Desirée Valadares shows how infrastructural imaginaries are forged and contested along “scenic” routes in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, looking to the ways that scenic highway designations and highway beautification efforts purposefully concealed histories of land and labour. Her research is archival-based and focused on the CCA’s collection materials related to infrastructure, travelogues, railway routes, and highway promotion in Canada.

Desirée Valadares is trained in landscape architecture and architectural history. She writes about land, territory, and empire in Canada and the US’ non-contiguous states, territories, and possessions. Her research focuses on the heritage politics of commemorating sites of forced wartime relocation and incarceration, and its Indigenous entanglements in the Pacific. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and an affiliate faculty member in the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program at the University of British Columbia.