The Miramichi Fire: A History

Awards:   Finalist for the 2021 Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing Winner of the Journal of New Brunswick Studies/Revue d'etudes sur le Nouveau Brunswick 2022 New Brunswick Scholarly Book Award Winner of the Journal of New Brunswick Studies/Revue d’études sur le Nouveau Brunswick 2022 New Brunswick Scholarly Book Award
Author:   Alan MacEachern
Publisher:   McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN:  

9780228001492


Pages:   288
Publication Date:   23 July 2020
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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The Miramichi Fire: A History


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Awards

  • Finalist for the 2021 Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
  • Winner of the Journal of New Brunswick Studies/Revue d'etudes sur le Nouveau Brunswick 2022 New Brunswick Scholarly Book Award
  • Winner of the Journal of New Brunswick Studies/Revue d’études sur le Nouveau Brunswick 2022 New Brunswick Scholarly Book Award

Overview

On 7 October 1825, a massive forest fire swept through northeastern New Brunswick, devastating entire communities. When the smoke cleared, it was estimated that the fire had burned across six thousand square miles, one-fifth of the colony. The Miramichi Fire was the largest wildfire ever to occur within the British Empire, one of the largest in North American history, and the largest along the eastern seaboard. Yet despite the international attention and relief efforts it generated, and the ruin it left behind, the fire all but disappeared from public memory by the twentieth century. A masterwork in historical imagination, The Miramichi Fire vividly reconstructs nineteenth-century Canada's greatest natural disaster, meditating on how it was lost to history. First and foremost an environmental history, the book examines the fire in the context of the changing relationships between humans and nature in colonial British North America and New England, while also exploring social memory and the question of how history becomes established, warped, and forgotten. Alan MacEachern explains how the imprecise and conflicting early reports of the fire's range, along with the quick rebound of the forests and economy of New Brunswick, led commentators to believe by the early 1900s that the fire's destruction had been greatly exaggerated. As an exercise in digital history, this book takes advantage of the proliferation of online tools and sources in the twenty-first century to posit an entirely new reading of the past. Resurrecting one of Canada's most famous and yet unexamined natural disasters, The Miramichi Fire traverses a wide range of historical and scientific literatures to bring a more complete story into the light.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alan MacEachern
Publisher:   McGill-Queen's University Press
Imprint:   McGill-Queen's University Press
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780228001492


ISBN 10:   0228001498
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   23 July 2020
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Reviews

This book is a most valuable endeavour. Impressive and astonishing for the great range and wealth of sources on which it rests, The Miramichi Fire throws new light on the history of New Brunswick. Alan MacEachern is an accomplished historian, and I can o Engagingly thorough, written in prose that is judicious, always graceful, and frequently wry, this outstanding history will be the primary reference for the Miramichi Fire indefinitely into the future. Alan MacEachern has reviewed all previously known sources, discovered new ones, and mastered them all. Stephen Pyne, Arizona State University


Engagingly thorough, written in prose that is judicious, always graceful, and frequently wry, this outstanding history will be the primary reference for the Miramichi Fire indefinitely into the future. Alan MacEachern has reviewed all previously known sources, discovered new ones, and mastered them all. Stephen Pyne, Arizona State University This book is a most valuable endeavour. Impressive and astonishing for the great range and wealth of sources on which it rests, The Miramichi Fire throws new light on the history of New Brunswick. Alan MacEachern is an accomplished historian, and I can o


Author Information

Alan MacEachern is professor of history at the University of Western Ontario and has written widely on Canadian environmental history.

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