This thesis studies the relationships between newcomers employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Simpson and the Ts’msyen people who came to live outside the fort from its establishment in Ts’msyen territory in 1834 until the founding of a Christian Ts’msyen village at Metlakatla in 1862. I argue that a mutually intelligible – if not equally understood – world was developed at this site in which the lives of these newcomers and local Ts’msyen people became intertwined and somewhat interdependent. While this world was not characterized by universal conditions of fellowship and trust it did involve shared Ts’msyen-newcomer participation in significant cultural activities, the repurposing or remaking of each other’s customs, and jointly developed practices in which customs from both groups were intermingled. I propose that some of these practices, particularly those of law and marriage, can be considered as culturally hybrid. This study suggests the compromised position of the HBC on the northern Northwest Coast, Ts’msyen cultural disposition, and dynamics of power within and between these groups fostered the development a mutually intelligible world and hybrid Ts’msyen-newcomer practices. Far from any centre of British power, greatly outnumbered by the Ts’msyen, and soon out-armed, the newcomers of Fort Simpson were particularly vulnerable. Ts’msyen people, it is claimed, generally valued innovation and had a long-established system for acquiring ownership of changes brought from outside into their communities. Ts’msyen women had a special role in this process. Moreover, both the Ts’msyen and the newcomers had hierarchically structured societies in which displays of power and authority were important. These local circumstances were fundamental to the formation of the hybrid institutions of marriage and law at Fort Simpson/Laxłgu’alaams and to the other complex social and cultural interactions of the two groups documented here. While this study acknowledges that Ts’msyen and newcomer people had distinct motivations for entering relationships with each other, for sharing and cross-participating in customs of the other, and for developing new joint and hybrid practices, it argues that for both groups power and authority were crucial factors. The distinct circumstances which made a mutually intelligible world possible at Fort Simpson/Laxłgu’alaams came to an end in 1862. The return of smallpox in Ts’msyen territory, the removal of the missionary William Duncan and his followers from Fort Simpson to Metlakatla, and the increasing colonial regulation of Indigenous people brought an end to the brief period of accommodation and collaboration between HBC newcomers and Ts’msyen people.

This study has attempted to analyse the economic base of an urban Chinese community in Victoria, British Columbia, from its earliest beginnings in 1853 until 1947. Two groupings, merchants and service occupations have been delineated and described through time using the results of both field-work and document research. The problem was to determine the nature and extent of the economic enterprises included within these groupings, their relationship to the social context of cultural contact in which they functioned and the resultant effect of this con-text in terms of economic adaptation, diversification and overall change. From the data it was apparent that both merchant and service activities went through a period of development, expand¬ing in the number of both businesses and personnel involved during a period of increasing social stress between the Chinese community and the host society. This also coincided with intense organizational and associational activity within the Chinese community. Diversification is apparent in both types of activity during this period as merchant and service personnel seek to maximize gain in their separate market areas. Adaptation is manifested as merchants manipulated assets and invested in economic enterprises relying on the host community as clientele. This is primarily manifested through large investment in in-tensive agricultural activity, through purchase of land and the establishment of greenhouses. The variables effecting this change reflect the preferable socio-economic position of the merchant. The service occupations, on the other hand, had expanded in proportion to the demand for various goods and services within the host community. They provided a situation of contact, minimal capital investment and lower incomes. When the merchants diversified their interest to incorporate the same market area, they became reliant on the host community as clientele but faced competition from the same in a situation where they had no established mechanisms for contact. By 1947 there were relatively few Chinese remaining in the traditional merchant activity and minimal numbers of service businesses. The exceptions were the development of localized retail and wholesale produce redistribution outlets and restaurants, which provided economic enterprises for numerous Chinese families. Some were those related to segments of the traditional merchant group who had moved into intensive agriculture, and others consisted of those involved in the higher income activities of the service group. Notably the Exclusion Act and changing aspects of main-land China effectively necessitated the readjustment of the clientele on which the Chinese merchant had depended. Similarily, those employed in service occupations had no in-coming personnel to replenish their numbers and relatively little chance for adaptation with a lower socio-economic position and a declining demand for their goods and services. In conclusion the social environment of the overseas Chinese community in Victoria forced varying degrees of economic adaptation and diversification, manifested by utilization of the host community's economic system as the only means of subsistence, in the very area from which the host society had sought relentlessly to remove the presence of Chinese economic activity.

