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U N I V E R S I T Y O F G U E L P H M A G A Z I N E F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S

From student towriter at U of G

PLUSOlympic runnersSaving the elmsA career in the North

theS U M M E R 2 0 1 2

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i n and around the un ivers i ty

U of G welcomes

theatre producerDavid Mirvish as its newchancellor and celebratesa student’s national fel-lowship. Across campus,researchers report newfindings on how skeletonsdevelop, why the nextGreen Revolution willcome from below theground and how toreduce children’s fear ofreceiving a needle.

a lumni mat ters

T he University

of Guelph AlumniAssociation honoursalumni achievement,while U of G staff salutevolunteer fundraisers anddonors to the BetterPlanet campaign. Scholar-ship awards demonstratethe impact of campaigngifts, and CFRU radioreaches out to alumnithrough online and cablebroadcasting.

424

3 — president’s page • BetterPlanet update — 8 • grad news — 28

on the coverPoet and novelist

Alison Pick

PHOTO BY KEVIN KELLY

contentst h e p o r t i c o • s u m m e r 2 0 1 2

— 10 —

RUNNING TOWARD AN OLYMPIC DREAM

From Canada’s top cross-country program, Gryphon coaches andathletes will cheer for their own at the 2012 London Olympics.

— 19 —

SAVING THE ELMSScientists and philanthropists work together to

preserve endangered trees and plants.

— 22 —

ARCTIC CAREERZoology grad finds his niche in the North, where he studies the

population dynamics of seals and other marine mammals.

— 16 — cover story

FAMILY HISTORY INSPIRES POETRY AND FICTION

Her English prof gave Alison Pick the tools she needed to pen a poignant novel.

Portico onlineMore U of G news at

uoguelph.ca/theportico

Gold medalmagazineThe Portico won the 2011

award for “best magazine”

at a Canadian university

from the Canadian Council

for the Advancement of

Education.

Friday Evening■ OVC 150th anniversary celebration dinner■ Star Party in the physics observatory

Saturday Morning ■ OVC AA breakfast and annual general meeting■ CBS AA breakfast and annual general meeting■ Memories of Mac Hall with

Judy Maddren, B.A.Sc. ’72■ Macdonald Institute tour■ Mac-FACS-FRAN AA annual general meeting

Saturday Afternoon■ President’s Lunch celebrating the Class of 1962■ Drop into the Brass Taps ■ UGAA annual general meeting■ Campus bus tours■ Walking tours:

• Macdonald Institute • Johnston Hall • Bioproducts Development and Discovery

Centre • Macdonald Stewart Art Centre sculpture

garden• OVC main building

Saturday Evening■ Milestone dinner■ Alumni pub night at the Brass Taps

Greetings fellow grads!

Register at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca

AlumniWeekend

June 15 and 16

It is my pleasure to invite you to Alumni Weekend2012. There are many wonderful events and activitiesplanned, and I hope you will take this opportunity tohead back to campus and reconnect with friends andclassmates from your days at Guelph. It will be a great time for sharingmemories of our alma materand includes 150th-anniversary celebrationsfor the Ontario VeterinaryCollege. I look forward toseeing you on campus.Ted Valli, DVM ’62,Honorary Chair

2 The Portico

porticoSummer 2012 • Volume 44 Issue 2

EditorMary Dickieson

Assistant Vice-PresidentCharles Cunningham

Art DirectionPeter Enneson Design Inc.

ContributorsSusan BubakLori Bona HuntWendy JespersenShiona MackenzieTeresa PitmanAndrew Vowles, B.Sc. ’84

Advertising InquiriesScott Anderson519-827-9169

Direct all other correspondence to:Communications and Public AffairsUniversity of GuelphGuelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1E-mail m.dickieson@exec.uoguelph.cawww.uoguelph.ca/theportico/

The Portico magazine is published three timesa year by Communications and PublicAffairs at the University of Guelph. Its mis-sion is to enhance the relationship betweenthe University and its alumni and friendsand promote pride and commitment with-in the University community. All materialis copyright 2012. Ideas and opinionsexpressed in the articles do not necessarilyreflect the ideas or opinions of the Univer-sity or the editors.Publications Mail Agreement # 40064673

Printed in Canada — ISSN 1714-8731

To update your alumni record, contact:Alumni Affairs and DevelopmentPhone 519-824-4120, Ext. 56550Fax 519-822-2670E-mail alumnirecords@uoguelph.ca

the

Summer 2012 3

T he Univers ity of Guelph community isalways changing, as graduates leave and new students

arrive; always renewing itself, as retirements lead to newfaculty and staff; always moving forward through researchand scholarship; always improving the educationalexperience through the infusion of new knowledge andtechnology. That has been true throughout 150 years ofinstitutional history and will remain true as each newgeneration of University leaders carries forward thelegacy of those who came before.

I often find myself reflecting on the people who havemade a difference to the University of Guelph and feelespecially privileged to have witnessed the leadershipstyle of chancellor emeritus Lincoln Alexander. A lawyer,politician and former lieutenant-governor of Ontario,he is known throughout Canada for his tremendouslegacy of public service. He was U of G chancellor formore than 15 years and remains a role model and inspi-ration for everyone in the University community.

A lifelong advocate for education, he used his posi-tion at Guelph to encourage every new graduate toapply their skills for the betterment of society. He pushedUniversity administrators to increase diversity withinthe student body and helped us establish a chancellor’sscholarship that has for the last 10 years attracted topstudents who are aboriginal, persons with a disability ormembers of a visible minority.

His name also adorns Alexander Hall, our new envi-ronmental teaching and learning hub, as well as two high-level University awards: a medal for distinguished servicethat recognizes campus leaders who contribute to thequality of academic life at U of G, and a leadership awardgiven by the University to Canadians whose accomplish-ments emphasize the values of learning, collaboration,advocacy and service. Values inherent in Linc’s own legacy.

His 90th birthday party in January attracted manyadmirers who have themselves left important legacies atthe University of Guelph. I think of former presidentBill Winegard, who guided the campus through the earlyyears of university status, and my immediate predeces-sor, Mordechai Rozanski, who led a modern Universityof Guelph through a time of significant growth in repu-tation, research funding and the involvement of studentsin university governance.

Birthday guests included other men and womenwhose efforts are continuing to shape the University ofGuelph: administrators, governors and chancellors whodeveloped U of G into a world-class educational insti-tution; faculty, staff and alumni who are advancing theUniversity’s reputation; students who improve the campus

environment; and friends, public servants and donorswho provide funding, goodwill and advocacy forGuelph’s teaching and research priorities.

These are important legacies for the University. YetI write this knowing that these supporters give their tal-ents, their time and their money not for the sake of theinstitution itself but for the students it educates and theknowledge it creates. As with our chancellor emeritus,their legacies are defined by what is most important intheir lives and reflect their hopes for the future.

The University of Guelph has proven to be a valuablepartner for those who want to better the world in whichthey live. This has never been more evident than duringthe first months of The BetterPlanet Project. U of Gfaculty, staff, students, alumni and volunteers have beenrecognized for their ongoing efforts to improve the livesof other people. Their teaching and scholarship, researchand community service have been validated by donationsfrom more than 53,000 individuals and organizations.

Large gifts or small monthly pledges, each oneenriches our shared legacy of education and service – alegacy strengthened over time by progressive leaders,talented scholars and thoughtful donors working togeth-er to advance the University’s long-term mission.

Alastair Summerlee, President

the president’s pageU OF G ENJOYS LEGACY OF PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP

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Skin Bones Reveal How Dinosaurs Grew

B iomedical sc i ent i st MattVickaryous is interested in creatures

that wear their bones both inside and out-side their bodies: from leopard geckos toarmadillos to prehistoric dinosaurs.

He studies how skeletons develop, regen-erate and evolve to find out more about theway body tissues develop in all animals. He’scollaborating with an international groupof palentologists studying two sauropoddinosaurs — an adult and a juvenile —from Madagascar.

These long-necked plant-eaters mayhave used hollow “skin bones” called osteo-derms to store minerals needed to maintaintheir huge skeletons and to lay large eggclutches. Sediments around the fossils showthat the dinosaurs’ environment was high-ly seasonal and semi-arid, with periodicdroughts causing massive die-offs.

“Our findings suggest that these osteo-derms provided an internal source of calcium

and phosphorus when environmental andphysiological conditions were stressful,” saysVickaryous, who helped to interpret the resultsof CT scans and fossilized tissue cores takenfrom the dinosaurs.

Shaped like footballs sliced lengthwiseand about the size of a gym bag in the adult,these bones are the largest osteoderms everidentified. The adult specimen’s bone washollow, likely caused by extensive boneremodelling, he says. The juvenile specimen,however, was solid and showed little evidenceof remodelling. That suggests that osteodermsbecame more important mineral stores as theanimals grew.

Osteoderms were common amongarmoured dinosaurs, but rare among sauro-pod dinosaurs and have appeared only intitanosaurs. These massive plant-eatersincluded the largest-ever land animals. “Thisis the only group of long-necked sauropodswith osteoderms,” says Vickaryous.

Q uilting bees. Threshing bees. Barn-raisings. These are rural traditions that

we tend to look back on nostalgically. But there’s another side to these “bees,”

says history professor Catharine Wilson.Sometimes, everything went wrong. “Therewere serious, sometimes fatal accidents andfights frequently broke out. Some turnedinto major brawls. I even found informa-tion about 16 cases of murder at the beesor right afterwards.”

Wilson became interested in “bees”because she feels they provide windows intounderstanding how rural neighbourhoodsfunctioned and how families worked togeth-er to accomplish things they couldn’t havedone on their own. Most of the time itworked well, according to descriptions she’sfound in farm diaries. But as Wilson points

out, managing any large group of people isnever easy. Mix in heavy farm equipment,and perhaps some disasters are inevitable.

The public nature of the bees also madethem a popular place for people to airgrievances. When disagreements turned intofull-fledged brawls, “they would just grabwhatever weapons were handy – pitchforks,butchering knives, poles.

“When there was an accident, the com-munity rallied around to help and supportthe injured person,” Wilson says. When fightsgot out of hand, the others at the bee became“first responders” trying to end the fight andcontrol the damage. “If the aggressor was real-ly dangerous, they called in the authorities.”

Wilson’s “bees-gone-wrong” anecdotes– and what they tell us about neighbour-hoods – will be one chapter of a book she’swriting about work bees. Her project isfunded by a Social Science and HumanitiesResearch Council Grant.

HISTORY PROF DISCOVERS FARM LIFE WASN’T SO IDYLLIC

Prof. Catharine Wilson

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Prof. Matt Vickaryous and leopard gecko

in around

Summer 2012 5

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David Mirvish, a Canadian theatre producer, art collector and

lifelong supporter of the arts, will beinstalled as University of Guelph chan-cellor during the June 11 convocationceremony.

“David has been a dominant force inCanada’s artistic community for decadesand possesses great vision, ingenuity,imagination and enthusiasm,” says U ofG president Alastair Summerlee. “He isknown nationally and internationally forhis productions and artistic contributions.His experience, wealth of ideas and end-less creativity will be an asset in thesetimes of great challenges. He will also addlustre to our reputation as a place thatinspires creativity and engaged inquiry.”

As U of G’s eighth chancellor,Mirvish will preside at convocations,confer all University degrees and act asan ambassador. As the University’s seniorvolunteer, he will represent its intereststo all government levels.

“I am proud to become a memberof a university community that is mak-

ing a difference around the world,” saysMirvish. “I look forward to getting toknow the students, faculty, staff andalumni, and to being an ambassador forGuelph’s people, ideas and innovations.”

As a longtime arts patron, Mirvish isan internationally renowned collector ofmodern art and a supporter and devel-oper of Canadian theatre productionsand emerging visual artists. He owns andoperates Toronto’s Royal Alexandra The-atre, Princess of Wales Theatre, EdMirvish Theatre (formerly the CanonTheatre) and Panasonic Theatre. He alsooperated the renowned Old Vic theatrein London, England.

Mirvish ran David Mirvish Gallery,which supported contemporary art andCanadian artists, and operated an artbookstore for 38 years. He has beennamed to the Order of Ontario and theOrder of Canada, and has received hon-orary degrees from several universities.He has served as a trustee of the Nation-al Gallery of Canada and the RoyalOntario Museum.

U of G Welcomes New Chancellor

David Mirvish

GUELPH UNDERGRADWINS 3M AWARD

Second-year Guelph student Jolène Labbé

is one of 10 inaugural recipients of a pres-

tigious national fellowship designed to recognize

leadership and engagement in the undergradu-

ate learning experience. The award was creat-

ed by the Society for Teaching and Learning in

Higher Education (STLHE) and 3M Canada.

Winners receive $5,000 and will participate

in an educational retreat and a collaborative pro-

ject related to post-secondary education.

Labbé is studying international development,

biology and economics at U of G. She consid-

ers the primary role of education to serve soci-

ety and enhance social well-being. She has vol-

unteered in a medical clinic in India and helped

bring Vietnam War survivor Kim Phuc to cam-

pus to speak about the aftermath of the napalm

bomb attack on Phuc’s village.

Labbé also helped co-ordinate the Stop

Hate, Promote Acceptance campaign at U of

G, co-facilitated a first-year seminar course

called “Confronting Cultural Dilemmas,” and is

a Multi-Faith Team program facilitator, providing

resources for students about religious groups

on campus.

