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The Newsmagazine for McMaster University Alumni Winter 2010 McMas t er T imes McMaster’s next president Seriously sustainable Campus embraces sustainability Making brain waves The brain-language link

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McMaster Times is the newsmagazine of McMaster University Alumni.

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Page 1: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

The

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McMaster Times

McMaster’s next presidentSeriously sustainable

Campus embraces sustainability

Making brain waves The brain-language link

Page 2: Winter 2010 McMaster Times
Page 3: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

McMaster Times - Winter 2010 3

$33 million fuels research............................................... 8

McMaster captures three Polanyi awards ................. 8

Free tuition for children of fallen soldiers ................... 9

Soup can reopens mystery of Franklin Expedition .... 9

Anniversary celebrations.............................................. 10

Awards and honours ...................................................... 11

Research news ............................................................... 11

Alumni gift benefits aging studies ................................ 6

Sobeys gift supports students ........................................ 6

RBC Water and Health Initiative launched.................. 7

Undergraduate nursing bursaries established ........... 7

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR................................................. 4

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE ................................................. 5

ALUMNI ALBUM ............................................................. 24

McMASTER WRITES ...................................................... 31

IN MEMORIAM................................................................ 33

THE LAST WORD ............................................................. 34

“I'm going to say one serious thing to you before I leave today:

Follow your dreams.”

Meet McMaster .............................. 12High-tech visionary Rob Burgess '79 shares his perspective on the future of technological innovation. By Shelly Easton McMaster's next president .......... 14 Learn what Patrick Deane has to say as he embarks on the road to McMaster. By Shelly Easton

Making brain waves ...................... 16 Researchers in the Faculty of Humanities' linguistics and languages department are riding the wave in the study of the science of lan-guage. By Chantall Van Raay Seriously sustainable .................... 21The McMaster community has embraced sustainable practices across campus – measures that will help the environment and save money. By Chantall Van Raay

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“Alumni should not hesitate to offer me guidance on what incoming presidents, and particularly incoming presidents who are new to the institution, need," says Patrick Deane. Learn more about McMaster's next president and vice-chancellor in the interview beginning on page 14.

Dave Thomas '72 left McMaster's newest alumni and their families and friends laugh-ing and contemplating his words of wisdom at Fall Convocation. Read excerpts from his speech in The Last Word on page 34.

A conversation with Patrick Deane page 14

JD Howell

JD Howell

Page 4: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

4 McMaster Times - Winter 2010

ContributorsRebecca Bentham ‘02, Jane Christmas, Michelle Donovan, Peter George ‘96, Dan Ho ‘85, Jason Jones, Karen McQuigge ‘90, Ron Scheffler, Matt Terry '09.

Advertising SalesSandra RodwellOffice of Public Relations 905-525-9140 ext. 24073

Officers, Alumni AssociationRebecca Bentham ’02, president; Elizabeth Webel ’84, past-president; David Adames ’92, first vice-president; Bill McLean ’90, second vice-president; Don Bridgman ‘78, financial advisor; Jennifer Kleven ’90, executive councillor; Maria Topalovic ’08, executive councillor. Representatives to the University SenateEarl Cochrane ’64, Suzanne Craven ’73, Maureen Harmer ’66, Dennis Souder ’70. Representatives to the University Board of Governors Brian Bidulka ’87, Quentin Broad ’86, Lauren Cuddy ’80, David Lazzarato ’79, Howard Shearer ’77. McMaster Times is published three times a year (Winter, Spring and Fall) by the Office of Public Relations in co-operation with the McMaster Alumni Association. It is sent free of charge to University alumni and friends. Non-alumni subscriptions are available at $15 (Canada and U.S.A.) and $20 (foreign). Please make cheques payable to McMaster University.Ideas and opinions published in the McMaster Times do not necessarily reflect those of the editor, the McMaster Alumni Association or the University. Letters and editorial contributions are welcomed. National and local advertisers are invited.

Editorial communications: Assistant Editor, McMaster Times, Public Relations Office, DTC 125, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9. Tel: 905-525-9140, ext. 23662Fax: 905-521-1504 E-mail: [email protected] www.mcmaster.ca/ua/opr/times/Canada Post Publications Mail 1473638Postmaster: Send all returns to McMaster Universityc/o Advancement Services, T-27Hamilton, ON L8S 4L8

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The wood in this product comes from well-managed forests, independently certified in accordance with the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council.

PublisherAndrea Farquhar

Assistant EditorChantall Van Raay

Managing EditorShelly Easton

Art DirectorJD Howell ’04

Letters to the Editor A quick message to congratulate Chantall Van Raay on the interesting piece she wrote in the last McMaster Times (An-swering the questions of cancer, Fall 2009). I was struck by the beautiful picture of Margaret Anne Cranfield in her dragon boat and by her reference to dragon boat racing hav-ing helped save her life. In that context, it’s a shame that the article didn’t mention an excellent PhD dissertation completed by Rhona Shaw in the Department of Sociology in 2008 on women with breast cancer and dragon boat racing. The dissertation, titled Breast Cancer, Femininity, Embodiment and the Sport of Dragon Boat Racing, examines the multiple meanings of the dragon boat experience for women with breast cancer and the tran-formative effects these experiences can have on women’s bodies as well as on their sense of self.

