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This collaborative inquiry sought to answer the primary research question “How can a series of facilitated dialogues focused on mindfulness and adventure enhance student success within the Adventure Studies Department at Thompson Rivers University?”. Guiding this inquiry was the intention to work with the department and its students using an action research methodology that considered the Action Research Engagement model and an appreciative stance. Five second-year diploma students from the Adventure Studies Department participated in three dialogical methods of learning circle, participant journaling, and a focus group. Any interaction with participants adhered to the Royal Roads University Research Ethics Policy. Using both an inductive qualitative analysis and a deductive analysis the following four themes emerged: understanding mindfulness, mindfulness and adventure education, community, and emotional intelligence. Each conclusion ultimately informed recommendations that center on implementing mindfulness into the program and are worth pursuing. The recommendations are: adopt mindfulness into the Adventure Studies Department’s strategic plan, encourage staff to explore mindfulness for their own sake, and integrate mindfulness into the existing curriculum using guiding principles.

This research is focused at the sites of Tumbo Island North and Tumbo Cliff (both on Tumbo Island within the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve [GINPR]), with supplemental data from Rocky Point Department of National Defense (DND) and Garry oak Preserve on Vancouver Island, and Waldron Island in Washington State. Field data is overlaid with a literature review of First Nations’ land management practices and acknowledges First Nations’ use of wildfire on traditional landscapes. Results comparing 2010 to 2018 vegetation data indicate an overall increase in exotic and native species and a net negative effect of fire application. Fuel loading levels are higher than expected and have a direct relationship to fire behaviour outputs. Canopy cover has a positive net effect on native species in grass strata and exotic species in forest strata and a negative net effect if found on exotic species in grass strata and native species in forest strata. An additional product of this research is a restoration plan for Tumbo Island North, which includes a comprehensive burn plan for reintroducing fire to Garry oak (Quercus garryana or p’hwulhp ) ecosystems with an aim to restoration, and with specific prescriptions for reducing conifer encroachment, reducing forest fuel loading, increasing oak sapling regeneration and survival, and increasing plant diversity of native plant species. This restoration plan can serve as a model that can be adapted and used at other Garry oak ecosystem sites. p’hwulhp is the Hul’qumi’num word for Garry oak (Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, 2011,p.10).

Rapid suppression, or initial attack (IA), is the primary method of managing new fires, with relatively low costs and high containment rates. Factors contributing to containment are well understood, but consequences for the landscape-level distribution of fire risk are not. This research introduces a method of assessing IA impacts using spatially-explicit burn probability (BP) analysis, and applies it to a study area in Kootenay National Park. BP is assessed with and without the influence of suppression by combining the Burn-P3 model with a stochastic probability of containment algorithm. Results indicate IA impacts are spatially heterogeneous. Suppression was most effective in recently burned areas, whereas mature, contiguous fuels moderated its influence. IA was least effective in the management zone where natural fire is not permitted, suggesting supplementary tactics may be appropriate. Managers can use this method to compare emergent, fine-scale consequences of fire management policy and increase long-term management effectiveness.

Preface -- Leisure education for youth with a lived experience of mental illness, development of the FRESH [Fun Recreation Exercise and Skills for Health] program for a youth cohort in Western Sydney, Australia / Manali Hiteshkumar Shah, Stewart Alford, & Dafna Merom -- Kink as a form of leisure: Kinky events and the people who love them / Craig Webster & Stanislav Ivanov -- Measuring community engagement: A case study of Livingston (Calgary, Alberta) / Dwayne P. Sheehan & Diala F. Ammar -- Raising the Curtain: At the intersection of education, art, health care and lived experience of dementia / Ania Landy & Colleen Reid -- Improving communities through innovative financing: A case study of the Baileys Trail System / Danny Twilley, Dawn McCarthy, & Seth Brown It is the honour of the World Leisure Centre of Excellence at Vancouver Island University to share the fourth volume of case studies that comprise the Innovative Leisure Practices series. As with previous volumes in the series, the intent is to share examples of unique and innovative practice in leisure, and to encourage discussion around these varied examples. The cases presented herein are eclectic in nature, and represent a very diverse set of important interests, communities, and practices. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/23389/wlce-case-volume-4-2020.pdf?sequence=3

