Tree selection is critical to ensuring that urban forests are diverse, healthy, and adapted to the urban environment. Climate is one of the main controllers of plant distribution around the world, so tree species are expected to redistribute as a result of climate change. This research aimed to identify which eastern North American tree species should be most suited for planting in urban areas in Halifax given impending climate change. A database was developed for 57 tree species and 95 tree characteristics to enable analysis of tree species native to eastern North America. The results of previous climate envelope research and the database were used to identify the tree species most suitable for planting in Halifax. Of the 57 tree species examined, 16 were identified as most suited for the Halifax urban forest of the 21st century.

The analyses of benthonic foraminifera in surface sediments for two-years (Oct. 2007-August 2009) and cores from Halifax Harbour (HH) were essential for short-term monitoring, and reference environment reconstruction for the remediation that started in 2008. The distribution of foraminifera in the surface sediments indicates a lateral environmental variation and positive correlation to the pollution rate in HH as the environmental purity increases seawards. The treated area, Inner Harbour, recorded a rapid environmental recovery during treatment period (2008), and reverted to its former characteristics after treatment stopped (early 2009). This recovery represented by an increase in both diversity (from <12 to >20 species) and abundance (from 120–880 to 1350-1750 individuals). Additionally, the assemblage during that period witnessed a decrease in opportunistic species (<50%), shell deformities (<11%), and inner linings (17%), and a significant increase in calcareous species. The assemblage in pre-impact environment, as inferred from cores, has a high diversity (>30 species) and abundance (>4000 individuals), a dominant calcareous record (>60%), and lower deformities (3-4%). The gradual environmental degradation due to organic enrichment in the harbour caused an increasing foraminiferal decimation to reach dramatic levels with the huge growth of Halifax city since late 1950s. This decimation led to dominance of opportunistic species (e.g., agglutinated forms such as Eggerella advena, and Reophax scottii), abundance of shell deformities, and complete absence of calcareous tests, leaving only their inner linings. Analysis of benthonic foraminifera in two cores from Sydney Harbour (SH) helped to compare contamination types in both areas (domestic in HH vs. industrial in SH). The domestic pollution in HH developed an agglutinated assemblage with low diversity, low abundance, and high ratios of inner linings. In SH the assemblage showed higher diversity (>22 species) and abundance (>4000 individuals), dominant calcareous record (>50%), and low inner linings (<10%) together with some species that had never been observed in such cold waters in Nova Scotia (Ammonia beccarii).

The primary area of study for this thesis is public aquarium design. Through the study of previous proposals for an aquarium in Halifax, significant aquarium facilities around the world, and the technical requirements for the re-creation of various aquatic habitats, an effective design for a Halifax aquarium can be developed. The introspective nature of major aquarium facilities often creates a significant disconnect between programmatic activities within the aquarium, and the dynamics of the building’s immediate urban context. The efficacity of exhibit design is relating content and context, allowing the visitor to become personally invested in what is being exhibited. Through an architectural design strategy that relates exhibit, building, and site, an aquarium project could serve as an effective vehicle for connecting the Halifax harbour to its dynamic waterfront and vibrant urban fabric.

Thèse (M.A.)--Queen's University at Kingston, 1998. / In Nos racines. Bibliogr. (p. 106-113). Publié aussi en version papier.

The most surprising outcome from the Victoria School of Art and Design's first half century is that it survived into its second. How it survived, and how it almost failed to, is the subject of this thesis. The main argument is that community support for the VSAD, or lack of it, was based more on pragmatic concerns, rather than on whether people liked the art being produced. Among those concerns, the most talked about was art training for employable skills. Led by Anna Leonowens, who later became the subject of the musical The King and I, well-to-do citizens in Halifax, Nova Scotia founded the VSAD in 1887. In 1925 the school changed its name to the Nova Scotia College of Art. Its current name, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, came in 1969, the year that the College became what was then the only autonomous degree granting art institution in Canada. As part of an international movement, the VSAD shared its late nineteenth century origins with similar art schools throughout North America, Europe, Britain and its colonies. Many of these schools also shared common purposes: to sharpen the graphic skills of industrial designers, to provide instruction in the fine and decorative arts, and to train drawing teachers for public and private schools. Of the different groups supporting the Halifax school, women and their organizations were the most consistent and consequential, especially Halifax's Local Council of Women. A properly funded art school, they argued, could generate jobs, stimulate economic gains, and foster higher standards of civic culture within the community. This study looks at the VSAD's supporters, teachers, and administrators during its first half century. It describes how the school, with its inadequate enrolment, budget, and space, played a limited role in generating art-related employment before the Great War. It is only with the principalship of Elizabeth Styring Nutt from 1919 to 1943, with her strong community connections and decades-long commitment to training artist-workers, that the school finally gained relative security and success. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

