The Calf with Two Heads Transatlantic Natural History in the Canadas

by Blair, Louisa

• ISBN13: 9781771863308
• ISBN10: 1771863307
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-11-01
• Publisher: Baraka Books

Summary

These beautifully illustrated stories of natural history in nineteenth-century Canada are about the curious men and women who crossed the oceans from Europe to explore, map, draw, puzzle about, collect and exhibit nature in Canada. Informed by French, British and Indigenous naturalists, they tried to understand what they saw. What did it all mean about the origins of the world? Louisa Blair, an amateur naturalist in Quebec and a transatlantic species herself, tells tales on Darwin, Russell Wallace and James Cook, and lingers on the strange and colourful details of Canada’ s stubborn resistance to evolutionism and its first natural history museums with their penchant for deformities. These stories feature Indigenous mapmakers, botanical artists, bug-bitten rock fanatics, arctic explorers, and a trio of Quebec women who managed to get plants named after themselves. To make her case, Louisa Blair has gathered a vast collection of vintage illustrations. In short, muddy boots, cold hands, a pocket full of fossils, a mind full of existential questions.

Author Biography

Louisa Blair is writer, editor and translator who was born in Quebec city, raised in the UK, and returned to live in Quebec 25 years ago. Her books in English include The Anglos: The Hidden Face of Quebec City and Iron Bars and Bookshelves: A History of the Morrin Centre. She has also translated numerous books and exhibitions about history, culture and politics in Quebec. Her translation of Robert Lepage’ s play 887 (House of Anansi Press, 2019) was nominated for a Governor General’ s prize.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Acknowledgements 9 Foreword 10 Introduction 13 I – NOVELTIES OF NATURE 15 The heresy of the stars 15 Astronomical leaps 15 A hardier mulberry 17 Botanical usefulness 17 Pet pigeons 19 Ornithological obsessions 19 No rotting flesh 20 Geological dating 20 II – INTERROGATING NATURE 25 Memory maps 25 Indigenous natural history 25 More fun than embroidery 31 Lady botanists of Quebec 31 A singular specimen of the potato 36 Natural history at the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 1824 to 1840 36 The beknighted collector 41 James MacPherson Le Moine 41 III – DRAWING NATURE 45 Drawing dissected mollusc penises 46 Natural history artists 46 While her husband mapped the river 51 Natural history artists in the Canadas 51 IV – EXPLAINING NATURE 57 Seasick on the Beagle 58 Origins of the Origin… 58 Feel it struggling between one’ s fingers 62 Alfred Russel Wallace and the theories of evolution 62 “ I laughed … til my sides were almost sore” 66 How the theory of evolution by natural selection was received 66 A chaos of fallen rocks 69 Passionate opposition in Quebec 69 V – MAPPING NATURE BY BOAT 74 No room for idlers 75 Captain Cook in Quebec 75 Canada’ s Arctic Dogsbody 79 Captain Bernier, 1853– 1934 79 Nothing more human than a ship 84 The Canadian Arctic Expedition 84 VI – EXHIBITING NATURE 88 Les simples curieux 89 The birth of the great museums 89 Otis and the safety elevator 95 World’ s Fairs 95 The calf with two heads 101 The first natural science museums in Quebec 101 Sinking into the mud 105 The Geological Survey and the Canadian Museum of Nature 105 Slate pencils 112 William Dawson and the Redpath Museum in Montreal 112 Sentinel species 116 Natural history and the future of nature 116