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A Canadian Civil Affairs Officer in Italy: Lieutenant-Colonel H. S. Robinson, Provincial Commissioner for Brescia in 1945
Get PDFThis article provides an overview of one Canadian Civil Affairs Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Homer Smiley Robinson, and his contribution to the rebuilding of the province of Brescia in north Italy and its eponymous capital after liberation from Nazi occupation. Robinson, as Provincial Commissioner, led the Civil Affairs team from April to October 1945 as the first Canadian to be appointed to the position. Traditionally, Civil Affairs has been studied predominantly as a bureaucratic structure. The human element in terms of staff and stakeholders has been almost entirely neglected. It is hoped that this account of a soldier-turned-governor will prove to be a step towards redressing that neglect
Three Essays on Corporate Debt Contracting and Innovation
Get PDFThis dissertation comprises three essays investigating topics in Corporate Debt Contracting and Innovation. The first essay examines the relation between Passive Institutional Ownership (IO) and debt covenants. Using Russell 1000/2000 annual index reconstitution as a source of exogenous variation in passive IO, I find that passive IO leads to reduced covenants in the bond market. Specifically, I find that passive IO leads to reduced (a) Investment, (b) Dividend restriction, and (c) Subsequent financing restriction. However, I observe weaker results for loan covenants, implying that loans, usually collateralized, are less sensitive to changes in passive ownership. The overall effect of passive ownership on bond covenants supports the argument that passive institutional investors are effective monitors, and their interests are closely aligned with creditors’, thereby lowering monitoring costs for creditors and reducing dependence on tighter bond covenant restrictions. The second essay investigates how labor union strength may influence private and public debt covenants. We employ fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and use plant-level union election outcome data for firms (between 1977 and 2020) as quasi-exogenous shock to examine the effect of labor unions on firm-level loan as well bond market covenants. Our extensive RDD analysis shows that unionization leads to significantly lower covenants in public bond issuances and in particular reduced levels of (a) Investment, (b) Subsequent financing, and (c) Event-related bond restrictions. Loan markets show limited evidence of covenant reduction implying that bank lending, typically collateralized, is less sensitive to labor market frictions. Firm-level channel analyses show that following successful union elections, stronger unions help mitigate the agency risks and reduce covenant threshold in firms with other forms of monitoring in place (i.e., firms in highly competitive product markets, firms with high institutional ownership, firms with high credit ratings, and firms with better corporate governance). Sub-sample analyses based on firm characteristics show that the negative effect of union on covenant is stronger for firms with higher level of risk ex-ante (i.e., firms with higher RD investment ratio, firms with higher leverage ratio, and firms with lower profitability 3 ratio). Our results are therefore consistent with the argument that lenders’ and unions’ interests are closely aligned in non-bankruptcy states, thereby leading to lowering monitoring costs for creditors and reduced dependence on tighter bond covenant restrictions. The third essay investigates whether peer firms’ R&D activities increase the focal firm’s tendency to engage in discretionary R&D spending. Building upon network concepts and using Panel Data on US innovative public firms, we show that peer firms’ R&D activities indeed increase the focal firm’s tendency to engage in discretionary R&D spending. Further analyses show that this effect is weaker for firms with high incentive to engage in earnings management. Such firms include (a) firms suspected to manipulate their earnings, (b) firms engaging in SEO in the following year, (c) firms with low institutional holding, and (d) firms with low profitability. Our sub-sample analyses suggest that the potential benefit from enhanced innovation productivity (due to reduced earnings management through R&D) is of second-order importance compared to firms’ incentive to engage in earnings management
Review of “Haunted Britain: Spiritualism, Psychical Research and the Great War” by Kyle Falcon
Get PDFReview of Haunted Britain: Spiritualism, Psychical Research and the Great War by Kyle Falco
Review of The Hardest Battle: The Canadian Corps and the Arras 1918 Campaign by William F. Stewart
Get PDFReview of The Hardest Battle: The Canadian Corps and the Arras 1918 Campaign by William F. Stewar
Review of We Lived in Danger: From True Prairie Boy to Royal Regina Rifleman. A Western Canadian’s WWII Memoir by Victor Hepburn Small
Get PDFReview of We Lived in Danger: From True Prairie Boy to Royal Regina Rifleman. A Western Canadian’s WWII Memoir by Victor Hepburn Smal
Review of Battlefield Emotions in Late Antiquity: A Study of Fear and Motivation in Roman Military Treatises by Łukasz Różycki
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Issue 21: Temporary Shelter to Permanent Home: Advancing Permanent Residency for Ukrainian Refugees in Canada
Get PDFThe Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, initiated in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, has provided temporary refuge to a significant number of Ukrainian nationals. While this program has been effective in addressing immediate safety needs, its temporary nature falls short of ensuring the long-term stability and socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugees into Canadian society. Unlike Convention Refugees, who are individuals granted permanent residency in Canada because they have been recognized as needing protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion (Government of Canada, 2019; United Nations, 1951; United Nations, 1967), temporary protection under the CUAET program does not offer the same level of security and rights. Consequently, this leads to persistent uncertainty, limited access to essential services, and barriers to stable employment. This policy brief advocates for a critical shift from temporary protection to permanent residency for Ukrainian refugees. Such a transition would not only align with Canada’s humanitarian commitments under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol but would also enhance the socio-economic fabric of the country. Granting permanent residency would allow these refugees to fully leverage their potential, contributing significantly to the Canadian economy and community life, and promoting a more diverse and dynamic society.
