• Canada
• Research softwareclose
• Other research productsclose
• 2021-2021close
• VIUSpace close

Through qualitative semi-structured interviews with host community partners, this thesis explores the effects of hosting three different groups of First Nation evacuees on a single host community, the City of Timmins, as well as potential improvements to address negative impacts and experiences for the host community and evacuees. Hosting partners experienced challenges around a lack of familiarity with evacuating communities, language barriers, inadequate substance use and mental health supports, assumption of large costs, and access to deployable provincial supports. Findings demonstrated that the needs of evacuees during precautionary and emergency evacuations are distinct, necessitating agile hosting plans. Recommendations for hosting partners are provided based on the interview findings. Further considerations for improving host community capacity include sharing lessons between host communities, conducting further collaborative research, encouraging relationship building between host communities and First Nation representatives, simplifying provincial standards, and applying lessons from existing research, community studies, reports, and commissions.

As an environmental educator, I am interested in helping students learn from the natural world. In this phenomenological autoethnography, I outline some major lessons I learned from local nature while site-sitting, listening, reflecting and journaling by the Bow River in Calgary, Alberta. In apprenticing myself to the beings around me and paying attention to what they could tell me, I learned to let their teachings flow through me to tell a story about what can emerge when one fully pays attention. Inspired by traditional knowledge and worldviews, I developed an ethic of respect and reciprocity with the land around me and its inhabitants. Four fundamental themes emerged: paying attention, community, patterns and cycles, and belonging. I concluded that the natural world is a wonderful model of resilient communities and reciprocity, and that there are many ways for educators to allow Nature to be a respected co-teacher. This autoethnographic work was transformative, bringing forth a more reflexive worldview and allowing me to see the world as alive, animate, and full of teachers. Ultimately, I hope that these lessons can serve as an invitation for others to begin seeing the world with new eyes too.

The behavioural, social, and cognitive skills that guide response to emergencies and disasters make up crisis resource management (CRM). Emergencies and disasters are different types of events. Both are crises with potential to harm. They differ qualitatively and quantitatively. An emergency is a local event, manageable with resources usually available. A disaster is bigger, involves multiple organizations, and has the potential for much greater harm. Importantly, a disaster presents needs that exceed available resources. Though CRM is often applied to both, the same skills may not be equally valuable in events of different natures and magnitudes. The goal of this systematic review of CRM in disasters is to uncover how the components of this framework may need to be adapted to extreme events and what other, more disaster-specific skills may need to be considered. Awareness, decision-making, communication, leadership, and teamwork are foundational components guiding management of a crisis of any proportion. Extreme complexity makes adaptation, collaboration, and trust overarching themes in disaster response. Education and networks, though not components of response per se, were highly influential on the response phase and thus also included in this analysis.

France continues to see a widening cultural divide between immigrants and the greater French society. The French government and non-governmental organizations have implemented programs to try and address the differences that exist in the French Republic. This study examines programs implemented in Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, by non-governmental organizations that impact the lives of immigrants. To discover what impact these programs are having on the cultural divide in Seine-Saint-Denis, interviews were held with seven organizations that deliver programs in the area. These organizations were specifically selected due to the inclusion of Interactive Conflict Resolution components in their programs, namely face-to-face interaction in training, education, or language. The results showed that while face-to-face interaction were seen as having an impact on bridging the cultural divide, the inability to address the cultural differences directly due to France’s laws surrounding differentiation and equality, led to superficial and politically sanitized programs that would not prevent the escalation of the conflict into intractability. The results suggest that while these organizations benefit the quality of life for marginalized people, to have a direct and lasting effect on the escalating cultural conflict in France, they need to go farther than superficial interactions between participants or providing administrative tools that paper the cracks of the French system. To avoid future violence and escalating human security concerns, the Government of France should implement programs that uses dialogue, analysis, and problem-solving to explore the subjective, psychological social identity differences between immigrants and the greater French society. The government can do this by relaxing the stringent laws around gathering ethnic data, creating a central repository for program evaluations and oversight, and including the notion of equity in the Republic’s definition of equality.