Dorothy Pawluch Associate Professor and Chair, Graduate Committee Department of Sociology McMaster University

On the Cover Introducing McMaster's next president, Patrick Deane. In an interview with the Times, Deane shares his thoughts on why he's excited about coming to McMaster. See our story on page 14. Cover photo by JD Howell ’04.

Page 5: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

McMaster Times - Winter 2010 5

McMaster used to be described as the University that hides its light under a bushel. That statement is no longer true. We proudly tell the world about the success of our students and alumni, the exper-tise of our faculty, and the groundbreaking discoveries made in our labs and research centres. Our focus is on achieving excellence and when we look back over the past year there are many markers of the University’s suc-cess:

For the seventh consecutive year, McMaster has been named ■■one of the Top 100 universities in the world – one of only four Canadian universities to make the list published by Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityThe 2009 ■■ Times Higher Education – QS World University Rankings also places McMaster among the top 200 universitiesThe University’s reputation for being research intensive was ■■highlighted in the Research InfoSource annual rankings where McMaster was recognized as the second most research-inten-sive university in the country, a move forward from third place last yearThe ■■ Globe and Mail Student Report Card finds McMaster stu-dents are highly satisfied with their experience on campus and the quality of education they receiveIn the annual ■■ Maclean’s magazine rankings of Canadian uni-versities, McMaster placed sixth for the third year in a row among the universities with medical schools and a wide vari-ety of doctoral programsThree of the five recently announced Ontario Polanyi Prizes ■■for the brightest young researchers went to McMasterThere were two national 3M Teaching Award winners this year■■McMaster now has 55 professors in the Royal Society of ■■Canada thanks to the induction of three new membersThe winner of the 2009 Gairdner Wightman Award (often ■■called the baby Nobel) was David Sackett from the Faculty of

Health Sciences

McMaster’s teaching and research success benefit our students, our local community and communities across Canada and around the world. As alumni you have a special connection to McMas-ter and its success. Our commitment to making McMaster one of Canada’s most distinguished international universities is stronger than ever and I look forward to sharing more good news with you through 2010.

President’s Message

Peter George, President, McMaster University

Making our markJD How

ell

JD Howell

Page 6: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

6 McMaster Times - Winter 2010

$1-million gift from Hong Kong alumni member benefits aging studiesA first-of-its-kind $1-million gift from an anonymous member of McMaster’s Hong Kong alumni community will fund the Uni-versity’s new Chair in Aging and Chinese Culture in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Understanding the role of culture and eth-nicity in aging issues has become increas-ingly important in our multicultural society. The gift will support an expert who, during a period of seven years, will research and teach the cultural aspects of aging and the role of the elderly in China. It is the first time an alumni member from China has designated a gift of this size. “We’re building a very strong network of alumni in China and Hong Kong who are enthusiastic supporters of the University,” said President Peter George, who spent 12 days in China meeting with University alumni and finalizing the gift. “We recruit a significant number of stu-

dents from China and it’s important that they continue to feel connected to McMas-ter after they graduate.” McMaster has long been recognized as a national leader in aging studies. The Faculty of Social Sciences was the first in the country to offer an undergraduate degree in gerontology and the University’s

renowned Centre for Gerontological Studies and the Department of Health, Aging and Society foster research and education in aging on a University-wide basis. In 2007 McMaster established the Ray-mond and Margaret Labarge Chair in Research and Knowledge Application for

Optimal Aging and more recently estab-lished the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging and the Gilbrea Chair in Aging and Mental Health. These initiatives were also created through generous donations from McMaster alumni. The new Chair in Aging and Chinese Culture will be a perfect fit for McMaster, which earlier this year was named the site of the 20-year, $30-million Canadian Lon-gitudinal Study on Aging led by Professor Parminder Raina. Raina is the inaugural chairholder of the Raymond and Margaret Labarge Chair in Research and Knowledge Application for Optimal Aging. The new chairholder’s work will further an understanding of the unique challenges in meeting the needs of the elderly in spe-cific cultural settings. The chairholder will lead new research and outreach activities that will benefit individuals, families and communities locally, nationally and interna-tionally. Areas of focus include developing strategies for dealing with issues of aging, developing best practices for seniors’ cen-tres in China and Canada that will benefit the elderly in both countries, and address-ing the concept of “aging in a foreign land.”

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Sobeys gift supports students at Ron Joyce Stadium

In recognition of a $400,000 donation by Sobeys to The Campaign for McMaster University, the concourse outside of Ron Joyce Sta-dium is now known as the Sobeys Entrance Plaza. Adjacent to several student residences, the Sobeys Entrance Plaza is used by spectators attending every event held at the sta-

dium as well as those picking up tickets on event day. The area is also a common venue for student gatherings in support of various types of varsity athletics. A sign recognizing the plaza’s new name was unveiled before a Marauders football home game in the fall.

Celebrating Sobeys' gift (L to R): Rob Allsop, director of operation Niagara District, Sobeys Ontario; Peter Weicker, vice president operations, full service, Sobeys Ontario; President Peter George, Roger Trull, vice-president university advancement and Jeff Giles, director of athletics & recreation.

JD Howell

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RBC gift boosts water and health connections

Undergraduate nursing bursaries created

Mike Lalich

CIBC has invested $500,000 at McMaster to establish the CIBC Undergraduate Bursaries in Nursing for undergraduate students with a specific interest in breast cancer research and education. The donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Ontario Trust for Student Support, doubling the impact of the donation and raising the endowment to $1 million.