Digital media consumption of magazines is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, yet print remains significant in this genre. The purpose of this study is to determine a model of publishing in which an independent magazine’s printed form can be made more viable because of its digital components, not despite them. Using a strengths-based approach, the study is based in semi-structured interviews with the publishers of eight independent magazines that have used both print and digital media in their publishing practices, exploring themes like motivation, creative freedom, creative control, and career development. Then, the data was sorted through the lens of McLuhan’s “laws of media” tetrad model, allowing for analysis of what is enhanced, obsolesced, retrieved, and reversed in this hybrid publishing model, with the aim of showing what each component can effectively bring in order to support the print edition and to integrate the digital components. The results inform the design and framework of a magazine publishing model in which the print issue is the focus, with support from the digital components. Any independent magazine can apply the results to its current practices or use them to launch a new hybrid offering.

Pressed specimen of Paeonia lactiflora. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/25204/Kipot.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Front-line maintenance supervisors play a key role at BC Transit, as this role directly interacts with and oversees front-line staff. These front-line leaders are responsible for overseeing most of the organization’s communications and change initiatives. This research investigates the front-line leadership role that organizations rely on as their main conduit for communication of organizational goals and change management initiatives to front-line staff. Front-line leadership roles are the roles in an organization that deal directly with the front-line staff daily. This research investigated the challenges a front-line leader can face while working in this role. This research study engaged BC Transit’s front-line maintenance supervisors and the front-line staff from two different sites within the greater Victoria, British Columbia area. The main research question asked was, “how can BC Transit assist in the development of front-line maintenance supervisors so that they develop the capabilities and skills to lead front-line staff effectively?” Based on this overarching research question, data was collected from a focus group and an online survey that revealed five themes: define and document roles and responsibilities, strengthen hiring processes, develop formal training, focus on team-building and resolve communication barriers. Recommendations offer strategies for the development of front-line leaders, including enhancing overall support for front-line leaders and relationships between front-line leaders and the front-line staff. Keywords: front-line leadership, communication, development, relationships, roles and responsibilities.

This research explores the psychosocial dimensions of a poorly understood profession: the professional aquarist (fish caretaker) in a modern aquarium. Using a qualitative and psychoanalytically-informed methodology, this study explored how aquarists at the Vancouver Aquarium navigate and negotiate any tensions, dilemmas and stressors they experience in their work, including public scrutiny of their occupation, the stressors and traumas inherent in caretaking work and the political, social and organizational challenges specific to the Vancouver Aquarium. Through interviews with five professional aquarists using the Dialogic, Relational Interview method, a thematic analysis illuminates the complexity of the work, including sources of resilience and the forms of defensiveness such as defense mechanisms and coping strategies the aquarists appeared to employ to stay functional. Findings suggest that aquarists experience moral distress regularly throughout the course of their work, often leading to feelings of ambivalence and guilt, and increasing the occupational risk of burnout.

Winning essay - English Department Competition 2017-2018 Winning essay - ENGL 346 https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/7734/Barton.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

This ethnographic research was conducted to better understand how living in an intentional community may be promoting environmental integrity, personal and community well-being and to gain insight into the intentions and motivations of individuals engaged in living in an intentional community. Intentional communities are a group of individuals who have chosen to live together with a common purpose of creating a cooperative lifestyle that reflects their shared values. These communities function collaboratively, address the practical and social needs of individuals, and recognize the importance of social relationships as antidotes to alienation, disempowerment, and stress. The end result of this research project, undertaken in collaboration with a 12 year old intentional community called the Dangle Dome, is an accessible and easily shareable film and digital resource, which contributes to the ongoing conversation about housing practices and housing policy.