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ABSTRACTPostglacial paleophytogeography and paleoclimates in the western part of the Lower Saint Lawrence River region, Québec. Pollen analysis of the sediments of four lakes in the Lower Saint Lawrence River region, north of Maine, shows that tundra vegetation existed during an estimated period of 500 to 1000 years following ice retreat. Progressive development of the tundra from a quasi-desert to a shrub stage with dwarf birch, through an herb stage rich in arctic-alpine taxa is confirmed by macrofossil analysis. Organic sedimentation in the lakes started only around 9500-9200 BP, that is to say more than 2000 years after ice retreat, and is coincident with the arrival of the first trees (macrofossils) in the area. The regional late-glacial climate was thus apparently very harsh, compared to the Appalachian regions located to the south and southwest. Black spruce, the poplars, larch and white birch comprised the forests which remained open until around 8000 BP. The corresponding pollen zone is dominated by green alder which played a major role in the plant cover during a period characterized by a great incidence of fire. Afterwards, the modern vegetation developed, corresponding to a mosaic of fir and maple communities with physiographic sequences and regional phytogeographic gradients similar to those present today within this section of the Appalachian range. Eastern white cedar, which nowadays occupies the wet or boggy sites of the estuarine lowlands and of the northern margin of the Appalachian plateau, whether in pure stands or with balsam fir, began to increase by 3600 BP. The Holocene Climatic Optimum is clearly marked in the study area only by a greater abundance of white pine, especially at the northern margin of the Appalachian plateau between 7000 abd 3600 BP.

ABSTRACTA cartographie reconstruction of the vegetational cover of Québec-Labrador for 6 ka BP is based on palynological and plant macrofossil records. A dense Shrub Tundra occupied the stretches of land between marine waters (Tyrrell Sea or d'lberville Sea) and the residual ice masses that still occupied over 100 000 km2, from Ungava (Nunavik) to the Schefferville area. This Tundra belt was narrow along the southern limit of glaciers but expanded eastward to a width of more than 400 km, extending to the Labrador Sea north of latitude 54°. The tree-line thus ran approximately through the middle of the present-day Taiga zone (open boreal forest), but the northern limit of the Closed Forest already corresponded to its modern position. Like the Tundra, the 6 ka BP Taiga was shrubby, more dense, and more diversified than todays, probably due to favorable climatic conditions but also because soils contained more nutrients than today. The southern forest vegetation zones, dominated respectively by spruce, fir, and maple, generally occupied their modern positions, but the abundance of some companion tree-species differed markedly from the modern. The differences are attributed 1) to delayed migration, as in the case of jack pine (Pinus banksiana) in the Western Spruce Forest domain or American beech (Fagus grandifolia) in the Maple Forest domain, 2) to a generally lower incidence of natural fires, 3) to a lower impact of paludification on hydric sites, and 4) to an overall milder climate. An analysis of the records at a regional scale permits the identification of more detailed, ultimately climatically-controlled phytogeographic gradients and fields, especially in mountain and subalpine zones.

AbstractJohn Bartlet Brebner (1895-1957) was a significant Canadian historian, but his work has been marginalised and discredited in the historiography. A Maritime historian, he continued to study Nova Scotia after leaving the University of Toronto for Columbia University, and this and his work on early explorers and British history led to his espousal of a continental approach that emphasised Canadian-American exchange and a shared British legal and political heritage. A deep liberal, he felt under suspicion because he did not promote either of the two nationalist schools of Canadian history and because he lived in the United States; this feeling moved him to naturalise as an American in 1941 and give up Canadian history. He later regretted this action, as his experiences as a liberal American in the post-war era gave him concerns about the liberal quality of American nationalism. After Brebner's death, his reputation was tarnished by the posthumous publication of an obsolete manuscript and the concerted attack of nationalist historians who, led by Donald G. Creighton, sought to deny legitimacy to even the most nuanced use of the "continental approach."

