As environmental deterioration became a major social and political issue near the end of the twentieth century, activists in Nova Scotia stood together to defend the places they called home. Political radicals and conservatives alike worked to achieve legislative and social success, even as they disagreed over fundamental principles. In Defence of Home Places examines the diversity of this movement, its early accomplishments, and the disagreements that caused its eventual weakening and division. It places Nova Scotian environmental activism within national and international contexts and explores the choices and tactics that brought about its greatest successes and failures.

Mark R. Leeming's profile page

Mark R. Leeming writes and researches in Nova Scotia. He has published on the history of environmental protest music and anti-nuclear activism.

... Leeming has produced an important work that will require environmental historians and others to rethink their approach to the growth of modern environmentalism in Canada. The shift in focus away from the big organizations and from the national to the provincial level, combined with a meticulous mapping out of linkages between myriad groups, culminates in a significant contribution to the burgeoning historiography on environmentalism.

NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment

In Defense of Home Places is a little book that encourages us to think big … The appearance of ‘Home Places’ in the title is telling; it speaks to the concept of environmental localism, that jealous love of place, the intimate, sensory, psycho-social relationship with specific settings that so often underlies environmental activism … In Defense of Home Places posits the notion that there is no single history of environmentalism in Atlantic Canada … Leeming’s admirable study has given us Nova Scotia’s experience. It represents a friendly challenge to others to unearth the remaining Atlantic Canadian experiences.

Acadiensis