The "Opening" chapter reflects on the connection between historical and technological frontiers. "Listening for Pleasure" discusses oral histories as they relate to the negotiated and contested space of Sumas Lake. "Margins and Mosquitoes" recovers archival records from Victoria to Ottawa to explore flood-lake involvements federally, provincially, and locally. "Memory Device" moves into the archive of land and waterscapes, looking for connections between place and history, mindful of both Native oral tradition and written accounts of the lake. The concluding chapter, "One More Byte," written from the perspective of a mosquito, attempts to distance this project from the work of modernization while assessing the value of interactive history. An independent but complementary hypermedia essay "Disappearing a Lake" is located on this website (scroll up) at http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/files/cameron_laura http://oldwww.mqup.mcgill.ca/files/cameron_laura/

Laura Jean Cameron is professor of historical geography at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

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"A thought-provoking examination of different ways of understanding the past, Openings expands on ideas about what history means by drawing on a rich cultural and philosophical literature. Issues of community, the historian's responsibilities, and the construction of experience are brought to bear on our understanding of one now non-existent place." R.W. Sandwell, Department of History, Simon Fraser University