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.

You enter a national park through a gate and its limits are legible on a map. It is a legally defined, bounded space of rivers, forests, lakes. It is whole and contained. Nonetheless the rivers flow out of its perimeter, moving on to feed other bodies of water. Birds nest within its boundaries and circulate through the air far beyond its limits. The park exists as land, and as a named, delimited place.

In Canada, as in other settler colonial states, national parks have ambiguous and contested histories as lands claimed for state ownership and settler occupation. They are sites of immense natural abundance, beauty, and wellbeing, while also encompassing complex narratives of land dispossession and the maintenance of dominant definitions of Indigenous heritage and survival in the present. Parks have served to hold certain lands in states of transitional development, at once forestalling the arrival of damaging extractive industries and deferring questions of Indigenous land rights.

More specifically in the province of Quebec, parks have served to normalize access to land under contested forms of (dis)agreement between First Nations and their band councils and various level of government. They maintain ties to land historically claimed through the establishment of private hunting camps, largely serving settler interests. Over decades national parks in Quebec have begun to grapple with their colonial legacies, and to create forms of land-based collaboration and interpretation with First Nations with claims to the lands these parks occupy.

The 2026 CCA Master’s Students Program will open a longer-term research project through a three-month historical and theoretical exploration of the national and regional park systems in the province of Quebec. The three selected participants will undertake a week-long trip to two parks in Quebec during the month of June, while also having the opportunity to independently organize day trips to national parks in the region surrounding Montréal over the summer. Through these research trips the participants will reflect on the ways in which these parks navigate settler colonial legacies; the ongoing presence and voices of First Nations within the formally defined park; the historical definition of park land; and emerging “posthuman” definitions of land-based heritage, land rights, and commoning of land that parks may evolve towards. The participants will have the freedom to explore parks that don’t yet exist but may come into being.

Participants will be selected by a CCA selection committee. Selected candidates will work collaboratively on a common research project, with advising and support provided by the CCA’s Associate Director, Research, and Coordinator, Research.

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 will participate in a three-month residency at the CCA during the summer (1 June to 28 August 2026) for which they will receive a stipend of CAD 7,500 to cover travel, housing, and living expenses while in Montréal. The residency will include two visits to national or regional parks within a three-hour drive from Montréal (8 to 12 June 2026). Candidates must be comfortable with sleeping four nights in camping conditions (“prêt-à-camper”). The CCA will cover the cost of accommodation and transportation in the context of these visits. 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 theme.

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 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 centre, etc.), or a letter of support from their peers (Native Friendship Centre, Indigenous Students Services Circle, etc.).

Deadline: 30 March 2026 at 11:59pm (EDT)

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

For updates on the CCA Master’s Students Program, please subscribe to our newsletter.

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.

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