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Drawing on the manuscript records of the Department of Crown Lands, its published reports, and case law, this thesis examines the illegal occupation of rural land, known as squatting in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the period 1838 to 1866. By 1838, demographic pressure in the seigneuries, inflated land prices due to speculation, and inaccessible public land granting practices had made squatting a commonplace strategy for land acquisition. The responses to squatting of the Department of Crown Lands, the Legislature and the judiciary are analysed for what they implied about ideas of property in Lower Canada. / While the Department of Crown Lands' policy of pre-emption affirmed that squatters held rights to public land because they laboured to cultivate and improve it, the legislature refused to acknowledge that squatters could acquire such rights on private land; nine out of ten bills intended to ensure ejected squatters a systematically determined remuneration for improvements made by them on the private property of absentees failed to pass into law during the period. Most were rejected by the Legislative Council which defended the interests of landed wealth. / Lower Canadian courts, meanwhile, struggled to sort out laws relating to squatting. Ultimately they found that while squatters on private property owned their improvements, they had no right to the land itself. Thus the judiciary applied a bifurcated concept of property to rural land in Lower Canada despite the prevalence of liberal theories of absolute property rights during the nineteenth century.

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The goal of this thesis was to examine submerged macrophoe biomass, distribution, and ecosystem effects at scales large enough to incorporate the littoral zone into models of whole lake structure and function. Submerged macrophyte biomass and distribution was shown to be highly variable between growing seasons and primarily dependant upon air temperature and the timing of the onset of the growing season. Within a growing season, a mass balance study showed an undisturbed macrophyte bed to markedly lower phytoplankton biomass: total phosphorus ratios, although the net effect of the bed on the growing season phosphorus budget was minimal. The weedbed preferentially retained phytoplankton biomass while being a source of bacterial production to the open water. These findings were mirrored at the among lake scale, as planktonic respiration and bacterial production were higher in macrophyte dominated lakes than would be expected based on phytoplankton biomass alone. Further, phytoplankton biomass was lower than would be expected based on epilimnetic phosphorus levels, showing that the classical view of pelagic interactions that proposes phosphorus determines phytoplankton abundance, which in turn determines bacterial abundance through the production of organic carbon, becomes less relevant as macrophyte cover increases. Long term phosphorus accumulation in the littoral zone was shown to be linked to macrophyte biomass, and on average almost an order of magnitude higher than calculated from the growing season (June--October) phosphorus budget, suggesting that the bulk of phosphorus accumulation in weedbeds occurs outside of the growing season. Finally, sediment core data showed that while submerged weedbeds accumulate up to four times as much bulk sediment compared to the profundal zone, phosphorus accumulation in weedbeds is much less than observed in the profundal zone. These results strongly indicating that submerged macrophyte beds play a central role in trapping ep

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This thesis examines the everyday experiences of Anglophone communities in three different regions of Quebec – the Gaspésie, Gatineau and Eastern Townships – with the aim to understand their sense of place. Specifically, the focus is on the role of different geographic contexts on everyday access to social services, particularly healthcare, and how these experiences contribute to Anglophones’ place attachment. Data collection involved semi-structured personal interviews with ten participants in each region. Comparative analysis yielded three main findings: (1) issues with accessing healthcare in English reinforces Anglophones’ minority status; (2) in spite of the challenges faced as a linguistic minority, Anglophones demonstrate a strong sense of place to their region; and (3) feelings of home, heritage, and rootedness constitute elements in Anglophones’ place attachment and contribute to their sense of place in Quebec. The study also concludes that age, mobility, and location are important variables in influencing everyday experiences in each of the three regions.