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SESSION 1.3: The Good Food Box Program: An Evaluation of Nutritional Sustainability in Nanaimo, BC
No full textOur research examines how Nanaimo Foodshare’s Good Food Box program enhances nutrition, access to nutritious food, and the social well-being of the food insecure demographic. Research shows that improving access to nutritious food supports the physical and psychological well-being of individuals and their families while also creating positive community connections. Valued at seventeen dollars, the Good Food Box program offers a monthly box of fruits and vegetables to members of the community for ten dollars per month, which aids food insecure individuals in stretching their income and receiving healthy food on a monthly basis. Through our study, we conducted a nutritional assessment of the Good Food Box based on its contents, portions, and frequency of intake. Surveys and interviews with Food Box users and a dietician provided insight into how well the Good Food Box program is reaching individuals in need of the service. Our research suggests there is a need to understand the cultural diversity of the community in order to move beyond nutrition and support social well-being
SESSION 1.1: Steamtown: Transpacific Steamships and the Vancouver Waterfront
No full textThe end of the supposed “golden age” of shipping in the late nineteenth century arrived at precisely the time when the urban Pacific Northwest began to develop. The city of Vancouver—like Victoria, Port Townsend, Seattle, and Tacoma—consequently never developed a distinct sailortown. These portside neighborhoods of seafarers and their communities had long held close associations with ideas of race, ethnicity, foreignness, and criminality. Nevertheless, historical attitudes toward the urban waterfront—particularly in terms of racialization and criminality—survived the existence of the historical sailortown. Vancouver’s residents and observers, as those of earlier port cities had done in prior centuries, continued to perceive their dockside neighborhoods as sites that were simultaneously essential to port industries and home to problematic populations and practices. The heart of Vancouver’s dockside community was Gastown, named for a Yorkshire-born seaman and saloon-keeper, and home to one of the region’s largest seaports, the Canadian Pacific Railway’s western terminus, and the highest concentration of liquor-licensed establishments in the city. This paper will attempt to parse the relationship between Vancouver’s urban waterfront at the turn of the twentieth century and the transpacific steamship lines that fed the city’s industry in order to understand the entangled multinational, multiethnic dynamics of life in one of the most subversive spaces of early twentieth century urbanity
SESSION 1.3: Sentiment for IWW is good : Forest Capital, Loggers, and the Strikes of 1923 and 1924 in the East Kootenays
No full text“‘Sentiment for IWW is good’: forest capital, loggers, and the strikes of 1923 and 1924 in the East Kootenays” Set within the context of an industry on the verge of collapse due to overexpansion and unsustainable cut rates, this paper examines the experience of loggers and forest communities during the 1920s and 1930s in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia. The paper shows that forest capital’s commitment to modern, high-speed sawmill operations contributed to the rapid exhaustion of the region’s resource and an ongoing, downward pressure on wages and conditions in labour-intensive woods operations. By the early 1920s, the shared experience of poor conditions and low wages prepared loggers, many seasonal workers from prairie farms, for the effective organizing drive of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Kootenay strikes of 1923 and 1924 were part of the IWW’s final major organizing drives that focussed on loggers, sawmill workers and farm workers across the west. The paper examines the sources of solidarity among impoverished rural workers who took enormous risks in participating in two major strikes. It also explores the power of capital, including the Canadian Pacific Railway, to defeat workers and their radical, industrial union in a remote region of the province. In the early 1920s, the IWW did not appear to be in a state of “disorder and decline” to the workers and companies of the region. Finally, the paper considers these understudied, practically unknown, strikes within a history of rural underdevelopment and poverty in the region and the province. As part of this, it argues that they deserve a more prominent place in the province’s labour history
SESSION 1.4: “In that \u27zact same room”: The Everydayness of Life and Death in the SROs of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
No full textFor Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, particularly in the context of the ongoing homelessness and fentanyl crises, SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels stand as sites of people’s survival and their unjust deaths. In this paper, I explore the SRO everyday, arguing that tenants are not passive recipients of crisis, but active responders
SESSION 2.1: A Storied Landscape: Deconstructing Colonial Narratives at Milner Gardens
