFB Toronto military base from the late 1940s until 1996.42 The federal government announced the intention to create an urban park at the former airfield in 1994, as a legacy project, intended to demonstrate the highest standards in sustainable development. Downsview is now owned and operated by Canada Lands Company CLC Limited, a Crown corporation, following an amalgamation with Parc Downsview Park Inc. (PDP) in 2012. Blatchford Park is the former site of the 536-acre (217-hectare) Edmonton City Centre Airport, founded in 1929 and closed in 2009, and located in the north-central part of the city; it is now controlled by the City of Edmonton.43 Given that both of these sites occupy disused industrial lands, there was little to no ecology worth preserving when they were designated as neighbourhoods and parks. Downsview does have some mature stands of trees that form the basis of reforestation efforts there, but a report prepared by Dougan and Associates in 2006 notes that “from a natural heritage perspective, [Downsview] is a highly disturbed site with nothing

significant to constrain a development plan.”44 Likewise, Blatchford is described by the project landscape architects, Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (PFS Studio), as having no ecology to speak of.45 Rouge Park, by contrast, is widely recognized for its ecology, agricultural value, and geological features. It represents the eastern edge of the Carolinian forest zone in southern Ontario and is significant for its sheer size. In 2012, the federal government announced that the massive area would soon be designated as a national urban park under the control of Parks Canada. It was officially created on 15 May 2015, with a study area encompassing over 19,540 acres (almost 8,000 hectares)46 of the Rouge River watershed, extending from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine. Lands within the area are held by the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority, the Town of Markham, the City of Pickering, the Regional Municipalities of York and Durham, and private stakeholders.47 It is, however, by no means a pristine landscape; it is very much an urban park, traversed by infrastructural systems such as hydro corridors and major transportation networks. The challenges these elements present to the Rouge require a different approach to protecting its ecosystems, as articulated in the Rouge National Urban Park Draft Management Plan from Parks Canada: This new model of protected area management embraces an ecosystem health approach that recognizes the park’s increasingly urban surroundings and its working farms, major roads, rail lines, and hydro corridors. This dynamic urban and agricultural context has long driven change both within and surrounding the park, and will

Fig. 14.4.  A 2012 aerial view of Downsview Park, looking south towards downtown Toronto. Source: Kaloon Company/Geoff Grenville, published with permission of Canada Lands Company.

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continue to do so. Parks Canada will manage the park not so much towards a particular end state, but in an adaptive way, so that it remains healthy and strong in the face of changes within and beyond its borders. The protection, conservation, and restoration of the park’s natural, cultural and agricultural resources are integral to all decision-making related to park management.48

At first glance, it may seem that Rouge National Urban Park is being developed using a similar approach to that used in historical examples such as High Park. However, where urbanization is already present at the edges and throughout the Rouge, this new park is poised to anticipate and react accordingly. What these three parks have in common is that they fall within larger planning contexts that situate them as important features within a broader strategy for urban growth. Downsview has been the subject of various secondary planning exercises since 1999, with the latest version approved in 2011 by the Ontario Municipal Board, “providing for the development of [Downsview] and a balanced mix of land uses and development levels that will support the transformation of the area over time to one of new residential and employment communities well served by public transit and appropriate for the surrounding context.”49 The updated secondary plan, by PDP with a consultant team led by Brook McIlroy Inc. (BMI), accommodates a mix of housing and employment for forty-two thousand people within five new neighbourhoods.50 Similarly, the City of Edmonton held an international competition in 2010 for Blatchford Field, as an initial step towards a development plan that would include mixed uses and housing for thirty thousand residents

as well as extensive open space,51 with construction that commenced in 2014.52 The competition was won by the team led by Perkins + Will (Vancouver), with PFS Studio as the landscape architects, Civitas as the planners, and Group2 as the local architecture and urban design firm.53 The winning entry forms the basis for the area redevelopment plan, which is supported by concurrent transportation planning and Edmonton’s official plan documents, as well as by the capital region growth plan, all of which emphasize protection of environment and resources, strengthened communities, increased sustainable transportation choices, and efficient provision of services.54 Rouge Park was officially established, in its current form, by the Province of Ontario in 1995, and it has been protected under the official plans of the various municipalities on its borders since then. However, perhaps the most significant planning legislation affecting the park was the 2005 provincial greenbelt plan, which limited the extent and type of development within the “protected countryside,” restricting any future intensification to areas outside the extensive greenbelt protected boundaries. Rouge Park’s status as a national urban park has allowed for the conservation of a larger area, with a clear mandate to maintain and restore critical native ecosystems, the visitor experience, stewardship, and interpretation, and to ensure a long-term future for farming within the park.55 Crucial in implementing these planning strategies is that the parks be built first in the phasing of land developments, as with the road networks and underground servicing. At the park scale, both Downsview and Blatchford have the basic landforms and amenities phased as the first moves to be implemented across the

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sites. Design activities for the approximately 200-acre (80-acre) public open space portion of Downsview have been under way since the international design competition was won by the Tree City team, led by Bruce Mau Design and Rem Koolhaas, in 2000. Construction of the initial phase has progressed steadily since 2005, under the detailed planning and supervision of various consulting teams, including Tree City (at the time, Bruce Mau Design, PMA Landscape Architects, and SNC Lavalin Engineers), and later MMM Group Limited and Dillon Consulting, with all design and construction activities overseen by an internal group of professionals. The park opened to the public in 2012, boasting an urban orchard, a set of stormwater treatment ponds and bioswales, extensive forest planting, an event space, and a primary pathway system for pedestrians and cyclists. The first neighbourhood developed at the south end was Stanley Greene, where construction of municipal servicing works commenced in 2015. At Blatchford Park, 183 acres (74 hectares) is dedicated to open space, including an 80-acre (32-hectare) central park, which, like Downsview, will be phased to include large earthworks and stormwater facilities as a central focus of the design strategy.56 PFS envisions that its implementation will involve “gradual improvements across the entire park … provid[ing] a way for Edmonton’s citizens to repossess the site right away.”57 As Nathan Brightbill of PFS also pointed out, “This approach allows for up front habitat value and a large open space in an area of the city that has little access to large parks. It also gives the park time to develop at a more natural pace prior to development surrounding it on all sides. Over time, some unique

