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M A G A Z I N E
V O L . 2 5 | N O . 1 | S P R I N G | 2 0 0 8
Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40065040
Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Alumni Office Dalhousie University Halifax NS B3H 3J5
a toast to maritimehealth
BestJetEN ROUTE TO
get ready for ‘gen y’
that’s annwith an E
If this were a hockey team, they’d all be forwards.
LEFT TO RIGHT, FRONT ROW: Rhonda Harrington, Director of Advancement, Faculty of Medicine; Ann Vessey, Planned Giving Officer; Suzanne Huett, Director, Advancement Strategy; Linda Crockett, Director, Global Gifts; Dawn Ferris, Administrative Assistant; Sharon Gosse, Administrative Assistant.
LEFT TO RIGHT, BACK ROW: Rosemary Bulley, Development Officer, Engineering & Computer Science; Mary Lou Crowley, Development Officer, Health Professions; John MacDonald, Director, External Relations, Faculty of Management; Chris Steeves, Development Officer, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences; Diane Chisholm, Development Officer, Law; Jennifer Laurette, Development Officer, Dentistry.Not Pictured: Wendy McGuinness, Director, Planned Giving; Ron Mitton, Sr. Advisor, Corporations & Foundations; Debbie Bright, Adminstrative Assistant
Meet the Dalhousie fundraising team. Play makers. Team players. Leaders.
An eclectic group of dedicated professionals with one goal – a stronger Dalhousie.
If you haven’t met them yet, you will. Relationship building is forefront on their agenda,
every day. For more information or to schedule lunch, give them a call at 1.800.565.9969.
Dalhousie
On our coverAloft is Sean Durfy, President and
CEO of WestJet, who was a gracious
host to our photographer and
writer during their visit to corporate
headquarters in Calgary.
(Danny Abriel Photo)
D E P A R T M E N T S
FROM THE EDITOR 2
CONVOCATION 4
UPFRONT ON CAMPUS 6
DALUMNI 28
CLASS NOTES 34
THE BACK STORY 40
M A G A Z I N E
10Culture club
Kidding aside, they’ve got to be about the most cheerful employees around. Sean Durfy, WestJet’s President and CEO, was responsible for the “because owners care” advertising campaign. He more than lives up to it — he embodies it. Perhaps that’s why their nickname is “BestJet.” by Marilyn Smulders
22Improving the health of our Maritime community Understanding sleep disorders, hearing problems and patient safety. Extending the reach of specialists through a bedside robot. Volunteering in a developing country with inter-professional health care teams. We’re pleased to share some highlights from Dalhousie Medicine 2007. Edited by Betsy Chambers
18 The ‘millennials’ are coming to an office near you
The millennial generation is beginning to graduate and is heading out into the labour market in quantities unheard of since the baby boom. Instead of fighting for jobs, as in years past, there’s a stronger possibility that the jobs will be fighting for them.by Ryan McNutt
14 Reading between the lines
For a hundred years, readers have loved author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables. Now, children’s writer Budge Wilson has written the prequel Before Green Gables
and historian Elizabeth Epperly has described
the creative process in Imagining
Anne. What’s been a secret between bosom
buddies until now is that these writers share the Dalhousie experience.by Marilyn Smulders
FromtheEditorD
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DalhousieEDITOR
Amanda Pelham
ASSISTANT EDITOR/ADVERTISING MANAGERKeri Irwin
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Marilyn Smulders
ART DIRECTORFran Ornstein
CLASS NOTES/ DALUMNI/ IN MEMORIAMFor submissions, contact: Joanne Ward-Jerrett
ADDRESS CHANGES Tel: (902) 494-6855 1 (800) 565-9969
Email: [email protected]
Alumni Records, Macdonald Building Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 3J5
PRODUCED BY Dalhousie University
Communications and Marketing
CONTRIBUTORS
Temporarily in charge of a WestJet 737, at least in their dreams, are “pilot” Marilyn Smulders and “co-pilot” Danny Abriel. As well as writing the profile of Sean Durfy for this issue,
Marilyn discovered the strange connection between Budge Wilson and Lucy Maud Montgomery.
At 25, Ryan McNutt is the youngest member of the Communications and Marketing team but an older member of the millennial generation. He’s called upon to speak for his generation regularly enough that he figured he’d best do some research before answering with any authority. His article exploring ‘Gen Y’ was aided greatly by Don Christie of Dalhousie’s Career Services Centre, who provided countless contacts and background research.
Improving the health of our Maritime community, which contains capsules of selected articles in the current issue of Dalhousie Medicine, was prepared in consultation with Dalhousie Medicine’s editor, Betsy Chambers, from stories by Melanie Jollymore and Betsy Chambers.
Brian Harrison, a partner with Halifax-based Trivium Design, continues to guide the evolution of our new design.
Welcome to Debora Jewitt who has joined Creative Services and handles photography arrangements. Thanks to Jane Lombard for production coordination and Marla Cranston for answering proofreading requests.
Billy Comeau hails from Clare, N.S. He seems to be enjoying his internship with Communications and Marketing, following his program in Public Relations at the Nova Scotia Community College. Billy contributed a number of stories for different sections of the magazine.
DALHOUSIE MAGAZINEappears three times a year.
Editorial deadline for the next issue is August 6, 2008.
M A G A Z I N E
Here’s looking at you, kid
When she first got the invitation to be our cover
model, Karen Beazley tried to beg off.
You can’t blame her, really. She was in her office
— in the Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building — sporting a
massive shiner.
During a trip overseas, she’d fainted at her London hotel,
bumping her head on a porcelain bathtub. Waking up seconds
later, she felt the bump already growing. She’d been home just
long enough for the bruising to spread and become multi-hued.
Creative director Fran Ornstein was merciless about the photo, but offered some
compassion. “We’ll bring makeup,” she promised, dispatching photographer Nick Pearce.
Designer Brian Harrison featured the image on his multi-layered cover to illustrate Marie
Weeren’s story “Big Picture Thinking.”
We were working on a new format under prompting from our boss Jim
Vibert, an advocate of creative risk taking. This cover was an Atlantic Journalism
Award finalist, offering a chance to celebrate the hands and hearts and minds
that shape the magazine. This same edition — the first expanded and
redesigned university magazine — earned a national gold Prix d’Excellence
award from the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education.
It all comes back to seeing and hearing from you. This time, we profile the high-
flying Sean Durfy, who leads WestJet and cheers his university on from Calgary.
(See “Culture Club”, Page 11). We’ll pursue a literary thread uniting alumnae Lucy
Maud Montgomery, Budge Wilson and Elizabeth Epperly. (See “Reading between
the lines,” Page 15). Our focus on research continues with the Dalhousie Faculty of
Medicine. (See “Improving the Health of our Maritime Community,”Page 22). It’s a
pleasure to recognize our 2,800 newest alumni. (See “Facing the future,” Page 4).
The ‘millennial’ generation faces the brightest career prospects in decades. (See
“Turning Ideals into Reality,” Page 18). Thanks to all who are willing to share
their lives with us and who, one by one, are telling the Dalhousie story.
After all, it’s unanimous that Karen Beazley is a particularly
good sport. And in the end, what matters most is how her
qualities of scholarship and leadership shine.
“I got lots of comments on that magazine cover,” says Dr. Beazley,
laughing. “I always ask, ‘Can you tell that I had a shiner?’ And nobody
knew! That’s what you guys can do when you all get together.”
W— in the Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building — sporting a
massive shiner.
bumping her head on a porcelain bathtub. Waking up seconds
later, she felt the bump already growing. She’d been home just
long enough for the bruising to spread and become multi-hued.
M A G A Z I N E
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research powerhouse for the region
fostering the will of the afghan people
halifax’s own mystery writer
thinkingBIG PICTURE
Guestview
It’s hard to believe four years have passed since I was a fresh-faced first-year, joining other
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new students on what was perceived by some as exciting, by
others as a terrifying new adventure. Whatever our initial sentiments, most will agree (at
the risk of sounding cliché), that although we may be broke financially, we leave this experience
enriched with more than just a piece of paper.
Though I am a Haligonian, scholarship funds enabled me to stay in residence at first. This
allowed me to become more involved in student life both socially and academically and to enjoy
perks such as ‘bedhead chic’ from rolling out of bed 15 minutes before classes.
Despite feeling a little shell-shocked adjusting from a fairly slack high school career to what
I exaggerated as an endless onslaught of homework, I quickly adjusted to self-structuring. I will
admit more independent study led to a few coffee–fuelled all-nighters, but it was this flexibility
that I enjoyed most about university life.
Studying international development allowed me the freedom to explore history, philosophy,
environmental issues and economics. I was relieved by the ability to structure classes around
my interests, favourite profs
and schedule (spending hours
in search of the elusive three-
day weekend). I was also able
to combine the facilities and
selection of a large school with the intimacy of a small school by remaining an official King’s
student while taking all my classes at Dal.
With Dal’s financial and academic support, I attended UN Climate Change Conferences
in Kenya and Indonesia, reinforcing my belief in the value of education beyond the classroom.
I was able to apply what I learned in class to real-world situations. I appreciate that Dal
recognizes the importance of out-of-class education and personal development.
This recognition is apparent in the many study abroad programs at Dal. I used language
study as an opportunity to spend a summer in Spain on exchange. Immersing myself in
Spanish food, drink, culture and history only amplified my desire to study the language upon
my return.
Education outside the classroom didn’t just come through world travel. It also came from
attending Dal-sponsored lectures and getting involved in university events, societies and sports.
This involvement can beef up your resumé, expand your mind and social circle, and may even
score you a date for Friday night.
Whether grabbing a beer at the Grad House following a lecture, breaking a sweat at
Dalplex, or having a breakdown in the library, these past four years have been a wild ride and
I’m not ready to get off anytime soon.
The real world can wait. I’ve gotten used to the university lifestyle. Master’s here I come!
The best of both worlds
...a large school with the intimacy of a small school...
Jessica Wishart is graduating with the Class of 2008.
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Welcome
Fred Fountain has attended a few convocation ceremonies
over the years at Dalhousie—as a law grad in 1974 and an honorary degree recipient in 2000—and he’s about to attend many, many more. He made his debut as Dalhousie’s sixth chancellor at spring convocation in May, looking regal in a black brocade gown lavishly trimmed with gold braid and a velvet birretum. In his speech to the black-gowned sea at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, Mr. Fountain urged graduates to enjoy being “a star for a day.” He also encouraged them to continue “to let Dal be a part of you,” by keeping Dalhousie and Nova Scotia in their hearts wherever their journeys take them. “If you take care of your roots, blossoms will follow,” said Mr. Fountain.
Looking on proudly were Mr. Fountain’s wife Elizabeth, two children Alexander and Katharine and his mother, Marjorie Fountain. He said he wished his father could have shared in the day: Sheldon Fountain passed away in late 2006 at the age of 92. Mr. Fountain inherited his love of learning from his late father. He recalled travelling as a boy with his father from their home in Wolfville, N.S. to Deer Island, N.B., where the elder Fountain taught primary through to Grade 12 in a one-room schoolhouse when he was just 17 years old. Sheldon Fountain went on to get his BA from Acadia University and his MBA from Boston University—one of the first people to acquire the degree. The “entrepreneurial educator” also had honorary degrees from Acadia and Dalhousie University. A dedicated volunteer, Mr. Fountain’s association with Dalhousie has been long and distinguished. He sat on the Board of Governors at Dalhousie from 1990 to 1999 and continues to serve as the chair of the advisory board to Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management and as a director of Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation. The residence wing, Fountain House, is named in appreciation of Fred and Elizabeth Fountain’s generous support of Dalhousie. “I am deeply honored to become your chancellor,” he said. “I’m passionate about this fine institution.”
