About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
Built within an exceptional watershed, Montreal is intertwined with the waterways that ring its island and flow beneath it in underground networks. Montreal, City of Water focuses on water not only as a physical element – both shaping and shaped by urban development – but also as a sociocultural component of the life of the city. This unique study considers how water has produced and transformed urban space over two centuries. It traces the history of Montreal’s urbanization, shining a light on current concerns about water pollution, rehabilitation, and public access to the riverfront – and on the power relations involved in addressing them.
Contributor Notes
Michèle Dagenais is a professor of history at the Université de Montréal. She specializes in urban and environmental history and is the author of Faire et fuir la ville: espaces publics de loisirs et de culture à Montréal et Toronto aux XIXe et XXe siècles (2006) and Des pouvoirs et des hommes: l’administration municipale de Montréal, 1900–1950 (2000). She is also co-editor of Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches (2003) and Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal (2011). Peter Feldstein is the translator of eight books, including Paul-Émile Borduas: A Critical Biography, for which he won a Governor General’s Literary Award in 2014. He lives in Montreal.
Editorial Reviews
Montreal, City of Water is full of insights.
— Scientia Canadiensis
The past was never paradise. Michèle Dagenais’s Montreal, City of Water: An Environmental History takes on the myth that Montrealers once enjoyed an idyllic relationship with the city’s streams and the St. Lawrence River; a relationship supposedly lost during the nineteenth century only to await recovery after the 1970s. Instead, Dagenais shows that there was never a break between people and the environment…
— Network in Canadian History and Environment
