British Columbia in a Global Context British Columbia in a Global Context Geography Open Textbook Collective Arthur Green, Aviv Ettya, Siobhan McPhee, Britta Ricker, and Cristina Temenos BCcampus VICTORIA, B.C. British Columbia in a Global Context by Geography Open Textbook Collective is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. © 2014 Geography Open Textbook Collective The CC licence permits you to retain, reuse, copy, redistribute, and revise this book—in whole or in part—for free providing the author is attributed as follows: Britsh Columbia in a Global Context by Geography Open Textbook Collective is used under a CC BY 4.0 International Licence. If you redistribute all or part of this book, you must include the following on the copyright notice page: Download for free from the B.C. Open Textbook Collection. Sample APA-style citation: This textbook can be referenced. In APA citation style, it would appear as follows: Geography Open Textbook Collective. (2014). British Columbia in a Global Context. Victoria, B.C.: BCcampus. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/geography/. Cover image attributions: Pitt River Bridge View by James Wheeler is used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Licence, Natives making a canoe from a tree trunk at Mission, British Columbia, circa 1900 by BiblioArchives is used under a CC BY 2.0 Licence, Heisholt Lake by David Stanley is used under a CC BY 2.0 Licence, and Skybridge, British Columbia by Troy Wason is used under a CC BY 2.0 Licence. Visit BCcampus Open Education to learn about open education in British Columbia. Contents About the Book viii Introduction x 1. Urban Settlement in British Columbia Introduction 2 Urbanization in British Columbia 6 Case Study 1: The Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts 9 Case Study 2: Dockside Green, Victoria 13 Summary 17 Key Terms 19 Suggested Activities 21 References and Resources 23 2. Socio-Economics in British Columbia Introduction 26 Quality-of-Life Measures 27 Homelessness and Poverty in the First World 28 Case Study 1: Victoria and Williams Lake 30 Case Study 2: Housing Affordability 34 Summary 36 Key Terms 37 Suggested Activities 38 References and Resources 43 3. Aboriginal Issues in British Columbia Introduction 46 Territories, Natural Resources and First Treaties 49 Modern Treaties and Claims 51 Case Study 1: The Indian Residential School System 53 Summary 57 Key Terms 58 Suggested Activities 60 References and Resources 62 4. Resources in British Columbia Introduction 64 What are Resources? 65 Mining in BC 67 Case Study 1: The Gold Rush 71 Case Study 2: Carrier Nation and the Endako Mine 77 Summary 81 Key Terms 82 Suggested Activities 83 References and Resources 87 5. Food Systems in British Columbia Introduction 90 Food Systems in the Physical Landscape 91 Food Systems in British Columbia 97 Confronting the Frontiers 103 Case Study 1: The Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) 104 Case Study 2: Managing the BC Salmon Fishery 108 Summary 112 Key Terms 113 Suggested Activities 115 References and Resources 117 6. Forestry in British Columbia Introduction 120 History of Commercial Logging 125 Pulp and Paper Mills 128 Forest Tree Tenures 129 Case Study 1: Mountain Pine Beetle 132 Summary 137 Key Terms 139 Suggested Activities 141 References and Resources 142 7. Health Geography in British Columbia Introduction 145 Types of Health Geographies 146 Case Study 1: The "Golden Hour" and Access to Health Care 148 Case Study 2: Urban Heat Islands, Health and Spatial Technologies 150 Summary 152 Key Terms 153 Suggested Activities 154 References and Resources 155 8. Physical Geography of British Columbia Introduction 158 Climate Change and Environment in BC 164 Geology 166 Hazards 170 Case Study 1: 1965 Hope Slide 172 Case Study 2: 1964 Port Alberni Tsunami 176 Case Study 3: 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park Fire 179 Summary 182 Key Terms 183 Suggested Activities 185 References and Resources 187 Tools for Spatial Data Collection and Utilization 189 Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography 195 Physical Geography Research Methods 198 Statistical Geography 201 How to Find Research Literature 204 About the Authors 216 Additional Credits 218 Versioning History 219 About the Book The Geography Open Textbook Collective Over the course of four days in June 2014, five Geography faculty members from across British Columbia, supported by a facilitator, librarian, researcher, illustrator, programmer and instructional designer, created this book. This involved drawing on our own research, teaching and experience and working with the team to put it all together into an online format, one that would be accessible to students and educators alike. Beyond the unique way in which this book was created through this Book Sprint process, there are other elements of this book that make it unique. First, it takes a holistic approach to first-year