Department of Geography
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3

www.yorku.ca/geograph/

A. HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY AT YORK

1. Introduction

By the time of York University's founding in 1960, geography as a subject had been well integrated into liberal arts and science programmes in Canadian universities. Recognizing this, George Tatham, a well known, highly respected geographer who had taught at the University of Toronto for twenty years, was one of the founding academics appointed to the new university. Tatham, (Ph.D., Clark), British-born and first trained in geography at the University of Liverpool, lectured in British universities before going to Toronto. Some inkling of the spirit and joy with which Tatham approached education and geography is shown in this quotation from Kant with which he headed the Geography course listings in York University's annual Calendar: "'The need for this study is very extensive. It provides a purposeful arrangement of our perceptions, gives us pleasure and provides much material for friendly discussion.' What more could anyone want?"

York University, located in Toronto, was the first of the new universities created by the province of Ontario after World War II to cope with the rapidly increasing number of Canadians who wanted to attend university. Additional student places were particularly needed in the rapidly growing Toronto-centered region, which persistently attracted migrants from other parts of the country, as well as a large proportion of the immigrants coming to Canada.

For its first five years, York was an affiliated college of the University of Toronto, and the Toronto degree was conferred on students. In the meantime, work was proceeding on preparing the York curriculum, which was first taught in 1963. York's founders introduced new educational ideas into post-secondary arts and science education in Ontario, while still fulfilling the fundamental aims of liberal education. General education courses, sometimes called interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary, were introduced at York along with traditional arts and science courses. Divisions of Humanities, Natural Science, and Social Science were established, alongside departments such as English, Geography, History and Psychology, each with the academic authority to organize courses and the budgets to make appointments, . York's new curricular proposals, stressing comprehensiveness and integration of knowledge, were not unlike the educational claims that geographers made for their discipline in the 1950s. Indeed, Tatham was the chairman of the committee that produced York's first curriculum, and its breadth of approach epitomized his own philosophy of geography and education. The broad over-arching ideals associated with General Education have remained important at York. At the same time, the commitment to the traditional disciplines has been strong, and an understanding of the role of the departments and that of the General Education divisions was only gradually achieved.

Geographers are appointed to a number of Faculties at York. Geography was one of the original departments in the university, first in the Faculty of Arts and Science, and after 1969 when the Faculty was split into two, in the Faculty of Arts. Atkinson College, a separate unit within York for part-time students, was established in 1961, and has had its own Department of Geography from 1965, when David Wood was appointed to the College. He has prepared an account of geography at Atkinson College for this CAG series. The courses in the two Departments are sufficiently coordinated that course credits are readily transferred. In 1968, York's Faculty of Environmental Studies was founded, and geographers are appointed to the Faculty as the different programmes require.

Although the main thrust of undergraduate geographical education at York has been through departments, as in other Canadian universities, geographers have always taught in the General Education divisions, most particularly in the Division of Social Science. A few geographers are either cross-listed or cross-appointed to the divisions, but the Division of Social Science also appoints geographers to tenure stream positions, just as it may appoint political scientists or sociologists to teach its courses.

2. Background to Creating a Curriculum

By the province's founding legislation, for its first four to eight years York was required to be affiliated with the University of Toronto, because it was anticipated the institution would grow slowly and this association would guarantee educational credibility. However, York grew so rapidly that this arrangement lasted only the minimum four years. The first students were taught the University of Toronto curriculum and exams were set jointly, although York students were marked by York instructors. Relations between the two institutions in geography was easy, since a few York geographers knew their colleagues at the University of Toronto well. One legacy of the University of Toronto association was that York adopted quickly not only three-year (Ordinary) but also four-year (Honours) undergraduate degree programmes. This required the rapid introduction of a comprehensive range of undergraduate courses, and energetic recruiting of faculty.

A wide selection of regional courses was conventional in the geography programmes of most Canadian universities in the mid-twentieth century, and York was no exception. This also was a matter of conviction. Department members believed it was important in a liberal arts and science programme to teach regional courses, both for their intellectual content and to ensure that students be well informed on the nature of their own country and of other parts of the world. That philosophy has held true in the department. It has also been borne in mind that it is essential to provide an adequate regional geographical background for those undergraduates heading for the teaching profession, as it is primary and secondary school teachers who introduce large numbers of pupils - future citizens - to different parts of the world.