The 3M fellowship recipients will be formal-

ly recognized in June during STLHE’s annual

conference in Montreal.

Jolène Labbé

university

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P sychology profes sor MeghanMcMurtry is developing a new tool to

measure the level of fear children have whenreceiving a needle or other medical proce-dures. “Children undergo painful proceduresfrequently, but in many cases their pain andfear is still not measured and managed verywell,” she says.

Her Children’s Fear Scale (CFS) is adapt-ed from the Faces Anxiety Scale for assess-ing anxiety in adults. The new CFS pairs oneof five faces with a child’s emotional state.Children and parents are known to prefer“face scales” over numerical scales becausethey are easier for children to interpret.

McMurtry and other researchersobserved blood draws on 100 children at a

pediatric health-care centre. The childrenand their parents completed several ratingscales for fear and pain to help perfect theCFS. The scale is now available for othersto test it through the researchers’ website:pphc.psy.uoguelph.ca.

REDUCE KIDS’ FEAR OF NEEDLES?

“T he next Green Revolut ion

will come from below the ground.”So says plant agriculture professor ManishRaizada, whose recently published studysuggests corn growers aiming to use fertil-izer more efficiently look not just at the

plant’s ears or leaves but at its roots.He means “roots” both in the ground

and in historical time. The study by Raiza-da and his Guelph colleagues shows for thefirst time that modern and ancient cornplants adjust their fine root structures underlow nitrogen in different ways. That insightmight allow canny breeders to marry oldand new cultivars to yield strains that usethis key fertilizer ingredient more efficiently.

Raizada hopes his root studies will helpsave money and fertilizer for farmers indeveloped countries and, at the same time,point a way to assisting millions of poorgrowers in developing parts of the world.

Needing to look closely at root structures,the Guelph team used aeroponics to growtheir plants in a campus greenhouse. Green-house growers use this “air growing” methodto spray water and nutrients over exposedplant roots. The system allowed the Guelphresearchers to examine the plants’ “feet” with-out having to dig them up and damage themin the process. And they found some cultivarsadapt to varying nitrogen by growing moreor fewer roots, or by lengthening or shorten-ing those roots. Others alter the length ornumber of fine root hairs, where individualproteins move nutrients such as nitrogen andphosphorus into the plant. His team is nowlooking at genes coding for those proteins.

Growing plants in air makes rootseasier to study

FIRST-TIME BUYERS MAY BE SUBSIDIZINGOTTAWA’S BOTTOM LINE

Canada’s mortgage finance system, espe-

cially insurance requirements for first-time

buyers, needs a thorough review, according

to a new briefing paper by Prof. Jane Lon-

derville, Department of Marketing and Con-

sumer Studies. The paper was released by

the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an indepen-

dent public policy think-tank in Ottawa.

The submission to the federal government

of $14 billion between 2001 and 2010 by the

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

(CMHC) may have come at the expense of

buyers who have no choice but to pay the flat,

upfront mortgage insurance fee, says Lon-

derville, a mortgage finance and real estate

expert. “I believe we need to take a close look

at innovations in other jurisdictions to see if

we can make mortgage insurance in Canada

more affordable, while still preserving the secu-

rity of our existing system.”

She is also concerned about the policy of

providing full government backing for mort-

gages insured through CMHC but only 90 per

cent for mortgages insured through private

mortgage insurers. “Considering the skyrock-

eting demand for mortgage insurance, the

rationale for the government’s different treat-

ment of private mortgage insurers and the

CMHC is not clear,” she says. “We need to

know if there is any real disparity in the types

of loans insured by these two groups.”

Londerville suggests looking at criteria used

to lend to homeowners, oversight of CMHC,

and the pricing structure of mortgage insurance.

Prof. Manish Raizada

Prof. Meghan

McMurtry

Prof. Jane Londerville

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& thein around university

NOTEWORTHY• In February, the University of Guelph

presented honorary degrees to

renowned animal scientist, author

and autism spokesperson Temple

Grandin; philosopher, physicist and

environmental activist Vandana

Shiva; international business strate-

gist Peter Senge; and veterinarian

and poultry disease researcher

Richard Witter.

• A new bee species discovered in

Brazil has been named Chilicola

kevani in honour of U of G insect

ecologist Peter Kevan, whose lead-

ership in pollinator conservation has

also won him election to the Royal

Society of Canada and a gold medal

from the Entomological Society of

Canada.

• Prof. Adronie Verbrugghe came to

U of G in December from Ghent

University in Belgium as the first

holder of the Royal Canin Veterinary

Diet Endowed Chair in Canine and

Feline Clinical Nutrition. Her posi-

tion is devoted to the nutritional care

of dogs and cats.

• The first phase of a new livestock

Research and Innovation Centre

intended to model sustainable ani-

mal agriculture systems will be built

at the Elora Research Station

through a partnership with the Agri-

cultural Research Institute of Ontario,

the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture,

Food and Rural Affairs, and Dairy

Farmers of Ontario. Future phases

of the project may include research

facilities for swine, poultry and beef.

• U of G’s Hospitality Services received

one of five Ontario Local Food

Champions awards from the Friends

of the Greenbelt Foundation for its

efforts to support the local economy

by buying local food. U of G also

received a grant from the foundation

to build a small processing facility to

preserve in-season fruits and veg-

etables for winter use.

Summer 2012 7

E very year , the northernwheatear songbird flies from the

Arctic region of the Western Hemi-sphere all the way to sub-Saharan Africaand back, according to a new studyinvolving integrative biology professorRyan Norris.

This Alaskan migratory songbirdregularly travels some 29,000 kilome-tres across ocean and desert. Scaled forbody size, this is one of the longestround-trip migratory journeys by anybird in the world.

Norris completed the study withDavid Hussell from the Ontario Min-istry of Natural Resources and a teamof German researchers led by FranzBairlein at the Institute of AvianResearch.

Until recently, details about songbirdmigration remained unknown becausegeo-locators were too big or heavy toattach to such small birds. New smallerdevices now allow scientists to trackflights over several months and over longdistances. The researchers attached 1.2-gram geo-locators by leg-loop harnessto 46 northern wheatears in Eagle Sum-mit in Alaska and Baffin Island inNunavut. The devices recorded naturallight levels twice daily for 90 days inDecember, January and February.

The researchers also analyzed win-ter-grown feathers from birds sampledin the Arctic. Chemical signatures inthe feathers come from certain geo-graphic locations, allowing scientists tolearn where the birds spent the winterwithout directly tracking them.

The study found that Alaskanwheatears fly over Siberia and acrossthe Arabian Desert to reach Africa.Birds from the eastern Canadian Arc-tic cross about 3,500 kilometres of theNorth Atlantic, land in the UnitedKingdom, travel southward acrossEurope, and cross the MediterraneanSea and the Sahara Desert. The birds flyup to 290 kilometres per day.

“This is the only known terrestrialbird that physically links the two radi-cally different ecosystems of the OldWorld and the Arctic regions of theNew World,” says Norris.

Read U of G daily news at www.uoguelph.ca

Tiny Songbird Migrates from the Arctic to Africa

Northern wheatear

Prof. Ryan Norris

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F rom a green roof and rooftopwind turbine to a basement cistern col-lecting rainwater, a new four-storey

addition to the Thornbrough Building hasturned the School of Engineering facility intoa teaching lab for students learning about sus-tainable design.

A $1-million leadership gift from 1966engineering grad Wolf Haessler supported the50,000-square-foot addition as well as newundergraduate scholarships. “I want to helpmore qualified young people have a successfulcareer in engineering and help the School ofEngineering live up to and grow its reputa-tion,” said Haessler, the founder of Skyjack Inc.and a member of the school’s advisory board.

The School of Engineering is expandingin physical size and programming, with anemphasis on sustainability and innovationresearch. Enrolment has increased from justover 500 students in 2008 to more than 1,000last fall. “This growth would not be possible

without the generosity of people like WolfHaessler,” said director Hussein Abdullah.

Anthony Vannelli, dean of the College ofPhysical and Engineering Science, said engi-neering students will gain a competitive edgeby learning within a real-life context. They willhave supervised access to the building’s pent-house mechanical systems, for example. Besidesinspecting engineering and architecturaldesigns, students can obtain data about use ofsteam, electricity, water and gas.

They’ll visit the roof to compare energyproduction by wind turbine and solar panels,and will study plant species commonly used ingreen roof designs for moderating buildingtemperatures and filtering rainwater. In Thorn-brough, that water is collected and recycled forflushing toilets.

Besides teaching space, the new additionhouses sustainable energy labs, a roboticsresearch institute and a lab run by the Schoolof Computer Science.

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Alumnus Wolf Haessler, centre, and professor emeritus Walter Bilanski, right, converse with

Prof. Mohammad Biglarbegian, a specialist in mechatronics systems, during a tour of new

teaching facilities in the School of Engineering.

1964 CLASSBUILDS FOR THE FUTUREThe Ontario Agricultural College

(OAC) class of 1964 likes to build

a solid foundation. Several years

ago, the class funded construc-

tion of a sitting wall around the

conservatory gardens that also

recognizes the many other

alumni who contributed to the

greenhouse reconstruction and

themed gardens.

Now OAC ’64 classmates

are raising funds for a new post-

graduate scholarship marking

their 50th anniversary. Under the

Ontario Graduate Scholarship

program, the class gift will be

matched two-to-one by the

provincial government, creating

a named scholarship endow-

ment for graduate students in

agriculture or the environment.

The OAC ’64 anniversary

gift will reach fruition in 2014

as U of G celebrates both its

own 50th anniversary as a full-

fledged university and the final

year of The BetterPlanet Pro-

ject campaign.

Engineering Building Teaches Sustainable Design

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GUELPH FAMILY GIFTSUPPORTS ATHLETICS

A n anonymous gift from a local Guelph

family highlights the value placed on U of

G sports and sports facilities by the off-cam-

pus community. The $1.5-million donation will

pay for a new synthetic turf field at Alumni Sta-

dium and has kick-started renovations of the

stadium track and lighting. It also inspired a

grassroots campaign by the Guelph running

community that raised an additional $1 million

towards completion of the eight-lane track.

“The renovations to Alumni Stadium, com-

bined with the recent installation of the rugby

field, soccer complex and new field house,

mean that U of G now has one of the best out-

door and indoor field facilities in Canada,” says

athletics director Tom Kendall. “Not only will it

be a welcome addition to Gryphon athletics,

but it also will benefit the community. The syn-

thetic turf means that we can use the facilities

more extensively for University and communi-

ty events, regardless of weather.” The eight-

lane running track will allow the University and

the city to host internationally accredited events.

The stadium improvements will be com-

pleted by September; the total estimated cost

is $4.9 million. U of G’s athletics master plan

also includes building and renovating a student

fitness and recreation complex. The plan will

be implemented in phases as funding permits.

Summer 2012 9

Planet Project

Amajor contribution fromthe W. Garfield Weston Foun-dation will help ensure the

world’s food supply through establish-ment of the Rebanks Family Chair inPollinator Conservation in the School ofEnvironmental Sciences at the Univer-sity of Guelph’s Ontario AgriculturalCollege. A Canadian first, the endowedchair is supported by a $3-million gift inthe name of Wendy Rebanks, daughterof Garfield Weston and director of theW. Garfield Weston Foundation.

“The shortage of honeybees and oth-er pollinators is a serious threat to plantsand the food chain and to oureconomies,” says U of G president Alas-tair Summerlee. “This investment willsupport critical research and educationthat is a vital part of the University’sefforts to build a better planet. We thankthe W. Garfield Weston Foundation fortheir vision and generosity.”

Worldwide, about 300 cultivatedcrops are used for food, fodder and fibreproduction, worth an estimated $200 bil-lion-plus a year. About 80 per cent of

those plants rely on pollinators to setseeds and fruit.

Both the diversity and the numbersof insect pollinators are falling globallybecause of such factors as disease, pesti-cide exposure, malnutrition, habitat lossand climate change. In Canada, 28 speciesof butterflies and moths and two beespecies are known to be at risk.

The Rebanks Family Chair in Polli-nator Conservation at U of G will devel-op a world-class research program, raiseawareness of the importance and plight ofpollinators, inform public policy, help trainhighly qualified conservationists and agri-culturalists, and assist amateur beekeepers.

“For three generations, the W.Garfield Weston Foundation has main-tained a family tradition of helping char-itable organizations to make a differenceand enhance the quality of life for allCanadians,” said chairman W. Galen West-on. “We are excited to partner with theUniversity of Guelph on this importantinitiative that goes beyond pure researchto engaging all stakeholders in this crit-ical effort.”

Weston Foundation BoostsPollinator Research

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More than three-quarters of all flowering plants depend on pollinators for fertiliza-

tion – primarily bees but also butterflies, moths, flies, beetles and birds.

10 The Portico

Wherethe Runners

Are

Guelph running community has

Story by Andrew Vowles

character, passion and Olympic dreams

Cook’s Mill Road, southeastof Guelph. Backlit by a late afternoon sun,the runners lope over a hill, slender andlong-legged as gazelles. They descend thegravel hill and pause where Dave Scott-Thomas, coach of the Gryphon cross-coun-try and track and field team, is waiting. Run-ning at a relaxed pace, the group has arrivedhere from the parking oval in front of theUniversity’s athletics centre. That’s about fivekilometres: far enough for the runners tohave shaken out the cares of the day andloosened their limbs for their afternoontraining session.

