Jane’s Walk | Water and time

Cooksville Creek, from microseasons to this millennium

Sunday, 3 May 2026 | 2:00 p.m. | John C. Price Playground to oldest(??) tree in Mississauga City Centre

Let’s take a walk along Mississauga’s Cooksville Creek, as an exercise in traveling deep, and not far across both time and space. Let’s have conversations about what brings us—people, peoples, and place; humans and nonhumans; ancestors and future kin—together; about portals to an alternate, actually-existing Mississauga; about inhabiting a place; and about water.

Duration:

2:00:00

Walk start:

John C. Price Playground, Little John Lane, off Dundas Street East.
Closest major intersection: Dundas and Hurontario.
Five-minute walk to 1 Dundas and 2 Hurontario MiWay bus routes.

Walk end:

Oldest(??) tree in Mississauga City Centre.
Closest major intersection: Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario.
Five-minute walk to 2 Hurontario, 26 Burnhamthorpe, 10 Bristol, and 20 Rathburn MiWay bus routes.

Route info:

Most of our route will be within a ten-minute walk (or less) from the 2 Hurontario and 3 Bloor MiWay bus routes.

Washrooms and vending machines will be available at a little past the midway point, at Mississauga Valleys Park.

Themes:

Environment and Sustainability, History and Places, Lived experiences and personal perspectives, People and Communities

Accesibility:

Uneven terrain, Stairs or other barriers, Breaks encouraged.

This walk is not a loop, though the start point can be reached from the end point using transit.

Attendees Identify You:

I will have an orange backpack.

Empire as insular, unsophisticated, incoherent

Commentary on Scott Kirsch’s American Colonial Spaces in the Philippines: Insular Empire

At the 2025 AAG Meeting in Detroit, I was part of an author meets readers panel for Scott Kirsch’s American Colonial Spaces in the Philippines: Insular Empire.

The panel was organized by Christian C. Lentz, Michael Hawkins, and Joseph Palis, and included commentary from Kristian Saguin, Mona Domosh, Don Mitchell, and myself.

A version of our comments was published in September 2025 for the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. What follows is my original unabridged commentary.


Let me begin by making a distinction between the violence and injustice of American imperialism on one hand, and its sophistication, coherence, and success on the other. Though at perpetual risk of erasure, the evidence for the former in the Philippines is plentiful. But this is not necessarily evidence of a total, nor monolithic, nor coherent project.

To resist the erasure of American imperialism, and to understand its ongoing legacies, it is important not to ascribe to it more power than it could actually muster. We could instead name its weaknesses and contradictions, through finer-grained close studies, and show just how vain, incomplete, and unsuccessful its schemes are. And what better way to do this than to study Great Men and their Grand Designs, at the height of their hubris?

Continue reading “Empire as insular, unsophisticated, incoherent”

Jane’s Walk | Water and time

Cooksville Creek, from microseasons to this millennium

Sunday, 4 May 2025 | 2:00 p.m. | John C. Price Playground to oldest(??) black walnut in City Centre

Let’s take a walk along Mississauga’s Cooksville Creek, as an exercise in traveling deep, and not far—across both time and space.

Let’s have conversations about what brings us—people, peoples, and place; humans and nonhumans; ancestors and future kin—together; about portals to an alternate, actually-existing Mississauga; about inhabiting a place; and about water.

Continue reading “Jane’s Walk | Water and time”