Geography Discussion Paper Series

In this paper I shall attempt to describe the purposes, approaches andresults of an exercise in restructuring the undergraduate curriculum in theDepartment of Geography at Simon Fraser University. To do this I shallfirst sketch out a few of the conditions giving rise to this effort. Thecontribution is that of a case study, but because the department is one ofthe largest in Canada, and because its whole development lies within thememories of those who came to it in its earliest days, there is theopportunity to reflect on a generation of curriculum development. Byimplication, the curricular experience of this department may also serveto gauge developments in the discipline as a whole.

This paper interprets glacial and periglacial processes within the Mackenzie River valley on the basis of the delineation of transverse valley-profiles. The Mackenzie River courses from Great Slave Lake in the southwest to the Mackenzie Delta on the Arctic coast in the northwest of the Northwest Territories.

The purpose of this study was to gather information on the phenomenon and process of single family house expansion. The work was initiated essentially as a problem setting exercise, recognizing that there are fundamental issues involved at various levels of enquiry. On the one hand lies the fundamental human endeavour of creating shelter. This is not absent at the household level whether the society be styled as primitive, developing or developed. On the other hand, at the social level, one recognizes that individual households in modern societies(such as that in which the present study was undertaken) are not entirely free to create shelter in any way they please.

A catalog of daily 5OOmb synoptic types for southwestern Canada andadjacent areas is presented for the years 1946 to 1978. The 18 synoptictypes are categorized objectively by the application of the Kirchhofer sumsof squares technique to gridded data from the National Center for AtmosphericResearch. Small-scale, high-wavenumber types are used because they explainthe climate of the region better than larger, more generalized synopticscalepatterns.

Diverse and vigorous expression of ethnicity has become a strikingfeature of contemporary urban Canada. The older heavy dominance of Frenchand English speech and ways is challenged now by new pluralities from elsewherethan the founding Nations. Vancouver, as the "third metropolis,"displays the heightened multi-ethnic character of the late twentieth centuryCanadian large city in its full intensity and complexity, which are thesubject of this essay.