The intent of this study was to gain an appreciation for the experiences of mothers whose parental rights have been permanently severed through child welfare court orders of Crown Wardship with No Access. The study utilized an explorative, qualitative design approach and included semi-structured, in-depth interviews with four women. Participant text and found poetry presented the voice of mothers, something not often the focus in the child welfare literature. Themes of betrayal, loss, anger, and disenfranchised grief were reported in the research findings. The role of the social worker emerged as an important factor influencing the mothers. This study found that mothers need acknowledgment for their losses and support for their grief. Consideration for social work implications and further research are also discussed.

Data on the occurrence of freshwater fishes in Ontario lakes were used to evaluate the scale of the processes that are primarily responsible for shaping their distributions and patterns of diversity. In Chapter 2 it is shown that, regardless of the scale of analysis, the most important factors structuring their distributions are climatic measures of energy, suggesting that species tend to be able to survive heterogeneous conditions falling within large areas encompassing their climatic affinities. In Chapter 3 it is shown that the relationship between species richness and energy (annual potential evapotranspiration) changes according to the scale on which it is measured. The species-energy relationship is weak at the local scale and stronger and steeper at increasing regional scales. This scale dependence is due to the ability of high energy regions to accommodate relatively large numbers of rare or infrequent species, and reflects the regional scale at which species respond to environmental gradients, particularly those related to energy. In Chapter 4 the relationship between local and regional species richness is examined. It is found that mean richness of lakes is linearly related to the species richness of the watersheds in which they reside. Together, the results point to the importance of processes that are regional in scale for shaping species' distributions and patterns of diversity.

The purpose of this study is to understand why and how media education became legitimate in the Ontario educational system in the 1980s. The theoretical focus is on how a new social movement (the new social movement in Ontario) led to the legitimation of a new social curriculum (the media education program). This study on media education in Ontario is contextualized in the epochal shift to the information society. Adopting the approach of historical sociology, it documents the influence of those social forces which gave rise to media education and investigates how key individuals brought media education into schools. In the 1970s and 1980s, the societal shift brought with it rapid development in media technologies and induced new social tensions. This study finds that the conceptualization of the mass media as "invisible curriculum," the ideology of techno-cultural nationalism and the moral controversy over media sex and violence directed public attention to the importance of media literacy. The media literacy movement in Ontario subsequently placed media education in the formal school curriculum. Legitimating media education can be regarded as a social and educational response to the technological changes in the information age. This study also indicates that less powerful groups in the community and the educational field were able to put a body of low-status knowledge into the formal school curriculum. In order to analyze the process from social movement to subject formation, a theoretical framework is put forward identifying strong justification, effective lobbying, proper positioning and unofficial support for curriculum-building as the four key elements for legitimating a new social curriculum. Instead of justifying media education in terms of utilitarian and academic values, the advocates emphasized the pragmatic solution provided by the new curriculum to social problems. The manipulation of public support by creating a "climate of opinion" was vital to the success of lobbying. "Subject inhabitancy" was an effective way to find a curricular niche for a new social curriculum. Finally, the advocates' support for the curriculum development and implementation played an important role in strengthening the government's confidence in mandating a new program.

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between creditor/debtor law and broader political, economic, and social relations in Upper Canada before 1812. The research reviews the history of credit relations in early Upper Canada through a critical reassessment of both the historiographic debates and available primary legal and archival sources. Recent historical writing, in seeking out the community based nature of creditor/debtor relations has often tended to overlook the extent to which social, political, and economic conflicts were also played out in the arena of credit and debt. In early Upper Canada, matters relating to credit and debt were not infrequently the focus of conflicts about constitutionalism and the rights of colonial subjects. The thesis argues for a re-framing of the study of creditor/debtor relations to take account of the overall context of economic inequality. Feminist historical and theoretical work is drawn upon to expand conventional understandings of the economic, and to argue that local or communal based relations are not always consensual. The thesis draws a connection between social inequality, political repression, constitutional politics and the private law of property, credit, and debt. It asserts that early Upper Canadian creditor/ debtor relations were expressive of the struggle over the kinds of institutions that would represent the new polity, and of a sensibility among at least some portion of the population that the rule of law should apply to a wider range of people than those who made up the elite. It is found that the role of certain financial instruments and the contents of certain court records has been misunderstood. These findings change our understanding of the 1794 court reforms in Upper Canada, which established an English-style Court of King's Bench. It is also found that debtor/creditor law, in particular the seizure of land for debt in Upper Canada (a remedy that was not available in England) impacted upon the constitutional politics of the time.

In an upland forest in the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), Ontario, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in precipitation increased with passage through a forest canopy, as throughfall and stemflow. A maximum mean concentration of 67 mg/l occurred in the forest floor, which decreased to 11 mg/l in the B horizon, as DOC was sequestered in the soil. High DOC concentrations were measured in an ephemeral stream draining the upland, as a result of saturated overland flow, and the leaching of litter and woody material. / Porewater DOC concentrations decreased with depth in two bogs. The porewater DOC was comprised primarily of acidic fractions (70 to 87%), with a predominance of hydrophobic acids. The bogs were significant sources of DOC, exporting between 17.2 and 29.4 g DOC/m$ sp2$ over the study period. In 1993, a bog was flooded simulating the creation of a hydroelectric reservoir, and resulting in significant increases in porewater DOC concentrations at the surface. A maximum surface concentration of 223 mg/l was measured in late September. The flooding of the bog also resulted in significant increases in DOC concentrations in the draining waters, with the outflow of the watershed increasing from a mean of 20.5 mg/l in 1992, to 14.7 mg/l in 1993.

