The purpose of this research is to identify the impact of recent organizational change upon the culture of firefighting. The experiences of female firefighters were utilized as a measure of cultural change. A purposive sample of twenty-seven male and female firefighters were interviewed in a semi-structured format about their experiences in the fire service. This research found that the culture of firefighting has adjusted to the presence of previously excluded groups by forging a division among the identities and roles of male and female firefighters. The white, male firefighters, who have traditionally constituted a majority of the workforce, have continued to identify with traditional firefighter roles and reported high levels of cohesion. In contrast, the female firefighters showed a greater variance in their identification with traditional roles and decreased levels of cohesion with the main body of the group.

During the Second World War, more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians were interned to various locations throughout Canada. While more than 60 years have passed since these events, there remains limited research on the impact that this event had on this group of people. Using McCubbin and Patterson’s (1983) Double ABCX model of family stress and adaptation as a framework, this study used historical narratives of 69 Japanese Canadians to gain insight into a) how Japanese Canadians coped with the challenges associated with their internment, and b) what resources they used during this same time period. The analysis of the coping strategies was done using a modified version of existing measures of coping strategies (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986; Suedfeld, Krell, Wiebe, & Steel, 1997), and the analysis of resources was done using an adjusted version of Rettig’s (1995) and Tucker and Rice’s (1985) resource classification list. There were no statistically significant differences between Japanese Canadian men and women in their coping strategy use, but that there were differences between the Issei (first generation) and Nisei (second generation). The Issei used Self Control, Positive Reappraisal, and Denail more than the Nisei, while the Nisei used Seeking Social Support more than the Issei. A strong relationship between coping and resources was found; a relationship that has often been assumed, but never tested. The findings from this study also provided additional support for the usefulness of using both narratives and the Double ABCX model in research. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

The Royal Commission on Japanese Claims (1947-1951), known as the “Bird Commission,” investigated and offered compensation to Japanese Canadians for their losses of property during the 1940s. It is largely remembered for what it was not: that is, it was not a just resolution to the devastating material losses of the 1940s. Community histories bitterly describe the Commission as destined to failure, with narrow terms of reference that only addressed a fraction of what was taken. Similarly, other historians have portrayed the Commission as a defensive mechanism, intended by the government to limit financial compensation and to avoid the admission of greater injustice. Yet scholars have never fully investigated the internal workings of the Commission. Despite its failings, Japanese Canadians used the Bird Commission in their struggle to hold the state accountable. Hundreds of Japanese Canadians presented claims. Their testimonies are preserved in thousands of pages of archival documents. The Bird Commission was a troubling, flawed, but nonetheless important historical process. This thesis examines government documents, claimants’ case files, and oral histories to nuance previous accounts of the Bird Commission. I draw from ‘productive’ understandings of Royal Commissions to argue that the Liberal government, cognizant of how such mechanisms could influence public opinion, designed the Bird Commission to provide closure to the internment-era and to mark the start of the postwar period. Their particular definition of loss was integral to this project. As Japanese Canadians sought to expand this definition to address their losses, the proceedings became a record of contest over the meaning of property loss and the legacy of the dispossession. Navigating a web of constraints, Japanese Canadians participated in a broader debate over the meaning justice in a society that sought to distance itself from a legacy of racialized discrimination. This contest, captured in the Commission proceedings, provides a pathway into the complex history of the postwar years as Canadians grappled with the racism of Second World War, including Canada’s own race-based policies, and looked towards new approaches to pluralism. / Graduate / 2018-12-22

Since the mid-1980s, the study of Canadian postmodern historical fiction has been dominated by Linda Hutcheon’s “historiographic metafiction.” Emphasizing historiography and textuality, critics of historiographic metafiction have flattened the past to text and image, inadvertently severing its active connection with the present and removing it from historical process. This is problematic for the ideological intentions of the texts in question because it is an awareness of the past/present dialectic that incites awareness that present action can lead to future change. This thesis, therefore, examines three novels that have overwhelmingly been viewed as historiographic metafiction for their inclusion of researcher-historian characters: Findley’s The Wars, Bowering’s Burning Water, and Marlatt’s Ana Historic. By opening up these texts to criticism that acknowledges history as process, I demonstrate that there is no need to limit these novels to this problematic framework and that researcher-historian characters are valuable for more than their foregrounding of historiography.

