Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2013

The thesis examines how the social construction of African women in development discourse transformed from the 1970s to the 2000s, focusing in particular on the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). From the 1970s to the 1990s representations of African women were based on women’s economic potential. The mainstreaming of gender in the 1990s resulted in women being represented as agents of change. This approach gave women an opportunity to play roles in decision-making but led to policies that failed to challenge the established institutions. The emphasis on women as agents of change opened doors to some African women but with implications for the women’s movement. Only some middle-class women appear to benefit but their gains have been marginal in comparison to the gender inequalities that persist. The thesis uses secondary sources and interviews with development practitioners in Ottawa to understand the representation of African women as agents of change.

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the City of Ottawa implemented a program to disseminate vaccination clinic information using the microblogging tool Twitter. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluate whether this program constitutes a communicative model. The challenge for crisis communicators has been to convince a confused and skeptical public to be vaccinated against the virus. Drawing on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Rousseau’s The Social Contract, the theoretical framework of this thesis feeds from Heidegger’s (1977) views on technology, new media, Web 2.0 technologies, Eid’s (2008) Crisis Decision-Making Model for Media Rational Responsibility, Rowan, Botan, Krepes, Samoilenko and Farnsworth’s (2008) CAUSE model, Crozier’s (1967) Theory of Bureaucratic Dysfunction and New Public Management. The thesis employs a case study approach and utilizes a qualitative research design to analyze the Twitter messages and internal City of Ottawa documents, and to conduct in-depth interviews with employees. Findings reveal and explain that the City of Ottawa’s program constitutes a flawed communicative model. A recommended communicative model is put forth in order to improve the areas of planning, human resources and message design. This model contributes to the emerging field of social media, and is intended to help health crisis decision-makers communicate their messages effectively.

This work comprises two main parts. The first part outlines our efforts to expand on the recent work of Gütlich et.al. by synthesizing Co(II) based spin crossover systems within a dendritic framework. We wanted to investigate the possibility of synthesizing different first generation, triazole containing dendrimers using “click” type reactions and their coordination ability with Co(II) ions. To this end we have had limited success mainly due to the numerous challenges in synthesizing a pure dendrimer product. The second part details our efforts in the synthesis of a mononuclear Co(II) based single molecule magnet. This comes as an extension to recent reports by Chang and Long where they have successfully obtained mononuclear Fe(II) single molecule magnets by inducing structural distortions within the complexes to amplify the spin-orbit coupling. We postulated that the use of Co(II) in conjunction with a bulky ligand framework would lead to desirable magnetic properties. We chose the known bis(imino)pyridine ligand scaffold due to its rich chemistry and its interesting and unexpected coordination behaviour, as we have seen in previous research efforts by our lab. To this end we were successful in isolating and characterizing 4 compounds, and we have carried out detailed magnetic measurements on the two most magnetically interesting species.

The thesis examines how the social construction of African women in development discourse transformed from the 1970s to the 2000s, focusing in particular on the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). From the 1970s to the 1990s representations of African women were based on women’s economic potential. The mainstreaming of gender in the 1990s resulted in women being represented as agents of change. This approach gave women an opportunity to play roles in decision-making but led to policies that failed to challenge the established institutions. The emphasis on women as agents of change opened doors to some African women but with implications for the women’s movement. Only some middle-class women appear to benefit but their gains have been marginal in comparison to the gender inequalities that persist. The thesis uses secondary sources and interviews with development practitioners in Ottawa to understand the representation of African women as agents of change.

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the City of Ottawa implemented a program to disseminate vaccination clinic information using the microblogging tool Twitter. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluate whether this program constitutes a communicative model. The challenge for crisis communicators has been to convince a confused and skeptical public to be vaccinated against the virus. Drawing on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Rousseau’s The Social Contract, the theoretical framework of this thesis feeds from Heidegger’s (1977) views on technology, new media, Web 2.0 technologies, Eid’s (2008) Crisis Decision-Making Model for Media Rational Responsibility, Rowan, Botan, Krepes, Samoilenko and Farnsworth’s (2008) CAUSE model, Crozier’s (1967) Theory of Bureaucratic Dysfunction and New Public Management. The thesis employs a case study approach and utilizes a qualitative research design to analyze the Twitter messages and internal City of Ottawa documents, and to conduct in-depth interviews with employees. Findings reveal and explain that the City of Ottawa’s program constitutes a flawed communicative model. A recommended communicative model is put forth in order to improve the areas of planning, human resources and message design. This model contributes to the emerging field of social media, and is intended to help health crisis decision-makers communicate their messages effectively.

