Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

What happens after a place has been exploited, isolated, and neglected? What occurs when that place is bound – confined – by impenetrable voids of dereliction? Its core, slowing diffracting, with no opportunity to perceive outward – beyond the derelict terrain to the boundless expanses of earth and water that have perpetuated its vitality. And what then, if for a moment, this decaying place is given a view beyond these boundaries? Deindustrialization has invariably altered modern cultural conceptions of control over nature. The terrain remaining after decades of resource exploitation is composed of deep voids and fissures that reside physically, psychologically, and theoretically in-between the accepted realms of culture and nature. This thesis explores the perversion and dissolution of these two opposing realms within the sublime and fantastical derelict landscape of a declining town. Deindustrial voids are considered as both barrier and bridge; serving as persistent symbolic reminders of the volatile and hubristic relationship between culture and nature, and offering potential reconnection to the natural landscape of a city’s foundation. Reacting to collective nostalgia through memorialisation, totemism, and erasure, typical design interventions continue to prioritize cultural domination and emphasize the designer as creator in order to reassert control over the chaos of deindustrialization, often resulting in placeless infilling of the void. Ideas of extimacy, alterity, and ruination, with influences from the fields of industrial archaeology and landscape architecture, ground contemporary reactions to the deindustrial void and explore the role of landscape in the creation and fragmentation of ideas of place for the dissolving North American industrial city. Both inspired and situated within the declining former town of Fort William, Ontario, this thesis surveys an abandoned industrial corridor that encircles the town, severing it from the liminal water’s edge and landscape beyond. Viewed as a palimpsest, this site is considered beyond its most recent industrial usage to expose a place-specific natural/cultural terrain comprised of material and immaterial layers of evolution and exploitation. This thesis positions the architect as perceiver, hoping to inspire sensitivity, pause, and reflection and resists ideas of forced transformation as a means of outwardly expressing progress. It immerses itself within the in-between places that blur preconceived boundaries – natural and cultural, past and future, controlled and chaotic – in order to encounter the inherent existential qualities of a site in transition.

What happens after a place has been exploited, isolated, and neglected? What occurs when that place is bound – confined – by impenetrable voids of dereliction? Its core, slowing diffracting, with no opportunity to perceive outward – beyond the derelict terrain to the boundless expanses of earth and water that have perpetuated its vitality. And what then, if for a moment, this decaying place is given a view beyond these boundaries? Deindustrialization has invariably altered modern cultural conceptions of control over nature. The terrain remaining after decades of resource exploitation is composed of deep voids and fissures that reside physically, psychologically, and theoretically in-between the accepted realms of culture and nature. This thesis explores the perversion and dissolution of these two opposing realms within the sublime and fantastical derelict landscape of a declining town. Deindustrial voids are considered as both barrier and bridge; serving as persistent symbolic reminders of the volatile and hubristic relationship between culture and nature, and offering potential reconnection to the natural landscape of a city’s foundation. Reacting to collective nostalgia through memorialisation, totemism, and erasure, typical design interventions continue to prioritize cultural domination and emphasize the designer as creator in order to reassert control over the chaos of deindustrialization, often resulting in placeless infilling of the void. Ideas of extimacy, alterity, and ruination, with influences from the fields of industrial archaeology and landscape architecture, ground contemporary reactions to the deindustrial void and explore the role of landscape in the creation and fragmentation of ideas of place for the dissolving North American industrial city. Both inspired and situated within the declining former town of Fort William, Ontario, this thesis surveys an abandoned industrial corridor that encircles the town, severing it from the liminal water’s edge and landscape beyond. Viewed as a palimpsest, this site is considered beyond its most recent industrial usage to expose a place-specific natural/cultural terrain comprised of material and immaterial layers of evolution and exploitation. This thesis positions the architect as perceiver, hoping to inspire sensitivity, pause, and reflection and resists ideas of forced transformation as a means of outwardly expressing progress. It immerses itself within the in-between places that blur preconceived boundaries – natural and cultural, past and future, controlled and chaotic – in order to encounter the inherent existential qualities of a site in transition.