Geography, incorporating elements of physical, human and regional geography, as well as bringing in methods and perspectives from spatial information science. Pedagogically, this book is aimed at a a first-year or introductory Geography student, and would be suitable for a first-year Geography course on BC. It incorporates elements of service learning and suggested service learning activities recognizing that the study of Geography is deeply connected to the communities we live in. Many of the suggestions for service learning are illustrated through the use of case studies from across BC. ABOUT THE BOOK • ix Finally, this book is openly licensed with a Creative Commons license, meaning that it can be freely used, copied, distributed, adapted and modified, either in whole or in part without further permission. We have made this book available in numerous file types that you can take, modify and reuse. Your reuse of this material can be anything from simple copying and using a single illustration or image to a complete rewriting of the book to fit your own learning objectives. About BCcampus Open Education BCcampus Open Education began in 2012 as the B.C. Open Textbook Project with the goal of making post- secondary education in British Columbia more accessible by reducing student costs through the use of openly licenced textbooks and other OER. BCcampus supports the post-secondary institutions of British Columbia as they adapt and evolve their teaching and learning practices to enable powerful learning opportunities for the students of B.C. BCcampus Open Education is funded by the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills & Training, and the Hewlett Foundation. Open textbooks are open educational resources (OER) created and shared in ways so that more people have access to them. This is a different model than traditionally copyrighted materials. OER are defined as teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license 1 that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Our open textbooks are openly licensed using a Creative Commons licence, and are offered in various e-book formats free of charge, or as printed books that are available at cost. If you are an instructor who is using this book for a course, please fill out our Adoption of an Open Textbook form. Attributions • Geography Open Textbook Collective photo: Day 1 from BCcampus_news used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license 1. "Open Educational Resources," Hewlett Foundation, https://hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/ (accessed September 27, 2018). Introduction In sitting down to think about what a regional geography of British Columbia (BC) might look like, the ideas in the room were as diverse as the people there. However, we all agreed on one thing: a traditional textbook format was not something that would fit the scope of the project that we had been set. Regional geography is often considered to be an inwardly focusing geographical perspective with analysis pertaining to local networks and drawing on isolated contextual examples. So what did regional geographies of BC mean to us as a diverse group of geographers? Figure 1. Regions of British Columbia The discussion generated two themes: the first, illustrated by the Regions of British Columbia map (see Figure 1), comes from an understanding that BC is an incredibly diverse place. There are vastly different physical features of landscape, from temperate rainforests to deserts to beautiful boreal forests in the north. INTRODUCTION • xi The second theme is the importance of natural resources. BC’s rich natural resources such as forestry, fishing, metals, minerals and natural gas not only provide for a vibrant local economy, but make the province a key part of Canada’s economy in relation to the global marketplace. If you put “British Columbia Canada” into a Google search, you’ll be offered a snapshot of some of the issues relevant here in BC, but whose effects are felt across the globe. The main scope of the book is, therefore, to apply the fundamental geographical approach of understanding our globally changing world by looking at the local processes. These local processes and events are intrinsically linked to the same processes and events elsewhere. For example: • Mining and its effects are a global issue and we can see how these unfold in BC. • The recent apologies to First Nations peoples on the residential school issue are similar to events that have occurred in the US, Ireland and Australia. • Processes of urbanization, a phenomenon that people all over the globe are experiencing, can be seen in Vancouver with our discussion of the city’s development and its rating as the second-most expensive city in the world to purchase a home. Geography students, indeed all first-year students, need to know and be able to critically assess their own contexts and environments in order to properly engage with our continually globalizing world.