Producing Provincial Space: Crown Forests,the State and Territorial Control in British Columbia

This paper presents three ways in which Crown forest administration in British Columbia at the turn of the 20th century helped to facilitate effective provincial control of territory. First, officials discursively constructed timbered spaces as a shared trust for British Columbia's citizens. Secondly, they produced useful geographical knowledge and a spatial architecture that would facilitate on-going surveillance. Finally, officials constructed resource spaces of sustained production, monitored and controlled by trained experts. Thus, Crown forest administration solidified provincial claims to vast swaths of territory. The analysis highlights the importance of considering the on-going geographies of land and resource management as a fundamental part of processes of dispossession and reterritorialisation.