Despite increasing concern about the presence of heavy metals, pesticides and other toxins in indoor environments, very little is known about the physical and chemical composition of ordinary household dust. This study represents the first systematic investigation of the mineralogical composition of indoor dust in residential housing in Canada. Specimens of dust were obtained from homes in six geographically separate cities in the Province of Ontario: two located on the metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Precambrian Canadian Shield (Thunder Bay and Sudbury), the other four located on Palaeozoic limestone and shale dominated bedrock (Barrie, Burlington, Cambridge, and Hamilton). Forty samples of household vacuum dust were obtained. The coarse fraction (80 – 300 µm) of this dust was subjected to flotation (using water) to separate the organic components (e.g. insect fragments, dander), natural and synthetic materials (e.g. fibres, plastics) from the mineral residue. The mineral fraction was then analyzed using quantitative point counting, polarizing light microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy methods. Despite the great distances between the sampling localities and the distinct differences in bedrock geology, the mineral fraction of dust from all six cities is remarkably similar and dominated by quartz and feldspar, followed by lithic fragments, calcite, and amphibole. Some evidence of the influence of local geology can nevertheless be found. For example, a relatively higher proportion of sulphide minerals is observed in the two cities on the Canadian Shield where these minerals are clearly more abundant in the bedrock. Specimens from Sudbury, Canada’s largest mining centre located atop a nickel-sulphide mineral deposit, showed the highest sulphide contents. Quartz is the dominant mineral in all cities. All quartz grains have internal strain features and fluid inclusions that are indicative of a metamorphic-igneous provenance. In all cities, sand is used on the streets as an abrasive for traction during the icy winter season. This sand is obtained in all cases from local glaciofluvial deposits that were ultimately derived principally from the rocks of the Canadian Shield in the last Pleistocene glaciations that affected all of Ontario. Thus, tracking in sand is the most plausible mechanism by which quartz was introduced into these homes since sampling was done, in all cases, in the winter season. The results indicate that glacial deposits dominate the mineral composition of indoor dust in Ontario cities and that nature of the bedrock immediately underlying the sampling sites is relatively of minor importance.

Despite increasing concern about the presence of heavy metals, pesticides and other toxins in indoor environments, very little is known about the physical and chemical composition of ordinary household dust. This study represents the first systematic investigation of the mineralogical composition of indoor dust in residential housing in Canada. Specimens of dust were obtained from homes in six geographically separate cities in the Province of Ontario: two located on the metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Precambrian Canadian Shield (Thunder Bay and Sudbury), the other four located on Palaeozoic limestone and shale dominated bedrock (Barrie, Burlington, Cambridge, and Hamilton). Forty samples of household vacuum dust were obtained. The coarse fraction (80 – 300 µm) of this dust was subjected to flotation (using water) to separate the organic components (e.g. insect fragments, dander), natural and synthetic materials (e.g. fibres, plastics) from the mineral residue. The mineral fraction was then analyzed using quantitative point counting, polarizing light microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy methods. Despite the great distances between the sampling localities and the distinct differences in bedrock geology, the mineral fraction of dust from all six cities is remarkably similar and dominated by quartz and feldspar, followed by lithic fragments, calcite, and amphibole. Some evidence of the influence of local geology can nevertheless be found. For example, a relatively higher proportion of sulphide minerals is observed in the two cities on the Canadian Shield where these minerals are clearly more abundant in the bedrock. Specimens from Sudbury, Canada’s largest mining centre located atop a nickel-sulphide mineral deposit, showed the highest sulphide contents. Quartz is the dominant mineral in all cities. All quartz grains have internal strain features and fluid inclusions that are indicative of a metamorphic-igneous provenance. In all cities, sand is used on the streets as an abrasive for traction during the icy winter season. This sand is obtained in all cases from local glaciofluvial deposits that were ultimately derived principally from the rocks of the Canadian Shield in the last Pleistocene glaciations that affected all of Ontario. Thus, tracking in sand is the most plausible mechanism by which quartz was introduced into these homes since sampling was done, in all cases, in the winter season. The results indicate that glacial deposits dominate the mineral composition of indoor dust in Ontario cities and that nature of the bedrock immediately underlying the sampling sites is relatively of minor importance.