Pictured at the gift announcement (L to R): President Peter George, Neil Gordon, vice-president, CIBC, Southern Ontario, Roger Trull, vice-president university advancement, Catherine Tompkins, associate dean, nursing and John Kelton, dean and vice-president, Faculty of Health Sciences.

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A citizen-run program that will monitor and track biodiversity and ecosystem health in the Hamilton region is one of three water-focused projects that will be created as a result of a $1.5-million gift from the RBC Foundation for the RBC Water and Health Initiative. URBAN (Urban-Rural Bio-monitoring and Assessment Net-work) will provide valuable ecological information on water quality, air quality, wetland health and forest health for conser-vationists, city planners, resource managers, and researchers while at the same time educating citizens about eco-services.

The second initiative is the launch of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change. Led by Altaf Arain, associate professor of geography & earth sciences, and Mike Waddington, professor of geography & earth sciences, the Centre will sponsor an in-augural public lecture series, website, and high school outreach programs. The third initiative will allow professor Lesley Warren of the Department of Geography & Earth Sciences to establish out-reach programs related to her green mining technologies re-search.

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A new $6.7-million research network at McMaster will deal with the problem of vision loss experienced by a growing number of Canadians. The network of 12 university researchers and 10 industry partners will develop and commercialize new materials and technologies to treat the nearly one million Canadians suffer-ing from vision loss, a number expected to dramatically increase as Canada’s popula-tion ages. The 20/20: NSERC Ophthalmic Materials Network (20/20 Network) is one of nine new networks announced by the federal

government. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is providing $5 million to the 20/20 Network over five years through a strategic network grant. Other funding is being provided by industrial and institu-tional partners and the Ontario Centres of Excellence.

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Amelia De Falco, Michael Kiang and Laura Parker were awarded Polanyi Prizes.

The MIP Atrium

$33 million fuels research

A lifetime of perfect vision

JD Howell

From producing the next generation of solar cells to understanding how bacteria infects domestic animals and humans, to finding solutions in the digital media and gam-ing industry, 18 unique McMaster research projects have accelerated, thanks to a $33-million boost from Ontario's Ministry of Research and Innovation. Almost two dozen research laborato-ries and facilities, employing more than 300 researchers, will be impacted by the province’s research investment. The infra-structure monies will provide funding to start new labs, expand existing research facilities and purchase the latest equipment to enable researchers, their research teams and students to stay at the forefront of discoveries that will improve the environ-ment, health and the economy. The invest-ment funds a variety of cross-disciplinary projects across all six McMaster faculties. The announcement is part of a broader $268-million province-wide investment that will support 214 projects and more than 3,300 researchers in 14 cities.

McMaster captures three Polanyi awards

McMaster has captured three of five Polanyi awards given to young Ontario univer-sity researchers. Named in honour of the 1986 Nobel-prize winner, the John Charles Polanyi Prize recognizes outstanding researchers in the early stages of their career who are continuing their post-doctoral studies at an Ontario university. Each prize is valued at $20,000. The McMaster researchers are: Laura Parker, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, whose research interests are in the field of observational cosmology, more specifically, the processes of galaxy and structure formation and how galaxies and the dark matter that surrounds them interact; Amelia De Falco ’03, a sessional lecturer and post-doctoral fellow in English and cultural studies, who is conducting research into the ethics of caregiving in contemporary Canadian literature; and Michael Kiang, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences and a psychiatrist in the mental health and addictions department of St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. Kiang is studying the abnormalities of brain function that cause symptoms of schizo-phrenia.

Ron Schefller

Union Gas and McMaster’s Faculty of Engi-neering unveiled the Energy Audit Program aimed at helping local schools and busi-nesses reduce their energy use and green-house gas emissions. Union Gas will pro-vide $500,000 in funding for the program and will donate the specialized equipment needed to conduct the audits. Samir Chidiac ’83, professor of civil engi-neering and Michael Tait, from the Depart-ment of Civil Engineering, and professors James Cotton ’94 and Mohamed Hamed from the Department of Mechanical Engi-neering are overseeing the energy audit program at McMaster.

Gift supports Energy Audit Program

Innovation at its best

The McMaster Innovation Park has cel-ebrated the opening of its first building – the MIP Atrium. Once complete, the 37-acre complex at 175 Longwood Road South near Highway 403 will also house laboratory, office, teaching, training, and conference facilities in support of research and development. The anchor tenant is CANMET Materials Technology Laboratory (MTL), which will relocate from Ottawa to MIP in the fall of 2010.

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Space course lifts off An innovative course at McMaster is teach-ing students how humans physiologically adapt when exploring the final frontier. Space Medicine and Physiology, offered through the Faculty of Health Sciences, is the first of its kind in Canada. Teaching students everything from how the body reacts in space to what astronauts wear and why, course instructor and Canadian astronaut Dave Williams gives students a first-hand look at what life is like in space and how lessons learned there can be applied on Earth.

