Angela May (neé Kruger) is a PhD Student working with Dr. Amber Dean in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her doctoral project examines the work of trauma in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Angela is also a writer, community activist, and visual artist. Her first major public artwork, a creative video called dear community, interrogated the politics of Japanese Canadian presence and commemoration in Vancouver’s historic Powell Street neighbourhood (Paueru). Her current writing project is a collection of linked short stories, tentatively titled Hotel Blue. Angela holds a BA in English (University of Victoria), an MA in Socio-Cultural Studies of Health (Queen's University), and a Creative Writing Certificate (Simon Fraser University). For more: www.angelamarianmay.com, @angelamayyyy (Twitter), @paperandplot (Instagram).

Broadly speaking, Angela’s research explores the politics of loss, particularly as they manifest in place. Her research is shaped profoundly by her home of Vancouver, British Columbia, and especially the city’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. As a mixed (white/non-white) Japanese Canadian settler with historic roots in the Downtown Eastside, Angela’s work is informed by the neighbourhood’s legacies of violence, on the one hand, and community resistance, on the other.

For example, Angela’s doctoral project takes as its starting point a refrain that has become increasingly common in public discourse about the Downtown Eastside: that violence in the neighbourhood is a result of trauma. While this statement may be true, Angela’s project begins from the premise that this refrain obscures more than it reveals. By bringing together literature on trauma and memory, pain, and public health, Angela seeks to reveal the complexities—and, crucially, the stakes—of asserting that violence in the Downtown Eastside is a result of trauma. At the same time, by paying close attention to the unique dynamics that shape the Downtown Eastside, Angela’s doctoral project aims to demonstrate the importance of thinking through trauma in terms of place.

While Angela’s doctoral project focusses more concertedly on trauma, her recently published academic work considers the kinds of violence that are made possible specifically by the lack of affordable housing in Canada. For example, one paper (co-written with Sophie Lachapelle, University of Ottawa) analyzes the local government and public health authorities’ response to COVID-19 in Kingston, Ontario, arguing that for Kingston’s unhoused population, efforts to manage COVID-19—which included forcibly removing people from successive tent encampments—exacerbated their risk of suffering and death, even in the name of “health”. Another paper focuses on the Astoria Hotel, a Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, in order to think through the ethics of pursuing research that explores pain and loss, especially in over-researched communities. (Citations below.)

Lachapelle, Sophie and Angela May. “A Matter of Life and Death: Exploring the Necropolitical Limbo of Kingston’s Housing Crisis in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research, vol. 10. (Click here)

May, Angela. “Beyond Pain Narratives?: Representing Loss and Practicing Refusal at the Astoria Hotel”. Loss, special issue of the Urban History Review, vol. 48, no. 2, 2021.

Emily Belmonte lives in Ontario and is a sixth-year undergraduate student at York University
pursuing her Specialized Honors Bachelors of Arts in History and her Bachelor of Education
with plans to graduate in June 2022 as an Ontario Certified Teacher. She is passionate about
studying history and Indigenous studies, and was honored to write a paper which brings to
light the stories of the Chippewa, Plains Ojibwa and Cree, signatories of Treaty One in
Manitoba. This paper was written under the supervision of Professor Sean Kheraj and was
awarded the Odessa Prize for the Study of Canada by the Robarts Centre and the Best
Canadian Studies Essay Prize by the Canadian Studies Network.

