Mainstream Canadian Research Articles

The ‘Media Party’

Far-right media networks regularly engage in media criticism to undermine the legitimacy of mainstream news. These media critiques work to challenge the authority and power of mainstream news while establishing far-right media as journalistically superior. While constructive media criticism is necessary within any society, far-right news tends to frame mainstream media as an elitist and exclusionary institution that purposefully spreads misinformation to its users. In Canada, numerous far-right media sites have emerged over the past decade but have been relatively under-examined within the literature. In this context, my paper analyzes the types of critiques Canadian far-right media use to question the legitimacy of mainstream Canadian news. The study uses qualitative analysis to examine 65 articles published by two Canadian far-right media outlets, Rebel News and True North. Guided by previous literature surrounding far-right media critiques, I identify four commonly used critiques that the Canadian far-right media employ; the Media Party position, the Disinformation position, the Citizen/Taxpayer position, and the Expert position. Through my analysis, I argue that Canadian far-right media employs these specific strategies of criticism to present their discourse as authoritative over legacy media in Canada.

Letters from Exile: Canadian Media, the Romanian Diaspora, and the Legionary Movement

This article traces the post-Second World War immigration of Romanians to Canada, and addresses themes of self-identification versus outside perception, national identity, and myth-making in the Romanian-Canadian community. It subsequently documents the scrutiny faced by the Romanian diaspora for supposed links to the interwar Romanian far-right Legionary Movement. Beginning in the 1950s, Romanian exiles in Canada forged their own community organizations, churches, and media, in which a unique synthesis of national identity and far-right politics was promoted, placing these new immigrants at the center of intracommunity and inter-ethnic conflict. Following the release of the Deschênes Report on war criminals living in Canada in 1986, as well as a series of unsolved terrorist attacks, Romanian-Canadians were subject to investigations by the mainstream Canadian media for potential involvement in far-right organizing. In the years since the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, significant strands of the Romanian diaspora in Canada have continued to embrace historical figures of the Legionary Movement, synthesizing a diaspora identity flavored by anticommunism, radical right politics, and (ultra-) nationalism well into the post-communist period.

Reframing a community in crisis: an Intersectional discourse analysis of media responses to state of emergency declarations in Attawapiskat

ABSTRACT During the height of the Idle No More movement over the winter of 2012–2013, then Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence undertook a ceremonial fast, widely framed by the mainstream Canadian media as a hunger strike. This event responded to a housing related State of Emergency declaration in her community. During the cold Canadian winter, for six-weeks Chief Spence survived on medicinal fish broth and tea while catalyzing unprecedented social mobilization. Her actions sparked dialogue about the failures of the Canadian government and the general public to understand and uphold treaty relations. From an interpretive critical policy studies perspective, this paper presents an intersectional discourse analysis of mainstream coverage of her community and highlights themes of crisis, accountability and blame. In doing so, this paper seeks to interrupt these hegemonic frames with an account alternative counterstories grounded in community voices. Drawing upon interpretive policy analysis this paper argues that these predominant frames misrepresented Spence’s core request: a revitalized dialogue about treaty relations. Spence’s story and the voices of community-members speak back to and intervene upon the colonial status quo in Canada. This paper presents some insights and lessons learned for critical policy studies based on counterstories articulated in a community-engaged mixed media storytelling research project entitled Reimagining Attawapiskat.

“Canada Is Where You Belong. Poland Is The Past”: Images of Polish History and Culture in Heather Kirk’s Warsaw Spring

Polish characters appear in both mainstream Canadian books and children’s literature, but they usually function as either side characters or antagonists. The fiction of Heather Kirk is a noteworthy exception. This Canadian writer, who spent two years in Warsaw in the late 1970s working as a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, devoted her first two young adult problem novels, Warsaw Spring (2001) and A Drop of Rain (2004), to Polish Canadians and Polish history and culture. The article argues that in Warsaw Spring Kirk shows that the teenage protagonist has to experience the history and culture of the country of her ancestors before she can incorporate it into her own transcultural repository of memory. The article demonstrates how the experience of traveling to Poland and meeting with the representatives of the older generations, often survivors of the Second World War and communism, influences the formation of the protagonist’s Polish Canadian identity and cultural memory. Finally, the article shows that despite Kirk’s praiseworthy attempts to introduce young readers to Polish history, the way she portrays Poland is problematic because the country emerges as an exotic, post-Second World War heritage site of memory for Eva, a Canadian teenager whom all of the novel’s Poles seem to treat as superior.