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and unexpected opportunities may arise out of this process.”58 The phasing of park areas first reinforces the notion of open space as infrastructure, specifically the idea that a park can be “performative.” A performative landscape has an ecological job to do: for example, improving water quality or providing storage for stormwater runoff, or improving soil, air, and habitat through strategic planting. At Downsview and Blatchford, major design moves are centred on passive stormwater facilities, sized to accommodate water volumes from the parklands as well as flows from future neighbourhood developments. These facilities double as riparian and aquatic habitats and as amenities for visitors, but most importantly they anticipate the effects of future intensification and take on performative functions, internalizing the effects of urbanization through on-site treatment. Downsview’s system provides an upstream set of wet (sedimentation) and dry (overflow) ponds that accept stormwater from eastern catchment areas, before filtering it through a system of bioswales across the site to the 3.6-hectare “lake” which collects and controls the flow of stormwater into adjacent ravine systems (fig. 14.5). An additional stormwater pond planned for the future Stanley Greene neighbourhood, along with streetside bioswales, will collect runoff from the new development and ultimately connect with the lake. Designed by landscape architects and engineers at MMM Group, the lake will eventually capture stormwater from a catchment area of 417 acres (170 hectares), managing both water quality and quantity, before controlled release to the adjacent Black Creek watershed. Blatchford takes cues from prairie knob and kettle landforms; as at Downsview, fill from the

Fig. 14.5.  The upper pond at Downsview Park serves as a preliminary treatment pond for stormwater from the eastern portions of the site, before it flows to the larger “lake.” Source: Light Monkey Photography, published with permission of Canada Lands Company.

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lake excavation will be used to create a mound on the site. Stormwater runoff and grey water from the surrounding neighbourhoods will be collected via wetland corridors and conveyed to the kettle stormwater facility, which is designed to overflow rarely, if ever, into Edmonton’s municipal stormwater system.59 In terms of terrestrial ecology, both parks prioritize the re-establishment of strong vegetation communities. Downsview’s reforestation efforts are based on Tree City’s concepts of soil restoration and the strategic planting of native southern Ontario mixed forest throughout the site.60 The development standard document, updated in 2012, establishes guidelines for neighbourhood plant selection and open space planning, providing for linkages and corridors that connect with the larger park area.61 Blatchford’s design emphasizes the re-establishment of the Edmonton region’s aspen parkland forest, a transitional zone between the prairie and boreal forests.62 Creating these ecologies from the ground up presents a unique opportunity to monitor and adapt young vegetation communities over time, as neighbourhood developments are implemented. Further, both parks have a strong urban agricultural component. Downsview’s new orchard (fig. 14.6) holds possibilities for future engagement with the surrounding communities, while parcels of land within the park are being sustainably farmed by tenant organizations that sell their produce. Blatchford dedicates smaller parcels throughout the “agri-hood” portion of the development to local food grown by residents (fig. 14.7). Downsview and Blatchford represent ecologies that are as closely tied to urban processes as they are to natural ones. Because of the prior nature of these

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Fig. 14.6.  The orchard represents the first urban agricultural component to be built at Downsview, offering community engagement and educational opportunities. Source: Light Monkey Photography, published with permission of Canada Lands Company.

Fig. 14.7.  Integral to neighbourhood design, open space at Blatchford Field is dedicated to local food production. Source: Perkins+Will, with rendering by Foyd Architects.

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sites, the strategy is less about protecting the limited existing ecologies and more about establishing ecologies that work with the new neighbourhoods in a performative, infrastructural capacity. Despite Rouge Park’s differences in origin, site characteristics, and approach, it is as much a vital piece of green infrastructure as landscapes deliberately designed as such, particularly when examined through the lens of the ecosystem services it can provide. The United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment initiative (2005) defines ecosystem services as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food and water; regulating services such as flood and disease control; cultural services such as spiritual, recreational, and cultural benefits; and supporting services, such as nutrient cycling, that maintain the conditions for life on Earth.”63 Parks Canada’s Rouge National Urban Park Draft Management Plan clearly outlines the agency’s objectives for ongoing management and promotion of the park’s ecological integrity, agricultural uses, and cultural and social benefits – all aspects of an ecosystem recognized as conveying benefits to humans. But perhaps a more direct expression of its infrastructural value comes from a 2012 report prepared for the David Suzuki Foundation, where author Sara Wilson estimates that Rouge Park could provide around $12.5 million a year in non-market economic benefits.64 This emerging approach to valuation of ecosystems shows promise in furthering the consideration of landscapes as infrastructure equal to urban elements that traditionally fall within the category. Given the site’s rich ecology, it will be instructive to observe over the next several decades (and directly compare with historical examples)

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whether the policies adopted in the Rouge will secure its prospects for long-term ecological health in the face of a changing urban fabric. Aside from the general maintenance of these parks (mowing, leaf blowing, garbage pickup, and so on), managing ecologies – which can take several years to establish and will require ongoing expert input – will continue to present challenges. In promoting and planning for development around park edges, designers are again creating a situation where human use could pose a threat to ecosystems at the site scale, however well integrated the ecosystems may be within the urban form. Where contemporary parks differ from nineteenth-century ones is that implementation, programming, and management are being carefully considered in the early design stages. At Downsview, active recreational facilities and gathering spaces are provided, but sited away from more sensitive terrestrial and aquatic habitat. More importantly, regular stewardship events are coordinated as part of the internal education program, often with external partners such as Evergreen, involving supervised planting and maintenance of the forested areas. Parks Canada’s initial concept framework and draft management plan for Rouge National Urban Park set out clear ambitions for recreational and agricultural areas, with a focus on protection and presentation, as well as natural and cultural experience programs.65 The framework also identifies stewardship and volunteer opportunities as being key to the Rouge’s use and management (fig. 14.8). At both Downsview and Rouge Parks, the programming and management activities are directed by strong visions that prioritize a productive balance between ecological and human processes.

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Fig. 14.8.  Stewardship is strongly promoted as a key program element at Rouge Park. Source: Heike Reuse, Parks Canada/Rouge National Urban Park.

