Atlantic Books Today REVIEWS
P.E.I. from the air shows 85 years of changing island landscapes by Mathias Rodorff
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new book by Dr. Joshua MacFadyen offers an unprecedented view of the changes Prince Edward Island’s communities faced between 1935 and 2020. Time Flies: A History of Prince Edward Island from the Air illustrates the author’s argument that the development of land use in Prince Edward Island is “most evident from the air.” However, it is the focus on aerial photography combined with the use of historical maps, statistics and digital datasets that offer an unprecedented “view of rural, urban, and coastal land use.” This method can be applied not just to Canada’s smallest province, but to other provinces or communities as well. The historical transformation of land use and infrastructure in rural, urban and coastal areas are complemented by a “discussion of what defines nature” and an analysis of key developments in the economical, social and cultural sectors. By showing these repercussions, MacFadyen shows the significant impacts of human activities on their environment. As such, Time Flies is a relevant contribution the ongoing “Anthropocene” debate, which refers to the unofficial geological time scale when human activities started to significantly impact the planet’s ecosystems and climate. As the director of the Lab for Geospatial Research in Atlantic Canadian History, located at the University of Prince Edward Island, MacFadyen supervises the digitization of “historical maps and geospatial characteristics of rural food and energy systems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” For this book, MacFadyen processed, together with a team of student research assistants employed at the lab, the aerial photographs and historical maps in the Geographic Information System and the National Topographic Series. Chapter 1 shows the connection between population growth and changes in primary industries. It guides the reader through the history and developments of the various agricultural sectors. Supported by statistics and newspaper articles, the author evaluates the mutual impacts of political goals, population growth and growing economic competition on a rapidly increasing global market for agricultural goods. The effects of transportation infrastructure for rural communities, and the urban development of Prince Edward 38
Times Flies Dr. Joshua MacFadyen Island Studies Press
Island, are the focus of this book. “As the number of farms declined and population continued to rise, new houses and new communities sprang up to support the emerging commercial agriculture, aquaculture, and tourism sectors.” In the first two chapters the potential of aerial photographs illustrates the graphic description of the transformation processes the various rural, urban and coastal communities faced within 85 years. The scale strengthens this graphic description by illustrating the impacts of infrastructural changes, from the effects a small asphalt road had on a single farm to the construction of the impact building the Confederation Bridge and the TransCanada Highway had on entire communities. In Chapters 3 and 4, various aspects are addressed: the retreat of farmland, deforestation, ribbon and subdivision development and the intended and unintended impacts, of infrastructural projects, like bridges, ferries, highways or simple roads. In Chapter 4, the author completes his study with a stronger focus on the natural habitats by looking at impacts of land use in coastal and island habitats as well as the efforts to counter the effects of climate change, such as the “well-documented cases of erosion on Robinson Island.” In this chapter, it is argued convincingly the reasons for coastal erosion in Prince Edward Island cannot be found in the “abstract” effects of climate alone, but in the direct effects “of attracting residential and recreational developments” along the coastline. Elaborately written, clearly structured with a wealth of written, visual and digital sources, Time Flies illustrates a groundbreaking combination of research methods that show to any reader the potential benefits of using aerial photography and creating digital datasets. Hopefully, this book will encourage more similar research projects focusing on the environmental history of other fast-changing communities in Atlantic Canada, like the Annapolis Valley and Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, or around the city of Moncton in New Brunswick. ■ MATHIAS RODORFF is research manager at the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and managing editor of the Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society.