Canadian history

This thesis argues that Canada, as it is regarded by the Canadian citizenry, exists as a collection of public-facing narratives within a collectively imagined national mythos. This mythos, as it stands in 2022, is an accumulation of layers of narratives built on the foundation of former British imperial myths honed by bourgeois ideologies and ideals into a uniquely 'Canadian' nationalism through the propaganda of the Great War, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the 'War on Terror.' In attempting to deconstruct this collection of narratives, this thesis employs a historical materialist approach and uses the theories of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, and Althusser to argue for the importance of an internationalist perspective which has been neglected in the insistence on an inward domestic approach to the identity of Canada as a nation.

Author Keywords: Canada, Capitalism, Marxism, Media, Neoimperialism, Propaganda

This study examines the intersection between nuclear energy in Ontario, Canada, with popular forces acting upon it between the 1940s and the mid-1980s. It finds that nuclear energy was the target of changing epistemology as society shifted to a post-modern framework in its perception of technology. Technology was irreparably associated with potential encroaching governmental Technocracy. Nuclear was additionally impacted by a societal misunderstanding of the engineering design philosophy, success through failure, as a negative aspect. These factors then combined with the common psychological phenomenon of affective heuristics to produce a society that was fundamentally opposed to nuclear energy on intellectual principles, safety principles, and base psychological principles. It is the finding of this paper that these factors almost assuredly contributed to the cancellations of and shift away from nuclear power in Ontario. This study offers a rebuttal to the overarching popular misconceptions of, and apprehension toward, nuclear energy.

Author Keywords: nuclear, Ontario, post-modern, risk, technology

This thesis examines how political and social issues have molded and alteredCanada's penal system since the nineteenth-century. From early Anglo-Canadian society to Joseph Archambault's 1938 Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate the Penal System of Canada, the Canadian penal system waxed and waned against social and political tides. As rehabilitative justice took hold throughout the developed world in the early twentieth century, Canada attempted to shift its justice ideologies only to find that punitive justice had created strong footings. This made reform challenging to implement.

Author Keywords: Archambault Report, Canadian penal system, Canadian prisons, prison press, prison systems, prison writing

In this dissertation, I examine union organizing in the Canadian banking industry between 1940 and 1980. By demonstrating that bank workers consistently sought to unionize throughout the twentieth century, I challenge claims that bank employees and other private sector white-collar workers have low rates of unionization because they are not interested in unions or suffer from false consciousness. This research also suggests, however, that many bank workers saw themselves as different from blue-collar industrial workers; the lived reality of bank work as precarious, poorly paid, and rife with gender inequality intersected with ideas about professionalism and aspirations of advancing up the career ladder. Banks, unions, and workers drew on these ideas and experiences in their arguments for and against unionization.

I also look at why previous organizing efforts did not establish a strong union presence in the banking industry. Most of these attempts failed, I argue, due to several key issues, including the banks' anti-union activity, federal and provincial labour board decisions, and labour movement disputes over ideology, jurisdiction, and strategy. The banks consistently opposed unionization and used a variety of tactics to thwart union organizing, both overtly and covertly. The state, in the form of labour legislation and labour boards, provided unions and workers with some means by which to compel the banks to recognize unions, negotiate contracts, and deal with employee grievances; however, state action and inaction more often worked to undermine union organizing. The attitudes and strategies of high-ranking labour movement officials also shaped the outcome of union drives in the banks. Between 1940 and 1980, the mostly male labour leadership repeatedly used top-down organizing strategies and appointed male organizers with no experience of bank work to oversee union drives in a sector with an increasingly feminized workforce; labour leaders' inability or unwillingness to reflect on this approach and to support grassroots campaigns and alternative strategies hindered bank union organizing. I thus highlight the intersection of gender and class and reveal how these factors have historically shaped the labour movement bureaucracy, union organizing, and the relationship between labour and the state.

Author Keywords: banks, gender, labour bureaucracy, trade unions, union organizing, white-collar workers

The residential school legacy is one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history. From the mid-1850s to 1996, thousands of Aboriginal children were taken from their homelands and placed in residential schools. Taken against their will, many dreaded attending these schools. Some attended for as long as ten to fifteen years, only to be strangers in their own communities upon their return. In the past thirty years, survivors began disclosing the loneliness, confusion, fear, punishment and humiliation they suffered within these institutions, and also reported traumatic incidents of sexual, physical or emotional abuse. These childhood traumas still haunt them today.

This dissertation examines the four compensation processes (Litigation,

Alternative Dispute Resolution, Independent Assessment Process and the Common Experience Process) used by survivors to determine whether the compensation payments made to them assisted in reconciliation of their residential school experience. To complete an analysis of the processes, twenty-four residential school survivors from Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia were interviewed about their experiences with one or more of the compensation processes. The study begins with a historical overview of the residential school legacy and continues with the residential school healing movement that initiated and finalized a negotiated settlement agreement for all living survivors.

This dissertation provides a unique perspective to the residential school legacy by using a cultural framework, Anishinabe teachings and concepts to share the voices of residential school survivors. The pivotal Anishinabe teaching within this study comes from The Seventh Fire Prophecy. This prophecy states that: "If the New People will remain strong in their quest, the Waterdrum of the Midewiwin Lodge will again sound its voice." In this dissertation the residential school survivors are the New People. As the dissertation unfolds the author utilizes various Anishinabe concepts to illustrate how the compensation processes failed to assist the New People to reconcile with their residential school experience.