Conclusion As Pierre Bélanger writes, “Often found underground, or on the periphery of cities, infrastructure remains largely invisible until the precise moment at which it breaks down. Floods, blackouts, and shortages serve as potent reminders of the fragility of this invisible background, which less than a century ago barely existed.”66 We tend to think of infrastructure as engineered systems, such as roadways, sewer networks, and power grids – the systems that have made urbanization and life in cities possible. But, as Olmsted understood, a

park is as much a part of urban infrastructure as any engineered system. As the nineteenth-century parks illustrate, a public green space should be viewed as infrastructure in its own right, contributing to city life by providing social, recreational, and transportation opportunities and services, as well as access to natural areas and the benefits that these landscapes bestow. Their amenities and functions are so entrenched in our daily lives that they often go unnoticed – that is, until they fail. Similar to a crumbling highway structure or sewer system, a park’s “failure” may indeed be a slow process, unfolding over many decades, but it may not

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become apparent until a major disturbance highlights the park’s inability to recover on its own because of weakened ecosystems and subsequent loss of resilience. Large parks might also take on infrastructural roles more typically performed by engineered systems – by managing stormwater flows though passive surface means, for instance – along with more traditional functions. The flexibility and resilience provided by healthy landscapes offer distinct advantages over engineered systems, which are more costly to fix when they fail. Recognizing their role as urban infrastructure, which both supports and interacts with its surroundings, is key to understanding the importance of adaptive, resilient ecological design, programming, and management that can prevent future decline and eventual failure. Ten years after Hurricane Juan struck, Point Pleasant’s regeneration was helped along by stewardship and management efforts, guided by a comprehensive plan by Ekistics Planning and Design and NIPpaysage, joint winners of a 2005 competition for the revitalization of the park. The plan establishes and solidifies its identity as an urban forest and focuses its recommendations on the practices required to promote a healthy Acadian forest, first and foremost, including what human uses are most appropriate within that context. High Park has undertaken a progressive maintenance strategy of prescribed burns (fig. 14.9), aimed at regenerating the black oak savannah ecosystem,67 and it has implemented stormwater sediment ponds at sewer outfalls, to control the quality of water entering the site and improve aquatic habitat.68 In the Mount Royal Protection and Enhancement Plan, the authorities responsible for the park identify the need to strengthen terrestrial linkages and work with adjacent property owners to

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improve the quality and quantity of Monteregian vegetation communities around and within Mount Royal. In addition, the plan calls for more regulations of built form and paved surfaces around the park’s edges.69 Various habitat restoration and enhancement efforts are progressing at Stanley Park, under the direction of the Stanley Park Ecological Society, including removal of invasive species, replanting of unsanctioned trails in forested areas, and the restoration of Beaver Lake Bog.70 In general, increased study, awareness, and action on these sites with regard to ecological restoration or enhancement affirms renewed clarity about what made them great urban parks in the first place. Expecting these historical landscapes to be restored to their nineteenth-century state may be unrealistic; they must adapt to continually changing conditions and stresses from the surrounding urban environment, as well as from within. It might appear that historical and contemporary parks are following opposite trajectories towards a similar degree of ecological health, driven towards this state by a single process: the intensification of Canadian cities. Ecologically speaking, nineteenth-century parks have been in decline, but thanks to the efforts of ecologists, volunteers, management, and landscape architects, they are stabilizing or improving. On the other hand, contemporary parks such as Downsview and Blatchford have started with highly disturbed sites and are creating thriving ecologies from scratch, as central emphases of their designs. Whatever the results, they are ecologically better than their starting points. Historical parks are reacting to urbanization, whereas contemporary parks are embracing it as a process in which to participate, but both must be supported by broader policy frameworks

Fig. 14.9.  “Line of Fire,” a prescribed burn in High Park, Toronto. Source: Karen Yukich, High Park Nature.

Urbanization and Large Canadian Parks in the Nineteenth Century and Today

as well as actions and transformations on the ground that recognize parks’ vital contribution to city building and the social, economic, and environmental benefits they provide as infrastructure. 10 11 NOTES 1 Frederick Law Olmsted, Mount Royal, Montreal (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1881), 25. 2 Ibid., 53. 3 George Hargreaves and Julia Czerniak, eds., Large Parks (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007). 4 Theodore S. Eisenman, “Frederick Law Olmsted, Green Infrastructure, and the Evolving City,” Journal of Planning History 12 (2013): 290. 5 “Canadians in Context – Population Growth,” Employment and Social Development Canada, last modified 14 July 2013, http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/.3ndic.1t.4r@-eng .jsp?iid=35. 6 Ibid. 7 John Ross Wright, Urban Parks in Ontario Part I: Origins to 1860 (Toronto: Province of Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation, 1983), 71. 8 Ibid., 3. 9 As its first order of business in 1887, Vancouver’s newly formed city council petitioned the Dominion government to convey the 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of government reserve (now Stanley Park) for park use. At the time, Vancouver’s population was only 2,600 residents, most of whom lived in Gastown, a fair distance from the park. The surrounding lands were owned by a mere four private speculators and one company, the Canadian Pacific Railway. Jean Barman and Mike Steele both assert that all five landowners were motivated to promote the government reserve as parkland by the anticipated effect on the values of

12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20

365

their land holdings. Mike Steele, Vancouver’s Famous Stanley Park: The Year-Round Playground (Surrey: Heritage House Publishing Company, 1993), 13–15; Jean Barman, Stanley Park’s Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2005), 89. Ibid., 12. A.L. Murray, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Design of Mount Royal Park, Montreal,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 26, no. 3 (1967): 165, accessed 17 June 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/988363. “Summary of Population Growth, 1851–1961,” Historical Atlas of Canada Online Learning Project, accessed 16 July 2013, http://www.historicalatlas.ca/website /hacolp/national_perspectives/population/UNIT_25 /U25_leg_info_PDens5161.htm. Jane Kitz and Gary Castle, Point Pleasant Park: An Illustrated History (Halifax: Pleasant Point Publishing, 1999), 15. Ibid., 40–2. David Bain, “John Howard’s High Park,” Ontario History C1 no. 1 (2009): 3. Banff National Park, the first national park in Canada, was created in 1885, and the Canadian Commission of Conservation was established in 1909. Monte Hummel and Erin James-Abra, “Environmental and Conservation Movements,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed 27 February 2017, http://www.the canadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/environmental -and-conservation-movements/#h3_jump_2. Steele, Vancouver’s Famous Stanley Park, 13. Ibid., 12. Bain, “John Howard’s High Park,” 11–12. Interestingly, before settling on the idea of a public park, Howard had drawn up his own speculative plans in the 1830s and attempted to sell the park for development in 1862 (ibid., 5). Joanna Kidd, Tove Christensen, and Beth McEwen, “High Park: Restoring a Jewel of Toronto’s Park