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Convocation2008
New beginnings: Class of 2008 Graduate Studies
Global warming and climate change are top of mind for many but for Judith Lipp they are her life’s work. When she’s not examining how to transform the renewable energy market in Canada, she’s been building an off-grid, strawbale cottage near her hometown of Grafton, N.S. Ms. Lipp is completing an interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Environmental Science and Public Administration. Her research examines the policy needs for greater penetration of renewable electricity in Canada. She contrasts Canada’s developments with approaches used in other countries.
“Canada uses three times as much energy as European countries. If we are going to make an impact we need to change how we each use energy and we need to do it fast.” Ms. Lipp has investigated the role governments need to play in legislating green policies, by identifying the barriers to renewable energy development in Canada today. “Walk more, put on a sweater instead of turning up the heat, carpool, caulk around windows and doors, do an energy audit — these are small things that we all can do to reduce our energy footprint. When you’ve made the small but important changes, then look to the bigger solutions — solar energy, hot water heating systems or powering your home using wind turbines.” She has been consulted by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy, Pollution Probe and Oxford University. She assessed the full cost of Nova Scotia’s current energy mix, including environmental and social factors. Ms. Lipp’s next role will be as executive director with the Toronto Renewable Energy Cooperative. Keri Irwin
College of Continuing EducationIt’s a family affair for Transition Year Program student, Carrie Lee. Ms. Lee is the third member of her family to complete the program at Dal. She follows in the footsteps of her mother and her sister (who is completing her degree in social work). Ms. Lee has enjoyed learning about the true history of her culture through the Native Studies program and the history of Indigenous Black Nova Scotians through the black studies course.
“The program has shifted my thinking,” she says. “I’m exploring new perspectives and the professors and staff are extremely supportive.” In addition, she discovered a passion for writing through her English class and tutorial — a passion she will further explore through her advanced studies. Ms. Lee will be returning in the fall, enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program with a future career goal of working for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. Keri Irwin
Farewell
Over his six years as Dalhousie chancellor, Richard Goldbloom estimates he’s been to 100 convocation ceremonies and sent 25,000 Dalhousie graduates out into the world. There have been many special moments. There was the time a graduate-cum-magician made Dr. Goldbloom’s toonie disappear, then pulled it from behind his ear. Or when his granddaughter, Ellen Goldbloom, graduated from Dalhousie Medical School and later became the family’s fourth generation pediatrician. He’s greeted international students in their own language—offering a “ni hao,” hello in Mandarin or “sabbah-el-khair,” good morning in Arabic—and been rewarded with surprised giggles. And then there was the time he noticed one older-than-average graduate on a cellphone while he waited for the dean to call his name. Dr. Goldbloom thought the man was rude until he realized that he was talking to his elderly mother in British Columbia who couldn’t be part of the ceremony. As the man knelt before him to be capped, Dr. Goldbloom asked if he could call the man’s 85-year-old mother and then proceeded to chat with her from centre stage. “As chancellor, you really write your own job description,” says Dr. Goldbloom, 83, who resolved to talk to each and every student who walked across the Rebecca Cohn stage. He asks about hometowns, future plans and the highs and lows of their time spent at Dalhousie. “I remember one young woman groaning when I asked what her plans were: ‘Oh don’t ask me that,’ she tells me, ‘I just got out of bed.’
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Community leaders join the celebrationsDalhousie recognized leadership and community contributions with honorary degrees for: Robert Gillespie, a senior executive in the global consumer goods industry; Stuart Hamilton, opera voice coach and broadcaster; Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, innovative and ‘green’ urban landscape architect; Richard Seewald, researcher focusing on child-friendly hearing aids; and Matthew Warren Spence, physician and internationally recognized health research visionary. Sable Island is her home Wild horses couldn’t drag Zoe Lucas away from Sable Island. But they certainly lured her to the remote, windswept isle for a fascinating lifetime of biological research and environmental monitoring. Following her first visit in 1971, Ms. Lucas landed a job with a seal research program in Dalhousie’s psychology department. By the mid-1980s, she moved permanently to Sable, located 160 kilometres off the province’s southeast coast. Now a research associate with the Nova Scotia Museum, Ms. Lucas continues to study the horses, seals and other wildlife in their unique habitat. She monitors the beaches for sea litter and oil-contaminated birds, and conducts environmental impact studies for the offshore energy industry. Her work has appeared in many scientific journals and she is well-known for public education. Marla Cranston
And, they’re healthy tooJohn Bragg understands the true nature of success. The President and Chairman of Oxford Frozen Foods developed his company from a local, family run business to nothing short of a global phenomenon. Oxford Frozen Foods has grown into an international industry leader, specializing in wild blueberries. Mr. Bragg’s business acumen has extended to other entrepreneurial pursuits, including the Eastlink communications and entertainment company. His entrepreneurial success is balanced with a strong commitment to community, higher education and philanthropic causes, particularly higher education. In recognition of his support, the Marion McCain Arts and Social Sciences Building includes a room named in honor of the Bragg family. Dawn Morrison
It all started here There’s a curious connection between Scotiabank and Dalhousie, both among the earliest organizations established in the province. Originally, Dalhousie College was situated downtown on Halifax’s grand parade. The Bank of Nova Scotia was looking for a central business location. Two rooms in the college were rented by the bank’s board for 50 pounds a year starting on May 31, 1832, states The Scotiabank Story, A History of the Bank of Nova Scotia, 1932-1982. Shortly afterward, the entire building was converted into a cholera hospital. By July, the bank rented a stone house at the corner of Granville and Duke streets. Now there’s another connection between Dalhousie and Scotiabank. Brian Porter, executive vice-president and chief risk officer of Scotiabank, is receiving an honorary degree from his alma mater. Amid a demanding career as one of Canada’s top banking executives, Mr. Porter always makes time for his community. His management experience brings leadership and wisdom to a variety of important causes and charities. A commerce grad, he is on the Faculty of Management Advisory Board.
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ceThe shape of things to come
Dalhousie is beginning a campus planning process to provide clear direction for the university’s physical development for years to come. “The university needs a clear, concise version of how the campus should grow to align with Dalhousie’s strategic goals,” says Jeff Lamb, assistant vice-president of Facilities Management. Those goals include enhanced academic and research excellence, an enriched student experience, an increase in enrolment, the development of excellent human resources, the advancement of fundraising support and continued financial stability. “If you break them down, most of the strategic goals translate at least in part into space needs,” says President Tom Traves.
The process begins with hiring a consulting team, setting up a steering committee and a planning team. Public consultation will be carried out with students, faculty, staff and neighbours. One of the tough issues that must be dealt with in developing a master plan is the issue of deferred maintenance—estimated at more than $200 million. One of the opportunities is that everything built on campus will have to be LEED-designed and certified. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) Mr. Lamb hopes to have a master campus plan in place by fall 2009.Mary Somers
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Upfrontoncampus
Wishes come true
Courtney Larkin recalls her most
memorable moment at Dalhousie without
hesitation: Orientation
Week. “I was extremely
shy on my first day, and very scared,” admits the native of Cole Harbour,
Nova Scotia. “I got to meet a lot of people, and
I remember meeting the VP Student Life at the time
and thinking that would be the coolest job in the world.”
Four years later, Ms. Larkin held down that very job with the Dalhousie Student Union, organizing activities to increase student spirit on campus. The special events planner was responsible for organizing the James Bond-themed Orientation Week, and a Charity Ball that raised $4,000 for the Bide Awhile Animal Shelter. Students have promoted Ms. Larkin, electing her DSU president. It’s a fitting role for a student who declared herself a Dalhousian at a far younger age than most. “I remember shows or performances at the Rebecca Cohn, and thinking ‘I want to go here,’” she says. “I was probably 12.” A course in entrepreneurship inspired her to work toward a management degree. “I love my program,” she says. “We do group projects all the time and it’s a lot of creative stuff, which I really enjoy.”Ryan McNutt
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7I’m your fan
It’s been 37 years since Leonard Cohen stepped onstage at the Dalhousie Arts Centre — in May, 1971 — at one of the first convocations in the Cohn Auditorium. The campus was expanding and the groundwork was being established for the Dalhousie we recognize today. The university celebrated the new Dalhousie Arts Centre by awarding honorary degrees to prominent artists. The debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen had appeared to critical acclaim in 1967 featuring the still-popular songs Suzanne and Sisters of Mercy. The University News, in its first year of operation in 1971, captured the moment with the newly minted graduate: “Dr. Leonard Cohen, of Montreal: a poet, author and folk singer.” Flash forward to May 2008 and the foyer is again packed with fans. Tickets were snapped up so quickly that five performances were eventually scheduled for the Cohn Auditorium. Dr. Cohen is famous for declining interviews. But, perhaps the last word should still go to the “arch bard of miserablism” (as described by The Guardian in 2006) from his self-deprecating and humorous Tower of Song. “My friends are gone, my hair is grey, I ache in the places where I used to play. Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back I told you when I came I was a stranger” Amanda Pelham
The wheels are turningMembers of a new Society for Bicycle Advocacy at Dalhousie say they want a revolution. The group is hoping to acquire a permanent space on campus where students can come to learn about cycle safety, find parts, get help with repairs and learn routes to and from school. The society is also lobbying for better cycling infrastructure on campus, such as bike paths and racks, and is also investigating a bicycle sharing program that would make bikes available for short trips between the three campuses. Students Neskie Manuel and Dave Bethune believe such measures would raise the comfort level and involvement of many would-be cyclists, whether they need a helping hand or handlebars. Jessica Wishart
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Weighing in on poutine
When Halifax’s Citadel High School banned junk food in favour of healthier cafeteria fare, some students crossed the road to get their fix. But it wasn’t a fast food restaurant that served them the fries, burgers and pop that they craved — it was a hospital cafeteria. This got Dr. Rob Stevenson thinking about the cafeteria’s poutine, a mélange of French fries and cheese curds, smothered in gravy. Why would a hospital serve poutine? Dr. Stevenson, a cardiology resident with Dalhousie Medical School, and a group of colleagues from the hospital crossed the same road to check out the high school’s healthy offerings. After local press coverage, the hospital responded there were healthy choices at the point of sale and there would be changes.
