A descent into the ravine is a step through a tear in urbanity. The terrain vague is a foil to the capitalist city; against a demand for order, specificity, and integration, it is disorienting, banal, erratic. Operating outside the constraints of dominant social structures, it harbours the unconscious of the city, not only an inevitable, but also a necessary rupture in the urban fabric. In this subterranean realm, the striated and measured plots of land are sporadically smoothed over by persistent nature, reclaiming its territory. These perceived voids invite projections of desire, both at a civic scale and on an individual level, that consequently shape the space. These are grounds of negotiation, a political realm often driven more by visceral impulses than economics. They aggravate tensions typically suppressed in the city, including those wrought by violence and melancholy. This is a portrait of the Don Valley in Toronto. Fragments of representation reveal the role of this space in the collective memory of the public. Beyond the infrastructure that binds them, the city and the valley are integrated through their opposition: one fuels the experience of the other.

This dissertation explores human interactions with Toronto’s Don River Valley from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the period of intense urbanization and industrialization between 1880 and 1940. Its concentration on the urban fringe generates new perspectives on the social and environmental consequences of urban development. From its position on the margins, the Don performed vital functions for the urban economy as a provider of raw materials and a sink for wastes. Insights derived from the intersections between social and environmental history are at the heart of this project. The dissertation begins by documenting the industrial history of the river and its transformation from a central provider in the lives of early Toronto residents to a polluted periphery in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An analysis of the valley’s related function as a repository for human “undesirables” reveals connections between the processes that identified certain individuals as deficient “others” and similar imperatives at work in classifying difficult or unpredictable environments as “waste spaces.” Efforts to “reclaim” and improve the river are the subject of the remaining chapters. A series of initiatives between 1870 and 1930 aimed at reconfiguring the lower Don as an efficient corridor for transportation and industrial development reveal in their shortcomings and unintended consequences a failure to accommodate dynamic and often unpredictable ecological processes. Reclamations of a different kind are explored in the conservation movement of the twentieth century, through which the valley emerges as a valuable public amenity. The dissertation concludes by investigating how the valley’s history informs current plans to “renaturalize” the river mouth. Throughout, the Don functions as an autonomous and causal force in the city’s history. On this small river on the urban fringe, nature and society worked in mutually constitutive ways to shape and reshape the metropolis.

This dissertation explores human interactions with Toronto’s Don River Valley from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the period of intense urbanization and industrialization between 1880 and 1940. Its concentration on the urban fringe generates new perspectives on the social and environmental consequences of urban development. From its position on the margins, the Don performed vital functions for the urban economy as a provider of raw materials and a sink for wastes. Insights derived from the intersections between social and environmental history are at the heart of this project. The dissertation begins by documenting the industrial history of the river and its transformation from a central provider in the lives of early Toronto residents to a polluted periphery in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An analysis of the valley’s related function as a repository for human “undesirables” reveals connections between the processes that identified certain individuals as deficient “others” and similar imperatives at work in classifying difficult or unpredictable environments as “waste spaces.” Efforts to “reclaim” and improve the river are the subject of the remaining chapters. A series of initiatives between 1870 and 1930 aimed at reconfiguring the lower Don as an efficient corridor for transportation and industrial development reveal in their shortcomings and unintended consequences a failure to accommodate dynamic and often unpredictable ecological processes. Reclamations of a different kind are explored in the conservation movement of the twentieth century, through which the valley emerges as a valuable public amenity. The dissertation concludes by investigating how the valley’s history informs current plans to “renaturalize” the river mouth. Throughout, the Don functions as an autonomous and causal force in the city’s history. On this small river on the urban fringe, nature and society worked in mutually constitutive ways to shape and reshape the metropolis.