Despite increasing concern about the presence of heavy metals, pesticides and other toxins in indoor environments, very little is known about the physical and chemical composition of ordinary household dust. This study represents the first systematic investigation of the mineralogical composition of indoor dust in residential housing in Canada. Specimens of dust were obtained from homes in six geographically separate cities in the Province of Ontario: two located on the metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Precambrian Canadian Shield (Thunder Bay and Sudbury), the other four located on Palaeozoic limestone and shale dominated bedrock (Barrie, Burlington, Cambridge, and Hamilton). Forty samples of household vacuum dust were obtained. The coarse fraction (80 – 300 µm) of this dust was subjected to flotation (using water) to separate the organic components (e.g. insect fragments, dander), natural and synthetic materials (e.g. fibres, plastics) from the mineral residue. The mineral fraction was then analyzed using quantitative point counting, polarizing light microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy methods. Despite the great distances between the sampling localities and the distinct differences in bedrock geology, the mineral fraction of dust from all six cities is remarkably similar and dominated by quartz and feldspar, followed by lithic fragments, calcite, and amphibole. Some evidence of the influence of local geology can nevertheless be found. For example, a relatively higher proportion of sulphide minerals is observed in the two cities on the Canadian Shield where these minerals are clearly more abundant in the bedrock. Specimens from Sudbury, Canada’s largest mining centre located atop a nickel-sulphide mineral deposit, showed the highest sulphide contents. Quartz is the dominant mineral in all cities. All quartz grains have internal strain features and fluid inclusions that are indicative of a metamorphic-igneous provenance. In all cities, sand is used on the streets as an abrasive for traction during the icy winter season. This sand is obtained in all cases from local glaciofluvial deposits that were ultimately derived principally from the rocks of the Canadian Shield in the last Pleistocene glaciations that affected all of Ontario. Thus, tracking in sand is the most plausible mechanism by which quartz was introduced into these homes since sampling was done, in all cases, in the winter season. The results indicate that glacial deposits dominate the mineral composition of indoor dust in Ontario cities and that nature of the bedrock immediately underlying the sampling sites is relatively of minor importance.

Despite increasing concern about the presence of heavy metals, pesticides and other toxins in indoor environments, very little is known about the physical and chemical composition of ordinary household dust. This study represents the first systematic investigation of the mineralogical composition of indoor dust in residential housing in Canada. Specimens of dust were obtained from homes in six geographically separate cities in the Province of Ontario: two located on the metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Precambrian Canadian Shield (Thunder Bay and Sudbury), the other four located on Palaeozoic limestone and shale dominated bedrock (Barrie, Burlington, Cambridge, and Hamilton). Forty samples of household vacuum dust were obtained. The coarse fraction (80 – 300 µm) of this dust was subjected to flotation (using water) to separate the organic components (e.g. insect fragments, dander), natural and synthetic materials (e.g. fibres, plastics) from the mineral residue. The mineral fraction was then analyzed using quantitative point counting, polarizing light microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy methods. Despite the great distances between the sampling localities and the distinct differences in bedrock geology, the mineral fraction of dust from all six cities is remarkably similar and dominated by quartz and feldspar, followed by lithic fragments, calcite, and amphibole. Some evidence of the influence of local geology can nevertheless be found. For example, a relatively higher proportion of sulphide minerals is observed in the two cities on the Canadian Shield where these minerals are clearly more abundant in the bedrock. Specimens from Sudbury, Canada’s largest mining centre located atop a nickel-sulphide mineral deposit, showed the highest sulphide contents. Quartz is the dominant mineral in all cities. All quartz grains have internal strain features and fluid inclusions that are indicative of a metamorphic-igneous provenance. In all cities, sand is used on the streets as an abrasive for traction during the icy winter season. This sand is obtained in all cases from local glaciofluvial deposits that were ultimately derived principally from the rocks of the Canadian Shield in the last Pleistocene glaciations that affected all of Ontario. Thus, tracking in sand is the most plausible mechanism by which quartz was introduced into these homes since sampling was done, in all cases, in the winter season. The results indicate that glacial deposits dominate the mineral composition of indoor dust in Ontario cities and that nature of the bedrock immediately underlying the sampling sites is relatively of minor importance.