Next, he wrote a newspaper column about hospitals and junk food offerings that prompted discussions from Simon Fraser University to the University of New Brunswick. Toronto blogger and physician Yoni Freedhoff described him as “… an example of a young new doc, using his voice.” Dr. Stevenson says there has been amazing support at the QEII, with an open dialogue established with the administration as they work together to find a way forward. “Public Health and the Department of Health Promotion and Prevention have also been very helpful,” he says. “Change happens in an instant,” he adds. “Every day is the perfect day to stop serving fries and doughnuts.” Dawn Morrison
Upfrontoncampus
Perish, then
publish
It’s been a son’s dilemma that’s fascinated people worldwide: What should Dmitri Nabokov do with his father Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished last novel, languishing these past 30 years in a Swiss bank vault? Should he burn the manuscript for The Original of Laura—as were his express deathbed instructions—or publish it? The controversy was recently taken up on the pages of The Times. Save it, argued novelist John Banville. Burn it, decreed Tom Stoppard. The editor of a new Dalhousie academic journal, Nabokov Online Journal, stepped right in the middle of the controversy when the journal obtained an exclusive interview with Dmitri in January and posed the burn-or-not-to-burn question. Just hours before the 2008 edition of the journal was to be deployed on April 23rd, Nabokov’s birthday, professor Yuri Leving was able to update the story with Dmitri’s definitive answer. “I have toyed with the idea … of being an obedient son and destroying the manuscript. On the other hand wouldn’t it be fun, before my time does run out, to have a last spin in a remaining Ferrari or in my fast boat?” responds the 73-year-old Nabokov, the Lolita author’s sole surviving heir. He continues: “All kidding aside … I shall publish.” Marilyn Smulders
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Chelsea Nisbett
Battling superbugs
Our greatest adversary may be a bug. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA, is a superbug bacterium that killed more North Americans last year than HIV or AIDS. Now a Dalhousie professor is creating a battle plan. “Superbugs are opportunistic pathogens affecting people with weakened immune systems,” says David Jakeman, associate professor at the College of Pharmacy. Dr. Jakeman is researching natural compounds produced by Streptomyces venezuelae, a soil-based microbe, that appears effective against staph infections. This is promising research in discovering an antibiotic to battle MRSA. The unexpected discovery, during cancer research of the compounds was “serendipitous,” says Dr. Jakeman. “It’s important to evaluate natural compounds in a variety of different assays.” “Research into antibiotics isn’t considered new science because of the success in killing classic bugs,” says Dr. Jakeman, and although it’s far from a cure, he believes this work will bring greater research and focus to defeating superbugs. Billy Comeau
Zap, tuition is frozenWinter may officially be over, but that didn’t stop the Nova Scotia government from announcing a freeze that will benefit all university students in the province. At Province House, Dalhousie University President Tom Traves, representing the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents, and Education Minister Karen Casey signed a new memorandum of understanding. The province pledges to spend $180 million more in direct funding to its 11 universities over the next three years and establish a $66 million Nova Scotia University Student Bursary Trust. For students, the increase in funding means an across-the-board tuition freeze until 2011. For the next three years, all Nova Scotia students studying in the province will receive a bursary to further reduce their tuition: a maximum per-student benefit of $761 in 2008-09, $1,022 in 2009-10 and $1,283 in 2010-11. The average tuition for these students is expected to reach the national average in 2010-11. While not eligible for the same reductions, out-of-province and international students will still benefit from the tuition freeze and will also receive a bursary of $261 in 2010-11. This is so the differential in tuition between students from Nova Scotia and those from elsewhere does not exceed $1,000. The three-year funding arrangement allows universities like Dalhousie a better opportunity to plan ahead and confront the challenges they face with greater assurance, says Dr. Traves. Ryan McNutt
Yellow Submarine
It floats like a bird. It looks like a plane. But don’t look up in the sky if you’re expecting to find these gliders – recast your gaze to the deep blue sea, where a Beatles-like “yellow submarine” can be found soaring beneath the waves. The Slocum Glider takes its nickname from Joshua Slocum, a Nova Scotian who was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world. And like its namesake, the unmanned glider is amazingly independent. It can dive for days or even weeks before being recovered. It conserves energy by using ocean currents while it “glides” up and down through the water, reaching the surface to send data to researchers via satellite. And, best of all, it’s considerably cheaper and more energy-efficient than commissioning ships to canvas the ocean for days on end. No wonder Marlon Lewis calls gliders “the future of oceanography.” “You see much more detail than you would ever see in a ship,” explains the oceanography professor and founder of Satlantic Incorporated. “They can take measurements with higher resolution and can travel in far worse conditions. They’re pretty amazing.” Dr. Lewis and his fellow Dalhousie oceanographers John Cullen and Katja Fennel spent March and April this year checking their computers for daily updates from an RU15 Slocum Glider making its way through the Atlantic Ocean from New Jersey to Nova Scotia. Launched by a team of colleagues at Rutgers University — world leaders in working with these devices — the RU15 was embarking on its longest journey to date, pushing the boundaries of how far this technology can go. During its two-month journey, it survived a storm with eight-metre seas, got caught in a warm core ring, and had a close call with a Gulf Stream meander. It was recovered 30 nautical miles offshore of Halifax by a team from Dalhousie and Satlantic, after completing a voyage of 2,600 km, measuring over 2,150 vertical oceanographic profiles. Plans are for three similar gliders to be purchased and utilized as part of the Dalhousie-led Ocean Tracking Network. Ryan McNutt
clubclubCULTURE
by marilyn smulders
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The guy driving the baggage cart is whistling. The customer service representative click
clacks on high heels around the counter to
lift a heavy bag on the carousel for an elderly man.
The flight attendant cracks jokes on the trip
across the country: “Let me remind you this is a
nonsmoking flight, as are all WestJet flights,” she says
as the airplane lifts off. “If you’re caught smoking,
you’ll be asked to leave the aircraft immediately.”
And, at WestJet’s head office in Calgary, the front-desk
receptionist sings out a sunny “good morning!”
When comedian Rick Mercer investigated the
“hysterically happy WestJetters” phenomenon
on his TV show, he approached a smiling
ticket agent for the airline with some
frustration: “Has a memo gone out?”
Rest assured, says the Dal grad
in charge of the place, there’s no Kool-
Aid in the water coolers, no “don’t
worry, be happy” memo. But with a wry
smile, Sean Durfy professes to bleeding
corporate-coloured, teal blood.
“You either believe in the place or
you don’t; you’ll know pretty much within
the first six months of working here,” says
Mr. Durfy (BCom ’89), president and CEO
of WestJet. “It is really is about aligning the
interests of our people with the interests of
the company. It’s all about our culture.”
WestJet’s mission, vision and value
statements—the same ones mounted
and displayed in the lobby—hang from
the lanyard around his neck. The
mission is “to enrich the lives
of everyone in WestJet’s
world by providing safe, friendly and affordable
air travel.” The vision is to be one of the five most
successful international airlines in the world by 2016.
Top five in the world—isn’t that overreaching? Just
on the basis of its bottom line, WestJet has already
achieved its vision. With a 16 per cent operating margin,
WestJet ranks as the fourth most profitable airline in
the world, behind Ireland’s Ryanair, Panama’s Copa and
Malaysia’s AirAsia. It’s an amazing accomplishment,
given that the upstart company only took to the skies 12
years ago with three planes flying to five destinations.
Now having a market value at more than $2 billion, the
low-cost carrier has 74 Boeing next-generation 737s,
employs 7,000 people and has played host to 11.9 million
“guests,” in WestJet lingo.
The company recently underwent an expansion
with the launch of WestJet Vacations; it now flies to 27
destinations in Canada, 12 in the United States and seven
hotspots in the Caribbean, including Mazatlan, Mexico;
Montego Bay, Jamaica; and Nassau in the Bahamas.
WestJet’s carefully managed growth is all the more
impressive considering the turbulence that’s plagued the
airline business in recent years, including the security and
safety concerns raised in the wake of 9/11. Indeed, WestJet
has survived and thrived when many other low-cost
airlines—Greyhound Air, Roots Air, Royal, CanJet, Jetsgo
and Canada 3000—were grounded when profits never took
off. Even Air Canada was affected, filing for bankruptcy
protection in 2003 after suffering a string of heavy losses,
emerging as a leaner, more efficient airline. But now as the
skies clear over Canada, the turbulence continues south of
the border, with a downturn in the U.S. economy cutting into
travel demand. Delta, one of the biggest U.S. airlines, has just
cut back on its workforce. American Airlines recently had to
cancel more than 3,000 flights because of maintenance issues.
Phot
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Abr
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continued on p.12
Airline Weekly, the trade paper for the airline industry, documented WestJet’s success
in March under the headline, “BestJet: What makes WestJet one of the world’s most
successful airlines?” With the salutation “Hello WestJetters,” Mr. Durfy forwarded the story
to every employee. He’s tickled about “BestJet” and likes to use it himself.
“For me, it’s never been about nice planes and comfortable leather seats,” says Mr.
Durfy, 42, a Calgarian by way of Corner Brook, Nfld. “I just get juiced by the people we’ve
got here and what we’re offering.”
He’s actually still settling into the place and the position—the corner office with
the sign in the hallway which simply says “Sean and Hugh.” (Hugh is Hugh Dunleavy,
executive vice-president for commercial distribution.) The windows, offering a scenic
view of the parking lot below, are lined with photographs: five-year-old daughter Kennedy
at the Calgary Stampede; Kennedy at a Calgary Flames game; 15-month-old son Reilly in
wife Tracy’s arms; Mr. Durfy and Mr. Mercer taken during the fellow Newfoundlander’s
WestJet “investigation”; and with friends at a Great Big Sea concert in Calgary. He has
another photo of himself that he keeps close by but tucked away in a desk drawer—he’s
10 years younger and 50 pounds heavier.
“I was 33 years old and I looked like I was 50. I was told at the Foothills Medical
Centre that I was bound for a heart attack unless I made some dramatic changes. So I try
very hard to keep a balance in my life,” he says. He runs most mornings before arriving at
work around 9 a.m. and returns home in time to give the kids their baths and read their
bedtime stories. During this interview, he sips vegetable juice from a rinsed roll-up-the-
rim cup.
Mr. Durfy arrived at WestJet four years ago on the invitation of the company’s
energetic founder Clive Beddoe, a real-estate developer and pilot who led the company
through a period of explosive growth. At the time, Mr. Durfy had spent 10 years in the
Alberta energy industry, where he was president and chief operating officer of ENMAX
Corporation, the energy utility for the City of Calgary. He and Tracy were looking for a
change; they had drawn up a business plan and were going to buy and operate a hotel in
the Caribbean when a friend called with a suggestion, “Why don’t you meet this guy Clive
Beddoe?”
A 20-minute meeting turned into two hours and by the end of it, Mr. Durfy wanted
to join WestJet’s executive team. He did in December 2004, as executive vice-president
for sales, marketing and airports. He became WestJet president in September 2006 and
added chief executive officer to his title last September, as Mr. Beddoe moved to become
chairman of the company’s board of directors.
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It really is about aligning the interests of our people with the interests of the company. It’s all about our culture. He winces as he admits it, but he didn’t really get
WestJet’s down-home corporate culture at first. Within
months of his arrival, he was ready to go ahead with
a $6-million, national advertising campaign dubbed
“WestJetiquette.” Described as witty and tongue-in-cheek,
the campaign included three TV spots outlining the dos
and don’ts of flying on WestJet. In one ad passengers
are told: “Do love WestJet’s leather seats, but don’t get
romantic with them.”
“Kind of at the last moment, we thought, ‘Let’s show
our folks,’ and we had a big meeting in the hangar,” recalls
Mr. Durfy. “The reaction was very strong—they thought
I was making fun (of them). I thought I was going to be
killed by the angry mob.”
He pulled the campaign the day before it was due
to air, and rolled up his sleeves to lead development on
a new one.
“It was a hard lesson. They were telling me, ‘You don’t
get us yet.’”
Within six weeks, the marketing team shaped the
highly successful “Because Owners Care” campaign, with
the now-familiar line, “Why do WestJetters care so much?
Because we’re also WestJet owners.” Folksy, fun, even a
little corny, the campaign reflects the pride employees
have in the company; more than 84 per cent of them
are WestJet shareholders. They can dedicate up to 20
continued on p.13
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per cent of their salary in share purchases, an amount
matched by the company. They’re also encouraged to offer
input on how the airline runs. One of the ads features a
flight attendant rocking a crying baby in the aisle; when
she returns the baby to arms of the exhausted parents,
everyone in the cabin is snoozing, too. Another ad—the
one mercilessly parodied on This Hour Has 22 Minutes
and the Rick Mercer Report—features the efficient flight
attendant who not only returns a passenger’s briefcase left
behind on the plane, she pumps up his power-point.
The ideas behind Because Owners Care have
led WestJet to top the annual list of Canada’s 10 most
admired corporate cultures three years in a row. Other
companies to receive the designation, from Waterstone
Human Capital, include Four Seasons Hotels, Boston
Pizza International and the Royal Bank of Canada. When
Mr. Durfy heard about the latest honour, he was in a
customer-service-rep’s uniform at the Calgary airport
pitching in during the holiday rush.
WestJet’s caring attitude is not for show, like the
best set of china that gets dusted off for company. It’s
something the airline’s employees believe in passionately.
And, since Mr. Durfy “learned his lesson,” they believe in
him, too.
In the hangar, scene of his comeuppance,
maintenance workers checking over a 737 are
heckling their boss as he gets his photograph taken for
the magazine.
“This place is a lot different from other companies.
