Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1993. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

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Colonialism in twentieth century Canada has operated as a totalizing discourse, administered not by the force of a colonizing power, but by the mimicry of descendants from the constructed British imperial centre. These anglo-celtic descendants built a colonial identity that in its ideal manifestation asserted universal dominance and control, demanding that all difference assimilate or cease to exist. The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), a Canadian women's patriotic organization formed in 1900 and still in existence, is used to represent this colonial identity; a hegemonic process that was constantly changing, and produced in a recursive relationship to the threats and resistance that, at specific moments, challenged its composition. Tracing the historical/cultural geography of the IODE reveals the shifting focus of Canadian identity from imperial space to national space. This shift was produced in a multiplicity of geographic locations that offer a complicated challenge to theories of 'public' and 'private', of masculine and feminine and the 'everyday' and the 'theoretical'. Archival sources from across Canada, interviews with members of the IODE provide the primary sources.