Graduate Theses & Dissertations

Struggling for a New Left
This study examines the emergence of the New Left organization, The New Tendency, in Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s. The New Tendency, which developed in a number of Ontario cities, represents one articulation of the Canadian New Left’s turn towards working-class organizing in the early 1970s after the student movement’s dissolution in the late 1960s. Influenced by dissident Marxist theorists associated with the Johnson-Forest Tendency and Italian workerism, The New Tendency sought to create alternative forms of working-class organizing that existed outside of, and often in direct opposition to, both the mainstream labour movement and Old Left organizations such as the Communist Party and the New Democratic Party. After examining the roots of the organization and the important legacies of class struggle in Windsor, the thesis explores how The New Tendency contributed to working-class self activity on the shop-floor of Windsor’s auto factories and in the community more broadly. However, this New Left mobilization was also hampered by inner-group sectarianism and a rapidly changing economic context. Ultimately, the challenges that coincided with The New Tendency’s emergence in the 1970s led to its dissolution. While short-lived, the history of the Windsor branch of The New Tendency helps provide valuable insight into the trajectory of the Canadian New Left and working-class struggle in the 1970s, highlighting experiences that have too often been overlooked in previous scholarship. Furthermore, this study illustrates the transnational development of New Left ideas and organizations by examining The New Tendency’s close connections to comparable groups active in manufacturing cities in Europe and the United States; such international relationships and exchanges were vital to the evolution of autonomist Marxism around the world. Finally, the Windsor New Tendency’s history is an important case study of the New Left’s attempts to reckon with a transitional moment for global capitalism, as the group’s experiences coincided with the Fordist accord’s death throes and the beginning of neoliberalism’s ascendancy. Author Keywords: Autonomist Marxism, Canada, Labour, New Left, Rank-and-file Organizing, Working-Class History
Branding of the Prime Minister
From 1949-1957, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was the face of the Liberal Party. Party branding was wholly devoted to his friendly, ‘Uncle Louis’ brand image. St. Laurent’s image was manipulated and manufactured without public preconception, establishing the modern tactics of personal branding still used by his successors. This thesis studies the elections of 1949, 1953, and 1957, analysing photos, advertisements, speeches, archival documents, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources to show the development of Liberal branding strategy. It employs political scientist Margaret Scammell’s conceptualization of brand theory, showing how marketers used emotional brand differentiators and rational substantive performance indicators to sell ‘Uncle Louis’ to Canadians. The Liberals used St. Laurent and branding tactics to win two massive majorities in 1949 and 1953, and the Diefenbaker Tories used those same tactics to defeat them in 1957. ‘Uncle Louis’ proved the effectiveness of personal branding and leader-centered campaigns in Canadian politics. Author Keywords: Brand Theory, Canadian Politics, Elections, Liberal Party of Canada, Louis St. Laurent, Political Marketing
How Did We Get Here? Exploring Socio-Political Influences in Canadian Penitentiaries
This thesis examines how political and social issues have molded and alteredCanada’s penal system since the nineteenth-century. From early Anglo-Canadian society to Joseph Archambault’s 1938 Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate the Penal System of Canada, the Canadian penal system waxed and waned against social and political tides. As rehabilitative justice took hold throughout the developed world in the early twentieth century, Canada attempted to shift its justice ideologies only to find that punitive justice had created strong footings. This made reform challenging to implement. Author Keywords: Archambault Report, Canadian penal system, Canadian prisons, prison press, prison systems, prison writing
“The Darkest Tapestry”
This doctoral research project is a part of the quest for an inclusive telling of Canada’s national identity and will focus on the creation of a memorialization Keeping Place model to commemorate the Indian Residential School system in Canada. My dissertation is interdisciplinary and contributes to the fields of cultural history, memory and post-colonial studies. In response to the TRC recommendation that calls on all Canadians to “develop and implement a national heritage plan and strategy for commemorating residential school sites, the history and legacy of residential schools, and the contributions of Indigenous peoples to Canada’s history”, this project aims to contribute a unique analysis and discourse to the existing literature as it will focus on developing a process of commemoration of the IRS system by uniting the architectural/geographical location not only as a place/space of colonizing “perpetrator architecture” but also as a Keeping Place and “site of memory/lieu de memoire” or conscience. This project will also engage the concepts of “Indigenous Métissage” and “Cultural Interface” to aid in the creation of an educational commemoration and reconciliation Keeping Place model for all Canadians. Author Keywords: canada, indian residential schools, keeping place , memory, saskatchewan, sites of memory