For the next few minutes, the team goesthrough a series of what Scott-Thomas callscreatine-phosphate runs: short uphill bursts,first women, then men, as if the gazelles hadspotted a predator and fled en masse to higherground. At the top of the slope, the runnersturn and amble back down, recovering. Butthen one of them spots that carnivore againat the bottom, gives a secret signal and leadsthe herd off once more. After several reps, theytrot off at a more leisurely pace, this time tovanish down the road. They will spend thenext 90 minutes or so logging today’s requisitemileage on the back roads that carve up thissection of Puslinch Township.

It seems like a long distancefrom Cook’s Mill Road to the Olympic

Games in London this summer. But “dis-tance” is a relative term for these elite mem-bers of the Speed River Track and FieldClub centred around Scott-Thomas’s varsityprogram at U of G. The group includes twomarathoners already qualified for London2012 and several other Olympic prospectswho were chasing their own qualifying timesthis spring.

Reid Coolsaet, B.Comm. ’02, crackedthe marathon qualifying time of 2:11:30during the 2010 Scotiabank Toronto Water-front Marathon; last fall, he finished third atthe same event with a personal best of2:10:55. Last year’s race in Toronto also sawSpeed River teammate Eric Gillis earn a spotby running one second under the mark. Thiswill be the second Olympic appearance forGillis, who ran the 10-kilometre race in Bei-jing in 2008. It’s been 12 years since a Cana-dian appeared in the Olympic marathon, andnow two Guelph runners will line up inLondon this summer.

Ten years ago, Gillis was training at St.Francis Xavier University in his homeprovince of Nova Scotia. He and Coolsaetwere Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS)competitors then but already teammates atinternational events like the 2002 WorldStudent Games held in Spain; both repre-sented Canada that year, with Scott-Thomas as coach.

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12 The Portico

In 2008, Gryphon runner Reid Coolsaet

had hoped to qualify for the Beijing

Olympics in the five- or 10-kilometre event.

An injury early that year ruined his plan. Four

years later, he’s ready to line up among the

100-odd competitors from around the world

— including Guelph teammate Eric Gillis —

at the Olympic marathon in London this

summer. Says Coolsaet: “It’s really exciting

to be in that situation. There’s no other place

you want to be in that moment.”

He won his berth in London by qualifying

during the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront

Marathon in 2010. Running at the same

event last fall, he bettered his own time. He

had hoped to set a Canadian record, but

windy conditions played havoc with those

plans. No matter: the race highlight came

only a moment after his third-place finish. “I

turned and saw Eric coming. That’s when I

got excited. Once I saw (coach) Dave (Scott-

Thomas), it was really emotional. We had

planned for this for so long.”

By March, Coolsaet was running an

average 200 kilometres a week. He delayed

his departure for Arizona team training to

compete in the Around the Bay race in his

hometown of Hamilton, Ont. It was his first

showing in the oldest road race in North

America. He fell short of a record bid for the

30-kilometre course but won the race. Not

bad for a runner who had started at Guelph

as a so-so prospect in 1998, only a year

after Scott-Thomas had arrived to pick up

a nearly non-existent varsity program.

Coolsaet had racked up some success

at high school but was hardly a star. The

self-described late bloomer says: “I started

running cross-country in middle school. I

guess every kid dreams about the

Olympics.” He had heard about this new

coach at U of G but had been weighing a

couple of options. “I applied to Guelph late.

I had to drive my application in on the very

last day.” Coolsaet toured a nearly deserted

campus with Scott-Thomas.

During his first year, the runner watched

other members of the team from the sidelines

during CIS competition. Compare that with

his last varsity meet at the World University

Games in Turkey, where he won a silver

medal. In 2011, he received an award from

Athletics Canada. He credits Scott-Thomas

and the U of G team for his success.

“I owe my whole career to them,” says

Coolsaet, who worked at a bank after grad-

uating with a marketing degree but has

trained full-time since 2005. “When I entered

university, I wasn’t dreaming of the

Olympics. How do you repay a career you

never thought you’d have?”

The regard is mutual. Scott-Thomas and

his wife, Brenda, named their third daughter,

now seven, after the runner. He’s Big Reid;

she’s Little Reid. That tribute to Coolsaet

has more to do with his performance as a

human being than as an athlete, says the

coach, citing the runner’s hard work, disci-

pline and ethics. “He’s a good guy.”

Olympic marathon — 42 kilometres

Eric Gillis, left,

and Reid Coolsaet

Summer 2012 13

Other Guelph prospectsin middle and long distances were still aimingfor Olympic qualifying times when The Por-tico went to print. By mid-April, Kyle Boors-ma, B.Sc. ’11, was preparing for a five-kilo-metre race in Los Angeles near the end ofthe month. He needed to hit the Olympicstandard there and finish in the top three ata national meet in Calgary in late June.

Taylor Milne, a 1,500-metre specialist,was also looking for a qualifying time atmeets beginning in late April. Now 30,Milne moved to Guelph after finishingschool in North Carolina. This would be hissecond Olympics as well.

Genevieve Lalonde placed sixth in the3,000 metres at the world juniors in 2010and is the second-fastest Canadian steeple-chaser ever. A third-year U of G student inenvironmental sciences, she also needed toearn an Olympic berth by qualifying atmeets beginning in late April. “I love run-ning,” she says. “Getting to go to theOlympics is amazing.”

Also in the 3,000-metre steeplechase isAlex Genest. A transfer from the Universityof Sherbrooke, he is in his fourth year ofapplied nutrition. “It’s an amazing group ofpeople,” says Genest. “Everybody’s tryingfor the same goal: to get better.” By March,Genest had his requisite Olympic qualifyingtime and needed to hit B standards in a cou-ple of races this spring.

Middle-distance runner Hilary Stelling-werff was also looking for an Olympic ticket.Her 13th-place finish at the 2007 worldchampionships set her up for London, butshe also needed to compete in races thisspring. Her husband and training adviser isTrent Stellingwerff, a 2006 Guelph PhDgraduate in exercise physiology who was atwo-time All-Canadian runner with theGryphs and is a former assistant coach.

By mid-March, several of those runnerswere away at meets or training; a week later,the elite team would leave Guelph for amonth’s worth of high-altitude training inArizona. But today at least, many membersof what’s considered to be Canada’s bestrunning club are doing what they’ve beendoing for years — logging the requisite dis-tance on and around Cook’s Mill Road. SaysScott-Thomas: “There’s nowhere else in thecountry where people of that talent are run-ning up and down a dirty hill.”

Olympic track — 5,000 metres

K yle Boorsma finished his varsity career in 2011 as one of the most

decorated athletes in Gryphon and CIS track and field history. He

was Guelph’s first three-time Athlete of the Year. He says his highlights

were racking up five straight team championships in cross-country and

winning the individual title in 2010 (he had been runner-up in the two pre-

vious years). His specialty then was 1,500 metres. The 24-year-old hopes

to run the five-kilometre event in the London Olympics.

“I just love to compete,” says Boorsma, who began running in ele-

mentary school here in Guelph. He played hockey as well but decided

to focus on his running while at Centennial CVI. For varsity, he looked at

other schools, but having begun running with the Speed River club, he

knew where he wanted to be. Guelph lacked facilities, but it had coach

Dave Scott-Thomas.

“The whole program is pretty much his vision,” says Boorsma. “He’s

the one who drives success. He had the technical expertise as well as

the passion to take me where I needed to go.”

Since completing his undergraduate degree in human kinetics, he

has begun a master’s degree in the Department of Human Health and

Nutritional Sciences. He plans to study natural performance-enhancing

substances, notably beetroot juice supplements containing nitrates.

Boorsma says lessons translate between the track and the classroom,

including knowing how to handle pressure and unexpected situations.

Whether it’s lining up on the track, writing an exam or attending a job

interview, it’s important to find the right mental space, he says. “To run

well, you can’t be so nervous that it holds you back from doing what

you’ve trained to do. But you can’t be nonchalant either, because then

you won’t put yourself out there. It’s a fine line. That’s probably the most

important thing to learn.”

Kyle Boorsma

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Talent? There’s no dispute. U of Gclaims the most successful cross-country pro-gram among Canadian universities, havingcaptured the most CIS cross-country ban-ners: 19 in all, 11 men’s titles and eightwomen’s. Last fall, the Gryphon women’steam won its seventh CIS title in a row, andthe men’s team, its sixth.

On the track, both the men’s andwomen’s teams won silver at the 2012 CISchampionships. Those teams have medalledrepeatedly since 2007/2008, when both menand women won the CIS championships.That was the first national track and fieldtitle for both Gryphon teams and the firsttime in CIS history that one institutionswept both titles in the same year.

If Gryphon runners are decorated, so istheir coach. Since arriving at Guelph in1997, Scott-Thomas has won 24 Coach ofthe Year awards from Ontario UniversityAthletics and 21 from CIS. Besides turningaround U of G’s running program in thattime, he created the Speed River Track andField Club for student and local runners; it’snow considered the most successful club inthe country. Guelph is also home to one ofthree National Endurance Centres in Canadadeveloping future Olympians.

Assistant Gryphon coach Chris Moulton,B.Comm. ’05 and a former middle-distanceGryphon, says Scott-Thomas has a lot to dowith all that success. “He’s built a reallystrong environment here. His understandingof people — that’s what he does better thananybody else.”

There’s more at stake here than medalsand Olympic glory. Yes, these are superblyconditioned athletes, says Moulton, butthey’re part of a community of ordinaryhuman beings. Adds Scott-Thomas: “Thefact that, for us, it’s running is almost irrel-evant. It’s about pursuing something to ahigher level.” Medals and championships aregreat, he says, but that “something” is a run-ning culture he measures in ways other thanhardware and titles.

Arriving from Victoria to his alma materin 1997, Scott-Thomas took over a programwith almost no resources or budget. Perhapsthe most important thing he did was to lookbeyond the campus borders to launch theclub program. He now works with a supportstaff of about 20 specialists in massage andphysiotherapy, nutrition and mental skills.

14 The Portico

Above: Gryphon head coach

Dave Scott-Thomas is also

the founder and coach of

Guelph’s Speed River Track

and Field Club. Among the

elite athletes training with him

and vying for Olympic qualify-

ing times are, clockwise from

left: Taylor Milne, Genevieve

Lalonde, Hilary Stellingwerff

and Alex Genest. Below:

Gryphon women endure

creatine-phosphate runs on

Cook’s Mill Road.

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“We went from a non-existent low-resourcegroup to getting good to becoming one ofthe best ever.” Last fall, a story in the Globeand Mail ran beneath the headline: “IsGuelph Canada’s Fastest City?”

Today the Speed River club boasts about180 runners, including some 80 varsitymembers. Jeff Haller coaches the club’s 19-and-unders, numbering about 40 athletes.He also coached with the Gryphons until2007, when he decided to focus on the clubjuniors and his own school-teaching careerin Cambridge, Ont.

About half of those juniors live inGuelph; the rest come from Oakville, Mil-ton, Georgetown, Cambridge and otherplaces. Four of Haller’s own “graduates” arenow U of G varsity athletes. “Dave’s groupcreates quite a buzz, which causes people tocome from all over,” says Haller, a formercross-country and 1,500- and 3,000-metretrack specialist with the University of Wind-sor. “Dave’s passion is something that younotice within the first couple of minutes ofmeeting him. He’s very assuring; his man-nerisms allow you to believe.”

Guelph is also now home to the Cana-dian Centre for Running Excellence, a not-for-profit group working to promote run-ning in the city and area. Chair JohnMarsden credits Scott-Thomas with beingthe “connective tissue” among people andgroups in the city: “He’s one of the bestcommunity builders Guelph has ever seen.”Marsden organizes the Guelph Victors recre-ational running club, whose more than 200members are based at the track at St. JamesCatholic High School. They range in agefrom elementary schoolers to seniors. Mem-bers Christina Clark, B.Sc. ’99 and M.Sc. ’02,and David Brooks, M.Sc. ’98, have finishedamong the top 50 Canadian marathoners inrecent years.

The club is named for the late VictorMatthews, a longtime U of G classics pro-fessor and a former Gryphon coach who ledthe team to numerous championships. Hewas inducted into the Gryphon Club Hallof Fame in 1996.

Marsden relied on Scott-Thomas’s con-nections and reputation in leading a grass-roots fundraising drive this year for a newinternational-calibre track and field facilityat U of G’s Alumni Stadium. That campaignsparked donations from elite athletes, com-

munity members, alumni, friends and busi-nesses. It took just over a week to raise $1million to build an eight-lane facility for cer-tification by the International Association ofAthletics Federations. That project will bepart of a multimillion-dollar overhaul ofAlumni Stadium.

On a couple of days, the campaignreceived $100,000 without a major donor.On another day, Coolsaet pledged $10,000of his winnings from the Scotiabankmarathon in Toronto last year. Runninggroups and businesses have also donated,including Angus GeoSolutions Inc. inGeorgetown, Ont., which gave $150,000.Scott-Thomas says it was “a crazy week,”one that actually began years ago. “It tookme 15 years to get to one week. It was oneweek but a lifetime of connections; a lot ofpeople contributed to believe in the programand the dream.”