In organizing the geography programme close attention was given to the significant and demanding changes in systematic geography consuming the discipline in the years that York University was being formed. It was evident that mounting only one course in some of the generally accepted major fields of geography would be inadequate to teach the new research and fresh ideas emerging in the very active geographical world of the 1960s and the immediately following years. Accordingly, almost from the start it was decided that in important sub-fields of geography such as economic, rural, and urban geography there would be a sequence comprising an introductory course, followed the next year by a more advanced course. Thus prerequisites were required, and a firmly structured curriculum was rapidly put in place. That underlying philosophy has remained, although modified in detail as new geographical specializations have sprung up.

A complicating factor at York that proved frustrating for many years was meshing General Education and Departmental courses. General Education had both supporters and critics. For all of geography's vaunted breadth of approach, geographers emerge from graduate school as specialists, and to encounter in one's first teaching job York's programmes in interdisciplinary studies could be disconcerting. Fortunately, most of the bitter curricular battles over General Education had been fought in Faculty Council in the first years of York, before large numbers of new geography faculty arrived. However, the task remained of working out a sound geography programme within the curricular regulations that existed.

One immediate problem faced in organizing an undergraduate geography programme was that all First Year courses, and some Second Year courses, were interdisciplinary General Education courses, and disciplinary courses such as Chemistry, Economics, English, History, Psychology, and, of course, Geography, did not begin until second year. This was of special concern in Geography which requires prerequisites, and endeavours to provide a logical sequence of courses in the few years that undergraduates are enrolled in a university. Battles raged in Faculty of Arts and Science curriculum committee meetings for many years, until 1978-79, when it was finally decided that departments such as Geography could introduce First Year courses. After that change, all York students still had to take a minimum number of General Education courses, but these could be increasingly spread over a number of years, improving flexibility in the ways students selected courses. Department and General Education courses have become comfortably integrated at York, and other Canadian universities have introduced their own variations of General Education in order to combine specialization and breadth in undergraduate education.

3. Building the Department: Hiring Geographers

In the 1960s and '70s it was not uncommon for instructors who arrived fresh from graduate school to be still working on their doctorates. In this history the degree listed for an instructor is the highest ultimately attained, not necessarily the degree held when appointed.

George Tatham, kept extremely busy with general administrative duties in the new university, in 1962 brought the Swiss-born, Swiss-trained, geographer Hans Carol, (Ph.D., Zurich), to York to build the Department. Both Tatham and Carol were deeply interested in the philosophy of geography, which is one reason why Tatham recruited Carol from the United States, where he was teaching. Tatham's and Carol's philosophies of geography actually were very different. In their everyday professional relations the two men agreed simply to differ on defining geography; after a short time neither tried to convert the other, and they remained on cordial terms. Geographical convictions were strongly held this era; Carol believed that the environmental determinism of Griffith Taylor must have rubbed off on Tatham during their many years as colleagues at the University of Toronto, even though Tatham publicly supported possibilism in what has become a classic article on geographical determinism. Carol extended his suspicions of environmental determinism to the older generation of geography graduates from the University of Toronto who shortly were to teach at York. Clearly, geographical thought was taken very seriously in those days! Tatham, who became Dean of Students, and Master of McLaughlin College in York, continued to teach introductory human geography and the geography of Europe, but only occasionally gave advice on appointments, as Carol proceeded to build the Department.

In the five years from 1962 to 1967 the department grew quickly to ten full-time members. The intention was to build deliberately in the main fields of human geography as they figured in most North American departments in the 1960s, although in the background the quantitative revolution was underway in the discipline and would have to be addressed. John Warkentin (Ph.D., Toronto), a historical geographer who had taught at the University of Manitoba, came in 1963 to teach regional geography, followed the next year by Alex Blair (Ph.D., Illinois) to teach economic geography, especially resources. In 1965, Ian Brookes (Ph.D., McGill), a geomorphologist, was appointed to teach physical geography, and Bernard Gutsell, (B.A., London), came from the Geographical Branch in Ottawa to take charge of cartography. In 1966, three appointments were made: J. Tait Davis (Ph.D., Clark), specializing in international economic development, came from George Washington University to teach economic geography; James Gibson (Ph.D., Wisconsin) a historical geographer who specialized in Russian geography, to teach the geography of the Soviet Union; and Robert Tennant (M.S., Chicago), a geographer trained in quantitative methods, to teach urban geography. Roy Wolfe (Ph.D., Toronto), specializing in recreational and transportation geography, came in 1967 from the Ontario Ministry of Highways.

