Christine Nelson

Christine Nelson
Degrassi character
Publicity photograph of Spike from the third season of Degrassi Junior High.
First appearance	Degrassi Junior High: January 18, 1987 (episode 1.01: "Kiss Me Steph")
First speaking role	Degrassi Junior High: March 8, 1987 (episode 1.08: "Nothing To Fear")
Last appearance	Degrassi Takes Manhattan: July 16, 2010
Created by	Linda Schuyler and Yan Moore
Portrayed by	Amanda Stepto
Number of appearances	37 (Junior High) 25 (High) 51 (Next Generation)
In-universe information
Full name	Christine Nelson-Simpson
Nickname	Spike
Grades	Grade 8 (DJH seasons 1 & 2) Grade 9 (DJH season 3) Grade 10 (DH season 1) Grade 11 (DH season 2)
Occupation	Photo developer (School's Out) Hairdresser (Next Generation)
Family	Ms. Nelson (mother) Unseen father
Spouse	Archie "Snake" Simpson (The Next Generation)
Children	Emma Nelson (with Shane McKay) Jack Simpson (with Archie Simpson)
Nationality	Canadian

Christine "Spike" Nelson^[1] is a fictional character from the Degrassi teen drama franchise. She is portrayed by Amanda Stepto. She made her debut in the first episode of Degrassi Junior High in 1987, but remained as an extra with no dialogue until the eighth episode. She has appeared throughout Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High, and Degrassi: The Next Generation. Her role throughout Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High primarily concerns her pregnancy and motherhood as well as its impacts on her social life and education.

She becomes pregnant in the season one episode "It's Late", after she has unprotected sex with her boyfriend Shane McKay (Bill Parrott) at a party. As her pregnancy progresses, Spike loses faith and trust in Shane who is hampered by his conservative parents and his own inhibitions. In the second season of Junior High, she is ultimately removed by the PTA who claim she sets a "bad example". She goes into labor when she returns for the school dance, later naming the baby Emma. She spends the third season struggling as a teenage mother, further compounded by Shane's drug-induced brain injury. Degrassi High similarly follows Spike as she attempts another relationship, which is hampered by both her responsibilities and her hesitance, The Next Generation follows Spike in adulthood as she continues to raise the adolescent Emma (Miriam McDonald), marries former classmate Archie "Snake" Simpson (Stefan Brogren), and gives birth to another child. During its third season, the plotline of Shane McKay (now played by Jonathan Torrens) is revisited when Emma discovers him in a mental institution, leading to an unexpected reunion with the expecting Spike where he suffers a meltdown in her house, prompting her to go into labor. She later names the baby Jack.

The character's introductory episode "It's Late" won an International Emmy, the award of which inspired the name of Spike's daughter. She was one of the first major pregnant teenagers on television. Like her co-stars, Amanda Stepto's public image was directly affected by her portrayal of Spike, as she was often conflated with the character and mistaken as being legitimately pregnant. The character's large spiked hair, which was Stepto's own, became considered a "trademark" of both the character and the actress. Several episodes about her pregnancy were banned from airing on the BBC in the United Kingdom, where Degrassi Junior High experienced its highest viewership. Amanda Stepto earned recognition from critics and scholars for her portrayal of Spike, and was nominated twice, once as part of the Degrassi Junior High cast in 1990, and again by herself in 1992. Spike was one of the show's most popular characters, and her storyline was key to the franchise's later developments. An eponymous novel was released in December 1988 which explored the character in greater detail and provided exposition to her background. She appears in a total of 113 episodes throughout the franchise.

Concept and casting[]

Audition[]

Amanda Stepto noticed an audition for Degrassi Junior High when she was attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts,^[2] where she minored in drama.^[3][4] Identifying with the punk rock movement, Stepto had large spiked hair, citing Colin Abrahall, the vocalist of the UK82 band GBH, as her stylistic influence.^[5] Stepto was not a professional actress at the time, and did not have either a resume^[6] or professional headshots,^[7] and so she was required to have a photo taken to be sent in.^[6] She recalled having an argument with her parents over having her hair spiked in the photos, with her parents telling her: "You’re never gonna get on TV with spiked hair! There’s no way! Put your hair down for the photos!", to which she responded "NO WAY! This is my hair! If they don’t like me, fuck them!”.^[7][8]

