Canadian Studies

From 1950-1995, the Canadian government investigated the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), amassing over 15,000 pages of documentation about, among other matters, nearly 4,500 unique sightings. This investigation was largely passive and disconnected, spread across a number of federal departments and agencies that infrequently communicated about the subject. Two official investigations, Project Magnet and Project Second Storey, were initiated in the early 1950s to study the topic. The government concluded that the UFO phenomenon did not "lend itself to a scientific method of investigation," and terminated the projects. After this point, the investigation entered a state of purgatory, with no central communication, and every government department eager to pass the responsibility onto someone else. As such, Canadian citizens writing to the government for straight answers to the UFO enigma were often on the receiving end of what they called "doublespeak." Citizens were seeing things in the sky and wanted the government to simply tell them what they were. The government was unable and unwilling to do this, and over time frustration grew on both sides. What began for the government, in its own words, as an irritating intrusion into more important matters, became the catalyst for a dynamic of mutually-reinforced mistrust between state and citizen during the postwar period.

This dissertation offers a chronological history of the efforts that the Canadian government and citizens made to investigate UFOs, and when and why these efforts came into conflict. The main argument is that the Canadian state attempted to use UFOs as a site to assert its modernity during a time of uncertainty and anxiety over its legitimacy, by drawing on the cultural authority of the scientific community. The project was one of ridding the public of ignorance and creating instead a more rational citizen. This attempt ran up against beliefs and attitudes that some citizens shared, that tapped into a spirit of anti-authoritarianism present during the 1960s and even earlier. These citizens considered themselves to be iconoclasts, unmoved by claims of expertise, and accused the government of conspiracy theory. These approaches fed into one another, contributing to further misunderstanding and conflict. The history of Canada's UFO investigation is thus more broadly a history of changing attitudes toward authority and expertise in the postwar era.

Author Keywords: Canada, citizenship, history of science, scientific object, state, UFO

This dissertation explored how rural communities enhance the capacity of youth to both navigate and negotiate healthy identities and well-being in the context of social ecological resilience. Resilience refers to the capacity for individuals to have good outcomes in spite of exposure to significant adversity. Rural communities are often identified as places of deficit both in scholarly literature and in general social discourse which can constitute adversity. Given the importance of place as a social determinant of health, rural communities can have a notable impact on the positive development of adolescent identity and well-being of the youth that reside within them.

Drawing on the concept of social ecological resilience which draws attention to the importance of environments and relationships to support development, this project engaged with high school aged adolescents (14 to 18 years old) from Haliburton County in Central Ontario. Leveraging mixed model methods, the project featured both quantitative and qualitative approaches. There were 63 participants (33 male, 28 female and 2 non-binary) for the quantitative phase of the research which made use of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure survey instrument. The second phase of the research was qualitative and featured 14 participants who engaged in six focus groups. The focus groups provided context specific awareness of place-based factors which participants found supportive in their development.

The results indicated that while the overall resilience scores for the community were lower than the national average (t(62) = 3.20, p <0.01), some study participants found the community to be resilience bolstering. Specifically, participants recognized the importance of supportive people, an awareness of an enriched sense of community, and a powerful sense of the value of nature and the outdoors to be the most significant aspects for the development of their resilience.

The results indicate that rural youth are not naïve to the complexity of their circumstances but are able to use their rural contexts to develop the capacity to negotiate and navigate towards healthy identities and well-being.

Author Keywords: Adolescent, Place-based, Resilience, Rural, Social Ecological, Youth

Canada takes a national approach to border management. While this ensures that security practices are consistent across the country, it also fails to consider that different regions in Canada may have their own border needs. This dissertation, therefore, seeks to determine if border management priorities in Northern Canada are the same as in Southern Canada, along the 49th parallel.

To make this determination, three sets of federal government documents are analyzed. First, documents associated with the current Beyond the Border Action Plan are explored to better understand security priorities and if regions are considered. Next, documents that are associated with Northern security and regional governance are analyzed in order to illuminate regional security issues and determine where borders fit within this narrative. The final set of documents to be examined are Senate reports on Northern security, as they can provide a glimpse into how regional security agendas are set. Grounded theory is used to illicit key themes from all documents and political discourse analysis is applied to the Senate reports to assess the strength of securitizing arguments for the region. Securitization theory and the Copenhagen School's five security sectors are used to frame the analysis. This approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the region's security priorities and the extent of the interplay between the sectors. The concept of regional security complexes is also addressed to determine the extent to which bilateral border cooperation exists in the North.

Analysis reveals that border security priorities are not the same in the North as they are in the South. For example, in the North, greater emphasis is placed on protecting maritime borders, whereas in the South, land and air borders are prioritized. Beyond the Border aligns more closely with the needs of the Southern border, thus leaving a policy and security gap in the North. Bilateral border and security cooperation are also much more prevalent in the South than in the North. This research concludes with three policy suggestions to close this gap and addresses the extent to which it is in Canada's interest to work more closely with the United States in the North.

Author Keywords: Arctic, Borders, Canada, Policy, Regions, Securitization theory

How can educators use drama to nurture an ability in their students to identify and challenge the discourses and practices that have historically perpetuated oppression and inequality within Canada — without miring them in those narratives of oppression? This dissertation discusses the work of De-Railed, a theatre group that worked with youth in Hamilton Rapids, a Toronto neighbourhood where a high percentage of residents experience racial discrimination and poverty, to create a play about the destruction of Africville, a historically Black community in Halifax, NS. Drawing from the methodologies of critical, performance, and imaginative ethnography; critical multiculturalism; theatre of the oppressed; and feminist critical pedagogy, this dissertation argues that while participants used the fictional and intersubjective nature of drama to express embodied and affective resistance to class- and race-based oppressions in Canada's past and present, the play-building process also reproduced certain unequal disciplinary structures that De-Railed was attempting to challenge. Emphasizing the importance of creating space for young people's expressions of negative affect and emotion, this dissertation considers both the potentialities and limitations of De-Railed's application of theatre of the oppressed methods in enabling participants to engage in affective expressions of resistance that may not have been permissible or available in other areas of their lives.

Author Keywords: Africville, feminist critical pedagogy, forum theatre, multiculturalism, performance ethnography, theatre of the oppressed

This dissertation utilizes the psychoanalytic theories of French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva as a lens through which to read the novels of American author Samuel R. Delany. I argue that concepts proper to Kristeva's work--namely abjection and/or the abject--can provide a way to think what it might mean to be utopian in the 21st century. Delany's novels are received historically, which is to say his work speaks from a certain historical and cultural viewpoint that is not that of today; however, I claim that his novels are exceptional for their attempts to portray other ways of being in the world. Delany's novels, though, contain bodies, psychologies, and sexualities that are considered abject with respect to contemporary morality. Nonetheless, this dissertation argues that such manifestations of abject lived experience provide the groundwork for the possibility of thinking utopianism differently today. Throughout, what I am working toward is a notion that I call Abject Utopianism: Rather than direct attention toward those sites that closely, yet imperfectly, approximate the ideal, one should commit one's attention to those sights that others avoid, abscond, or turn their nose up at in disgust, for those are the sites of hope for a better world today.

Author Keywords: Abject, Delany, Kristeva, Literary Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Utopia