Although they make up one of the largest physical minorities in Canada, persons with disabilities are not well represented in English Canadian fiction. Many stories that feature persons with disabilities present them in unflattering, stereotypical ways. Persons with disabilities are portrayed as dependent, pathetic characters that help perpetuate a harmful vision of what disability is. However, certain works of fiction that have been published in the last ten years--for instance, Frances Itani's Deafening and Lori Lansen's The Girls-- treat disability in a more multi-dimensional fashion. The characters in these books are independent people who use their disabilities as a means to identity and even language. With the help of disability scholars such as Lennard Davis, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, and Erving Goffman, this thesis examines English Canadian disabled fiction as a way of establishing the idea that disability constitutes a cultural identity within Canada's multicultural mosaic and that each disability comprises its own subculture.
This thesis examines the interconnection between existence, culture, and ecology. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, I tie together anthropological discussions of culture, French philosophy, and forestry with locally inspired narratives. Specifically, I examine Brian Fawcett's Virtual Clearcut: The Way Things Are In My Hometown and Des Kennedy's The Garden Club and the Kumquot Campaign, a 'testimonial documentary' and a novel respectively. Both narratives illustrate local connections, histories, interpretations, and contentions concerning forest use through a central theme of logging. The narratives reflect the Romantic literary tradition of the pastoral, while focusing on ecocentric considerations. Overall, by drawing from Felix Guattari's ecosophy I avoid favouring anthropocentric or biocentric tendencies, thus acknowledging the importance of the role of subjectivity and multiplicity in ecological debates, which allows me to conclude that debates concerning forest use can no longer be polarized.
This thesis provides a critical and creative exploration of the diary of a woman who pioneered in the upper Fraser River valley of northern British Columbia from 1912 to 1925. Ada Adelia Sykes left a diary in which she kept a record of daily activities throughout a three-year period. My work examines her diary in the context of women's life-writing. First, I discuss various theories of life-writing, arguing that women's life-writing makes important contributions to the understanding of past, present, and self. Next, I analyze the diary in its historical context. Finally, I present original poems, based on the diary entries, as well as on the life of my grandmother, Alice Jane Beaven, a contemporary of Ada Sykes. This thesis demonstrates a trend in which researchers imbricate their own stories in those of their subjects: in telling the stories of Ada Adelia Sykes and Alice Jane Beaven, I tell part of my own story.