At the turn of the twentieth century, apples served as a catalyst for far-reaching social and environmental change in the North American West. As people debated the future of North American society as a rural or urban civilization, rural advocates found their answer in horticulture. Steadfast in their conviction that urban environments were corrupt, immoral, and disordered, people on both sides of the international boundary engaged in a boisterous promotional campaign that culminated with the creation of an orcharding landscape that spanned British Columbia, Washington State, and Oregon. Consequently, countless communities found new purpose or came into existence organized around the cultivation of apples and other assorted fruits. Fully aware of negative stereotypes that depicted farming as backwards and unfulfilling, horticulturists argued that fruit farming would lead to the creation of a modern countryside. Guided by scientific agriculture, refined and intelligent settlers would transform rural life by uniting in partnership with “Dame Nature,” leading to bountiful harvests as nature was finished to its “intended end.” As a result, the orcharding landscape would organize an alternative modernity that stood in juxtaposition to the urban-industrial axis of development. Despite their location in different political projects, fruit farmers on either side of the International Boundary bore striking affinities that were affirmed and reinforced through publications, associations, exhibitions, and educational initiatives, underlining the significance of the border as a vantage to appreciate divisions as well as continuities. While the creation of a modern countryside was sustained by high hopes, growers did not anticipate that nature’s bounty would in many instances stand as a curse rather than a blessing. Through two world wars, growers wrestled with the changing contours of rural life, particularly as it related to rural growth. While orcharding endured, its original conception as the nucleus of a progressive and middle class rural society did not.

This dissertation examines the history of the creation and development of the concept of anticipation, a pattern of heredity found in several diseases (e.g. Huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy), in which an illness manifests itself earlier and often more severely in successive generations. It reconstructs major arguments in twentieth-century debates about anticipation and analyzes the relations between different research communities and schools of thought. Developments in cutting-edge medicine, biology, and genetics are analyzed; many of these developments were centered in Britain, but saw significant contributions by people working in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and North America. Chapter one traces precursor notions in psychiatric and hereditarian thought from 1840 to the coining of the term ‘anticipation’ by the ophthalmologist Edward Nettleship in 1905. Key roles in the following chapters are played by several figures. Prior to World War II, these include: the neuropathologist F.W. Mott, whose advocacy during 1911- 1927 led to anticipation being called “Mott’s law”; the biometrician and eugenicist Karl Pearson, who opposed Mott on methodological and political grounds; and two politically and theoretically opposed Germans – Ernst Rüdin, a leading psychiatrist and eugenicist who came to reject anticipation, and Richard Goldschmidt, a geneticist who offered a peculiar Mendelian explanation. The British psychiatrist and human geneticist, Lionel Penrose, makes a first interwar appearance, but becomes crucial to the story after World War II due to his systematic dismissal of anticipation, which discredited the notion on orthodox Mendelian grounds. The final chapters highlight the contributions of Dutch neurologist Christiaan Höweler, whose 1980s work demonstrated a major hole in Penrose’s reasoning, and British geneticist Peter Harper, whose research helped demonstrate that expanding trinucleotide repeats accounted for the transgenerational worsening without contradicting Mendel and resurrected anticipation as scientifically legitimate. Reception of the concept of anticipation is traced across the century through the examination of textbooks used in different fields. This dissertation argues against established positions regarding the history of the concept, including claims that anticipation’s association with eugenics adequately explains the rejection of the notion after 1945. Rejected, in fact, by many eugenicists from 1912, anticipation was used by physicians until the 1960s.

ABSTRACT The Nitinaht language and traditional knowledge that was usually transmitted from the older to the younger family members is on the verge of being lost forever. As a member of a Nitinaht family, I have concentrated on finding the Elders in our family, who are spread all over Vancouver Island, in an attempt to try to find a way to preserve this invaluable knowledge and to pass it on to future generations. This information was recorded and will be presented through interactive multimedia, which allows for the transmission of oral information such as stories, photographs, interviews, family trees, history, language and anecdotes. Since modern technology and traditional knowledge seem at the opposite ends of the spectrum, the research also looked into the acceptability of this method of transmission. Much traditional knowledge is confidential, and thus is not part of the written dissertation; however, much information is included without disrespect for our beliefs as ideas for future research. The written documentation includes a history of our family, discussion of the beauty and uniqueness of the Diitidaht (Nitinaht) language, a narration of our last Puku’u basket weaver, and a description of the “Family First” interactive multimedia program.

