Cette thèse porte sur la culture de la collection en tant que fait social. Elle étudie d’abord les discours tenus par les collectionneurs et les regroupements de collectionneurs à propos de leur pratique. Cet examen révèle les motivations qui justifient socialement un geste essentiellement individualiste en le rattachant à des bénéfices collectifs : bonification de la connaissance historique, construction de l’identité nationale, éducation citoyenne. Les collectionneurs propagent une vision utilitaire de leur activité, rationalisant un passe-temps qui a mauvaise presse. L’analyse permet aussi de mettre au jour les caractéristiques qui fondent l’image du praticien idéal et les critères de valorisation de la collection particulière et des éléments qui la composent. La thèse envisage également le collectionnement comme pratique et démontre que collectionner consiste à poser une série de gestes qui peuvent être regroupés en trois catégories d’actions principales : l’acquisition, la gestion et la diffusion. Elle décrit comment et auprès de qui les collectionneurs acquièrent les objets et révèle l’importance des réseaux locaux et internationaux de transactions. Elle met ensuite en évidence les soins apportés aux objets dans le cadre de la gestion de la collection : préparation, nettoyage, accrochage, rangement, classement, inventaire et catalogage. Elle établit finalement que la monstration s’effectue à différentes occasions et sous diverses formes devant un public choisi. La thèse propose une histoire culturelle de la pratique de la collection, et non une étude des collections. Les objets accumulés et classés (monnaies, médailles, timbres, artefacts amérindiens, objets archéologiques, œuvres et objets d’art, autographes, livres, documents anciens, spécimens d’histoire naturelle) ne sont pas considérés en eux-mêmes mais comme production d’une démarche qui est la matière véritable de la recherche. Elle présente une lecture critique du collectionnement et appréhende les aspirations, les croyances, les valeurs, les représentations des collectionneurs. Car collectionner est une façon d’organiser l’univers et la collection traduit, par les choix opérés dans la sélection de pièces et leur ordonnancement, une manière de voir le monde et de le comprendre. La pratique ainsi considérée est une voie permettant d’étudier la sociabilité masculine, la signification de notions telle que la virilité ou la nation, et l’importance faite à l’histoire, à la science et à l’éducation publique. / This dissertation focuses on the culture of collecting as a social act. It begins by studying the discourse held by individual collectors and groups of collectors pertaining to their collecting practices. This examination reveals the motivations that justify the social importance of an essentially individualistic act, by connecting it to various collective benefits such as furthering historical knowledge, building national identity, and civic education. The collectors propagate a utilitarian vision of their activities, and rationalize a hobby that is often negatively perceived. This analysis exposes the characteristics that compose the image of an ideal practitioner, as well as the criteria established to determine the status of private collections and their components. The dissertation also considers collecting as a practice, and demonstrates that collecting consists of a series of acts that can be grouped into three main categories: acquiring, managing, and disseminating. It describes how, and from whom collectors acquired objects, and reveals the importance of local and international networks of transaction. It then highlights the care given to objects in the area of collection management: preparing, cleaning, hanging, storing, classifying, inventory, and cataloguing. Finally, it establishes the particular forms, occasions, and public to which collections are exhibited. The dissertation does not consist of a study of collections, but instead puts forward a cultural history of the practice of collecting. The objects amassed and classified (coins, medallions, stamps, aboriginal artefacts, archeological objects, works of art, autographs, books, rare documents, natural history specimens) are not considered in themselves, but rather as the product of a process that is the true subject of this research. It presents a critical reading of collecting and seeks to understand the aspirations, beliefs, values and representations of collectors, for collecting is a way to organize the world, and thus the collection reveals, through the choices made in the selection of pieces and the order in which they are placed, a way to see and understand this world. The practice of collecting is considered as a way in which to study male sociability, the significance of notions such as virility or the nation, and the importance given to history, sciences, and civic education.

This research explores how unions, corporations and the federal government in Canada are responding to the dual economic and climate change crisis. Climate change politics have fostered alliance-forming both between the labour and environmental movements as well as between the state and capital. Climate change policy over the past two decades has been a planned, coordinated neoliberal project by the state and capital that has led to increasing emissions. Meanwhile, most unions successfully transcended the ‘jobs versus the environment’ dichotomy being used by business to propagate a voluntarist climate change policy. After giving their support to the ratification of Kyoto, labour has struggled to operationalize labour-environmental alliance-forming. Recently, both labour and the state-capital alliance have drawn on an ecological modernist discourse to frame climate change as an opportunity for jobs or capital accumulation, respectively. But this discourse fails to address the transnational dynamics of climate change, and economic and environment justice.

