Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley
Available from: University of Toronto Press | Amazon.ca | Chapters.Indigo.ca
Winner of the Canadian Historical Association’s 2015 Clio Prize for best book in Ontario history
Winner of the Ontario Historical Association’s 2015 Fred Landon Prize for best book on local or regional history in Ontario, published in the past three years.
Short-listed for the Canadian Historical Association’s Sir John A. MacDonald Prize, 2015
Reclaiming the Don shows how this unruly valley, but paradoxical sliver of paradise, has been geographically and culturally central to the history of Toronto. In these pages nature and the city become tangled up together as Toronto and the Don define one another across two centuries.
“Michael Ondaatje would enjoy this beautiful history of Toronto’s Don valley: it explores a place he drew on for his own work and it shares his novels’ intensity of imagery.” — Gideon Forman, This Magazine (March/April 2015)
“Jennifer Bonnell’s Reclaiming the Don shows how this unruly valley, but paradoxical sliver of paradise, has been geographically and culturally central to the history of Toronto. In these pages nature and the city become tangled up together as Toronto and the Don define one another across two centuries.”—H.V. Nelles, Department of History, McMaster University
“Written in clear and elegant prose, Reclaiming the Don is thoroughly researched and brilliantly conceived. Bonnell moves beyond a riverine focus to encompass the valley as a whole and explores links between land-use issues and riverine change in an effective, even startling way.”—Matthew Evenden, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
“In this winding exploration of the Don’s history, Bonnell has provided a lively narrative that restores to the valley its place, literal and metaphorical, in the history of Canada’s leading city.”—Arn Keeling, Department of Geography, Memorial University
Historical GIS Research in Canada