Author Talk: David Monteyne discusses For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers: Architecture and Immigrant reception in Canada, 1870-1930
Doors: 6:45 PM | Talk begins: 7:15 PM
Please join us on August 10th at 7 pm for a talk by Dr. David Monteyne, PhD, award-winning author, and associate professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.
For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers reconstructs the experiences of people in these spaces - both immigrants and government agents - to pose a question at the heart of architectural thinking: how is meaning produced in the built environments that we encounter? Monteyne interprets official governmental intentions and policy goals embodied by the architecture of immigration but foregrounds the unofficial, informal practices of people who negotiated these spaces to satisfy basic needs, ensure the safety of their families, learn about land and job opportunities, and ultimately arrive at their destinations. The extent of this Canadian network, which peaked in the early twentieth century at over sixty different sites, and the range of building types that comprised it are unique among immigrant-receiving nations in this period.
In our era of pandemic quarantine and migrant detention facilities, For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers offers new ways of seeing and thinking about the historical processes of immigration, challenging readers to consider government architecture and the experience of migrants across global networks.
Monteyne’s decision to focus on immigration buildings from the perspective of cultural landscapes rather than purely architectural history has made the book relevant and interesting to a broader audience than just architects and architectural historians. A significant number of people living in Canada are immigrants or have claim to a parent or grandparent who emigrated to Canada. This book helps to paint a picture of what it would have been like for our grandparents and great-grandparents to be newly arrived in Canada.