Despite its growing importance in industrialized nations, the service sector has received relatively little attention from economic geographers in recent debates over the nature and significance of the current processes of change affecting contemporary capitalism. This lack of attention means that we have little detailed knowledge about how the various industries that comprise the service sector are restructuring their operations and how these processes, in turn, influence broader economic change. This thesis goes some way toward redressing this imbalance by studying the evolving structure of two key sectors of the Montreal tourism industry--hotels and travel agencies. / I begin with an overview of past attempts to understand the changing role of the service sector in developed economies. Despite their weaknesses new political economy frameworks are shown to perhaps provide the best starting point for the development of a more 'services informed' approach to understanding current economic change. / In an attempt to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of applying such approaches to the study of services I first review their ability to explain and predict changes currently taking place in the tourism industry as a whole. This is followed by a discussion of the empirical findings of the thesis based on 103 interviews with managers and owners of Montreal hotels and travel agencies. I focus on the following key areas: the evolving competitive environment, changes in corporate organization, the adoption of new technologies and shifts in labour use. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Golden Square Mile is well known as the historic domain of Montreal's anglophone elite. Its idyllic setting on the mountainside, overlooking the city and the St Lawrence River, was a natural magnet for wealthy nineteenth-century families, just as it had been in the days of fur traders such as James McGill. As an urban environment, however, the Golden Square Mile was far more complicated than the sum of its mansions. Despite a long history of habitation by gentlemen farmers, the "GSM" took shape only as of mid-century, accompanying the rise of capitalist institutions and the middle classes. Furthermore, it was the result of a considerable amount of planning and salesmanship, which made fortunes for some landowners and speculators even before the first mansions appeared. The anglophone, Protestant character of the area also had to be encouraged, reflecting a growing cultural dichotomy within Montreal society. This thesis considers the Golden Square Mile within the context of urban history: it is a study of town planning, land ownership, architecture, and social geography. It also considers the built environment as a venue for broader social and cultural change.

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No description available.

During the language debates of the 1960s, Montreal's Italian community found itself in the middle of a conflict between Anglophones and Francophones. Forced to chose, the Italian community aligned itself with Anglophones. / The portrait which has been cast by numerous authors evokes the image of an Italian immigrant used as a pawn in a fight which generally was not his and which he could not understand. / An examination of the Italian press gives us a different image. St. Leonard represented more than a fight over the language issue. It was as much a dispute over the status of ethnic minorities in Quebec as it was over the language question. This study examines the immigrant's "Italianita" and how it helped shape his response to the ethnic tensions in St. Leonard.

Urban spaces and their meanings are continually reinvented by daily life and representational practices. Public spaces provide an avenue to analyse the construction and contestation of political and social power in the city. The geography of Montreal's gay men's communities underwent profound changes during the 1980s. The traditional gay areas of the downtown core and the "Red Light" districts have disappeared in favour of a new gay quarter, the Village. This transformation raises questions about the exercise of power in space since the heart of the gay neighbourhood and the downtown area were one in the same. The accumulated symbolism of downtown Montreal was contested and subverted by the growing visibility of sexual minorities. This analysis of urban space reflects a transformation in public discourse that evolved from a tight control of morals, to the confinement of private morality to private spaces, and finally to the constitution of a discourse centered on human rights. A variety of qualitative methods including interviews and documentary sources, such as the community press, have been used to show the political dimension of public space and the manipulation of the symbolic economy allowing the establishment of rights to urban space. / Dominion Square is the spatial focus around which collective and social phenomena have been analysed. The impacts of these phenomena on our collective imaginations have been reconstructed. The transformation of central urban space by modernist architecture and urban functionalism, reconfigured public spaces in the downtown core, along with its definitions, its representations and its control. A mapping of gay geographic imagination shows the importance of sexuality, language, social class, religion and national identities in the development of a sense of belonging in space. It has been shown that gay geographic imagination is necessarily linked to other aspects of identity and diverse manifestations of power. This imagination questioned the privileged representations of hegemonic social values through the practices of daily life, the subversion of the meaning of space and political protest. Police repression showed itself to be only one of the strategies used by the municipal establishment in its censorship practices.

No description available.

This thesis examines the Lebanese-Syrian Orthodox community of Montreal between 1905-1950 primarily through information found in the marriage registers of the two Orthodox churches. The first purpose of this study is to evaluate the importance of the three pillars of this ethno-religious group's culture--religion, family and hometown. The second purpose is to draw a composite of this immigrant community based on the information provided in the valuable source of an immigrant church's records. This study serves as a beginning for further studies of the Lebanese-Syrian Orthodox community in Montreal, this ethno-religious group's largest and founding community in Canada.

This study examines the cholera epidemic in Montreal during the summer of 1832, focusing on the Montreal Board of Health, the public health regulations, medical involvement on the Board, and the voluntary movement. Using newspapers, judicial documents, and correspondence, it seeks to re-examine the epidemic to further the understanding of the modernization of the Canadian state in the area of public health. / Many of the histories concerning the modernization of the Lower Canadian state have focussed on the 1837 rebellions as a breaking point between the 'old' state and the 'modern' state. If modernization can be equated with the process of increased state influence on society, then the 1832 epidemic provided an opportunity for the government to become more involved in the social regulation of individual lives. And the process was not solely influenced by the 'state,' as citizen committees played a role during the epidemic. Nor must Lower Canada be seen in a vacuum, as the shifts that occurred in Montreal during the epidemic coincided with those taking place in London, Paris and New York. / An analysis of the state during the epidemic suggests its growing significance in individual lives, particularly those of the poor. The appearance of cholera hospitals, the use and enforcement of public health regulations by a board of health, and the social assistance to the immigrants, orphans, and widows illustrate this modernizing state.

Despite the recognition that culturally diverse groups of children in low income areas are at elevated risk for future health problems, no dietary/nutritional studies have been reported on this population. Children aged 9-12 were sampled from schools selected on the basis of a poverty index and ethnicity. Nutritional information (24-hour recall, heights and weights) indicated children were growing well but a high proportion were overweight. A comparison of reported energy intake to calculated BMR indicated that overweight children under-estimated their intakes. Mean intakes met the Canadian RNIs except for calcium in 10-12 year old girls. Nutrient intake was related to family size, income and ethnic origin. Validation of two alternative tools to measure fat intake proved unsuccessful. In conclusion, dietary intake for these school children was adequate for all nutrients except calcium in 10-12 year old girls, but for approximately 40% of children, intake exceeded energy requirements.