Second of a trilogy dedicated to human resource management (HRM) in small businesses (SMEs), this paper summarizes a study that describes and comments the major HRM maintenance activities in small and medium-sized firms. Much of the available international literature has been reviewed and analyzed, based on empirical data obtained from several European and North- American surveys. A first global trend shows that, overall, compensation and fringe benefits are the most formalized HRM activities. Between 45 and 80 % of SMEs formalize these practices through policies and procedures, these figures increasing with organizational size and unionization level. In fact, SME owners and managers pay particular attention to these HRM activities as they constantly face losing their highly qualified resources to larger competitors, and are more likely to offer attractive compensation packages. These competitive constraints, along with other contingency factors, partly explain the increasing use of more sophisticated incitative and involvement packages, even if these methods remain optional in France (for SMEs smaller than 100 employees) and in most other western countries.On the other hand, the situation totally differs for performance appraisal, which is substantially less formalized in SMEs. With HR planning and job analysis, this appraisal is the least structured and the most misapplied by owners and managers, who often personally evaluate their employees' performance in a paternalist manner. As for compensation, the formalization level of performance appraisal varies with organizational size and unionization. In fact, evaluation policies are three times less frequent in firms with less than 150 employees, compared to small firms having less than 25 persons. Evaluation criteria usually refer to the individual employee and to his results, rather than to his professional behaviors, and are thus harder to define and to observe on a continuous basis. Finally, HR maintenance activities, whilst generally less formalized, occur in SMEs at various levels, again emphasizing the strong heterogeneous character of small and medium-sized firms, thus limiting any kind of generalization related to their HRM practices.

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which came into force on January 1, 1995 and is under the administration of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is the first multilateral agreement on trade in services. In it has been implemented a framework of basic obligations that apply in principle to all service sectors. It also includes in complementary annexes various specific commitments with regard to the following sectors : financial services, telecommunications, air-transport services and the movement of natural persons. These more specific commitments proved necessary owing to the complexity and particularities found in these sectors. This paper offers an in-depth and detailed analysis of the specific rules applying to these sectors. While numerous and quite significant— especially in the financial services and telecommunications sectors— and contrary to the general rules under GATS, until now they have been the subject of few in-depth analyses. The legal analysis is accompanied with a presentation of the relative contextual environment that sheds light on the particular nature of these sectors and the reasons why such specific commitments were negotiated. In concluding, further emphasis is put upon other sectors where specific issues arise and for which — within the context of the new round of negotiations on services begun in the year 2000 - the negotiation of special and more specific rules could prove to be necessary or useful.

Keywords: Modèle de croissance spatiale, croissance d'entreprise, proximité, région non métropolitaine

The project «literacy in the natural sciences classroom» was a three-year programme of professional development intended for Francophone secondary school teachers working in a minority context. This ongoing training programme privileged connections between language and the sciences and sought to raise awareness amongst teachers of the importance of language in their teaching. Our goal was to show them how to utilise a range of effective strategies in order to transform their classroom practices and thereby allow them to have their pupils read, write and speak during the study of science. The objective of our research was to determine how the beliefs and practices of teachers have changed over the years and how the latter have been implemented in different grades. We also wished to identify the challenges and facilitating factors relevant to the implementation of strategies and practices of classroom literacy at both the school level and that of the school division. The analysis presented in this article is based solely on interviews with teachers, with pupils, with school administrations as well as with other individuals implicated in the project. Analysis of the interviews with teachers revealed that changes relating to their assumptions and practices were progressive and directly related to the rate of participation in training sessions.

This article draws on the proposals of recent academic researches regarding the relevance of a renewed reflection on the contingent specificity of the SME as an object of analysis. Using a series of eloquent empirical observations made in the field of biotechnology firms in Quebec (Canada) – namely, that most firms in this market are less than 10 years old, and 43 percent of biotech firms have less than 10 employees – as its starting point, this article attempts to answer the following research question : Do biotechnology VSEs constitute a separate species and/or are they unique of their kind, resembling the “organized” type of very small enterprises evoked by Marchesnay (2003) ?This article is organized in three parts. In the first, the authors propose a theoretical framework that attempts to identify VSEs according to “what they do.” This section is based mainly on a review of the literature on the contemporary criteria used to define small enterprises and on the concept of the business model. Secondly, the authors outline the methodology of multi-factorial analysis and cluster analysis used to observe, by induction, the different behaviours of very small enterprises in the bio-industry cluster in Quebec. They then proceed to propose a framework for the analysis of these firms' contingent specificity. This article proposes an empirical validation of the specificity of “organized”, “world-class” VSEs as well as of Torrès' argument (1997) regarding the manifestation of a significant denaturation trend, while adding previously neglected components to the continuum of prevailing criteria defining the VSE. At the methodological level, the use of the five components of a business model in the age of innovation without borders proves effective in identifying the diversity within this specificity by revealing four main types of biotechnology VSEs : discoverers, toolmakers, specialized suppliers and generic suppliers of biotechnology products and services. This empirical study thus establishes VSEs as both specific VSE-forms (in relation to the species), and as special VSE-forms (unique of their kind : the organized VSE).

Keywords: Modèles d'affaires, Biotechnologie, TPE, PME, Spécificité, Haute technologie, Gouvernance, Innovation ouverte, Réseau de valeur