Over the summer the Faculty of Arts will be publishing a series of profiles highlighting researchers who have been successful in obtaining grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in 2009. This is the second installment in this series.

Additional light is soon to be shed on the history of the mining industry in Canada thanks to the work of Faculty of Arts professors John Sandlos (History) and Arn Keeling (Geography). They have just received a maximum $250,000 in funding from SSHRC for the Special Call “Northern Communities: Towards Social and Economic Prosperity.”

Their project, “Abandoned Mines in Northern Canada: Historical Consequences and Mitigation of Current Impacts,” aims to interpret the development of five northern mines (located in Quebec, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories) within the framework of environmental justice and political ecology and to examine how northern factors such as isolation and environmental hardships have contributed to the decline of the communities being studied.

Earlier SSHRC research development initiative grants have set the team up well vis-à-vis archival research and the development of contacts in the targeted northern communities. They are now able to “hit the ground running” in regards to moving into the oral research phase of the project and conducting community workshops.

As Dr. Sandlos, the principal investigator explains, “this is no longer the Keeling and Sandlos show. We’re now able to expand the research and utilize a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team.”

New members of the team include Dr. Yolanda Wiersma, (a biology professor at Memorial), Dr. Patricia Fitzpatrick from the University of Winnipeg who will be looking at environmental assessment issues, and Deborah Simmons, an adjunct professor of native studies at the University of Manitoba. As part of the team, Dr. Julia Laite, a Faculty of Arts postdoctoral fellow at Memorial, will continue her research into women in northern mining communities as she takes up a SSHRC fellowship at McGill University.

Much of the new funding will be streamed toward graduate students such as Alexandra Winton (in geography) and Amber Noeker (in history). A Yukoner, Ms. Winton is already working with First Nations communities in the Yukon Territory and Amber Noeker grew up in a coal mining region of Pennslyvania, completing her honours research on the history of coalmining.

“This issue is very close to their hearts [Alexandra and Amber].  We can see in their work how this personal attachment fuels interest in the project,” says Dr. Sandlos. “We also plan to hire local people as much as possible in terms of conducting the oral research,” he adds.

Graduate students will use Dr. Wiersma’s state-of-the-art Landscape Ecology and Spatial Analysis lab (LESA) to analyze landscape and ecological changes in the regions and establish the physical impact of such mining.

Drs. Sandlos and Keeling plan to dissiminate their findings via a website which is being developed through their partnership with the Network in Canadian History and the Environment (NiCHE).  Podcasts and streaming video will be used to communicate results as will more traditional academic outlets such as refereed articles and ultimately a book project.

Both professors are heading north in August and the communities in question are eager to participate. “The Katlodechee First Nation in Hay River has been emailing to see when we’re arriving,” volunteers Dr. Keeling.

Building strong community relationships have been the number one priority of the researchers up to this point. “Their experiences [the communities] haven’t been represented well and we hope to address that wrong after completing this phase of the project,” explains Dr. Sandlos. “In the documents from the ‘50s and ‘60s that we’ve looked at the communities weren’t even mentioned – it was all about national development.”

Dr. Keeling goes on to point out that last year told the story of Canadian mining in microcosm, going from boom to bust in the course of a few months. Recently there have been layoffs at the iron ore mine in Wabush and a weeks-long shutdown at the iron ore facility in Labrador City. “Now of course markets are all over the place – this phenomenon reinforces the instability of the mining industry in relation to global commodity prices.” 

Drs. Keeling and Sandlos hope to ultimately show how lessons from the past might educate contemporary corporations and governments in managing both large-scale growth and the resulting bust of recession and retrenchment.