Something of the state of Canadian geography at this time is revealed in the educational backgrounds of these eight geographers. Five were Canadian-born with undergraduate degrees from Canadian universities; two completed their Ph.D.s at the University of Toronto, and three at U.S. institutions. Tennant was American-born, and did all his degrees at U.S. universities. Brookes and Gutsell were both British-born, with undergraduate degrees from London, the former doing a Ph.D. at McGill. The specializations are representative of North American geography departments in the 1960s; however, historical, recreational, and quantitative geography were just coming to view in the discipline. Of this group, two were widely experienced geographers from outside the conventional academic path, coming into academia at later stages in their careers in an era when that still occasionally happened in geography. Gutsell had worked in the United Kingdom War Office during World War II, then as a federal civil servant in Ottawa, and knew maps, and Wolfe had applied experience in the Ontario civil service as a transportation geographer.

Two special factors entered into the making of appointments in the York geography department at this stage. In the early 1960s, as existing universities were expanding and new ones were being created, the idea was abroad in Ontario that the province's universities could be conceived as an integrated system. It was felt that coordination and specialization amongst universities would be a rational way to proceed in developing post-secondary education. In 1963/64, such a cooperative concept, always difficult to implement, was taken seriously by Carol and Warkentin, and they thought that York might usefully specialize in human geography, and have an excellent but relatively small supporting physical geography group. It could be the responsibility of other Ontario universities to build large physical geography programmes. It soon became apparent that it was impossible to attract and hold physical geographers if there was no critical mass of colleagues and appropriate laboratories and technical support, and the informal policy was abandoned. It is never easy to catch up in the number of appointments in a particular sub-field of a discipline, as other sub-fields continue to demand appointments as well. Thus the number of physical geographers in the department has remained small relative to the number of human geographers. That imbalance in numbers of human and physical geographers is true of many other Canadian geography departments, and reasons for that have to be sought in the history of each. At York it was a deliberate decision which did not work out as intended. Moreover, the anticipated coordination between Ontario universities never occurred.

A second factor was the search for geographers trained in the new geographical approaches appearing in the discipline. A significant change occurred in geography in the 1950s and '60s as quantitative methods, spatial analysis, and an appreciation of theory increasingly entered the subject. Graduate schools in the United States were producing students with some of these skills and interests. A few were Canadians who wanted to return to Canada and teach. Expanding geography departments in long-established Canadian universities were also adopting these fresh research-oriented approaches at the very time that Departments were being established in new universities such as York. The new breed of Ph.D.s was in great demand in Ontario. Well trained, capable candidates usually had job offers from a number of institutions, including York. At first York had little success in attracting these young scholars, who saw greater career opportunities in long-established geography departments, that, moreover, included graduate programmes. The department therefore adopted the policy of postponing appointments in particular areas, even when funds were made available in the Faculty of Arts and Science, until it could attract the qualified specialists needed. The patience paid off; the university did not penalize the department, and held the positions open as long as required until appointments could be made. By the late 1960s the department was even able to attract highly qualified young scholars with the new skills who held positions in other universities, and saw a future career for themselves at York.