The Secret Society of Montreal Oculists 1. Our earliest records of their activities date back to the spring of 1898 with the birth of Lambert. Coincidentally, that spring saw the most destructive flood the settlement had ever known. Lambert was immediately inducted into the Society by his mother, Mme Lepage, who practiced capnomancy and kept a pair of female Dobermans in the basement of the family home. On May 10th, 1994, when Lambert was five years old and despite his mother’s recommendations, he opened his eyes during the solar eclipse, burning them instantly. From the smoke, Mme Lepage divined a future flood that would engulf the mountain. 2. A narrative device. 3. LE GRAND SALON, wherein the Society ritualistically performed Lambert’s demise at each partial solar eclipse, staring at the skies until they could see no more. Presented here is the facsimile of such a ritual, including an Oculists statuary.

This thesis analyzes LGBTQ equality in the two Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Jamaica. The research answers the question: what key institutional factors can explain the variance in LGBTQ equality in Guadeloupe and Jamaica? I argue that variances in local LGBTQ equality between Guadeloupe and Jamaica can be explained by analyzing the different political, legal and socio-cultural historical institutions in these two islands. The central conclusion contends that historical institutions with a political or legal dimension have created significantly different levels of LGBTQ legal equality in Guadeloupe and Jamaica while socio-cultural historical institutions have helped to establish a similar level of LGBTQ equality in social and cultural realms. This thesis thus makes the case for using a historical institutionalist perspective to examine LGBTQ activism in the Caribbean.

Not for the first time, Marxism is considered to be in a state of 'crisis'. This thesis seeks to 'underlabour' on behalf of a particular version of Marxism, a version articulated with force, coherence and great originality for over two decades within human geography: what David Harvey (1985a: xii), in a paradigmatic formulation, has called 'historicalgeographical materialism'. A research programme, rather than the work of any one individual, historical-geographical materialism has in various ways and at various levels creatively extended the classical Marxist canon in a geographical direction. Yet today it is considered increasingly passe by critics on the Left as well as the Right of human geography, reflecting the wider ennui with Marxism outside the discipline. In particular, it is seen as being too 'modern' - too foundationalist, totalising and authoritative in its cognitive and normative claims - to contribute effectively to a critical human geography for the 1990s. Against this, this thesis seeks to develop an alternative reading of the core claims of this research programme by offering a novel reinterpretation of Marx's mature political-economy. Rewriting Marx's account of what Postone (1996: 1) calls "the fundamental core of capitalism", the thesis puts this reinterpretation of the explanatorydiagnostic basis of Marx's critique to work on three major themes of historicalgeographical materialism: the production of space, the production pf nature and the production of subjectivity. It does so in order to illustrate the explanatory power, thematic reach and theoretical coherence of this reinterpretation, as well as its relevance to the late capitalist world. In closing, the normative or anticipatory-utopian basis of this reinterpreted historical-geographical materialism is considered and its political implications for today thereby scrutinised. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

D.Phil. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The main scope of the work is to support a wider understanding of the achievements and limitations of economic analysis in historical contamination issues. The work describes how various schools of economics focus their study on environmental problems, specifically on Brownfields redevelopment. It presents the ideas of environmental economics, resource economics, free market environmentalism, institutional economics, political economy and ecological economics. The work includes a case study from the region of Ralsko in North Bohemia.

One can compare Guthrie's fiction with a sampling of the primary source material, to determine in general his degree of historical accuracy. Then one can compare Guthrie's interpretation with the interpretations of some widely read historiographers, to determine points of agreement or divergence. Finally, Guthrie's interpretation of history can be studied in relation to the themes he develops in his fiction.