“When You’re A Long, Long Way From Home”: The Establishment of Canadian-Only Social Clubs for CEF Soldiers in London, 1915–1919

This article examines the off–duty activities of Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) soldiers in Britain during the First World War. For many CEF soldiers abroad, Britain became their “home away from home,” with London serving as their main leave–time destination. Although thousands of CEF soldiers visited the English capital, Canadian federal and military authorities maintained a hands–off approach to the off–duty lives of the men. Fearing for the men’s well–being, Canadian philanthropist, Lady Julia Drummond, established the Canadian–only King George and Queen Mary Maple Leaf Club. Founded upon middle– and upper–class moral standards the Maple Leaf Club emphasizes the role of public patriotism at the time, while also highlighting a rising sense of Canadian nationalism and self–awareness at the time of simultaneous loyalty to the empire

The Housing Preferences and Location Choices of Second Generation South Asians Living in Ethnic Enclaves

Canada has experienced the development of suburban ethnic enclaves by established immigrant diaspora groups surrounding major metropolitan centres. However, less is known regarding the housing and location preferences of their maturing offspring population, known as the second-generation. This paper seeks to explain the housing preferences and location choices of second-generation South Asians residing in Brampton\u27s ethnic enclaves, a suburban city on the periphery of Toronto. This research draws on the home leaving process and integrates the theoretical perspectives of ethnic enclaves and the life cycle. A telephone survey conducted in Brampton\u27s ethnic enclaves suggests a dominant preference of low-density, detached-style dwellings in suburban areas. The life cycle perspective has proven to be a powerful explanatory tool during the household-formation phase, but does not appear to be valuable during the independent-living stage, since ethnic enclave residency seems to persist. The importance of familial ties in the South-Asian culture, the growth of ethnic enclaves, traditional ideas of socioeconomic success and life cycle values during family-formation shape preferences for second-generation South-Asian-Canadians

The Housing Preferences and Location Choices of Second Generation South Asians Living in Ethnic Enclaves

Canada has experienced the development of suburban ethnic enclaves by established immigrant diaspora groups surrounding major metropolitan centres. However, less is known regarding the housing and location preferences of their maturing offspring population, known as the second-generation. This paper seeks to explain the housing preferences and location choices of second-generation South Asians residing in Brampton\u27s ethnic enclaves, a suburban city on the periphery of Toronto. This research draws on the home leaving process and integrates the theoretical perspectives of ethnic enclaves and the life cycle. A telephone survey conducted in Brampton\u27s ethnic enclaves suggests a dominant preference of low-density, detached-style dwellings in suburban areas. The life cycle perspective has proven to be a powerful explanatory tool during the household-formation phase, but does not appear to be valuable during the independent-living stage, since ethnic enclave residency seems to persist. The importance of familial ties in the South-Asian culture, the growth of ethnic enclaves, traditional ideas of socioeconomic success and life cycle values during family-formation shape preferences for second-generation South-Asian-Canadians

Using a simulated student to repair difficulties in collaborative learning

We describe the use of a simulated student in a synchronous but distributed collaborative learning environment in the domain of programming. The role of the simulated student is to detect and repair difficulties in collaborative learning amongst the human students, for example when a human student is too passive or when the students start chatting about off-topic conversations. The simulated student intervenes by posting messages in the shared "chat" window, just like the human students and was believed to be another human student by them. The paper describes the rules by which the simulated student operates and briefly outlines an evaluation of the system with university first year programming students. The system proved to be successful both in detecting a range of difficulties and in intervening effectively

MaMiC: Macro and Micro Curriculum for Robotic Reinforcement Learning

Shaping in humans and animals has been shown to be a powerful tool for learning complex tasks as compared to learning in a randomized fashion. This makes the problem less complex and enables one to solve the easier sub task at hand first. Generating a curriculum for such guided learning involves subjecting the agent to easier goals first, and then gradually increasing their difficulty. This paper takes a similar direction and proposes a dual curriculum scheme for solving robotic manipulation tasks with sparse rewards, called MaMiC. It includes a macro curriculum scheme which divides the task into multiple sub-tasks followed by a micro curriculum scheme which enables the agent to learn between such discovered sub-tasks. We show how combining macro and micro curriculum strategies help in overcoming major exploratory constraints considered in robot manipulation tasks without having to engineer any complex rewards. We also illustrate the meaning of the individual curricula and how they can be used independently based on the task. The performance of such a dual curriculum scheme is analyzed on the Fetch environments.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2019). (Extended Abstract

The propaganda model and sociology : understanding the media and society

This article unpacks reasons why the Propaganda Model represents a critical sociological approach to understanding media and society, explores the model’s potential within the sociological field, and considers the trajectory of its reputational reception to date. The article also introduces the three central hypotheses and five operative principles of the Propaganda Model and suggests that the model complements other (competing) approaches that explore the relationship between ideological and institutional power and discursive phenomena

Evangelical Christians in Canadian National Television News, 1994–2004: A Frame Analysis

Recent surveys have shown that most evangelical Christians in Canada believe that the news media treat them unfairly. This study empirically tested the validity of the evangelicals’ charge against the media by examining the frames used in the nightly, national news reports of Global, CBC and CTV television networks. An analysis of all reports featuring evangelicals showed that neutral and positive frames, together, were almost equal in strength and number to negative frames used; this resulted in an overall rating of “balanced” for the coverage. While overall the coverage was balanced, the frequency and exclusivity of certain negative frames elevated their saliency considerably. For example, the “evangelicals as intolerant” frame alone appeared in one quarter of all reports. Regarding topic of the news reports, evangelicals most often received coverage for involvement in politics followed closely by involvement in criminal or immoral actions. Implications of these results are discussed