The recommendations within this brief include establishing clear pathways to permanent residency, enhancing support services for integration, and adapting immigration policies to better meet the needs of Ukrainian refugees. Implementing these measures will strengthen Canada’s role as a global leader in humanitarian response and foster a richer, more inclusive community, thereby aligning with the strategic interests of fostering a resilient socio-economic system
Beekeeping With/out Borders in Ukraine, Moldova and Romania: Cooperation and Conflict in Defending Carpathian Honeybee Territory.
Get PDFRemembering Lost Lives and Collective Healing from Trauma: Homicides, Incarceration, and Pain-Driven Advocacy in the Jane and Finch Community
Get PDFThis article serves as a vessel for knowledge mobilization and activism as research, intertwining remembrance of lost lives and communal healing by sharing collective pain amongst the authors and bolstering mutual support. Guided by personal encounters with violence including death, homicides, and incarceration, four authors comprising a teacher, social worker, and two community activists, unveil their 20-year+ advocacy journey in the Jane and Finch community in Toronto, Canada including their involvement with programs and services through the non-profit organization Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE). The pain and suffering are shared as symptoms of systemic trauma inflicted on the community and how the trauma is perpetuated through institutional neglect for racialized under-resourced communities. The conversations are examined through an intersectional and Critical Race Theory lens, centering life experiences associated with trauma and systemic violence. Lived experiences and emotions are shared as valuable data through duoethnography as a methodology, emphasizing how inspiration is harnessed from the pain and trauma to guide community advocacy. Effective coping and healing strategies are outlined from various vantage points. Overall, the article contributes to filling in the research gap by centering racialized personal narratives in the Canadian context, offering nuanced lessons for integrating research and activism, and showcasing tangible ways to support the needs of youth and families through community-oriented, trauma-informed approaches
Characterizing the targeting pathway of chloroplast outer membrane protein OEP18 in Arabidopsis thaliana and other targeting signals utilized by outer envelope membrane proteins
No full textApproximately 95% of chloroplast proteins are encoded by nuclear DNA and are post-translationally targeted to the chloroplast. Over half of the 138 known or predicted chloroplast outer membrane (OM) proteins are predicted to utilize four non-canonical targeting pathways. The first two pathways are characterized by containing a single α-helical transmembrane domain (TMD) within the first or last 50 amino acids (AAs), the third pathway is utilized by β-barrels, and the last requires an N-terminal cleavable transit peptide (TP). Recently, a fifth novel pathway called Toc159-like (TOC159L) has been characterized by the presence of a C-terminal reverse TP in Toc159. Subsequent analysis of all known chloroplast outer membrane proteins (OMPs) for this TOC159L feature identified 36 candidates including OEP18. However, recently developed structural prediction tools suggest that OEP18 is not a TOC159L candidate but it does contains a region of highly concentrated predicted secondary structures, referred to as the β-domain which is part of a conserved domain that is traced back over 1 billion years. In this thesis, the β-domain with and without the C-terminus were transiently expressed in onion epidermal cells and Arabidopsis protoplasts showing targeting to the plastids and the chloroplast exterior, respectively. This was also true for an OEP18 construct only containing the C-terminus. This suggests that both the β-domain and the C-terminus are sufficient for targeting to plastids. Western blotting showed targeting of a construct containing both features to the chloroplast, but this was not seen in other constructs. The mechanism is hypothesized as the C-terminus getting the protein to be in close proximity to the chloroplast OM, and the β-domain facilitating the interaction with the membrane. The presence of multiple targeting signals within a single protein led to the re-examination of a targeting motif previously identified in tail-anchored (TA) proteins. RK/ST residue motifs were previously shown to be an interchangeable and required targeting signals in some tail-anchored proteins. As such all chloroplast and mitochondrial OMPs, and endomembrane proteins were analyzed for a motif in close proximity to a TMD, since the RK/ST residue motif was found within 10 AAs of an α-helical TMD. This provides information that helps to close the gap of knowledge on how almost half of the chloroplast OMPs target the membrane