366

21

22 23

24 25

26

Sandra A. Cooke

System,” Report prepared for the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry, and Recreation Division, Toronto, 2000, revised and updated January 2008, 7. John Ross Wright, Urban Parks in Ontario Part II: The Public Park Movement 1860–1914 (Toronto: Province of Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation, 1984), 64. “Summary of Population Growth, 1851–1961.” Robert A.J. McDonald, “‘Holy Retreat’ or ‘Practical Breathing Spot’? Class Perceptions of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, 1910–13,” Canadian Historical Review 65, no. 2 (1984): 138. Bain, “John Howard’s High Park,” 13. Proposals for a tram line to Stanley Park were repeatedly tabled between 1910 and 1913. By 1897, a streetcar line was in place, providing access to the Coal Harbour entrance. McDonald, “‘Holy Retreat’ or ‘Practical Breathing Spot’?” 130, 144. In Toronto in 1877–88, John Howard contributed a design and the funding for a railway platform at Lake Shore Boulevard and Indian Road, at the southern end of High Park, to improve access. Among other roadway improvements, in 1889 Keele Street was extended south from Bloor Street, allowing access along the eastern edge of the park. In 1894, streetcar service to the park was in place from Dundas Street West, and by 1915 Bloor streetcar service provided access from the north side. Bain, “John Howard’s High Park,” 13–16. In Montreal, from the 1850s to the 1890s, Mount Royal Park was surrounded by various institutional properties, including McGill University and the Royal Victoria Hospital. The north slope was developed in 1922 with St. Joseph’s Oratory and the Université de Montréal, and consolidation of the neighbourhood followed. Ville de Montréal, Mount Royal Protection and Enhancement Plan (April 2009), 31, accessed 13 July 2013, http://servicesenligne.ville.montreal.qc.ca /sel/publications/PorteAccesTelechargement ?lng=En&systemName=42917862&client=Serv_corp. In Vancouver, prominent middle-class families, many

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37

38

39 40 41 42

those of CPR managers, built homes adjacent to Stanley Park. By 1900, the neighbourhood had spread throughout the west end. McDonald, “‘Holy Retreat’ or ‘Practical Breathing Spot’?” 139. Ibid., 144. Steele, Vancouver’s Famous Stanley Park, 21. Kitz and Castle, Point Pleasant Park, 153. Ibid., 158–65. Murray, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Design of Mount Royal Park, Montreal,” 171. Bain, “John Howard’s High Park,” 11. Ibid., 22. Kidd, Christensen, and McEwen, “High Park,” 20. Ibid., 17. NIPpaysage and Ekistics Planning and Design, Point Pleasant Park Comprehensive Plan, report prepared for the Halifax Regional Municipality, Halifax (October 2008), 2, accessed 7 July 2013, http://www.point pleasantpark.ca/en/home/planning/default.aspx. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, in their 1865 plan for a Brooklyn park, “recognized the limitation of a single park, and they sought to extend its benefits beyond the boundaries of an isolated green space by considering its place in both the current and the future metropolis.” Eisenman, “Frederick Law Olmsted,” 296–7. Julia Czerniak, “Legibility and Resilience,” in Large Parks, ed. Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 216. Nina-Marie Lister, “Sustainable Large Parks: Ecological Design or Designer Ecology?” in Large Parks, 35–6. Czerniak, “Legibility and Resilience,” 216. Ibid. Edward Wayne Kelly, “The Downsview Family Tree: An Historical Summary of the Downsview Lands,” report prepared for Canada Lands Company Limited, Toronto (February 1998), accessed 22 June 2013, http://www.toronto.ca/planning/pdf/downsview _heritagebuild_studyreport_4may09_pt4.pdf.

Urbanization and Large Canadian Parks in the Nineteenth Century and Today

43 Jacob Allerdice, “City in Flight,” Canadian Architect 57, no. 11 (2012): 42–3. 44 Dougan and Associates Ecological Consulting Services, Downsview Park Terrestrial Ecology Report, prepared for Parc Downsview Park Inc., Toronto ­(September 2006), 4. 45 Nathan Brightbill, email to author, 25 July 2013. 46 Parks Canada, About Rouge National Urban Park, accessed 27 February 2017, last modified 7 June 2016, http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/on/rouge/about /apropos-about.aspx. 47 Ibid., 15. 48 Parks Canada, Rouge National Urban Park Draft Management Plan, 2014, accessed 27 February 2017, 13, http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/on/rouge/plan /plan1.aspx. 49 City of Toronto, Stanley Greene District – Downsview (80 Carl Hall Road) Zoning By-law Amendment and Draft Plan of Subdivision Applications – Request for Direction Report. Toronto (2011), 6, accessed 22 June 2013, http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012 /ny/bgrd/backgroundfile-43377.pdf. 50 Ibid. 51 Nathan Brightbill and Chris Phillips, “On the Runways,” Landscapes | Paysages 15, no. 2 (2013): 41. 52 Allerdice, “City in Flight,” 45. 53 Ibid. 54 City Centre Redevelopment: Area Redevelopment Plan Edmonton: 2012, “City of Edmonton, Current Planning Branch, Sustainable Development,” 7, accessed 6 July 2013, http://www.edmonton.ca /blatchfordedmonton/documents/City_Centre_ARP _Consolidation.pdf. 55 Parks Canada, Rouge National Urban Park Draft Management Plan, 5. 56 Brightbill and Phillips, “On the Runways,” 41. 57 Ibid., 42.

