This thesis explores the development of missionary infrastructure in the Canadian north between approximately 1850 and 1915 and its impact on the evangelization of northern indigenous people by missionary organizations. Focussing on two groups of missionaries - the Catholic Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Anglican Church Missionary Society - this thesis demonstrates how missionaries used buildings to develop a programme for evangelization based on the convert and civilize model prevalent in nineteenth-century global missions. It argues that the intent was to convert indigenous people to Christianity and to enact significant changes on their traditional way of life, including their economy and social structure. Within this programme, architectural spaces, specifically the mission station, were used as a frontier location where indigenous people and missionaries interacted, providing a location for missionary teaching, a didactic place to demonstrate how Christians lived, and a method of transforming what was viewed as a non-Christian wilderness into a Christian 'garden' through construction of buildings and control of the natural world. While these ideas were applied to diverse locations throughout the global mission field in the early modern period of missionary activity, the Canadian north presents a unique area of study for this topic because of the relative lack of pre-existing non-indigenous development in the region, the difficulties in building resulting from its environment, and the romantic approach that missionaries took to it as the frontier of European and Christian activity - in biblical terms, the 'uttermost ends of the earth'. Within this context, the use of architecture as part of a missionary programme of conversion and civilization became extremely important as a tool for the transformation of the land and its people to a Christian ideal rooted in European precedent. This proved problematic because of the inherent difficulties in evangelization in this geographic region. As a result, this thesis demonstrates how missionaries applied architecture within the mission station as a tool for evangelization in this region, taking into consideration both the way in which they perceived the territory and the realities they faced on the ground. It reveals how these missionaries created a unique set of architectures that responded to how missionaries understood building function within the missionary environment, as well as what was actually achievable in the northern mission field.

There are currently very few examples of northern Canadian landscape architecture. There is even less literature on the subject. This design practicum follows a broad exploration of the Canadian North in an attempt to understand how the discipline of landscape architecture may insert itself as a profession capable of functioning in a northern environment. Key design issues specific to the North have been identified through a review of literature and personal experience working in the North, and have been categorized in three main areas: socio-economic, socio-cultural and physical environment. A framework of considerations for northern landscape architecture has been proposed and applied to the research process, supporting a holistic approach. A design has been proposed for the historic mine site of Port Radium, Northwest Territories. The design tests the applicability of landscape architecture in the North and follows the proposed framework, considering the history and future of the site from a socio-economic, socio-cultural and environmental perspective.

There are currently very few examples of northern Canadian landscape architecture. There is even less literature on the subject. This design practicum follows a broad exploration of the Canadian North in an attempt to understand how the discipline of landscape architecture may insert itself as a profession capable of functioning in a northern environment. Key design issues specific to the North have been identified through a review of literature and personal experience working in the North, and have been categorized in three main areas: socio-economic, socio-cultural and physical environment. A framework of considerations for northern landscape architecture has been proposed and applied to the research process, supporting a holistic approach. A design has been proposed for the historic mine site of Port Radium, Northwest Territories. The design tests the applicability of landscape architecture in the North and follows the proposed framework, considering the history and future of the site from a socio-economic, socio-cultural and environmental perspective.

Data are presented from an automatic weather station on the Brintnell-Bologna Icefield that operated from August 2014 to August 2016 in Nahanni National Park Reserve. This location is notable for being the northernmost mass balance alpine study location of the federal government’s glaciology program (NRCan/GSC). The link between atmospheric forcing at the synoptic scale and response at the glacier surface has been shown to be strongly dependent on continentality and latitude. In this region, however, many aspects of the physical processes controlling the interaction between atmospheric forcing and snowpack response are virtually unknown, especially at the daily to hourly timescale. The character of snowfalls during the accumulation seasons for this icefield are investigated using high resolution time series from two acoustic snow depth sensors and other relevant meteorological parameters. It is found that the most drastic changes in snow depth occur from infrequent large snowfalls. Using an adaption of an Environment Canada snow depth algorithm, snowfall events are identified and their timing is quantified based on a system of thresholds, running averages and ratios between the snow depth sensors. Synoptic conditions are examined using meteorological reanalysis data and trajectory analysis to determine the moisture origin and pathway. / Graduate

No description available.

<p> The conflict between native people and resource development in the Canadian north is considered within the framework of a colonial model of development. It is hypothesized that the origins of contemporary land use conflicts in the north can be attributed to the colonization of native people, and that the growing discontent among native people can be viewed as a response to the perpetuation of their colonial status. </p> <p> Two phases in the historical relationship between native people and the Canadian government, traditional colonialism and nee-colonialism, are defined and the impacts of these forms of colonialism upon native people, and their role in the future development of the north, are examinedo Alternative native responses to colonial status are identified and each option is discussed in terms of its likelihood as a choice and the effects of that choice upon the native community. Government control over native people is identified as a major constraint on response choice. Various means of government control and their effectiveness are considered. </p> <p> Two alternatives are presented for the future control of political space in northern Canada: continuation of colonial domination or increasing control by natives. It is concluded, on the basis of recent experiences in native communities, that increasing control by natives is the only means through which the political and socio-economic status of native people will be improved. </p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

No description available.

This study of Canadian adventure romance for adolescents seeks to demonstrate the cultural significance of the genre through close readings of James Houston's Frozen Fire and The White Archer, Monica Hughes's Hunter in the Dark and Ring-Rise, Ring-Set, as well as Markoosie's Harpoon of the Hunter. By means of a semiotic-structuralist approach I examine the texts as a signifying system conveying discourses that constitute a code of connection to the social context of contemporary young-adult readers.Structured on the formula: separation-initiation-return and informed by the symbolism of death-rebirth, the stories hold out the promise of a life-enhancing return. Roland Barthes's definition of myth as a mode of signification underpins my discussion of how the narrative conventions become vehicles of existential truths by replicating and intensifying adventurous experiences. With the quest for identity and the polarization between two worlds as structural determinants, the selected books juxtapose the values of Western civilization with those expressed through the Canadian North and its indigenous population. As a defining category of Canadian identity, the northern wilderness provides the space and the challenges for the protagonists' initiatory experiences. My application of the dichotomy self-other to the selected books provides a number of polarized positions such as civilization-wilderness, white-native, male-female, and conscious-unconscious, polarities through which the different discursive levels of the texts are generated. Arguably, the formulaic character of the journeys into the unknown allows the stories to signify on various levels, thus inviting both psychological and ideological readings of the texts.It is primarily through a recycling of narrative conventions that Houston and Hughes invest their work with significance. By focusing on the structural and thematic similarities of adventure romance, my examination attempts to elucidate the parallels to mythic adventure and archaic rites of initiation with the aim of validating the role of the genre as symbolic representations of the process of maturation and vicarious rites of passage. The conclusions I draw have a bearing on much of Houston's and Hughes's fiction, on the genre of romance as a whole, and to some extent on the adjacent genres of fantasy and science fiction. / <p>Behandlar James Houston, Monica Hughes och Markoosie.</p> / digitalisering@umu