Alan MacEachern's Meteorological Service of Canada talk is available on the CJSR website

Alan MacEachern's talk, "Observation Nation: The First Decades of the Meteorological Service of Canada", was recorded by CJSR as part of their Brains on Campus series. Listen to Episode 14, "Back when weather forecasting was sexy" here.

Founded in 1871, the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) modelled American and British systems, covering vast geography with limited resources. To survive, it relied on a national network of volunteer observers. 

Over time, this program – part citizen science, part settler colonialism – was framed as a way to understand and unify the nation. 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.   

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).