This research explores how unions, corporations and the federal government in Canada are responding to the dual economic and climate change crisis. Climate change politics have fostered alliance-forming both between the labour and environmental movements as well as between the state and capital. Climate change policy over the past two decades has been a planned, coordinated neoliberal project by the state and capital that has led to increasing emissions. Meanwhile, most unions successfully transcended the ‘jobs versus the environment’ dichotomy being used by business to propagate a voluntarist climate change policy. After giving their support to the ratification of Kyoto, labour has struggled to operationalize labour-environmental alliance-forming. Recently, both labour and the state-capital alliance have drawn on an ecological modernist discourse to frame climate change as an opportunity for jobs or capital accumulation, respectively. But this discourse fails to address the transnational dynamics of climate change, and economic and environment justice.

La Fédération des scouts catholiques de la province de Québec fut fondée en 1935. Elle possédait un objectif exigeant : former des hommes, des chrétiens et des citoyens. Plus encore, elle se proposait de former des chefs aptes à influencer la société canadienne-française. Bien que chapeauté par l’Église catholique, le mouvement scout laissait aux laïcs une place prépondérante. Le scoutmestre (SM) et le chef de patrouille (CP) étaient les deux principaux chefs laïcs de la troupe scoute. Ils étaient respectivement en charge de la troupe (24 à 32 jeunes) et de la patrouille (6 à 8 jeunes). Le CP était lui-même un jeune scout. Par eux transitaient les idéaux et les systèmes de représentation inculqués aux jeunes. Ils devaient être formés adéquatement pour leur charge. Plus que de simples compétences de meneur, leur formation visait à leur transmettre un véritable rapport au monde : l’idéal du chef scout. Ce mémoire examine la méthode scoute prônée par la Fédération, tout en la nuançant avec le vécu de chefs et de jeunes scouts dans quatre troupes outremontaises. L’effet de la Révolution tranquille sur la représentation traditionnelle du chef scoute sera aussi abordé. / The Quebec Federation of catholic scouts was founded in 1935. Its goals were demanding: it proposed to train men, Christians and citizens. Moreover, it intended to train leaders who could influence the French-Canadian society. Although headed by the Catholic Church, the Francophone Quebec scout movement was in fact dominated and directed by laymen. The Scoutmaster (SM) and the Patrol Leader (PL) were the two main lay leaders of the scout troop. They were respectively in charge of the troop (24-32 youths) and the patrol (6-8 youths). The PL was a young scout himself. The ideals and system representations conveyed to youths were transmitted through the SM and PL. They needed to be trained appropriately to respect their commitment. Beyond the regular competencies of a leader, their training proposed to transmit nothing less than an authentic dealing with the world: the ideal of Scoutmaster. Taking the scout method recommended by the Federation as a formal background, this dissertation analyses its true life actualization by Scoutmasters and Patrol Leaders of four Outremont troops. The impact of the Quiet Revolution on the traditional representation of the boyscout leader is also examined.

This is a history of returned soldiers of the Great War in Toronto covering the period from when they began returning home in 1915 through to the end of demobilization in late 1919. Based largely in newspaper research, the focus is the discourse of returned men, as they were frequently called, and the role they played in Toronto and in Canada more broadly. The dissertation examines veterans' attitudes, the opinions they expressed, the goals they collectively pursued, the actions they took and their significance as actors and symbols in the public sphere. The study shows that during and immediately after the war returned soldiers played a prominent role in public debate over conscription and wartime politics, the status of non-British immigrants in Canada, the Red Scare and re-establishment policy. In exploring these topics the study elaborates on the identities veterans collectively adopted and constructed for themselves as comrades and citizens. Class, definitions of masculinity, British-Canadian ethno-nationality and experience as soldiers all affected formulations of veteran citizenship and comradeship. Returned soldiers' representations of their citizenship resonated powerfully in Canadian society. The experiences and symbolism of returned soldiers generated interest in civilian society that granted them easy access to the public sphere and encouraged pro-war politicians to use returnees to promote the war effort. Veterans took advantage of their access to the press and public stages to broadcast their own views and claim that their service gave them special rights to intervene in public affairs. Comradeship was vitally important to returned soldiers and set them apart from civilians, but it was neither a simple nor stable category. Veterans' debates and the history of veterans' associations testify to the fact that collective service in the war did not erase civilian identities and create a stable platform for united collective activism after the war. Furthermore, comradeship sometimes existed uneasily with the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Parliamentary methods were fundamental to veterans' activism, but their politics were also performative, often pursued and proclaimed at street level, and a minority of veterans threatened and engaged in violence they claimed was justified.