Similarities and differences in male and female First Nations hockey players’ experiences of moving away from their home communities to play elite hockey in the Canadian mainstream context

There is a dearth of research that has explored the differences and similarities in First Nations male and female hockey players’ experiences while playing elite hockey in the Canadian mainstream. I used tribal critical race theory, Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous methodologies, and interviews with 10 male and 10 female First Nations elite hockey players to understand the differences and similarities in their experiences of moving away from home to pursue hockey in the mainstream. I produced two main themes: the challenges that the athletes experienced, which included new languages, culture shock, and racism; and the benefits, which were athletic and personal growth and support from their home community. There were important differences between male and female participants, which included the males facing more violent and overt racism than the female players, and the female players needing to travel farther away from home due to a lack of opportunities to play hockey.

Polarizing figures of resistance during epidemics. A comparative frame analysis of the COVID-19 freedom convoy

ABSTRACT Using the 2022 Freedom Convoy in Canada as a case study, this article explores divisions between public understanding of resistance to health measures during epidemics and oppositional movements’ self-representations. It derives from a comparative analysis of five mainstream Canadian media (n = 516 publications) and of the Freedom Convoy’s Facebook page (n = 611 posts). The data were submitted to a rhetorical frame analysis and a thematic analysis, each factoring in a temporal dimension. Results show how this movement formed around a specific pandemic policy restrictions became increasingly understood from a binary logic concerning questions of identity. Protesters’ experience and analysis of COVID-19 mandates became peripheral in media and social media content, as the focus was instead placed on who was and was not acceptable in Canadian society. Results show that a dialogic relation between the frames used in Canadian mass media and in Facebook posts constructed increasingly dichotomous identities. The social implications of polarizing a political conflict around public health policies are discussed.

The realities of Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada.

To examine the impact of the Canadian MAiD program and analyze its safeguards. A working group of physicians from diverse practice backgrounds and a legal expert, several with bioethics expertise, reviewed Canadian MAiD data and case reports. Grey literature was also considered, including fact-checked and reliable Canadian mainstream newspapers and parliamentary committee hearings considering the expansion of MAiD. Several scientific studies and reviews, provincial and correctional system authorities have identified issues with MAiD practice. As well, there is a growing accumulation of narrative accounts detailing people getting MAiD due to suffering associated with a lack of access to medical, disability, and social support. The Canadian MAiD regime is lacking the safeguards, data collection, and oversight necessary to protect Canadians against premature death. The authors have identified these policy gaps and used MAiD cases to illustrate these findings.

The Media’s Representation of Cindy Gladue: An Analysis

Cindy Gladue, a 36-year-old Cree Métis woman, was murdered in an Edmonton hotel bathroom in June 2011 while working as a sex worker. While much has been written about her death, the media’s news reporting has largely failed to adequately capture the nuances of Cindy’s death. This includes both the gravity of the individual crime perpetrated by Bradley Barton and the colonial gendered violences that made her death possible. Since Indigenous women are judged based on their post-mortem representation from the media, this essay analyses how the inadequate representation of Cindy Gladue’s murder contributes to the negative profilicity of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. This inadequate representation then allows for the continuation of gender-based harm. I use a Critical Discourse Analysis (van Dijk, 2015) framework to link discourses used in international, mainstream Canadian, and Indigenous news sources to the ongoing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, two spirit plus (MMIWG2S+) crisis faced by Indigenous communities to situate and reassign responsibility for this gender-based violence

Prescription psychostimulants as a harm reduction and treatment intervention for methamphetamine use disorder and the implications for nursing clinical practice: A scoping review of the literature.

