"The dam at Shipshaw No. 1 looks like the side of a cathedral—a smooth sweep of light-colored concrete pierced by Gothic openings." (25). A brilliant description, to be sure, yet it fails to do the project justice when compared with actually viewing the imposing infrastructure of the Dams. Dorothee Brantz, in an article titled "Landscapes of Destruction", truly encapsulates why pictures and photographs are so much more striking as documentation. "Powerful photographs are able to depict a highly expressive moment, but they also transcend the instant of the image itself. They bridge the gap between a moment that is ripped from the flow of time and the historical narrative that weaves together a sequence of events.” (26). In viewing juxtaposing images of the same locations before and after they felt the effects of war and time, the very real impact of the changes and alterations that were made to the environment during the Second World War becomes brutally apparent. This was terrain that was physically, permanently altered in many different ways, and that is made nowhere as apparent than through the images documenting the progression of these alterations. The manner in which the environment was impacted during the Second World War is one that is a relatively new area of historical study. Chris Pearson, author of “Environments, states, and societies at war”, maintains that “historians of totalizing war have rarely considered environmental factors” or “the relationship between the Second World War’s environmental history and totalizing war”, even as it is acknowledged that the “Second World War was profoundly environmental” (27). As new work emerges that begins to fully detail this impact, historians of today learn more about how the environment was reshaped, exploited, and hurt by the drive for victory in the Second World War, and the ways in which many of these actions are still relevant and apparent in today's world. In many ways, each topic this discussion has explored influenced each other: as demands for one supply or product increased, so too did demands for the others, prompting massive geographical overhaul as the environment was changed to be able to meet these demands. The impacts of these changes and alterations have long withstood the test of time, with both their presence as well as their underlying effects proving themselves a reminder of the war and of the sacrifices Canadians made to meet its demands and surpass them. The Shipshaw Dams continue to provide massive amounts of power at the same time as they continue to reroute an entire segment of an enormous river; aluminum extraction and processing has become bigger than it ever was, but at the cost of the surrounding environments and often the people in them; though the Can Car Factory still exists and operates today, the tools and weapons with which the war was won no longer exist, or were destroyed in ways which left their own detrimental mark on the environment. All of these things continue to have a very real, very visceral effect on the environments and ecosystems in Canada, in ways that will transcend the memory of the Second World War, and in ways that we as a society are yet to fully realize.

25.    Findlay, D. K. 1943. Pg. 16.

26.  Brantz, D. 2015. “Landscapes of Destruction” (CHSWW, Vol. III, pp. 725-748). Pg. 728.

27.   Pearson, Chris. 2015. Pg. 221.