What does that dream look like? Simple,he says: a town that runs. “There’s somethingpowerful in what the group does that res-onates with the community. I can drive frommy house to here and pass 50 runners. Thisis becoming a running town. We’ve hadhundreds of different people coming togeth-er to support this; it really is a giant spectrumwe’ve tapped into.”

On its own, that new track on campuswon’t produce the next Olympic runner; afterall, Scott-Thomas has done just fine withoutit. But he says the new facility will help inattracting attention and recruits, as well asallowing the University to host internationallysanctioned meets. For all the local success,recruiting is still a scrap pitting varsity andclub programs from across North America.“I work as hard as ever at that,” he says.

One new recruit, Hamilton’s AnthonyRomaniw, had started at Dartmouth Collegein New Hampshire but returned to Canadaearlier this year. Weighing both U of G andthe University of Victoria, he had emailedScott-Thomas and received a prompt replyoutlining Guelph’s approach and programand where an 800-metre specialist might fit.“He gave me the best email a coach couldgive in that situation,” says Romaniw. “Wewere on the same page. He has some sort ofenergy about him. There’s a good mix oflaid-back and aggressive about him — it’skind of hard to explain.”

The human kinetics transfer will become

eligible to compete for Guelph next fall.Meanwhile, he’s joined that growing herdof gazelles at Cook’s Mill Road, rebuildinghis program with his new coaches to runmore efficiently and with more power. Hisgoal is a shot at the Rio de Janeiro OlympicGames in 2016.

Racingin thewater

Guelph swimmer Andrew Ford

will compete for Canada at the

London Olympics in the 200-

metre individual medley. A

member of the Guelph Marlin

Aquatic Club and the varsity

Gryphons in 2010-2011, he is

coached by U of G head

coach Don Burton. Ford qual-

ified April 1 at the Canadian

Olympic swimming trials in

Montreal; his time was 2:01:18.

With Olympic trials scheduled

after The Portico press dead-

line, other Gryphon alumni may

also win spots on the Canadi-

an team. If you read one of

their success stories, please

send it to alumni@uoguelph.ca

so U of G can recognize their

achievement.

Summer 2012 15

Poet and novelist Alison Pick finds herself in family history

Story by Andrew VowlesPhoto by Kevin Kelly

That’s not all they left her. Decades after hergreat-grandparents lost their lives in the Nazicamps of the Second World War, Alison Pickfound something else hidden inside her“own small life.” Two things, actually, bothof which would become central parts of theCanadian author whose second novel, Far toGo, is having a far-reaching impact. One washer family’s buried Jewish identity, whichsurfaced a half-century after the Holocaustwhile Pick was growing up in Kitchener,Ont. The other began to unfold near the endof her studies at the University of Guelph.

That was in early 1999, the last year ofPick’s psychology major. Having served asa counsellor in Raithby House that year, shehad made plans to return to the peer coun-selling service in the fall. For that summer,she’d agreed to help paddle on a 4,000-kilo-metre trek across part of Canada to raisemoney for mental health. The canoe trip,involving a friend and Pick’s younger sister,Emily – a biology student at U of G –would unfold as planned. But before that,something else occurred in that last wintersemester to change not just her counsellingplans but her entire career.

Pick signed up for a creative writingcourse with Prof. Janice Kulyk Keefer in theSchool of English and Theatre Studies. Howmuch had she written before that? Nothing.Nothing? Seated in a coffee shop near herToronto Annex home, Pick shakes her head.OK, there’d been a few bits – and there wasthat instructor’s comment written on an ear-lier assignment: “If you’re not an Englishstudent, you should be one.” But she hadn’tviewed herself as a writer.

Kulyk Keefer, on the other hand, knewwhat she was looking at. By then, theGuelph professor had published nearly a Hid

den identi

ty…

16 The Portico

Summer 2012 17

dozen books of her own, including a storycollection, The Paris-Napoli Express, and sev-eral novels, including The Green Library, Mar-rying the Sea, and Honey and Ashes.

Remembering Pick, the now retired pro-fessor writes by email: “When Alisonenrolled in my course, I could see that herwriting showed great promise. She had astriking way of looking at things and ofexpressing her perceptions. But she also waseager to learn as much as she could abouthow to make her writing better than italready was, and to discover what matteredmost to her in terms of subject matter.”

Something in that elective course workedfor her student. “Suddenly everything camealive for me,” says Pick. She began writingpoems, including one that won a prize in acontest at the downtown Bookshelf.

Life and death, happiness, sorrow: thosewere the subjects that Pick explored in aseries published in 2003 in her first volume,Question & Answer. In that collection she alsobegan probing roots and her sense of identitythrough several pieces about her father andhis displaced family, including some thatwould foreshadow the themes of Far to Go.

Says Kulyk Keefer: “I remember partic-ularly the poems she started to write abouther grandmother, poems which seemed tounlock a whole world of memories andquestions about family history.”

Other poems in that debut collectionwent in a different direction, drawing onPick’s trekking experiences, including earliercanoe trips into northern Quebec and theNorthwest Territories. Impressions fromthose travels also found their way into herfirst novel, The Sweet Edge, published in 2005.That novel traced the separate lives of ayoung couple one summer – a girl workingin an urban art gallery and her boyfriendtaking a solo canoe trip into the Arctic.

The Sweet Edge was a Globe and MailTop100 Book of the Year. Pick’s first poetry col-lection had garnered the 2002 BronwenWallace Memorial Award, and individualpieces won her the National MagazineAward and the CBC Literary Award.

In 2008, she published her second poetrycollection, The Dream World. By the time shesettled in Toronto with her husband, DeganDavis, several years later, it was time to tackleanother story that had long been formingin her mind.

What They Left MeFor Oskar Bauer1880�20/1/1943& Marianne Grünfeld Bauer1894�20/1/1943

A passion for remembrance. Two names on a monument

at the synagogue in Prague.

The date they were deportedto the death camp.

Their twenty-year-old daughter who got out.

Her son: my father. My own small life. The first light snow of winter,

their ashes at my back.

…hid

den ta

lent

18 The Portico

Pick was still a young teen when shebegan putting together things about herfamily that she’d overheard from her rela-tives. But it was only after her grandmotherdied in 2000 that she and her father felt theycould begin exploring their mutual interestin the family story.

After Hitler’s troops had occupied theCzech Sudetenland in 1938, her grandpar-ents had fled Europe. By the time theyarrived in Canada, they had left behind notjust a country but their Jewish identity. Ali-son’s father, Thomas, and her uncle wereraised as Christians, with no mention of theloss of her grandmother’s parents inAuschwitz.

Speaking of her father, Alison says, “Hegrew up not knowing he was Jewish.” Hehad learned the story by the time Alison andEmily arrived, but the girls grew up in a sec-ular household in Kitchener.

Alison’s initial foray into the past yieldedsome of the poems in her first collection,including “What They Left Me.” But shewanted to explore something more on alarger canvas. Not a memoir, not yet. Instead,she decided she would write a novel basedloosely on her ancestors’ story and thetheme of family secrets.

In Far to Go, the fictional Bauers flee theoccupied Sudetenland after the 1938Munich Agreement. Reaching the Czechcapital, Prague, they work to save themselvesand their six-year-old son, Pepik, who endsup on a Kindertransport out of the country.It took Pick three years to write the novel– an odyssey that, in some ways, involvednot just one traveler but two.

His discussions with Alison had inspiredThomas to take his own historical journey.In turn, his discoveries wound their wayback into his daughter’s novel. He piecedtogether documents that traced his parents’travels between 1938 and their landing inQuebec three years later. He also foundunpublished memoirs by survivors fromCzechoslovakia.

He even connected Alison with a mannamed Tommy Berman, whose father hadmanaged the textile factory begun by hergrandfather in Europe before the war. Bermanhad left Czechoslovakia on a Kindertransportand arrived in Scotland as a preschooler (hewas an elderly man by the time Pick methim); subsequent letters between the boy’s

parents and his adoptive family helped hershape the youngster in Far to Go.

Published in Canada by House of AnansiPress, the novel has also been published inthe United States, the United Kingdom,Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republicand Brazil. The novel itself was shortlistedfor the prestigious Man Booker Prize andwas a Top 10 of 2010 book at NOW Maga-zine and The Toronto Star. Both of Pick’s nov-els have been optioned for film.

She says the awards and positive attentionare gratifying, but she tries to keep them inperspective. “Your main task as a writer isto become your own best reader and editorand try not to give too much credence tooutside reviewers,” she says. “You have towrite what is pleasing to you.”

She stresses that point when teaching inthe Humber School for Writers’ CreativeWriting by Correspondence program. Herown favourite writers include novelistsEmma Donoghue, Jamie O’Neill and SusanMinot, and poets Jack Gilbert, CharlesWright and Jane Hirshfield.

Referring to a “collaborative process”between writer and characters, Pick says sheaims to let her characters grow onto thepage. Easiest to come in Far to Go wasAnneliese, Pepik’s mother, who shares manytraits with Pick’s late grandmother.Anneliese’s husband, Pavel, stands for theimportance of nationalism and Judaism: “Iunderstood Pavel from the beginning.”More slow to develop was Marta, the fam-ily’s nanny, whose actions send their lives inunexpected directions. Pick says it wasimportant to get Marta right, as her charactergrew into the viewpoint for wartime eventsin Czechoslovakia.

In an interview about her novel withUniversity of Chicago historian Lucy Pickthat was published on her cousin’s blog(Lucy Pick Books), Alison says: “The ideaof an unreliable narrator was appealing. Ioften turn to Jack Hodgins’ A Passion forNarrative – my novelists’ bible – and I thinkit was his suggestion to view the main char-acters, in my case Pavel and Anneliese,through outside eyes.”

While writing the novel, she also turnedto her historian cousin for comments aboutdetail and accuracy.

A number of readers have confessed tochoking up over the portrayal of the Bauer

family’s plight in Far to Go, particularlyPepik’s journey. “I have to say that it isalways very gratifying for me to know thebook has struck an emotional chord,” saysPick. “The main thing I myself as a readerwant out of a book is for it to make me feelsomething, so I’m especially glad to havebeen able to do the same for my readers.”

Says U of G’s Kulyk Keefer: “You can’tteach anyone to become a writer; what youcan do is to create a community of peoplewho want to learn about the process of writ-ing through intensive practice and ‘appliedcuriosity.’ This includes reading, as writers,the work of ‘the greats’ and of one’s peers;coming to understand writerly techniquesand strategies; and learning to apply themin one’s own work.”

Last spring, Far to Go won the CanadianJewish Book Award for fiction. That awardwas especially poignant for the author. In2009, she and her husband converted toJudaism. Pick says she was thrilled to learnabout the award. “I hope it will help thebook get into the hands of the readers whowill most enjoy and relate to it. SinceJudaism goes far back in my family but isfairly new to me individually, I felt a certainlevel of acceptance on winning it.”

Pick's three-year-old daughter, Ayla, cansometimes disrupt her writer mother’sschedule, but Pick says she still writes everyday. “I go to bed at night and can’t wait toget to my desk the next morning.” She’snow working on a memoir of sorts, tenta-tively titled Between Gods, incorporating herfather’s story and his own quest into thefamily’s heritage.

Meanwhile, her father’s labours have alsoyielded his own book: an album of familyphotographs, a genealogy and his own writ-ings copied for family members, includinghis daughters. Near the end of the album,their great-grandmother, Marianne Bauer,appears in a photo taken sometime in 1942;on the facing page is a copy of Alison’s ele-giac poem “What They Left Me.”

Glancing through her copy of the album,Alison identifies the faces in the black andwhite photos. She lingers over the pages,pointing out the family resemblance sharedbetween her and several generations por-trayed in her father’s album. “It’s meaningfulto me that he took the time to put it together.”

Summer 2012 19

There is an American elm treethat has stood, majestic and for-midable, on the University ofGuelph campus for more than

100 years. The tree has witnessed a century

of change. It towers near Macdonald Hall,its branches and leaves creating a massive,cascading umbrella of green in the sky.

The elm has managed to live, year afteryear, while nearly all of its kind has died, the

victims of Dutch elm disease. The importedfungal infection is so deadly that it has dec-imated the American elm population thathad dominated the North American land-scape for centuries.

U of G researchers clone a century-old survivor New institute advances in vitro technologySTORY BY LORI BONA HUNT

20 The Portico

“The wonder is that we can see these treesand not wonder more.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before Dutch elm disease took its toll inCanada, American elms were among the mostpopular and recognizable trees in Ontario,lining boulevards and adorning city centres.Now 95 per cent of them are gone, and mostthat remain are struggling to stay alive.

Yet the tree near Macdonald Hall hasendured. It possesses something the othersdid not, a natural edge that helps it stand upto the biggest killer of its species.

First discovered in the United States inthe 1930s and Canada in the 1950s, Dutchelm disease interferes with water transportand stops nutrients from circulating in thetree. Only about one in 100,000 Americanelms appear to be able to tolerate thepathogen naturally.

U of G's elm specimen extends nearly 80feet into the air. The secret of its success lieswithin: tangled in its roots, creeping throughthe branches to the buds of new leaves.

“Any elm tree that has survived initialand subsequent Dutch elm epidemics hastolerance to the disease and is even poten-tially disease-resistant,” says U of G plantscientist Praveen Saxena. But it is this tree,the gentle giant at the north end of campus,that holds a key to developing conservationtechnologies for reviving the American elmacross Canada and beyond.

