Thinking with Water - Paperback

by Cecilia Chen (Author), Janine MacLeod (Author), Astrida Neimanis (Author)

Emphasizing the role that vivid personalities - including engineers John Laing Weller and Alex Grant as well as contractors and labourers - played in the construction of the canal, Roberta Styran and Robert Taylor use archival sources, government documents, newspapers, maps, and original plans to describe a saga of technological, financial, geographical, and social obstacles met and overcome in an accomplishment akin to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A story of Canadian skill, courage, vision, and hardship, This Colossal Project details the twenty-year excavation of the giant channel and the creation of huge concrete locks amidst war, the Great Depression, political change, and labour unrest.

Author Biography

Cecilia Chen is a senior architect in Montreal. Janine MacLeod is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Astrida Neimanis is Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.