Landscape, Settlement, and Extractive Entanglements in 20th Century British Columbia

• In Event: Shaping Cities, Shaping Knowledge

Abstract

Land is both central to landscape architecture and settler-colonialism, yet the relationship between the two remains under-considered within landscape history. In focusing on overlapping themes of colonial horticulture, extractive capitalism, and the formation of professional expertise, this paper queries how landscape architectural practice is implicated in settler colonial processes in early twentieth century British Columbia. The paper draws from archival materials of two projects designed to support land speculation and resource extraction: the Uplands (1907-1915), a racially exclusive suburb designed by the Olmsted Brothers near Victoria, and Kitimat (1951-1954), a new town designed by Dan Kiley and conceived, funded, and built by the Aluminum Company of Canada to house smelter workers in northern British Columbia.
Both projects were designed by prominent American landscape architects in service of the Canada’s resource economy, and despite geographical and temporal differences, their similarities reveal how landscape architecture gained professional expertise through settler-state formation. The Olmsted Brothers’ design for the Uplands was inspired by the existing Garry Oak (p'xwulhp) ecosystem, an endemic landscape actively maintained for more than millennia by the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen). While the Olmsted design prioritized the health and survival of the Garry Oaks, the lək̓ʷəŋən were being forcefully moved onto reserves. Similarly, Kiley’s design of Kitimat, located on unceded Haisla land, sought to create a ‘content’ workforce through nuclear families and private property that foreclosed on traditional Haisla land practices. Critically, in both projects the design and development of residential landscapes directly intersects with Indigenous dispossession, helping construct an idealized landscape for white settlers. Through a comparative historical analysis of the design, financing, and construction of these two projects, the paper illustrates how speculation and extraction are mutually co-constituted through landscape architecture to enable or resist settler-state formation, a narrative which landscape history is yet to fully consider.

Author

• Sara Jacobs, University of British Columbia