This is a history of returned soldiers of the Great War in Toronto covering the period from when they began returning home in 1915 through to the end of demobilization in late 1919. Based largely in newspaper research, the focus is the discourse of returned men, as they were frequently called, and the role they played in Toronto and in Canada more broadly. The dissertation examines veterans' attitudes, the opinions they expressed, the goals they collectively pursued, the actions they took and their significance as actors and symbols in the public sphere. The study shows that during and immediately after the war returned soldiers played a prominent role in public debate over conscription and wartime politics, the status of non-British immigrants in Canada, the Red Scare and re-establishment policy. In exploring these topics the study elaborates on the identities veterans collectively adopted and constructed for themselves as comrades and citizens. Class, definitions of masculinity, British-Canadian ethno-nationality and experience as soldiers all affected formulations of veteran citizenship and comradeship. Returned soldiers' representations of their citizenship resonated powerfully in Canadian society. The experiences and symbolism of returned soldiers generated interest in civilian society that granted them easy access to the public sphere and encouraged pro-war politicians to use returnees to promote the war effort. Veterans took advantage of their access to the press and public stages to broadcast their own views and claim that their service gave them special rights to intervene in public affairs. Comradeship was vitally important to returned soldiers and set them apart from civilians, but it was neither a simple nor stable category. Veterans' debates and the history of veterans' associations testify to the fact that collective service in the war did not erase civilian identities and create a stable platform for united collective activism after the war. Furthermore, comradeship sometimes existed uneasily with the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Parliamentary methods were fundamental to veterans' activism, but their politics were also performative, often pursued and proclaimed at street level, and a minority of veterans threatened and engaged in violence they claimed was justified.

This thesis articulates how the Kuh-Ke-Nah network (K-Net) shaped broadband development in remote indigenous communities. K-Net operates under the not-for-profit stewardship of Keewaytinook Okimanak (KO) Tribal Council. Located in Northwestern Ontario, KO brought K-Net to life amongst its six member First Nations in the mid 1990s. As K-Net evolved and expanded its membership, KO established a governance model that devolves network ownership and control to community networks in partner First Nations. This governance model reflects KO’s use of social enterprise to organize K-Net’s community-based broadband deployment amidst necessary partnerships with government programs and industry players. K-Net’s social enterprise has rapidly grown since 1997, when its core constituents fought for basic telephone service and internet access in Northern Ontario. In the space of less than a decade, K-Net communities have gone from a situation in which it was common for there to be but a single public payphone in a settlement, to a point where over thirty now have broadband internet services to households. Technologies now under K-Net control include a C-Band satellite transponder, IP videoconferencing and telephony, web and email server space, and a variety of terrestrial and wireless links that effectively connect small, scattered First Nations communities to each other and the wider world. K-Net’s governance model encourages member communities to own and control community local loops and internet services under the authority of a local enterprise. Community ownership and control over local loops allows First Nations to collaborate with KO to adapt broadband applications, such as telemedicine and an internet high school, to local challenges and priorities. K-Net’s aggregation of demand from disparate users, within and across member communities, creates economies of scale for the network’s social enterprise, and allows a dynamic reallocation of bandwidth to meet social priorities. Based on four years of research with K-Net stakeholders under the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), my thesis documents the evolution of K-Net’s governance model as a reflection of its social enterprise. Drawing from Community Informatics and the Ecology of Games, I trace K-Net’s history and organization to assess how KO, its partners, and K-Net’s constituents, cooperated to make social enterprise viable for member First Nations.