Ce mémoire porte sur les expériences de deux femmes aidantes qui s'investissent auprès de leur proche âgé dépendant. S'appuyant sur l'analyse qualitative d'un corpus de récits, il s'intéresse principalement au sens que celles-ci donnent à leur expérience d'aide et à leur rôle d'aidante. Nous avons choisi de nous inscrire dans la perspective de l'interactionnisme symbolique parce que ce sens se construit à travers les interactions avec l'aidé, l'entourage familial et les professionnels de soins. Notre analyse met l'accent sur trois thèmes interreliés qui nous semblaient particulièrement importants, soit l'identité et la construction identitaire, le don de soi et l'évolution de la relation parent-enfant. Nos résultats montrent tout d'abord, que ces femmes s'inscrivent dans une «carrière d'aidante», s'étant mobilisées auprès de leurs parents depuis de longues années. Suite à certains événements qui font rupture, cette aide qui implique de multiples activités, a pris de plus en plus de place, le rôle d'aidante constituant désormais leur identité principale. Toutefois, cette identité est peu reconnue, entre autres parce que c'est au nom du lien filial et de l'amour porté au parent que les femmes s'engagent dans l'aide. Les aidantes témoignent aussi de leur difficulté à partager leur expérience avec d'autres, tant l'investissement auprès de leur parent leur semble singulier. Le don de soi qui caractérise bien l'engagement sans limite des femmes auprès de leur parent s'avère une notion particulièrement intéressante, qui permet d'envisager l'aide comme un échange impliquant un contre-don. Nous avons tenté de saisir ce que pouvaient retirer ces femmes de leur investissement auprès de leur proche. Nos résultats soulignent l'importance de la dette à l'égard du ou des parents car au travers de l'aide, c'est l'image de la «bonne fille» qui se construit. Ce constat nous a alors amené à interroger la relation parent-enfant, qui teinte très largement le sens de l'aide à un proche et continue d'évoluer. La perte d'autonomie de l'aidé pose toutefois plusieurs défis à la communication, mais les aidantes développent des stratégies pour les dépasser, qui s'appuient notamment sur le corps et la gestuelle. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Proche aidante, Femme, Vieillissement, Personne âgée, Identité, Don de soi, Évolution de la relation parent-enfant, Soin.

With the shift in perspective from temporary to permanent residence in this country, Sikhs are caught in between two polar ends of homeland and diaspora. This thesis attempts to illuminate a third – a universal permanence free of physical barriers. This account describes a movement towards establishing a Sikh homeland that is manifested in the collective Sikh body of the world rather than in the physical land of Punjab. The turban that is the physical identity of the Sikhs in diaspora has also come to represent the rigidities of the culture, which neglect the omnipresent divinity, and sacredness of every place. In its form and content, this thesis is engaged in “unfolding of the turban” to open it to the new worlds it is now a part of, to create a new beginning as a human body unfolds upon death into its five primal elements on the verge of reviviscence. Sikhs worldwide are aware of their need to convert diaspora back into a homeland, to fight against restrictions that hinder the completion of rituals of life and death. The unraveling of the turban into an undulating path allows for a new perspective on permanence for the Sikhs in foreign lands. Unfolded into a form of the meandering river, the turban also represents the eternally flowing waters. The silent sacredness of the water indistinctly exists in Toronto. Behind the towering city, the Don River often flows quietly, leading a life parallel to that of the River Ganges and the River Sutlej. This once pastoral valley that sustained villages and nature is now discarded, in post-industrial despair. Trapped within these modern city confines, the river still secretly retains the power to transfigure souls, but its powers of reviviscence remain unidentified and unused due to restrictive cremation bylaws. This thesis attempts to create for the Sikhs an essential funeral landscape, whose icons may be read through an anamorphic lens of Sikh culture, while providing for all an opportunity to engage the forgotten river, and its energy.

