Pump tracks are among the fastest-growing recreation infrastructure in North America. Within the leisure community, pump tracks are increasingly framed as inclusive public spaces for all ages, skill levels, and all wheeled equipment. However, inclusion in urban leisure spaces in what is now known as Canada must be understood within the context of the country's colonial history, which has typically erased Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, the authors (leisure researchers and Indigenous community members) explore Indigenous Peoples' relationship(s) to the pump tracks at the Steve Smith Bike Park located on Snuneymuxw First Nation ancestral and unceded lands, in what is now Nanaimo, British Columbia. Using settler colonial theory, community-based participatory research, go-along and semi-structured interviews, and reflexive thematic analysis, we produced two themes: (1) enduring colonial legacies at the pump tracks; (2) the pump tracks as a space for resistance and cultural resurgence. Together, these themes illustrate how the pump tracks function as complex urban leisure spaces that both (re)produce settler colonial exclusions and enable Indigenous presence, resistance, and resurgence.
This study provides the first quantitative empirical examination of living funerals-pre-mortem farewell ceremonies-as a leisure phenomenon within a collectivist cultural context. Grounded in theories of rites of passage, liminality and communitas, interaction ritual chains, and festivity, a cross-sectional survey (N = 165) of Taiwanese adults identified a culturally contextualized three-factor structure-Family Companionship, Life Planning, and Ritual Atmosphere-through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Structural equation modeling revealed that familial support indirectly enhances participation willingness through ritual atmosphere and life planning, consistent with Collins' emotional energy mechanism. Cardiovascular disease (OR = 12.301) and regional cultural norms (OR = 2.969) were the strongest predictors; demographic variables were non-significant. The study positions living funerals as a hybrid liminal-leisure practice, bridges leisure studies and palliative care, and advances the emergent scholarship on leisure, loss, and death. Elevated RMSEA (0.097-0.098) underscores the need for cross-cultural validation and longitudinal extension.