She was ultimately accepted and underwent the first series of acting workshops.^[9] Stepto was the only student at the school to audition for the show.^[6][10] Recalling this, Stepto later said: "A year later, everyone else was sorry they didn't".^[2] Initially, she auditioned for the role of provocatively dressed Stephanie Kaye, which later went to Nicole Stoffman.^[11] Show co-creator Linda Schuyler later recalled: "We said to each other afterwards, “Oh my—that girl is not Stephanie Kaye, but we need her in our show!”".^[8] The role was explicitly created for Stepto.^[8] In 2019, she recalled making approximately $50 daily for her role in Degrassi Junior High, as actors were paid based on how many lines they would have per episode.^[11]

Development[]

According to Stepto, Neil Hope, who played Derek "Wheels" Wheeler, coined the nickname "Spike", which also inspired the character's name.^{[8][note 1]} The cast was forbidden from wearing predominantly black clothing, which, according to Stepto, "ruled out like 99% percent of my wardrobe".^[12] Instead, she wore various T-shirts of punk rock and new wave bands.^[12] Like the rest of the characters on the series, Spike's experiences were loosely or directly based from Stepto's own experiences.^[13]

The character's storyline was developed from research on teenage pregnancy by writer Loretta Castellarin, who later co-authored the character's novelization.^[14] Initially, the writers suggested making the character Stephanie Kaye pregnant, but later felt it was predictable due to the nature of the character.^[14] Stepto later said; "That would be too obvious. You can't just say the promiscuous girls get pregnant.".^[14] The reason Spike was chosen to be pregnant was because she was "a nice, quiet character that everybody liked",^[15] and thus wouldn't be expected to have such a problem befall her.^[15] In developing the character, the writers aimed to demonstrate that "just because someone's 14 and gets pregnant doesn't mean that she's a slut."^[15]

Writer Catherine Dunphy noted that some Degrassi cast members "snickered" during the initial read-through of "It's Late", the episode where Spike first becomes pregnant.^[6] Stepto's own observations of a rise in sexual activity among her peers, compounded by what she perceived to be a lack of sex education, coincided with the character's development.^[15][6] Spike's decision to keep her baby was influenced by an increasing trend in pregnant teenagers keeping theirs.^[15] Conversely, Stepto would say in contemporary interviews that she would have had an abortion had she been in her character's situation, which she said would greatly surprise interviewers.^[16][15] In an episode of Degrassi Talks, Stepto noted that she initially thought the plotline was unrealistic in the context of the wealth of information on sexually transmitted diseases and contraception.^[17]

Stepto's influences[]

Stepto sometimes compared playing Spike to being her biological mother.^[15] In 1992, she cited the first season episode "Parent's Night" as her most important episode.^[6] In the episode, which immediately follows "It's Late", Spike, who is contemplating giving her baby up for adoption, seeks the advice of Wheels who is adopted himself.^[6] Speaking on the filming of the scene, Stepto said that she felt as if she was in "the body of my biological mother talking to me".^[18] In 1988, Stepto stated to Montreal Gazette the impact that playing the role would have on her: "Spike made me realize I shouldn't hate my own mother for what she did especially when I realized I was really playing her."^[15] Other aspects from Stepto that were translated to the character included her support for animal rights,^[1] and the scrutiny that she experienced in public due to her spiked hairstyle.^[1]

Characterization[]

Spike is characterized as a normally-behaved teenage girl with a "gentle" personality^[20] whose fashion incorporates elements of punk rock, including large spiked hair (which evolves into a "mall hair" style by Degrassi High), as well as other types of clothing such as plaid skirts, oversized sweaters and ruffled blouses.^[21] She is typically polite, but confrontational and resentful when concerning her pregnancy and motherhood. She has been described as a "petite punk rocker",^[22] "seemingly cool but naive"^[23] and a "sullen girl".^[24] As opposed to her more stoic friend Liz O'Rourke, she appears to be against violence, at one point dissuading Liz from vandalizing a diner.^{[note 2]} Her personal life is explored occasionally throughout Junior High. She is shown to live alone with her mother in an apartment complex. It is mentioned in "It's Late" that her mother gave birth to Spike when she was seventeen, and a comment made by her mother in the second season episode Dinner And A Show ("Typical male, gets off scot free") implies that the father may have abandoned her.

