Biography
Dale Bellaire is a PhD Candidate and SSHRC CGRS-D scholar in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. Grounded in her Algonquin (Crane Clan) and French settler ancestry, her interdisciplinary research, teaching, and community engagement bring together aging, leisure and sport, Indigenous research, and land-based learning to explore how relationships, place, participation, culture, and community shape identity, continuity, belonging, and wellbeing across the life course.
Dale's work is guided by relational accountability and community-engaged approaches to research and teaching. She is particularly interested in land-based and experiential learning and is a TA in Outdoor Recreation and Land-Based Learning, where students are invited to understand land not simply as a setting for recreation, but as a place of relationship, knowledge, responsibility, and reciprocity. Her broader community-engaged work extends into Indigenous health, education, and wellbeing.
Research interests
Indigenous aging; relational continuity; relationality and relational accountability; later-life transitions; leisure and sport across the life course; land-based learning; Indigenous methodologies and pedagogies; place and belonging; community-engaged research.
Dale’s master’s research examined how continued sport participation supports continuity, social connection, and wellbeing among older competitive athletes navigating later-life transitions. Her doctoral research extends this interest through relational continuity, exploring how relationships with people, place, land, culture, community, and meaningful practices sustain identity, belonging, and continuity among First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Elders. Her scholarship and teaching also explore land-based learning as relational pedagogy, grounded in relationship, reciprocity, responsibility, observation, story, and place.