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58 Nathan Brightbill, email to author, 25 July 2013. 59 Ibid. 60 Tree City (Bruce Mau Design, PMA Landscape Architects, SNC Lavalin), Canada Forest design, prepared for Parc Downsview Park Inc., Toronto, November 2005. 61 Brook McIlroy Inc., Downsview Park Standard, document prepared for Parc Downsview Park Inc., ­Toronto, 2012, 7. 62 Brightbill, email to author, 25 July 2013. 63 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003), 49, accessed 24 February 2017, http://www .millenniumassessment.org/documents/document .300.aspx.pdf. 64 Sara Wilson, Canada’s Wealth of Natural Capital: Rouge National Park (Vancouver: David Suzuki Foundation, 2012), 6, accessed 23 July 2013, http://www.davidsuzuki .org/publications/downloads/2012/report _Rouge_Natural_Capital_web.pdf. 65 Parks Canada, Rouge National Urban Park Concept, 2012, 7, accessed 7 July 2013, http://www.pc.gc.ca /eng/progs/np-pn/cnpn-cnnp/rouge/rouge1.aspx. 66 Pierre Bélanger, “Redefining Infrastructure,” in Ecological Urbanism, ed. Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, 2010), 332. 67 Kidd, Christensen, and McEwen, “High Park,” 11. 68 Ibid., 20. 69 Ville de Montréal, Mount Royal Protection and Enhancement Plan, 11, 19, 21, 77, http://servicesenligne.ville. montreal.qc.ca/sel/publications/PorteAcces Telechargement?lng=En&systemName=42917862 &client=Serv_corp. 70 Stanley Park Ecology Society, Habitat Restoration, accessed 29 July 2013, http://stanleyparkecology .ca/conservation/stewardship-in-action/habitat -restoration/.

Contributors

Matthew A.J. Brown, OALA, APALA, CSLA, is a Sessional Lecturer at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He is the Co-founder and Principal Landscape Architect of Brackish Design Studio Inc. He holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Planning from the University of Waterloo, a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto, and a Master in Design Studies, Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology from Harvard University. Sandra A. Cooke, OALA, APALA, CSLA, is the Co-founder and Principal Landscape Architect of Brackish Design Studio Inc. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto. Grant Fahlgren, BCSLA Intern, CSLA, is a Project Designer at PFS Studio Planning, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture. He is a Member of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, and Chair of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Reconciliation

Advisory Committee. He holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba, a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of British Columbia, and is a post-graduate Masters of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design candidate at Harvard University. Chris Grosset, NuALA, NWTALA, FCSLA, CAHP, is a Partner at NVision Insight Group. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Guelph. Adrien Sun Hall is a Visual Artist. She holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Guelph, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. Marc Hallé, OALA, CSLA, is an Associate at Claude Cormier et Associés. He holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto.

370

Contributors

Susan Herrington, BCSLA, CSLA, and Registered Landscape Architect, Connecticut, USA, is a Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the State University of New York, and a Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. Stéphane LeBlanc is the Founder and Principal of Stéphane LeBlanc Architects Inc. He holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the Technical University of Nova Scotia, and a Master of Architecture from Dalhousie University. Marla Limousin is the Chief Adminstrative Officer at the Municipality of Cambridge Bay, Community Development Consultant, and Partner of Ehrler Limousin and Associates. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Waterloo, and a Certificate in Municipal Administration from St. Lawrence College. Shelley Long, BCSLA, OALA, CSLA, is Team Leader at West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of British Columbia, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto. James Allan MacDonald-Nelson is a Landscape Architect at Topotek1 in Berlin. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Global Development Studies from Queen’s University, a Master of Landscape

Architecture from the University of Toronto, and a post-professional Master of Science in European ­Urbanism from the Delft University of Technology. Andrea Mantin, OALA, CSLA, ASLA, is a Senior Associate at Brook McIlroy Inc. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art in Art History from Concordia University, a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto. Fadi Masoud is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Centre for Landscape Research at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies, Planning from the University of Waterloo, a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto, and a post-professional Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. Alissa North, OALA, CSLA, is an Associate Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. She is the Co-founder and Director of North Design Office Inc. She holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto, and a Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. Michael Ormston-Holloway is an Adjunct Lecturer at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of ­Toronto. He is a Partner and Principal, ISA Certified Arborist, ASLA, at The Planning Partnership. He

Contributors

371

holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Plant Biology from the University of Guelph, a Master of Science, Professional, Forest Soils and Ecology from the University of Guelph, a Graduate Diploma in Horticulture from the University of Guelph, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto.

Matthew Spremulli is a Sessional Lecturer at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, and Innovation Engagement Manager at Autodesk Technology Centers. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) from the University of Toronto, and a Master of ­Architecture from the University of Toronto.

Shadi Ramos is a Landscape Designer. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto.

James C. Thomas, MALA, FCSLA, MCIP, MPPI, RPP, is a Former Principal now Senior Advisor at HTFC Planning & Design. He holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies (Hons.) in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Manitoba.

Peter Jamie Reford is a Business Development Manager with Volatus Aerospace Corp. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Political Science Major, Economics and History Double Minor from McGill University, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto. Yannick Roberge, AAPQ, CSLA, is the Studio Director: Design at Claude Cormier et Associés. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology from the Université de Montréal, and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the Université de Montréal.

Ron Williams, AAPQ, FCSLA, RAIC, OC, is Professor Emeritus at the School of Landscape Architecture at the Université de Montréal, Principal of Ron Williams Landscape Architect and Architect, and Co-Founder of Williams, Asselin, Ackaoui and Associates. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from McGill University, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

James A. Roche, OALA, APALA, BCSLA, FCSLA, is a Sessional Lecturer at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, and a Partner at DTAH. He holds a Bachelor of Arts as a Fine Art Major from the University of Guelph, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.

Karen Wilson Baptist is an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba, a Master of Education from the University of Manitoba, and a PhD in Landscape Architecture from the Edinburgh College of Art.