This study presents a medicine wheel understanding of reconciliation and the Residential School Legacy. It concludes with an important message to the second and third generation survivors to continue the reconciliatory efforts that the New People introduced. It is crucial that the children and grandchildren of the New People begin the reconciliation process not only for themselves but for the next seven generations.

Author Keywords: Anishinabe, compensation, Indian residential schools, reconciliation, survivors

This dissertation examines the historical relationship between settler colonialism, capitalism, and the rise of state schooling in what is now known as British Columbia between 1849 and 1900. It aims to "unsettle" conventional views of Canadian schooling history by bringing accounts of Indigenous and non-Indigenous education into one analytical frame, and it shows how the state used different forms of schooling for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous children—company, common, public, mission, day, boarding, and industrial schools—to assist colonial-capitalist social formation in the Pacific Northwest. In combining interdisciplinary insights from Indigenous studies, historical materialism, political economy, and critical pedagogy, the dissertation highlights the ways in which state-supported schooling facilitated capitalist accumulation by colonial dispossession. The central argument of the dissertation is that between 1849 and 1900, colonial, provincial, and federal governments strategically took on greater responsibility for schooling as a way of legitimizing the state and supporting the emergence of a capitalist settler society.

Author Keywords: Capitalism, Education, Indian Residential Schools, Indigenous Peoples, Settler Colonialism, Violence

The development of pan-Indigenous political organizations in northeastern Alberta in the context of oil and gas development during the 1970s created disparate effects on Indigenous communities in the region. Resistance to assimilation policies led the Indian Association of Alberta to transform itself into a unified voice that represented Aboriginal and treaty rights in the late 1960s; however, the organization lost legitimacy following the divergence of goals between influential Indigenous leaders, Harold Cardinal and Joseph Dion. Tripartite agreements began to unfold between the federal and provincial governments, the oil and gas industry, and individual local leadership; environmental degradation spread throughout the landscape. Some communities benefitted financially whereas other communities, like Lubicon Lake Nation, received little compensation and felt the full force of industrial contamination of their traditional territories. Without the support of pan-Indigenous political organizations, Lubicon Lake developed an individual response that was successful in gaining international attention to their conditions.

Author Keywords: 1970s, Indigenous politics, Lubicon Lake Nation, northern Alberta, political economy, tar sands

This thesis explores the history of the Indigenous child welfare system in Manitoba and the effects of the Millennium Scoop on children in care. My research question is: what was the experience of children in care in Manitoba from 1990 to 2015? A related question is: how do survivors find healing? The thesis begins with a discussion of the history of acts, policies, and practices that began with the Indigenous child welfare system during the running of Residential schools. Then the acts, reviews, and policies that have shaped the child welfare system in Manitoba are discussed more thoroughly. The focus of the thesis is on the stories of Phoenix Sinclair, Tina Fontaine, and Natasha Reimer. I share their stories and provide an analysis of how the child welfare system has affected their lives. The negative effects of being a child in care are numerous. Being a child in care leaves behind grief, loss of identity, and loss of security. The systemic issues of the child welfare system include inadequate funding, overloaded case workers, staff burnout, and a lack of transparency. These overarching failures translate into the failure of children in care: details are overlooked, wrong decisions are made, and children are left to fend for themselves. Or they fall into the cracks and do not receive adequate care. This then translates into the deaths of children in care, or they are left to navigate life on their own and forced to create their circle of supports. Despite all the complications and negative impacts, some children can succeed while in care. Natasha's story is a perfect example of such resilience.

Author Keywords: child welfare, indigenous studies, millennium scoop, sixties scoop

"The Paper Chase: A Survey of Student Newspapers on Ontario Campuses in the 1960s" is a regional study of three University campuses in Ontario — the University of Toronto, Queen's University and Trent University — and examines each of these institutions' respective student newspapers, The Varsity, The Queen's Journal, and The Arthur as a primary source analysis. In broader terms, this thesis looks to theoretically historicize the themes of "life," "love," and "liberty" on Ontario campuses in the 1960s. Its central question is whether Ontario's youth experienced a cultural revolution like that portrayed in popular memory of the period, which profoundly appears in other sixties cultural interpretations in Canada and the United States. By framing student life through student newspapers' gamut, this thesis calls into question the lionization of some cultural decade elements. It determines students were, in fact, in some ways much more conservative in their outlook than earlier literature or the popular memory of the period suggests. History has much to say about students who rebelled. This thesis focuses on those who did not.

Author Keywords: Conservatism, Counterculture, Queen's University, Sixties, Trent University, University of Toronto

The lengthy and raucous 1986 Gainers meatpacking plant strike in Edmonton, Alberta was one of the most important events in recent Alberta labour history. In the midst of the economic crisis of the 1980s and the rise of neo-liberal ideas, the strike marked a backlash by both the labour movement and ordinary citizens against attacks on workers and unions. Characterized by widely covered picket line violence, repressive police and court actions, and government unresponsiveness, the strike generated massive solidarity within and beyond the labour movement. This solidarity originated in a rejection of the neo-liberal new reality of Alberta typified by high unemployment, anti-union laws and practices, and lack of government welfare support, and it generated a provincial change the law campaign, national boycott, and rising class consciousness. The working class mobilization during the Gainers strike was a watershed for the Alberta labour movement.

Author Keywords: Alberta Federation of Labour, Gainers strike, neo-liberalism, solidarity, working class