This thesis titled “Understanding Treaty One: Subsistence and Survival, 1871-1881,”
includes a synthesis of scholarship on the history of Canada’s colonial expansion into the
Northwest with a focus on environmental history to establish the foundation for interpreting
Treaty One and the first decade of its implementation. The thesis relies on primary sources
including records relating to Treaty One, as well as internal records of the Department of
Indian Affairs. The paper claims that the Canadian government negotiated treaties with
Indigenous peoples in Western Canada as a formal tool of land surrender and title
extinguishment in order to expand into the Northwest. Nonetheless, this was not the intent or
spirit of the discussion in the 1870’s, as Indigenous signatories viewed treaties as entering
into a nation-to-nation relationship, as a way to meet their subsistence needs, create a new
livelihood in an unsecure future and share the land and its resources with settlers. The
concept that Indigenous people were required to, “cede, release, surrender, [and] yield up,”
their land to the government was not part of the negotiations, nor could Indigenous people
even conceive of this idea of land surrender, as they were not in the power to do so, they did
not own the land. Therefore, when interpreting Treaty One, and all treaties, it is fundamental
to understand the Indigenous perspective, as they did not have any intention to transfer
control of land, from a western perspective, the original intent was to share in the land and its
abundance.

The thesis will demonstrate that Indigenous signatories of Treaty One, in Manitoba,
were active participants and skilled negotiators who signed treaties in order to guarantee food
security and government assistance in their transition to a largely agrarian economy. It also
promises to examine the racist ideology that permeated both intentional and unintentional
misunderstanding of the land issues that were involved in the signing of Treaty One,
including the federal government’s failure to live up to the terms of the written treaty and its
complete denial of the terms of the oral treaty that lay at the heart of the negotiations. By the
late nineteenth century, Indigenous peoples in Canada were vulnerable and seeking a
relationship with the colonial government to safeguard their futures. Through an analysis of
Treaty One and its implementation in the 1870’s, this paper will consider the following
themes: (1) the extent to which disease, ecological change, and food scarcity influenced
treaty making; (2) the influence that subsistence had in persuading Indigenous people to
consider agriculture as their new economic base; (3) how the Canadian government used the
reserve system, the extension of private property rights, and the Indian Act to dispossess
Indigenous people; (4) the Social Darwinist attitude of the Canadian government in their
attempts to assimilate, civilize and Christianize Indigenous people.

Evangeline Kroon is a PhD candidate in political science at York University specializing in women in politics and Canadian politics. Her current research centers on political expressions of climate anxiety with a focus on the federal and provincial Green party in Canada. Previously she has published on narratives of female violence in post-apocalyptic pop culture, and this research interest has remains relevant in her current research as she examines our understandings of future-oriented imaginaries through the lens of climate crises. This research also blends seamlessly with her personal love of nature, quest for ecological sustainability and feminism. She lives and works and tries to keep plants alive in her apartment in Tkaronto, which has been care-taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat. It is now home to many First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities and she acknowledged the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

In the summer of 2018 Canadian history was made in Guelph Ontario when Mike Schreiner became the first ever Green MPP to be elected. Taking 45% of the vote, Schreiner’s win marked the first time that four different parties were elected to the Ontario Legislature since 1951. While this was not the first victory for the Green Party in Canada, it was the first breakthrough for the provincial Green party in Ontario. This project is primarily an exploration into the Ontario Green party that aims to discover why and how the party was so successful in Guelph in the 2018 provincial election.
Within the context of the current global discussion on climate change, Canada’s political response to the ongoing climate crisis effects how our country is perceived on the international stage. Canada’s historical and contemporary position as an energy extraction state is key to the nation’s identity and economy, influencing its political decisions. Canada’s location is also uniquely precarious in that it both disproportionality contributes to, and suffers from, the consequences of global warming, and this tension is observable in current political discourse. Therefore, an examination of environmental concern in Canada as reflected in voter support for the Green Party of Canada is overdue.
Therefore, my project begins this work through an analysis of academic articles mainly discussing climate change and Canadian political parties generally, as well as the regular publications of federal election summaries. From these sources, this paper compares themes of Green party emergence and success to the EU and Australasian literature – themes of post-modernism, the economy, voting systems, and to a lesser extent, party funding, party competition and environmental and social events – to analyze where the similarities and differences to Canada’s Green party lie. This discussion of the success and emergence of the federal Green party will be used to contextualize and contrast my main focus, which is the provincial Green victory in Guelph. Then I will narrow my focus once again, looking at the provincial Green party in Ontario, again tracing its history and election success. Finally, these political and historical contexts will set the stage for the focus of my research: Guelph, Ontario
This study therefore fills a gap in third party political research in Canada, as historically, the parties examined have largely been the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois. This study also makes additions to important conversations surrounding Canada and the rise of concern at home and abroad about the issue of global climate change.

