Three Poems

Poetry by Renée Jackson-Harpe

Forests, Clearings, and the Spaces in Between: Reading Land Claims and the Actuality of Context in Ana Historic

“Women are ground, women are nature,” writes British Columbian poet, novelist, and critic Daphne Marlatt in “Self-Representation and Fictionanalysis,” a paper that maps and theorizes the work she does in her 1988 novel Ana Historic. Such claims by Marlatt have brought on accusations of essentialism from critics, who have read Marlatt’s writings “as advancing a reductive search for origins.” While this article doesn’t read her claim of an essential female connectivity with ‘ground’ and ‘nature’ as reductive, it does see in it, and in Ana Historic’s various references to indigeneity, an invitation to wrestle with the problematics of seeking self-identity with the land when dwelling on contested ground. This article, as it examines Ana Historic’s penetration and translation of British Columbia’s south coastal space, argues that while the novel is critical of the province’s male narratives of resource extraction and settlement, it is itself actively engaged in an appropriative ordering of geography that posits that identity may be wrought from the space where forest and clearing meet

Kootenay River & the Brilliant Dam

Poetry by Renée Jackson-Harper

Unlovely Seeds: Human/Nature/Wilderness in Isabella Valancy Crawford’s Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters

In 1872, Isabella Valancy Crawford answered a call printed in George-Édouard Desbarats’s weekly story paper the Hearthstone seeking: “narratives, novels, sketches penned by vigorous Canadian hands, welling out from fresh and fertile Canadian brains, thrilling with the adventures by sea and land, of Canadian heroes” (Early and Peterman 25). Crawford’s winning submission to the Hearthstone's call, Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters, reaps the materials for its narrative from “inexhaustible fields” of both “fact and fancy” of a burgeoning Canadian national imagination (25). This paper is interested in exploring the specifically Canadian anxieties expressed by the novel, as this paper examines the manner in which the displaced occupants of the novel’s Howard lodge act as uncanny avatars of the natural world and of a wilderness as they resist (or, are denied) a place in the domestic space established by the “national family” (167).  In this paper, I argue that Crawford’s Winona, with its attention to both domestic and natural spaces, provides a productive site through which to interrogate the vexed relationship of a newly Confederated country with its own “native materials” (Johnson 7; Early and Peterman 10)

Barriers and facilitators to mobile phone use for people with aphasia

Purpose: Mobile phone use increases social participation. People with the communication disorder of aphasia are disadvantaged in the use of information and communication technology such as mobile phones and are reported to be more socially isolated than their peers. The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health provides a framework to address the impact of environmental factors on individual participation. The aim of this preliminary study was to identify the barriers and facilitators to mobile phone use for people with aphasia. Method: A qualitative descriptive study involving two phases was conducted: (1) semi-structured interviews with 6 individuals with aphasia who owned or expressed a desire to own a mobile phone; (2) structured observations of key scenarios identified in the interviews of 3 participants who were sampled from the interview study. Results: Results identified 18 barriers and 9 facilitators to mobile phone use. Key barriers and facilitators were identified in the areas of design and features, written support and training, and communicative partners. Conclusion: Mobile phone use can be problematic for people with aphasia. Intervention needs to address the barriers and utilise the facilitators to mobile phone use for this population. Further research is required to inform policy and intervention programs to ensure that people with aphasia have access to this technology

Kootenay River & the Brilliant Dam

Poetry by Renée Jackson-Harper

Pour une meilleure compréhension des particularités de la violence familiale vécue par les femmes autochtones au Canada1

La violence conjugale en milieu autochtone présente des particularités qui demeurent trop souvent ignorées ou confondues avec celles d’autres groupes de femmes violentées au Canada. Cet article rapporte les résultats d’une analyse de documents produits au cours des trois dernières décennies afin de dégager les principales caractéristiques de cette problématique. Cette analyse suggère que la notion de violence familiale doit être privilégiée à toute autre et que la violence conjugale dont les femmes autochtones sont victimes se distingue tant par ses formes, sa fréquence que par sa gravité.Aspects that are unique to conjugal violence as experienced by Aboriginal women are often ignored and confounded with those of other groups of abused women in Canada. This article presents an analysis of documents from different sources of knowledge that have been produced over the last three decades in order to identify distinctive dimensions of this problem. The analysis points to the significance of the notion of family violence over other terms that are used to describe conjugal violence and to the different facets of Aboriginal women’s experiences of violence with regards to prevalence, severity and forms of violence

Pour une meilleure compréhension des particularités de la violence familiale vécue par les femmes autochtones au Canada

La violence conjugale en milieu autochtone présente des particularités qui demeurent trop souvent ignorées ou confondues avec celles d’autres groupes de femmes violentées au Canada. Cet article rapporte les résultats d’une analyse de documents produits au cours des trois dernières décennies afin de dégager les principales caractéristiques de cette problématique. Cette analyse suggère que la notion de violence familiale doit être privilégiée à toute autre et que la violence conjugale dont les femmes autochtones sont victimes se distingue tant par ses formes, sa fréquence que par sa gravité.Aspects that are unique to conjugal violence as experienced by Aboriginal women are often ignored and confounded with those of other groups of abused women in Canada. This article presents an analysis of documents from different sources of knowledge that have been produced over the last three decades in order to identify distinctive dimensions of this problem. The analysis points to the significance of the notion of family violence over other terms that are used to describe conjugal violence and to the different facets of Aboriginal women’s experiences of violence with regards to prevalence, severity and forms of violence