Every year more and more Canadians are diagnosed with heart failure. For some who receive this diagnosis, a heart transplant is required. Heart transplants are not performed in every province in Canada; thus, patients and caregivers must relocate to access transplant care. The research question I sought to answer is: How is home connected to the heart transplant journey? The purpose of my study is to learn from the lived experiences of patients and caregivers, as well as through my lived experience as a caregiver who relocated with a patient to access a heart transplant. To explore these various perspectives two methodologies were used. First autoethnography was used to analyze journal writing which described my experience as a caregiver, who relocated with my husband Jamie, to access a heart transplant. My journals were written during my relocation, which occurred from 2014 to 2017. In total there were 947 journal entries. From my journals, I identified the challenges associated with relocating which include: the stress of finding accommodations, limited finances, a lack of mental health supports, and the challenges associated with being an out of province patient. The supports I found helpful during relocation include my immediate and extended family, and the transplant team. While I did not define home in my journals, it was clear to me that, home meant Newfoundland, my house in Newfoundland, as well as my parents’ house in Newfoundland. Second narrative analysis was used to explore patient and caregiver perspectives of relocating to access a heart transplant. Nineteen interviews were conducted, and during these interviews patients and caregivers identified the challenges they faced during relocation, the supports that made relocation easier, and their definitions of home. The challenges patients and caregivers faced were the same as the ones I had identified in my journals - the stress of finding somewhere to live, financial stress, a lack of mental health support, and the challenges associated with being an out of province patient. Patients and caregivers also identified three things that helped them during their transplant journey – family, other patients and caregivers and the transplant team. When asked to define home, patients and caregivers used words such as family, community, warmth, comfort, safety and belonging. When I combined both the autoethnography and narrative analysis I was able to ascertain that home is not a geographical location or physical space. Home is defined by people, and how these people make us feel, thus home is connected to the transplant journey. With this connection in mind, this research aims to create an understanding of the unique challenges that patients and caregivers who relocate face, and that supports be created to meet the needs of this population.

Building equitable, accessible and affordable campuses through Co-operatives. Webinars discussing co-operatives, what they are and how they could make for more equitable and accessible campus communities. Co-op webinar 2. This video is part of the second webinar in the webinar series on "COVID-19 Response: Building Higher Learning Resilience in the Face of Epidemics: Co-operatives and Campuses". Webinar occurred on March 17th, 2021.

Pressed specimen of Centaurea mntana. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/25212/Turk.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Wicked problems, a class of complex problems said to be unsolvable, impede humanity's quest for a just and sustainable world. The UN 2030 Agenda to achieve its matrix of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) is behind schedule. While decades of discourse on the science of complexity offers hope, complexity thinking (sensemaking within the uncertainty of complex systems) is not yet widely adopted. A mind shift and leader competency in the application of complexity thinking could enable interventions that catalyze emergent outcomes and mitigation of the existential threats posed by wicked problems. This action research project engaged sustainability practitioners in complexity thinking as they compared leadership, complex system analysis, systemic intervention, and governance models to their lived experience. The primary aim of the study was to assess the value and potential form of complexity andragogy for sustainability professionals. The secondary aim was to understand foundational elements of a framework for managing complex social change. The study concludes that professional development of sustainability practitioners in complexity thinking is worthwhile. This and championing dialogue on emergence and governance among funders might accelerate sustainable development. Finally, the study recommends further applied research on frameworks for change in complex reflexive (living) systems.

Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations have been fraught with ignorance, misunderstandings, and racism since the imposition of Settler colonialism on Turtle Island. Our current era is characterized by change, and as tensions continue to rise over title to the lands and waters of this continent, there is a growing need and desire to work towards more just and respectful relations between Indigenous and Settler People(s). I use a phenomenological approach to explore Settler experiences of respectful relations with Haida People, drawing on in-depth, one-on-one interviews with long-term Settlers to Haida Gwaii. Interview transcripts were analyzed drawing on theoretical concepts including the “ethical space of engagement” (Ermine, 2007), Barker and Lowman’s (2015) “space of dangerous freedom”, and Regan’s (2010) notion of “unsettling the settler within” revealing that respectful relations are understood to be embodying yahguudang, the Haida principle of respect. The findings reveal that Settlers strive towards this in an ongoing process of becoming following four crucial pathways: embodied humility, embodied acknowledgment, embodied responsibility, and a sense of embodied reciprocity. The current Haida Gwaii context offers unique opportunities for Settlers to learn and practice embodying these ways of being and also of becoming, which create potential for building genuine and lasting respectful relations with Haida People. Participant experiences, along with the socio-political circumstances that surround their experiences, may offer insight for other Settlers wishing to live in respectful relations with Indigenous People(s) across Turtle Island. Keywords: Indigenous–Settler relations, yahguudang, embodied respect, Ethical Space of Engagement, Haida Gwaii, phenomenology, settler colonialism, decolonization, reconciliation

This case study will explore how the Banff Centre addresses truth and reconciliation to work towards social sustainability through its creative arts programs and community development practices. This case study will use the United Nations SDGs, as framed by Odulaja and Halseth (2018), and UNDRIP’s Article 15 as a framework to analyze change towards alignment with these principles at the Banff Centre. https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/25234/Collishaw.pdf?sequence=3