Tissue samples from its buds are beinggrown into new plantlets that are geneticclones. If the old adage holds, these “chipsoff the old block” should indeed be like theirparent — natural survivors, able to avoid ortolerate Dutch elm disease.

Cell culture technology could then allowresearchers to select germplasm with thedesired traits, eventually developing agermplasm that is highly resistant to Dutchelm disease. This process may also broadenour understanding of the basis of plant resis-tance to pathogens, says Saxena.

Finding ways to produce stronger, hearti-er elms to reintroduce in Canada hasbecome his quest in recent years. “Despitethe knowledge of tissue culture methods fordecades, natural American elm trees havebeen extremely difficult to clone.”

saxena ’s pursuit goes beyond bringingback the American elm. Perfecting cloningtechnologies may also help protect and con-serve the Earth’s other endangered plantsand trees. And there has never been a morecritical time. “Up to 50 per cent of theworld’s plant species face the danger ofextinction within three decades due to dis-ease, pollution, climate change and otherhuman activities,” he says.

Such rapid loss of plant diversity threatensthe health and resilience of all ecosystems andthe quality of human life. “The need to con-serve endangered plant species is crucial andurgent. We owe it to future generations.”

Saxena has moved closer to his goal witha groundbreaking discovery this spring andthe launch of a brand-new research instituteat U of G – both achieved with a little helpfrom his friends. Those friends include themembers of his plant cell technology lab andhis co-investigator, plant agriculture professorAlan Sullivan; Kevin Hall, U of G’s vice-president (research); and Philip and SusanGosling of the Gosling Foundation, a non-profit organization for ecological preserva-tion and environmental education.

Saxena is known internationally for hiswork protecting valuable plant speciesthrough in vitro multiplication and preser-

vation; he met the Goslings through Sullivanabout three years ago. “It was a turning pointin my career,” says Saxena. The couple sharea fondness for trees and an understanding ofthe science needed to preserve and conservethem.

In fact, the Goslings have supported otherU of G efforts to save the American elm.The late Henry Kock, former interpretivehorticulturist at the Arboretum, started theElm Recovery Project in about 1998. Herecruited volunteers to search for survivingelm trees in Ontario to create a seed orchardand cultivate disease-resistant trees. TheGoslings supported Kock’s efforts as well asother research and education programs inthe Arboretum.

When Saxena met the couple,SusanGosling, who has a master’s degree in plantgenetics, was looking for a research projectinvolving disease resistance; she hoped tohelp save her husband’s beloved elm trees.

During their first meeting, Saxena recalls,Philip Gosling kept reminiscing about howelm trees were once abundant in Guelph.Several of the giants had grown in his gar-den, and a northern oriole used to build anest in the same tree each year.

That elm is gone now, and so is the oriole. “Philip is a very direct man,” Saxena says.

“He listened to what we had to say and thenasked, ‘If the propagation technology is asgood as you say it is, then why isn’t anyonedoing anything about my elm trees?’”

saxena remembers explaining the com-plexity of the research to the Goslings andthe challenge in finding private-sector sup-port for expensive work whose only appar-ent beneficiary is the environment. Mostfunding candidates want a better return ontheir investment, says Saxena. “But PhilipGosling said that hearing the musical greet-ing call of the oriole each spring was a goodenough return for him.”

“It was with considerable despair that wesaw these wonderful trees die,” says Gosling.“Just think about how a tree sits in the envi-ronment: it’s a home for insects, for birds, itproduces oxygen, all these wonderful things

Profs. Praveen Saxena, left, and Alan

Sullivan with cloned plantlets

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“Look deep into nature, and then you willunderstand everything better.” Albert Einstein

that we enjoy and take for granted.”Susan Gosling agrees. “When a tree has

Dutch elm disease and needs to be cutdown, there is a fair bit of sadness; that’s oneof the main reasons why I thought to lookat disease resistance. It seems very valuable,not only esthetically in terms of how an elmtree makes the landscape look but also itsrole in the environment.”

The Gosling Foundation pledged $500,000initially to support the Guelph researchers’efforts to develop new cloning techniques forAmerican elm trees. But Saxena knew it wouldtake more, both dollar- and research-wise, toaccomplish what he wanted to do.

His break came two years later during aresearch trip to Jamaica when he met KevinHall. Hall had been newly appointed as U ofG’s vice-president of research, but this wastheir first meeting. Saxena explained his dreamof taking his elm tree research to the next lev-el, applying the techniques to other speciesand involving researchers around the world.

Hall recalls: “I told him that this was big-ger than what he could do in his lab. It calledfor a full-fledged institute where we couldbuild a team beyond Guelph. This isadvanced science that can make a differencesocially, culturally and scientifically. It has thepotential to start a whole new vein ofresearch at our university that would helpbetter the planet and distinguish us from allother universities that do plant research.”

Back at U of G, there followed numerousmeetings involving the Goslings, Hall and Sax-ena. This March, the University announcedthe creation of the Gosling Research Institutefor Plant Preservation (GRIPP). Directed bySaxena, GRIPP is supported by a $1.5-milliondonation from the Goslings through the Bet-terPlanet Project, the University’s $200-millionfundraising campaign.

The institute’s scientists will work to helpthreatened plants around the world. Theyplan to develop international collaborations,and run education, outreach and service pro-jects to teach people about the value of con-servation, locally and globally.

“Creating the institute opens the door forus to bring new research partners to the table

and to attract additional private- and public-sector partners,” says Hall.

At the institute’s official opening, PhilipGosling said it’s time to get a “GRIPP” onthe loss of biodiversity. “We can despairabout this, we can regard it as inevitable, orwe can say: ‘Let’s do something, let’s savewhat we can while we can.’ And I think wecan do it. We can do research, we can startdeveloping and cloning disease-resistanttrees, we can understand how trees andplants develop resistance.”

a couple of weeks after the GRIPP launch,Saxena, Sullivan and their research teammade history, announcing they had success-fully cloned American elm trees that hadsurvived repeated epidemics of Dutch elmdisease. The breakthrough was publishedMarch 29 in the Canadian Journal of ForestResearch, which is produced by the NationalResearch Council of Canada.

Starting with shoot tips and dormantbuds from that Macdonald Hall elm on cam-pus, the scientists produced genetic clonesof the parent tree. It’s the first known use ofin vitro culture technology to clone budstaken directly from a mature American elm.

Their feat also highlighted what GRIPPcan do to preserve and conserve plantspecies, Saxena says. In vitro conservationtechnology is efficient and better than seedbanks for conserving many plant species.Hundreds of genotypes with known visiblefeatures can be conserved in a safe smallspace and can be easily propagated.

Saxena, Sullivan and Susan Goslingworked on the project with Guelph post-doctoral researchers Mukund Shukla andMaxwell Jones, and with Chunzhao Liu ofthe Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The researchers also announced that theyhad perfected a way to conserve germplasmover the long term. A germplasm repositorynow contains 17 accessions collected fromsurviving mature elms across Ontario,including the specimen on campus.

The research team will now focus onidentifying and developing a germplasm thatis highly resistant to Dutch elm disease.

“While great progress has been made andcontinues to be made by U.S. breeders work-ing to develop cultivars tolerant of Dutchelm disease, much more remains to be done,”Saxena says. “To our knowledge, no truly dis-ease-resistant germplasm currently exists, per-haps due to our lack of knowledge of com-plex plant-pathogen interactions.”

Developing a resistant germplasm wouldallow scientists to grow thousands of genet-ically identical plants with the same diseaseresistance, aiding in elm breeding andbiotechnology programs around the world.

Cloning the American elm tree will alsoserve as a model for propagating and pre-serving other plants at risk of extinction,Saxena says. He fears ash and maple treesmay be next; numerous diseases and humanactivity are taking their toll.

And so it started — but will not end —with the majestic elm that has made U of Gits home for more than a century. This giantsurvivor has provided, figuratively and liter-ally, the buds of something that will growmuch larger.

That’s the beauty of it, Susan Goslingsays. “If we are able to do this with the elm,there are so many more species that needhelp. This can provide the motivation, theinspiration to carry on. We can be optimisticabout the future.”

Philip and Susan Gosling

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22 The Portico

I t was the best of t imes ; it was the worst oftimes. Charles Dickens didn’t pen those words about

the Canadian Arctic, but they’re a fitting description ofwhat it’s like to be a Dickens-reading biologist studyingseals in the Great White North.

“I take lots of books,” says Mike Hammill, B.Sc. ’78,a research scientist for the Department of Fisheries andOceans Canada (DFO). “You get into a situation wherethe best thing is just to sit and wait. You wait until theweather turns good or you wait until the animals showup. The best strategy is just to be patient. To cope withthat, I take books. I remember when I first started; I wentthrough a whole slew of Dickens books, anything thatwas 500 pages long. As long as I have a book to read, itdoesn’t matter. I can sit and wait.”

Currently based in Mont-Joli, Que., near the mouthof the St. Lawrence River, Hammill was an undergradat U of G when he first heard the call of the wild. Hestarted working at DFO’s Montreal office soon aftercompleting his zoology degree and went on to pursuepost-graduate studies on Arctic wildlife at McGill Uni-versity.

When he heard about a summer job opportunitywith DFO, he boarded a plane to Montreal and neverlooked back. “I remember asking my dad if I could bor-row $100 for the flight,” says Hammill.

That loan was worth every penny. His first assignmentwas a six-month trip to the southeast corner of BaffinIsland. It was a dream job for a starry-eyed recent grad,but it was also an exercise in survival and isolation fromhis family and friends. Laptop computers and cellphonesdidn’t exist, and neither did email and text messaging.Even regular mail was a luxury. “In the first six weeks,we had two or three air mail drops,” he says, but theyhad no means of sending mail. Their food was also airdropped.

The work was physically demanding and the livingconditions were harsh. “One of the first things younotice in the North is the wind,” he says. Their tentsdidn’t offer much protection from the elements. Whilemapping seal holes, they would set up their camp onthe ice, starting with layers of caribou skins, foam mat-tresses and sleeping bags. They covered the tents withblankets to absorb any condensation, covered the blanketswith tarps and built a wall of snow around the base ofthe tent to block the wind.

Three men would sleep in the tent along with a cou-ple of dogs. When a storm hit, there was nowhere to go.“You don’t do anything in a storm,” says Hammill. “This

was before the Internet, so you’d read, and you’d read,and you’d read.”

When the team moved further south, their researchfocus switched to biological sampling, which involvedcapturing seals in the water to collect specimens. Ham-mill faced different but equally challenging conditionsat sea. He once awoke to the sound of their boat creak-ing under the pressure of ice that had surrounded thevessel overnight.

While working off the southeast coast of Greenland,finding and capturing seals was a challenge. The teamspent up to 14 hours a day tracking seals in a 28-footfibreglass boat. No matter how much Hammill thoughthe knew about seals, there was always something newto learn. When harp seal pups feel threatened, they playpossum, but Hammill thought the pups outgrew thebehaviour in adulthood. When he tried to capture adultseals, he was puzzled when they froze like icicles. “Wereally thought there was something wrong with theseseals. As it turns out, this is just a normal reflex that theyhave.”

In addition to seals, Hammill has studied Arctic foxesand other wildlife. Two years ago, he studied the Inuitsubsistence hunt of beluga whales in James Bay. “Ourinterest is determining a quota level that would enablethem to meet what they need as far as their food require-ments are concerned and, at the same time, protect theresource.”

Although Hammill is still involved in beluga studiesin northern Quebec, he now spends most of his timein the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he studies the pop-ulation dynamics of harp, grey, hooded and harbour sealsto ultimately balance the needs of fisheries and marinemammals. “Our research results often have a directimpact on the livelihood of Canadians,” says Hammill,who has collaborated with scientists in Greenland andNorway.

Hammill has also supervised more than 35 M.Sc. andPhD students and post-doctoral researchers. “Workingwith students is fun,” he says. “I am able to provide themwith an opportunity to study animals and meet peoplein areas where most people do not get to visit, as wellas share some of my knowledge and experience. Inreturn, they share their energy and enthusiasm, and I getto see how they develop as they move on. Some of themcontinue in science, and that is particularly rewarding.”

Hammill also studies the potential impact of climatechange on seals. He toured the Gulf of St. Lawrence byhelicopter in March 2011 and January 2012 to monitor

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Amike hammill

Mike Hammill approaches a sedated male hooded seal in the Magdalen Islands; the seal weighs close to 350 kg.

harp seal numbers. Although the population is currentlyat its highest level since the 1950s, that could change ifice conditions continue to deteriorate. “Although theyare quite abundant right now, harp seals need ice forreproduction,” he says. “If they don’t have it, mortalityseems to be extremely high.”

Although grey seals can reproduce on land, harp sealsneed ice to give birth and nurse their pups. Once thepups have been weaned, they need two to three weeksto mature before they can survive the frigid water. Pups

that don’t get enough time to nurse are smaller andweaker. If they constantly get swept into the water, theycan become fatigued and drown.

Since the life expectancy of a seal is 25 to 30 years,one or two years of poor ice conditions won’t havemuch of an impact, but several years could be detrimen-tal. Hammill says seals may adapt by migrating north toLabrador or Greenland, adding that wherever they go,he will follow.

