Seamfulness is a narrative-based and arts-informed inquiry into young women's "depression" as pedagogy. Unfolding in rural Nova Scotia, this research is rooted in my experience of depression as the most transformative event in my life story. While memoirists tell me I am not alone, there is currently a lack of research on personal understandings of depression, particularly for young adult women. Through storytelling sessions and self-publishing workshops, I explored four young Nova Scotian women's depression as a productive site for growth. Participants include four young women, including myself, who experienced depression in their early 20s, and have not had a major depressive episode for at least three years. Aged 29 to 40, we claim Métis, Scottish, Acadian, and British ancestries, and were raised and lived in rural Nova Scotian communities during this time. At the seams of adult education, disability studies, and art, I ask: How do young women narrate experiences of "depression" as education? How do handmade, self-published booklets (or “zines”) allow for exploring this topic as embodied, emotional and critical transformative learning? To address these questions, I employ arts-informed strategies and feminist, adult education, mental health, and disability studies literatures to investigate the critical and transformative learning accomplished by young women who experience depression. Through a feminist poststructuralist lens and using qualitative and arts-informed methods, I situate depression as valuable learning, labour, and gift on behalf of the societies and communities in which women live. I argue that just as zines are powerful forms for third space pedagogy, depression itself is a third space subjectivity that gives rise to the "disorienting dilemma" at the heart of transformative learning. I close with "Loose Ends," an exploration of depression as an unanswered question. This thesis engages visual and verbal strategies to disrupt epistemic and aesethetic conventions for academic texts. By foregrounding participant zines and stories, I privilege participant voices as the basis for framing their experience, rather than as material to reinforce or contest academic theories.

Thesis--Université de Paris. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-255).

The growing need for reducing the negative impacts of climate change and ensuring a constant and environmentally friendly energy supply, led the way to the exploitation of renewable energy sources. Canada has already acknowledged this trend by incorporating more power from renewables on its energy mix. Similarly, Nova Scotia has started an ambitious energy program in which the substitution of most of the fossil fuels by wind energy, will play a significant factor. The purpose of this research is to investigate all suitable locations for wind energy development in the province of Nova Scotia, under the scope of minimizing environmental impacts, increasing social acceptance and maximizing energy production. This spatial analysis is performed through the combination of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). The analysis of the province was based on the preferences of wind experts and administration authorities, which formed the weights assigned on eight (8) evaluation criteria. The extract of the relative weights was succeeded by using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), while their spatial dimensions were expressed by GIS software. The above procedure was possible through the application of a methodology where exclusion areas were found on the first place and the remaining areas were assessed on their level of suitability. The implementation of the GIS-MCDA methodological framework indicates that, despite the exclusion of a significant part of the province, there is still enough space to develop wind energy. The applied methodology and relevant results could be used as a Decision-Making tool by planning authorities, wind developers, and stakeholders.

Many historians have presented the narrative of Canada’s Second World War experience as a “good” war. Individuals and communities came together in patriotism and a common purpose to furnish the national war effort with military manpower, labour, financial contributions, and voluntary efforts. As the dark years of the Great Depression gave way to unprecedented levels of industrial and economic growth, falling unemployment rates, increased urbanization, and a wealth of social programs, Canada’s future was bright. However, this optimistic picture is not representative of Canada as a whole. Some regions fared better than others, and industrial Cape Breton was one of those that benefited the least from the opportunities presented by the war. Glace Bay, Cape Breton’s largest mining town and long-time hotbed of industrial strife and labour radicalism, serves as an ideal case study of the region’s largely unprofitable and unchanging wartime experience. Long plagued by poverty, poor living conditions, and underdeveloped industry, and desperately seeking to break free of its destitution, Glace Bay tried and failed to take advantage of wartime opportunities for industrial diversification and local improvement.

Despite considerable research on the British North American colonies and their political relationship with Britain before 1776, little is known about the administration of Nova Scotia from the perspective of Lord Halifax’s Board of Trade in London. The image that emerges from the literature is that Nova Scotia was of marginal importance to British officials, who neglected its administration. This study reintegrates Nova Scotia into the British Imperial historiography through the study of the “official mind,” to challenge this theory of neglect on three fronts: 1) civil government in Nova Scotia became an important issue during the War of the Austrian Succession; 2) The form of civil government created there after 1749 was an experiment in centralized colonial administration; 3) This experimental model of government was highly effective. This study adds nuance to our understanding of British attempts to centralize control over their overseas colonies before the American Revolution.

A high-resolution pollen record from Path Lake (43°87’00”N, 64°92’42”W, 10m asl) in Port Joli Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada, was used to provide a paleo-ecological perspective on Holocene climate and vegetation variability within the context of local archaeological research. Pollen assemblages in the early Holocene reflect a post-glacial forest dominated by Pinus, Tsuga, Betula and Quercus. Shallow water aquatic and wetland taxa increased after 3400 cal. yr. BP in response to wetter climatic conditions. Increased settlement intensity of native inhabitants coincides with late-Holocene climate change at a regional scale, suggesting that environmental conditions may have influenced prehistoric human activities. European settlement, after 350 cal. yr. BP, was marked by a rise in Ambrosia, and peak charcoal accumulation rates after this time showed evidence of human disturbance on the landscape. This study suggests that environmental changes affected human exploitation of the landscape, and human activity altered forest composition in the late Holocene.

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