Miriam Wright

Associate Professor, History
Graduate Faculty

Ph.D. Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1997
M.A. Queen's University, 1990
B.A. University of Western Ontario, 1987
 

2172 Chrysler Hall North
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4
tel. 519-253-3000 ext. 2341

mwright@uwindsor.ca

Research & Teaching Interests

Canadian history, Atlantic Canada, Atlantic and Pacific coast fisheries, state and society, Aboriginal peoples, modernity

Current Projects

I am working on an ecological/social/political history of salmon fisheries management and regulation on the Nass and Skeena rivers in northern British Columbia in the 1950s and 1960s. This was period of huge ecological, technological, economic and social change in the fishery which had a big impact on both the salmon populations and the Aboriginal people who comprised the majority of industrial fishers and cannery workers in the region. These fishing people came into frequent conflict with the other groups involved in the fishery – state officials, fisheries scientists and cannery owners. In this project, I am studying the ways that the different groups involved perceived salmon and the salmon fishery, and how these groups interacted in the struggles and controversies over access to the resource.

Selected Publications

"Aboriginal Gillnet Fishers, Science, and the State: Salmon Fisheries, Management on the Nass and Skeena Rivers, British Columbia, 1951-1961," Journal of Canadian Studies, 44,1(Winter 2010), 5-35.

"'Building the Great Lucrative Fishing Industry': Aboriginal Gillnet Fishers and Protests over Salmon Fishery Regulations for the Nass and Skeena Rivers, 1950s-1960s," Labour/Le Travail, 61 (Spring 2008), 99-130.

"Images of the Fisher Folk in Newfoundland, 1900-1930s," Acadiensis, XXXV, 1 (Autumn 2005), 148-151.

A Fishery for Modern Times: The State and the Industrialization of the Newfoundland Fishery 1934-1968. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Recent Graduate Students Supervised

Becky Hill, "Hadigehjiso:oh Hadihso:da: Oga:doh -- An Oral History of Two Six Nations Vietnam Veterans," August 2010.

Mark Conte, "L'arte del padre è mezzo imparata: the Italian Immigrant Garden in Post-War Toronto," January 2010.

Charles Bain, “Myth and History: Aboriginal Peoples, Canada, and the First World War,” May 2009.

Krista Montelpare, “A State of Transition: Immigration and the Emergence of Medical Institutions in Saint John, New Brunswick, 1830-1860,” June 2008.

James Frost, “From Theory to Practice: Liberalism and the Struggle for Reform at the Kingston Penitentiary, 1835-1848,” September 2006.

Brandon Dimmel, “Domestic Diplomacy: Regional History and the Connection between Windsor and Detroit during the First World War,” May 2006.

Courses Taught