Paradise found : the settler colonial legacy of Beautiful British Columbia magazine
department or school: Creative and Critical Studies, Faculty of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCO
creator: Mathur, Chhavi
issued: 2024-05-27T15:36:43Z
issued: 2024
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Okanagan Valley of British Columbia is often depicted in Canadian settler culture as an oasis in a desert, or a Garden of Eden, thanks to its exceptional climate and semi-arid shrub steppe biome. With its fruit, tourism, and wine industries, it is best known today as place of leisure and plenty. This idyllic and utopic image of the place is, however, complicated by the complex history of its cultural and material landscape. The Okanagan idealized by Canadians is, in fact, the traditional unceded territory of, primarily, the Syilx people. Since the late 19th century, through successive phases of settler colonialism in the Okanagan, the material and cultural landscape of the area has been written over, reshaped, transformed, and remains contested in many ways. This thesis contributes to a discussion on the making of environmental cultures through an ecocritical reading of the role of the Beautiful British Columbia magazine – with a focus on the years 1959-1983 when it was funded by the provincial government – in shaping the idealized narrative and landscape aesthetic of the Okanagan Valley that persist to this day. The visual and textual analysis of the magazine is framed by the socio-political, economic, and material history of the region from the mid to late decades of the 20th century. While international tourists were presumably the primary audience of the magazine, this thesis argues that the magazine also served the province’s campaign to attract Anglophone migrants and to ‘sell’ British Columbia and more specifically the Okanagan as an idyllic home for white settler populations. It traces and uncovers some of the recurring aesthetic tropes that have constructed and framed both the British Columbian landscape generally and within that, the Okanagan Valley, as an idyllic place to live. It contrasts the white settler colonial landscape aesthetic of the Okanagan with Indigenous imaginations of the place. It brings out the fault lines and contradictions between the …
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/88373
note: PARADISE FOUND: THE SETTLER COLONIAL LEGACY OF BEAUTIFUL BRITISH COLUMBIA MAGAZINE by Chhavi Mathur B.A. (Hons), Ashoka University, 2019 PGDip, Ashoka University, 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Interdisciplinary Studies) (Sustainability) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Okanagan) May 2024 © Chhavi Mathur, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled: Paradise Found: The Settler Colonial Legacy of Beautiful British Columbia Magazine submitted by Chhavi Mathur in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts. Dr. Greg Garrard, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies Supervisor Dr. David Geary, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Erin James, University of Idaho Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Laura Moss, The University of British Columbia (Vancouver) University Examiner Additional Committee Members include: Lisa Grekul, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract The Okanagan Valley of British Columbia is often depicted in Canadian settler culture as an oasis in a desert, or a Garden of Eden, thanks to its exceptional climate and semi-arid shrub steppe biome. With its fruit, tourism, and wine industries, it is best known today as place of leisure and plenty. This idyllic and utopic image of the place is, however, complicated by the complex history of its cultural and material landscape. The Okanagan idealized by Canadians is, in fact, the traditional unceded territory of, primarily, the Syilx people. Since the late 19th century, through successive phases of settler colonialism in the Okanagan, the material and cultural landscape of the area has been written over, reshaped, transformed, and remains contested in many ways. This thesis contributes to a…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2024-09
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0443799
language: eng
degree discipline: Interdisciplinary Studies
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Garrard, Greg
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88373