I mean, look at the guy,” says Duane “Potts” Potekal with
a glance in Mr. Durfy’s direction—he’s standing on the
wing of the plane. “You never see the bigwigs unless
they’re coming to say ‘We’re shutting you down.’ He knows
our names. He comes and talks to us.”
WestJetter Vern Guenther admits to some
apprehension when he heard the respected Mr. Beddoe
was stepping down.
“Sean had to learn the WestJet culture, but (Clive
Beddoe) taught him well,” he says. “That campaign
he showed us, oh it was funny and all that, it just
wasn’t us. But he nailed it on the head with the Owners
Care campaign.”
“If you’re going to work at an airline, you want
to work at WestJet,” adds Lorraine Stewart, from Cape
Breton, while cleaning the cockpit. “He sets the pace.
From us little old cleaners to the pilots, we all really like
being WestJetters.”
Phot
o: D
anny
Abr
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As the kid from Corner Brook, Sean Durfy says coming to Dalhousie was the formative experience of his life. “It defined me as a person, I would say,” says Mr. Durfy, president and CEO of WestJet. He’s one of Dalhousie’s biggest boosters in Calgary, dressing his children in Dal sweatshirts and hosting functions for Alberta students who are deciding where to go after high school. While at Dalhousie, he enjoyed Halifax’s night-life and made a wide circle of friends. But he also learned to manage his time efficiently and pull off good marks. But not always—he got a failing grade on his first-year marketing class, a mark that only made him more determined. (“I was made to feel like a meathead,” he rails. “I thought, screw that, I’ll make marketing my major.”) He graduated in 1989 with a double major in marketing and finance and was the valedictorian of his class. Frederick G. Crane, now at Northeastern University in Boston, remembers being impressed with Mr. Durfy’s drive and entrepreneurial spirit. He has stayed in touch with his former student and features his leadership role at WestJet in his textbook, Marketing (McGraw-Hill Publishing). “I’ve taught him everything he knows,” he jokes. “But seriously,” he continues. “I believe he is a shining example of the type of education students receive at Dalhousie … Clearly, Sean’s energy and innovativeness have helped WestJet become a major brand in its category. A combination of his innate abilities and the education he received are the platform of his success.”
Phot
o: D
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Abr
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In a guest editorial for the Dalhousie Gazette in 1939,
Lucy Maud Montgomery—by then beloved the world
over as the writer of the Anne and Emily books—
offered some advice for wannabe authors.
“Write, I beseech you, of things cheerful, of things
lovely, of things of good report,” she implored to a new
generation of Dalhousie students. “Don’t write about the
pigsties because they are ‘real.’ Rose gardens and pine
woods and mountain peaks towering to the stars are just
as real and just as plentiful.”
L.M. Montgomery followed her own advice, writing
of cherry trees “thickset with blossoms,” lakes of shining
waters and “tremulous grasses” in her debut novel, Anne
of Green Gables. Five publishers rejected it before the
Boston-based L.C. Page Co. published it in 1908. It was
embraced by readers a century ago and by generations
ever since. A year later, L.C. Page published Anne of
Avonlea, the first of seven Anne sequels.
But until now, there’s never been an Anne prequel.
Two years ago, with the Anne of Green Gables centenary
approaching, Nova Scotian author Budge Wilson got a
phone call from Helen Reeves, an editor at Penguin.
“Out of the blue she says, ‘We’d like you to do the
prequel to Anne of Green Gables. Will you do it?’” recounts
Mrs. Wilson (BA 1949, BEd 1953). Penguin was also planning a
100th anniversary collector’s edition, a lavishly illustrated tome
examining L.M. Montgomery’s scrapbooks by Elizabeth Rollins
Epperly (MA 1974).
B E T W E E N T H E L I N E S
by marilyn smulders
continued on p.15
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“I was dumbfounded. I think I said something
really milquetoast, like ‘I’d like to think about it.’”
Her instinct was to say no. She had another book
she wanted to write—a collection of poems touching on
the crash of Swissair Flight 111 ten years ago. The Anne
task was too intimidating and she wasn’t up to dealing
with the legions of ardent fans who regard the beguiling,
red-haired, freckle-faced Anne Shirley as sacrosanct. She
also worried that L.M. Montgomery might not want her
to do it.
But then she reread Anne of Green Gables, a book
she enjoyed at age nine and loved all the more at 79. The
lively book also contains some interesting clues about
the orphan girl’s early history in Nova Scotia, a dark
current of death, deprivation and hard labour. The “bald
facts,” according to Anne, include her parents’ deaths by
fever, being taken in by the housekeeper Mrs. Thomas
“though she was poor and had a drunken husband,” and
then handed over to another family, the Hammonds, to
help care for eight children under the age of five—two
wee ones plus “twins three times in succession.”
There are echoes of Anne’s history in L.M.
Montgomery’s own far-from-storybook life. Born in
1874 in Clifton, P.E.I., she had a lonely childhood. When
she was a baby of 21 months, her mother Clara died of
tuberculosis and her father left her behind to be raised
by strict grandparents. He moved on to Saskatchewan
and remarried.
As a young woman, L.M. Montgomery was flooded
with marriage proposals by more than a dozen suitors.
In her 30s, she finally accepted the proposal of Ewen
Macdonald, the Presbyterian clergyman who came to
Cavendish; writing in her journal, she wrote she felt like
a “hopeless prisoner” on her wedding day. Later, her
husband suffered long bouts of mental illness that she
tried to keep covered up so he could keep his job.
The pigsties in Lucy Maud’s life were real: “I read
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journal and realized what
an exceedingly unhappy life she had,” says Mrs. Wilson,
now age 81. “Anne had endured a lot, too. Montgomery
herself gave hints of these things but she never pursued
them. I think she didn’t want to do it. It was just too sad.”
But there was enough tantalizing detail in what the
11-year-old Anne reveals to the spinster Marilla to build
a story and puzzle out how Anne came to be so feisty
and articulate. Mrs. Wilson, like Marilla, “was shrewd
enough to read between the lines of Anne’s history and
divine the truth.”
Once decided, Mrs. Wilson put pen to paper. She
wrote the 71 chapters of Before Green Gables in 71
days, finishing the draft on her 80th birthday. She wrote
in longhand with her arthritic hand—“sometimes I
would hear it scrunch” —from her perch on her bed,
mostly in the little fish house by the shore of her home
in Northwest Cove on St. Margaret’s Bay. As the pages
drifted one by one to the floor by the bed, she jotted
down questions for her historian husband, Alan Wilson:
How did people travel in 19th-century Nova Scotia? What
shoes did they wear in the winter? Had the egg beater
been invented yet?
She also creates a bleak picture of life for women,
who birthed and buried babies, scrubbed clothes, kept
house, tended livestock and tilled fields in backwoods
continued on p.16
Nova Scotia. Mrs. Wilson could relate to the sense of
profound isolation she creates on her pages; it wasn’t all
that different from when she and her husband moved
to the old house in Northwest Cove in the early 1950s.
There was no electricity, no running water, no telephone.
Mrs. Wilson did the laundry in a galvanized tub using a
plunger with holes in it. “It was about eight years before
we had running water,” she remarks. “This stuff just
didn’t seem odd to me.”
But there is sunshine among the dark shadows
of Before Green Gables. Mrs. Wilson picks up on the
imaginary friends Anne mentions in Anne of Green
Gables—her reflection “Katie Maurice” in the “enchanted
bookcase” at the Thomas house and the echo she names
“Violetta” when she escapes for fleeting moments from
diaper duty at the Hammonds. She also creates new
characters and fleshes them out: Miss Henderson, the
schoolteacher who awakens her inquisitive mind; and
the reclusive Egg Man, who gives her five new words a
week in exchange for her company.
Mrs. Wilson came to love creating the book, even as
she was hurried through the editing process and “clung
on by my fingernails” to save it from drastic cuts. Then,
the draft went to pre-eminent Montgomery scholar
Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, who recalls opening the
package with trembling fingers.
“What if I hate it? What if she doesn’t have Anne?”
says Ms. Epperly, professor emerita and former president
of the University of Prince Edward Island. “Fifteen pages
in, I started to relax. I got really caught up in the story
… She had captured Anne and that was the task.”
The two authors (both Dal alumnae as was L.M.
Montgomery) met while Mrs. Wilson was doing a
reading in Charlottetown and conversed frequently on
the phone during the writing of Before Green Gables.
“After I finished it, spent, I ran to the phone, you
know with tears in my voice, saying ‘You did it, you did
it!’ I hear Budge on the other end of the line, ‘Um, who is
this?’”
Before Green Gables was launched at the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto last February and the
backlash Mrs. Wilson dreaded never came. Even
skeptical reviewers have mostly been won over, as have
the fans. “I did end up liking the book more than I
thought I would,” admits “AvFan4vr”, a sentiment that’s
repeated again and again on the Avonlea Message Board.
Yuka Kajihara, a member of Buttercups, the oldest and
largest Montgomery fan club in Japan, says she picked
up Before Green Gables fully prepared to hate it but
ended up with grudging admiration for Mrs. Wilson.
“Producing a biography of the early Anne must have
been difficult,” says Ms. Kajihara, who runs the blog
Yukazine, exploring all things Montgomery. “I appreciate
her gentle, warm eyes towards adult characters whose
lives appear amazingly harsh to modern readers. Like
Montgomery, Wilson peppers fairy tale essences which
nicely blend with realism in the story.”
Ms. Epperly believes readers of Before Green Gables
will dive right back into the pages of Anne of Green
Gables. “You just hope desperately she gets someplace
where she’s going to be loved. Of course you know
it’s going to happen, but it’s so wonderful to immerse
yourself in that world again and realize that it’s as
beautiful and as colourful as you’d like for Anne.”
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I got really caught up in the story...she had captured Anne...
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A room of their own
Lucy Maud Montgomery had the time of her life
studying English literature at what was then
Dalhousie College in 1895-96. Maud, as she
was called by her friends, saved her teacher’s salary
for an entire year to pay the tuition; she reveled
in the challenge of her studies, the intellectually
stimulating conversations and the proximity to
Point Pleasant Park where she loved to stroll.
It was a time when her talents as a writer
were first being recognized. In one week in 1896,
her short stories and poems were accepted in three
different publications: “$5 + $5 + $12!” she wrote.
“I really feel quite bloated by so much wealth.”
Her affection for Dalhousie comes through on the
pages of her scrapbooks, in the snips of black-and-gold
ribbon, newspaper clippings, convocation programs
and fin-de-siecle fashion illustrations of women
wearing satin gowns with glorious puffed sleeves.
Montgomery scholar Elizabeth Rollins Epperly,
a Dal alum herself (MA 1974), writes about the
scrapbooks and the profound influence they have on
L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, in Imagining Anne (Penguin
Canada). Like Budge Wilson’s Before Green Gables,
the beautiful book has been released to coincide with
the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables.
“She wrote about Dalhousie in her journals and it’s
there in her scrapbooks,” says Ms. Epperly—Betsy to her
friends. “She looks back on it so fondly. And, of course,
she fleshes out the experience in Anne of the Island,
calling Dalhousie ‘Redmond College.’ The year she spends
at Dalhousie turns into a full-fledged BA for Anne.”
While at Dalhousie College, L.M. Montgomery boarded
at the Halifax Ladies College, an imposing mansion that
used to stand on the south-end of Barrington Street. At
one point, after a bout of measles, she was moved out
of the infirmary to a tiny white room on a floor called
“third-and-a-half,” which included only five rooms.
Even after she recuperated, she asked to remain.
During the writing of Before Green Gables, Mrs.
Wilson and Ms. Epperly discussed the author’s stay at
the Halifax Ladies College. And it struck Mrs. Wilson:
she believes she stayed in the same room when she
was a student at the school half a century later.
“I actually feel shivery thinking of it,” says Mrs.
