Abstract

In Alberta, 60-70 percent of wetlands have disappeared (Alberta Government, 2013, September 1). While this figure is used to quantify wetland loss in the province, it does not reflect the experiences of those emotionally impacted by such loss. Using Davidson and Milligan’s concept of emotional geography (2004) this thesis will explore grief in relation to wetlands within Alberta’s North Saskatchewan Watershed through the accounts and observations of some who inhabit the watershed and have been impacted by its transformation. Mapping the life and loss of wetlands is not a matter of locating geographical markers, rather it uses grief as a point of departure by making present the material, sensory, and emotional entanglements with wetlands, which then open to deeper research and analysis about wetland loss as part of Alberta’s settler history and ongoing economic development. For many who grew up on the Prairies, or who have spent a considerable amount of time with wetlands, grief is not only a response to their material loss, but rather a response to a disruption of one’s sense of being and place. Through the use of landscape ethnography and phenomenology as both a methodological and theoretical approach I examine the ways in which wetlands are not just backdrops to past experiences, but become part of living memory shaped in relation to kinship, home, and cultural politics. The North Saskatchewan Watershed is therefore a conceptual frame for imagining an emotional hydrogeography, one where wetland loss exposes a certain vulnerability in Being-with-wetlands, and in Being-without them.