RESEARCH

I study the cultural and environmental history of 20th-century Canada, with a special focus on the west and British Columbia. I have been a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, a Grant Notley Postdoctoral Fellow in History & Classics at the University of Alberta, and an assistant professor of History at the University of Northern British Columbia. I completed my PhD in History at Queen’s University under the supervision of Ian McKay.

My main area of interest is the relationship between modern systems and practices of mobility — that is, of travel, traffic, tourism, transport, and their related infrastructures — and Canadians’ changing experiences of landscape and community. In pursuing this theme, I have examined a wide range of topics, including:

• the history of parks, especially provincial parks;
• the history of technology and energy, especially in the form of automobility;
• the history of public history: markers, monuments, local museums, etc.;
• boosterism and the service industry in small towns and rural communities;
• the forest industry since the rise of truck logging in the 1930s;
•  visual and material culture, especially vernacular photography and commercial architecture.

I am currently conducting two major research projects. One is an architectural-agricultural history of roadside fruit stands in Canada’s only arid desert. The other is a history of teenage rowdyism and other ‘bad behaviour’ in Canada’s Great Outdoors during the years 1965-1985.

Publications

Check out my CV for an up-to-date list of my scholarly publications you can track down. Links and additional info coming soon.