View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by YorkSpace UNSETTLING REVITILIZATION IN TORONTO: THE FANTASY AND APOLOGY OF THE SETTLER CITY BY BRYONY JANE HALPIN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO February 2017 © Bryony Jane Halpin, 2017 Abstract At a time when social movements for Indigenous resurgence in Canada are as powerful as ever, and are coupled with state-sponsored reconciliation and recognition efforts (focused primarily on residential schools), it is crucial to examine the ongoing systemic processes unique to the settler colony that continue to dispossess, enact violence, and deny Indigenous sovereignty. Also, it is pertinent to ask – driven by Jordan Stanger-Ross’s assertion that cities have played a strategic role in the settlement process – how these processes play out in urban spaces. Specifically, what is the role of urban planning and urban revitalization in the ongoing settler project? In this dissertation, I examine the large-scale revitalization project underway on Toronto’s waterfront and argue that settler colonialism is a structure revealed through what I define as the fantasies and apologies that manifest in the revitalizing of settler cities. I contend that revitalization projects reveal the fantasy that the settlement dispossession / violence is long over now, and that there is a ‘pastness’ to the injustices of settler colonialism. Therefore, the fantasy that informs how we plan and envision our urban spaces positions settlers legitimately and unquestionably on the land – in perpetuity. This fantasy is related to, and in tension with, the apology, which I argue is also revealed in urban revitalization and works to foreshadow the search for state-sponsored reconciliation in the present day. The apology represents the way in which urban revitalization makes insincere attempts to address the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples and to apparently facilitate Indigenous agency in the present day. As a result, the apology ends up marking the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty in urban space. Threaded throughout the fantasy and the apology, however, is ii transformative resistance in settler urban spaces which present ways to authentically address settler state violence. iii Dedication for Micah & Louis iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................ ii Dedication ....................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 Murder of Chief Wabikinine: Indigenous Presence and Absence on the Waterfront ....... 1 Chapter Summaries .................................................................................................................. 5 Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................. 14 Emptying the Land, Dispossessing, Dissolving and Replacing ...................................... 14 The Problem with Research ................................................................................................... 14 To Settle Is To Be ................................................................................................................... 20 The Final Frontier: The City as a Settler Formation ............................................................... 21 The Meeting Place .................................................................................................................. 24 The Waterfront ........................................................................................................................ 34 The Toronto Harbour Commission ......................................................................................... 36 Gentrification on the Frontier: The Waterfront Today ............................................................. 38 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER TWO ............................................................................................................. 44 Urban Frontiers and terra nullius: Settler Colonialism and Imagining the City ............... 44 What is Settler Colonialism? ................................................................................................... 46 Settler Geographies ................................................................................................................ 53 Land and Identity: Terra nullius as a Constitutive Doctrine .................................................... 56 The Guises of Contemporary Settler Colonialism: Recognition and Reconciliation ............... 59 Beyond Recognition ............................................................................................................... 66 Settler Colonialism and Gender Violence ............................................................................... 68 Progress vs. the Indian: Settler Colonialism and the City ....................................................... 75 This is What Revitalization Looks Like ................................................................................... 79 CHAPTER THREE ......................................................................................................... 82 The Fantasy of the Sweet Life on Toronto’s Sugar Beach: ............................................ 82 City Building, Settler Colonialism and Slavery ............................................................... 82 The Dual Fantasy Thesis ........................................................................................................ 82 Two Fantasies Revealed ........................................................................................................ 86 Threads and Themes from the Interviews .............................................................................. 89 The Beach .............................................................................................................................. 92 Redpath Sugar and the American Sugar Refining Group ...................................................... 94 Fantasy One: Settler Belonging on the Land and Clear Title ................................................. 96 Settler Desire and Dispossession ........................................................................................... 98 Fantasy Two: A Post-Racial Canada .................................................................................... 100 Racial Space-Making in Settler Colonies ............................................................................. 102 Slavery in Canada ................................................................................................................ 103 The North Star ...................................................................................................................... 107 The North Star and Contemporary Multiculturalism ............................................................. 110 Towards A Radical Critique .................................................................................................. 113 v Where Two Fantasies Meet .................................................................................................. 115 Parks as Transformative Spaces .......................................................................................... 117 Parks: The Fantasy Unveiled ............................................................................................... 119 Conclusion: Parks as Transformative Space ........................................................................ 121 CHAPTER FOUR ......................................................................................................... 125 Apology, Reconciling and Revitalizing: ........................................................................ 125 Pan Am/Para Pan Am Housing as a Symbolic Act ...................................................... 125 The Tour ............................................................................................................................... 125 The Project ........................................................................................................................... 129 What Does it Mean to Revitalize? ........................................................................................ 133 Revitalization as Domination ................................................................................................ 135 Reconciliation and Distribution ............................................................................................. 137 Housing and Homelessness in Toronto ................................................................................ 139 Housing in the Toronto Indigenous Community ................................................................... 143 Treaty