Amanda Stepto expressed some critical observations about her character's personality during and after the series' run. During Degrassi Junior High's run, Stepto observed that her character seemed very unhappy; when interviewed in 1990, Stepto stated that Spike was "always sad or depressed" and "sort of boring", but acknowledged her character's struggles contributing to her behavior.^[25] In 2005, she would remark that she and her character shared some similarities, including her support for animal rights, but sans the pregnancy.^[1] Interviewed by CBC show Switchback, Stepto was asked whether she was like her character in real life. She responded: "My character's much more depressing than I am, because of, you know, what she has to cope with.".^[3] However, she further stated: "It's really interesting because you learn a lot about what other people go through if they were under that same stress.".^[3] Speaking to the Canadian Press in December 1988, she spoke of plotlines that she wanted for Spike, including one where she runs away to "get away from it all".^[14] She also expressed a want for "an episode where I'm laughing. I'm always asking, 'Can't I smile?'".^[14] Despite these reservations, Stepto commented that her character as portrayed in the novelization, which she described as "much more cocky", more closely resembled her real-life personality.^[16]

Speaking of her character in Next Generation in 2005, Stepto felt her character had become "boring" and "a bit dull" in the newer series, as opposed to her style in the previous series.^[26] She noted that her character "makes these yuppie dinners all the time", but felt that she was still "fashionable".^[26] Stepto also stated that she still had input into her wardrobe, particularly wearing clothing from Canadian designers.^[26]

Role in Degrassi[]

Degrassi Junior High[]

Spike is occasionally seen as a background extra in the early episodes of the series, with a supporting role in the eighth episode, where she is first credited. In the episode, she and Voula Grivogiannis (Niki Kemeny) try and support the ailing father of their friend Lorraine "L.D." Delacorte (Amanda Cook), who has a fear of hospitals.^{[ep 1]} The character's storyline begins in the episode "It's Late", where after a sexual encounter with Shane McKay (Bill Parrott), she becomes pregnant. This development causes their relationship to deteriorate, with the former now having to deal with the consequences of teenage pregnancy, and the latter fearing the reaction of his conservative parents (his father being a minister). Despite looking to prove himself to Spike, Shane ultimately shows a fleeting interest in the baby, exacerbated by the actions of his parents. At one point, Spike is advised in counseling to take care of an egg as if it were a baby and allows Shane to care for it himself, but he succumbs to peer pressure and throws it around at a party, causing Spike to lose trust in him.^{[ep 2]} The reactions of her peers to her pregnancy are explored somewhat through the second season.^{[note 3]} Kathleen Mead (Rebecca Haines-Saah) advocates putting Spike in a home, which Melanie Brodie (Sara Ballingall) and her other friends disagree with, arguing that it wasn't entirely Spike's fault. Eventually, she is labelled by several parents as a "bad example" and forced to be removed from Degrassi, despite the protests of Caitlin Ryan (Stacie Mistysyn).^{[ep 3][ep 4]} She later returns for the school dance at the end of the season, six weeks due; she goes into premature labor.^{[ep 5]}

Between the second and third seasons, Emma almost dies in the hospital as a result of her premature birth, which involved over twelve hours of labor.^{[ep 6] [note 4]} When school returns, Spike refuses to let Shane see Emma, feeling he is unreliable. However, she begins to slightly warm up to him when he begins to give her part of his allowance for child support. Although she is reluctant, she eventually lets Shane hold Emma.^{[ep 7]} Later, a friend persuades him to withhold payment to attend a punk rock concert, where he is later found unconscious at the bottom of a bridge causing him neurological damage, and making him estranged completely from Spike and Emma.^{[ep 8][ep 9]} When her other daycare arrangements begin to unravel, Spike attempts to get a job, but this is hampered by her hairstyle, for which she is mocked by the owner of a diner.^{[ep 10]} By the season finale, her grades are failing and Ms. Avery (Michelle Goodeve), who delivers her report card to her mother's salon, suggests she take correspondence courses. Spike initially balks at the idea of having a future and blames Emma for her failings, prompting Ms. Avery to tell her to count her blessings and appreciate having her baby, as not everyone is as lucky to have one. Later, at the school dance just prior to a fire, Spike approaches Ms. Avery and agrees to the correspondence courses.^{[ep 11]}

Spike appears in a total of 37 episodes of Degrassi Junior High. She is in Grade 8 for the first two seasons, and in Grade 9 for the third.^[27]

Degrassi High[]