Ibrahim completed his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a Concentration in International Relations at Carleton University. Throughout his career in the public service, Ibrahim worked with different Members of Parliament on various national and international portfolios. Ibrahim’s most recent political role supported the Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada before returning to complete his MA in Canadian-American studies at Brock University and State University of New York at Buffalo. Ibrahim is now pursuing his PhD at Laurentian University, exploring populist influence in a Canadian-American cross-border context. Ibrahim is a TA and Lecturer in Canadian Studies at Brock University and is also an adjunct professor in Sociology at Niagara University in Niagara Falls, NY. 

The concept of populism has re-emerged in recent years as a pejorative and often misrepresented and misinterpreted term lacking explanation and proper analysis. Populism is not a new phenomenon but remains difficult to conceptualize. The last decade saw the rise of many populist movements, campaigns, and actors, shifting the political conversation towards antiestablishmentarianism, capitalizing on voter polarization, voter rage, neoliberal inequality, nationalism, xenophobia and discrimination. Populism, at its core, is a divisive and transgressive political strategy aimed at pitting the immorality and corruption of the elite against the morality and purity of the people (Mudde, 2017). Leaders, like Donald Trump, engage populist rhetoric in their politics because it is successful at mobilizing unorganized angry voters and turning the tide of electoral support. This research analyzes the potential influence of American populism on Canadian political society. This research employs Seymour Martin Lipset’s (1990) Continental Divide theory to explain why American society – guided by the doctrine of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – allows for the absence of socialism leading to populism. Alternatively, Canadian society is driven by the traditional dogma of peace, order and good government. Canada is an elitist society guided by deference to authority, socialist tendencies, and the rejection of populism. Nick Nanos (2018) points out that Canada has only been successful at remaining ahead of the populist curve. Michael Adams (2017) argues that Trumpism can indeed happen in Canada. This dissertation measures the progression of populist rhetoric in Canada from the 2015 federal election to the 2019 federal election as a result of populist rhetoric that emerged during the 2016 American election.

Jesse is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Victoria. Jesse has a professional background in historical consulting, having conducted oral histories, Traditional Knowledge and Land Use Studies, and archival research for government, private firms, and Indigenous clients. Jesse has written reports for Parks Canada and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and has authored a historical entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia. He has presented findings from his current research to the Canadian Historical Association and a recent workshop on Canadian Coastal Histories hosted by the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University. Jesse currently serves on the board of the Friends of the BC Archives.

My dissertation research looks to the transborder Pacific Northwest during the highwater period of settler colonialism to reveal an essential precursor and handmaiden to European settlement. Hydrographic charts, sailing directions, and shore-based aids to navigation (including lighthouses, buoys, and foghorns) generated a kind of state knowledge that was integral to settler projects of mobility and access to land, resources, and marine environments. Nineteenth century coastal navigation was a dangerous and often costly undertaking, as attested by the countless vessels and lives lost in what became known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Navigational knowledge and devices were necessary for ships to supply new colonies, bring settlers, extract resources, and discipline Indigenous peoples. Britain, Canada, and the United States deployed navigational infrastructure to project power and consolidate state claims to sovereignty over distant marine environments. Yet marine navigation cannot be understood solely as a colonial imposition. This dissertation shows that the success of state-sponsored navigation depended to a considerable extent on Indigenous knowledge, labour, technologies, and social networks. It thus presents an overlooked history of encounter and negotiation that underpinned the production of navigable waters, revealing the contingency and long-term consequences of maritime imperialism, while also showing how the aspirations of colonial power were shaped and modified according to unique local circumstances.

