yet you dream in the green of your time
August 27, 2022 2:00PM-3:30PM
Event Information:
On August 27 2022, we launched yet you dream in the green of your time—a new publication by Chris Mendoza at Governor’s Bridge Lookout. Accompanying the book launch was a group discussion with Chris Mendoza and historian Jennifer Bonnell, moderated by Parker Kay. The discussion unpacked the bibliography of yet you dream in the green of your time in order to acknowledge the long tradition of writers, researchers, and artists who have engaged with the Don River Valley as well as explore the relationship between language, alternate histories, and imaginaries.
yet you dream in the green of your time was originally written as a master’s thesis accompanying Mendoza's exhibition of the same name which gathered research and interventions engaging the history of urban development of Toronto’s Don River. The text consists of four paths of reflection that, while self-contained, consider related questions of aesthetics, politics and ecology in relation to the lower ravine, circling these topics from multiple angles. In it, reflections on the manipulation and codification of the river valley by the city are intertwined with narration on how Mendoza came to be drawn to and learn from this river. The title of the text is drawn from Gwendolyn MacEwen’s poem Dark Pines Under Water which narrates a sinking moment of introspection as the reader is faced with the land.
Jennifer Bonnell is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at York University, where she teaches courses in Canadian, environmental and public history. She is the author of Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and the editor, with Marcel Fortin, of Historical GIS Research in Canada (University of Calgary Press, 2014). Her current research includes an environmental history of beekeeping and environmental change in the Great Lakes Region; and a history of human relationships with wildlife in British Columbia.
Event Response by Katie Lawson
