The CCA Master’s Students Program encourages students at Canadian universities to take up urgent questions of public relevance to the built environment in Canada and beyond. Through a three-month collaborative project, participants actively engage with the CCA’s Collection, participate in seminars and other pedagogical activities, and articulate their own understanding of architecture as a public concern.

This three-year project seeks to explore and support how the Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens are contending with a changing local climate. The Jardins de Métis is a landmark horticultural laboratory that for decades has set an agenda for international landscape design. This project focuses on the site’s changing local conditions through its connections to the Mitis River, the shoreline of the Saint-Lawrence River, and their surrounding territorial ties to what is now known as Gaspésie. Each year the three participating students will develop a project anchored by this state of ecological flux, occasioned both by the effects of global warming as well as the short- and long-term consequences of farming, mining, and other local extractive industries. Grand-Métis, Quebec, will thus become a microcosm to reflect on the broader ecological futures of shoreline erosion, depleting aquifers, soil exhaustion, and other manifestations of a rapidly changing ecology.

The Jardins de Métis will serve as a space of dialogue and community engagement. Located on the eastern shore of the Mitis River, and so on the ancestral territories of the Wolastoqiyik and the Mi’gmaq, the Jardins de Métis will host the participating students for a one-month research residency in June of each year, as well as foster a public event near the end of this first month. During the months of July and August, the students will be in residency at CCA to pursue their collaborative research project. They will get the opportunity to participate in events, workshops, and engage in conversations with other researchers. Participants may also draw on the Jardins de Métis’ and the CCA’s archival collections.

While the first year focused on the Mitis River and its importance as a gathering place, and the second year examined more specifically the shorelines of both the Saint-Lawrence and the Mitis rivers, the third year will centre the land management practices created and led by the Jardins de Métis, particularly with a view to understanding the emergence of new models of ecological restoration premised on the resurgence of biodiverse futures. The aim is to better understand how the Jardins de Métis affects and enters into dialogue with land management projects, policies, and tangible land-based places with its surrounding communities, including the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’gmaq Nations. The group of students may focus on histories of agricultural nationalism and experimentation in the region, particularly through the role played by the Commission de protection du territoire Agricole du Québec; the consolidation of the forestry industry; and/or the need for introducing practices of rewilding to regenerate and support soil, plant, and animal biodiversity. The intent is for participating students to explore and foreground ways of reading the layered histories of land use, both settler and Indigenous, that contemporary zoning bylaws, forestry management regimes, and land use planning surface at the interfaces of the Jardins de Métis. Guiding questions include: what do productive agricultural lands both reveal and conceal? Does rewilding appropriate and promise a false “return” to Indigenous forest management practices? Who should be involved in practices of land use planning, particularly on sites with contested histories of Indigenous dispossession? Should biodiversity be the guiding principle in regions dependent on agriculture and other land-based extractive industries?

The first year focused on the Mitis river, and its important role as a gathering place and site of invitation for surrounding communities, in particular members of the Wolastogiyik community.

To know more about the first-year project, read the article River as Invitation.

Participants:
Hannah Thiessen (McGill University)
Jia Chen Mi (University of Toronto)
Marie-Ellen Houde-Hostland (University of Toronto)

The second year will examine the shoreline and how the Jardins de Métis is imagining new methods to slow, counter, and work with water-based erosion.

To know more about the second-year project, read the article Living Landscapes.

Participants:
Robyn Adams (University of British Columbia)
Julia Pingeton (University of Guelph)
Marie Pontais (Université du Québec à Montréal)

The third and final year will consider land management practices generated by the Jardins de Métis, and how these create opportunities for dialogue, experimentation, new historical narratives, and relationships that can foster a shared understanding of what it means to pursue a more biodiverse future. Participants will collaboratively build an independent research project that explores what land-management practices consist of, their contested histories, and what the future holds for their capacity to generate understandings of postcolonial territoriality.

Participants will be selected by a CCA-Jardin de Métis selection committee. Selected candidates will work collaboratively on a common research project, with advising and support provided by the CCA’s Associate Director of Research and Coordinator, Research, in addition to Edith Bélanger and Myriam Landry, members of an advisory research committee.

Students currently enrolled in professional and post-professional master’s programs—Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, Master of Environmental Design, or Master of Urban Design—in Canada are eligible to apply, regardless of citizenship.

Selected candidates are expected to participate in a three-month residency at the CCA and the Jardins de Métis during the summer (1 June to 29 August 2025), for which they will receive a stipend of CAD 7,500 to cover travel, housing, and living expenses while in Montréal and Grand-Métis. June will be spent at the Jardins de Métis, and July and August at the CCA. The award is non-renewable.

Master’s students are invited to submit applications that describe how their research interests, professional endeavours, volunteer experiences, and design philosophies align with the 2025 theme (Third Year).

All applications must be submitted online through the CCA application portal, and must include:

• a written statement (500 to 750 words) addressing how the candidate would approach the 2025 theme from a critical perspective, as well as how the output of this residency will contribute to their development as a designer;
• a curriculum vitae indicating one preferred academic or professional reference;
• a portfolio including visual and/or written materials (not to exceed 5MB);
• in efforts to be responsive to concerns voiced from Indigenous communities, the CCA may ask selected candidates who self-identify as Indigenous to submit one of these references: their status card, a letter of support from their community (Band Council, Elders Council, cultural center, etc.), or a letter of support from their peers (Native Friendship Centre, Indigenous Students Services Circle, etc.).

Deadline: 17 March 2025 at 11:59pm (EDT)

For questions regarding the program, please contact studium@cca.qc.ca.

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This program is generously supported by the Power Corporation of Canada.

The diversity of our institution is at the core of our creativity and strengthens our research efforts. While all qualified candidates are invited to apply, we particularly welcome applications from persons with disabilities, Indigenous, Black, and other people of colour, of all genders, and LGBTQ+ persons. Candidates are encouraged to self-identify in their application (CV or cover letter). Applicants who require accommodations for any part of the application process can contact vsamson@cca.qc.ca to receive confidential assistance.

Past years

2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003