On May 19, 2011, Parks Canada celebrates its 100th anniversary,
commemorating its founding in 1911 as the world’s first national
parks service. Preceding the creation of the National Park
Service in the United States by more than five years, the
federal government of Canada created a new unit within the
Department of the Interior, known as the Dominion Parks Branch,
to oversee and administer the country’s forest reserves and a
nascent assemblage of western national parks. Over the course of
the next century this government agency would, as Canadian
historian Claire Campbell writes, “convince Canadians that in
their national parks resided the true wealth of a kingdom.” In
recognition of this occasion, the Network in Canadian History
and Environment sponsored the publication of a new edited
collection called A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011 that
explores episodes of Canada’s national parks history from coast
to coast to coast. This book is the first to be published in
NiCHE’s Canadian History and Environmen