BY SUSAN BUBAK

24 The Portico

He walked into the campusradio station in 1979 as a stu-dent named Nick Taylor and

has been there ever since as NickyDread, host of CFRU’s The CrookedBeat. His reggae-themed program nowoccupies a Thursday evening slot,between Klangteppich (profiles of Ger-man classical composers) and theextreme metal thrashing of ForeverDeaf.

“What you’ll hear on CFRU youwon’t hear anywhere else,” saysMargie Taylor, M.Sc. ’09, a Guelph res-ident who spent decades in Canadianbroadcasting, notably with the CBC.She discovered the campus stationwhile creating a radio documentaryfor her master’s degree on rural com-munities. Since then, she has served onthe CFRU board of directors and isnow volunteering as interim commu-nity outreach co-ordinator.

The two Taylors aren’t related, butboth enjoy CFRU’s range of musicprograms, as well as documentary-style and talk radio programs. Amongits “Guelph-centric” programs are Beyond the Ballot Box on local poli-tics, Campus/Community Lectures and even Cycology, a new showabout bike culture. On a globalscale, Migrant Matters covers cross-border issues.

“Tune in to the radio station at anygiven time and it could be anything,”says station manager Peter Bradley, BA’09, who co-hosts a morning showcalled Books for Breakfast.

He started with the station as a stu-dent volunteer and stayed after com-pleting a history degree. “This was oneof my first stops on campus,” says

Bradley, who grew up near Ottawa. He’s among some 350 station vol-

unteers; about half of them are on-air.Volunteers are split half-and-halfbetween U of G students and com-munity members. “When you tune into CFRU, it’s a volunteer fromGuelph representing what’s impor-tant to them,” says Bradley.

Reggae-loving Nicky Dreadworks by day as systems databasemanager with the WellingtonCatholic District School Board, buthis broadcast career precedes that joband even CFRU’s FM licence.“Radio Gryphon was the callingname,” says Taylor, who grew up in

Guyana and attended school inEngland before arriving in Guelph.

He launched The Crooked Beat in1981, an eclectic mix of music that heoften connects with current events;recently he discussed the Joseph Konyviral video, justice and freedoms. “Icarry around 16 crates of vinyl andthe same in CDs.” He hears fromlocal listeners and some as far away asArgentina, Cyprus and Japan.

CFRU airs across Guelph,Cambridge and Kitchener-Waterlooat 93.3 FM and online at cfru.ca. Youcan also listen around the clock onRogers TV Digital Cable channel 948.

BY ANDREW VOWLES

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Campus radiodoesn’t miss a beat

From left, Peter Bradley, Nick Taylor and Margie Taylor

uof guelph

Summer 2012 25

S tudents, alumni, donors,

faculty, staff and friends of theUniversity came together in Februaryfor a celebration of philanthropy andacademic excellence at the annual uni-versity-wide awards presentation. Oneof the awards highlighted was the newlyestablished Kenneth W. Knox Leader-ship Travel Grant.

Colleagues and friends of Knoxestablished the endowed scholarship inhis honour to benefit diploma, under-graduate and graduate students at theOntario Agricultural College. Theendowment was initiated by alumnusBruce Archibald, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’79.

Knox, who is a three-time Guelphgraduate, was guest speaker at theawards event. In his remarks, he con-gratulated students and encouragedthem to keep in touch with theUniversity to communicate theachievements they make as a result of

their education and the support theyhave received from donors.

Other new awards that were rec-ognized included the CIBC Healthand Science Scholarships, the LinamarEngineering Entrance Scholarships,the Truscott Family Scholarship inJustice Studies, and the Tony and AnneArrell Scholarships.

Undergraduate students Jae Perez and Marie Park are the first recipients of

the CIBC Health and Science Scholarships. The $5,000 awards allowed them

to spend the summer working with a U of G research team studying biological

aspects of cancer. From left: CIBC branch manager Terri Millar, U of G provost

and vice-president (academic) Maureen Mancuso, Perez and Park, and CIBC

branch manager Steve Hatzipantelis.

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U of G benefitsfrom dedicated volunteers

T he University of Guelph enjoys a deep

connection with alumni from across the

decades. Four or more years of student

involvement often blossoms into a passion

for alumni volunteerism. Whether it is men-

toring students, acting as a regional ambas-

sador, assisting with convocation, joining an

alumni association or speaking at a career

night, alumni are giving back to their alma

mater in ways that are meaningful and per-

sonal. The University is also benefitting from

the committed volunteer leadership of The

BetterPlanet Project campaign cabinet — a

select, diverse group of alumni, business and

community leaders, and donors who are

committed to the University’s vision and mis-

sion. This is an impressive group of individuals

who will help guide the University through its

fundraising efforts for the duration of the Bet-

terPlanet campaign.

I would like to thank the 53,000 people

who have already contributed to The Better-

Planet Project. With only 20 months left in the

campaign, we need to call on all U of G alum-

ni to help us reach our $200-million goal by

making a donation or increasing an earlier

gift. With your support, the University of

Guelph will create transformative change in

research, teaching and learning as our com-

munity provides answers to important chal-

lenges facing the world today. To make your

donation, please visit www.thebetterplanet-

project.ca.

Joanne Shoveller

Vice-President, Advancement

University-wide awards celebrate philanthropy

Sociology professor Sally Humphries,

right, congratulates award winner Aditi

Datta, a master’s student in biostatistics.

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Macdonald Hall opened its doors in January to 25 alumnae who used to call the

residence home. Mac Hall student leaders and grads from across the decades shared

stories about residence life, friendship and the occasional prank. They also took a trip

down memory lane with a tour of the residence and a reception that included a look at

Mac memorabilia.

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Celebrating alumniexcellence

UGAA had the pleasure of recognizing

alumni achievements at the Celebration

of Excellence held in March – a combined

event featuring the annual UGAA Awards of

Excellence and the 25th anniversary of the

President’s Scholarship program. It was inspir-

ing to hear about the accomplishments of

proud U of G grads from across the decades.

The UGAA award recipients are pro-

filed on the next page; Margaret

Dickenson, Tricia Bertram Gallant and

Linda Hruska. It was wonderful to see their

families in attendance, and they were all

proud to acknowledge the support of their

families as pivotal to their success.

Held in the brand-new atrium of the

Thornbrough Building, the event was a

global celebration, with new technology

allowing past President’s Scholars to join

via Skype from around the world. We

heard from both recent scholarship recip-

ients and alumni who have gone on to

make a difference in the world.

The UGAA award recipients and

President’s Scholars represent broad and

diverse talents, important contributions and a

shared passion for the University of Guelph.

You are invited to nominate an inspir-

ing U of G grad for the next Awards of

Excellence celebration. The deadline is

Oct. 31.  Learn more about the program

and find nomination information at

www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.

BRAD ROONEY,

ADA ’93 AND B.SC.(AGR.) ’97

UGAA PRESIDENT

alumni matters

26 The Portico

Alumni Return to Campus

The March 24 joint celebration of the UGAA Awards of Excellence and the 25th

anniversary of the President’s Scholarship Program drew a wide-ranging group of

alumni and friends, from seniors to young parents with strollers.

Left: Soon-to-be U of G alumni Chris-

Beth Cowie, left, Gavin Armstrong and

Holly Clark, helped with a March 26

alumni networking event held in Rozanski

Hall. Internationally acclaimed speaker

Dave Howlett gave tips on how to

connect with new people for business

and personal success, while Alumni

Affairs and Development staff organized

a number of displays and conversation

starters to help grads break the ice.

E ach year the UGAA honours threedistinguished alumni through its Awards

of Excellence program. Meet this year’srecipients:

ALUMNUS OF HONOURMargaret Dickenson completed a four-yearfood and nutrition degree in three years atMacdonald Institute. After marrying LarryDickenson, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’68, she accompaniedhim on his diplomatic career, which tookthem to eight countries in 28 years.

Margaret entertained tens of thousandsof guests and established an internationalreputation for her unique recipes. Her 1998cookbook, From the Ambassador’s Table: Blue-prints for Creative Entertaining, was named bestcookbook on entertaining at the WorldCookbook Fair in Perigueux, France. It wasthe first Canadian cookbook to receive thisprestigious award.

Her second cookbook, Margaret’s Table –Easy Cooking & Inspiring Entertaining, wonfour major international awards. In 2009, shewas named Culinarian of the Year by theCordon d’Or International Culinary Awards,and Ottawa Life Magazine named her amongits “Top 50 People in the Capital” in 2010.

She has created and hosted two cookingand lifestyle television shows – Margaret’sSense of Occasion and Margaret’s Table – andwrites for Diplomat and International Canada,Capital Style and Wedding Dreams magazines.

She supports a variety of charities and vol-unteers for U of G’s Ottawa alumni chapter.

ALUMNI MEDAL OF ACHIEVEMENTTricia Bertram Gallant, BA ’94 and M.Sc.’99, is a leader in promoting academicintegrity in higher education. After gradu-ating from the University of Guelph, sheattended the University of San Diego topursue a PhD in philosophy.

Gallant’s experience working in highereducation began at U of G, where sheworked in co-op education and career ser-vices. At the University of San Diego, sheworked in the school of education withfaculty and students.

Since 2002, she has been a board memberand council chair of the U.S.-basedInternational Center for Academic Integrity.And in 2006, she became the academicintegrity co-ordinator at the University ofCalifornia, San Diego, where she has estab-lished a respected academic integrity officethat serves as a model for other institutions.

Gallant has extensive experience indeveloping academic integrity policies andprocedures, managing academic miscon-duct complaints, advising faculty on class-room management and teaching studentsabout academic integrity.

A highly regarded consultant, she is theauthor of Academic Integrity in the Twenty-FirstCentury: A Teaching and Learning Imperative,and co-author of Cheating in School: What WeKnow and What We Can Do. She also serves on several institutional and professional commit-tees and holds many professional affiliations.

ALUMNI VOLUNTEERLinda Hruska, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’85, is a passion-ate and committed University of Guelphalumna who has dedicated countless hoursto her alma mater. Driven by a desire togive back, her volunteerism has spanneddecades and departments within U of G.

After completing her degree, Hruskaworked in a variety of animal researchpositions with Agriculture and Agri-FoodCanada. She returned to Guelph andjoined the first class of the master’s in agri-business management program, graduatingin 1988. She began working as a teachingassociate at the Ontario AgriculturalCollege (OAC) and later joined the RoyalAgricultural Winter Fair as director of edu-cation.

Hruska has been an active volunteerwith the OAC Alumni Foundation for thepast 13 years. She joined the board as anex-officio member in 1999 and became adirector in 2002, serving until 2008, whenshe became vice-chair. She is currentlyserving as president of the foundation.

Hruska has also been involved with theOAC Alumni Association for more than 20years, serving as secretary/treasurer andpresident. She was a member of the com-mittee to review the UGAA honours andawards program, was later appointed chairof the UGAA Honours and AwardsCommittee, and served as UGAA presi-dent from 2008 to 2010.

Summer 2012 27

Find more U of G alumni news and events at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca

UGAA honours alumni achievement

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28 The Portico

universityof guelph

Humanitarian work draws grad to Latin America

In 2000, Elaine Hernandez, BA ’74,found herself sitting on a pyramid at

a Mayan site in Guatemala, asking whatshe should do next in her life. Theanswer that came to her was “interna-tional humanitarian aid.” At the time,she says, ”I had no idea how to beginthis new career track.”

Twelve years later, Hernandez seemsto have found her way. She’s currentlymanaging a maternal-neonatal-childhealth project in Honduras for theCanadian Red Cross. “With the birthsof my first two grandchildren, theimportance of safe births and earlychildhood development became per-sonally more relevant,” she says.

Her deep affection for the peopleof Honduras is obvious in the storiesshe tells about memorable moments.“There was the mother who invitedme into her simple home, bare of anyfurniture except for a single hammockhanging in the middle of the room. Sheoffered me a couple of bananas, justpicked from her tree. I had broughtnothing for her or her four children,but she didn’t expect anything excepta friendly conversation. I accepted herfruit with gratitude and humility.”

Hernandez was born Elaine Dovein Brantford, Ont., and first discoveredthe magic of travel when she spent ayear in Mexico after Grade 13 as an

exchange student “learning Spanishand falling in love with the LatinAmerican culture.” She came to U ofG to study Spanish and was subse-quently hired by the University’s Cen-tre for International Programs. She leftthat position in 1976 and moved toMexico, where she married Raul Her-nandez, a dairy farmer from Aguas-calientes whom she’d met at Guelph.

For the next few years, Elaine andher husband operated a dairy farm inMexico and added a vineyard of winegrapes for export. They had two chil-dren, and she started an elementaryschool for the 28 children who livedon the farm. She later received anP

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1940Donald C. Master, DVM

’40, is a well-known communityleader in Charles Town, West Va.,where he celebrated his 93rd

birthday on Oct. 31. He grew

up in Ontario, played football atGuelph and graduated as a vet-erinarian at age 21. He taughtartificial insemination tech-niques to dairy farmers in thenortheastern United States,

finally settling in West Virginia,where he ran a veterinary prac-tice until retirement in 2004. Heand his now-deceased wife,Grace, raised four children. Mas-ter built and flew his own air-

plane, was active in municipalaffairs and served as mayor ofCharles Town from 1978 to1990. He still lives in the com-munity with his second wife,Carolyn.