The global rise in methamphetamine use and its negative effects warrants the need for research exploring harm reduction and treatment interventions for individuals with methamphetamine use disorder. Agonist medications have been utilized for years for the treatment of heroin and opioid addiction, but have yet to be incorporated into mainstream Canadian practice for methamphetamine dependence. This review aims to provide an overview of the current trends of prescription psychostimulant usage for individuals with methamphetamine use disorder from a Canadian perspective, identifies the barriers to accessing prescription psychostimulants for methamphetamine use disorder and highlights the nursing clinical practice implications in caring for individuals with the disorder. Discourse on the sustained abstinence and harm reduction debate is presented from the perspective of methamphetamine abuse is provided along with the neuropsychiatric complications of chronic methamphetamine use. The impacts of specific prescription psychostimulants on cognition are discussed as is the use of neuroimaging techniques to assess neuronal damage in methamphetamine users. Sign of toxicity, overdose and the contraindications for use of these prescription psychostimulants is also presented. The implications to nursing clinical practice in caring for this population is provided, touching on the clinical presentation of methamphetamine use, completing thorough assessment and screening and patient education. The findings of this review indicate the need for further research in this area exploring the benefits of prescription psychostimulants as a harm reduction and treatment intervention for the global problem of methamphetamine dependence.

The fate of bitumen: an exploratory study of national newspaper coverage of Alberta’s bitumen industry during the COVID-19 pandemic

This exploratory study examines how three major Canadian newspapers—the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star—reported on Alberta’s bitumen industry throughout 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic introduced significant market volatility. Through a combination of computational text analysis and qualitative interpretation, the study identified four recurring themes in 685 articles published by the target newspapers: (1) contention over bitumen infrastructure, (2) economic challenges for the bitumen industry, (3) political divide over the future of bitumen, (4) the bitumen industry’s environmental impacts. A further qualitative assessment of these themes indicates that despite the pandemic’s exposure of the structural weaknesses underlying Canada’s resource-dependent economy, voices supporting the bitumen industry continue to dominate Canadian mainstream newspapers.

Collectively Dreaming Toward Indigenized School Psychology Education and Training

Indigenous Peoples comprise a significant portion of the population whose mental health needs must be appropriately addressed, and schools are important contexts for this service provision. The author presents findings from a culturally-grounded, strengths-based, qualitative, Two-Eyed Seeing study that engaged with current and previous Indigenous graduate students from Canadian mainstream and Indigenized counseling psychology programs to explore their graduate school experience and dream for the future of psychological education and training. Community-led analysis with aspects of qualitative thematic analysis guided a collective results narrative. Eight findings emerged including: (1) the importance of relationality in education and training; (2) the significance of experiential learning (i.e., land and art-based, ceremonial, interpersonal relations); (3) diversity in knowledge sharers and inclusion of elders in psychology education; (4) critical decision-making about cohort member inclusion (i.e., all indigenous cohorts vs. mixed); (5) mandatory Indigenous pre-requisite courses; (6) cultural humility; (7) teachings about how to be a good person rather than how to be a good counselor; and (8) interviews for program entry. These findings are discussed in the context of future practice, intervention, education, and training of school, educational, counseling, and clinical psychologists, as well as pedagogical and curricular programmatic changes in multi-educational levels (i.e., K-12 and post-secondary). Considerations and areas of future research are discussed.

Chinese Immigrants’ Health Beliefs and Practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine in British Columbia of Canada

Objective: This study is to address the health beliefs and health behavior of Chinese immigrants residing in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia (BC) Province in Canada. This article discussed Chinese immigrants’ traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) use, health beliefs, and health behaviors. Methods: Information used in this study is based on data collected in the Chinese-speaking community in the Greater Vancouver area of BC in 2020–2022. Quantitative and qualitative methods were applied to this study. The first stage recruited 314 participants for the quantitative study to cross-validate an instrument tool, followed by the 2nd stage of 20 stratified random sampling out of the 314 participants for TCM-related in-depth qualitative interviews. This study focuses on the second stage of TCM qualitative interviews. Results: Results indicated that TCM health beliefs have cultural and spiritual meanings tied to the Chinese-speaking participants. There are barriers for the Chinese-speaking population to access the existing healthcare services due to their TCM health beliefs and other health needs, for example, family doctors, integrated medicine for better health outcomes, and mental health services especially during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Conclusion: Integrating TCM health beliefs and behaviors of Chinese-speaking immigrants into existing Canadian mainstream health services are strongly recommended.

