The importance of exercising within a group has been suggested to demonstrate a positive individual and group influence on exercise adherence. In addition, the important role the group fitness leader plays is integral in the development of group cohesion and individual exercise success (Turner, Rejeski, & Brawley, 1997). Bain, Wilson, and Chaikind (1989) revealed the importance of leadership style and approach on the exercising participant’s enjoyment and adherence. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of novice, female group fitness participants and the feelings and attitudes they have about their group fitness experiences as they relate to the leadership of the class. Participants included six women, between the ages of 38-60 years currently participating in a novice, group fitness class. Participants were recruited through posters placed at the YM-YWCA of Greater Victoria and Oak Bay Recreation Centre. This ethnomethodological inquiry used interview and focus group as the data collection strategies. Analysis of the data revealed seven themes that were connected to four styles of leadership. Characteristics of the transformational style of group fitness leadership offer the participants the best support as they move from novice to advanced levels of experience. The results of this study provide a greater understanding of how to advance fitness leadership to maximize exercise adherence.

This thesis investigates the potential and emerging roles of the Social Economy at the level of global governance by examining how transnational civil society (TCS) has organized in an attempt to influence global policy-making. One of this study’s principal aims is to glean insights into the dynamics of civil society coalitions, gaining a better understanding of how they combine the collective knowledge, resources and strengths of members and drawing out some of the “best practices” and challenges inherent in past civil society alliances. This study seeks to explore the complex nature of the relationships that exist among civil society actors and the unique challenges such groups face in forming partnerships by examining these relationships through the lens of Inter-Group Conflict Theory. A Case Study of one TCS partnership, the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign, is conducted and an Inter-Group Dispute Resolution Analysis of MPH is carried out.

In this thesis I evaluate the role of Inuit governance in Nunavut's political space. To do this, I critically examine the practice of political consultation, as it is a site where government and Inuit communities interact. This thesis begins with an overview of the government structure in Nunavut and its consultation process. It then shifts focus to discuss the principles and practices supported within Inuit governance. A political and conceptual gap will be revealed. In response to this gap, I introduce and explore the Kitchen Consultation Model, a community based consultation model inspired by the principles and practices of Inuit governance. This model provides Inuit communities with a political framework to support dialogue and interaction within the community, supporting Inuit communities in designing solutions to address their challenges. This thesis ends with a discussion on the role of Inuit governance within the broader Indigenous context

A permutation array, represented by PA(n, d), is a subset of Sn such that any two distinct elements have a distance of at least d where d is the number of differing positions. We analyze the upper and lower bounds of permutation codes with distance equal to 4. An optimization problem on Young diagrams is used to improve the upper bound for almost all n while the lower bound is improved for small values of n by means of recursive construction methods.

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When educated professionals with a disability immigrate to Canada with their families, they are full of hope. Because they were told that Canada is a land of opportunity, they expect to build on their past careers and become fully employed. Nevertheless, the experience of many immigrant families with an educated adult member with a disability has been long years of poverty and unemployment in Canada. My phenomenological and heuristic study was designed to explore the central research question, "What is the lived experience of Ethiopian immigrant families in Canada in which one adult member is blind?" My study also examined several sub-questions: I-low does the fact that one family member has a disability affect the family as a whole, in their experience as immigrants in Canada? What are the social barriers that the blind immigrant and his or her family have encountered during the experience adapting to Canadian society? What are the strengths and coping mechanisms of the family members? What changes do immigrants suggest to improve the lives of immigrant families with a blind adult family member? Using interviews, I gathered the family experiences of six blind participants, as well as two sighted participants whose partners were blind. All were adult immigrants from Ethiopia. I chose to use methodology that would give participants a "voice" and would allow their own words to be used when describing the findings. Transcripts went through a process of narrative analysis. Data was divided into categories and then separated into themes. Twelve metathemes emerged from data analysis of 323 themes: Comparison of Ethiopia and Canada's treatment of blind people, High Achievement, Persistence and perseverance, Ethiopian expectations about a blind child or student, Social construction of disability, Importance of Advocacy, Unemployment in Canada, Desire to be independent and self-supporting, Personal and family strengths, Importance of social support network, Participants' experiences accessing help from CNIB and employment agencies, and Recommended Government Policy Improvement. The emerging metathemes supported the view of scholars who hold that "disability" is a social construction and is merely a characteristic. Despite "disability", my six blind participants achieved academic education and entered fulfilling careers in one country. Afterward, they endured long years of poverty and unemployment in a second country. The sighted partners of educated blind professionals verified their partners' experiences of poverty and ableism since immigrating to their new country. The two contrasting experiences demonstrated that "disability" was framed either positively or negatively by the social environment in which the educated blind professionals lived and worked. Participants' experiences revealed that Canadian employment agencies lack accountability. As well, employment agencies and organizations for the blind are providing ineffective help for blind people seeking employment. Several participants noted the need for "organizations of the blind, not, for the blind" in order to improve the services of such organizations. In contrast to the stereotype that successful blind people must he special or talented, the study revealed that blind people can become educated and employed in their careers when there is motivation, opportunity, and some small amount of social support. The participants all believe that employment is part of full citizenship. The study revealed that certain personal and family strengths of sighted and blind participants have supported them to stay together as a family and to persist in seeking employment without losing hope. Despite hardships related to long term unemployment, participants continue to live fairly peaceably within their families. Their support for each other within the family, and their persistence and refusal to give up hope was striking. All participants called out for increased activism and advocacy for both Canadian-born and immigrant blind people, on the part of the Canadian government.