Free tuition for children of fallen soldiers University N

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Lead levels that are "off the scale" have been confirmed after tests were done on a lid of a soup can dating back more than 150 years. The findings reopen the mystery surrounding the cause of death of Sir John Franklin and his doomed crew as they searched for the Northwest Passage. Fiona McNeill, associate vice-president research and a professor of medical sci-ence and applied radiation, says tests were conducted using x-ray fluorescence, a non- destructive method of analyzing artifacts. McMaster is one of two centres in Canada with this specific kind of x-ray fluores-cence capability. Franklin set sail from England in 1845 on his fourth Arctic exploration to map the final section of the Northwest Passage. But something happened when his ships became stuck in ice, and the crew was

McMaster’s rankings soar

The Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and the McMaster Alumni Association have launched Discover Psy-chology: Science You Can Use, a public lecture series for students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of the public. The lectures feature McMaster professors dis-cussing topics related to psychology. The one-hour talks take place each Friday at 2:15 p.m. in the Psychology Building, room 155 and are free of charge. To pre-register, visit www.discoverpsychology.ca/

Science you can use

MIP will also house an 8,000-sq. ft. research facility that will gather, tag, preserve and track artifacts and organic remains that cover thousands of years of Ontario history. In partnership with the University of Western Ontario, McMaster received $10 million from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for the lab. Both the McMaster and London sites are expected to be operational within two years.

McMaster continues to place high on national and international rankings. Below are a few recent rankings and how McMaster fared:

An annual ■■ Globe and Mail survey finds McMaster students are highly satisfied with their experience on campus. Students cite the quality of education, campus atmosphere, advanced technology and high-quality libraries and athletic facilities as key reasons why the University is one of the best in the country. In the annual ■■ Maclean’s magazine rankings of Canadian universities, McMaster placed sixth for the third year in a row. For the seventh consecutive year, ■■McMaster has been named one of the Top 100 universities in the world, one of only four Canadian universities to make the list published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.The 2009 ■■ Times Higher Education QS World University Rankings also places McMaster among the top 200 universi-ties.The University’s reputation for being ■■research intensive was highlighted in the Research Infosource annual rank-ings where McMaster was recognized as the second most research intensive university in the country, up from third place last year. The DeGroote School of Business has ■■ranked second in payback among MBA schools in Canada in Canadian Business’ annual MBA guide.

McMaster has joined Project Hero. The University will offer free tuition for four years, and provide residence accommoda-tion and a meal plan in first year, to the children of Canadian soldiers who lost their lives in military action. Open to those under the age of 26, students will be required to identify them-selves as a son or daughter of a Canadian soldier killed in active duty. The program is open until August 31, 2014, and pro-vides a residence room and meal plan for the first year of study, and full tuition for four years of study. Details can be found at http://sfas.mcmaster.ca/projecthero.htm

Nine projects involving researchers from the Faculties of Science, Health Sciences and Engineering have been awarded $1.9 million by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. All projects have the potential to impact the health and well-being of millions of Canadians: they range from a neonatologist improving the quality of life for the tiniest of newborns to a physicist studying cell membranes to develop and improve new bio-based materials.

$1.9M for nine projects

Soup can reopens mystery of Franklin Expedition

never heard from again. The loss, consid-ered the biggest disaster in British naval history, triggered numerous search parties. In 1988, bodies of some of the crew were found, preserved in the permafrost. The can of soup being tested was found on Dealy Island, and though it was left behind by a search party dispatched from England in 1852 it would be virtually iden-tical to the provisions consumed by Frank-lin and his crew. With the lead levels confirmed, McMas-ter's Department of Anthropology will next make a batch of the ox cheek soup and can it using methods from the 1840s. Over the course of a year the cans will be opened and analyzed. Researchers will then be able to gauge how quickly lead leaches into soup rendering it lethal. Lead poisoning has long been considered a cause of death for the ill-fated explorers. The soup can is part of the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.

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10 McMaster Times - Winter 2010

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The next time you hear the notes of Arthur Burridge’s McMaster March, they may actually be played by a marching band. Already a recognized McMaster Students Union club and given practice and stor-age space by Athletics & Recreation, the McMaster Marching Band is one of the first such organizations at a Canadian univer-sity. The group officially launched during Homecoming last fall and performs at community events, festivals and parades.

McMaster marching band Anniversary celebrationsWhile many are celebrating the passing of the first decade of the new millennium, others are marking other significant mile-stones:

It has been 80 years since McMaster ■■moved to Hamilton from McMaster Hall in Toronto. Much has changed on campus since 1930 when there were only five buildings: University Hall, Hamilton Hall, Edwards Hall, Wallingford Hall and the Refectory. The University’s lands and buildings were secured through gifts from graduates, members of the churches of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, and citizens of Ham-ilton. The Silhouette■■ , the newspaper of the McMaster Students Union, is also celebrating its 80th anniversary in 2010. A reunion celebration has been planned for March 6, 2010 and will include an open house at the Silhou-ette office followed by a reception and dinner.The Engineering & Management pro-■■gram is celebrating 40 years. When it began in 1970, it offered five engi-

The McMaster Students Union hopes to raise $30,000 at its 12th annual Charity Ball on Friday, Feb. 5 at the Hamilton Con-vention Centre. This year’s proceeds will benefit the McMaster Children’s Hospital, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Hamilton and the McMaster Alumni Association. Tickets for this year’s event, “The Curse of Amun-Ra,” are $40 each. Visit [email protected] for more information.