4. Moving Forward

Enrollment of undergraduates continued to build rapidly at York in the 1960s and '70s, and all divisions and departments in the Faculty of Arts made numerous appointments. In Geography there was a very steep climb from 1968 to 1972; in five explosive years the number of geographers rose from 10 to 27. This made it possible to develop and teach various sub-fields of geography. Roy Merrens, a University of Wisconsin-trained historical geographer came in 1968 to teach human geography, emphasizing cultural landscape and the geography of the United States. Brian Murton, a South Asia specialist from the University of Minnesota came in 1968, but left the next year to take a post in the University of Hawaii. Conrad Heidenreich (Ph.D., McMaster) returned to the department in 1968, and developed specializations in historical geography, particularly the cultural geography of Canada at the time of Native Peoples-European contact, and in the early mapping of northern North America. Arthur Ray (Ph.D., Wisconsin) came in 1970, did work on fur trade historical geography that complemented Heidenreich's research, and also taught U. S. regional geography. In 1981 he left to join the history department at the University of British Columbia. William Found (Ph.D., Florida), who was teaching at McMaster, and Gerald Walker (Ph.D., Berkeley) came in 1968 and 1971 respectively to develop the resources and rural geography sub-fields. Found also developed a regional course on the Caribbean region, and Walker was active in the Division of Social Science. Robert Tennant, after four years in the department, returned to the United States in 1970. It had become increasingly apparent with the continuing movement of people to cities in Canada and elsewhere in the world that urban geography had to be developed strongly. John Marshall (Ph.D., Toronto) came from Brock University in 1968, and Robert Murdie (Ph.D., Chicago) from the University of Waterloo the next year. Both were urban geographers; Marshall worked on urban systems, and the history of geography, Murdie in urban social geography. John Radford (Ph.D., Clark), arrived in 1970 to develop the historical side of urban geography, and later also political geography. David Morley (Ph.D., Australian National University) came in 1968 from King's College, London, to work in cultural geography, and Bryn Greer-Wootten (Ph.D., McGill) in 1970 from McGill to teach social, population, and urban geography. Donald Freeman (Ph.D., Chicago) who came in 1969, and Glen Norcliffe (Ph.D., Bristol) the next year, taught economic geography and quantitative methods; Freeman worked on trade and transportation and Norcliffe on industrial restructuring.

In this period, changes taking place within the discipline in physical geography were as profound as in human geography, and this is reflected in the interests of the physical geographers appointed to the department. Alan Hill (Ph.D., Queen's, Belfast) came in 1968; trained in geomorphology, he soon specialized in ecology and biogeochemical investigations. He was joined in 1970 by Ted Spence (Ph.D. Alberta) who taught hydrology and water resources, but turned increasingly to administrative work, first as associate dean in the Faculty of Arts, and then dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies. David Erskine (M.A., Toronto) taught biogeography and the regional geography of Canada from 1971 to 1977.

There were a few short-term appointments at this time, in part because the cycle of sabbaticals for full-time faculty members was underway, and to cover the work of faculty members on leave. Ian Owens (M.A., Canterbury) lectured on geomorphology in 1971-73. In 1972-73, Ian Simmons (Ph.D., London) taught biogeography, and William Bunge (Ph.D., Washington) human geography, emphasizing both theoretical research and community field investigations. In 1974-75, Rod McGinn (Ph.D., Manitoba) taught physical geography, and Christopher Sharpe (Ph.D., Toronto) urban geography and statistics.

The department had started on the Glendon College campus of York University, but when the first college buildings were completed on the main campus in northwest Toronto in 1966 the department moved there, first into Vanier College and then into Winters. In 1969, the department took over space designed for it in the Ross Building, where it has remained.

The student body has changed over the years York has been in existence. In its first years, York attracted students who wanted to be part of an educational experiment in a new university. Later, again as a function of a new university, it became an institution where many of the students were the first members of a family to attend university, some the children of immigrants who had arrived in Toronto in the post-World War II years. In more recent times, the university student body reflects more and more the general population characteristics of the Greater Toronto Area. In York's early years, when the teaching of geography in Ontario high schools was particularly strong, the department took the initiative and was very active in going to high schools to establish liaison with the schools, but more and more such liaison is led and coordinated at the university and faculty level, where the department is a participant.

5. Retrenchment in the Faculty of Arts and Then New Appointments Again

In the 1970s, student numbers in geography stabilized, and consistently the Department had some of the largest undergraduate geography enrollments in Canadian universities.

In 1971 Hans Carol died of a massive heart attack, and sixteen years later George Tatham, who had retired in 1979, fell victim to the same disease. By 1972 there were 27 faculty members in the department, the maximum number it has reached. From 1973 to 1975 there were no new appointments. In the following years three factors particularly affected the development of the department: a serious effort to develop a few coherent groups of specialists in physical geography; a need to develop instruction in new technical support fields in geography; the necessity of replacing faculty as some left for other institutions, were not granted tenure, assumed administrative and teaching duties in York outside the department, or retired. Budget cuts in the university reduced the number of geography faculty to 20 by 1982, but as financial conditions improved new appointments were made. The new faculty did not always fill the specializations of someone departing, but represented new specializations developing in geography.

