This study challenges a popular Canadian national myth that characterizes Settlers as “benevolent” peacemakers, not perpetrators of violence in our relations with Indigenous peoples. I trace this foundational myth from its historical roots in 19th century treatymaking to a contemporary discourse of reconciliation that purports to be transformative, but simply perpetuates colonial relations. I argue that Settler violence against Indigenous peoples is woven into the fabric of Canada’s national history in an unbroken thread from past to present that we must “unsettle” and “restory,” making substantive space for Indigenous history； counternarratives of diplomacy, law and peacemaking practices, on transformative pathways to decolonizing Canada. This requires a better understanding of what role myth, ritual and history play in perpetuating or transforming Indigenous-Settler conflict. I propose a pedagogical strategy for “unsettling the Settler within” to explore the unsettling, potentially decolonizing and transformative power of testimony in public acts of restitution, apology, truth-telling and remembrance； and restorying—the making of space for Indigenous history, diplomacy, law, and peacemaking practices enacted in story, ceremony and ritual. I suggest that Settlers must confront our real identity as perpetrators—a deeply unsettling task. Dislodging the false premise of the benevolent peacemaker myth requires a paradigm shift that moves Settlers from a culture of denial that is the hallmark of perpetrators of violence towards an ethics of recognition that guides our attempts to become authentic peacemakers and Indigenous allies. The study mirrors this process, linking theory to my own critical, reflective practice. I critique reconciliation discourse in a case study of Canada’s approach to settling Indian residential school claims. I describe my personal experience in an apology feast held for Gitx&barbelow；san residential school survivors as an example of unsettling the Settler within and restorying that, despite its specificity, has broader applicability for designing truth-telling and reconciliation processes.

This thesis establishes the presence of pilgrimage in Canadian literature as reflective of Canadian cultural and global changes. It shows the enduring archetypal characteristics of pilgrimage from the earliest pre-Confederation travel writing to contemporary and postmodern novels. The topic of Canadian literary pilgrimage allows for an eclectic and necessarily multi-disciplinary approach and also for the study of the earliest Canadian letters and contemporary novelists, as well as for a breadth of forms, including journals, letters, archival sermons, dramatic works, poetry, and contemporary Canadian novels. Chapter one begins with the cultural figure of Brebeuf as pilgrim first in The Jesuit Relations 1632-1673), proceeds to E. J. Pratts long-poem Brebeuf and his Brethren 1940), on-site research at the memorial to Brebeuf in Midland, Ontario, and concludes with the post-colonial revisiting of this figure in James W. Nichols dramatic work, Saint-Marie Among the Hurons 1980), and in Brian Moores Black Robe 1985). Chapter two turns to Oliver Goldsmiths The Rising Village and explores Protestant pilgrimage, marking the material and spiritual progress of that pilgrimage. The thesis then looks at Goldsmiths work in conjunction with the influential sermons and journals of Bishop John Inglis of Nova Scotia. Chapter three follows pilgrimage into more contemporary works in Robertson Davies Fifth Business and Jane Urquharts The Stone Carvers, incorporating post-structuralist discussions of the nomad as pilgrim or anti-pilgrim figure and the implications of homelessness to the pilgrimage paradigm. Chapters four and five analyze Richard B. Wrights The Age of Longing and Clara Callan, and Timothy Findleys The Butterfly Plague and Headhunter, which are explored in light of some of Jacques Derridas writing and the critical utopian studies of Ernst Bloch.

In A Border Within (1997), Ian Angus calls for the expression of new visions of identity based in the experiential content of the nation. He requests that these secular expressions of contemporary identity be characteristic of the cultural history of Canada, emphasizing that they be articulated through rather than against diversity. Such contemporary expressions of community will lead to a more effective concept of nation in the face of globalization and multiculturalism. Representations of ice in contemporary English Canadian literature establish continuity with the strong identification established between English-speaking Canadians and the land they inhabit. Moreover, calling attention to the presence of ice in Canadian literary expressions leads to further notions of identity rooted in diversity and ecocritical ideals. Six works written by non-Aboriginal English-speaking Canadians—Wayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion, Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief, Jane Urquhart’s The Underpainter, Robert Kroetsch’s What the Crow Said, Aritha van Herk’s Places Far from Ellesmere and John Moss’s Enduring Dreams—span a progression from realist to postmodern narrative, highlighting the consistent theme of limitation as it appears in representations of ice.

Irish immigrant Frances Stewart reveals her life through half a century of letters that she wrote home to Ireland after arriving in Upper Canada in 1822. Original, excerpted, and copied variants of the letters are found in archival collections, while heavily edited published versions occur in Our Forest Home: Being Extracts from the Correspondence of the late Frances Stewart, compiled by Francess daughter, Ellen Dunlop in two variant editions 1889, 1902). By focusing on aspects of class, gender, and ethnicity, and known factors about the lived experiences of Frances and Ellen, this thesis discusses the manner in which Ellen re-describes her mother for publication. Textual analysis is used as an investigative tool for extracting meaning from the layers of text, and allows for credible postulations about the editing decisions that Ellen made. Concluding remarks include a discussion of the impact of Our Forest Home on later publications about Peterboroughs history and Upper Canadian immigrant women. Keywords. Frances Stewart, Thomas Alexander Stewart, Our Forest Home: Being Extracts from the Correspondence of the late Frances Stewart, Eleanor Susannah Dunlop, Peterborough, Ontario, Textual Analysis, Catharine Parr Traill, Nineteenth-Century Canadian Immigrant Letters.

