You are encouraged to attend the defence. The details of the defence and attendance information is included below:  

Date:  Tuesday, December 9, 2025 

Time:  10:00 AM – 12:00 PM (PT)

Defence mode: Hybrid

In-Person Attendance: Senate Chambers, UNBC Prince George Campus  

Virtual Attendance: via Microsoft Teams 

Please contact the Office of Graduate Administration for information regarding remote attendance for online defences. 

To ensure the defence proceeds with no interruptions, please mute your audio and video on entry and do not inadvertently share your screen. The meeting will be locked to entry 5 minutes after it begins: please ensure you are on time.  

Thesis entitled: “PLANNING AHEAD IS ESSENTIAL”: DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF CANADIAN NATIONAL PARK LANDSCAPES AND EXPERIENCES

Abstract: 

This inquiry explores the discursive mechanisms the Parks Canada Agency uses to construct national parks and visitors’ experiences of them. The objective of this study was to better understand the narratives that Canada’s national parks uphold and how this may impact the visitors that feel welcome in park landscapes. Historically, national parks were established through the expropriation and elimination of Indigenous Peoples from park lands so that colonial Euro-Canadian interpretations of the landscape, as empty wilderness, could be realized and preserved. Such understandings of national parks positioned humans and cultural history as separate from park landscapes and situate the wilderness as something humans can venture into to endure or overcome for personal virtue. Recently, Parks Canada shifted its approach to park management, now recognizing that humans and the environment are inseparable, and that natural and cultural heritage are necessarily enmeshed. Further, the Agency is making specific efforts to welcome diverse populations into national parks that wilderness narratives have historically excluded. Through a discourse analysis of over 300 Parks Canada publications from three case parks – Banff National Park, Rouge National Urban Park, and Kluane National Park and Reserve – this inquiry interrogates how this new understanding aligns or clashes with traditional wilderness narratives in the materials that visitors use to plan their national park experiences. This thesis argues that despite some progress, wilderness narratives still dominate Parks Canada publications, and the visitation practices the Agency supports. Similarly, the information available to visitors offers limited guidance on the structural practices of park visitation, thus making it more difficult for inexperienced visitors to access national parks. 

Defence Committee:  

Chair: Dr. Zoe Meletis, University of Northern British Columbia  

Supervisor: Dr. Jennifer Wigglesworth, University of Northern British Columbia  

Committee Member: Dr. Angele Smith, University of Northern British Columbia  

Committee Member: Dr. Philip Mullins, University of Northern British Columbia  

External Examiner: Dr. Bruce Erickson, University of Manitoba