Forests & Oceans for the Future Discussion and News

Something fun -fish boats coming into port in one of the main places that I conduct field research.

Today it’s Queen E. Annex, tomorrow maybe your favourite park

An interesting reference to selling ‘public’ land to “appease third party interests” was part of the closing lines in a Queen Elizabeth Annex parent’s letter to the Courier the other day. The linking of the school closure to selling off public lands, including “your favourite park,” raises some interesting questions. It is very likely that the letter writers did not mean to explicitly identify the Musqueam Reconciliation Agreement, but the similarity in the language with the fight against the agreement by park and golf course supporters shows a familiarity with the issues and implies a moral linking of these issues -selling the school and losing the park as being clearly on the ‘bad side of the equation. At the very least the letter points to one community’s sense of connection and feeling of being under attack and their capacity to mobilize and connect. First they lose ‘their’ park, now they are losing ‘their’ school.

Announcing a new Forests and Oceans for the Future research project

This is an ethnographic (anthropological) research project designed to examine the social construction of place amongst non-aboriginal residents of Point Grey -specifically users of the UBC Golf Course and Pacific Spirit Park. This project seeks to explore how non-aboriginal residents construct a sense of place and attachment to place. Key foci will be the use of language, metaphor, story in personal accounts of using places such as the golf course and the park.

Anyone interested in learning more about this project is invited to contact Charles Menzies
Given the recent media attention to the BC/Musqueam Reconciliation agreement (in which Musqueam ownership of the Golf Course and portions of Pacific Spirit Park has been affirmed by the government of BC) and given the creation of a Friends of the Golf Course and a Friends of Pacific Spirit Park this provides an excellent opportunity to explore how non-aboriginal peoples construct their sense of the importance of places such as the UBC Golf Course and Pacific Spirit Park. A subsidiary focus is on the discourse used by golf course and park supporters as they construct a sense of ownership over and sense of belonging to these places.

Classic anthropological methods do not involve ‘sampling’ in the sense that other social sciences might deploy. While appreciating that there are many anthropologies, the approach that I am using is one that traces the construction of meaning through networks of people who interact in a common social space. This means building linkages with people and spending time with them through the course of their daily life.