Wilson, whose parents transferred her to the school
because she was constantly sick while attending
what was then LeMarchant Street School. (Her Grade
2 class there had 66 children compared to the six
students at the ladies college.) “The room was very,
very white: a white bedspread, white chair, white
lamp. If Montgomery was in that room and didn’t
want to leave it, she was happy there. I was also so
fond of that room. It is still very vivid to me today.”
Mrs. Wilson surmises that when L.M. Montgomery
was imagining Anne’s room in Green Gables, she was
remembering the little room at the Ladies College.
Described at the beginning of the 1908 novel as “painfully
bare” and “of a rigidity not to be described in words,”
Anne comes to regard the room as a peaceful sanctuary,
where she would sit and daydream at the open window.
“I feel in my bones that it was the same room,”
says Mrs. Wilson.
Ms. Epperly finds the connection spooky. “I can’t
say definitively because I never saw that room. But
I think authors have intuition about these things.
And I would trust Budge’s instincts on that.”
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TURNING IDEALS INTO REALITYThe ‘millennials’ are coming to an office near you
by r
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mcn
utt
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They may be young, but they’re got drive and
enthusiasm to spare. They grew up juggling after-
school activities with busy social lives. They’ve
got iPods and cell phones locked to their hip. They’ve
been raised to achieve and are motivated to make an
impact on the world around them. And whether you’re
a “Boomer” nearing retirement or a “Gen Xer” making
your way up the corporate ladder, you’d best make room.
The millennials are coming to a workplace near you.
Born in the 1980s and early 1990s, the millennial
generation – or “generation Y” as it’s often called — is
making its way through universities and out into the
labour market in numbers unseen since the baby
boom came of age. Instead of fighting for jobs, as was
the experience of graduates in years past, there’s a
good chance that the jobs will be fighting for them.
“You have to take business cycles into account,
of course,” qualifies Jim McNiven, a retired professor
with the School of Public Administration. “But
over the long term — seven, eight, 10 years —
there will be real competition for these people,
which is totally different than in the past.”
The reason: a labour shortage that has significant
implications for Canada’s economy. Like most developed
countries, Canada’s birth rate is below replacement. “This
may be the first year where more people end up leaving
the workforce than entering it,” Dr. McNiven points out.
He’s crunched the numbers and concludes Nova
Scotia will likely run out of available labour needed to
continue its current rate of economic growth in 2015, a
mere seven years away. This “zero point” varies across the
country — Quebec and Ontario will likely hit it sooner,
the Prairie provinces later — but it’s a national problem.
The possible solutions to this looming crisis
— which include encouraging immigration, raising
participation rates and increasing productivity —
don’t preclude the role millennials will play in the
changing economy. Employers desperate for talent will
be working hard to recruit millennials into key roles
alongside up to three other generations of workers.
This poses challenges for employers and
employees alike. Kirby Nickerson graduated two
years ago from Engineering and had the opportunity
to stay in Nova Scotia to work with Michelin.
While his various co-op experiences prepared him
well for his technician’s job, there was a learning
curve when it came to integrating with coworkers
significantly older and more experienced than him.
“As a young engineer coming in, it took a
fair amount of time to prove myself,” he says.
“I’m here to help and improve the company, sure,
but I also know that there’s a lot to be gained in
learning from my coworkers’ experience.”
Companies are working hard to figure out strategies
to best integrate millennials like Mr. Nickerson into their
workforces, explains Adwoa K. Buahene. She’s a managing
partner with n-gen, a performance consulting company,
and the co-author of the book Loyalty Unplugged:
How to Get, Keep & Grow All Four Generations (Xlibris
Corporation). Ms. Buahene expects that millennials will
“revolutionize” the way we work as organizations shift
their culture to meet new employees halfway.
TURNING IDEALS INTO REALITYThe ‘millennials’ are coming to an office near you
by r
yan
mcn
utt
Employers desperate for talent will be working hard to recruit millennials into key roles alongside up to three other generations of workers.
Phot
os: N
ick
Pear
ce
continued on p.20
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“We’re learning that they can afford to be choosy
about who they come on board with and who offers
them the best fit from a work-life balance perspective,”
says Gail Seipp, a Dalhousie graduate who now manages
on-campus recruiting for Frito Lay Canada. Her
company now offers a flexible work-life balance policy
that tries to find solutions benefiting both employee
and employer. “If an employee suggests an idea on how
Frito-Lay can improve his or her work-life balance, we
work to support the employee to make it happen.”
“Companies are looking at their people practices
and saying, ‘Do we really tap into the motivations,
behaviours and expectations of all four generations?’”
says Ms. Buahene. “They’re also changing their
recruitment and hiring practices accordingly.”
This competition for tomorrow’s talent
means the days of relying on a job ad alone
to attract students are numbered.
“It’s not enough,” says Laura Addicott,
director of Dalhousie’s Career Services Centre.
“It’s still very integral, but it’s just the mechanism
by which the final connection is made. The rest of
the process has to be relationship building.”
Facilitating relationships between students and
employers is increasingly central to the Career Services
Centre’s mandate. In her decade with the office formerly
known as the Student Employment Centre, Ms. Addicott
has seen dramatic changes in how companies and
organizations are working to recruit university students.
“We had to do a lot more work in those days to
encourage people to recruit students from Dalhousie,
and I’m sure my colleagues across the country would
say the same thing,” she says. “Today, their tactics are
changing. The quality of the production material and its
messaging is dramatically improving. They’re trying to
understand their audience, give them what they want, and
are working through units like ours to reach them better.”
In the 21st century, universities like Dalhousie
are a magnet for corporate, government and non-
profit recruitment. During this past academic year,
215 organizations presented at campus-wide career
fairs, 180 employers participated in other career
activities on campus and over 15,000 jobs were
Do we really tap into the motivations, behaviours and expectations of all four generations?
continued on p.21
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posted to the Career Services Centre’s website.
One of the most successful employer information
sessions this past year was organized by Health
Canada, attracting nearly 100 students to learn about
job opportunities for BSc graduates. Its hook: joining
senior management representatives were comedians
from the Second City comedy troupe, adding a lighter
touch to the government department’s pitch.
“Sending a bunch of 45- or 50-year-olds in
suits by themselves to talk to students is probably
not a winning approach in hiring new recruits,”
acknowledges Health Canada’s Cathy Peters, who
managed the national recruitment drive. “It’s a new
way of promoting ourselves that is a little more
natural, fun and upbeat, while still getting our message
across about what we do and why it matters.”
Priya Verma was one of the students hired in that
recruitment drive and she is moving to Ottawa to work
as a scientific regulator. Health Canada is a good fit for
her ambitions: she wants no less than to play a major
role in shaping national and international health policy
in the future. When talking to prospective employers,
she’s looking for a sense of what she can contribute and
how the organization can help her achieve her goals.
“I want to know that, as a new graduate, I’m not
going just to be getting someone’s coffee or being
somebody’s assistant, but actually be valued for my
information and my capacity to contribute,” she explains.
“I need to know what my opportunities are going to be.”
Interactions with employers aren’t limited
to job fairs and information sessions. For Tokes
Bakinson, who graduated this spring with her
MBA, the term “elevator pitch” took on a whole
new meaning when a casual conversation with a
recruiter traveling on the Rowe building elevator
made an impression. It led to her current job in
Calgary as a financial analyst with Imperial Oil.
“I was just casually chatting and he turned out to be
an employer!” she laughs as she recalls her conversation.
Ms. Bakinson, like many of her peers, has big
plans: she wants to travel and hopefully work for
an international non-profit organization. But she
sees her new position as an ideal launching point
for her career. “The thing about having a plan is
flexibility,” she says. “It’s actually written in sand,
and can even be washed away at times. But it helps
me focus, knowing that I have an outline.”
In many ways, Ms. Bakinson has mapped
out the ideal roadmap for the millennial
generation, one that balances between planning
ahead and embracing opportunity.
“There’s so much choice available today,” concludes
Ms. Addicott. “It’s not the struggle it may have been in the
past for some generations, and it isn’t the narrow path
that people may have taken or have seen
to take in the past. When there’s so
much choice, why not try to explore?
Graduates can turn their goals
into reality — the opportunity
is out there in today’s market.”
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Improving the health of our Maritime communityThe vision that energizes the Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine is a commitment to improve the health of our community, while educating the caring and competent physicians and researchers required nationally and internationally.continued on p.23
Phot
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And so to bed: To sleep, perchance to dream
While many of us take a refreshing night’s
sleep for granted, as many as one in four
Canadians suffer from some form of sleep
disorder: insomnia, night terrors, restless leg syndrome,
excessive daytime sleepiness and sleep apnea.
“Whatever the cause of sleep loss, it can have
serious consequences,” says Rachael Morehouse,
medical director at the Atlantic Health Sciences
Sleep Centre at the Saint John Regional Hospital.
Given the prevalence of sleep and light-
related disorders, Dr. Morehouse is on a mission
to educate medical students, family physicians
and other health professionals about sleep’s
critical role in mental and physical health.
“There’s a lack of capacity in the system to
handle sleep problems,” she says. “There are so many
different potential causes of insomnia, for instance,
that treatment needs to be tailored to the individual.”
To spread the word, she’s created an educational CD-
ROM and participates in monthly videoconference case
reviews with colleagues throughout the Maritimes.
“Sleep loss increases the risk of depression,
workplace and motor vehicle-related injuries. It can
also lead to impaired job or school performance and
relationship difficulties,” says Dr. Morehouse.
Public awareness about sleep is also important.
“Most people are running on one or two hours
less sleep than they really need,” she says.
Critical thinking improves patient safety
A few years back, as head of a busy local emergency
department, Pat Croskerry began to analyze
the causes of medical error — a phenomenon, then
rarely discussed. Today he is one of Canada’s leading
experts in the burgeoning field of patient safety.
“It’s very important,” he says, “for physicians
to think critically about how information is being
presented, not just by patients, who can lead you
down the garden path, but by physicians’ own
colleagues and by people in other professions —
nurses, paramedics. We can all mislead each other.”
Drawing on his expertise in experimental and
clinical psychology, he has assessed and categorized
types of mistakes and published papers on how
physicians think. He found they were often led astray
by snap judgments about patients, dismissal of data
inconsistent with a diagnosis, insufficient patient history-
taking, and even the influence of persuasive colleagues
who may have made inaccurate initial assessments.
On his initiative, Dalhousie became Canada’s
first medical school to bring medical error into the
undergraduate and resident curricula. He organized
Canada’s first clinical gathering on medical error,
called the Halifax Symposium, in 2000. Today he
Phot
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Pat Croskerry
continued on p.24
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is a widely sought clinical consultant and media
spokesperson on patient safety, and Chair of the Nova
Scotia Healthcare Safety Advisory Committee.
“In Canada the number of people who die from
adverse events in the health care system each year
has been estimated to be up to 25,000. And you have
to think that at least half of those could be prevented
by having the right systems in place and people
looking at things the right way,” says Dr. Croskerry.
Ethicists take novel approach
Are psychotrophic drugs changing the parameters of
normal human behaviour? Should we allow scientists
to create chimeras — new beings from an amalgam of
animal and human materials — for disease and stem cell
research? What is the common good and how should it
guide pandemic planning? What about inter-generational
justice in this brave new world of medical science?
At Dalhousie, some of Canada’s best minds are
sorting through some of the most vexing ethical
issues at the frontiers of modern medicine. The
eclectic Novel Tech Ethics research team includes
a physician, a lawyer and two philosophers.
Their desire to create a collaborative learning
environment has created a free-ranging, face-to-face
forum for discussion and cooperation. They are shaping
the next generation of ethicists for policy making and
research. The group makes great efforts to engage the
public in topical conversations promoting ethics literacy.
A few years ago, two of the core Novel Tech
faculty — both holders of Canada Research Chairs
— captured the only two grants available for
Emerging Teams from the Canadian Institutes of
Health Research’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental
Health and Addiction. At the time, with a combined
value of $3 million, it was the largest amount given
to neuroethics research anywhere in the world.