Diaspora Dynamics: Canadian Immigration Policy and the Caribbean Connection

Immigration is the most fundamental policy a government can set. The nature of the country itself is determined by the kind of people who are allowed to enter. An overview of Canadian immigration policy with respect to the peoples of the Caribbean provides a kind of pulse to monitor the Canada Canadians want. These policies also offer a window into mainstream Canadian attitudes toward Black people. The circumstances in which they have or have not been admitted reveal the place of African Canadians already in Canadian society. Tracing this policy therefore provides another pulse: to monitor mainstream Canadian racism. Because Caribbean immigrants have persevered, participating prominently in challenges to entry restrictions and domestic racism, they have contributed substantially to Black life in Canada and especially to the more direct inclusion of African Canadians in the broader African diaspora.

Moral identity and acculturation process among Chinese Canadians: Three cultural comparisons

This study explored Chinese Canadians’ moral identities and extended the investigation of the socio-cultural impact on moral identity. The main sample consisted of 131 Chinese Canadians. Approximately equal numbers of participants from two reference groups, European Canadians and Chinese in China, were also recruited. All participants were presented a moral identity questionnaire. It was found that Chinese Canadians’ self-selected moral values were more similar to European Canadians than to Chinese in China. Unexpectedly, the Chinese Canadians scored significantly lower in moral identity of context of community than the two reference groups. In addition, mainstream acculturation positively predicted Chinese Canadians’ moral identities after controlling for length of residency in Canada and immigration status. However, age of arrival played a role in acculturation processes and moral identity in the context of school. These findings suggest the notion of acculturation, with individuals’ moral identities being acculturated to the norms of mainstream Canadian culture.

Stigma and blame related to COVID-19 pandemic: A case-study of editorial cartoons in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic represents not only the spread of a highly contagious and potentially fatal virus, but also an outbreak of theories, rumors, discourses and representations trying to make sense of a crisis. In this article, we explore the issue of blame and stigma in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. We do so by studying editorial cartoons published about COVID-19 in ten mainstream Canadian newspapers between January 2020 and March 2021. We identified 203 editorial cartoons that highlight common discourses which blame or stigmatize specific groups of people for the origin or transmission of COVID-19, or for their behavior during the pandemic. The cartoons focused on four groups: 1) people of Chinese origin or descent and of other national/geographic provenance (Americans, Canadians from specific provinces, urban residents); 2) international travelers; 3) people who do not respect the preventive measures to contain the pandemic; and 4) people who question or criticize the scientific discourses about COVID-19. Our analysis revealed an “othering process” common in times of pandemic. Our analysis of editorial cartoons in Canada also uncovered a moralization around the respect of the counter measures against COVID-19. These editorial cartoons largely divide the population into two groups: 1) “virtuous” people who are “selfless” and “smart” and who respect the public health preventive measures; 2) those who are “immoral”, “self-centered”, “silly” and even “stupid”, who do not respect the recommended measures to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. While negatively portraying these individuals may help promote adherence to the recommended measures, it also can exacerbate polarization. Analyzing editorial cartoons can be a useful approach to rapidly gather information on attitudes and feelings in the public at a specific time and place.

Diaspora Dynamics: Canadian Immigration Policy and the Caribbean Connection

Immigration is the most fundamental policy a government can set. The nature of the country itself is determined by the kind of people who are allowed to enter. An overview of Canadian immigration policy with respect to the peoples of the Caribbean provides a kind of pulse to monitor the Canada Canadians want. These policies also offer a window into mainstream Canadian attitudes toward Black people. The circumstances in which they have or have not been admitted reveal the place of African Canadians already in Canadian society. Tracing this policy therefore provides another pulse: to monitor mainstream Canadian racism. Because Caribbean immigrants have persevered, participating prominently in challenges to entry restrictions and domestic racism, they have contributed substantially to Black life in Canada and especially to the more direct inclusion of African Canadians in the broader African diaspora.

The Reproduction of “Petro-Nationalism” in Ethnic Media: A Case Study of WeChat Public Accounts’ Coverage of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Controversy

Over the past 2 decades, Alberta’s bitumen industry has emerged as a major point of contention in Canadian politics, with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX) project being a recent controversy that has attracted both domestic and international media attention. This brief research report focuses on news coverage of TMX in a rarely studied form of ethnic media: WeChat newsfeeds (known as “public accounts”) targeting Chinese diasporas across Canadian metropolises. A thematic analysis of TMX-related WeChat articles published between January 2016 and May 2021 reveals an overall negative attitude toward the project’s opponents. This stance is mainly due to WeChat public accounts’ heavy reliance on the Canadian mainstream media’s framing of TMX. As a result, the Canadian mainstream media’s downplay of the climate emergency and decarbonization sets the news agendas of the surveyed WeChat public accounts. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to develop non-English alternative media to engage ethnic minority groups in broader public conversations on climate change mitigation.

