Observation Nation: The First Decades of the Meteorological Service of Canada

When the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) was established in 1871, it was to be modelled after American and British weather services - but with the massive geographical coverage of the former and the miniscule budget of the latter. For the MSC to survive, it would need to develop and rely on a national network of volunteer observers. In the decades that followed, the observation program - part citizen science, part settler colonialism - was represented by the Canadian state as a model not just for better understanding the nation, but for unifying it. Yet even as the MSC continued to trumpet its volunteers, it quietly turned more to paid observers for the standard of work that 20th century science demanded.

About Dr. Alan MacEachern 

Alan MacEachern teaches History at Western University. The founding director of NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment, he is the author most recently of Becoming Green Gables (2024), The Summer Trade (with Edward MacDonald, 2022) and The Miramichi Fire (2020).

Co-hosted by the faculties of Arts and Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation.