The aim of this master thesis is to explore the significance of the growing oil sands production for the economy of the province of Alberta as well as the whole of Canada. Parts of this thesis will outline current global energetic situation with the emphasis on oil production and explain the importance of seeking new alternative sources which includes the renewable energy as well as the unconventional oil and gas. With the waning amount of easily accessible light oil reserves it is likely that the unconventional oil resources where the production is both energetically and financially challenging will become more and more important.

The Calgary stroet-levcl Arcade preceded the Mall as a place of public exchange: During the first half of its history the covered arcade acted as a buffer between the public street and private interior. The arcade extended me.vitality of the city street to the pedestrian. It was shelter from bad weather and vehicles, and a window into another world of consumable items. A shopper could peruse the 'just out of reach' at the Hudson's Bay or wait for a street car under the measured punctuation of the covered arcade. The public nature of the arcade reconciled.the individual to the group. It mediated the transition from the busy street'.to the beckoning shop window. Today merchandising strategies promise to develop a more efficient circle between shopper and commodity. Mall spaces are connected above ground with a maze of raised public walkways. Crisscrossing the original grid of streets at a height of 4.5 meters is the raised "Plus 15 System." Over the last twenty-five years, Calgary has extended one of the largest semi-private systems in the world through it's downtown core. This system replaces the public street with an interior analogy that is neither public nor private. Ground level street-life suffers a slow but definite decline and is not replaced. As the city experiences a period of extreme growth the opportunity arises to remedy the decline of the public realm In the process of development and gentrification a temporary set of urban artifacts becomes visible. The building crane, the site trailer, construction hoarding - this language of urban expansion is as tenable as the "architecture'' of the city itself. This thesis project will invigorate boomtown city growth with a new public architecture. The site is the back lane between 8th and 9th Avenues and Centre and 1st Street in the heart of downtown Calgary. This is one of many blocks yet to complete the Plus 15 labyrinth of public access-ways. Mid-block pedestrian bridges connect the south and east sides of the site with the rest of the city's Plus 15 system. Low-level heritage buildings and Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall wall the north side of the site while the giant Pan Canadian Building dominates the south. Running through the Pan Canadian Building is an existing public right of way. Using current development as a spring board this project will suture the internal world of the Plus 15 to adjacent public and private fragments of the city. A steel "Frame" will accompany the current developer scheme for a hotel high-rise on the site. This frame reconciles the horizontal dimension of the original property width of Stephen Avenue Mall and the new vertical layering of the "floorplate skyscraper." Inserted into this ordered web is a temporary housing system of pre-built trailer boxes - - an appropriation of the familiar objects of construction: The ATCO trailer, construction hoarding and a "take-apart" kit of frame components provide a fertile base for the growth of the public "tube". They furnish a temporary architecture while the new public walkway asserts its presence. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

Floods are becoming more frequent and the magnitude of direct consequences, relating to destruction of critical infrastructure and loss of life, has highlighted the importance of flood management. This thesis proposes a new methodology to quantify the impact of predicted and historic flooding events on emergency services. The approach moves beyond simple flood inundation mapping by accounting for the relationship between flood depth and vehicular speed. A case study was presented for Calgary Alberta, where the depths of a predicted 100-year flood and an historic 2013 flood event were modelled. The methodology applied geographic information systems (GIS) to flood depth mapping, utilizing digital elevation models (DEMs), flood extents, and hydrological data. Flood depths were then assigned to links comprising the road network, where the maximum vehicle speed was calculated as a function of the standing depth of water on a link. The flooded network was used to derive service areas for several types of emergency services (emergency medical services (EMS), fire, and police), following targeted response times. The results quantified and located the residential and work populations that no longer meet the targeted response times. During both flood scenarios, EMS were found to have the greatest reduction in accessibility, with 23% to 47% of residents and workers, respectively, not served. Fire services were seen to be more resilient with only 3% to 9% of residents and workers, respectively, not served. The results for police services were similar to fire services. However, the former have a greater range of response times, meaning these areas represent those that are completely isolated during both flood events. Overall, the proposed methodology quantified vulnerable populations on a partially degraded network, which can be used to develop evacuation plans and emergency response strategies, minimizing disturbances in the network and the number of people affected. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

