Note from Andrea: I’m just finishing up my marking for my condensed summer course, so we have another special guest post for you today! When I found out that Heather Green was researching beer in the Klondike, I just knew I had to talk her into a blog post. Enjoy!
Heather Green recently received her PhD from the University of Alberta studying environmental and indigenous histories of gold mining in the Klondike region of the Yukon from 1890 to 1940. She is an incoming Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University where she will research trophy hunting tourism in the southern Yukon from 1920 to 1950.
This blog is the early research for a larger collaborative project with Matt Papai (University of Alberta) on the connections between local identity, environment, and beer production in the Yukon. Both collaborators are craft beer enthusiasts, and the idea for this project arose in 2015 from discussions about the environmental impacts of Northern beer production while researching in the Yukon and Alaska. Our next steps include examining liquor laws, temperance, and prohibition movements in the Yukon, as well as tracing commodity chains of brewing ingredients into the North. We also hope to investigate how successful O’Brien’s ad campaign was in reaching the public.
The craft beer movement has gained momentum over the past few decades with new microbreweries popping up each year all over North America and around the globe. In Canada, the microbrewery movement began in the 1980s, primarily in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Vancouver, British Columbia. Today, you are guaranteed to find at least one craft brewery in most towns and cities in Canada. Around the world one thing seems to ring true no matter where you go – breweries, and the beer they produce, hold a connection with place and local identity.
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Heather Green is a post-doctoral fellow with the Wilson Institute in Canadian History at McMaster University where she studies transnational tourism in the Yukon, specifically the rise of sport hunting, conservation policy, and Indigenous engagement. She is also a Fulbright Canada scholar with the University of Arizona examining the ways in which Indigenous groups in Arizona developed guiding and outfitting businesses for tourists in the early 20th century. She is also this year’s New Scholars representative for NiCHE! You can find her on Twitter @heathergreen21 usually tweeting about #envhist, the Yukon, and her dog, Whiskey!