Martin Kellman (Ph.D., Australian National University) arrived from Simon Fraser in 1976 to carry forward biogeography. Donald McIver (M.A, Alberta) taught climatology from 1972 to 1981. Richard Bello (Ph.D., McMaster) came in 1984 to teach climatology, particularly microclimatology of cold climates, and Nigel Roulet (Ph.D., McMaster) came the next year specializing in hydrology, to take up part of Spence's work as he went into university administration. André Robert (Ph.D., Cambridge) was appointed in 1990 to teach process geomorphology. Roulet left for McGill in 1993, and Kathy Young (Ph.D., McMaster) came in the following year to teach hydrology. When Kellman retired in 1999, Katharine McLeod (M.Sc., UBC) was appointed to continue work in biogeography.

Bryan Massam (Ph.D., McMaster) arrived in 1977 to teach social geography, particularly administrative geography and planning - cross-appointed in the Division of Social Science, and Paul Simpson-Housley (Ph.D., Otago), cross-appointed with Atkinson, came in 1985 to teach cultural geography, including behavioural studies, and geography and literature. Lucia Lo (Ph.D., Toronto) arrived in 1987 to teach transportation geography, spatial modelling, and statistics. Valerie Preston (Ph.D., McMaster) Director of the Institute for Social Research at York, 1988-91, was cross-appointed to the geography department, and joined full-time in 1991 to further develop the field of social geography. In 1996 Patricia Wood (Ph.D., Duke) was appointed to teach in historical and cultural geography. GIS and Remote Sensing were developed in the department in collaboration with the Faculty of Environmental Studies and the Faculty of Pure and Applied Science. Qiuming Cheng (Ph.D., Ottawa) - cross-appointed with Earth and Atmospheric Science, and Paul Treitz (Ph.D., Waterloo) - cross-appointed with the Faculty of Environmental Studies, both were appointed in 1995 to teach GIS and remote sensing (RS), and established a GIS/RS laboratory in the department. Treitz left in 1999 for Queen's and was replaced the following year by Yifang Ban (Ph.D., Waterloo). Philip Kelly (Ph.D., UBC) was hired in 1999 to teach economic geography.

Short term appointments in these years included Steve Cohen (Ph.D., Illinois), 1981 to 1984, teaching climatology, Glenda Laws (Ph.D., McMaster) from 1987 to 1989, teaching social geography, Elizabeth Szplett (Ph.D., Calgary), urban and economic geography 1985 to 1987, and Linda Peake (Ph.D., Reading) who taught political geography in 1989-90 and then joined the Social Science Division. Part-time instructors have been vital in teaching some introductory courses when regular instructors have been on leave, and to assist course directors to organize the tutorials in large introductory courses, where up to ten sections and a large number of TAs have to be coordinated and closely supervised. These responsibilities are similar to the work done by part-time instructors in the very first years of the department. Lewis Code (Ph.D., York) has coordinated the introductory human geography tutorial groups since 1983, and taught urban courses in the Social Science division and in Atkinson College; Peter Long (B.A., London) has coordinated the introductory physical geography tutorials since 1987, and also lectures in geomorphology and in Atkinson College; and Richard Anderson (Ph.D., York) has taught various human geography courses since 1989, both in the department and in Atkinson College.

Retirements have increasingly affected the department, and many of the first generation of appointees have departed, because they reached the age of 65, or took advantage of early retirement provisions, or for reasons of health. Gutsell retired in 1979, and Wolfe in 1983. In the 1990s, Blair, Brookes, Davis, Gibson, Kellman, Marshall, Merrens, and Warkentin retired, although some continued to teach a course for a few years after retirement.

6. Graduate Programme and Research Interests

Graduate programmes in the liberal arts and sciences at York are administered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Geographers from the Faculties of Arts, Environmental Studies, and Atkinson College, qualified to teach graduate courses, are appointed to the Graduate Programme in Geography. Appropriate teaching and thesis supervision credit is given in the home Departments and Divisions.

