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Fires in the Rough: A Close Examination of the Fire Hazards in the Rural-Urban Fringe in Kelowna, B.C.
Get PDFFire hazards in the rural-urban fringe have been a cause of concern for several decades. During the hot, dry summer months, risks for fires increase dramatically. This is due in part to the low level of maintenance in these areas when compared to their urban counterparts, as well as the issues of weather, lack of adherence to policy regarding environmental management, and the emergency response of the region. These issues have been thoroughly investigated using a deep literature review using peer reviewed articles, newspaper articles, regional data from statistics Canada, and this paper includes an examination of wildfire events in the Kelowna area, exploring the potential improvements from the perspectives of management, policy, and individual responsibility. We found that the probability of fires occurring is greater in the rural- urban fringe, the response time by regional district is slower, and there is a greater susceptibility of the landscape to hazardous weather conditions. In conclusion, the social and physical characteristics of the rural-urban fringe in Kelowna promote an environment that is particularly vulnerable to wildfires, and the city is continuing to improve land-use patterns in the area to ensure a decrease risk of fire hazards
SESSION 2.3: As I Remember It: A Digital Remediation Project
No full textThis paper discusses the collaborative process through which a team of authors (including myself) remediated a successful print publication and transformed it into a digital book. The three authors of Written as I Remember It (UBC Press 2014), decided to pursue what we originally conceived as a digital companion to the original text. We realized, however, that a more important opportunity lay before us: namely, to produce a quite different book that would be accessible and appealing to different audiences, most particularly to Tla’amin community members themselves, as well as to students of all ages (kindergarten through university.) The result is As I Remember It (UBC Press 2019). In working on this book, we grappled with the problem, common to in Indigenous digital humanities projects, that despite the much-lauded democratizing potential of digital forms, the internet is also a site that can easily expediate and expand (rather than eliminate) the colonial theft Indigenous intellectual property. In addition, we struggled with the implications of the new K-12 curriculum for how to teach and present Indigenous materials in classroom settings. Here too, the issue of intellectual property and expertise was paramount. Even as we articulated the digital book to the specifics of the curriculum, we realized that teachers without expertise in Indigenous studies were prone to mis-interpret or mis-apply the material. Our project offers one example in which an Indigenous knowledge-holder engages the internet towards de-colonizing/anti-colonial ends, while mediating the risk posed by the internet her status as a privileged knowledge holder
SESSION 3.1: Engaging Rural BC Youth in Community and Arts-Based Participatory Research
No full textYouth who live in rural communities rarely have adequate access to health, social services and programs. Youth are often framed as “at risk” and subsequently programs are created to prevent youth from participating in high-risk behaviours (such as substance use, unhealthy eating, physical inactivity, violence, self-injury), which severely limits their ability to fully realize their potential as contributing members of society. Barriers regarding accessing programs and services may include a lack of confidential services, beliefs about effectiveness, or feeling stigmatized, patronized, unwelcome, and unworthy. Opportunities to find solutions to these barriers are not regularly afforded to youth. We report on a study in two British Columbia rural communities on how we are engaging youth using arts-based methods that support their positive development to find solutions and take action to strengthen their lives and improve their community. We will discuss our experiences recruiting youth who are “hard to reach”, the process of youth engagement through arts-based methods, and preliminary findings of issues youth face living in rural communities
SESSION 3.3: Filling the Gap? Analyzing Social Need in the Nanaimo Community
No full textNanaimo, B.C. is a port city in proximity to Vancouver and it is home to many organizations and groups working to support those in need within the community. For example, Haven House, John Howard Society, Loaves and Fishes, and Tillicum Lelum offer services covering issues from homelessness and hunger to job skills and youth drop-in centres. Many of these organizations receive support from service clubs such as Zonta Club, the Lions Club of Nanaimo, and Knights of Columbus. This research project proposes to look at the services offered in Nanaimo and compare them to the needs of the community. It is a needs-based gap analysis and we will be presenting the results. The project uses qualitative research methods, and our results will include subjective data gathered from executives, managers, and spokespeople of non-profit organizations that benefit from service clubs. These community organizations will include those involved with hunger, housing, education, women’s empowerment, and families. The presentation will focus on the social needs in the Nanaimo community, as identified through community organizations, and how they are being met
SESSION 1.2: Afterlives of the Last Cariboo Stagecoaches: Frontier Nostalgia and the Popular Past before 1958
No full textThe central and northern hinterlands of British Columbia were widely regarded as some of North America’s last frontiers during the first decades of the twentieth century – at the very moment their economy and social geography were being transformed by new railways, roads, and energy grids. Those modern networks of mobility sped the decline of horse-drawn transport and inland steamboats in the region. They also generated new ways of thinking about community, progress, and the past. This paper explores how the modernization of overland mobility and commensurate rise of petroleum dependency in the BC Interior contributed to a popular nostalgia for the paths and conveyances of yesteryear: for the Cariboo stagecoaches and freight wagons that have been icons of the region’s history for a full century now. A wide range of written, material, and visual sources are drawn on to trace the halting, uneven, often quite ironic emergence of “horsepower nostalgia” and interest in old wooden vehicles in western Canada. Stagecoaches had been made famous as symbols of the frontier and generic (North) American Western-ness in the 1880s, when Buffalo Bill Cody used one as the centrepiece of his touring Wild West Show. Yet in some regions, such as the Cariboo country, the same vehicles were in active service into the 1920s. As early as the 1900s, the persistence of stagecoach travel had marked these districts as being in a different stage of development, as being backward, a kind of relic of the past. Then, as automobiles and new rail lines appeared there in the 1910s, the same old coaches and wagons started being preserved, collected, restored, and put on display. Tourism promoters saw new value in them because they were regionally distinctive yet recognizable within North America’s broader enthusiasm for ‘Wild West’ themes. For amateur historians and many ordinary residents, the same artifacts could simultaneously evoke the romance of bygone days – the (relatively recent) end of frontier conditions and of pioneering – and also illustrated the region’s material progress, as manifested in good roads, high energy use, and an active state
SESSION 3.2: Who Am I and What Is my Role in Decolonization, Indigenization, and Reconciliation?