MSU Charity Ball

neering disciplines. Today, more than 120 students graduate each year from nine disciplines. There are more than 1,300 Engineering & Management alumni living worldwide.The Bachelor of Health Sciences pro-■■gram is celebrating 10 years with a year-long calendar of events in 2010. Visit www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/bhsc/cel-ebratebhscThe Gould Trading Floor at the ■■DeGroote School of Business re-cently celebrated its 10th anniversary. Opened in 1999, it was the first uni-versity trading centre in Ontario and the second in Canada.McMaster’s First Nations Student ■■Association recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. The Marlins men’s hockey team ■■marked its 50-year anniversary reunion in 2009 for former play-ers from the 1958 to 1962 teams. Awfy-Wick, McMaster’s intramural ■■football team, celebrated its 25th con-secutive game in the football league’s playoffs, a streak unmatched in the University’s history. Editor’s note: Have we missed a 2010 milestone? E-mail [email protected]

Page 11: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

McMaster Times - Winter 2010 11

University New

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Surgical masks appear to be as good ■■as N95 respirators in protecting health-care workers against influenza, according to a study led by Mark Loeb ’96, a professor in the Michael G. De-Groote School of Medicine. The study concludes that surgical masks have an estimated effectiveness within one per cent of N95 respirators, and are not associated with an increased rate of infection of influenza or other respira-tory viruses. A team led by chemistry professor ■■John Brennan has come up with a “dipstick” to test for small amounts of pesticides in food and beverages. The team developed the quick test for toxic pesticides in foods and plans to

make similar paper-strip tests avail-able for foodborne bacteria like E. coli, listeria, and salmonella. If you are 50 or older and you break ■■your hip, you have a one in four chance of dying within five years. Break your back, and you have a one in six chance of dying that soon, ac-cording to a national study led by George Ioannidis ’92, a health research methodologist in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. The research has found that about 25 per cent of men and women who develop hip fractures and 16 per cent of people who develop spine fractures will die over a five-year period. Researchers have found that frail ■■seniors who participate in a Stay Well program for one year experience im-proved physical abilities and a signifi-cant reduction in their use of health care services. Established in 1997,

the Stay Well program is a Hamilton-based physical maintenance program designed to keep frail older adults healthy, independent and mobile. The Canadian blood supply relies ■■heavily on a small number of donors - with young adults donating at higher rates - that may prove problematic as the population ages, according to a new study led by Antonio Páez, as-sistant professor in the Department of Geography & Earth Sciences. If you use your willpower to do one ■■task, it depletes you of the willpower to do an entirely different task, finds a new study led by Kathleen Martin Ginis, associate professor of kinesiol-ogy. The study has found that cogni-tive tasks, as well as emotional tasks such as regulating your moods, can deplete your self-regulatory capacity to exercise.

Ronald Barr, an internationally ■■renowned pediatric oncologist in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, has been recognized by the Canadian Cancer Society for excellence in cancer research by being named the 2009 recipient of the O. Harold Warwick Prize. Michael Boyle ’80■■ has been named the 2009 Researcher of the Year in Health Services and Systems and Population Health by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Boyle, who holds the Canada Research Chair in the Social Determinants of Child Health, is recognized for his efforts to untangle the relationship between children’s health and their environment.Sheila Sammon, associate professor ■■of social work, and Nick Bontis, asso-ciate professor of business, were two of six professors selected by 15,000 peers to receive the Ontario Confed-eration of University Faculty Associa-tion Awards. Six researchers have been lauded for ■■having the “next big ideas.” Sarah Dickson, Marie Elliot, Ben Evans, Bhagwati Gupta, Duncan O’Dell and Valerie Taylor ’00 are recipients of On-tario’s Early Researcher Awards.

Christopher Swartz, director of the ■■McMaster Advanced Control Consor-tium and professor of chemical engi-neering, accepted the NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation on behalf of consortium members and student Wei Chen ’09 was named runner-up for the Innovation Challenge Award. Three McMaster professors have been ■■welcomed as fellows into the Royal Society of Canada, including Deborah Cook ’85, Health Sciences, Jeff Galef, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behav-iour and David Wilkinson, dean of the Faculty of Engineering.Susan Dudley, associate professor of ■■biology, has been awarded the 2010 Women of Discovery Award (WOD) by WINGS WorldQuest. Dudley received the WOD Earth Award for her discoveries on plant kin recogni-tion. She is among five recipients to receive the US$10,000 prize.The late ■■ Susan Farley’s ’08 passion for learning will live on with a new award for students in the Department of Health, Aging and Society. Created in 2009 by her parents, the Susan Farley Scholarship is in memory of the student who struggled with mul-tiple sclerosis.

Mary Yang, a third-year Arts & Sci-■■ence student whose scholarly inter-ests lie in topics as diverse as genomics and the evolution of pro-teins as well as the history of West-ern civilization, was among 17 Cana-dians to receive a Killam Fellowship in 2009, valued at $10,000.Three faculty members have been ■■recognized for their contributions to McMaster’s Faculty of Health Sciences by having their names added to the Community of Distinction, located in the Ewart Angus Centre. They are: Nathan Epstein, a pioneer in mental health who successfully de-stigma-tized mental illness; Alvin Zipursky ’80, world-renowned for his leader-ship in pediatrics and oncology; and the late Barbara Ferrier, whose work advanced medical education.Luke Chan ‘74■■ was recently honoured with a 2009 Chinese Canadian Leg-end Award, along with Audrey Chiang ’77, a financial advisor with Clarica Insurance. The award recognizes Chi-nese Canadians for contributions to the community through outstanding achievements in their field.