Index

Acre Architects/Collective, 189–93, 196n34 Alaska, 163 Alberta, xvii, 118, 121, 126, 135n25, 137nn61,66, 232, 236–7, 239, 249n68, 250n94 Allan, SK, 225, 239 Andersson, Thorbjörn, 318, 341, 341n2 Andre, Carle, 45 Anholt, Jill, 287 aquatic plant beds, 35 aqueduct, 35, 41n65, 346 Aycock, Alice, 146 Banff, AB, 118–20, 123, 125–6, 129, 132, 134nn18,19,20, 135n22, 136n53, 137nn60,66, 365n16 Bartholomew, Harland, 323 BDA Landscape Architects, 116, 129, 176–8 Beardsley, John, 146, 220n8 Bélanger, Pierre, xx, 28, 30, 38n15, 39n18, 40nn47,58, 154, 167n26, 293n1, 362, 367n66 Beresford-Kroeger, Diana, 153, 167n24

Berton, Pierre, 6, 10n3 bioremediation, 35–6 bioswales, 162, 278, 357 Borduas, Paul-Émile, 201, 220nn3,10 boreal forest, 48–9, 51–2, 58–9, 173, 299, 359 Boston, MA, 278 Bouctouche, NB, 178–9, 194, 195n18 Bowring, Jacky, 245, 250n116 Brightbill, Nathan, 357, 367nn45,51 British Columbia, 30–1, 39n19, 85n3, 126, 129–30, 136n42, 260, 262–3, 265–6, 270, 273nn22,25, 274n27, 318, 323–4, 330, 369–70 Brook McIlroy, 356, 367n61, 370 Brown, Matthew A.J., 129, 163, 196n29, 369 Bruce Mau Design, 357, 367n60 Bruegger, Willy, 321 Calgary, AB, 59–60, 119, 126, 134n20, 135n27, 136n41, 137n56, 235–8, 241, 249nn69,71,74, 262–3, 266, 274n27 Cape Breton, NS, 121–3, 135nn25,32,33, 174 Capra, Fritjof, 16, 38n10

Carson, Rachel, 147 Civilian Projects, 58 Claude Cormier et Associés, xvi, 16, 24nn24,27, 53, 55–6, 59, 153–4, 167n21, 202, 204–8, 215–18, 270–1, 285–7, 369, 371 constructed wetland, 161–2, 278 Cooke, Sandra, 133, 206, 327, 347, 353, 369 Coral Harbour, NU, 99–100, 107–10, 112n16 Cormier, Claude, 45, 61n3, 62nn25,26,28, 152, 167n21, 204, 206, 216. See also Claude Cormier et Associés Corner, James, 38n11, 61n2, 62nn23,36, 147, 167n13, 294n6, 341n9 corridor, 25, 106, 126, 235, 239, 249n71, 283, 285, 292–3, 311, 329, 335, 351, 354, 359 Cronon, William, 48, 51, 62nn11,15,21, 134n4 Crosby Hanna & Associates, 239–41 Crozier, Lorna, 224, 247n1 Czerniak, Julia, 137n67, 220n8, 351, 353, 363n3, 366n38

374

Daily Tous Les Jours, 211, 212, 215–16 Dalhousie University, 262–3, 265–6, 274n27, 370 Danahy, John, 159, 257–60, 272nn9,11,14, 273nn14,15,16,17, 18,19,20 Daoust Lestage, 208, 210, 214 de Maria, Walter, 44, 146 Deloraine, MB, 227, 230 drainage, 80, 106, 238–9, 266, 335 Dramstad, Wenche, 239 DTAH, 154, 279, 282, 285, 371 Duke of York Bay, NU, 98–9, 107–10, 112nn9,16 Durham, ON, 354 earthwork, 146, 292, 357 ecological corridor, 25, 235, 239 ecological succession, 16, 49, 58 Edmonton, AB, 311, 346, 354, 356–7, 359, 367n54 Ekistics Planning and Design, 363, 366n36 Elkin, Rosetta Sarah, 49–50, 62n14 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 230 En Masse, 215 Englar, Jerry, 257, 272n10 ERA Architects, 184, 189, 196n30 Erickson, Arthur, 321, 341n3 estuary, 18–19, 29–32 Evans, Philip, 184, 196n29 Evergreen, 361 Evernden, Neil, 152, 167nn22,23 Fahlgren, Grant, 19, 23, 26, 31–4, 66, 94, 162, 164, 311, 369 Field, BC, 126 fishing weirs, 35–6

Index

FOA (Foreign Office Architects), 322 Fogo Island, NL, 179–81, 194, 195n21, 196n22 Forillon, QC, 123 Forman, Richard, 239 Foster, Hal, 10n2, 146, 167n9, 195n2, 247n15 Fox Lake Cree Nation, 29 Frampton, Kenneth, 5–6, 10n2, 182, 193, 195n2, 196n37, 228, 247n15, 248n43 France, 45, 66, 173–4 Geddes, Patrick, 15 Geuze, Adriaan, 166n2 Girling, Cynthia, 159, 249n71, 323, 341n1, 342n16 Girot, Christophe, 17, 38n13 Goderich, ON, 305, 307–8, 313nn29,31,32,33 green roofs, 4, 149, 152, 159, 162, 278, 330, 332–4, 337, 340 green walls, 159, 162, 278 Gros Morne, NL, 123, 125, 135n38, 136n52 Grosset, Chris, 96, 98, 104, 108, 111, 112nn8,16, 369 Group of Seven, 48–9, 62n13, 116, 148, 213 Group2, 356 Grove, Frederick Philip, 224, 247n5 Guelph, ON, 51, 257, 260, 262–3, 265, 274nn27,28,29, 275n37, 302, 312n6, 369, 371 Haag, Richard, 323 Halifax, NS, 262, 346, 349, 365n13, 366n36

Hall, Adrien Sun, 95, 156, 163, 165, 200 Hallé, Marc, 59, 156, 285, 323, 346, 369 Hapa Collaborative, 156–7 Hargreaves, George, 146, 220n8, 365n3, 366n38 Heidegger, Martin, 224 Heizer, Michael, 44, 146 Herrington, Susan, xvi, 10n1, 61n3, 167nn12,20, 208, 337, 341n7, 342n24, 346, 370 Herriot, Trevor, 232, 238, 242, 248n55 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 195n1 Hobbes, Thomas, 5 Holt, Nancy, 46, 146 Hotson Bakker Architects, 322 Hough, Michael, 125, 136n44, 147, 153–4, 167nn25,26, 173 Hough Stansbury Associates, 123, 135n40 HTFC Planning and Design, 29, 40nn54,56, 66–7, 69, 72, 74–5, 77–82, 85, 371 Hunt, John Dixon, 45, 48, 51, 62n9, 145–6, 166nn3,5, 167n8 Hutton, Jane, 154, 167n27 inlet, 156, 178, 341n12 Inuvik, NT, 148, 150 Irwin, Robert, 45, 146 isthmus, 35 Jacob, Sam, 271 Jacobs, Peter, 28, 40n46, 62n17 James Corner Field Operations, 324 Janet Rosenberg and Studio, 59, 216, 285