Elaine Hernandez directs a Canadian Red Cross project in rural Honduras that has benefited more than 10,000 children and the

communities where they live.

grad

achievement award from the U.S. orga-nization Women in Government Rela-tions, partly because of her work withthis school.

The Hernandez family returned toCanada in 1980 and had a third child.Elaine went back to school, completeda master’s degree in adult educationand counselling with the Ontario Insti-tute for Studies in Education and begana PhD program, but did not completeher dissertation.

She and her family moved to Texasso she could take a one-year program toearn a Spanish-English teaching licenceat the University of Texas. They stayed22 years, and during that time Elaineexpanded her credentials and taught inrural Texas schools near the Mexican

border. She eventually became directorof continuing education at South TexasCommunity College.

In 2000, she received a FulbrightScholarship to study in Guatemala forsix weeks. By then, her children weregrown, her marriage had ended, andher college position was being amal-gamated with another division. That’swhen she found herself looking for anew direction.

“At age 50, I enrolled in a newmaster’s program in public health atTexas A & M University,” Hernandezsays. As a graduate student, she travelledto India with Rotary’s group studyexchange program to study the diag-nosis and treatment of tuberculosis.

After graduation, she was hired asdirector of border health with theLower Rio Grande Valley DevelopmentCouncil. She oversaw the planning ofa medical response system for fourTexas border counties, directed thearea’s health education centre and con-tinued her work on tuberculosis.

The American Red Cross offered her a position as a health delegate to Mexico in 2005, where she manageda tuberculosis pilot project. “This experience highlighted the effec-tive role of Red Cross volunteersworking with vulnerable populations,” Hernandez says. “It also introduced meto the most amazing international network of humanitarian workers. Red Cross strengthens the resilience of

communities.”Now in Honduras with the Cana-

dian Red Cross, she works in isolatedcommunities training communityhealth volunteers to monitor the devel-opment and nutritional status of chil-dren under the age of two and ensurethat pregnant women receive prenatalcheckups through the local health clin-ic. Hernandez says much has beenaccomplished: “Our program in ruralHonduras has benefited more than10,000 children.” In addition to clinicsfor expectant mothers and babies, theproject has helped communities developfood security programs with family gar-dens, build latrines and water systems,and train first-aid volunteers. “Anotherimportant component of our work isthe promotion of gender equity andequality,” she adds. “More fathers areactively participating during the preg-nancy, birth and post-birth activities,providing support for their spouses andchildren — a responsibility that oncewas only for women.”

When she completes her contractlater this year, Hernandez isn’t surewhere she’ll go next, but she hasn’t for-gotten the role U of G played inlaunching her career: In the 1970s, “thepresence of many foreign students atthe campus, the overseas research inter-ests of the faculty, and the study abroadoptions brought the international worldto the Guelph campus.”

BY TERESA PITMAN

Summer 2012 29

1970 David Barker, B.Sc. ’74, has

been appointed vice-presidentof academic and student affairsand seminary dean at HeritageBaptist College and Theological

Seminary in Cambridge, Ont.He has been teaching at Her-itage since 1978 and also servesas an associate pastor at BentonStreet Baptist Church in Kitch-ener.

Carolyn Kennedy, BA ’75,received an education degree in1978, a graduate diploma ineducation from the Universityof Calgary in 1985 and a mas-ter’s from the University of

British Columbia in 2002. Sheis happily married in Calgarywith two grown boys.

Jim Sutherland, BA ’70,taught ESL in South Korea andChina from 2000 to 2008. He

news

30 The Portico

J ust when you thought social networking sitesare making face-to-face interaction obsolete, along

comes Uniiverse.com, a site that puts the “social” backin social networking. It may sound like a radical concept– meeting online contacts in person – but co-founderAdam Meghji, B.Comp. ’04, says that’s what makes Uniiverse different from other sites.

“Aspects of the platform allow people to safely offerand share their time, interests, skills, belongings and spacewith other people in real life.” Social networking sitesdon’t necessarily promote social interaction, he adds,pointing out sites where people amass hundreds of con-tacts or friends, many of whom they barely know.

“The mission of Uniiverse is to bring people togetherin real life through our online networks,” says Meghji.“We can use Uniiverse to get together to lead a morecollaborative lifestyle.” The postings include social activ-ities, fitness groups, workshops and carpools. Users canalso post items that they are willing to rent or loan.

Meghji co-founded the site with company presidentBen Raffi and chairman Craig Follett. Raffi and Follettwere working as consultants at The Boston ConsultingGroup when they approached Meghji with their idea.“When they came to me with the concept, it instantlyclicked,” says Meghji, who is the company’s chief tech-nical officer.

They were so confident that Uniiverse would be asuccess, they quit their jobs in June 2011 and startedworking for the site full-time. They launched in Februaryand work from offices in Toronto and Boston.

Meeting strangers online comes with safety concerns,but Meghji says Uniiverse is safer than other online marketplaces because users must provide verifiable infor-mation such as their real name and location to set up anaccount and earn a “trust score.”

How do you know if the person offering a serviceis actually qualified? If the service requires certain skills,such as babysitting, the vendor can provide relevant cre-dentials. If parents are looking for a babysitter who hasexperience working with children with disabilities, theycan enter that search criteria to find the right person.

“Everybody has something to offer and Uniiverse isa platform to share that,” says Meghji, adding that anyonecan become an entrepreneur on the site. Students, forexample, can earn extra money by offering tutoring orlessons. He uses the site himself to offer music lessonson beat-making and DJ-ing, a hobby that he started as an undergrad at Guelph where he was known as DJMarmalade. He also offers free web and technology sessions where people can meet with him and receiveentrepreneurship advice.

Meghji describes himself as “a nerd who loves to buildthings that can change the world” and says his passionsalso include kung fu, photography and food-orientedglobetrotting. His personal website is adam.meghji.org.

As a co-op student at Guelph, Meghji started his ownbusiness called Earwaks.com, an urban music website thatkick-started his career in social media. Meghji designed a system for registering members and an e-commercefunctionality, but says: “It was more of an entrepreneurialwork term as opposed to a traditional computer scienceco-op work term. I learned what's involved in taking anidea and materializing it, making it happen.”

Soon after Meghji’s success, U of G’s Co-operativeEducation and Career Services launched a co-op businessventure program to help students become entrepreneurs.The program provides access to resources both on and offcampus, including business, legal and tax advice throughthe Guelph-Wellington Business Enterprise Centre.

BY SUSAN BUBAK

Social Networking is his Uniiverse

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Summer 2012 31

is now working as an editor,proofreader and writer, with fivebooks for sale on Amazon Kin-dle. One is a children’s book,one is about living in Korea, andthe other three are about farmlife in southern Ontario.

1980Shelagh Cantley-Dodge,

DVM ’87, became a partner inthe Dartmouth & Eastern ShoreVeterinary Hospitals in 2007,which recently amalgamatedwith five other practices aroundHalifax to form the PerFocusVeterinary Group. She and herhusband of 22 years, PeterDodge, have three teenage chil-dren (Alex, Jennifer and Rebec-ca) and two border terriers(Floss and Bella).

Tom Hedican, BA ’82, is a2012 recipient of Ontario’s JuneCallwood Outstanding Achieve-ment Award for Voluntarism.Named for the former journalistand activist, the award recog-nizes those whose volunteerwork improves the quality of lifein their communities and theprovince. Hedican is an inter-national hockey goaltendingcoach and resident of NorthBay, where he started theCoach4Food campaign in 2005;he coached local youth for freeduring his Christmas break inexchange for donations to thelocal food bank.

In 2011, he received a Trilli-

um grant to expand the programacross Ontario, and Guelph wasone of the first communities toparticipate. In a letter to theGuelph Mercury, he acknowl-edged the Guelph Storm andUniversity of Guelph Gryphonsfor helping with the trainingprogram, which collected 12,000pounds of food. Hedican wasprofiled in the winter 2010 issueof The Portico magazine (www.uoguelph.ca/theportico), andwas inducted this spring into theNorth Bay Sports Hall of Fame.

Ernest Rogers, BA and B.Sc.’85, recently joined the New Jer-sey State SPCA Humane Policeas the first forensic veterinarianon staff in the law enforcementdivision. Veterinary forensics is anew specialty in veterinary med-icine, says Rogers, who credits the science grounding hereceived at U of G for helpinghim succeed in this area of crimeinvestigation. Rogers completedhis DVM at Tuskegee Universityin 1991 and a PhD in toxicologyand pharmacology at VirginiaTech in 2004. He practices vet-erinary medicine at the Maple-wood Animal Hospital in thetown of Maplewood and hasmultiple years of experience inexamining crime scenes relatedto animal cruelty, the examina-tion of animal remains, policeconsultation, and providingexpert witness reports.

TOM HEDICAN WITH YOUNG

HOCKEY PLAYERS AT

COACH4FOOD IN NORTH BAY.

ERNEST ROGERS, LEFT,

RECEIVES HIS POLICE BADGE

FROM SGT. AL PETERSON OF

THE NEW JERSEY SPCA.

Being called a dinosaur isn’t such a bad thing, says Ian Morrison,

BA ’86, a technician in the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) vertebrate

paleontology lab. A newly identified dinosaur has been named for

Morrison.

The Gryphoceratops morrisoni is described along with a second

leptoceratopsid (“horned face” dinosaur) in a paper by Canadian

scientist Michael Ryan, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the

Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and David Evans, the ROM’s

associate curator of vertebrate paleontology. Evans said the small-

bodied dinosaur fills a gap in the fossil record and helps scientists

better understand dinosaur evolution.

“I’m honoured to have my work for the Royal Ontario Museum

acknowledged in such a unique way,” said Morrison. “Who knew

that my artistic talent would lead me here? Every day I draw, paint,

sculpt, mould and cast something new, but my subject matter is

always prehistoric.”

Lower right jaw fragments of an unnamed dinosaur were found

in southern Alberta’s fossil beds in 1950 by Canadian dinosaur

hunter Levi Sternberg while working for the ROM. Recently, Evans

retrieved the fossil fragments from a collection drawer. After failing

to fit them together, he gave them to Morrison, who completed the

task within minutes.

“I’ve always been good at solving puzzles and putting pieces

together,” said Morrison. “That day the puzzle turned out to be just

as important scientifically as it was interesting to solve.”

Gryphoceratops morrisoni lived about 83 million years ago.

Its genus name refers to the Gryphon of Greek mythology with an

eagle’s head and a lion’s body. Researchers believe the adult stood

less than half-a-metre tall,

making it the smallest horned-

face dinosaur in North Amer-

ica and one of the smallest

plant-eating dinosaurs known.

The new species is the earli-

est record of the herbivore in

North America. Leptoceratop-

sids are believed to have

migrated here from Asia.

Dinosaur named for fine arts grad

IAN MORRISON HOLDS THE JAW BONES OF

GRYPHOCERATOPS MORRISONI.

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32 The Portico

COMING EVENTSMay 27 • CBSAA Family Day at the Royal Botanical Gardens

in Burlington, Ont. Alumni are encouraged to bring family and

friends to this annual event; registration is at 11:30 a.m.,

followed by a complimentary lunch and self-guided tours of the

gardens. Admission free for alumni and RBG members.

June 4 • Statistics grads are invited to an alumni event at the

Bullring in conjunction with the Statistical Society of Canada’s

annual meeting. RSVP to Gary Umphrey at umphrey@uoguelph.ca.

June 15 and 16 • Alumni Weekend. See page 2 for details.

June 18 • Gryphon Golf Classic, proceeds to U of G athletics.

Details at www.gryphons.ca.

June 25 • HAFA/HTM AA Golf Tournament at the Royal

Woodbine Golf Course, Toronto. Registration at 7 a.m., shotgun

start 7:45 a.m. Proceeds to the HAFA/HTM Alumni Association.

Contact: Jacqueline Watty, Ext. 54703 or jroberts@uoguelph.ca.

August • Countdown to Guelph. Alumni are invited to wel-

come new U of G students at Ontario events in Pickering,

Aug. 7; St. Catharines, Aug. 9; Mississauga, Aug. 12;

London, Aug. 14; and Kitcnener-Waterloo, Aug. 21. See the

alumni website for details.

For details of these and other alumni events, visit www.alumni.

uoguelph.ca or call 519-824-4120, Ext. 56934.

1990Sylvie Chartrand and Jake

Regala, both B.Sc.(Env.) ’99,are enjoying life in Beamsville,Ont., with their daughter Josée,who is almost three.

Tania Ferus, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’98,and Michael Schumaker, Ph.D’09, and married on Sept. 24,2011, at the U of G ArboretumCentre. The homecoming foot-ball game was in full swing andthey could hear the cheers duringthe ceremony. They are living inSudbury where he is working onHALO and SNO+ experimentsat SNOLAB and she is a GISprofessional working for themunicipal government.

Marion Gruner, BA ’96, isa documentary filmmaker. Sherecently produced a film forCBC’s The Nature of Thingsabout new theories on autism.Her film features U of G pro-fessor Emma Allen-Vercoe, mol-

ecular and cellular biology, alongwith other researchers.

Sara (Fisher) Korytowski,BA ’97, married in 2011 andhad a baby in February 2012.

Melanie Lewis Ivey, B.Sc.’96, completed her PhD in plantpathology at Ohio State Uni-versity. She was the first studentin the department’s history tocomplete a PhD while workingfull-time as a research associate.