L’histoire militaire du Canada sous le Régime français s’est enrichie de plusieurs travaux sur les soldats depuis l’avènement de l’histoire sociale dans les années 60. Les historiens de la justice ont aussi étudié les soldats comme groupe social. Ces études – qui ne portent pas exclusivement sur les gens de guerre – ont été faites dans une perspective quantitative. Si les historiens ont étudié la vie des soldats sous divers facettes, aucun n’a ciblé la criminalité. C’est précisément ce que ce mémoire cherche à faire, en exploitant principalement les archives judiciaires. Et plus précisément, en analysant les procès criminels intentés contre des soldats. En outre, la jurisprudence d’Ancien Régime s’est avérée fort pertinente pour comprendre le contexte de la criminalité chez les gens de guerre. Les procès ont, quant à eux, permis de découvrir les formes diverses de cette criminalité et certains facteurs qui y contribuaient. Enfin, plusieurs procès, mais aussi la correspondance des autorités coloniales ont permis de découvrir que l’armée, plus qu’un appareil de guerre, jouait un rôle dans la réhabilitation de soldats aux mœurs délictueuses. / Since the arrival of social history in the 1960s, the military history of Canada under the French Regime has been enriched by several studies of soldiers. Historians of justice have also investigated the rank and file as a social group. These studies – which were not exclusively devoted to soldiers – adopted a quantitative approach. Though historians have viewed various aspects of soldiers’ lives, none have singled out criminality. That is precisely what this thesis attempts to do, by exploiting principally the judicial archives. More precisely, it analyzes criminal trials involving soldiers, relying as well on Ancien Regime jurisprudence to help place soldiers’ criminality in perspective. The trials offer a view of the different forms of this criminality and of some of the contributing factors. Lastly, several trials in addition to the colonial correspondence show that the army, not just a war machine, also played role in the rehabilitation of soldiers inclined to criminal behavior.

Depuis 1970, on remarque une flambée de diagnostics de trouble du spectre de l’autisme (TSA) chez les enfants québécois et occidentaux. Autrefois des « malheureux » souffrant d’un « mal inconnu », l’autisme est désormais un trouble bien connu du public, et sur lequel plusieurs études ont été menées. Par contre, avec la publication d’une étude en 1998 attribuant les origines du syndrome au vaccin contre la rougeole, la rubéole et les oreillons (vaccin RRO), le discours sur l’autisme est désormais pollué par la question des origines de l’autisme, si bien que peu de personnes se sont penchées sur les représentations des autistes et de l’autisme dans la période devançant cette publication, alors que les années 1970 à 1990 représente une période importante en matière d’évolution des repères sur l’autisme et de sa prise en charge, en particulier au Québec. À cette fin, une série d'articles provenant des quotidiens La Presse et Le Devoir concernant l'autisme sur la période 1970-1998 furent analysés afin de faire ressortir trois axes importants à la présente recherche : les caractéristiques de l’autisme, les causes du trouble ainsi que la prise en charge des autistes, et particulièrement des jeunes autistes. De cette analyse, on retient d’abord une transformation dans la perception de l’autiste, où l’enfant « idiot » des années 1970 devient un génie incompris dans les années 1990, ainsi qu’une réorientation de la prise en charge qui met désormais l’accent sur l’intégration et non plus l’isolement. En parallèle, on constate une appropriation par les discours populaires du rôle des parents (et surtout de la mère) dans les origines de l’autisme, de même que la popularisation du mythe de la douance pendant les années 1990. Dans l’objectif de répondre à ces questions, le présent mémoire espère s’interroger à la fois sur l’épaisseur, la complexité et la temporalité de ces représentations, et ce en essayant notamment d’observer si ces représentations interagissent ou sont indépendantes les unes des autres durant cette période, et si l’on constate au sein de la presse des tensions entre les discours, ou un mélange d’appropriations mutuelles. / In 1988, British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield describes a new type of phenomenon. According to his Since 1970, specialists have noticed an upsurged in the amount of diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Quebecois children and children across the world. Once considered “unfortunate souls” suffering from an “unknown illness”, autism is now a disorder the public is now well-aware of, and on which multiple studies were conducted. However, with the publication of a study in 1998 claiming the origins of the disorder is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR vaccine), the conversation on autism is now polluted by the question of its origins, to the point few people have considered the portrayals of autism and autism in the period leading up to this publication, when the years 1970 to 1990 represent an important period in terms of the evolution of autism’s markers and its treatments, in Quebec in particular. To this end, a series of articles from daily newspapers La Presse and Le Devoir concerning autism over the period 1970-1998 were analyzed in order to highlight three important axes in the present research: the characteristics of autism, the causes of the disorder as well as the care of autistic people, and in particular, young autistic people. From this analysis, we first retain a transformation in the perception of the autistic, where the ‘idiot’ child of the 1970s becomes a misunderstood genius in the 1990s. Simultaneously, we note the appropriation by popular discourses of the role of parents (and mothers especially) on the origins of autism, as well as the popularization of the myth of giftedness in the 1990s. In order to answer these questions, the present dissertation hopes to question the thickness, complexity and temporality of these representations, and do so by trying to observe if those representations interact or are independent from each other during this period, and if we see through the press tensions between discourses used by both communities, or a mixture of mutual appropriations.

