What can we learn from the long-ago diaries of Rideau Canal surveyor John Burrows about how he perceived the landscape unfolding around him, through the lens of the British military, engineering, and colonial culture of the time?
Adapted from his recent lecture “Engineering Identity: John Burrows, Rideau Canal Landscapes, and Anglo-Canadian Ways of Seeing”, historian/researcher/writer David C. Martin looks beyond the many landscape paintings Burrows left behind, and instead explores what Burrows further revealed when he put pen to paper.
Read his account: Engineering Identity: John Burrows, Rideau Canal Landscapes, and Anglo-Canadian Ways of Seeing
Among David’s sources were John Burrows’ field notes, excerpted in Sights and Surveys: Two Diarists on the Rideau (1979), an Historical Society of Ottawa publication by Edwin Welch, the link to which is provided here: Sights and Surveys: Two Diarists on the Rideau