Brian Morcombe, BA ’96,saw his Everyone CD nominatedfor a Juno Award as Children’sAlbum of the Year.

2000Lori Alexander, B.Sc. ’06

and M.Sc. ’07, completed herstudies in nutritional science andworked at the Guelph Food andTechnology Centre before join-ing PepsiCo Canada as managerof nutrition science and regula-tory affairs.

Open House Sunday, Oct. 13Join the CelebrationEveryone Welcome

207 Humber College Blvd.Toronto, Ontario

http://celebrate.guelphhumber.ca

Celebrates10 Years!

Theodore S. Farley, B.A., LL.B.

Andy Gazzola, B.A., LL.B.

Marti E. Wilson, B.A., LL.B.

Practical, timely andcost-effective legal adviceReal Estate, Business Law,

Wills and Estates

Special recognition forUniversity of Guelph

graduates, faculty, staff andstudents for wills and

estate planning

Suite 101, 848 Gordon StreetGuelph, ON N1G 1Y7

Tel: 519-837-5454Fax: 519-837-2655

www.farleylawoffice.ca

Summer 2012 33

Addison Aspilla, B.A.Sc.’09, is a graduate of Guelph-Humber’s family and commu-nity social services program. Herecently earned a master’sdegree in theological studiesfrom Tyndale Seminary, gotmarried and started his owncompany, Aspilla ConsultingGroup Inc. His website and blogare at www.addisonavenue.ca.

Alex Burlatschenko,B.Comm. ’07, joined RBCRoyal Bank’s Toronto office asa commercial lender after grad-uation. He and his team special-ize in professional and servicesfirms, providing operating lines,term loans and equipment leasesup to $25,000,000. In addition,Burlatschenko supports hisclients with advice on the effi-cient setup of cash managementand foreign exchange servicesand engaging external financingpartners.

Eugene Chan, B.Comm.’08, began his career as an assis-tant restaurant manager forRichtree Market Restaurants.Within two years, he was pro-moted to assistant general man-ager. In 2010, he became oper-ations manager for the food andbeverages department at Cana-da’s Wonderland, where he oversees 23 main restaurants, ninelicensed bars, catering facilities,warehousing and commissary.

Victoria Drost, BA ’08,graduated from the GlasgowSchool of Art with a master’sdegree in June 2011 and wasfeatured in the 2012 CatlinGuide, which profiles 40 of theUnited Kingdom’s mostpromising art graduates.

Kristin (James) Glowa, B.Sc.’04, is a registered nurse withAlberta Health Services. Aftergraduation, she completed a master’s degree in pharmacology

HOMECOMING 2012

Cheeron the

Gryphons!

September 22 • 1 p.m.Alumni StadiumReunion details: alumni.uoguelph.ca

Gryphon hockey salutes OVCStudents’ Challenge Cup

Tony Calverley, DVM ’52, participated in the ceremonial puck

drop at a Gryphon men’s hockey game held Jan. 20. The event

paid tribute to the 150th anniversary of the Ontario Veterinary College

and the 82nd year of the student hockey tournament. Calverley’s

team won the tournament every year from 1949 to 1952.

Hockey was part of OVC student life long before the college

moved to Guelph in 1922; it became known as the Challenge Cup

in the 1970s. This year’s tournament featured a new silver trophy

made by Prof. Brad Hanna, DVM ’89.

Pictured here are Calverley family members, from left: Peter;

Tony; Beverley, also DVM ’52; and Jamie.

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at Oxford University and a bach-elor of nursing at the Universityof Calgary. She is now marriedand expecting her first child.

Brad Lockey, BA’02, is amortgage broker in Pickering,Ont.

Carley Robb-Jackson, MA’09, was one of five youngwomen honoured as a GlobalChangemaker by the OntarioCouncil for InternationalCooperation during Interna-tional Development Week inFebruary. She taught life skillsand health classes to people liv-ing with HIV/AIDS in Moro-goro, Tanzani, with Youth Chal-lenge International in 2008. Shenow works with Canada’sInternational DevelopmentResearch Centre in Ottawa,often travelling to Sierra Leoneto work on research projects onwomen’s legal rights and thecountry’s gender acts.

Judith Samuels, MBA ’06,recently returned to the traveland tourism industry, taking onnew challenges as director ofmarketing for The FairmontRoyal York with Fairmont Hotels& Resorts.

David Schmidt, BA ’02, andVanessa Cotterell-Schmidt,

B.Sc.(Env.) ’00, announce thebirth of their second child andsecond son, Xavier RobertSchmidt, on Oct. 26, 2011. Thegrowing Schmidt family has

34 The Portico

It was a capital event

More than 60 U of G grads from the Ottawa area attended a

reception at the Mill Street Brew Pub on Feb. 17. Pictured

here are, from left: Bob Gowan, B.Sc. ’71, Brian Ure, B.Sc.(Agr.)

’68, Larry Dickenson, B. Sc. ’68, Margaret Dickenson, B.H.Sc. ’68,

and Susan Gowan, BA ’74.

Over the winter months, alumni also gathered for networking

events in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, as well as in Washington,

D.C., for an all-Canada university event and in Florida for U of G’s

annual Port Charlotte picnic and the North American Veterinary

Conference held in Orlando.

XAVIER ROBERT SCHMIDT

rooted in Guelph and is goingstrong well over a decade after Uof G brought Dave and Vanessato the city.

Jesse Stewart, PhD ’08, andBA ’97, won a 2012 Juno Awardfor Instrumental Album of theYear with his band the StretchOrchestra. An accomplished jazzpercussionist, composer and artist,Stewart also has two master’sdegrees from York University and

is now a professor in the Schoolfor Studies in Art and Culture atCarleton University.

At U of G, he was the firstrecipient of the Brock DoctoralScholarship; his research lookedfor common ground amongmusical genres, particularly formsof jazz. He was also a sessionalinstructor in Guelph’s School ofFine Arts and Music, led anensemble of musical improvisa-tion, served as assistant artisticdirector of the Guelph Jazz Fes-tival and has been a mainstayperformer at the annual festival.Stewart was previously namedOutstanding Young CanadianJazz Musician by the Interna-tional Association of Jazz Educa-tors and Young Musician of theYear by Jazz Report.

2010Sarah Brown, BLA ’12, leaves

a musical mark on U of G as the

winner of a campus song com-petition held to highlight Sustain-ability Week 2012. She wrotemusic and lyrics and produced avideo adaptation of a song called“Are You Sure?” Brown says sus-tainability concepts were an inte-gral part of her Guelph studies:“Everything we do has conse-quences, and we need to think ofthat before we start altering theworld around us.”

Anastasia Richardson,B.Sc. ’11, is working with four

other U of G alumni as a pro-gram assistant in residence lifeat McMaster University.

Jason Smith, B.Comm. ’12,is working at the Martin BrowerCompany and says he boughthimself an H2 Hummer as a Uof G graduation present.

Raymond Tam, B.Comm.’10, says he was inspired by theoperation management courseoffered at U of G by businessprofessor Thomas Manning. Tamwent on to graduate school atthe Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity and earned a master’sdegree in industrial logistics sys-tems. He is now a managementtrainee with Kerry LogisticsNetwork Limited.

Caroline Themer, B.Comm.’05, works for Adecco in Barrie,Ont., as an occupational healthand safety co-ordinator and is engaged to be married in September.

Summer 2012 35

STRETCH ORCHESTRA

MEMBERS JESSE STEWART,

RIGHT, AND MATT BRUBECK.

SARAH BROWN

36 The Portico

Sylvia Ahermae, B.Sc. ’78, March 11, 2010

Mabel (Clute) Bailey, DHE ’35, Jan. 26, 2012

Barry Belchamber, BA ’76, Nov. 19, 2011

Allan Beveridge, M.Sc. ’70, March 6, 2012

James Biggark, BSA ’51, Jan. 30, 2012Ross Bronson, BSA ’54, Oct. 7, 2011Katharine (Cole) Browne, DHE ’41,

Dec. 2, 2011Dermot Campbell, DVM ’59,

March 13, 2012Clifton Carss, BSA ’50, Oct. 23, 2011Harmon Chapman, DVM ’37,

Oct. 5, 2011John Clancy, ADA ’69, March 17, 2010Michael Colterjohn, DVM ’85,

March 28, 2011Kathleen (Overs) Constandy,

B.H.Sc. ’58, Dec. 1, 2011Daniel Couch, B.Sc. ’10, Dec. 19, 2011Colin Crichton, M.Sc. ’78, May 9, 2010William Darlington, ADA ’61,

Sept. 16, 2011Peter T. Donaldson, BA ’75,

Jan. 8, 2011Cyprian Edweani, M.Sc. ’73,

March 22, 2012Robert Eliason, DVM ’35,

Nov. 26, 2011Laura (Jakowec) Facca, B.A.Sc. ’87,

Dec. 11 2011Betty (Tarzwell) Ferguson, DHE ’39,

Dec. 23, 2011Nora (McGrath) Freeman,

B.Sc.(Agr.) ’78, May 16, 2010Leonard Gerbrandt, BA ’70,

Oct. 23, 2010Bernard Goodwin-Wilson, BSA ’50,

Jan. 18, 2012Blake Graham, DVM ’51,

March 5, 2012Christopher Graham, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’74,

Jan. 14, 2012Paul Haley, BA ’80, Aug. 22, 2011Robert Henderson, BA ’74,

March 6, 2011Jeremiah Hergott, DVM ’49,

Feb. 22, 2012

Leslie Hill, ADA ’50, April 19, 2010Bruce Holliday, DVM ’57,

March 21, 2010Kent Israel, B.Sc. ’77, Nov. 24, 2011Frederick Johnston, ADA ’70,

Oct. 1, 2010Ross Kennedy, ADA ’63, April 30, 2011Erin (Stewart) Leis, DVM ’07,

Feb. 28, 2012Frederick Linley,ADA ’54, June 28, 2011Martha Mallon, BA ’75, in 2012Alice Jean Maxim, BA ’74,

March 2, 2012Robert McConney, BSA ’48,

March 11, 2011David McGuigan, ADA ’47,

June 24, 2010Douglas McKelvie, DVM ’47,

Jan. 14, 2012Lionel McKeown, ADA ’52,

Aug. 2, 2011Douglas McLaren, BSA ’50,

Feb. 12, 2011Don McLaughlin, BSA ’56,

Nov. 9, 2011Gordon McNern, BSA ’51,

Jan. 27, 2012Gerritje (Roelofsen) Mitchell,

BA ’71, December 2011Barbara (Kitras) Murray, BA ’74,

Sept. 3, 2011Patricia M. Murray, ODH ’85,

April 1, 2011Curtis Myers, ADA ’57,

March 29, 2010Helen (Carlyle) Neill, DHE ’38,

Oct. 6, 2011Brian Nichol, B.Sc.(Eng.) ’82,

Dec. 9, 2010Catherine Noseworthy, DVM ’78,

Feb. 2, 2011Sandra O’Connor, B.Sc. ’84,

Oct. 27, 2011Michael Paine, PHD ’85, July 1, 2011Robert Jack Parker, MSA ’62,

Oct. 30, 2010Robert Jackson Parker, BSA ’59,

Jan. 17, 2010John Pearce, B.Sc. ’66, March 11, 2010Eric Pedersen, BLA ’83,

March 15, 2012

Jessie Pelton, DHE ’33, March 8, 2010James Raab, DVM ’66, December 2009Allen Rawlings, BSA ’44,

Sept. 10, 2011C. Gordon Reid, BSA ’47, Feb. 16, 2008Eric Rose, BSA ’58, Feb. 9, 2012Joanne (Rowden) Schmidt, B.Sc. ’74,

Oct. 10, 2010Robert Silk, DVM ’64, Feb. 14, 2012Vernon Skeoch, ADA ’65, Oct. 7, 2010Leslie Somerville, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’73,

Jan. 23, 2012 Jonathan Stanfel, B.Sc. ’84,

Dec. 10, 2010Donald F. Stewart, ADA ’55,

Dec. 31, 2011Nancy (Taylor) Stiles, DHE ’32,

Feb. 21, 2012William Szenasi, ADA ’66,

March 20, 2012Edward Teeter, B.Sc. ’70, July 14, 2011Patrick Tooley, B.Sc. ’75, Nov. 17, 2010David Unrau, BSA ’62, Dec. 31, 2011Randy Upper, MA ’74, Feb. 24, 2012David Van Laeken, ADA ’77,

Aug. 1, 2010Frederick Vincent, DVM ’49,

Nov. 9, 2011Carl Walker, B.Sc.(Eng.) ’82, Feb. 1, 2010Alan Kin Yuen Wan, BA ’80,

Aug. 3, 2011Philip Watson, BLA ’72, Sept. 11, 2011Nicholas Weesjes, ODH ’71,

Nov. 4, 2011Robert C. M. Williams, DVM ’48,

March 10, 2012William Wolfe, ADA’57,

March 27, 2010Michael Yurkowski, PhD ’68,

June 3, 2011

FACULTYStuart Dixon, MSA ’51, Feb. 2, 2012,

retired, Environmental ScienceJohn P. Walker, BSA ’43, Nov. 12, 2011,

retired, Animal and Poultry Science

To honour alumni who have passed away, the University of Guelph Alumni Associationmakes an annual donation to the AlumniLegacy Scholarship.

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