Les mammifères alpins sont vulnérables aux changements climatiques car ils sont confinés à une certaine altitude. Toutefois, des adaptations physiologiques et comportementales chez certaines espèces d’animaux fouisseurs pourraient, en partie, atténuer les impacts négatifs des changements climatiques. En effet, chez les animaux fouisseurs qui hibernent, le fait d’avoir recours à la torpeur en hiver en plus d’avoir accès à des terriers souterrains permet aux individus de réduire leur exposition aux conditions extérieures lorsqu’elles sont défavorables. J’ai étudié les liens entre les facteurs environnementaux et les variations interannuelles de la masse corporelle et de la survie chez les adultes d’une population de marmottes des Rocheuses. Mon étude utilise des données qui ont été récoltées pendant 14 ans à Caw Ridge en Alberta. J’ai émis l’hypothèse que la variation interannuelle dans les conditions environnementales au printemps, à l’été et en hiver déterminerait la masse corporelle des individus pendant l’été en plus de la survie annuelle via des effets directs sur la qualité et la disponibilité des ressources alimentaires. J’ai aussi prédit que la masse à la fin de la saison d’activité serait l’un des principaux déterminant de la survie annuelle. Mes résultats démontrent un effet positif des printemps hâtifs sur le gain de masse estival et la survie annuelle. J’observe aussi que la masse à l’émergence des marmottes qui ont connu des hivers froids et rigoureux est 47% inférieure à celle des marmottes qui ont connu des hivers plus doux. Toutefois, les marmottes qui émergent avec une masse plus faible aux printemps suivants des hivers plus rigoureux ont un gain de masse plus important pendant l’été. Ainsi, à la fin de l’été, elles atteignent une masse similaire à celles qui ont une masse plus élevée à l’émergence suivant un hiver plus doux. Cela suggère que les individus adoptent une stratégie d’allocation des ressources qui leur permet de maximiser leur gain de masse estival afin de survivre pendant la prochaine période d’hibernation. Cette capacité des marmottes à maximiser leur gain de masse estival contribue probablement à expliquer le fait que je n’ai pas observé d’effets de la masse à la fin de la saison active sur la survie annuelle. Bien que les adultes devraient avoir des réponses tamponnées aux changements environnementaux comparés aux juvéniles, notre étude suggère que la masse corporelle et la survie des adultes peuvent être considérablement affectées par les conditions environnementales et que les changements prévus dans les conditions climatiques pourraient avoir des effets sur les espèces d’animaux fouisseurs qui hibernent en milieux alpins

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.

Art is often used as a catalyst to stimulate redevelopment and neighborhood change. This often occurs inadvertently as the presence of artists in certain communities can attract both public and private investment to revalorize economically depressed areas. Marginal neighborhoods in inner-urban areas offer inspiration and diversity to artists seeking lower-cost housing. Their presence effectively makes these marginal communities "safe" for middle-class residents looking to live in a funky, urban neighborhood. Ultimately, however, artists are eventually priced out of the communities they helped to create. The Alberta district in northeast Portland, Oregon has used art to create an identity that distinguished it from other redeveloped neighborhoods throughout the city, having become known as the Alberta Arts District. The research presented in this thesis traces the history of the Alberta district from its roots as a thriving streetcar community through its years as a dilapidated, crime-ridden neighborhood, and into its current state as a vibrant arts district. I show how the commercial corridor along Alberta Street has evolved to reflect the changing demographic composition of the surrounding neighborhood. Additionally, housing in the surrounding residential neighborhood has experienced a dramatic increase in average sale price and an upfiltering of aesthetic appearance. Many are attracted to the Alberta district for its vibrancy and diversity, the people and businesses that contribute to the diverse atmosphere may disappear as real estate becomes increasingly more expensive.