During the 1740’s, Hudson Bay went from an obscure backwater of the British Empire to a locus of colonial ambition. Arthur Dobbs revitalized Northwest Passage exploration, generating new information about the region’s environment and indigenous peoples. This study explores evolving English and British representations of Hudson Bay’s climate and landscape in travel and natural history writing, and probes British anxieties about foreign environments. I demonstrate how Dobbs’ ideology of improvement optimistically re-imagined the North, opening a new discursive space wherein the Subarctic could be favourably described and colonized. I examine how Hudson Bay explorers’ responses to difficulties in the Arctic and Subarctic were seen to embody, even amplify, central principles and features of eighteenth-century British culture and identity. Finally, I investigate how latitude served as a benchmark for civilization and savagery, subjugating the Lowland Cree and Inuit to British visions of settlement and improvement in their home territories.

This thesis provides a detailed account of the introduction, use, and repeal of the alternative vote (AV) in British Columbia in the 1950s. It argues that British Columbians, familiar with polarized, two-party politics, were dismissive of majority representation. Conversely, the public expressed a strong preference for local representation during discussions of redistribution. While the Liberal and Conservative Coalition parties introduced AV to keep the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation from forming a government, party members were often stronger proponents of electoral reform than their leaders. Nevertheless, the system was debated in terms of democratic values. This was true of electoral reform debates across Canada, including federal debates on proportional representation. Contrary to histories that focus solely on the 1952 and 1953 AV elections and W.A.C. Bennett and Social Credit, this project traces the origins of the alternative vote in BC from the 1940s forward, including ongoing discussions of the single transferable vote (STV) and a points system. The history of BC’s provincial party system in the twentieth century is included in order to establish how polarized politics affected British Columbians’ attachment to the idea of local representation. This thesis contends that the public’s preference for plurality voting contributed to its dismissal of AV: even those who ranked multiple candidates did not necessarily endorse the system. This project also looks at the alternative vote debates in the 1970s and redistribution commissions in BC, particularly the 1978 Eckardt Commission, in order to better understand British Columbians’ attachment to local representation and first-past-the-post, and their dismissal of a preferential system that encouraged them to rank candidates. Social Credit favoured regional representation over representation by population during the redistribution process, and the theme of local representation has consistently framed discussions of electoral reform in British Columbia, including the 2004 BC Citizens’ Assembly’s STV proposal.

The rapid expansion of the postwar commercial aviation industry in Canada was made possible, in part, by the thousands of wartime pilots who filled the ranks of the nation’s major airlines beginning in 1944. Through mentorship of subsequent generations of peacetime aviators, wartime pilots had lasting impacts on the Canadian commercial aviation industry during their time flying for companies such as Trans Canada Airlines (TCA). Following an examination of the agreements made between the Royal Canadian Air Force and TCA between 1944 and 1945 for the transfer of pilots between the two organizations, this thesis tracks the development of the professional culture of wartime RCAF aviators through an analysis of their training and subsequent operational flying during the war. It concludes that while there were numerous benefits for commercial aviation in Canada through this process, there were, likewise, a series of negative repercussions for the safety of the Canadian aviation industry.

This collaborative study investigates the events that led to the repatriation of the Stone T’xwelátse from the Burke Museum of Natural History, University of Washington Seattle, USA to the Noxwsá7aq people of Deming Washington, USA and to the Stó:lō people of Chilliwack, B.C. Canada. Stone T’xwelátse is the first ancestor of the Chilliwack people who was transformed to stone by the transformer This research grew out of the desire to learn about and share the positive lessons learned during the repatriation process and to investigate if these experiences could benefit repatriation processes in Canada, specifically the province of B.C. This work establishes the current legal setting for cultural repatriation processes in Canada, the United States, and internationally, tells the ancient and contemporary story of Stone T’xwelátse, and examines the impact of Indigenous law, differing worldviews, community capacity, and relationships on cultural repatriation processes. An analysis of the conflict is presented through the identification of the key challenges and successes. The events of the repatriation, as told by the research participants, support the argument for the implementation of John Paul Lederach’s Conflict Transformation Theory practices in future cultural repatriation processes. Using Participatory Action Research and Indigenous Research methodologies data was gathered through participant interviews to form the result of the study: How to Work Together in a Good Way: Recommendations for the Future for Museums, Communities, and Individuals from the Participants of the Stone T’xwelátse Repatriation Research Project and Museum Professionals. These recommendations were formed to share the lessons learned from the Stone T’xwelátse repatriation and also to state changes that the participants would like to see implemented in cultural repatriation processes in Canada. Stone T’xwelátse is now with the Stó:lō people fulfilling his role to teach the people “how to live together in a good way.”