Growing Up in Postwar Suburbia
Growing Up in Postwar Suburbia: Childhood, Children and Adolescents in Canada, 1950-1970 This dissertation explores the intersections between the suburban landscape both `real' and imagined, childhood, children and adolescents. I contend that there was a richness and diversity in the experiences of children and adolescents in postwar Canada that resists simplistic stereotypes that often depict suburbia as primarily middle-class, dull, homogeneous, conformist, and alienating for residents of all ages. Suburban living has become the definitive housing choice for the majority of Canadians since the end of World War II. Suburban homes and communities were critical in shaping the everyday lives of young people in this period. These young lives were predominantly safe, comfortable, and enriched in their homescapes. Yet this was not a universal condition. While class and gender were important factors shaping childhood and adolescence, my research findings also show that children and adolescents exercised their agency in this period, and they were active participants in their lives on personal, educational, community, and municipal levels. Young people were monitored, regulated and disciplined, but they were not passive receptacles in a world dominated by adults. This interdisciplinary study uses a wide range of archival, visual and documentary sources, and also integrates oral histories as a key methodology. These oral histories have added important reflections on childhood and adolescence in postwar suburbia, providing insight into how memory constructs multiple meanings associated with the dissertation's key themes. Ultimately, I offer a pan-Canadian view of changing images and constructions of childhood by delving into more specific topics to children and adolescents using postwar Calgary suburbia as a focal point in order to understand the heterogeneity of suburban life. In studying the intersections of place, space, age, class, sexuality, `race,' and gender, I demonstrate that the lives of children and adolescents are woven into the fabric of postwar Canadian social and cultural history in a profound and meaningful way. Author Keywords: adolescence, adolescents, childhood, children, history, suburbs
Paper Chase
"The Paper Chase: A Survey of Student Newspapers on Ontario Campuses in the 1960s" is a regional study of three University campuses in Ontario — the University of Toronto, Queen's University and Trent University — and examines each of these institutions’ respective student newspapers, The Varsity, The Queen's Journal, and The Arthur as a primary source analysis. In broader terms, this thesis looks to theoretically historicize the themes of "life," "love," and "liberty" on Ontario campuses in the 1960s. Its central question is whether Ontario's youth experienced a cultural revolution like that portrayed in popular memory of the period, which profoundly appears in other sixties cultural interpretations in Canada and the United States. By framing student life through student newspapers' gamut, this thesis calls into question the lionization of some cultural decade elements. It determines students were, in fact, in some ways much more conservative in their outlook than earlier literature or the popular memory of the period suggests. History has much to say about students who rebelled. This thesis focuses on those who did not. Author Keywords: Conservatism, Counterculture, Queen’s University, Sixties, Trent University, University of Toronto
Rights, Resources, and Resistance
The development of pan-Indigenous political organizations in northeastern Alberta in the context of oil and gas development during the 1970s created disparate effects on Indigenous communities in the region. Resistance to assimilation policies led the Indian Association of Alberta to transform itself into a unified voice that represented Aboriginal and treaty rights in the late 1960s; however, the organization lost legitimacy following the divergence of goals between influential Indigenous leaders, Harold Cardinal and Joseph Dion. Tripartite agreements began to unfold between the federal and provincial governments, the oil and gas industry, and individual local leadership; environmental degradation spread throughout the landscape. Some communities benefitted financially whereas other communities, like Lubicon Lake Nation, received little compensation and felt the full force of industrial contamination of their traditional territories. Without the support of pan-Indigenous political organizations, Lubicon Lake developed an individual response that was successful in gaining international attention to their conditions. Author Keywords: 1970s, Indigenous politics, Lubicon Lake Nation, northern Alberta, political economy, tar sands

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Graduate student theses produced at Trent University. You may also browse theses and dissertations by year, program, or author.

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