Index

Jardins de Métis, 45, 50, 54, 168n35, 206, 208 Jasper, AB, 118, 123, 126, 129, 131, 135n25, Jencks, Charles, 146 Johnson, Philip, 195n1 Kekerten Island, NU, 97, 100–5, 112n12 Kellett, Ronald, 159, 168n38, 249n71 Klein, Naomi, 151 Kouchibouguac, NB, 123, 135n32, 136n41 Kovacic, David, 238 Krauss, Rosalind, 146–7, 167n9 Kugaaruk, NU, 92 Kwinter, Sandford, 155, 167n28 Laird, John, 104, 106, 112n14 Laird, Mark, 146, 167n8 Lasn, Kalle, 151 Latour, Bruno, 147, 167n15 Laurence, Margaret, 224, 230, 247n4 Lefaivre, Liliane, 5, 195n2 Lemieux, Jean-Paul, 213 Leopold, Aldo, 230 LeWitt, Sol, 146 Lister, Nina-Marie, 137n69, 167n28, 351, 366n39 Long, Margot, 325, 327 Long, Shelley, xix, 53, 61, 124, 130, 163, 167nn32,33, 176, 232, 370 Long Sault First Nation, 74, 87n30 Louisburg, NS, 174 MacKay-Lyons, Brian, 182, 189, 193–4, 196nn26,39 Malpas, Jeff, 229, 248n34

Mancuso, Stefano, 163, 168n47 Manitoba, xvii, 29, 40n48, 41nn67,68, 66, 68–9, 76, 79–80, 82, 84, 85n8, 86nn10,11, 87nn31,34,40, 88nn43,44, 121, 149, 224, 227, 230, 232, 238–9, 241, 243, 245–6, 249n86, 250nn96,100, 257, 262–3, 265, 274n27, 313n28, 369, 371 Margolis, Liat, 159 Markham, ON, 275n37, 313n24, 354 marshes, 18, 30, 32–4, 40nn60,62, 178 Masoud, Fadi, 148, 370 Matsuzaki, Eva, 324 McHarg, Ian L., 15, 123, 147, 167nn11,12,13 Menzies, Archibald, 149 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 224, 228, 247nn8,9,21, 248n26 Meyer, Elizabeth K., 229, 247, 248n32, 250n117 Miss, Mary, 44, 146 Moncton, NB, 193 Montreal, QC, xvi, xvii, 10n9, 40n43, 49, 53, 55–6, 59, 62n13, 111nn1,2, 134n1, 135n33, 154, 195n14, 201–2, 204–10, 212–17, 220n1, 267, 274n27, 346, 349, 365nn1,11, 366nn26,31, 367n69, 371 Moriyama, Raymond, 239 Morris, Robert, 45 Mostafavi, Mohsen, 16, 38n9, 146, 195nn3,4, 367n66 Mullin, Roger, 182–8, 196nn24,28 Mumford, Lewis, 15 Murcutt, Glenn, 182 Muret, Claude, 323 New Brunswick, 66, 86n10, 123, 135nn25,32, 174, 178, 189–91, 193–4

375

New York, 22, 45, 47, 57, 119, 132, 155, 309, 311, 351, 370 Newfoundland and Labrador, xvii, 40n57, 66, 85n3, 123, 135n32, 173–4, 179–80, 184, 186, 189, 193–4 NIPpaysage, 49, 52, 59, 61n8, 214, 220n7, 363, 366n36 Norberg-Schulz, Christian, 230, 248n42 North, Alissa, xv, xviii, xx, 49, 61, 132, 137n68, 142, 144, 149, 154, 164–5, 166n1, 167n32, 274n27, 286–7, 294n7, 299, 312, 314n45, 370 North, Pete, xx, 156, 160, 168n35 North Design Office, xix, 53–4, 60, 156, 158, 370 Northwest Territories, 85n3, 121 Nova Scotia, 66, 86n10, 121–2, 135nn25,32, 174, 181–3, 191, 193–4, 196n24, 370 Nunavut, 66, 93–100, 102–5, 107, 110, 111nn1,3,4,5,7, 112n8 O2 Planning + Design, 126–8, 136n55, 235–7, 249n74 Oberlander, Cornelia Hahn, xvi, xx, 10n1, 148–52, 167n20, 318, 321, 324, 341nn6,7, 342n24 Oberlander, Peter, 322 Olmsted, Frederick Law, xvi, 57, 117, 134n9, 206, 278, 346, 348–51, 362, 336n37, 365nn1,4,11, 366nn31,37 Olson, James, 239 Ontario, 22, 24, 69, 76–9, 87n36, 118, 121, 125, 164, 275n37, 299, 302, 305, 311, 312n7, 354, 356, 359 Orkney, SK, 227, 234

376

Ormston-Holloway, Michael, 292, 299, 301, 304, 306, 310, 312n6, 313n21, 314n42, 370 Ottawa, ON, 4, 148, 159, 311 Pallasmaa, Juhani, 182 Pangnirtung, NU, 100–2, 112nn11,13 parterre, 156, 328 Peguis First Nation, 68, 69, 71–3, 77, 79, 80, 82–3, 85, 86nn9,13,14, 87nn26,33,34,35,40, 88n42 Perkins, Nathan, 260 Perkins + Will, 356, 360 Peters, Tracy, 241, 243, 250nn106, 108 PFS Studio, 127, 287, 288–9, 318, 328, 354, 356, 369 Philips, Jeff, 327 Pickering, ON, 354 Picon, Antoine, 254, 272n1 Plain Projects, 244–5, 250n115 Planning Partnership, 154, 285, 287, 289, 302, 306–8, 312, 313n31, 314n42, 370 Plant Architect, 57–8, 62n33 PMA Landscape Architects, 357, 367n60 Point Pelee, ON, 121–3, 125, 135n40 Port Moody, BC, 326 Prince Albert, SK, 121, 135n25 Prince Edward Island, 122, 129, 135n32, 174, 176, 194, 195n14 Prinz, Jesse J., 341 Public Work, 159, 161, 168n36 PWL Partnership, 127, 318, 324–5, 327 Quebec, xv, xvii, 25–9, 40nn42,43,48, 45, 49, 51, 57, 59, 62nn17,35, 66, 68, 85n3, 117–18, 123, 125, 134n4,