This study takes a cultural perspective in studying the "Alberta Arts District," a gentrifying neighborhood in Northeast Portland in which bohemian cultural production/consumption has become the dominant and commodified vision of the community. Survey data demonstrates residents' general opinions and levels of participation in the changing neighborhood. Forty long-time residents, black and white, homeowners and renters, are interviewed in-depth regarding their perceptions of change. Long-time residents of gentrifying neighborhoods are often overlooked as a less powerful group that only has to negotiate rising rents and property values. This study approaches the meaning of neighborhood changes for long-time residents who have the potential to react culturally, socially, and economically in a neighborhood where racial and economic differences are structured by segregation and divestment. In the course of identifying positive, negative, and mixed feelings about changes, long-time residents also establish their belonging in the neighborhood as it changes around them. This is often done through constructing symbolic boundaries around newcomers, new businesses, and new cultural events in the neighborhood. This study finds that although most long-time residents perceive changes to be positive, race and homeownership affect different outcomes for different groups. Particularly, long-time black residents may establish belonging as being black in a diminishing black community, whereas long-time white homeowners may establish belonging by being homeowners in the context of positive changes.

Many researchers in numerous studies have focused on leadership style and organizational cultures, but there is an absence of research regarding leader personality traits and productive work cultures in Alberta's oil and gas industry. The purpose of this correlational study was to assess the relationship between leader traits and preestablished learning organization culture benchmarks within Alberta's oil and gas industry. Learning organization culture is an extension of Senge's learning organization theory. Simple random sampling was used to attain a population comprised of 52 employees in Alberta's oil and gas industry who were accountable to an organizational supervisor. Data were collected via the NEO-FFI-3 and the Learning Organization Survey; summarization was accomplished by means of an online third party survey administration service. Regression analyses revealed that each of the 5-factor traits was correlated to learning organization culture. When the model was changed to multiple regression using all traits together, only 2 traits remained significant. Openness to experience positively correlated with learning organization culture, whereas neuroticism was negatively correlated with learning organization culture. The implication for social change is that human resource personnel in Alberta's oil and gas industry can institute information provided in this research to identify and develop leaders who promote innovation in a learning organization culture. Innovation in Alberta's oil and gas industry assists to overcome environmental sustainability, augment technology inefficiencies, and decrease workplace personnel issues.

The western toad (Anaxyrus boreas, formerly Bufo boreas) is one of many amphibian species considered to be at risk of extinction (COSEWIC status is Special Concern). I examined habitat use patterns of the western toad using several methods to gain a better understanding of its habitat requirements. I examined the relationship between relative abundance of the western toad and two sympatric amphibian species (wood frog, Lithobates sylvaticus; and boreal chorus frog, Pseudacris maculata) and habitat features at eight scales of spatial extent at 24 wetlands in the Lake Utikuma region of Alberta, Canada. I radio-tracked adult western toads in three study areas in the Aspen Parkland and Boreal regions of north-central Alberta to examine 1) whether patterns of habitat selection change with different scales of spatial extent, spatial resolution, habitat composition, temporal period, and between males and females during the active period, 2) habitat used for hibernation, and 3) factors influencing the timing and nature of movements to hibernation sites. I found that the abundance of the three amphibian species was best described at different spatial extents and was related to the biology of each species. Resource Selection Function (RSF) models, created using radio-telemetry data, indicated that habitat selection was scale-dependent for western toads; differences in selection were observed among study designs, study areas, time periods, and sexes. Predictive ability did not differ significantly among study designs. However, models that were created using a fine-grained map and home-range spatial extent generally produced models with greater predictive ability than models using a coarse-grained map or population-range extent. During the active season toads selected open habitat types such as wet shrub, disturbed grass, and crop/hay fields. Western toads hibernated terrestrially in pre-existing tunnels and the majority of toads hibernated in forest stands dominated by spruce. Toads used hibernation sites 1461936 m from breeding ponds and 68% of hibernacula were communal. Arrival at and entry into hibernation sites was influenced by temperature and/or day length; larger toads moved to hibernation sites later in the year. My research results can be used to identify and protect habitat for western toads in Canada. / Environmental Biology and Ecology