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How do you define innovation?Being innovative means having the cour-age to do things differently than they have been done before. McMaster recognized this a long time ago at the medical school. They had the idea that there were a wide range of skills needed to be an effective doctor … not just high marks in math and science. It took courage for them to inno-vate this way and the results have been a huge success. Google is an example of an extremely innovative company. They make it manda-tory that 20 per cent of your time has to be spent on stuff that’s not part of your job. They encourage employees to think outside the box and they provide a platform to actually get outside the box. The result is a company that is disrupting most media, technology and consumer business models while providing a free service that every-one relies on now. Pretty good in 10 years. In the world of technology, what does the future hold? The concept that I envision is screens of all different sizes and forms will be every-where – that’s what people will converge around. That will be a user’s experience. Think of it in terms of energy and your house. You don’t have a power plant in

your house but you have plugs that you use to access the energy. Handhelds will be an increasingly huge phenomenon, especially with this next generation. The experience will get richer and richer and the graphics and keyboards and input methodologies will be better and more human. How does Adobe fare with other companies?Adobe has built a culture around innova-tion and technical excellence from the beginning. Dr. (John) Warnock and Dr. (Charles) Geschke invented desktop pub-lishing when they were playing around with desktop computing at Xerox Parc. It’s a software company that is built on innova-tion, so culturally that’s deep in the genes of everyone who works here. As a board member, I encourage them to hire people who are the targets of their products. If you are trying to build applications for a Japanese customer you need to under-stand what they do with their cell phones. Whoever is building the application should be part of that culture. I think Adobe spends a lot of time looking at what people are trying to achieve rather than looking at others. It’s not about being a follower. It’s similar to the famous Wayne Gretzky line, you are shooting for where the puck is going to be, not where it is.

If you had a crystal ball, what do you foresee for technology in 2030?I see a fantastic 10 to 15 years of innova-tion ahead of us … maybe the biggest time of innovation because everything has to change. It is simply driven by how this generation is dealing with computers and how they are interacting with different digi-tal devices and platforms like Twitter and Facebook. I look at the current possibilities for investment and see great opportunities. My biggest reason for optimism is how many things are broken or don’t work. For example, there is a company called Green-box and they have built a system to moni-tor home energy consumption in real time. We have an energy crisis and a depen-dency on foreign oil but we can’t read our electric bills because they are set up to not be understood. When you get involved you see how crazy the current system is. It has to change and it should change. What type of technology do you have at home? We are all Apple and Adobe at our house. I have an iPhone and we have three Macs, including a big one for video editing. We are building a new house and we are going to be using lots of new clean technologies.

A world full of possibilities by Shelly Easton

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Rob Burgess ’79 is a director on the board of di-rectors at Adobe Systems Inc. in San Jose, Calif. and was formerly the CEO of Macromedia and Toronto-based Alias Research and Alias/Wavefront. The Bachelor of Commerce graduate spoke to the Times about what he thinks lies ahead for the future of innovation and technology.

Technology has often been viewed as both a blessing and a curse. What are your thoughts on this given the speed of invention in the industry?From the curse standpoint, it’s something that has infuriated me for a number of years – when people develop features that are not accessible so nobody can use them. Some companies have figured it out and don’t do that – like Apple and Google. There is an increasing awareness that design does matter, be it on a website or a device like an iPhone. It’s about not just adding features because you can, but also because they work effectively. We are heading into a magnificent time, a really fun time for people who don’t like technology. They are interested in what a device can do for them with the technology part being in the background. That is one of the opportunities – using innovation to get the technology out of peoples’ lives and make it more transparent to what you are trying to do.

How did you begin your career? Initially I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do. I wasn’t particularly interested in high technology. I was in my graduat-ing year and interviewing for jobs. There

were lots of opportunities and I had two I was considering: brand management for Proctor & Gamble and working as a sales trainee for Honeywell Information Systems. Proctor & Gamble wanted to put me on the Tide brand, which had looked the same for years. The interviewer said to me, “Well, when you get to be number one, why change?” That didn’t seem like any fun to me so that’s how I got into high-tech. Then I went to Digital and learned how to sell computers. That led to working for Silicon Graphics Canada Inc. in my base-ment in Toronto. I spent a few years driv-ing across Canada in my car with a demo machine that weighed 200 pounds trying to get people excited about the right software applications and computer animation. Eight years later I was hired to be CEO of Alias, which was a young public com-pany with software for computer anima-tion. That was just as computer graphics were becoming a possible technology to do special effects for film. Terminator 2 proved you could use this technology to make movies and Alias was a leading supplier of that software. (Mr. Burgess led the integration of Alias Research into Silicon Graphics Ltd., which bought the firm in 1995. He then left to

become chairman and chief executive offi-cer of Macromedia for 10 years. It was pur-chased by Adobe in 2005.)

How did your time at McMaster shape you?I had a very positive experience at McMaster. I started out at Western and then transferred for my last two years to McMas-ter. I managed the Bread Bin (now Union Market), which was a great job. I learned a lot about running a business from that work, how to make a profit, how to deal with human resource issues. I also had really positive experiences with some of my professors, in particular, the late Randy Ross who was a marketing professor. He was inspiring to me because he had real-world experience and had spent a lot of time actually marketing so he brought that into the class. McMaster has been innovative in bringing real-world experience to the lecture hall and students draw tremendous benefits from that.

A world full of possibilities

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Why were you interested in coming to McMaster?Master has a long-standing reputation for two things that I find very important, espe-cially when they come together. One is a commitment to higher academic quality and the second is a commitment to inno-vation. Those attributes are a particularly attractive combination. If you look overall at the state of universities in Canada, they are reasonably similar in their mandates and in their capacity, but they are not all free to develop and advance in the way that I think McMaster is by virtue of its his-tory and its circumstances.

