On May 31, 2008, one of Canada’s oldest needle exchange programs was forced to close its doors. Street Outreach Services (SOS), run by AIDS Vancouver Island, was evicted from its fixed site location in downtown Victoria, BC, due to years of inadequate funding and resources, and pressure from community members who blamed SOS for “public disorder” on the city streets. Without a new location from which to house the program, SOS has since operated as a mobile service. This case study documents the context surrounding the closure of SOS and the perspectives of outreach staff regarding the transition from fixed site to mobile services-only. Specifically, this study addresses the question: How have service delivery changes and restrictions impacted SOS outreach work? In addition to participant-observation, media and report analysis, primary data are derived from six semi-structured interviews with SOS outreach workers and a thematic analysis highlights common experiences of loss, isolation and changes in relationships with clients. A discussion of strategies for collective responses to ethical distress includes social justice perspectives. / Graduate

In May 1915 British soldiers stationed near Victoria instigated a retaliatory riot against the local German community for the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. The riot spanned two days, and many local residents eagerly took part in the looting and destruction of German owned businesses. Despite its uniqueness as the city’s largest race riot, scholars have under-appreciated its importance for Victoria and British Columbia’s racial narrative. The riot further signals a change in how Victorians understood Germanness. From the 1850s onwards, Victoria’s British hegemony welcomed Germans as like-minded and appropriate white settlers. I argue that race and colour shaped German lives in Victoria, for the most part positively. During the war however Germanness took on new and negative meaning. As a result, many Germans increasingly hid their German background. Germans maintained their compatibility with the British hegemony, largely thanks to their whiteness, well after German racial background became a liability. / Graduate

The City of Victoria is experiencing increased food insecurity due to its location on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, and a lack of food production in the city. The practice of urban agriculture presents a potential solution, enhancing food security by localizing resources, while increasing access and participation with local food production. Based on urban agriculture land inventories (UALIs) conducted in Portland, Vancouver and Nanaimo, my research evaluates and develops site selection criteria specific to Victoria for conducting a community garden land inventory focused on identifying land for allotment and commons gardens. I also examine the underlying barriers or supports for allotting land to urban agriculture in Victoria. To generate site selection criteria and explore the barriers and supports, I conducted interviews with urban agriculture experts, including city planners; community garden activists, educators and individuals involved in non-profits, and urban producers engaged in urban food production. The site selection criteria were further assessed as primary criteria for their application in GIS or secondary criteria to be considered during site visits. The final primary site selection criteria were land use and type, water availability (within 6.8 m), proximity to density users (within 400 m), minimum size thresholds of 1189.2 m2 for allotment gardens and 139.4 m2 for commons gardens, and excluding buildings, heritage designations, and protected green space. The analysis of the primary criteria resulted in a map illustrating 248 potential sites for community gardens in Victoria, whereby 213 were only suitable for commons gardens and 35 were suitable for allotment or commons gardens due to the larger size threshold. Four of the resulting sites were ground-truthed using site visits, and had medium to high potential for community gardens. The site visits documented secondary criteria, including proximity to community hub or prominent location, sunlight, ecologically sensitive area, cedar trees, and pollinator habitat or vegetation. Highlights from the interviews included identifying the most influential factors to allotting land to urban agriculture: the perception and awareness of urban agriculture, the community, the politics of City Council and staff support, and the costs or financial supports associated with community gardens. Overall, this research provides a model for the decision making process behind establishing an UALI, and contributes to understanding the challenges to allotting land to agriculture in the urban environment. / Graduate / 0768 / 0473 / jsauter@uvic.ca

