This is an inquiry that explores both then and now. Father and Daughter. Temporality and Geography. Within these pages stories are used to explore my family’s present and past; migration, settlement, memory, experience and connection to place – Glace Bay, a village on Cape Breton Island. Through narrative, poetry and photography, the contrasting experiences of having lived in Glace Bay in the past, and the struggle to connect with Glace Bay in the present, and future, are explored. Finally, within this manuscript I examine the impact of my father’s stories and I identify storytelling as an important factor in developing a critical consciousness. My father inspired my sense of social justice at a young age and the impetus for this project was not just to document his stories for the sake of posterity, but also to exemplify the way consciousness is cultivated and passed down; across generations, despite changing landscapes, through story.

This thesis examines the history of the Mi'kmaq people inhabiting Kmitkinag (Nova Scotia) and Unimaki (Cape Breton Island) from before contact to 1760. While contact precipitated change in Mi'kmaq society, the process was gradual, the result of the particular historical circumstances in which interactions between the two societies evolved. In the late seventeenth century, the Mi'kmaq established an alliance with the French Crown, made possible by previous social and economic relationships between Mi'kmaq families and French traders, fishermen and settlers. As European settlement increased and imperial rivalry in North America intensified in the eighteenth century, tensions emerged in the alliance, revealing the cultural differences between the Mi'kmaq and France's subjects. The thesis demonstrates that economic and political factors were more important than national identity in influencing the texture of Mi'kmaq-European relations.

Since the first Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers arrived in Nova Scotia in the late 18th century, their Gaelic singing tradition has been an integral part of life in communities on Cape Breton Island. With the waning of the Gaelic language, however, came efforts to collect and preserve the song tradition, and the intention to pass it along intact. This dissertation eschews the consideration of Gaelic singing as a monolithic tradition with a common repertoire and experience, and instead examines it as a multifaceted process enacted by individuals in three main sites: home, public performance and the archive. It examines the various ways the practice manifests itself, concluding that memory and individual agency are constants, both for singers and listeners. Through interviews, participant-observer activity and archival research, this study demonstrates that Gaelic singers have been far from passive culture-bearers but have instead actively shaped their song practice by choosing repertoire, melody variants and texts. It also discusses the dynamic role of memory and social interaction in the transmission and performance of Gaelic song. Memories of other singers, discussion of the text, and contextual details draw singers and listeners into a community that is both synchronic and diachronic. This practice is chiefly oral, but is supported by recordings and printed songbooks as well as an array of objects – photo albums, clippings, tapes – which evoke the sense of previous performances and their singers. Despite their intention to transmit the songs with little or no change, singers have a flexible relationship with the material and in some cases subvert the authority of recorded or printed sources by turning instead to first-hand experiences. This simultaneous presence of past and present has tremendous implications for what it means to know a song, and one comes to understand it as a composite of multiple memories, performances and meanings.

Since the first Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers arrived in Nova Scotia in the late 18th century, their Gaelic singing tradition has been an integral part of life in communities on Cape Breton Island. With the waning of the Gaelic language, however, came efforts to collect and preserve the song tradition, and the intention to pass it along intact. This dissertation eschews the consideration of Gaelic singing as a monolithic tradition with a common repertoire and experience, and instead examines it as a multifaceted process enacted by individuals in three main sites: home, public performance and the archive. It examines the various ways the practice manifests itself, concluding that memory and individual agency are constants, both for singers and listeners. Through interviews, participant-observer activity and archival research, this study demonstrates that Gaelic singers have been far from passive culture-bearers but have instead actively shaped their song practice by choosing repertoire, melody variants and texts. It also discusses the dynamic role of memory and social interaction in the transmission and performance of Gaelic song. Memories of other singers, discussion of the text, and contextual details draw singers and listeners into a community that is both synchronic and diachronic. This practice is chiefly oral, but is supported by recordings and printed songbooks as well as an array of objects – photo albums, clippings, tapes – which evoke the sense of previous performances and their singers. Despite their intention to transmit the songs with little or no change, singers have a flexible relationship with the material and in some cases subvert the authority of recorded or printed sources by turning instead to first-hand experiences. This simultaneous presence of past and present has tremendous implications for what it means to know a song, and one comes to understand it as a composite of multiple memories, performances and meanings.

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This interdisciplinary project offers new insights into the reclamation history of two of the most controversial and contaminated sites in Canadian history: the Sydney tar ponds and coke ovens and the Athabasca oil sands. It argues that Canada’s natural resource-dependent economy, combined with jurisdictional uncertainty, created a hesitant, fragmentary site cleanup regime, one that left room for different ideas about landscapes to shape and even distort reclamation’s goals and processes. In the absence of substantive reclamation standards and legislation, researchers struggled to accommodate the unique challenges of the oil sands during the 1960s and 1970s. Ambitious goals for reclamation faltered, and even the most successful examples of oil sands reclamation differed significantly from the pre-extraction environment; reclamation was not restoration. Planners envisioned transforming northeastern Alberta into a managed wilderness and recreation nirvana, but few of these plans were realised. The Sydney tar ponds experience suggests that truly successful reclamation cannot exist unless past injustices are fully acknowledged, reparations made, and a more complete narrative of contamination and reclamation constructed through open deliberation. Reclamation, after all, does not repair history; nor can it erase the past. Effective oil sands reclamation, then, requires a reconsideration of the site’s past and an acknowledgement of the perpetuated vulnerabilities and injustices wrought by development and reclamation.

This dissertation explores how colonial administrators on each side of the Atlantic used the British Survey of North America to serve their governments’ as well as their personal objectives. Specifically, it connects the execution and oversight of the General Survey in the northern and southern theatres, along with the intelligence it provided, with the actions of key decision-makers and influencers, including the Presidents of the Board of Trade (latterly, the Secretaries of the American Department) and key provincial governors. Having abandoned their posture of ‘Salutary Neglect’ towards colonial affairs in favour of one that proactively and more centrally sought ways to develop and exploit their North American assets following the Severn Years’ War, the British needed better geographic information to guide their decision making. Thus, the General Survey of British North America, under the umbrella of the Board of Trade, was conceived. Officially sponsored from 1764-1775, the programme aimed to survey and analyse the attributes and economic potential of Britain’s newly acquired regions in North America, leading to an accurate general map of their North American empire when joined to other regional mapping programmes. The onset of the American Revolution brought an inevitable end to the General Survey before a connected map could be completed. Under the excellent leadership of Samuel Holland, the surveyor general of the Northern District, however, the British administration received surveys and reports that were of great relevance to high-level administration. In the Southern District, Holland’s counterpart, the mercurial William Gerard De Brahm, while producing reports of high quality, was less able to juggle the often conflicting priorities of provincial and London-based stakeholders. Consequently, results were less successful. De Brahm was recalled in 1771, leaving others to complete the work.