In Degrassi High, Spike takes Emma to a daycare that is nearby the high school. She is sought for advice by Erica Farrell (Angela Deiseach), who had gotten pregnant following a summer romance; Spike tells her that keeping Emma felt right for her, but that it did not mean that it was the right choice overall.^{[ep 12]} She later meets a Grade 11 Irish student named Patrick (Vincent Walsh)^[28] who happens to wear the same Pogues T-shirt as her.^{[ep 13]} Despite a fledgling relationship, which includes a song he writes for her,^[28] Spike begins to avoid him as it becomes more serious, but he sits her down and tells her to take it easy, in a speech he claimed took half a night to write.^{[ep 14]} The two date for some time until breaking up off-screen in season 2, when Spike decides she could not commit to a relationship. The two are last seen together arguing in the school library over Patrick's decision to date Liz.^{[ep 15]}

After Liz's date with Tim O'Connor (Keith White) goes wrong when he kisses her good night, reawakening memories of sexual abuse, Spike attempts to talk to her in the library about it. When she tells Liz it's okay to kiss somebody you like goodnight, Liz retorts, "Yeah, it's easy to see why you got pregnant.", to which Spike responds, "What sort of cheap shot was that?". Nonetheless, she still attempts to get Liz to talk to her, to no avail. Liz later meets Spike at her house as she is playing with Emma and confides her childhood abuse to her.^{[ep 16]}

Later on, after the suicide of Claude Tanner (David-Armin Parcells) in the lead-up to a talent show, Spike suggests to hold the show but as a benefit, with the proceeds going to Claude's family or a charity, a proposal which is unanimously agreed upon by the other students.^{[ep 17]} Later on, in the lead-up to the school semi-formal dance, she develops romantic feelings towards Archie "Snake" Simpson (Stefan Brogren) but is unrequited as he is taking Michelle Accette (Maureen McKay).^{[ep 18]} Post-graduation, Spike is working at a one-hour photo lab with Tessa Campanelli (Kristen Bourne), but several months later is attending university while Emma is attending junior kindergarten, joking to Caitlin they are a "mother-daughter student team".^{[ep 19]}

She appears in a total of 25 episodes of Degrassi High. She is in Grade 10 for the first season and in Grade 11 for the second. She finishes Grade 12 by the beginning of School's Out.^[29]

Interim[]

Events in Spike's life that occurred between the end of Degrassi High and The Next Generation are explored in the latter series. Sometime when Emma is a toddler, Spike takes Emma to visit Shane at a sanitarium in Stouffville, Ontario. However, Shane's instability frightens Spike and she decides to remove Shane from their lives out of concern for Emma's safety.^{[ep 20]} She does not provide Shane with their new address nor photographs of Emma as she grows up.^{[ep 20]} She does not talk about Shane to Emma, except for his name.^{[ep 20]} Emma's lone memory of the sanitarium visit leads her to believe that Shane was a doctor.^{[ep 20]}

The Next Generation[]

Spike has a recurring role in Degrassi: The Next Generation, as Emma (now played by Miriam McDonald, as opposed to several unrelated infants in the previous series) is a central character. She is one of the four characters from Degrassi Classic to have a recurring role in the newer series. While she appears frequently in the first two seasons, Stepto is not credited in the opening sequence until the third season, and appears in the opening until the eighth season. By the events of Next Generation, Spike bought out her mother's beauty salon and took up a career as a hairdresser.^[30][26] In the show's second season, she begins a romantic relationship with Snake. This initially disgusts Emma, as Snake is her teacher in her Media Immersion class, but she later accepts it.^{[ep 21]} In the lead-up to their wedding, Spike gets pregnant again, which becomes a center of conflict as Snake had previously stated he did not want another child, but the two reconcile just before the wedding and arrive there in casual clothing. Instead of changing her last name, she adopts his surname after hers.^{[ep 22]} When Emma's then-boyfriend Sean Cameron (Daniel Clark), a troubled boy, eats at the Nelson-Simpson house for dinner one night, Spike offers him leftovers, which causes him to misinterpret her offer as looking down at him and he leaves to attend a party. When Emma finds Sean after being kicked out of the party, she calls Spike to pick them up despite the embarrassed Sean insisting her not to.^{[ep 23]}

The season 3 premiere Father Figure revisits the story of Shane McKay. After finding his photo in a yearbook, Emma and Craig Manning (Jake Epstein) skip school to go to Stouffville to find Shane, discovering him in an institution and causing Emma to resent Spike for allegedly lying to her. Craig criticizes Emma's resentment of Spike and states that she might have an explanation, and brings up that at least she has two fathers, whereas he has none.^{[ep 20][note 5]} Snake explains the real story to Emma at school.^{[ep 20]} Shane later visits the Nelson-Simpson residence and begins claiming her house and baby as his. When Spike insists that it isn't, Shane breaks into psychotic fits, breaking things around the house, and fights with Spike over the home phone, which causes her to go into labor.^{[ep 20]} Emma, coming home from school, discovers the scene and warns Shane that if he hurt her mother, she would never speak to him again, and calms him down with knitting. After giving birth (with the help of Liz O'Rourke as a midwife and with Shane as a witness), she names the baby, a boy, Jack.^{[ep 20]}