This study analysed why children under four years old were admitted to care, and whether they suffered harm due to abuse or neglect, based on file documentation regarding all 175 admissions, involving 129 children and 93 mothers, by one Ontario Children's Aid Society between 1992 and 1996. Using the Ontario Child Welfare Eligibility Spectrum to classify reasons for admission, more admissions were due to risks defined under Caregiver Capacity than Harm by Commission or Omission. Mothers' background and lack of resources were common factors. Evidence of harm was often hard to establish but was rated as clear or extreme in 12% of cases. Differences related to fathers' status, number and age of children in the home, and history of agency involvement were found between cases where children suffered severe harm due to abuse or neglect, and cases where they did not, but these differences were not statistically significant.

The convergence of compelling evidence that transmission of HIV from a pregnant woman living with HIV to her foetus can be significantly interrupted due to advances in antiretroviral and obstetrical interventions, and worrisome epidemiologic data documenting a rise in HIV infection among Canadian women, spurred the development in Canada and world wide of policies and programmes aimed at increasing the number of pregnant women who are tested for HIV. Responding to innovative therapy reducing perinatal HIV transmission risk by increasing the number of pregnant women who agree to test for HIV is clearly an important prevention objective. However, the process must be accomplished in a way that is of most benefit to the pregnant woman herself and in a way that does not compromise a pregnant woman's rights to the established Canadian principles of HIV counselling and testing. / Working with pregnant women in Ontario, the province with the highest level of HIV infection among Canadian women, this thesis articulates and interprets their experiences of prenatal HIV counselling and testing and details their perspectives on best practices. The pregnant women's evidence-based recommendations for the re-design of prenatal HIV testing programmes are provided. These unique data have important utility for federal and provincial policy makers as HIV counselling and testing policies and programmes that encompass and are grounded in pregnant womens' experiences and perspectives are likely to be maximally acceptable and thereby increase the number of pregnant women who can be apprised of prophylactic treatment to take care of their own health needs as well as those of their unborn children. / In order for pregnant women to increase control over their own health and that of their unborn children, there is clear value in all pregnant women being afforded the opportunity to know their HIV status. However, the voices of the women in this study suggest that the autonomy rights of pregnant women may well be at risk in a programme in which the current emphasis is on potential HIV infection of the foetus rather than on potential or actual infection of the pregnant woman.

A hydrological and biogeochemical study was undertaken at the Mer Bleue bog, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada from May 22, 1998 to May 21, 1999. Basin runoff was generated by groundwater discharge at the peatland margin, and groundwater discharge was controlled by hydraulic gradients and horizontal hydraulic conductivities (Kh). Flux of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) measured at the basin outflow was 8.3 g C m-2 yr-1 and compared to within 23% of DOC flux estimated using a Dupuit approximation of seepage during the ice-free season. Annual DOC flux was 11% of the annual carbon sink. / Flownet analysis showed that seasonal patterns of groundwater flow were controlled by boundary condition changes that resulted from precipitation and evapotranspiration events. A pattern of recharge was most common over the hydrological year, but a discharge pattern was observed during a 40 day groundwater flow reversal. Evaluation of the peatland recharge-discharge function using in situ sodium concentrations and a diffusion model revealed that the peatland is a long-term recharge system. It is hypothesized that peatland biogeochemical function is controlled by long-term recharge despite annual occurrence of groundwater flow reversals.

An assemblage of prehistoric Huron chipped stone tools has been analyzed in terms of its inherently dynamic properties. It is hypothesized that the series of measurements and ratios that has been developed is more efficient than existing systems for gauging the changing nature of these implements over time. The statistical evaluation of the data revealed strong linear relationships between various pairs of variables, such as projectile point length and tip angle and end scraper bit edge angles and bit height. It was found that comparing these data to other attributes of these tools, such as use-wear traces and reduction techniques, can be very informative about how each category of tools changed through manufacture, use, and maintenance. The results of this analysis were then compared to those of a more traditional study of a contemporaneous collection of Huron stone tools (Poulton, 1985), demonstrating the utility of the techniques developed.

Knowledge of price responsiveness of energy is important for designing effective price-based controls to curb the GHG emissions in Canada. The translog and logit models are developed in this study to analyze the demand for four types of energy inputs: coal, electricity, natural gas and refined petroleum products in Ontario's pulp and paper industry. The results suggest that the industry is inelastic to price change of energy consumed. Tests indicate that the translog model behaves slightly better than the logit model. The translog model was then applied to study the feasibility of imposing a carbon tax on energy inputs on Ontario's pulp and paper industry, which indicated that this sector does not seem to response to changes in energy inputs prices. Therefore, a carbon tax does not seem to be a good policy option for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in this sector.