“We Don’t Have Those American Problems”: Anti-Black Practices in Canada’s Rap Music Marketplace, 1985–2020

Beginning in the early to mid 1980s, Hip Hop culture appeared on Canadian stages and in homes, even as it was limited in supply on commercial radio and television. Unlike their American counterparts, mainstream Canadian emcees (many of whom were racialized as Black and identified with the city of Toronto) were notably dependent upon personal finances, under-resourced independent record labels, distribution deals, and state and not-for-profit grant monies to subsidize the conceptualization, production, and promotion of their art. Labelled “urban music” in an attempt to spatialize and covertly reference Blackness, Hip Hop in Canada, from the outset, was mapped against, in conflict with, and outside of the national imaginary. While building local scenes, an independent label system, and a cross-Canada college radio, television, and live music infrastructure and audience, Hip Hop artists developed spaces of resistance, circumvented industry-generated obstacles, and defined success on their own terms — all of which suggested that they were not solely at the will of the dominant white music industry. And yet artists simultaneously encountered anti-Black practices that constrained the creation and sustenance of a nationwide Hip Hop infrastructure and denoted an inequitable structuring of support for the arts in Canada. By examining the interface of Blackness, art, and the racial economy of Canada’s creative industries, this article will outline instances of Canada’s anti-Black racism as well as the challenges Hip Hop artists and industry professionals have faced in the areas of recording and label relations, music sales, broadcasting regulations, and the accolade system. These social relations — many of which are rooted in longer histories of race relations and anti-Blackness in Canada — resulted in industry-wide policies, practices, norms, and ideologies that unfairly disadvantaged Black artists and undermined the realization and marketplace potential of a Hip Hop infrastructure within and beyond Canada.

On the breach: Identifying infringements of section 35 rights

Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the Supreme Court of Canada has said, protects existing Aboriginal and treaty rights from unjustified infringement at the hands of federal and provincial legislatures and governments. To give meaningful effect to section 35’s protection, we need, therefore, to understand what counts as infringement of such rights and why. The Supreme Court’s own jurisprudence to date on this question, alas, disappoints; it does not withstand close critical scrutiny. This article calls attention to several shortcomings and inconsistencies in that jurisprudence and proposes for initial consideration a more inclusive approach to infringement identification, one that draws a sharper distinction between the infringement and justification inquiries. Adoption of such an approach, however, could have unwelcome substitution effects, prompting cautious courts to be more selective when asked to authenticate future claims of Aboriginal right, more penurious when construing the constitutionally protected scope of particular treaty or Aboriginal rights and/or more generous to governments during the justification inquiry. If the goal is to optimize the protection that Canadian constitutional law affords to treaty and Aboriginal rights, we shall need to be mindful of the interdependence among the authentication, infringement, and justification inquiries, and we shall need to understand much more clearly than we currently do just where the outer limits are beyond which mainstream Canadian law cannot, or will not, countenance Indigenous ways and why.

The Factory Women

The Factory Women is a fictional account of four Italian immigrant women in Toronto, Ontario in the 1960s. Told from the second person point-of-view, the narrative aims to challenge readers to see the story through the main character’s eyes. The women presented in the story sew uniforms in a small workshop that they have dubbed “the factory.” One of the women, Marta, lost her husband to the Hoggs Hollow disaster, an actual historical event in which four Italian workers were killed while building a water main tunnel in Toronto.When a mysterious man begins working at “the factory” alongside the women, he tries to encourage them to join a worker’s union, much to the disapproval of the workroom supervisor.While Toronto Italians have largely assimilated into mainstream Canadian society, The Factory Women strives to remind members of the ethnic community of their conflicted past in an effort to exhort them to speak out against social injustice now. While many young Italian Canadians have led privileged lives, they must remember the experiences of their own ancestors and continue to fight for the equality of all Canadians. While centred on the Italian experience in Canada, The Factory Women aims to remind all people of the importance of group solidarity.