In the episode Accidents Will Happen, a pregnant Manny Santos (Cassie Steele) seeks Spike for advice. She states that she stayed at home while her peers went to university or traveled,^{[note 6]} and tells Manny that ultimately, it's the woman's decision. Despite Spike's support of Manny, Emma becomes angry at her when she decides to have an abortion.^{[ep 24]} In the show's fifth season, after Emma catches Snake kissing principal Daphne Hatzilakos, an angered Spike kicks him out of the house.^{[ep 25]} When a group of male strippers are invited to cheer Spike up, she discovers one of them resembles Snake, and afterwards, confides to Caitlin that she still loves him.^{[ep 26]} After a failed attempt by Emma and Manny to reconcile the two with a dinner, Snake is successfully able to be allowed back by singing Spike their favorite song at the shopping mall. When Spike allows him back, the crowd at the mall erupts in applause.^{[ep 27]}

In the seventh season, when Snake is falsely accused of rape by Darcy Edwards (Shenae Grimes) and is suspended due to the allegations, Snake starts drinking, which prompts Spike to leave with Jack and stay with her mother.^{[ep 28]} She returns several episodes later, just after Sean returns from fighting in Afghanistan to stay at the Nelson-Simpson residence.^[31] She appears less frequently during the later seasons as Emma's class is phased out, and she last appears in Degrassi Takes Manhattan, where she and Snake attend Emma and Spinner Mason's wedding. She is seen in pictures on Snake's desk in the later seasons, and her pregnancy with Emma is mentioned by Snake to Clare Edwards (Aislinn Paul), a student also dealing with teenage pregnancy.^{[ep 29]}

She appears in a total of 51 episodes of The Next Generation.

Novelization[]

A tie-in mass-market paperback novelization of Spike's story, written by Loretta Castellarin and Ken Roberts, was released in December 1988^[15][14] and reprinted with an updated cover in 2006. The novel is in first-person^[32] and explores her character in greater detail, providing exposition to the relationship between Spike and Shane as well as her home life.^[33][34] The novel is based on the episodes "It's Late", "Eggbert", "Censored", "Pass Tense", and "Seasons Greetings".^[35]

In the book, Spike details her first interaction with Shane, at a soccer game.^[34] Their relationship develops over time, culminating in a sexual encounter at Lucy Fernandez's party.^[36] The prejudices Spike experiences as a pregnant teenager are also further addressed; for example, a petition calling for her removal from school is signed by over 300 parents,^[37] and Spike is suggested to hire a lawyer as her removal may potentially be unconstitutional.^[38] In addition, Spike's mother, portrayed as caring and supportive in the television series, is ultimately unwilling to support her daughter and lashes out at her when she decides to keep the baby rather than put it up for adoption.^[39]

Reception and impact[]

Christine "Spike" Nelson was a popular character with fans of Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High,^[40] and her storyline received favorable reviews from contemporary critics.^[41][6][42] Like the rest of the series, episodes about Spike were shown in schools as part of health and sex education classes.^[43] Amanda Stepto observed in 2005: "It was a combination of the hair and the pregnancy. There weren't a lot of pregnant teen characters on TV".^[44] In his book TV North, Peter Kenter stated that her storylines "struck a chord" with viewers.^[45] Praise mostly concerned Amanda Stepto's portrayal of the character, as well as the way her storylines were written. Janice Kennedy of The Gazette^[46] and Jim Bawden of The Toronto Star^[47] both felt that her introductory episode "It's Late" was handled with intelligence and sincerity typical of the series. The episode also won an International Emmy for Children & Young People in November 1987.^[48][49]

Alongside her pregnancy, Spike's "outrageously-coiffed"^[51] hairstyle also became considered the character's trademark,^[52] to the point where she was recognized as "the pregnant 14-year-old student with the weird haircut".^[14] Critic Bob Remington quipped that Spike's hair resembled a "science experiment in electromagnetism".^[53] According to Stepto, the hairstyle resulted in conflicting feelings about her public presence. She recalled: "I was always being stared at because of my hair, and then as the show became more popular, I realized I couldn’t tell people to fuck off and stop staring at me—they were staring at me because I was on the show."^[54] She also recalled receiving threats of violence from other punk girls, whose boyfriends were attracted her.^[54][12]