This thesis is an investigation of the ways in which Canadian historical fiction that deals with non-Canadian history comments on or contributes to a changing sense of Canadian national identity. Through a close examination Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter and Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, I argue that narratives that take the history of elsewhere as subject suggest a formulation of identity that is not only multicultural, but also international, and thus challenge singular, conventional notions of what it means to be Canadian. As the nation is steeped in plurality and diversity, any formulation of identity in the Canadian context must constantly negotiate between various subjectivities. In this sense, Canada and its citizens are never fixed or absolute, but always engaged in the process of becoming Canadian.

Where we consume, what we consume and how we present our material goods on our bodies all provide important messages about our identity. As consumers, we surround ourselves with objects that define and project our identity. Clothing is among the most popular, and the most public, of commodities used to express individual identities. It has moved beyond its usefulness for modesty and warmth, and has become highly culturally symbolic. Thus, consumption of clothing can be considered more than a frivolous and meaningless act, this thesis will reveal how it can be positioned as an intimate and involved exercise in identity construction. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, my research aims to uncover how people perceive spaces of consumption and how these perceptions affect processes of identity development and expression. Using the Gap and Old Navy as focal points for my case study, I examine how these retail environments are constructed, how merchandising techniques are utilized and how consumers interpret such spaces. I demonstrate the gendered differences in consumption habits and identity performance highlighting, for men, the influence of sexuality, and for women, the importance of ideal, perceived and real images of womens bodies. Given both the pervasiveness of the Gap and Old Navy in the Canadian market, and the continuing culture of identity-based consumption, I argue that the spatial practices employed by clothing retailers play a significant role in the shaping and expression of their patrons self-perceptions and identities.

Drawing upon and bringing together the insights of social nature scholarship and feminist and anti-racist scholarship on the nation, this thesis examines the social and historical processes and relationships of power through which Temagami, Ontario, came to exist as a site of Canadian wilderness. In it, I argue that the Temagami region is not “naturally” a national wilderness space, but rather that it has been created as such over time through a number of power-infused discourses, practices and events, including: the setting aside and regulation of the Temagami Forest Reserve in the early 1900s； Temagami tourism and travel writing at approximately the same time； a controversy that unfolded in the 1930s after the provincial government demanded the payment of rent from members of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Temagami region； and a court battle over legal title to the Temagami area that took place between Ontario and the Teme-Augama Anishnabai during the 1980s. Although it appears on the surface that forest policy, travel writing, the reserve controversy and the court case merely regulated, described or contested a pre-existing place, I show how these discursive practices in fact constituted the region as a site of Canadian wilderness while at the same time rendering invisible this active construction. The making of Temagami as a wild Canadian space worked to evict the Teme-Augama Anishnabai from the territory that they have always known as n’Daki Menan rather than. Temagami, and to open the region up to resource extraction and tourism for the benefit of non-Native governments and citizens. By uncovering the cultural processes through which Temagami came to appear self-evidently natural and national, I reveal the operation of power, often racialized and gendered, in the making of Canadian wilderness. In so doing, I aim not only to demonstrate that nature is constructed alongside other social categories like race, gender and nation, but also to create space for a more just Temagami to emerge, one that includes recognition of and respect for Teme-Augama Anishnabai rights and responsibilities toward n’Daki Menan.

Le present memoire de maitrise porte sur le cimetiere Saint-Louis de Trois-Rivieres, le plus ancien cimetiere catholique de la ville encore ouvert. Nous avons choisi daborder le cimetiere en tant quespace sacre, espace social et lieu de memoire. Letude sappuie principalement sur une documentation de premiere main en provenance des archives de leveche de Trois-Rivieres. Elle couvre la periode 1865 a 1950. Le travail est divise en quatre chapitres. Le premier presente un survol de lhistoriographie pertinente et identifie les grands themes de recherche privilegies dans ce memoire role de la paroisse et de la fabrique, gestion et politiques damenagement du territoire, conceptions et representations de la mort, etc.). Le chapitre deux retrace lhistorique du cimetiere pour la periode delimitee. Le plus souvent longuement planifiees, les transformations qui y furent apportees ont ete determinees par les besoins de la paroisse, sous limpulsion de lEglise, du Conseil de fabrique et des autorites sanitaires. Le troisieme chapitre traite de linhumation et de lexhumation. Il sattache a demontrer que les pratiques funeraires ont ete strictement encadrees et organisees par lEglise et lEtat, a travers la reglementation ecclesiastique et la legislation provinciale en matiere dhygiene et de sante publique. Le dernier chapitre nous conduit au coeur du terrain denquete. Mettant a profit un vaste inventaire des choix de sepultures et de services constitue a partir du casuel de la paroisse de lImmaculee-Conception pour les annees 1866 a 1936, de meme quun corpus de plus dune vingtaine de requetes pour exhumation 1871-1903), nous nous efforcons de retracer les indices de differenciation sociale a loeuvre dans le cimetiere. En derniere analyse, lexamen des dossiers dexhumation nous amene a reflechir sur la consolidation des liens de filiation comme enjeu de la translation des corps.