Openings: A Meditation on History, Method, and Sumas Lake

The "Opening" chapter reflects on the connection between historical and technological frontiers. "Listening for Pleasure" discusses oral histories as they relate to the negotiated and contested space of Sumas Lake. "Margins and Mosquitoes" recovers archival records from Victoria to Ottawa to explore flood-lake involvements federally, provincially, and locally. "Memory Device" moves into the archive of land and waterscapes, looking for connections between place and history, mindful of both Native oral tradition and written accounts of the lake. The concluding chapter, "One More Byte," written from the perspective of a mosquito, attempts to distance this project from the work of modernization while assessing the value of interactive history. An independent but complementary hypermedia essay "Disappearing a Lake" is located on this website (scroll up) at http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/files/cameron_laura http://oldwww.mqup.mcgill.ca/files/cameron_laura/