Marilyne Lamer is a PhD candidate in literary studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. She studied in France and has completed internships in Poland and in the United States. She is particularly interested in representations of the relationships between individuals and society. Her research combines study of genres and historical poetics and is part of a larger movement proposing new readings of Quebec's canon of novels that aim to take it out of the national perspective, long dominant in literary criticism in Quebec. More broadly, her work focuses on 20th century Quebec literature. She also has very strong interest for 19th-20th century German literature.

In his preface to the new edition of Gilles Marcotte’s “Une littérature qui se fait”, Jean Larose writes about French-Canadian literature: "Danger, literature in apprenticeship!" (1994: 7) This warning could be accompanied by the following phrase: "Danger, apprenticeship literature". Not only do the novels analyzed by Marcotte portray the trials and errors of a literature in search of itself, they also tell the stories of the upbringing, personal development, and maturation of heroes on the threshold of adulthood. These works, which represent the formation of young protagonists, correspond to a category conceptualized by literary theorists: they are Bildungsroman, or coming of age novels, of which The Years of Learning of Wilhelm Meister (1796) by Goethe embodies the model. In the wake of Marcotte's work, which shows that, during the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, French Canadian literature featured the exploration of its own form, my thesis intends to deepen the idea of "apprenticeship" by showing that several works published in Quebec at a time when a national literature is being built constitute Bildungsroman. Converging study of genres and historical poetics, my thesis successively examines the heroes' learning paths in their religious, didactic, as well as social dimensions, and aims to show that the Quebec Bildungsroman of the period considered follows the evolution of German models, gradually moving away from the Goethean model of Aufklärung to approach that proposed by the German Romantics of Sturm und Drang.

I am a PhD candidate in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan. My dissertation research focuses on ethics and values as an integral part of intercultural woodland caribou stewardship in northern Saskatchewan. Through this work, I have partnered with Indigenous governments and organizations to learn important teachings regarding human-wildlife relationships. My dissertation builds on themes initially begun during my master’s thesis research regarding multiple ways of knowing and listening to animal voices through the practice of wildlife rehabilitation. Through my life within and without the academy, I am passionate about helping humans in Euro-Western cultures form right relationships with wild animals and the natural world, and I employ visual arts methods as a way of knowing that is especially suited to the non-verbal exchanges that inform these relationships. I especially enjoy working with diverse groups of humans and other-than-humans, learning from their experiences and knowledges.

A Community-Driven Ethics for Woodland Caribou Stewardship in North-Central Saskatchewan
Due to sharply decreasing populations, woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) have become an animal of concern for Canadian and Indigenous peoples. In north-central Saskatchewan, Canada, Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, policy makers, land users, communities, and industry have faced multiple challenges working together to manage and conserve the subspecies. Some of these challenges are due to the vastly different ways that Euro-Western and Indigenous cultures know and understand the world, generally, and nonhuman animals in particular. The language of ethics and values may provide a working platform for intercultural conversations about wildlife stewardship that addresses some of these concerns. Using multispecies ethnographic and participatory community-based research methodologies, and visual methods within the context of a community caribou art exhibit and beyond, this dissertation study documents the ethical teachings and values that structure how northern Woodland Cree, Métis, and Euro-Canadian communities in and around La Ronge, Saskatchewan engage with woodland caribou and stewardship strategies. Four key themes have emerged from the communities’ values as important for caribou stewardship: (1) respectful relationships with nonhuman beings; (2) human responsibilities to care for other species and land; (3) intergenerational transmission of values; (4) the importance of working interculturally. The values present in these themes, discussed and employed in an ethical framework, will be recommended as a practical means to partner with Indigenous, Euro-Canadian, and more-than-human ways of knowing to gain better understandings of human-caribou relations, cultivate pathways for reconciliation, and develop more effective and ethical intercultural management practices in Saskatchewan.