With the shift in perspective from temporary to permanent residence in this country, Sikhs are caught in between two polar ends of homeland and diaspora. This thesis attempts to illuminate a third – a universal permanence free of physical barriers. This account describes a movement towards establishing a Sikh homeland that is manifested in the collective Sikh body of the world rather than in the physical land of Punjab. The turban that is the physical identity of the Sikhs in diaspora has also come to represent the rigidities of the culture, which neglect the omnipresent divinity, and sacredness of every place. In its form and content, this thesis is engaged in “unfolding of the turban” to open it to the new worlds it is now a part of, to create a new beginning as a human body unfolds upon death into its five primal elements on the verge of reviviscence. Sikhs worldwide are aware of their need to convert diaspora back into a homeland, to fight against restrictions that hinder the completion of rituals of life and death. The unraveling of the turban into an undulating path allows for a new perspective on permanence for the Sikhs in foreign lands. Unfolded into a form of the meandering river, the turban also represents the eternally flowing waters. The silent sacredness of the water indistinctly exists in Toronto. Behind the towering city, the Don River often flows quietly, leading a life parallel to that of the River Ganges and the River Sutlej. This once pastoral valley that sustained villages and nature is now discarded, in post-industrial despair. Trapped within these modern city confines, the river still secretly retains the power to transfigure souls, but its powers of reviviscence remain unidentified and unused due to restrictive cremation bylaws. This thesis attempts to create for the Sikhs an essential funeral landscape, whose icons may be read through an anamorphic lens of Sikh culture, while providing for all an opportunity to engage the forgotten river, and its energy.

Cities are concentrations of diverse populations that undergo continual transformation over time. This thesis deals with the question, how does the individual make place in a constantly changing environment? The entry point for this study was looking at neglected places in urban environments. I looked specifically at the Don River Valley in Toronto, Ontario and how it has developed as an open-ended and complex system. The site research is presented through a series of stories describing specific events or places in the Don Valley that have taken place over the past 200 years. This thesis offers a mongrel approach to design for a site within the Don Valley. “The Mongrel Approach” is an opportunistic way of building that is committed to survival and open as to how this can be achieved. The design proposes a series of intimate yet public infrastructural devices; a toilet, water fountain, shelter and bridge that are presented in a set of hand drawings as well as through an “Explanatory Tale.” A magpie narrates this short story, which is part true, part fiction and part wishful thinking. As the earth’s population becomes more urban than rural and increasingly mobile, contemporary cities are becoming home to a diverse range of individuals with complex and layered identities. The Mongrel Approach offers a way of building that can handle difference and contradiction and accommodate incongruous or inharmonious parts. It positions the designer as a conjurer or first mover. This thesis proposes Mongrel buildings that respond to change by transforming slowly and incrementally over time with the involvement of multiple authors; but at each moment, a register of time and human ritual.

This thesis aims to explore how the idea of American Dream is presented in White Noise, how the Dream is represented as ¡§American magic,¡¨ and how eventually it turns into ¡§American dread,¡¨ the ultimate American nightmare. In Chapter One, I provide a brief historical survey on the concept of the American Dream, the idea that mainly shaped the American nation in history. I turn to Jim Cullen¡¦s The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation and Andrew Delbanco¡¦s The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope to explore how the idea of the American Dream changes through the course of American history as well as construct a historical background of the American Dream. Chapter Two explores how the American Dream in White Noise is exposed and transformed into what DeLillo terms in the novel as the ¡§American magic¡¨ via the novel¡¦s extreme emphasis on the issue of mass media, the operation of simulated magic. First, I briefly analyze the American Dream succeeded in White Noise based on my survey of the American Dream in the previous chapter. Reading DeLillo¡¦s ¡§American magic¡¨ as the simulated dream in White Noise in light of Baudrillard¡¦s theory of simulacra and simulation, I argue that White Noise is in fact a novel based on the critique of the American Dream due to the falsehood of the protagonists¡¦ American Dream televised through media and consumer culture. In Chapter Three, by recalling the novel¡¦s emphasis on the protagonists¡¦ fear of death, I aim to examine the true reason for such fatal fear. While many may read White Noise simply as a postmodern representation of man¡¦s uncontrollable natural fear of death, I examine the connection of this major theme of fear towards death to DeLillo¡¦s American magic and point out the possibility of American magic acting both as a cause and reinforcement of this fear as well as relating it to the larger issue of DeLillo¡¦s ¡§American dread¡¨ ¡Xa portrayal of the American Dream and magic brought to its extremity and stirred towards a possible apocalyptic end.

<p><p><strong><p> </p></strong></p></p>

Proefschrift--Nijmegen--Katholieke universiteit, 1997. / Résumé en anglais. Bibliogr. p. 258-269. Index.