Building London with Canadian Resources: An Immersive History for Learning the Limits of the Earth's Carrying Capacity
Dr. Jim Clifford and Dr. Benjamin Hoy
This Partnership Development Grant brings together historians, education specialists and students at the University of Saskatchewan with Heritage 5G (Birmingham and London), the Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau), the Western Development Museum (Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, North Battleford and Yorkton), the Borough of Newham's Heritage Service (London), the Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage & Education Centre (London), and the Network in Canadian History & Environment. We are working together to create an augmented reality experience to explore the role of Canada in supplying essential raw materials to support London’s remarkable growth during the nineteenth century.
Holding a tablet computer, users in Newham or Saskatoon will explore a three-dimensional map of London and zoom in to explore the Surrey Commercial Docks in the 1830s, where ships unloaded timber, deals, planks and boards of different dimensions and species. The user will be tasked with discovering where the timber came from and the augmented reality will include portals to allow users to jump between different landscapes in the supply chain from the docks in London back to the timber coves in Quebec City, the rafts floating down the St Lawrence, the sawmills on the Gatineau River and the logging camps located hundreds of miles further up the Ottawa River.
The game will lead players to consider the importance of the Ottawa Valley forest for London's industrialization, during the 1830s and 1840s and the period of rapid growth spurred by the construction of the first railways, given the scarcity of forests and trees in the British Isles. The users will move on to explore the growth of shipping capacity, much of which was built in the Bay of Fundy, to connect London's factories and consumers to their global supplies of raw materials and food. Finally, the users will have the opportunity to see the connections between settler migration to Saskatchewan, railways, wheat farming and the construction of industrial-scale silos in the Port of Montreal and large industrial flour mills in Silvertown, on the eastern edge of Greater London. Learning this history will help users to consider how their lives rely on an unsustainable global network of supply chains to support their high levels of consumption.
Holding a tablet computer, users in Newham or Saskatoon will explore a three-dimensional map of London and zoom in to explore the Surrey Commercial Docks in the 1830s, where ships unloaded timber, deals, planks and boards of different dimensions and species. The user will be tasked with discovering where the timber came from and the augmented reality will include portals to allow users to jump between different landscapes in the supply chain from the docks in London back to the timber coves in Quebec City, the rafts floating down the St Lawrence, the sawmills on the Gatineau River and the logging camps located hundreds of miles further up the Ottawa River.
The game will lead players to consider the importance of the Ottawa Valley forest for London's industrialization, during the 1830s and 1840s and the period of rapid growth spurred by the construction of the first railways, given the scarcity of forests and trees in the British Isles. The users will move on to explore the growth of shipping capacity, much of which was built in the Bay of Fundy, to connect London's factories and consumers to their global supplies of raw materials and food. Finally, the users will have the opportunity to see the connections between settler migration to Saskatchewan, railways, wheat farming and the construction of industrial-scale silos in the Port of Montreal and large industrial flour mills in Silvertown, on the eastern edge of Greater London. Learning this history will help users to consider how their lives rely on an unsustainable global network of supply chains to support their high levels of consumption.