How would you describe your personal leadership style?My style of leading in the university is based on my great admiration for universi-ties as entities. What’s great about them is that they are independent, and they are the sum of a large number of independent forces, interests and constituencies. I think the best way to succeed is to capitalize on the talents within the institution and to do that you have to be open to being educated about what the diverse interests, emphases and achievements of the faculty and the students really are and to try and build on those. So my style of management is to respect and facilitate people in their work and try to bring together the contributions that everyone makes individually to pro-duce benefits to the institution as a whole and to our community. What role do you see alumni playing in the future of the University?Alumni are crucial members of the Univer-sity, and convocation symbolizes their for-mal inclusion in the continuing life of the institution. I think one needs to work to reinforce that role for alumni and to involve them wherever possible. They can certainly contribute to current students in profound ways. The obvious means is through pro-viding support to the University, but there are many forms of support, not necessarily material, and students benefit enormously from having a relationship with alumni who’ve been through their programs and are now making a career in a particular line of work. How can alumni help you transition into the role of President and Vice-Chancellor?Well, I think that alumni should not hesi-tate to offer me guidance on what incom-ing presidents, and particularly incoming presidents who are new to the institution, need. Alumni have a unique perspective on the University’s culture and the values of the institution.

On the road to McMaster

JD Howell

Patrick Deane

by Shelly Easton

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McM

aster’s next president

So you are anticipating a few phone calls? A few e-mails? Yes. I welcome them. As I said, I am interested in higher education institutions as organisms, which are robust by virtue of how they are composed. Being able to work with all the different components is really a very rewarding part of this kind of a job. Bringing the alumni even further into the life of the University than they may have been at different times historically is certainly going to be an important part of how I see my role. What advantages does an English professor have in leading a university like McMaster with such strong programs across so many disciplines, including health sciences and engineering?This is an interesting question that people often ask. It’s premised on the view that you are what your disciplinary background says you must be. If that was true then none of us would ever be qualified to per-form one of these roles because we would be incapable of making the imaginative or intellectual leap from one discipline to the other. I think part of what universities exist to do is to educate people in specific disci-

plinary terms; but the much greater goal is to educate them in a range of personal and intellectual capacities, which can then be widely applicable. I can’t imagine a job more exciting than the job I’m about to take on, precisely because of the range of disciplines and interests and constituencies in the Univer-sity. Finding ways in which I can be of ser-vice to different disciplines will strengthen McMaster overall. But there is a particular strength that people from my discipline have in this kind of work and that is the ability to read in a broad profound sense. I don’t refer to the simple act of reading; I mean the ability to interpret, to understand, and translate, and then bring together the different parts so they can be understood to make a meaningful whole. That is a met-aphor for what I think the job entails. What are the benefits and challenges of com-ing to McMaster from elsewhere? Coming new to any situation, whether to the University in itself or to the University in its relation to the community, can cer-tainly be a challenge, but it can also be an advantage. To be from away, or to be from

within: neither is in and for itself good. I think the benefit, potentially, is that I can see situations with a new pair of eyes and in a way that enables me to compare them with situations I’ve seen elsewhere. So, whether we’re talking about what’s going on in the University itself, or in community relations, say, to have seen those relations played out as I have in four or five other higher education settings is, I think, a ben-efit to McMaster. The same is true for inter-nal issues in the University. Freshness of perspective, particularly if it is underwrit-ten by a reasonable amount of experience in parallel situations, can be a real benefit. The danger is the whole issue of local knowledge and historic memory. I think a person coming in new has to be sensitive to the fact that there is a great deal that they don’t know, and a great deal that they don’t see at first glance, and they have to enter into matters properly mindful of the limitations of their knowledge of a particu-lar situation. The huge compensation is the excitement that arises from entering some-thing new – an excitement I feel now. It is a tremendous opportunity. Merely learning about what is here at the University prom-ises to be a stimulating journey.

What do you hope the University will look like five years from now?At the moment there are some short-term issues that need to be resolved, but they are not unique to McMaster. I would like to see the University in five years time on a very sound financial footing and character-ized by strength and international profile in a wide range of academic areas. Not all units within a University thrive in the same way, but they need to be able to thrive on their own terms. By respecting and sup-porting those differences I believe McMas-ter will be the University that students place at the top of their list because of its demonstrated strengths, the excitement of its programs and its commitment to innova-tion, as well as its engagement with human, social and national issues. Do you anticipate doing any teaching or research during your tenure as president?I do, because the business of teaching and research is what sustains me as an academic. It is important to be able to con-tinue that very direct relationship with the students and the academic mission of the University. The key issue is the extent to

which that is possible given the demands of the schedule. At this point it is hard for me to say. Can you share something about yourself that is not readily apparent to our readers? My wife and I do like animals and we’ve kept horses for a very long time. I enjoy them, but I am not a rider. Our sheep are a new acquisition, and they are of practical use: my wife Sheila is a weaver. I confess I simply enjoy the physical work of the farm. It provides you with an opportunity to think, and an opportunity to deal with things that are tangible and real. Did you ever think when you were growing up: Okay, I’m going to be a sheep and horse farmer and I’m going to be president of a university? No. Neither. I don’t know which was least probable! As an English literature scholar I’m sure your reading list is long. What reading material is on your nightstand? Three books are on my shelf at the moment. One is the new J.M. Coetzee book, Summertime. It’s the third volume of

his memoirs. He is a South African author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and won the Booker twice. I’ve just finished devouring it. The second is a biography of Flannery O’Connor. The third one is Rich-ard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth, which presents the evidence for evolution in Dawkins’s characteristically trenchant way. And I’m reading volume one of the McMaster history. What are you most looking forward to in your role? I love these jobs for the people. The plea-sure will be getting to know the individuals and groups who make this place, getting to know the new community. When you come to a university like this, there are a large number of people very committed to it and passionate about the institution. It’s exciting to encounter that and to find your-self in a position not only where you can enjoy it, but can help build on it.