By combining the tools of social history, poststructural analysis, and cultural studies, this dissertation explores the perceptions and realities of late nineteenth-century retailing within Halifax, Nova Scotia. The study places business within a social, cultural, economic, and political framework, while presenting an uncommon case study in professionalization, emphasizing the heterogeneity of retailers, and redefining petty enterprise as commercial activity worthy of research. Additionally, the dissertation addresses a region and occupational group often neglected by Canadian historians. / Specifically, the following study examines the late-Victorian drive for commercial professionalization, middle-class discourse on legitimacy, and recruitment of urban shopkeepers. In an era obsessed with modernity, decades plagued with financial recession, and a region haunted by a conservative reputation, prominent shopkeepers desired an elevated status for themselves, their trade, and their city. Besides the self-representations of leading proprietors, discussions of legitimacy rested upon the views offered by credit-reporting agents, supplying wholesalers, state officials, and social reformers. The external perceptions of retailing 'others'---marginal shopkeepers and itinerant traders---also helped distinguish the 'legitimate' retailer. Contributors to the discourse may have promoted the education of professional business standards, but exclusion remained an essential strategy in designating legitimacy. / Although participants in the discourse never applied the criteria consistently, the identity of the 'legitimate' retailer involved the practice of up-to-date business methods and the application of contemporary notions regarding class, gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Unfortunately for individuals concerned with promoting professionalization, no consensus emerged for the exact definition of legitimacy. Thus, most attempts to create a homogeneous and professional shopkeeping identity failed. / Despite this failure, retailers demonstrated a remarkable degree of active agency. Women, minorities, immigrants, and Roman Catholics engaged in business in surprisingly large numbers. Meanwhile, leading shopkeepers were not a population of politically impotent inhabitants who blindly accepted Halifax's reputation for unprogressive enterprise. Finally, whether a retailer confronted modernity willingly or chose to reject the dictates of professionalism, all proprietors actively negotiated a course for success or pursued strategies lessening the burden of financial failure.

No description available.

I examined the relationships of quail and rabbits to agricultural land uses in the Virginia Piedmont during 1986-1987. Bobwhites and cottontails were censused and the associated habitat components quantified at 2 scales: macro-scale at 121 road transect stations, and a micro-scale at 87-foot transect stations. Additionally, the quail's immediate habitat was measured using variables found in the HSI model for northern bobwhite. The paucity of rabbit sightings prevented an analysis of habitat relationships for this species. Relative quail densities decreased from 1986 to 1987 along both road and foot transects (P < 0.05). A model (R² = 0.374) relating relative density of quail at stations to adjacent habitat found positive (P < 0.10) relationships for crop/crop, road/pasture, road/fallow, and "other" edges and negative (P < 0.10) relationships for road/tall grass yard edge and 3 variables describing dense overstory canopies. The presence/absence of quail at foot transect stations was related to habitat characteristics using logistic regression. Wooded fallow fields, the length (m) of pasture/fallow and forest/forest edges, and the total number of all edges present were positively related to quail presence (P < 0.001). Analysis of quail-centered plots indicated quail preferred areas with more woody cover, less grass composing the herbaceous canopy, more bare ground or light litter ( < 2 cm deep), and more honeysuckle canopy than was randomly available (P < 0.05). Management recommendations are to emphasize maximizing the number of different edges present, especially the combinations highlighted by this analysis. Efforts should be made to maximize the number of fallow fields in early successional stages. Cultivation of field borders and corners, waterways, and other idle areas should be discouraged. / Master of Science

The Halifax Asylum for the Blind, the first residential school for blind children in Canada, opened its doors in 1872 as a charitable institution with educational goals. This work explores the foundation of the Asylum in light of Halifax’s religious, economic, and educational history in the mid-nineteenth century. It highlights the influence of local personalities and the fight for financial stability that led to a changed understanding of educating blind children and adults from that of charitable need to philanthropic right.

Between 1890 and 1927 hundreds of Nova Scotian children and adults were identified as either feeble-minded or mentally deficient through investigations conducted by physicians and philanthropists in the province. The earliest of these studies were not commissioned by the provincial government but instead reflected the middle-class internalization of the eugenic discourse. Reformers, drawn often from medical, religious, educational, and philanthropic vocations, sought with ever-increasing alacrity to respond to perceived social problems, such as poverty, prostitution, venereal disease, and alcoholism, with a scientific solution. The scientific solution that they embraced was eugenics. Eugenic ideology and programs rose to popularity in Europe and North America at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Driven by social anxiety and the medicalization of reproduction, eugenic theory expressed the concerns of the middle classes that those they deemed less fit on the basis of socio-economic class, education or heredity, were reproducing at a higher rate than the ‘desirable’ segments of the population. The application of eugenic theory was shaped by cultural assumptions about gender, class and race which resulted in the same principles finding different expression in different areas across the globe. This dissertation seeks to understand how local circumstances shaped the Nova Scotian understanding of eugenics and its application. It examines the manner in which Nova Scotian physicians and philanthropists, with strong ties to both New England and Britain, participated in the transnational eugenic discourse through both professional and popular publications and organizations. Overall it argues that the expression of eugenics in Nova Scotia culminated in legislation that enforced the inspection, segregation and institutionalization of individuals who were assessed as feeble-minded. In doing so it also calls attention to the need to recognize outcomes other than sexual sterilization as legitimate expressions of eugenic policy. Subsequently the influential role played by regional circumstances in shaping what was considered an acceptable eugenic outcome as well as how eugenic policy was sought and implemented is examined. In investigating what reformers understood to be eugenic, and conversely what they considered dysgenic, a complex discourse surrounding the health of populations and reliant on ideas of gender, race, and class is revealed.