Public Lecture sponsored by Institute of Island Studies as part of 'Time and a Place Conference, Environmental history of PEI Conference' Dr. Graeme Wynn “Time, Place and Trees: Forest scenes and incidents in eastern North America” Although George Perkins Marsh, sometimes called the “fountainhead” of the American conservation movement, made “The Woods” a major focus of his influential book Man and Nature, published in 1864, and Rachel Carson devoted a chapter of her landmark work Silent Spring (1962) to the environmental consequences of certain forestry practices in New Brunswick, there have been very few environmental histories of the forests that blanket much of Atlantic Canada. This presentation plunges into the forests of the Canadian Maritime provinces to sketch something of their changing form, extent, appraisal and importance through time. To provide a long view, while remaining sensitive to the diversity of this region, it focuses on trees in particular times and places (or, borrowing from the title of a nineteenth century book by Sir George Head) specific forest scenes and incidents, to argue for the signal importance of forests in the development of this area, as well as for the value of historical and geographical perspectives in the quest to understand human-environment interactions. Biography Through the four decades of his professional career, Graeme Wynn has sought to understand human transformations of the earth. When he embarked on this quest, research in this vein was seen as part of a venerable, albeit fading, geographical tradition; in recent years it has been given new impetus as "environmental history." The core of Wynn’s work has always been interdisciplinary, rooted in geography and history and engaged with the environmental sciences. Over time his early interests in eastern Canada broadened to encompass New Zealand and the rest of Canada. In each of these realms a fair part of his work has turned, in one way or another, on the histories and geographies of forest exploitation, conservation, preservation and management. Wynn’s academic writing has been directed, over the years, to both specialist scholars and the educated lay public (through such contributions as the extended chapter he was invited to write for The Illustrated History of Canada) in the conviction that it is important to communicate the fruits of academic research to an audience beyond the academy. His most recent book is Canada and Arctic North America: An Environmental History (2007). His research contributes to debate and discussion on, and understanding of, the development of European settlements overseas, the history of migration, the connections between environment and empire, and the developing field of environmental history.