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND: Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common physical disability in childhood with a prevalence of approximately 2-2.5 per 100 live births. Improvements in paediatric care have increased the survival of individuals with CP. Overall 90% are expected to grow into adulthood yet little is known about the outcomes of young adults with this condition. In order to provide holistic services for this population, an understanding of various aspects of their lives is required. / AIMS: To examine the outcome of young adults with CP from the perspective of perceived health status, functional ability, pain, quality of life (QOL), social participation, and healthcare service utilizations, compared with their able-bodied peers. To explore the determinants that contribute to the variation of these outcomes in the context of impairments, activity, participation, and personal and environmental factors. / METHODS: This is a population based cross sectional study of young adults with CP based on the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) model. A cohort of 335 young adults with cerebral palsy born in Victoria, aged 20 to 30 years, was recruited from the Victorian Cerebral Palsy Register. Data of typically developed peers selected from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey 2004 were used for comparison for the outcomes of perceived health, pain, and social participation. Data from a population-based sample of 751 young adults in U.S. were used for comparative analyses of QOL. Participants were asked to complete a multidimensional questionnaire by self report, or proxy report by parents or carers for those with intellectual or severe physical impairments. The questionnaire was comprised of the Quality of Life Instrument for Young Adults, the Short Form-36 Health Survey Questionnaire version 2, the Gross Motor Function Classification System, the Barthel Index, and a demographic section. / RESULTS: A total of 335 young adults with CP participated; 207 (62%) were able to self report and 128 (38%) were proxy reported. Compared with their able-bodied peers, self reported physical health in this population was lower but mental health was similar. Gross motor function, independence in self care, and limb distribution together explained 60% of the variance in the physical health data. They experienced more pain, impaired function, and reduced social participation, but despite this, their contact with medical and allied health professionals was low. Pain was linked with limb distribution and had a negative impact on functional ability, employment participation and QOL. Impaired functional ability, intellectual disability, and communication impairments had major effects in reducing social participation. Self reported QOL was similar to their peers in social relationship and environmental context domains, but was lower in the domains of physical health, psychological well-being, and role function. The impact of CP on the individuals’ QOL was on physical and functional aspects, and sometimes on social relationships, but not on psychological well-being. / CONCLUSION: This study has demonstrated that greater efforts are needed to improve the health, function, QOL, and social participation in individuals with CP, accompanied by more research to monitor the effectiveness of interventions for them.

This thesis explores how Victoria’s early childhood community negotiates colonial constructions of Aboriginality around dualisms such as Indigenous/non Indigenous and intersecting constructions of the child as ignorant or innocent of race and power both in concert and conflict with the non Indigenous early childhood community. It found a need for a reconceptualisation of Aboriginality around complexity and multiplicity as well as continuity and uniformity. Such a reconceptualisation can better address those issues of race, culture, identity and racism that see Indigenous communities marginalised within non Indigenous early childhood programs. / These negotiations around the colonial and the implications for Indigenous inclusion within the early childhood field are framed within post colonial theory which unites and connects major themes across tensions and contradictions. These themes act as a basis for each data chapter.

This study is, in effect, the compilation and the telling of the story of the establishment of the school of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception at Sunshine, it seeks to add to the quantum of knowledge available in regard to: First - the story of that particular school's establishment, Second - its derivation from and contribution to the \vider context of the development of Catholic education in Victoria, and Third - its place in the story of the growth of a suburban community as a reflection of some of the social forces which were operating in Victoria at that time. This thesis is the result of an invitation by the writer to a number of people to collaborate in constructing the storf. These people ranged from those who, as children, attended the new school, and those whose experience of its establishment was a generation removed but who, nevertheless. claim an affinity ,with the school and its society, to those archivists, professional and otherwise, whose task or desire is to keep alive the historical foundations of our culture. It this thesis is attached to any particular school of historiography it would be closest to the Annales school as outlined in The Living Past: Western Historiographical Traditions (1975). As Andrea and Schmokel describe it, The labors of love of a group of historians associated with the journal Les Annales have produced a wealth of informative detail studies about the life styles, living standards, social values and assumptions about various social groups in all periods of French and European history. (This school) simply seeks to recover knowledge about the past as it was lived. (p.266) In the light of postmodern criticism developed since 1975, this thesis acknowledges directly the ideological base from which the author is coming. Nevertheless, it remains within the orbit of Annales historiography in that it seeks to

The Tragowel Plains Irrigation District lies in the lower Loddon catchment of northern Victoria. Since the 1890s progressive development of the irrigation infrastructure of the Tragowel Plains has been accompanied by the development of irrigation induced soil salinity. In 1988 the State Government of Victoria supported the development of a community managed salinity management plan. At the same time, the water supply industry was significantly deregulated. Full cost recovery principles were applied to irrigation water pricing. Water entitlements were transformed into tradable commodities.The Tragowel Plains Salinity Plan was subsequently promoted by the Victorian government and the Loddon irrigation community as a model for encouraging structural change in a Commonwealth government facilitated regional development plan for the whole of the Loddon-Murray irrigation region. The process of developing this regional development plan revealed difference in the objectives of the various actors in this new planning process. The objective of community planners was the survival of the irrigation district. One of the objectives of Commonwealth was the transfer of water from low value use to high value use. These higher value uses were potentially elsewhere in the Murray Darling Basin. Further, these actors in the planning process used differing implicit models of the process of structural change in irrigation areas. The Commonwealth representatives had an implicit model of structural change in which farm consolidation was driven by the rate of exit from farming. They were also sceptical of the capacity of the Tragowel Plains salinity plan model to facilitate significant change in water use.