No full textThis place-based research has been part of a 2.5 year project at Milner Gardens in Qualicum Beach, BC that has included an archaeological inventory, literature analysis, interviews, and an interactive, digital mapping project. Sources used within this research include personal interviews, online surveys, archival research, and government-held archaeological reports in the hopes of providing a comprehensive of the stories and information held in and about the landscape. The purpose of this project has been threefold: to explore the role of counter-narratives in reconciliation; the ideas of nature or wilderness in the Western understanding of landscapes; and the role of archaeology in progressing or holding back knowledge transfers related to place and relationships. By examining these ideas, one can examine the impacts of colonial ideas of landscape and how and why certain stories are marginalized. This is important to identify if we are to be able to move forward in conscientious ways towards reconciliatio
The Colonial Violence of “Non-Violent” Resistance
Get PDFIn his paper “On Violence,” Frantz Fanon argues for the crucial role of violence in achieving decolonization and asserts that the notion of “non-violent resistance” is introduced and upheld by those who are ultimately interested in preserving the capitalist colonial structure (Fanon 1;22). Fanon argues for the necessity of violence, claiming only violence can dislodge a regime that is itself established and maintained through violence, and that violence grants a sense of agency to the colonized people (2; 4; 6; 22; 10; 21; 51). I open this paper with an exposition and defence of Fanon’s two arguments for the necessity of violence to anti-colonial efforts and an explanation of why insistence upon non-violent resistance protects the powers that be. In this paper, I will defend Fanon’s arguments from the objection that non-violent tactics have historically been successful in combatting colonialism, and to explicitly argue that upholding non-violence as the only legitimate form of resistance is an oppressive tactic. I will accomplish this by examining the role of violent resistance, both within and without Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India movement, in advancing Indian liberation from British rule in 1947
Determination of Parabens in Mouthwash by Capillary Electrophoresis
No full textParabens have been used in the beauty industry for their antimicrobial effects. There has been some push-back as parabens have been found inside human breast tumors and as such they are now controlled or banned in certain countries. It has been known that parabens, when exposed to singlet oxygen, can produce hydroquinone and 1,4-benzoquione, which can cause damage to the skin or hair. It has been found that shampoos, which contain parabens, are the leading cause for parabens to be accumulated in the body. One of the many reasons that this should be analyzed is that paraben has been known to bind to human serum albumin and bovine serum albumin, both of which are found in the plasma of blood and are used to carry drugs through the body. If these sites are binded to, these drugs become less effective. This study employs capillary electrophoresis to analyze the content of household mouthwashes, as they are marketed to help keep the mouth clean and reduce bacteria or whiten teeth. There are typically 4 parabens used for their antimicrobial effects (methyl-, ethyl-, propyl- and butylparaben). Only 3 were analyzed, (methyl, propyl, and butyl), as ethylparaben is only found within the food industry. These mouthwashes were analyzed quantitatively to identify which parabens were found within the mouthwash, and then were quantified to idnetify which parabens were in higher concentration. The paraben within the samples were then identified using the spike method. The method was then verified, and the detection limits and precision were evaluated. Expired mouthwashes were also analyzed to find any correlations between expired and non-expired mouthwashes
Interactome of Two Fermenting Yeast Species During Beer Production
No full textParallel 49 Brewing Company opened in East Vancouver in 2012 and has become an award-winning microbrewery central to the growing beer culture in British Columbia. One of their most successful beers is brewed with a co-culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Brettanomyces claussenii using a fairly complex and laborious process to achieve a unique flavour profile; however, due to the time and energy expenses required to produce this beer, production has been halted. At present, Parallel 49 critically needs information regarding this unique brew in order to: understand the genetic makeup of these two strains; characterize the metabolites produced by the individual strains in relation to their gene expression profiles; and understand how yeast strains genetically and metabolically interact during mixed-strain fermentations. To achieve these goals, the genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic profiles of each yeast species are being characterized independently and in co-culture during fermentation of wort into beer. Measures of fermentation progress, specifically decreasing oxygen, pH and specific gravity, as well as increasing ethanol content, show that Brettanomyces works at a much slower rate than Saccharomyces cerevisiae or co-cultures of the two. The rate of flavour compound production, as measured by headspace gas chromatography coupled to a flame ionization detector, differed in each yeast culture. By gaining an understanding of underlying biological processes, Parallel 49 will be able to identify key biochemical pathways that lead to the flavour profile of this popular brew. As advances in brewing sciences are made, the company will hopefully be able to tailor their brewing process to allow for use a single yeast species to make a similar product more efficiently