This thesis explores how two opposing world views espoused respectively by two social movements coexist within our society. One view holds that humans, non-humans, and all of nature are interconnected and interdependent. Its proponents believe that social justice should, therefore, be extended to all of nature. The other view holds that people are autonomous, independent individuals, each with a fundamental right to freedom from the coercion by others. Its proponents believe that social justice is a means of social control and. so. is incompatible with freedom. Four activists for each of these social movements were interviewed to understand their personal world views and to gain insights on the social implications of the coexistence of their respective projects. While the 'freedom' activists understand nature as being hierarchical and the'eco-social justice' activists deny a hierarchy, agreements between the two groups and disagreements within them suggest a dynamic mechanism for social change.

Some communities through the Japanese islands conduct some ceremonies, festivals, or customs, according to the belief that spiritual beings come from a distant place to bless villagers and go back to their own world. These ritual practices are often embedded in the basic notion in which life (spirit) exists in all forms and the spirit continues its journey between this world and the spiritual world by obtaining different physical forms each time it manifests itself in this world. In this way, an immense spiritual life force exists throughout the universe; this life force exists even within each human individual. In other words, all life forms repeat this cycle, births and deaths; a spiritual self and a physical self are not separated from one another. This notion is often expressed as faith in the marebito in present day Japan. Orikuchi Shinobu (1887-1953), a Japanese scholar in the field of Japanese folklore, introduced this notion through his marebito images presented in his marebito theory in his work, Kodai kenkyu: Kokubungaku no hassei (Archaic Studies: the Origin of National Literature). This thesis does not reflect Orikuchi's influence on Japanese imperialism during his time. The aim of this thesis is to illustrate his marebito images in the context of nature's law or the rule of the universe that has been introduced in the first paragraph. In order to capture his marebito images in this context, the author introduces spiritual worldviews of ancient Japanese, the Ainu people, and the Okinawan people. Through exploring the commonalities of these native worldviews, the author shows the intimate relationship between deities and humans as well as a macrocosm and a microcosm. By interpreting Orikuchi's marebito images in relation to these spiritual views with the utilization of existing scholarly works around Orikuchi's studies, the author seeks a way for humans to understand one another beyond the boundaries of cultural differences.

A sample of 96 rural adolescents recruited from four rural communities in the Kootenay Boundary region of British Columbia completed a cross-sectional survey tapping self concept, possible selves, sense of community, and the connections among these constructs. The consideration of both present and future selves were viewed through a contextual lens where rural characteristics were considered. There were mixed sentiments regarding living in the rural communities. Youth were typically able to find support and generally liking living in their communities although many indicated ambivalence about staying in their community after leaving high school. An important connection was found between a high estimation of capability for obtaining a future hoped-for self and a high rating of self-concept. This result suggests important implications for rural and possible selves research, and implications for rural youth including building self-esteem though fostering perceptions of capability, increasing community engagement, and strengthening community connections.

Parental psychological control is an intrusive dimension of parenting that involves parents' manipulation of children and adolescents' thoughts, feelings. and relationship bonds. Previous research indicates that parental psychological control is linked with increased risk for peer victimization in childhood and with increased risk for internalizing and externalizing problems in both childhood and adolescence. Less is known about the association of parental psychological control with peer victimization in adolescence or about the mechanisms that underlie this association. Participants in this study were 664 adolescents (ages 12-18) who were randomly sampled from a medium-sized Canadian city. Structural equation modeling showed that adolescents' internalizing problems mediated the link between parental psychological control and relational peer victimization whereas externalizing problems mediated the link between parental psychological control and both relational and physical peer victimization. The structural model was invariant across genders but differed between younger (ages 12-14) and older (ages 15-18) age groups.