Resonances of Éric Dardels’s L’Homme et la Terre (Man and the Earth) in Quebec Cultural Geography
While it is fundamentally unique, Quebec cultural geography is nonetheless shaped, albeit resonated, by certain currents of thought or by foreign geographers, particularly from Europe. Evidence of this influence on Quebec’s cultural geography is provided by French geographer Éric Dardel’s L’homme et la Terre (1952). Even if it is difficult to measure accurately its true impact, in our opinion it seems helpful to illustrate how the knowledge and the practices of Quebec geography are connected to Dardel’s thinking; it is especially enriching to demonstrate how his work can enhance our understanding of Quebec’s cultural geography, besides Quebec itself and its inhabitants. Dardel’s ideas, and the force of his conviction and intuition, are all the more remarkable as they can be harnessed to help explain Quebec’s appropriation of its territory and the affirmation of a distinct Quebec cultural geography – the putative goals of this article.