Good, good, good: Good vibrations
A device in development for people with middle ear
damage could one day change the design of personal
music players to protect users against hearing loss.
Players like the iPod depend on conventional air
conduction to transmit sound through the ear canal,
eardrum and middle ear. Music, channeled through
these players at high volume for prolonged periods, can
damage the ear’s delicate mechanism and impair hearing.
A nine-member interdisciplinary research team
led by Manohar Bance is developing a prototype for a
new class of cost-effective hearing devices that transmit
skull-conducted sound. Essentially, it uses bone
vibrations to stimulate the middle ear directly. This could
assist people with middle ear damage who are unable
to wear a conventional hearing aid and offer a new
concept in personal music player design.
Manohar Bance
continued on p.25
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Dr. Bance’s team is aiming for a non-invasive
product that resembles a set of headphones and sits
behind the ears. It would leave the ear canal open
to receive the ambient sound that helps individuals
maintain their orientation and balance.
The Bone Conduction Hearing Technologies
Project is a joint venture between Dalhousie and
Capital District Health Authority. The diverse
team is drawn from Dalhousie, Capital Health,
the University of New Brunswick and Defence
Research and Development Canada. They are
partnering with Bon Anchored Solutions, a Swedish
company affiliated with Cochlear Corporation.
Robots on-call
A medical robot sure comes in handy when your
immediate consulting practice spans three Maritime
provinces and experts are calling you from around
the world.
Dr. Mendez’s latest assistant is a remote-controlled
robot capable of bringing him face-to-face with patients
and colleagues whenever and wherever needed.
The first Remote Presence robot in Canada was
acquired for him through the assistance of the Queen
Elizabeth II Hospital Foundation. Dr. Mendez found it so
beneficial that a second robot was quickly acquired for
the Cape Breton Regional Hospital.
“If you’re in Sydney, Cape Breton and you’ve had
a head injury and you need a neurosurgeon, there
are no neurosurgeons there. So with the robot, I
can go look at you, see where your wound is, look at
your x-rays, talk to the physicians — your family —
make a decision on what to do,” says Dr. Mendez.
Patients seem to take the experience in stride.
In only a couple of minutes, they’re chatting away
with the unusual 160-pound bedside visitor.
This approach could revolutionalize care in
much of the region, where highly trained specialists
such as neurosurgeons, cardiac surgeons and
cardiologists are currently unavailable, he suggests.
Lives could be saved and health outcomes improved.
“Eventually we’ll be able to work like this with
anybody, anywhere around the world,” he says.
Brain Repair Centre
Atlantic Canada’s most comprehensive research
and development partnership, the Brain Repair
Centre, recently obtained a $5.6 million grant
from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI),
making the organization the recipient of one of
the largest single grants in Dalhousie history.
The grant came hot on the heels of another award
from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency / Atlantic
Innovation Fund for $3 million.
Together, these funds will help further the centre’s
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continued on p.26
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inquiry into ways to affect cell restoration after damage
by Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury and disease.
The centre integrates the work of basic and clinical
scientists seeking new treatments for neurological and
psychiatric disorders.
Robert Brownstone leads the spinal cord
research group and attributes their achievements to
collaboration. “We’ve put together a group with very
diverse backgrounds and interests,” says Dr. Brownstone.
Tanzania is a window on international health care
Students in medicine, dentistry and health professions
recently spent a three-week study tour in Tanzania,
an East African country that is home to Mount
Kiliminjaro and one of the poorest nations on earth.
They returned, not only with a better appreciation
of each others’ disciplines, but full of admiration
for the health professionals they saw in action.
“I was shocked by the enormous range of
conditions the doctor saw in one morning — from
elephantiasis and malaria, to dog bites and bicycle
accidents, to syphilis and HIV,” says medical student
Nicole Richard. “I was amazed by the talent of the health
care professionals in Tanzania; lack of skill is not the
problem, but lack of funds and other resources are.”
The International Health Office (IHO) has
conducted annual study tours to Tanzania for
medical students before, but last year’s inclusion of
students from other health professions was part of
a new and larger strategy for Dalhousie’s faculties
of medicine, dentistry and health professions.
Together they have launched several recent joint
research, training and clinical programs to give
their students the experience and skills needed to
collaborate in interprofessional health care teams.
Students return to campus with a whole new
perspective on the Canadian health care system and how
they can contribute to international health, says Ashley
Pinsent, IHO’s Manager of Student Programs.
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A quest for excellence
28
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Dalumni
For me, Dalhousie is a natural fit. As president of the Dalhousie
Alumni Association (DAA), I am involved in sharing a compelling vision and contributing time and thought towards the goal of becoming Canada’s best university. I take great pride, as I hope all of my fellow alumni do, in the success of Dalhousie as one of Canada’s leading universities. Part of the DAA board’s job is to attend events and spread the message to alumni and prospective students that Dal students and faculty continue to earn top honours and international acclaim.
My involvement with Dal has also allowed me to contribute to improving the student experience; contributions that include connecting students with mentors and spreading the word about our great campus. Since becoming president of the DAA, I’ve also faced the challenge of revamping Dal’s alumni program. We’re helping the Alumni Relations Office understand the perceptions, attitudes and expectations of our alumni in order to align strategy and resources to meet those expectations. Stay tuned! Level Chan, (BA’99, LLB’02)President, Dalhousie Alumni Association
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Being a lawyer can make volunteering challenging — not only in terms of freeing
up time to help a worthy cause, but also in choosing
which causes to support.
continued on p.29
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Friend of educationThe Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) recently honoured Jim Palmer, CM, QC (LLB’52, LLD’87) for his commitment to post-secondary education by presenting him with the 2008 Friend of Education Award. We congratulate Jim, a long-time friend and supporter of Dal, on this much deserved recognition.
Alumni eventsFrom east to west, down south and across the pond
Over the winter and spring months, Dalhousie alumni and friends gathered at events in New York, Florida, Halifax, Bermuda, London, England, Toronto, Kingston, Vancouver, Calgary and Kelowna.
Photos from top to bottom:
New York Alumni Reception
Kingston Alumni Pub Night
Calgary Alumni Lobster Dinner
Close to 20 alumni and friends gathered in Hong Kong for dinner on January 26.
Halifax Alumni Movie Night: Horton Hears a Who!
View more pictures online at www.dal.ca/alumni/events/photos
at events in New York, Florida, Halifax, Bermuda, London, England, Toronto, Kingston, Vancouver, Calgary and Kelowna
Photos from top to bottom:
New York Alumni Reception
Kingston Alumni Pub Night
Calgary Alumni Lobster Dinner
Close to 20 alumni and friends gathered in Hong Kong for dinner on January 26.
Halifax Alumni Movie Night:
Join us this summer and fall!Victoria Canadian University Alumni Picnic July 19Chester Alumni Reception August 7 Hosts: Brian (BCom’80, LLD’08) and Megan PorterDalhousie Annual Dinner October 16, Halifax Dalhousie Alumni Reunions October 16-17, Halifax
Watch for pub nights this fall in Ottawa, Toronto and Calgary and events in the Annapolis Valley and Sydney, NS.
Other upcoming events:Dalhousie Theatre Department Reunion for graduates of 1986-1990, Halifax, Saturday, June 21. Cost: $5. Email [email protected] for details. Phi Kappa Pi Alumni Association Reunion, Halifax, September 16-21. Contact Pat Dunphy at 902-857-9440 for details.
For complete event details and updates, visit www.dal.ca/alumni/events
Let us know what you’ve been up to: [email protected]
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When career-pediatric neurologist
Irving Fish first set foot
on the warm, dusty soil of
Ethiopia last year, his 40 years of professional
experience promptly deserted him.
“It was quite
overwhelming,” says Dr.
Fish (MD’64) of his first
philanthropic foray into Addis
Ababa, the capital of this terribly
beautiful African nation. “I like
to think of myself as being open-
minded, but I was prisoner to
those same preconceptions of Africa
that many of us have — images of
drought and famine and war. But it’s
so much more complex and rich.”
No paradise for its almost four
million residents, many of whom have no
electricity or running water, Addis Ababa
is a microcosm of this fiercely independent yet
desperately impoverished state. Ethiopia, with
a population of 75 million, ranks among the 10
poorest countries in the world. More than two-
thirds of Ethiopian women of childbearing years
are illiterate. Their children have never been
read to, have never held a crayon in their hand.
This is the scenario that Irving Fish
wants to change, one community at a time.
His vehicle is a program called The
Ethiopian School Readiness Initiative, a
culturally appropriate preschool literacy
project staffed by kindergarten teachers and
trainers from the Addis Ababa region. Building
capacity in this fashion will help to ensure
Educating preschoolers
is the key to boosting
Ethiopia’s crippled
economy—Dr. Irving Fish, MD’64
Irving Fish first set foot
on the warm, dusty soil of
Ethiopia last year, his 40 years of professional
experience promptly deserted him.
Ababa, the capital of this terribly
to think of myself as being open-
those same preconceptions of Africa
that many of us have — images of
drought and famine and war. But it’s
so much more complex and rich.”
No paradise for its almost four
million residents, many of whom have no
electricity or running water, Addis Ababa
is a microcosm of this fiercely independent yet
desperately impoverished state. Ethiopia, with
Spotlight NO PARADISE
Photos from top to bottom:
Scenes from a typical day at the pre-school;
children greet Dr. Fish with handmade
silk flowers (bottom).
Ethiopia
continued on p.31
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the project is economically feasible and self-
sustainable within a short period of time,
according to Dr. Fish, who is based in New York.
With the assistance of local psychiatrist
Dr. Menelik Desta — “our man on the
ground in Ethiopia” — Dr. Fish and his
team launched the first in what is to be a
series of programs in October 2007. This
pilot project, comprised of 40 urban and 40
rural preschoolers, offers many irresistible
incentives for local families: free lunch, a 10:1
child-to-teacher ratio and an engaging and
interactive teaching style, to name a few.
The results have been off the charts.
“I’ve been watching children
develop for over 40 years and
nothing prepared me for this,” says
Dr. Fish, who made a return trip to monitor
progress this past January. “In just three
short months, these children actually knew
the alphabet in English and could recognize
letters out of sequence. They also knew their
colours, shapes and numbers, and could
draw the 200 characters of Amharic [the
local language.] It just blew me away.”
Already on to the next phase of the
initiative, he is mobilizing resources for an even
more ambitious project, this one encompassing
some 3,500 families in the unforgiving
region of North Shoa in central Ethiopia.
“Funding and operating an initiative
like this certainly does have its challenges,”
says Dr. Fish, who has relied almost entirely
on the goodwill of well-heeled friends and
associates who have bought into his vision.
“But you’d be surprised by how much you can
accomplish for a relatively minor investment.
You’re dealing with a very different financial
picture in a country like Ethiopia. People get
paid very little and a dollar goes a long way.”
In fact, he says, the Addis Ababa pilot
project has a price tag of only $100,000.
The expanded North Shoa program can
operate in perpetuity on a shoestring
budget of just $250,000 a year — mere
peanuts by Western standards.
“This is one of the futures of medicine,”
says Dr. Fish, who has found his true calling
after more than 40 years at the helm of the
pediatric neurology department at New York
Hospital. “Sure, we need molecular biology
and genetic research in our quest to cure
suffering and disease but as we continue
to merge into one global community, we
can no longer afford to go on ignoring
economic disparities and poverty.”
After a lifetime of believing the practice
of medicine is fundamentally a humanitarian
endeavor, Dr. Fish is taking it to the bank. At 70
years of age, he is blazing new trails and raising
the bar for humanitarian medical practice
among younger physicians. It’s a call to action
for Dal medicine grads, whom he believes
should be looking at development projects
like his as exciting career opportunities.
“Being involved with this initiative
has been the most professionally satisfying
moment of my life,” says Dr. Fish. “The
children get a lot out of the program, but I
get 100 times more out of it than they do.”