No full textIn 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) completed the five-year national inquiry into the truth of survivors, families, communities and anyone personally affected by the Indian Residential Schools (IRS). Through the voices of the survivors, the TRC report informs Canadians and the world on what really happened and the ongoing impact on Aboriginal people, hoping that this guides Canadians to reconcile through a process of mutual understanding and respect. The TRC calls for action hold every Canadian accountable. Some have ignored them, others resist them, and others are taking action. For me as an educator, teacher educator, researcher, and visitor in Secwepemcúlecw, the TRC report and its calls for action have strong resonance. The TRC report has built a momentum for change, but unless we all sincerely, humbly, and consistently engage with this, it will just remain a report that has shortly shaken Canadian society. The TRC report has shaken me and driven me to a deep exploration of my own identity and my role in the process of reconciliation. I am aware that this requires decolonizing and indigenizing myself first. This paper reports on an auto ethnographic examination of my identity, my positionality and my role in decolonizing and indigenizing the academy through my research and teaching practices. Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), critical (Bhabba, 1998) and indigenous (e.g., Little Bear, 2009; Smith, 1999, 2012) theories guide this examination. Key words: auto ethnography, decolonization, indigenization, reconciliation, higher education, intersectionality, critical theory, indigenous theor
SESSION 3.1: The Legal Culture of the Kootenays/Columbia, 1860s-1914
No full textThe “First Formative Period” in the history of the law in British Columbia was a Victorian era that stretched from the creation of the crown colony in 1866 to the outbreak of World War One in 1914. While the legal contours of the first formative period have been sketched, there is still much to be done not only with its rich legal archival holdings, but also with the anthropological and sociological perspectives, the social, economic, and commercial dynamics, and the Canadian, American, and Imperial contexts. The purpose of this paper is to utilize the methodology of the new cultural history to explore the legal culture of in its first formative period with regard to one of its several geographical “islands,” the Kootenays/Columbia. The sources for the history of legal culture in British Columbia are among the richest for any region of Western Canada. The extant written record includes both the personal papers and bench books of some of the major judges of the period, and extensive court records for all jurisdictions from the Supreme Court to the Gold Commissioners. There are also large collections of documents in the files of the legal departments. The physical remains are also abundant, with many surviving courthouses and industrial sites. But how the law was perceived in the communities is an integral part of legal culture. This makes the printed press and other literary sources at least equal in importance to the legal record. One of the treasures of British Columbia\u27s historical remains is the survival of 394 newspapers representing its and their hinterland in the era. These will be utilized with court records, correspondence and events to explore the reality of the region\u27s legal culture. Looking at demographics, the southeast section of what became British Columbia comprised an area that can described as the three districts of the Kootenays bordered by the Columbia River communities. The problems of the law, and its image, in this remote area of the Canadian west were several. First, the Hudson\u27s Bay Company lacked jurisdiction over the indigenous peoples they encountered. Many of the company\u27s traders were husbands of mixed marriages whose status may or may not have been recognized in anglophone society. Second, the interface and possible conflict of First Nations, United States, and Russian interests made structures of authority ambiguous. Third, the discovery of rich mineral resources led to a mining boom with an influx of European immigrants. Mixed with fishing and forestry, the socio-economic factors were incredibly diverse. The violence between conflicting socio-economic interests, immigrant settlers, and First Nations would expand to other ethnic groups and employer-employee relations in the decades following the 1860s. And much of that would be adjudicated in an English common law regime. The political-judicial conflicts of the following years, concluding with the County and Assize Court Acts of 1883 and 1885, would result in an equally \u27mixed Canadian\u27 structure of local and central courts that would provide the touchstone for the foundation of legal culture in the region. The astronomical rate of prosecutions for this region in contrast to the province, or the rest of Canada, requires not only explanation, but also a discussion of its impact among the mixed peoples who inhabited the region. This paper will explore those subjects, and invite discussion and interaction as to the meaning of the evidence for the several fields of cultural, social, economic, historical and legal inquiry
SESSION 3.3: Saboteurs, Looters and Witless Dupes: The Rise and Fall of the Coalition for Proportional Representation in BC
No full textAt the end of November, the NDP government will count the results of a postal vote that will deliver proportional representation its worst defeat yet. BC voters are set to repudiate electoral reform on an unprecedented scale. How is it that proportional representation could fall from 58% support in the 2005 referendum to 39% in 2009 to the low 30s in 2018? The answer to this question is to be found at the social movement level. Declining support for PR has closely followed the ideological narrowing of fair voting movements throughout Canada. As with my previous papers at BC Studies, I will be offering a participant-observer perspective as both social scientist and movement activist. The proposed paper will seek to understand the reasons the BC electoral reform movement chose to ideologically narrow its base of support despite serious consequences at the polls and will, through this example, seek to adumbrate key trends in BC social movement politics in the twenty-first century. As a member of the boards of the formal Yes committees in 2005 and 2009 and a former director of Fair Voting BC, Fair Vote Canada and the BC Electoral Change Coalition, I am privy to a large array of un-curated primary sources pertinent to this shift and will bring them to bear in this analysis