The thesis explores the connections between nineteenth century imperial anthropology, racial ‘science’, and the imposition of colonising governance on the Aborigines of Port Phillip/Victoria between 1835 and 1888. It explores the way that particular, albeit contested, images of Aborigines ‘became legislative’. It surveys the declining influence of liberal and Evangelical ‘philanthropy’ at the end of the 1830s, the pragmatic moral slippages that transformed humanitarian gestures into colonial terror, and the part played by the Australians in the emergence of the concept of race as the chief vector of colonial power. (For complete abstract open document)

Otitis media and consequent hearing loss are known to be high in Koori communities. Previous research on otitis media in Koori communities has focused on its identification, treatment and management. Little research has focused on the prevention of otitis media. Victorian Aboriginal communities often have small populations which result in small sample sizes for research projects. Consequently use of traditional quantitative methods to measure of change arising from health interventions can be problematic. The aim of the research was to describe Koori children’s otitis media risk factors using a Koori research method in order to develop, implement and evaluate preventative interventions.

This thesis studies migration, work and community among Italian speakers in the Walhalla (situated in Victoria, Australia) gold mining district between 1865 and 1915, and analyzes the outcomes for those who either lived here for a time (as ‘sojourners’ in conventional historical parlance) or settled permanently in the district. It proposes to look way from the ‘big picture’ historical approach to Italian settlement in Australia, with its focus upon the large migrant communities in the capital cities, and instead examines the finer texture of small places and particular lives. The thesis offers a reconstructed history of Walhalla’s Italian community that challenges the prevailing emphasis of the district’s Anglo-centric history by using seemingly small and ‘insignificant’ events in order to develop broader themes which test and re-define ‘big picture’ history. In doing so, the thesis seeks to push the boundaries of understanding about what early Italians may have made of their lives, in terms of the experiences of specific individuals and family groups. / Firstly, the thesis questions the adequacy of contemporary understanding of what it means ‘to migrate’, and its use in historical analysis. It employs the Walhalla study in order to re-assess and re-apply the term ‘migration’ so as to provide a broader and better understanding of its meaning to Italians in a nineteenth century context. Has the word ‘migration’ changed over time, or has its use oversimplified and formularized a complex and diverse process in time, place and belonging? Is there a useful place for re-applying the term in a more constructive and inclusive way? / Secondly, the thesis re-examines and reconsiders the concepts of ‘migrant’, ‘sojourner’ and ‘work/migrant cluster’ and their application in our historiography. In particular, it focuses on the role of sojourners and their place within the migration process. A distinction between ‘migrant’ and ‘sojourner’ can only be drawn artificially and with hindsight and the use of these expressions in conventional historiography is unhelpful. Their application is problematic as strategies put into place prior to emigration could shift after arrival and the decision to settle permanently could be an imperceptible process made on an individual basis over time. / Thirdly, the thesis evaluates Charles Price’s well-accepted theory that migrant settlements often developed in certain Australian districts because pioneer migrants were involved in the same type of work which, in turn, led to the ‘accidental’ development of migrant communities. Should Price’s theory be re-formulated to address the possibility that early migrant settlements may have been more complex than previously understood, and that there were many facets contributing to the evolution of a migrant community not exclusively attributable to one occupational group? / Fourthly, the thesis reviews and examines the concept of ‘community’, its construction and what it may have meant to an early settler society and Italians within it. It explores the possibility that our national history may have been more inclusive, fluid and open ended than previously understood and that to completely separate, or isolate, different national or ethnic groups may be an incorrect modelling of early Victorian settlements. The thesis questions whether a broader theory should be applied to challenge the idea of a dominant British versus a non-British position towards the construction of ‘community’. By re-constructing an Italian community, the thesis teases out the dynamics at work within the Italian migrant settlement and its interaction and dialogue with Walhalla’s wider society. / My thesis emphasizes the relevance of micro-studies of this nature and its findings need to be extended by studies of other minority groups in other small places. Their accumulated implications should influence the broader historical understanding of the national and international patterns of Italian immigrant settlement in Australia and other New World countries.