The Province of Ontario through the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies (OCGS) ensures that the standards of graduate instruction in Ontario universities are high, and that graduate programmes are not needlessly proliferated in the province. Thus all graduate programmes in Ontario are rigorously evaluated, especially the quality of the faculty and the supporting library and laboratory resources. Before they gain initial approval, programmes have to be judged of high quality, and in subsequent years they are reviewed at regular intervals.

York University's Geography Graduate Programme submission to the OCGS provides a succinct historical summary of the development of graduate work in the university:

Senate approved the M.A. Programme in January 1967 and the Doctoral Programme in June 1970. In January 1968 the [Ontario] Appraisals Committee approved the Masters Programme in the fields of Historical, Economic, Cultural and Urban Geography, and in addition, the Theory of Geography. In June 1971 the Doctoral Programme was approved by the Appraisals Committee in the areas of Historical, Economic and Urban Geography.

In 1973 York was permitted by the A.C.A.P. discipline assessment to offer Biogeography, Climatology and Hydrology as areas for the Masters degree. The same committee recommended that the Programme proceed with the new Doctoral Programme in Historical-Cultural Geography, Urban-Economic Geography and Resource Analysis. The Senate approved the Ph.D. field of Biogeography in May 1977 and this was confirmed as a doctoral area by A.C.A.P. in June 1978. An M.Sc. in Biogeography was approved in 1979, and an M.Sc. in all other areas of Physical Geography was approved in 1987.

Hans Carol served as the first Director of the Graduate Programme. The first M.A. was granted in 1969, and from 1969 to 2000, 282 students have graduated with either the M.A. or M.Sc. degree. The first Ph.D. was granted in 1978 in urban geography, and from 1978 to 2000, 36 Ph.D.'s have been awarded.

The research interests of York geographers, listed by some of the main fields in the discipline, to 2000 have included: Administrative/Political Geography: the civil society; delivery of health care; location of public facilities; public policy decision-making processes; Cultural Geography: culture and class in the city; geography and polar literature; geography and secular and religious literature; geography of Canadian Native Peoples; modernity and the asylum; perception of environmental hazards; perception of landscape; spatial cognition and decision-making; Economic Geography: agricultural, rural, and regional development in developing countries; development of British tropical colonies; flexible production; fur trade economic studies; industrial regulation; industrial restructuring; rural planning and development; resource management; spatial choice models; spatial structure and spatial interaction; trade and transportation Historical: Canadian rural settlement; conservation in Canada; exploration and mapping of Canada; facsimile historical atlases; historical atlases; Russia; Russian fur trade; nineteenth century cities; settlement of Northwest North America; urban and industrial development in western Canada; History and Theory: environmental ethics; history of geography; theory in geography; Physical Geography: aeolian landscapes; Arctic wetland hydrology; biogeochemistry of stream ecosystems and wetlands; ecological processes in fragmented communities; ecosystem stability; tropical ecosystems; fluvial geomorphology; nutrient dynamics in stream ecosystems; glacial geomorphology; microclimates of permafrost areas; postglacial vegetation change; quaternary stratigraphy and soils; Regional: regional geography of Canada; regional writing in Canada; Social Geography: asylum environments; citizenship and identity; economic restructuring and community change; gender and urban labour markets; immigrant and refugee studies; immigrant destination choice modelling; medical geography; public attitudes toward environmental risks; social change in resource industry communities; social networks and social class; Urban: models of city population sizes; public sector housing; social groups; urban historical; urban systems.

Geographical work in archives or in the field has been carried out by members of the Graduate Programme in Australia, Belize, most parts of Canada, the Caribbean, East Africa, Guyana, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, Southeast Asia, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela.

7. Reflections on the Curriculum

In Canadian universities in any given period geography curricula tend toward a common approach to the kinds of courses that are taught, based on a mix of regional, physical, human, and technical courses. We have already noted how York initially tried to emphasize human geography, and then by introducing a stronger physical geographical component the balance shifted back to what is more usual in Canadian geography.

