The Promise and Threat of America in Australian Politics

From early days the United States has had a curious and very entertaining career in Australia as a kind of storehouse of ideas to be raided, a powerfully justifying precedent to be invoked or a dreadful example with which to shame the thoughtless. (Cited in Churchward 1979, p. xxv)     

“Britain's Spiritual Life: How Can It Be Deepened?”: Seebohm Rowntree,Russell Lavers,and the “Crisis of Belief”, ca. 1946–54

This article examines the response of two social investigators in the early post-World War II period to the apparent secularization of British society. It explains how an unpublished survey that the two men carried out, along with the work of other Christian and non-Christian commentators in this period, expressed the hope that religious influences would be strengthened through secular institutions, including communal organizations, workplaces, and the military. A revival of Christian belief, in some form, was seen as a bulwark against communism in the context of the Cold War in which the Soviet regime was seen to present a threat to the "Christian civilization" of the West. The "spiritual life of the nation" was synonymous with the "national character," and for the information and opinion on which their study was based, Seebohm Rowntree and Russell Lavers turned to those who they believed were in a position to influence the "national character."     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

COMPONENTS OF CHANGE IN THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELDERLY POPULATION IN ONTARIO, 1976–1986

Although the elderly population is increasing rapidly in all parts of Canada, the pattern of change is far from uniform. A number of properties of the aging process are strongly differentiated at the county and township levels, variations which have considerable significance for the design and implementation of social service and health care systems. Using data from the 1976, 1981, and 1986 Censuses for Ontario, components of change in the elderly population are obtained by cohort survival methods. The significance of rapid metropolitan growth of the elderly compared with the slow growth of the rural elderly is highlighted, while intra-county distributional shifts in the elderly population raise important questions for the next decade.
Quoique l'âge de la population augmente rapidement à travers le Canada, ce changement nes'opèrepas de façon uniforme. Certaines caractéristiques du processus de vieillissement sont vraiment differentes à l'échelle des comtés et des municipalités. Ces différences sont d'une grande importance lors de la création etde l'implantation des services-santé et des services sociaux. À l'aide des statistiques de recensement pour les années 1976, 1981, et 1986 pour l'Ontario, les facteurs de changement des populations de personnes âgées sont obtenus au moyen des paramètres de 'survie des groupes.' La signification du taux d'accroissement rapide des personnes â gés en milieu urbain comparé au taux d'accroissement plus lent de ces mêmes personnes en milieu rural est mise en évidence. Les variations de la distribution de cette population d'un comtéà I'autre soulèvent d'importantes interrogations pour la prochaine décade .     

STONE AXES OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS: NEOLITHIC EXCHANGE IN AN INSULAR CONTEXT

Summary. The petrology of stone axes found in the Channel Islands is examined. Recent research has resulted in the identification of an axe production centre at Le Pinacle, Jersey, and axes produced there have been recorded on Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. The Channel Island assemblages also include axes of Type A dolerite, flint, jadeite, eclogite and fibrolite, produced at known centres on the European mainland: together, these 'exotic' axes account for around 32% of the total Channel Island sample. A marked fall-off is noted between Jersey and the other islands in terms of the occurrence of these imported axes, and this can perhaps be explained in relation to factors affecting navigation. The social significance of inter-island and island/mainland interaction is explored.     

SITING A WOMEN'S HEALTH FACILITY: A LOCATION-ALLOCATION STUDY OF BREAST CANCER SCREENING SERVICES IN EASTERN ONTARIO

Women's health care has been a neglected area of study in geography. Access to health care has generally been treated as gender-neutral in the medical geography literature. In this paper, access to a women's health care service is examined using a location-allocation approach. We argue for the utility of a location-allocation approach to the informed siting of breast-screening facilities for two reasons. First, the readily available sex- and age-specific data are truly representative of need for breast-screening services. Second, there is a need to ensure geographic accessibility to women's health care services where the outcomes such as decreased mortality and improved quality of life have been demonstrated. A commonly used location-allocation approach with distance constraints is employed to evaluate the service provided by mammography facilities in the Ontario Breast Screening Program Kingston Centre's catchment area. The existing catchment area is found to leave many women with impossibly long travel distances. The results demonstrate the importance of taking a gender-informed geographic approach to the siting of women's health care services. Le bien-être des femmes a été négligé dans le domaine de la géographie. L'accès á l'aide médicale a été, généralement, traité sans tenir compte du problème ‘sexe’ dans la littérature médico-géographique. Dans cet écrit, l'accès des femmes á un service médical est analysé au moyen d'une approche qui tient compte de la disponibilité du corps médical sur l'ensemble de la région désservie. ll y a deux raisons pour lesquelles nous argumentons l'utilité des ‘médecins désignés’ concernant l'information distribuée sur les cliniques offrant, aux patientes, des examens amenant au dépistage du cancer du sein. Premièrement, les dernières statistiques disponibles sur le sexe et les âges spécifiques, montrent clairement la nécessité de services pour les examens mammaires. Deuxièmement, il est important de dèmontrer qu'il y a un besoin de réassurer l'accessibilité géographique au centre médical pour les femmes dans les cas où le taux de mortalité décroît ce qui amène, comme résultat, á une meilleure qualité de vie. Le service offert concernant la mammographie du ‘Programme Ontarien de Dépistage du Cancer du Sein’ au Centre Médical de Kingston est employé pour évaluer l'efficacité du corps médical malgré les problèmes de distances. Les régions désservies existantes ont malheureusement le désavantage d'être trop loin, ce qui ne favorise pas les patientes qui ne peuvent faire de longs voyages. Pour conclure, les rèsultats démontrent que l'approche géographique par le facteur de sexe dans la location des centres médicaux pour les femmes doit être, de préférence, revue.