This work comprises two main parts. The first part outlines our efforts to expand on the recent work of Gütlich et.al. by synthesizing Co(II) based spin crossover systems within a dendritic framework. We wanted to investigate the possibility of synthesizing different first generation, triazole containing dendrimers using “click” type reactions and their coordination ability with Co(II) ions. To this end we have had limited success mainly due to the numerous challenges in synthesizing a pure dendrimer product. The second part details our efforts in the synthesis of a mononuclear Co(II) based single molecule magnet. This comes as an extension to recent reports by Chang and Long where they have successfully obtained mononuclear Fe(II) single molecule magnets by inducing structural distortions within the complexes to amplify the spin-orbit coupling. We postulated that the use of Co(II) in conjunction with a bulky ligand framework would lead to desirable magnetic properties. We chose the known bis(imino)pyridine ligand scaffold due to its rich chemistry and its interesting and unexpected coordination behaviour, as we have seen in previous research efforts by our lab. To this end we were successful in isolating and characterizing 4 compounds, and we have carried out detailed magnetic measurements on the two most magnetically interesting species.

This thesis investigates the phenomenon of for-to complements in several dialects, focusing primarily on Appalachian English, though Belfast English and Ottawa Valley English are also examined. Following Chomsky's Government and Binding theory, we develop an analysis of for-to that predicts the distribution of for-to complements based on the requirements of Case, and the varieties of licit movement of features allowed by each dialect. To do this, we propose a Revised Case Filter which requires functional categories bearing Case features to discharge Case. We also show that the features of functional categories can move either by head movement (allowing movement of to into for) or by feature transmission (allowing for to move into to). / Each of these mechanisms generates a specific range of well-formed for-to complements; the distribution of these complements can be predicted by the ways in which the dialects allow features to move. Appalachian English and Ottawa Valley English allow head movement of features only, while Belfast English allows features to move via head movement and feature transmission. Thus for-to complements are more wide-spread in Belfast English than in the other for-to dialects. Standard English, which does not allow features to move unless they are accompanied by lexical material, does not exhibit for-to complements at all.

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the City of Ottawa implemented a program to disseminate vaccination clinic information using the microblogging tool Twitter. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluate whether this program constitutes a communicative model. The challenge for crisis communicators has been to convince a confused and skeptical public to be vaccinated against the virus. Drawing on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Rousseau’s The Social Contract, the theoretical framework of this thesis feeds from Heidegger’s (1977) views on technology, new media, Web 2.0 technologies, Eid’s (2008) Crisis Decision-Making Model for Media Rational Responsibility, Rowan, Botan, Krepes, Samoilenko and Farnsworth’s (2008) CAUSE model, Crozier’s (1967) Theory of Bureaucratic Dysfunction and New Public Management. The thesis employs a case study approach and utilizes a qualitative research design to analyze the Twitter messages and internal City of Ottawa documents, and to conduct in-depth interviews with employees. Findings reveal and explain that the City of Ottawa’s program constitutes a flawed communicative model. A recommended communicative model is put forth in order to improve the areas of planning, human resources and message design. This model contributes to the emerging field of social media, and is intended to help health crisis decision-makers communicate their messages effectively.

La réforme ontarienne des politiques éducatives de la fin des années 1990 a introduit une certaine économie de marché dans le système d’éducation, laquelle a contribué à accroître la concurrence entre les écoles pour le recrutement du plus grand nombre d’élèves. Au même moment, l’Ontario accueillait un grand nombre d’immigrants francophones, dont la plupart provenaient du continent africain. Dans ce contexte, quels facteurs influencent les mères francophones (d’origines djiboutienne/somalienne et canadienne) quand elles choisissent une école secondaire de langue française pour leur enfant. Plus précisément, il s’agit de voir s’il y a une tendance vers un choix positif ou s’il y a évitement de certaines écoles dans lesquelles de plus grandes proportions d’élèves issus de l’immigration seraient présent. En d’autres mots nous voulons voir s’il y a une ghettoïsation de certaines écoles de langue française en Ontario. En nous appuyant sur les outils d’analyse sociologique de Pierre Bourdieu (le champ, le capital et l’habitus), nous avons étudié la question selon trois dimensions : le statut socio-économique des familles, les programmes offerts par les écoles et l’environnement scolaire. Les données ont été recueillies lors d’entrevues semi-dirigées avec les mères. L’analyse de nos données révèle, dans un premier temps, que la présence des groupes ethniques et culturels divers au sein des écoles semble apporter une plus-value à ces établissements. De plus, nous n’avons pas relevé de différences considérables quant aux facteurs qui influencent les mères de notre échantillon (d’origines canadienne et immigrante) lors du choix scolaire. Cependant, la situation de double minorité (raciale et linguistique) des mères immigrantes fait en sorte que le choix de celles-ci se fait dans un contexte socio-économique différent, donc elles sont davantage motivées à choisir un programme et un environnement scolaire pour que leurs enfants puissent bâtir sur ce que leurs parents ont réussi à accumuler jusqu’à maintenant.