Producing Provincial Space: Crown Forests, the State and Territorial Control in British Columbia

Abstract

This paper presents three ways in which Crown forest administration in British Columbia at the turn of the 20th century helped to facilitate effective provincial control of territory. First, officials discursively constructed timbered spaces as a shared trust for British Columbia's citizens. Secondly, they produced useful geographical knowledge and a spatial architecture that would facilitate on-going surveillance. Finally, officials constructed resource spaces of sustained production, monitored and controlled by trained experts. Thus, Crown forest administration solidified provincial claims to vast swaths of territory. The analysis highlights the importance of considering the on-going geographies of land and resource management as a fundamental part of processes of dispossession and reterritorialisation.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented in the spring of 2007 at the Graduate Colloquium of the Geography Department of the University of Washington and the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers at the University of Saskatchewan. The valuable suggestions received at each mark the final version. Patricia Wood, Anders Sandberg and Kathryn McPherson were all instrumental in assisting the author to formulate the initial set of ideas upon which the paper is based. Additionally, the Editor and two anonymous reviewers offered several suggestions that strengthened the end result. Of course, any remaining errors or omissions are the author's responsibility alone.

Notes

1. The vast majority of timber lands in British Columbia are public (Crown) lands on which private companies cut timber through a system of licensing and royalty payment.

2. I borrow this phrase from Derek Gregory's (2004) discussion of the multiple geographies that make up the “war on terror”.

3. Afforestation is period terminology for reforestation.

4. This includes privately held lands obtained by grant or purchase, with proprietorship ranging from local individuals to national corporations, as well as federally held lands along the Canadian Pacific Railway line.