University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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Ecological Discourse in Craig Childs's The Secret Knowledge of Water
Get PDFThis essay analyzes the ecological discourse used by Craig Childs in his creative non-fiction work The Secret Knowledge of Water. Childs attempts the tricky rhetorical approach of translating nature’s “voice” into text, while trying not to personify or idealize the environment. He uses ecological discourse not as an end, but as a means to give readers a biocentric perspective. Childs describes the non-verbal “conversations” between humans and nature, to help his readers locate themselves within the landscape and begin to understand the role they play as a part of a dynamic natural system
Completing the ‘Three-Peat’: Recent Provincial Elections in British Columbia
Get PDFBritish Columbia held its 39th General Election on May 12, 2009. It produced a result very close to the previous election in May, 2005, with Gordon Campbell’s Liberal Government returned with 48% of the popular vote and 49 of 85 seats (or 57.6% of the MLA’s) in an expanded British Columbia legislature. For Gordon Campbell, his victory to a third term made him only the fourth Premier in British Columbia to be elected for a third term, and the first since William Bennett and the Socreds from the mid 1970’s to the mid 1980’s.
Until Gordon Campbell, all First Ministers since 1986 had served no more than one term, some considerably less. (VanderZalm, Johnston, Harcourt, Clark, Miller and Dosanjh (between 1986 and 2001 – an average of 2.5 years each), During this decade and a half of electoral turmoil, British Columbia became the first Canadian jurisdiction with Recall and Initiative legislation, as well as adding a separate Referendum Act.
To understand the 2009 result, having an idea of its prelude is helpful. That prelude included two General Elections – in 1996 and 2001 which were controversial and resulted in British Columbia’s shift to fixed election dates for 2005 and 2009. The latter two elections both also included a referendum on electoral reform. Both of these failed
Encountering the More-Than-Human: Narration, Abjection and Pardon in Three Day Road
Get PDFJoseph Boyden’s Three Day Road takes place during World War I at the ambiguous boundary between culture and nature, madness and civilization, human and the more-than-human other. I argue that both the story and structure of Three Day Road illustrate and support the crucial link that Julia Kristeva makes between tradition and form-giving in respect of trauma and ethics. Kristeva’s thought helps to illuminate what cathartic narration must address in order to bring repressed otherness out of its confinement in nature. Specifically, this paper draws upon Richard Kearney’s definition of working-through and Kristeva’s psychoanalytic process in an analysis of abjection, the return of the repressed, and a pardon asked for that initiates a reconciliation between ourselves, culture, language and the social
Animating Our Selves: The ‘Irreducible Multiplicity’ and Humans
Get PDFAnimal agency on a species level is currently being considered in the social sciences and in society at large, validating Derrida’s claims of ontic multiplicity and its resultant ethical implications. Political scientists and geographers are regarding species as social and economic players and analyzing their roles in the context of biotechnological advances and the human communities that form around them. Case studies illustrate how Derrida’s arguments compiled in The Animal That Therefore I Am are becoming tacitly integrated across disciplines
Campaigning and Digital Media in Alberta: Emerging Practices and Democratic Outcomes?
Get PDFThis article examines the use and impact of an array of established and emerging digital media on the 2008 Alberta provincial election. Based on data collected from a range of methods, we explore the application of digital media by candidates and political parties. In describing the extent to which various forms of digital media were employed as campaign tools, the article examines the role of digital media in overcoming the media access gap between the dominant political party and other oppositional and minor parties (democratization). As a source of comparison, data from the 2008 national election is employed. The article argues that the evidence supporting democratization is weak. Although there are indications that digital media is one area of campaigning that suffers from the lowest performance gap between different political parties and actors, we identify that structural, human and financial factors advantage the dominant parties' access to both conventional and digital media. This appears significant given the electoral success of the incumbent, and the continued decline in voter participation. The inability of digital media to reinvigorate Alberta democracy lies in other factors of which, we argue, politics is but one, historical, social and economic factors being significant as well
Ahead to the Past: The Return of the Delegated Leadership Convention
Get PDFThe paper examines the leadership convention held by the Nova Scotia Conservatives in 2006. Based on a survey of delegates to that convention as well as elite interviews, the paper examines the rationale for the party's retreat from the universal ballot.
Examination of the process is focused on the rationale offered by the party, namely to have a more fair, equal, and exciting process. Following a discussion of each of these issues, the paper concludes that the party fell short on its own measures and the retreat from a universal ballot was far from strategic
The Rise of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario: 1985-2009
No full textThe Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last twenty years. Once a decrepit and inefficient retailer, it is now regarded as a leader in its field. It provides a high level of consumer value to Ontario’s citizens and, most interestingly, has sought to reshape their preferences with regards to consuming and purchasing alcoholic products. Such a dramatic institutional shift was the result of externally imposed expectations, as well as internally generated institutional variables. The political power of other retailers and alcohol suppliers in Ontario’s oligopolistic liquor retail market, certain fundamental organizational changes that occurred to the LCBO, as well as more ephemeral variables such as Ontario’s conservative culture, and long history of government intervention in its economy and the agricultural sector, help to explain the actions of Mike Harris’ Conservative government with respect to this institution. Such an interesting policy outcome in the Ontario liquor market complicates arguments made by some that government enterprises are unable to provide high value services to citizens, as well as the arguments of those who see privatization of public assets as a key characteristic of neoliberal-type reforms
Sub-Versions of Pastoral: Nature, Satire and the Subject of Ecology
Get PDFOne of the strengths of ecocriticism is its evolving multi-valency. This essay revisits a core stream of inquiry – the pastoral tradition in America – by interrogating the relationship between romantic and satirical pastoral and teasing out a paradox lurking in the idea of “Nature’s Nation.” Via a late essay of Kenneth Burke on satire and novels of Gilbert Sorrentino and Richard Brautigan, it examines ways in which satiric pastoral texts disturb the roots of American subjectivity onto which the ideological conceit of “Nature’s Nation” was grafted. It also attempts to show how, within the framework of ecocritical analysis, the pastoral, far from being merely a usefully invoked trope, becomes the progenitor and enabler (the sine qua non) of various fantasies of national or regional identity as these are routinely enacted, improvised, and—as the case may be—parodied and burlesqued
Book Review: Paul Outka's "Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance"
No full textReviews Paul Outka's _Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance_ (2008)
Mulroney’s Shadows: The Many Images of Canada’s Eighteenth Prime Minister
Get PDFBrian Mulroney has a multi-faceted and still-evolving legacy. He pleases few and angers many, but often for contradictory reasons. This paper uses the writings of Mulroney and others to explore his multiple and paradoxical images, including Mulroney as perfection, as American, as neo-conservative, as family man, as crook, and as comeback. It argues that there is perhaps no real Mulroney – only impressions and shadows. In this sense, Mulroney’s insecurities, yearnings and absence of an obvious core reflect very widespread Canadian values. If Pierre Trudeau represented what many want Canada to be, Brian Mulroney may reflect Canada as it really is