Fifteen books following the stripping winter returns. The last patches of grass are now covered with a good 15 cm of loose snow. After college two weeks ago, the session begins Monday at college. A fine schedule, as during the morning. I'm an early riser, I'm fine. As for my youth, I am less sure. A firecracker exploded in a class at 8.30 can be considered as a teaching tool?
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It is high time to return to the series that began a month ago so here are three authors who were important in my life.
The college was for me a time when I did a lot readings that have shaped my ideas. I owe my courses in philosophy of having discovered Lewis Mumford. Not that we have studied the magazine but because Criterion busy at the time by Jacques Dufresne had organized a writing contest on urban issues that interested me. It browsing this issue I discovered what Mumford's classic The City in History (The City in History) and given up writing this text. In this book, making the history of cities and urban planning, he argues for a return to human scale, sensing the rampage entailed the automobile or the inhumanity of the modernist ideas of Le Corbusier and others.
His last major book, The Myth of the Machine (horribly translated into French) me even more impressed. It is a pessimistic book that it does not condemn as art in itself that interested in handling what he calls megamachine, large conglomerate financial interests military, industrialists and politicians whose sole purpose is to replicate and expand its influence. This results in a dehumanized world, a growth which runs pour elle-même. Disons que depuis quarante ans que ce livre a été écrit les faits ne lui ont pas donné tort. Oui, grâce à internet l’information circule et n’a jamais été aussi accessible, mais je me demande si cette omniscience virtuelle ne cache pas une plus grande ignorance du monde réel. Malgré son pessimisme, il conclut « But for those of us who have thrown off the myth of the machine, the next move is ours: for the gates of the technocratic prison will open automatically, despite their rusty ancient hinges, as soon a we choose to walk out » C’est un principe qui m’a toujours guidé.
My first contact with the work of Raoul Blanchard became the worst possible way. After a turbulent year, the college where I did my secondary 3 had forced me to take some work session. I did not finally made, which earned me a change of establishment also beneficial. Among these impositions, there was one to summarize the summary of Canadian Studies Raoul Blanchard that was the Canada-French version 1960. I read the book with passion but it is understood that summarize the 300 pages of a book which makes the synthesis of 1500 was above the forces of a cul-ti 14. Unknowingly, my geo teacher with whom I had incompetent baffled confirmed my passion for all things geographic. Blanchard's prose had helped. This disciple of Peguy a good pen, like many geographers of his time. He had a round of boosting long lists of facts or data to arrive at deriving the original line, one that makes sense. Add a gift for metaphor and that kills you a description of Monteregians who are like "a coward herd of elephants spread across the plain of Montreal "and you have a model for analyzing geographic never boring to read.
Many years later, when I began my bacc in geography, my brother suggested my father to give me for my birthday a series of five volumes of Blanchard on Canada- French. This is the best gift I ever had. I've savored all summer, and this has made me very damaged but fairly unbeatable on the geography of Quebec. I dream one day to have time, energy and discipline (!) to rejuvenate this masterful study that is not much read by historians. At a time when geographers surspécialisent, I think is to forget that one of the qualities of discipline is its sense of synthesis reports that humans have with their environment. (1)
This report is the heart of the thought of the last author whom I speak today. This is the ecologist Pierre Dansereau. I discovered in the old Quebec Directory tools planets that Grip was published around 1975. It made much of this volume which introduced a major study on the ecological impact of the deceased Mirabel Airport. Dansereau is one of the last survivors of this group of exceptional men that Marie-Victorin had gathered around him, he will also centenary this year. This is an original thinker who wanted to make a bridge between ecology and bio-biological sciences. Thus, the classic pyramid cons transformation / predation / recycling of natural environments, he suggested the ball arrow widens the concept of ecosystem humanized landscapes and territories. (2) For example, the apartment where you live is an important ecosystem and other ecosystems of the products (electricity, food) that are used and the residues are then exported to other ecosystems, a dump, say.
This way of seeing the world as a network of interrelated ecosystems was a revelation to me important then introduced me to the systemic and integrate all the concepts that I could learn in my studies. This was also done by my endless thesis where, using the concepts proposed by Dansereau, I had fun building the ecological history or historical geography of a village in Eastern Townships Est. And no need to tell you that when my manager offered me Mr. Dansereau's memory as an external drive I was more than honored. He was 94 and I think I was his last student. He liked my work. (3)
(1) In good academic, Blanchard has published the entire contents of its five major books in the Journal of Alpine he also founded. They can be found in the wonderful
portal Perseus, which has digitized many scholarly journals, just have to write (advanced search) title Canadian Studies and author Blanchard and magic all items are available as pdf files.
(2) To understand the thinking of Pierre Dansereau in those years, there
this interview with Joël Le Bigot, from the time he knew to be silent.
(3) To know man as he is, there's this documentary that her cousin Fernand Dansereau He was consecrated. Its title,
Some reasons for hope sums up what it is, and having met with a group of my students is very him. Only human. With his funny accent of Outremont.