Index

136n51, 156, 191, 199–201, 203, 206, 208, 211, 213–16, 219, 220nn1,2,3 Quebec City, 4, 57–9, 214 Rahmann, Heike, 254, 268 Rainy River First Nation, 66, 69, 72–7, 82–3, 85, 86n14, 87nn30,38,41 Reford, Elsie, 207 Reford, Peter Jamie, xix, 165, 371 Reford Gardens, 168n35 Regina, SK, 248nn56,57, 249n90, 250n94, 311 Rem Koolhaas, 357 remediation, 162, 285 retaining wall, 32, 191–2 retention pond, 162 Riding Mountain, MB, 121, 135n31 Riopelle, Jean-Paul, 208–9 Roberge, Yannick, 59, 156, 285, 323, 346, 371 Roche, James A., 216, 289, 371 Ruano, Miguel, 173, 195n5 Saint John, NB, 189–90, 192 Saint John’s, NL, 193, 196n35 San Francisco, CA, 40n60, 132 Sasaki, Strong, and Associates, 123 Saskatchewan, 69, 121, 135n25, 225, 230–4, 238–41, 248nn56,57, 249nn85,90, 250nn93,94, 369 Saskatoon, SK, 86nn11,13, 238–41, 249n82, 250n93 Saucier et Perrotte Architects, 203 Saunders, Todd, 179–80, 193 Schwartz, Martha, 45, 146 Seattle, WA, 40n61, 323, 326 Serra, Richard, 146 Sharp, Randy, 322–3 Shaunavon, SK, 234

Sheppard, Stephen, 159, 260–1, 273nn21,22 Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, 35, 37, 41n,66,70 Simard, Suzanne, 163, 168n45 Smith, Ken, 45, 47 Smithson, Robert, 44, 146 soil cells, 281, 309 Southampton Island, NU, 98, 107, 112n9 Spencer’s Island, NS, 182–3, 196n24 St. Peter’s First Nation, 68, 69, 72–3, 76–7, 79–81, 86n9, 87n34 Stegner, Wallace, 224, 242, 247n6 Stilgoe, John, 228 storm drains, 278 stormwater management, 24, 129, 137n64, 156, 239, 268, 286–8, 292, 300, 309, 324, 335, 351, 357–9, 363 stormwater pond, 357 stormwater wetland, 292 Strong, Richard, 136n52, 323 structural reefs, 336, 339 Sturgess Architecture, 129, 131 Teeple Architects, 287 Thompson, Ian Hamilton, 278, 293n2 Thomson, Tom, 48, 51 Thoreau, Henry David, 229–30 Toronto, ON, xv, xvii, 4, 59, 119, 123, 132, 153, 156, 159, 164, 216, 218–19, 257–8, 277–93, 302–3, 305, 307, 309–11, 322, 346, 349, 351, 354–5, 364, 366n25, 369–71 Treib, Marc, xvi, xviii, 45, 61n5, 242, 250n111 Turrell, James, 45 Tzonis, Alex, 5, 195n2

Index

University of British Columbia, 31, 159, 260, 262–3, 265–6, 270, 274n27, 323, 369–70 University of Calgary, 262–3, 266, 274n27 University of Guelph, 51, 257, 260, 262–3, 265, 274n27, 302, 312n6, 369, 371 University of Manitoba, 149, 257, 262–3, 265, 274n27, 369, 371 University of Montreal (l’Université de Montréal), xvii, 267 University of Toronto, xv, xix, xx, 35–7, 124, 148–9, 156, 159–60, 166, 166n2, 168n35, 256–8, 262–5, 267, 271, 274n27, 302, 369–71 van Manen, Max, 229, 247nn19,22 Van Valkenburgh, Michael, 146, 279, 289, 291 Vancouver, BC, xvi, xvii, 4, 34, 127, 149, 151, 156–7, 257, 260, 286,

317–41, 346, 349, 352, 356, 365n9, 366n26 Vaughan, Don, 323, 342n17 vegetative buffers, 162 Waldheim, Charles, xix, 16, 38n12, 39n21, 116, 118, 134nn3,5,13, 162, 168n42 Walker, Peter, xviii, 45 Walliss, Jillian, 254, 268 Walpole Island First Nation, 22–5, 39nn32,33,34,36,40,41 Warhol, Andy, 45 Washington, DC, 145, 318 wastewater treatment, 20, 129, 176–7, 278, 287 Waterfront Toronto, 278–85, 288–9, 291 watershed, 21–2, 26–7, 34, 41n68, 68, 132, 239, 335, 351, 354, 357 West 8, 279, 282, 285, 370 wetland, 24, 30, 68, 162, 165, 176, 232, 238, 242, 278, 292, 325, 359

377

Whiston Spirn, Anne, 38n7, 147, 173 Williams, Ron, xx, 117, 129, 134n1, 371 Wilson, Edward O., 229, 248n36 Wilson Baptist, Karen, 149, 225, 227, 231, 233–4, 244, 246, 248nn35,41,47,58, 249nn64,67,79,89, 250nn98,105, 371 Winnipeg, MB, xvii, 29, 35, 40n48, 41nn65,67,68, 66, 68, 71, 87n31, 88n43, 238–41, 243, 245–6, 249nn81,83,84, 250n96,103, 257, 313n29 Wohlleben, Peter, 163 Wright, Rob (Robert), 159, 257–8, 272n10 Wuori, Don, 326–8, 330, 335, 342nn37,40, 343nn47,49 zone, 47, 109, 124, 132, 230, 235, 241, 280, 285, 287, 292, 311, 337, 339, 354, 359