This study presents an insider’s view concerning the significant influence of American fundamentalism at Prairie Bible Institute (Three Hills, Alberta, Canada) during the tenure of the school’s co-founder and primary leader, Leslie Earl Maxwell. During much of the period covering 1922-1980, PBI rivaled well-known American schools such as Moody Bible Institute, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) and Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, in size. These schools were also highly efficient in producing hundreds of missionaries and Christian workers to serve the fundamentalist cause in North America and around the world. As a belated response to Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr.’s portrayal of PBI in his 1993 book, Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character, this thesis offers clarification and modification to Stackhouse’s work regarding how PBI during the Maxwell era should be viewed by students of church history. It is argued here that the ubiquitous influence of the United States of America on Canadian life is clearly visible in the nature of the Christian fundamentalism that prevailed at PBI under Maxwell’s leadership. The work thereby lends a certain amount of credibility to the suggestions made by some scholars that PBI during Maxwell’s career might legitimately be considered an outpost of American fundamentalism. Employing primarily a quantitative assessment of the evidence in combination with personal anecdotes and a few basic statistics, the thesis reveals that Maxwell’s personality and rhetoric were consistently more militant than Stackhouse allows. PBI’s affinity for many of the distinctives of American fundamentalist theology and culture are also documented. Such an approach serves the additional purpose of enabling the writer to call into question the utility of considering militancy the defining characteristic of twentieth-century evangelicalism when considered from a post-9/11 perspective. It also enables a challenge of Stackhouse’s assumption that what he identifies as “sectish” Canadian evangelicalism is ultimately as substantially different from American fundamentalism as the Canadian scholar infers. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Church History)

While today, archival theory is permeated with postmodern ideas and philosophies, borrowing from fields as diverse as anthropology and computer science, even just a few decades ago, this was far from the case. This transition was pioneered and strongly influenced by the imaginative and thought-provoking essays of Hugh Taylor, a Canadian archivist who developed a worldview that positioned archives and archivists at centre stage. Taylor was able to do so as a result of his fascination with the works of the media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, whose ideas Taylor found directly applicable to archives and archival theory. This thesis examines the mental state of Hugh Taylor throughout his life and how this mental state shaped his revolutionary concepts, which delved into epistemology and metaphysics, placing archives at the centre of a universal network of connections. These concepts would go on to drastically change archival theory to what it is today. / October 2016

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

No description available.

Oil and gas companies in Alberta, Canada lose millions of dollars per year due to ineffective management of retired assets. Ineffective management of inactive oil and gas assets in Alberta has led to over 80,000 inactive wells, highlighting the practice of prolonged deferment of asset end-of-life costs. Using the corporate sustainability model and asset management concept model as frameworks, this multiple case study was conducted to explore the strategies that asset managers in small- and medium-sized oil and gas companies used to manage retired assets effectively to increase organizational sustainability. The population for the study included 3 business leaders of small- and medium-sized oil and gas companies in Alberta who implemented effective strategies to manage their retired assets. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with the leaders and review of artifacts including firm documents and websites. Data were compiled, disassembled into fragments, reassembled into a sequence of groups, clarified, and interpreted for meaning. Methodological triangulation and member checking validated the interpretations. Data analysis resulted in 7 themes: responsible leadership commitment, adoption and communication of corporate social responsibility philosophy, regulatory compliance, asset management software tools, dedicated inactive assets and reclamation champion/team, annual budget/long-term planning, and performance measurement/reporting. The findings may contribute to positive social change by providing insights for small- and medium-sized oil and gas business leaders on strategies for managing inactive assets and for fostering an environmental culture among employees that has beneficial impacts on their families and communities.