Joanne Ward-Jerrett
We can no longer afford to go on ignoring economic disparities and poverty.
Reunion2008 OCTOBER 16 & 17
Come home to Dal! Meet old friends and see what’s new. A special invitation for the Classes of 1968, 1963, 1958, 1953, 1948, 1943 and earlier.For information on reunion events, Email [email protected] call 902.494.2805, toll free 1.800.565.9969
BOOKSTORE LOCATIONS
Studley Campus6136 University Ave. Phone: (902) 494-2460Fax: (902) 494-3863
Carleton CampusHealth Sciences5981 University Ave.Phone: (902) 494-3020Fax: (902) 494-6150
Sexton Campus1360 Barrington St.. Phone: (902) 494-3985Fax: (902) 494-3863
Methods of paymentCash, Debit, DalCard, MasterCard, Visa (authorized card holders only)
Order online at:www.dal.ca/bookstore
DEGREE FRAMESfrom the Dalhousie Bookstore
Our high quality degree frames come in five distinctive styles. These frames include a mat, foil-stamped with the Dalhousie crest in gold. They also feature an easy clip system that allows for quick installation of your degree.
Black$49.95
Walnut Wood$61.95
The Briarwood$88.50
The Diplomat$124.50
The Diplomat Medallion$199.95
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ANNUAL GIVING
For information on how to make a gift to our 2008 Annual Fund campaign, visit www.dal.ca/giving or call 1.800.565.9969
We made the call.You gave the answer.You and more than 6,500 of your fellow alumni and friends raised over $2,400,000 during the 2007 Annual Fund campaign. Whether you gave through the mail, over the phone or on our website you have helped Dal provide today’s students with the best environment to live, learn and explore.
Thank you.
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Spotlight TO MARKET, TO MARKET
Where did that bag of frozen French
fries come from? What befell
your hapless potatoes during
their trip from the dirt to the oven? How far
did they travel, how were they processed,
and how much energy was expended in the
spud’s epic journey from soil to plate?
Alumnae Marla MacLeod and Jennifer
Scott are “food miles coordinators” at the
Ecology Action Center. Their three-year
project for the Nova Scotia Federation of
Agriculture studies the impact of a local
Nova Scotian diet, versus an imported one.
“We don’t know how our food is traveling or
even where it’s coming from,” says Ms. McLeod.
Concerns about an imported diet aren’t
all environmental — although greenhouse
gases, energy emission during transport, and
processing pollution are all major factors
in the growing switch to local foods.
‘Food miles’ also have a serious economic
impact. Nova Scotia is losing local processing
plants to larger corporate competitors. Farming,
long part of the province’s heritage, is also
threatened. “Farmers are actually not able to
make a living right now,” Ms. MacLeod winces.
The pair urge switching to a healthier,
more sustainable model of eating. The
project is well-timed, too. More and more,
people want to support local farmers and
have that social connection with local
food — rather than popping a processed
TV dinner into the microwave.
Incorporating local foods into your diet
requires no more than a little forethought —
eating seasonally, relearning a lot of recipes,
asking questions at your favorite restaurants
about their use of local foods. Heavily processed
foods should be avoided, as they’re rarely
locally produced. “If you live near a farmer’s
market… go to the farmer’s market!”
Rebecca Schneidereit
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1960s1969Mell Hosain, PEng, PhD (NSTC), was granted Professor Emeritus status in Civil Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. He was awarded the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal for his contributions to the province as an educator and the Canadian Pacific Railway Medal for services to the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, including a year as the national president in 1997-98.
1970s1970Peter McGuigan, BSc, has a new book out. In 2007, Nimbus published his bestselling Historic South End Halifax. Currently working on a book on Halifax and the Great Depression for Fernwood, he is also collecting information for a new history of Dalhousie, which will emphasize the interrelation between the university and the city.1971Pankaj K. (PK) Sen, MEng (NSTC), PhD’74 (NSTC), is currently professor of engineering, Colorado School of Mines, and site director, Power Systems Research Center (www.pser.org). He is extremely proud of the education he had at Dal and wishes to share his email address with classmates:[email protected] Jackson, BSc, is chief scientist on a project in the High Arctic to extend Canada’s northern underwater boundaries through a process called UNCLOS: United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea. This is a multi-year project that requires geologic mapping of the seabed north of Ellesmere Island. For more information, visit: www.nanometrics.ca1973Dennis Bowie, MD, has been awarded the Prix d’excellence for Atlantic Canada by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Associate professor of medicine at Dal and practicing respirologist in the Capital Health District, Dennis is also head of the Atlantic Thoracic Society and past president of the Canadian Thoracic Society. His research interests include asthma, lung disease, respiratory infections and pulmonary function. This award recognizes Fellows who have made significant contributions as medical educators or provided outstanding service to their community.
1974Joyce MacKichan Walker, BRec, has been named 2008 Educator of the Year by the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators — the group’s most prestigious award. A strong advocate for educators and educational ministry, she was recognized for her work in church education. She serves as the minister of education at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, N.J., and has been on staff there for nearly 20 years. Les Grieve, BA, LLB’77, was appointed as a Judge of the Alberta Provincial Court, effective January 28, 2008. A number of Dal grads attended the swearing-in ceremony on February 21, 2008. He is the 13th judge appointed from the Dalhousie Weldon School of Law Class of 1977. Les now sits in the Banff and Calgary criminal courts, as well as other regional points around Calgary.1979Berns Galloway, BSc, has been appointed to the faculty of the Foundation for Human Enrichment (www.traumahealing.com). The Foundation is the sponsoring body offering training and research in ‘somatic experiencing’ — a naturalistic approach for psychotherapists and bodyworkers to support the resolution of trauma. Berns is a psychotherapist and educator living in Victoria, B.C. ([email protected]). Emmitt Kelly, BCom, was recently appointed president of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Nova Scotia for 2008 and sits on the board of BOMA Canada. As well, Emmitt has been appointed to the Board of Governors of the University of King’s College for a four-year term and chairs the property, grounds and safety committee. In his spare time he serves as a Class B member of the Canadian Olympic committee.
1980s1982Brenda Joyce Picard, BA, LLB’85, received the distinction of a Queen’s Counsel designation in December, 2007. In June 2007, she was also the recipient of the P.E.I. Law Society’s Community Service Award in recognition of her lengthy and ongoing volunteer work with local, provincial and national organizations.1984Alex Neve, BCom, LLB’87 was recently named to the Trudeau Foundation’s latest group of
Trudeau Mentors – some of Canada’s most distinguished and accomplished leaders from a broad range of backgrounds who are each paired with a PhD student studying in a similar area. Alex has been secretary general of Amnesty International Canada since January 2000. He has been a member of Amnesty for over 15 years and has worked for the organization nationally and internationally in a number of different roles including research missions to Tanzania, Guinea, Mexico, Burundi and Ghana.1985Leland (Lee) Keane, BA (Hons), completed a Master of Arts in organizational development from Phoenix University on December 31, 2007. He is currently employed by the RCMP and was posted to the Pacific Region Training Centre in Chilliwack as an operational skills instructor in February, 2007.1986Diane Ravenscroft, BSc, has a career in leadership development. Her firm, Workplace Master Inc., is designed to raise the bar of professional and interpersonal development through learning and coaching. The website is under construction but Diane can be reached at both www.discovercoaching.biz and www.workplacemastery.com. She is also program director for a new online graduate program in organizational leadership for Norwich University in Vermont.1988Karen Woodworth, BN, is pleased to announce her recent marriage to Fred Colaiacovo on August 31, 2007. Karen recently accepted a new position as head and neck oncology case manager in the Capital District Health Authority Cancer Care Program, Halifax, N.S. Friends and former classmates can contact her at [email protected] Mammen, BSc, has been appointed head of research with Theravance. He is responsible for all departments that encompass research (medicinal chemistry, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, and in vivo pharmacology), which represent more than 50 per cent of the company’s activities. It’s a major challenge and exciting opportunity for Mathai, who plans to continue giving Dal and its outstanding chemistry program good press at every opportunity. Check out the following link: http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/071219/0342098.html.
Classnotes
continued on p.35
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1990s1992Marlene Buckler, MD’91, PGM’92, has some surprising advice: “Stay away from doctors and don’t take pills!” The Sarasota-based physician is currently at work on a new book, and is the originator of a web site of the same name: Stay out of my ER! Visit Dr. Buckler at www.stayoutofmyer.com1994David J. Williams, BSc (Hons), married Jennifer Fankhauser on November 17, 2007, in Seattle, WA. David recently joined Expedia, Inc. as finance manager for the global air
business. They would be happy to hear from friends at [email protected] Drew Watt, BA, and husband Sam Avanesov are overjoyed to announce the birth of their son, Domenic, in August 2007. Julia and Sam met when she worked at the Embassy of Canada in Moscow, Russia and they now live in Ottawa, where she is currently on maternity leave from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.1996Darren D. MacDonald, BScK, and his wife Susan MacDonald are excited to announce the birth of their son Owen Shae MacDonald,
born December 27, 2007, in Sydney, N.S. Friends and classmates can contact Darren at [email protected] Crooks, BSW, was recently honored by the Metropolitan Halifax Chamber of Commerce, winning a silver award in the category of 2008 Business Person of the Year. 1998Amber MacArthur, BA, is currently living in Toronto and working as a CBC technology correspondent, among many other things. A new media journalist and web strategist, she juggles a variety of interests ranging from podcasts to TV. Check out her website: ambermac.com.
Thursday, October 16, 20086:00 for 7:00 p.m.Westin Nova Scotian Hotel · Halifax NSTickets: $75 or $750 for a table of 10
Across the street. Around the world.University and community working together.
Join fellow Dalhousie alumni and friends as Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard, MSW ’77, Director of the School of Social Work and member of the Order of Canada takes us on a journey into the heart of our own community. The Dalhousie Alumni Association will also recognize the outstanding community contributions of the 2008 award winners.
To reserve tickets or tables, contact Dalhousie External Relations: 902.494.1697 or 1.866.225.8043 To order online: www.dal.ca/alumniPlease order tickets by October 1, 2008
THE DALHOUSIE ANNUAL DINNER
continued on p.36
2000s2000
Rachel Matthews, BM, married Gordon Sweet in Montego
Bay, Jamaica, on February 14, 2008. They are proud
parents of Georgina (Gina), who will turn three on
August 15. Rachel is a teaching assistant in Dalhousie’s
Department of Music, and runs a busy little business,
“Cortland Music,” delivering live classical string music
in the Halifax area: www.cortland.ca.
Sylvia Hamilton, MEd , LLD’01, was recently named
to the Trudeau Foundation’s latest group of Trudeau
Mentors — some of Canada’s most distinguished
and accomplished leaders from a broad range of
backgrounds who are each paired with a PhD student
studying in a similar area. A noted filmmaker, writer
and president of Maroon Films Inc., Sylvia is also
co-founder of the New Initiatives in Film Program
— designed to provide women of colour and First
Nations women with opportunities to make films at the
National Film Board’s Studio D.
2002
Tanya (Flood) Fleming, MBA/LLB, and Jonathan
Fleming, MBA’00, are proud parents of a baby boy,
Jack David, born Christmas Eve 2007 and big sister
Megan Elizabeth (May 2005). Jonathan is an oil and
gas analyst with Canmark Securities and Tanya is a
corporate lawyer with Oster, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP.
2003
Beth Amiro, BA, and fellow Dal alumni Caralee Murphy,
BA ’01 and Juel MacCallum, BA’05, were honoured with
a bronze award for Best New Business 2008 by the
Halifax Chamber of Commerce. Surfers, activists and
community leaders, the women were recognized for
their leading-edge business, One Life Surf School,
Eastern Canada’s first women’s surf centre.