Even in the heyday of the quantitative vs. humanistic debates in geography neither perspective dominated the department. Human, physical, and regional geographers associated cooperatively through the years, notwithstanding the quite normal efforts of scholars to urge appointments in particular fields of specialization. Members of the department were cognizant of new approaches in the discipline, and incorporated new methodologies into their teaching and research as appropriate, but no extreme positions were taken. One possible reason for the general spirit of scholarly equanimity that prevailed is that the presence of General Education, and participation in interdisciplinary programmes threw geographers directly into contact with the concerns of scholars in other areas of study. As well, in physical geography a joint programme together with the Faculty of Pure and Applied Science was introduced in Geography/Biology. Thus changes that occurred in European and North American geography in the 1960s to 2000 were placed in a broad scholarly perspective. Another factor may be that the members of the department were so busy building a new university that they were preoccupied with internal matters, rather than the pursuit of ideological battles.

8. Administration

When the department was new and small it was administered through a headship, as was characteristic of Canadian universities into the 1960s, but in the next decade it was run more collegially through a chair, departmental council, and a committee structure to recommend policy and do the work on academic matters such as curriculum development, recruiting, and tenure and promotion. The chair's role has become that of coordinating the committees in the department, taking responsibility for the administration of the department, and representing the department in the university, including arguing for appointments, budget, space and facilities within the Faculty of Arts, and trying to survive the university paperwork that multiplies through the years. The chairs of the department in order of their first appointment have been Carol, Warkentin, Blair, Found, Spence, Gibson, Radford, Norcliffe, Massam, Marshall, and Robert.

B. CURRENT DEPARTMENTAL PROFILE

1. Introduction

The current academic mission in human and physical geography is built on both the strength developed within the department during the last four decades and other areas of specialisation which have merged over the years. In human geography, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the mission of the department is to promote and develop knowledge in the areas of socio-economic geography, historical/cultural geography, and resource analysis and management. The scholarly and teaching emphasis in physical geography at York University has been for a number of years on processes in near-surface environment (biological, chemical, and physical processes in near surface environments). This includes hydrology, biogeography, climatology, process/fluvial geomorphology, and terrestrial ecosystems studies (in a range of environments).

Cultural-historical Geography has been and remains a cornerstone of the graduate and undergraduate geography at York University. Recent emphasis in cultural geography at York University includes identity, political and cultural dynamics of world cities, and landscapes. Social and Economic geography at York currently a number of major sub-fields. Many faculty are primary concerned with problems in the developing world and the overall interconnections between politics, policy, economy and society. A second major group of scholars have based their research and part of their teaching on immigration, linking this to gender, employment, settlement patterns, housing and retailing. The social and economic structure of cities appears as an important theme as well, with related interests in the location of public facilities, social ecology of urban spaces and destination choice modelling. Finally, economic structuring, the growth of service employment, its impact on social polarisation, and changes in the form of work is a third important research focus. In physical geography, areas of interests focus on biophysical processes. This work emphasises biotic and abiotic processes that operate at the levels of plant population, vegetation communities and both terrestrial, aquatic and environmental systems. Considerable work is also conducted on physical hydrology in the arctic, on boundary layer climatology in mid-latitudes, and on physical processes in alluvial channels. The undergraduate curriculum reflects those interests and the courses are clustered around a process-oriented approach.

Finally, a signficant emphasis is being placed (as in most geography departments across the country) on Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing and its applications in physical and human geography and in environmental studies in general. Recent appointments have been made in these fields. Needless to say, GIS and Remote Sensing are becoming increasingly significant in various sub-fields of teaching and research in Geography.

3. Administration and Staff

• Applications of remote sensing and geographic information technology for resource mapping and environmental monitoring (Ban)

• Estimates of evaporation in advective environments (Bello)

• Energy balance of Arctic lakes (Bello)

• Sensitivity of northern environments to climatic change (Bello)

• Rainfall interception in subarctic vegetation canopies (Bello)

• GIS and Earth Science (Cheng)

• Project/program planning and implementation (Found)

• Rural planning (Found)

• Participatory methods (Found)

• Environmental management (Found)

• Islands of the Caribbean (Found)

• The role of The Straits of Malacca in Asian trade and development (Freeman)

• Settlement and development in British tropical colonies in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Malaysia and Queensland (Freeman)