In the book Women and Popular Culture in Canada, Christine Mazumdar observed Stepto's "honest portrayal" of Spike and asserts that the character's storyline "revolutionized" how teen pregnancy was portrayed on television, as the consequences are felt throughout the years and decades since.^[55] In the women's magazine Chatelaine, writer Rachel Giese listed Spike as a "television trailblazer" of the years 1987–1989.^[56]

Stepto's public image was directly affected by her portrayal of Spike. She was mistaken for being pregnant in real life and would be sent clothing and stuffed toys.^[57][58] She would also often be sent letters from fans praising, defending and criticizing her character, and from other teenage mothers, who sought her advice.^[59][16] Stepto said in 1988: "Someone will come up to me and tell me everything that happened to them [...] and what can I say? They just think I went through the same thing. But I didn't. It was my character."^[14] However, she also commented that she wasn't bothered by the confusion.^[16] Stepto was often recognized and mobbed in public as a result of her character's popularity.^[60] Owing to the impact of the character, Stepto was chosen as a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood in Alberta in 1992, and she would give talks at various schools and colleges across the province during 1993.^[61][62][63]

Stepto has been nominated twice for her role. In 1990, along with her co-stars, she was nominated for the Young Artist Award for Outstanding Young Ensemble Cast for Degrassi Junior High.^[64][65] In 1992, she was nominated for the Gemini Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role for Degrassi High. ^[66][67][68]

BBC ban[]

In the United Kingdom, where Degrassi Junior High experienced its highest viewership, the BBC refused to air several episodes about Spike's pregnancy.^[69] The ban came shortly before actress Amanda Stepto flew to England to promote the series.^[70] Stepto later recalled that the press in the United Kingdom tried to make her "talk shit" about the BBC in response to the ban.^[71] "It's Late" was later shown on the DEF II programming strand on October 3, 1988.^[72]

Influence on The Next Generation[]

Spike and her pregnancy storyline have been regarded as influential on the later development of the Degrassi franchise. The Next Generation originated as an unrelated teen series named Ready, Willing and Wired, to be produced by Epitome Pictures in 1999.^[73] However, writer Yan Moore realized that Emma Nelson would be attending junior high school, and the show was re-tooled (with the original ideas mostly retained) as a reboot of Degrassi.^[74][75] Adamo Ruggiero, who portrayed Marco Del Rossi in Next Generation, said in an interview with Miriam McDonald who portrayed Emma; "I'm so grateful Spike kept you. Because we would not have Degrassi, like we would not have this. [...] Let's all thank Spike."^[55]

In popular culture[]

American ska punk band Skankin' Pickle released a song about the character and her story named "I'm In Love with A Girl Named Spike" in 1994.^[76] In an episode of the Comedy Central series Tosh.0, a segment focuses on a creepy math teacher who is obsessed with actress Amanda Stepto, having made online videos in tribute to her showing images of her Degrassi character; he later answers the door to a singing man reading out a restraining order. ^[77]

See also[]

• Emma Nelson - Spike's daughter and central character of Degrassi: The Next Generation

Notes[]

References[]

Citations[]

Episodes[]

Sources[]

• Kenter, Peter (2001). TV North : everything you wanted to know about Canadian television. Vancouver: Whitecap. p. 39. ISBN 1-55285-146-X. OCLC 45190705.
• 1955-, Ellis, Kathryn (2005). The official 411 Degrassi generations. Fenn Pub. Co. pp. 46–47, 137. ISBN 1-55168-278-8. OCLC 59136593.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Sex. Toronto: Boardwalk Books. 1992. pp. 8–15. ISBN 1-895681-01-4. OCLC 25370148.
• Women and popular culture in Canada. Laine Zisman Newman. Toronto. 2020. pp. 104–108. ISBN 978-0-88961-615-8. OCLC 1140640717.CS1 maint: others (link)

Further reading[]

• Castellarin, Loretta (2006). Degrassi Junior High : Spike. Ken Roberts. Toronto: J. Lorimer. ISBN 1-55028-925-X. OCLC 65206094.

External links[]

• Archived bio of Christine "Spike" Nelson from Degrassi.ca
• Archived interview of Amanda Stepto from Degrassi.ca