2004
Terry L. Nikkel, MBA, has written his first book:
Making Library Web Sites Useful – a LITA
Guide. It was published in 2007 by Neal-
Schuman (www.neal-schuman.com). Terry
is now director of libraries at UNBSJ.
2005
Kristy Mahoney, BScN, and her partner, Jordan Surette,
would like to announce the birth of their little boy,
Liam Jordan, who was born December 29, 2007.
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37registrar’s office
Spotlight PROBLEM SOLVING IS HER SPECIALTY
Theo Bell has made fluid transitions
between chemistry, mechanical
engineering, investment banking and
even between continents.
Growing up on Prince Edward Island,
she never dreamt she’d work for a prestigious
investment firm in the United Kingdom.
“Life’s a journey,” says Ms. Bell.
“With some luck and a lot of hard work,
you never know where you’ll end up.”
As a chemistry student, she realized working
in a lab wasn’t for her. At Dalhousie, she was able
to combine her chemistry studies with a degree
in Mechanical Engineering and found her niche.
“Through co-op, I experienced the world
of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at
a combustion specialist firm in Halifax,” she
says. This involved using algorithms to solve
complex problems. When professor Julio Militzer
wanted summer students to help with his
website, CFDnet.com, she quickly volunteered.
Dr. Militzer supported her interests as
her graduate supervisor. “He taught me so
much, he was a great inspiration and made it
fun,” she says. “He’s like my second dad.” That
“fun” collaboration earned her the Governor
General of Canada’s Academic Medal for
outstanding Masters Thesis and the Cambridge
Commonwealth Trusts PhD Scholarship.
“After visiting Cambridge with its college
system, medieval architecture and proximity to
continental Europe, I decided on Cambridge.”
During her doctoral studies, she broadened
her career goals beyond academia. “Maybe it
was just the PhD, but I found it too solitary and
started looking for other career options,”
she says. She was introduced to investment
banking by her fiancé.
“Although an engineering process
may seem unrelated to finance, investment firms
recruit from many backgrounds but focus on
people who are best in their class,” says Ms. Bell.
In her spare time, she was a college
rower at Cambridge, training up to a dozen
times each week. “It taught me discipline
and work ethic,” she says. Billy Comeau
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Dalhousie Discover Alumni Ad Winter 07/082/3 page vertical 4.75x7.25
Studying environmental science and international
development was a great way to
learn about our world. And my
student exchange to Malaysia was
an amazing way to experience it.
Now I’m making my own
contribution by researching
policy for environmental
sustainability in Cuba.
Cool courses can change everything.
Find yours at DISCOVER.DAL.ca
Janice Ashworth, BSc’07
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Conference Services All the event planning support you need.
Whether it’s a meeting of five or a convention for more than 1,000, Conference Services will help you set the stage for an outstanding event. Dalhousie provides an extensive range of meeting space options for formal and informal events – from small boardrooms to large auditoriums.
www.conferenceservices.dal.ca Tel: 902-494-3401 | Fax: 902-494-1219 | Email: [email protected]
Full catering and audio visual services available.
For information, email: [email protected] or [email protected]
In her final moments, Betty Eisenhauer was still chuckling about the boxer short raid of 1943.
Her bequest to Dal reflects her sentiments.Legacy gifts speak to your experience at Dalhousie and all it has meant to you – an education
and a lifetime of memories. Your gift could support a bursary fund, or strengthen the program
within one of your preferred faculties. Giving back to Dal through a bequest, large or small,
helps to ensure lifelong success for the generations that follow.
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InMemoriam
Marion Dennis (Robb) Christie, BA’26, MA’27, Bedford, N.S., on February 23, 2008Donald Holdsworth McNeill, BSc’33, Waverley, N.S., on January 9, 2008John Henry Budd, BA’29, MD’33, LLD’78, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., on March 4, 2008Donald Macleod, BA’34, MA’35, LLD’78, Baltimore, Md., U.S.A., on January 20, 2008Albert Aaron Schwartz, MD’40, Edison, N.J., U.S.A., on January 6, 2008Marie Delvenia (Benoit) Demers, LCMus’40, Sydney, N.S., on February 13, 2008Douglas Scott Lyall, BA’38, LLB’41, North York, Ont., on January 15, 2008Thomas Melville Deblois, DENGR’39, BEng’41 (NSTC), Toronto, Ont., on January 28, 2008Dorothy Marguerite Hunter, BCom’42, Dartmouth, N.S., on April 15, 2008Kathleen Pyman T (Martin) Mack, BA’43, Halifax, N.S., on February 9, 2008Francis Carroll Fennell, DDS’43, Halifax, N.S., on March 25, 2008Robert Lloyd Parsons, BEng’44 (NSTC), Moncton, N.B., on November 9, 2007Rolfe Reynolds Colpitts, BEng’44 (NSTC), Kingston, Ont., on March 25, 2008Harry Aikens, BA’45, Halifax, N.S., on February 17, 2008Harry Oxorn, MD’45, Gatineau, Que., on March 16, 2008Alexander James Farquhar, BA’47, Halifax, N.S., on March 9, 2008Llewellyn Philip Arlette, LLB’48, Edmonton, Alta., on January 12, 2008Verna Georgie Holmes, BSc’48, BEd’73, MED’78, Ottawa, Ont., on February 2, 2008Neil Smith Sutherland, DPharm’48, Truro, N.S., on April 5, 2008Richard Willoughby Crudge, BEng’48 (NSTC), Calgary, Alta.James Adrian MacInnis, MD’50, Bath, N.B., on January 15, 2008Marion Shirley (McCoy) McLeod, BA’50, BSc’50, Wolfville, N.S., on February 28, 2008Harold John Blackwood, MD’51, St. John’s, N.L., on January 10, 2008William George Reid, BCom’51, Riverview, N.B.Thomas Edward Flynn, MA’53, Halifax, N.S., on January 22, 2008Kenneth Graeme Putnam, BEng’53 (NSTC), Dartmouth, N.S., on February 13, 2008Clive Langley Rippon, LLB’53, Victoria, B.C., on March 4, 2008
Janet Doris (Dexter) Reid, BA’54, Halifax, N.S., on March 6, 2008Eric Gordon Demont, LLB’56, Halifax, N.S., on March 6, 2008Hector McInnes, BA’54, LLB’56, Chester, N.S., on March 18, 2008John Robert McQuinn, DPharm’51, BSc’56, Halifax, N.S., on March 30, 2008Kenneth Ross Parker, MD’56, Burlington, Ont., on March 31, 2008Floyd Leroy Rhyno, DENGR’55, BSc’55, BEng’57 (NSTC), Sarnia, Ont., on January 17, 2008John Herbert Mercer, BA’54, BEd’57, Wolfville, N.S., on February 20, 2008Barbara Lillian Hopkins, BSc’58, St. John’s, N.L., on January 26, 2008Harry John Flemming, LLB’58, Halifax, N.S., on February 16, 2008Arthur Michael Sullivan, MA’58, Holyrood, N.L.Barbara Scott (Cameron) Webster, BCom’61, Pasadena, Texas, U.S.A., on March 29, 2008John Louis den Ouden, LLB’62, Niagara Falls, Ont., on September 22, 2007Daniel Graham Garnhum, MD’62, Halifax, N.S., on January 10, 2008Charles Edwin Blackie, BEng’63 (NSTC), Sorel, Que., on January 13, 2008John Alden Spargo, BEng’63 (NSTC) , on January 20, 2008Morton S Rucker, MD’64, Bradenton, Fla., U.S.A., on January 4, 2008Howard Andrew Gee Smillie, PGM’67, Halifax, N.S., on March 30, 2008Doris Claire McMaster, DNSA’67, Halifax, N.S., on April 8, 2008Charles Edward Sheppard, BEng’69 (NSTC), Clarenville, N.L., on September 24, 2007Jean Rivers Sawyer, BA’68, BEd’69, Halifax, N.S., on February 24, 2008Lloyd Lee Parsons, DENGR’69, BEng’70 (NSTC), Toronto, Ont., on November 9, 2007Suzanne Louise (Temple) Irvine, BA’69, BEd’70, Caledonia, Ont.Frank Woolhouse Walker, BEd’71, BSc’71Trevor Thomas Murray, BA’72, Bedford, N.S., on January 26, 2008Robert Eldon Wadden, BA’72, Lower Sackville, N.S., on April 4, 2008Eva Amalia (Laine) Wilson, DNSA’72, Aurora, Ont.David B Rhude, BA’73, Halifax, N.S., on January 8, 2008Ronald Clark MacDonald, BA’73, Bedford, N.S., on February 24, 2008
Gerda Den Hoed, DNSA’69, BN’73, MEd’79, Halifax, N.S., on March 14, 2008Barry Elmer Ling, BSc’70, MD’75, PGM’79, Charlottetown, P.E.I., on February 8, 2008William Russell Hicks, LLB’75, Lacombe, Alta., on February 9, 2008Robert John Hume, DDS’75, Hay Settlement, N.B., on February 19, 2008James Lawrence Fardy, MBA’76, St. John’s, N.L., on October 27, 2007Brian Robert Joseph Conrad, BSc’76, Dartmouth, N.S., on March 18, 2008Fay Cecelia (McGowan) Spencer, MA’74, MEd’78, Halifax, N.S., on February 7, 2008John Barry Roberts, BSc’75, PGM’80, MD’80, Baton Rouge, La., U.S.A., on December 26, 2007Trevor Anthony Phillips, BEd’75, MA’80, Herring Cove, N.S., on April 13, 2008Harold William Wilson, BEd’81, Lower Sackville, N.S., on January 16, 2008Iqbal Singh Gill, BEd’82, North York, Ont.Ronald Francis Crawley, BA’74, MA’80, MLS’83, Ottawa, Ont., on March 27, 2008Alan Edison MacDonald, DDS’84, Cornwall, P.E.I., on December 31, 2007Hedley Smith, BEng’84 (TUNS), Halifax, N.S.Gilles Vigneault, MSC’85, Jonquiere, Que.Dawn Michelle Anne Isenor, BCom’86, Stillwater Lake, N.S., on February 29, 2008Stanislawa Joanna (Alapin) Alapin-Rubilowicz, BA’86, BAHC’88, Halifax, N.S., on February 13, 2008Sonya Sheilah-Marie Arnold, BA’88, BSW’90, Dartmouth, N.S., on January 22, 2008Pierre M Vallee, MBA’92, Kirkland, Que., on January 4, 2008Alexander Dorneo Sayat, BCom’94, Yarmouth, N.S., on November 30, 2007Raymond Francis Carroll, MBA’77, PhD’96, Halifax, N.S., on February 27, 2008Katharine Claire Taylor, BCom’03, Mount Hebron, N.B., on January 15, 2008Craig Arden Lawrence, MURP’06, Chestermere, Alta., on February 12, 2008Samuel W J Howse, BCSc’99, MA’00, PhD’07, Halifax, N.S., on January 14, 2008Gareth Edward Akerman, MSc’07, Halifax, N.S., on March 14, 2008
We apologise to the friends and family of Freeman C. Sheppard, who was mistakenly identified in the Winter 2008 issue of Dalhousie Magazine.
theBackstoryFIT FOR THE JOB
NAME: Donna Goguen
HOMETOWN: Halifax, Nova Scotia
EDUCATION: BSc (Hons) 1980
PASSIONS: Family, fitness, volunteering
NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS: Commissioner of Maritime University
Field Lacrosse League, former regional director for Hockey Nova
Scotia Female Council, articles in Journal of Biological Rhythms,
Neuroscience Letters, Molecular Brain Research, and Neuroscience.
JOB: Manager of Circadian Rhythms Neuroscience Lab
at Life Sciences Centre
TEACHES: Donna is a familiar face at Dalplex — she’s taught fitness
for more than 15 years and aquafitness for a decade.
“Sometimes you recognize you have skills you didn’t know you had and sometimes there’s a need for them in unexpected places.”
Research: Billy Comeau
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