La guerre de course européenne connaît son apogée au XVIIIe siècle, en particulier durant la guerre de Succession d’Espagne (1701-1713). Cette activité a des répercussions jusque dans les colonies, qui sont éventuellement dotées des institutions nécessaires au jugement des prises ramenées par les corsaires, les amirautés. Le fonctionnement de ces dernières est géré par l’Ordonnance de la Marine de 1681, autant en France que dans les colonies françaises. Alors que le jugement des prises en métropole a été l’objet d’étude de quelques auteurs, il n’y a pas d’étude qui explore en détail ce sujet dans les colonies. Ce mémoire pose alors la question suivante : comment se déroule le jugement des prises dans les amirautés coloniales au XVIIIe siècle, plus précisément de 1690 à 1760 dans les ports de Plaisance, Québec et Louisbourg ? Pour répondre à cette question, les réponses de l’Amiral de la sous-série G5 ont permis la construction d’un portrait statistique préliminaire pour commencer à faire ressortir les éléments qui caractérisent les procédures des amirautés coloniales (chapitre 1). Ensuite, les procès-verbaux du port de Plaisance ont servi à reconstituer en détail ces procédures et à identifier les similarités et les différences avec les procédures menées dans la métropole (chapitre 2). Finalement, on a voulu chiffrer l’importance des jugements relatifs à la course dans la charge des amirautés dans son ensemble. Pour cela, on s’est appuyé sur le fonds de l’amirauté de Québec et de Louisbourg et le fonds d’archives notariés de Plaisance. Cette analyse nous a permis de voir le rôle de l’amirauté dans chaque port, un rôle fortement influencé par le caractère socio-économique et géographique du port (chapitre 3). Ce qui ressort de l’étude, c’est la similarité des procédures suivies dans les amirautés coloniales par rapport à leurs homologues métropolitains ainsi que l’adaptation de certaines caractéristiques au contexte colonial. / Privateering was at its all-time high in the eighteenth century, specifically during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713). The increase in this activity had particular consequences in the colonies and, in fact, precipitated the foundation of the first admiralty in French North America, at Plaisance. Colonial admiralties were to follow the instructions of the Ordonnance de la Marine of 1681, just like their French counterparts. While there are a few studies of the judgement of prizes in metropolitan admiralties, there are no studies that examine in detail how this procedure unfolded in colonial admiralties. This thesis asks, therefore, the following question: how did the colonial admiralties judge prizes in the eighteenth century, specifically from 1690 to 1760, in the ports of Plaisance, Québec and Louisbourg? To answer this question, the responses of the Admiral of France in the subseries G5 were used to make a preliminary statistical portrait to illuminate the main characteristics of captured prizes and their adjudication in the colonies (chapter 1). Then, records of proceedings of the Admiralty of Plaisance from the subseries G5 were used to reconstitute the judgement of prizes in detail and to identify the similarities and differences between colonial and metropolitan adjudication. Finally, in order to better understand the place of privateering in the admiralty’s overall activity, we examined how the volume of these cases compared to that of other types before the same institution. To do so, we consulted the fonds de l’amirauté de Québec and the fonds de l’amirauté de Louisbourg, with the notarized records of Plaisance. This analysis allowed us to see the particular role played by the admiralty in each port, a role shaped by the latter’s socioeconomic and geographic character (chapter 3). Main findings of the study include the similarity in procedures in metropolitan and colonial admiralties as well as the specific adaptations that were made to the colonial context.