• Local and regional conflicts in response to the Canadian Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Program (Greer-Wootten)

• Interest groups in risk assessment: formation, dynamics and impact on the public policy decision-making process (Greer-Wootten)

• Elite constructions of the environmental problem (Greer-Wootten)

• Women’s narratives on the environment (Greer-Wootten)

• The exploration and mapping of Canada 1497-1763 (Heidenreich)

• The historical geography of native Canada 1000-1763 (Heidenreich)

• Watershed controls on nutrient dynamics in headwater stream ecosystems (Hill)

• The biogeochemistry of riparian wetlands (Hill)

• Nutrient transformations in streambed environments (Hill)

• Iindustrial development and labour processes (Kelly)

• Space and place in the global economy (Kelly)

• Environmentalism and resource use in Southesast Asia (Kelly)

• Destination choice and consumer preference modelling (Lo)

• Migration and immigration (Lo)

• Ethnic businesses and ethnic economy (Lo)

• Geographical aspects of the public good (Massam)

• Computer-based decision support systems and location planning (Massam)

• Treeline dynamics, Northwest Canada (McLeod)

• Range limits and population dynamics of conifers (McLeod)

• Holocene vegetation change (McLeod)

• Ethnic segregation in cities (Murdie)

• Housing experiences of immigrants and refugees in Toronto (Murdie)

• Comparative study of urban segregration in Canadian, Swedish and Dutch cities (Murdie)

• Industrial restructuring (Norcliffe)

• Geographies of modernity (Norcliffe)

• Cultural industries and metropolitan develoment (Norcliffe)

• Immigrant women in urban labour markets (Preston)

• Work reorganization and social change in pulp and paper communities (Preston)

• Gender and race effects on commuting (Preston)

• Nineteenth century cities (Radford)

• Plantation landscapes of the US south (Radford)

• Historical representations of disability (Radford)

• Fluvial geomorphology: forms and processes in alluvial channels (Robert)

• Geography in secular and religious literature (Simpson-Housley)

• The Arctic and Antarctica (Simpson-Housley)

• Post-colonialism (Simpson-Housley)

• Natural disasters (Simpson-Housley)

• Social areas ona the Oak Ridges Moraine (Walker)

• Social networks and social class (Walker)

• Land-uses in Toronto’s countryside (Walker)

• Citizenship and identity (P. Wood)

• Urban and Industrial Development in Western Canada (P. Wood)

• Historic Sites and Commemoration (P. Wood)

• Arctic Wetland Hydrology (Young)

• Ecohydrology (Young)

• Snow Hydrology (Young)

• Hydroclimatology (Young)

6. Recent Publications

(*indicates not a member of this department; ² indicates a current or former grad student)

*AGTERBERG, F.P. and CHENG, Q. 1999 ‘Introduction to Special Issue on Fractals and Multifractals’ Computers and Geosciences 25 (9), 947-948

BAN, Y. and *HOWARTH, P.J. 1999 ‘Multitemporal ERS-1 SAR data for crop classification: a sequential-masking approach’ Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 25 (5), 438-447

CHENG, Q. 1999 ‘Markov processes and discrete multifractals’ Mathematical Geology 31 (4), 455- 469

_________ 1999 ‘Multifractality and spatial statistics’ Computers and Geosciences 25 (9), 949-961

__________ 1999 ‘The gliding box method for multifractal modelling’ Computers and Geosciences 25 (9), 1073-1079

__________ 1999 ‘Spatial and scaling modelling for geochemical anomaly separation’ Journal of Exploration Geochemistry 65, 175-194

__________ and *AGTERBERG, F.P. 1999 ‘Fuzzy weights of evidence method and its applications in mineral potential mapping’ Natural Resource Research 8 (1), 27-35

__________ 1999 ‘Multifractal interpolation’ in Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the International Association for Mathematical Geology ed S.J. Lippard, A. Naess and R. Sinding-Larsen (Trondheim, Norway) 1, 245-250

__________ , *XU, Y. and *GRUNSKY, E. 1999 ‘Integrated spatial and spectral analysis for geochemical anomaly separation’ in Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the International Association for Mathematical Geology ed S.J. Lippard, A. Naess and R. Sinding-Larsen (Trondheim, Norway) 1, 87-92