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Historical geography at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Hamilton (Ontario), 25–31 May, 1987
CONFERENCE REPORTS
61
Historical geography at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Hamilton (Ontario), 25-31 May, 1987
The study of Canada's past populations is entering an interesting phase. This is because, first, painstaking labour has now created well-researched data bases and, second, the models that guide our understanding are being revised. To illustrate the first point, work involving parish registers and other sources has facilitated the study of Quebec's Amerindian and European populations, as Yves Landry and Hubert Charbonneau (Montreal) showed. Other papers reported progress with the nineteenth-century censuses: thus, Frank Innes and Kenneth Pryke (Windsor) examined causes of mortality in 1871, while Elizabeth and Gerald Bloomfield (Guelph) explored the 1871 data on occupation. Previous attempts to extract useful information on fertility from these censuses have been flawed, but Marvin McInnis (Queen's, Kingston) remedied this by a presentation of new county estimates. Finally, record linkage has increased the quality of data, as an analysis of infant mortality in Montreal in 1860 by Patricia Thornton (Concordia) and Sherry Olson (McGill) showed. Their work also illustrated the second theme, since they indicated that alterations in infant mortality cannot be explained by socio-economic or ecological variations; they argued that a theory based on cultural differences is needed. Suggested revisions were also proposed to frontier models by David Wood (York) in his analysis of Ontario settlement. Finally, Darrell Norris (S.U.N.Y., Geneseo) suggested that migration research must pay attention to information flows, while William Morrison (Brandon) and Kenneth Coates (Victoria) stressed the importance of transiency in their study of the Yukon. It is to be hoped that the progress that this session reported can be sustained, and that the next steps will be to place results in the broader context of other changes in society, and to pursue analysis at the level of the individual. In his presidential address, Cole Harris (British Columbia) summarized the arguments of the forthcoming Historical Atlas of Canada, while another editor of this project, Louis Gentilcore, was honoured by a special session of his former doctoral students. Their papers exemplified the range and quality of his research in North American historical geography. Thus Victor Konrad (Maine) examined salt marsh agriculture in Maine, while Martin Kenzer (Louisiana State) explored the influence of Oberhummer on Sauer. Darrell Norris (S.U.N.Y., Geneseo) illustrated a typology for highway commercial strip developments, while William Norton (Manitoba) presented a human-orientated landscape theory based on cultural rather than economic considerations. These directions were later amplified in a further session which investigated cultural landscapes in places as diverse as the Catskills and Cumberland, and included Graeme Wynn's (British Columbia) description of the Maritime provinces in 1800, while two papers took care that religious differences were not overlooked in this examination. Perhaps the only topic missing was urban historical geography, but this was remedied by a session which included papers on Winnipeg by Daniel Hiebert (British Columbia), Montreal by David Hanna (Quebec fi Montr6al), and Sherry Olson's (McGill) pioneering research method for the analysis of the changing ecology of occupations.
62
CONFERENCE REPORTS
All in all, historical geography in Canada appears to have survived the changes of the last two decades remarkably well, and seems set to prosper, provided it can continue to attract students.
Institute for Research on Public Policy, Ottawa Centre for Canadian Studies, Edinburgh
ALAN NASH JUDY WEISINGER
Citation of the Journal of Historical Geography
The Social science citation index, compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information, is derived from citations that appear in 1,461 fully covered source journals and 3,267 journals that are covered selectively. Journals are ranked according to such measures as the "impact factor", a ratio of the number of citations to the number of citable items in the previous two years. The survey of publications in 1985 has revealed that the Journal of Historical Geography came 4th in a ranking of 25 "Geography Source Journals" by their "impact factor". Only five of the journals had an "impact factor" greater than 1.00: that of the Journal of Historical Geography was 1.19.
61
Historical geography at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Hamilton (Ontario), 25-31 May, 1987
The study of Canada's past populations is entering an interesting phase. This is because, first, painstaking labour has now created well-researched data bases and, second, the models that guide our understanding are being revised. To illustrate the first point, work involving parish registers and other sources has facilitated the study of Quebec's Amerindian and European populations, as Yves Landry and Hubert Charbonneau (Montreal) showed. Other papers reported progress with the nineteenth-century censuses: thus, Frank Innes and Kenneth Pryke (Windsor) examined causes of mortality in 1871, while Elizabeth and Gerald Bloomfield (Guelph) explored the 1871 data on occupation. Previous attempts to extract useful information on fertility from these censuses have been flawed, but Marvin McInnis (Queen's, Kingston) remedied this by a presentation of new county estimates. Finally, record linkage has increased the quality of data, as an analysis of infant mortality in Montreal in 1860 by Patricia Thornton (Concordia) and Sherry Olson (McGill) showed. Their work also illustrated the second theme, since they indicated that alterations in infant mortality cannot be explained by socio-economic or ecological variations; they argued that a theory based on cultural differences is needed. Suggested revisions were also proposed to frontier models by David Wood (York) in his analysis of Ontario settlement. Finally, Darrell Norris (S.U.N.Y., Geneseo) suggested that migration research must pay attention to information flows, while William Morrison (Brandon) and Kenneth Coates (Victoria) stressed the importance of transiency in their study of the Yukon. It is to be hoped that the progress that this session reported can be sustained, and that the next steps will be to place results in the broader context of other changes in society, and to pursue analysis at the level of the individual. In his presidential address, Cole Harris (British Columbia) summarized the arguments of the forthcoming Historical Atlas of Canada, while another editor of this project, Louis Gentilcore, was honoured by a special session of his former doctoral students. Their papers exemplified the range and quality of his research in North American historical geography. Thus Victor Konrad (Maine) examined salt marsh agriculture in Maine, while Martin Kenzer (Louisiana State) explored the influence of Oberhummer on Sauer. Darrell Norris (S.U.N.Y., Geneseo) illustrated a typology for highway commercial strip developments, while William Norton (Manitoba) presented a human-orientated landscape theory based on cultural rather than economic considerations. These directions were later amplified in a further session which investigated cultural landscapes in places as diverse as the Catskills and Cumberland, and included Graeme Wynn's (British Columbia) description of the Maritime provinces in 1800, while two papers took care that religious differences were not overlooked in this examination. Perhaps the only topic missing was urban historical geography, but this was remedied by a session which included papers on Winnipeg by Daniel Hiebert (British Columbia), Montreal by David Hanna (Quebec fi Montr6al), and Sherry Olson's (McGill) pioneering research method for the analysis of the changing ecology of occupations.
62
CONFERENCE REPORTS
All in all, historical geography in Canada appears to have survived the changes of the last two decades remarkably well, and seems set to prosper, provided it can continue to attract students.
Institute for Research on Public Policy, Ottawa Centre for Canadian Studies, Edinburgh
ALAN NASH JUDY WEISINGER
Citation of the Journal of Historical Geography
The Social science citation index, compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information, is derived from citations that appear in 1,461 fully covered source journals and 3,267 journals that are covered selectively. Journals are ranked according to such measures as the "impact factor", a ratio of the number of citations to the number of citable items in the previous two years. The survey of publications in 1985 has revealed that the Journal of Historical Geography came 4th in a ranking of 25 "Geography Source Journals" by their "impact factor". Only five of the journals had an "impact factor" greater than 1.00: that of the Journal of Historical Geography was 1.19.