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Foreign place names reflecting the names of American hunter-conservationists and places mark the geography of Western Canada. This exogenous place naming dates to the 1930s when one of Canada's most successful NGOs-Ducks Unlimited Canada-launched 'The Lake that Waits' project. Emerging out of the Dust Bowl and declining waterfowl populations, the project combined geographical imagination, foreign toponyms, and ecological knowledge to incite American waterfowlers to invest in the rehabilitation of Canadian wetlands. It is insinuated that this renaming re-colonized in the name of nature conservation. When theorized within a postnational ecological and historical context, however, the use of foreign toponyms may be interpreted as a means to positively influence perceptions of identity and sense of place. It was a social construction of nature encouraging recognition of the shared ethical responsibilities of continental waterfowlers who needed to re-envision waterfowl migration within an ecological common-Duckland. Renaming was a means to effect both environmental and cultural change resulting in the conservation of millions of acres of waterfowl habitat, leaving an enduring mark on North American geography. Imaginer Canardia : le postnationalisme, la migration de la sauvagine et le collectif écologique Les toponymes étrangers inspirés des noms de chasseurs-écologistes américains et de lieux américains sont un trait caractéristique de la géographie de l'Ouest canadien. Cette façon exogène de désigner les lieux remonte aux années 1930, à l'époque du lancement du projet « The Lake that Waits » par Canards Illimités Canada. Le projet a débuté lors des années du Dust Bowl et du déclin important des populations de sauvagine. Il conjuguait l'imaginaire géographique, les toponymes étrangers et les savoirs écologiques afin d'inciter les sauvaginiers américains à investir dans la réhabilitation des milieux humides canadiens. Certains font allusion au fait que ces changements de nom représentent une forme de recolonisation. Toutefois, en prenant une perspective théorique postnationale, l'utilisation de toponymes étrangers serait alors vue comme un moyen d'influencer positivement les sentiments d'appartenance aux lieux. Il s'agissait d'une construction sociale de la nature qui favorise la reconnaissance du partage des responsabilités éthiques des sauvaginiers qui devaient réimaginer la migration de la sauvagine au sein d'un collectif écologique - Canardia. Grâce aux changements de toponymes, les conditions environnementales et culturelles ont pu évoluer, ce qui a permis de conserver des millions d'acres de l'habitat de la sauvagine et de laisser une marque durable sur la géographie nord-américaine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although researchers have deconstructed the myth of stark social differences between the various North American sub-societies, an assimilating American melting pot and an ethnically oppressive monocultural Québec are still popular representations within Canadian majority discourses, such as the English-language mainstream media and parts of academia. In this paper, I argue that images of ‘America’ and ‘Québec’ play important roles for the multicultural reconstruction of Canadian nationhood. Examining selected op-ed articles from two Toronto-based mainstream newspapers during the 1990s, I develop and exemplify a theoretical understanding of how national identities are constituted and transformed within inter- and intra-national relations of power and alterity. I pay special attention to the particularisation of Canada through the confrontation with American nationhood, the ambiguities of recognising the distinctiveness of Québec inside Canada, and the consequences of projecting Québec's supposedly ‘ethnic’ nationalism outside the boundaries of Canadianness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the international unions shared by workers in the U.S. and Canada most of which are headquartered in the U.S. These links have been a contentious issue in Canada throughout the 20th century, especially in the 1960s and 1970s when Canadian nationalism has been on the rise. The widespread and growing American influence on many phases of Canadian life is being strongly criticized by Canadian nationalists. Some Canadian experts believe that the links between the unions operating in the two nations will soon be severed.