Have you had a good response so far?Oh yes. It’s felt very positive. I look forward to getting to know people and having them get to know me better.

I can’t imagine a job more exciting than the job I’m about to take on, precisely because of the range of disciplines and interests and

constituencies in the University.

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Everyday, people find themselves in these types of situations. Someone suffers a head injury and loses his ability to commu-nicate. An elderly immigrant visits a doctor but no one speaks the “contact language” she acquired in her new Canadian commu-nity. An autistic child is shunned because he doesn't have the social skills needed for communication. Often, interpersonal communication is taken for granted, says John Connolly, pro-fessor and chair of McMaster’s Department of Linguistics and Languages. McMaster experts are making waves in studying the connections between language and the brain in order to better understand how we communicate with one another. From language loss in the elderly to second language acquisition to speech technology, pathology and brain imaging, McMaster researchers are embracing collab-oration to foster a deeper understanding of the intricacies of the science of language. New developments in Connolly’s depart-ment, including the creation of Canada’s first humanities-based multidisciplinary lab in neurocognitive linguistics, mean the interplay between language and the brain

is under scrutiny. Connolly and colleagues from across campus are working to better understand language and, at the same time, build pro-grams that combine the study of traditional humanities disciplines with those from science, health sciences, engineering and social sciences. For Connolly, the rewards from his research are immeasurable. He has pat-ented a neuropsychological assessment procedure that records brain function in response to visual and auditory stimuli. He is developing and expanding the applica-tions in a new Language, Memory and Brain Lab and is using this technology to help patients. One of his most memo-rable cases was a patient who suffered a knife wound to the brain. He lost his abil-ity to communicate and was classified as vegetative. Using his patented test, Con-nolly determined that the patient’s brain responded to speech stimuli – a level of consciousness that didn't match the diagno-sis. After five months of rehabilitation, the patient was back to living a relatively nor-mal life although he couldn’t speak. With-out the test, not only would he have been

denied treatment, but his parents, family and friends would never have known that he understood everything happening around him. “Language is the way we communicate and if you can’t do anything in that domain you may be evaluated as not having any intel-lectual capacity,” says Connolly, who came to McMaster because of the opportunity to work with leading linguists, neuroscientists, and neurologists. “Our technique leads to decisions to treat individuals who had pre-viously been denied treatment. That whole area of research has a real impetus now and there are genuine success stories about understanding how we do certain cognitive tasks. The better we understand language disorders and the mechanisms involved, the better we can design interventions that may help.”

John Connolly and students in the Language, Memory and Brain Lab in the Department of Linguistics and Languages.

Making brain wavesYou begin your day with “hello.” You talk about the weather, your work, your children. You wave. You smile. You laugh. You think nothing of the conversations you have or the words you know. What if sud-denly you couldn’t speak, gesture or communicate? What if one day you were not understood?

JD Howellby Chantall Van Raay

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“Studying linguistics gave me a strong understanding of language, both theoreti-cally and practically, which was absolutely necessary while working with Kenswey Nsey,” says DeVries. “The professors gave me the knowledge that I needed in every-thing from phonetics and phonology to cross-cultural communication.” There’s a new language in town – texting. But has it come at the cost of other lan-guages? Linguistics specialist Magda Stroinska, who studies the effects of texting on a young person’s language skills, is work-ing on an experiment to demonstrate the effects of texting on spelling. She has found that written and verbal English knowledge has diminished to the point that many students don’t know the differ-ence between “where,” “we’re” and “were.” In many cases, children learn to use com-puters before they learn to read and write, she notes. “In texting, there are programs where you start the word and the program finishes it for you. It’s not that I’m blaming technology, but students need to be taught grammar and that there is a difference between texting and writing formally.” With diminishing world boundaries, acquir-ing a second, third and even fourth lan-guage is not uncommon. But what is the best way to learn a language? Elisabet Service, who studies language from a cognitive perspective, challenges a language program that introduces French as a second language at a young age, but does not follow through up to high school graduation. Studying second language learning at different ages has direct appli-cations in the design of language teaching procedures for different age groups, she says. “This can both save tax dollars and give Canada an edge in the global market, where competitors already speak English

From research and teaching to linking col-leagues from across campus, McMaster has provided a niche in the field of languages and linguistics, Humanities dean Suzanne Crosta ’80 says. “The department has com-pletely redefined itself to offer programs with an interdisciplinary focus. Collabora-tions have opened new vistas in linguis-tics, cognitive science, neuroscience and other emerging fields of research. What’s more, “the department has opened new avenues for humanities students who see these courses as a gateway to professional careers in such fields as speech language pathology and cognitive science.” She cites two highly sought-after cogni-tive science programs – a new graduate program offering specializations from sociolinguistics to neurolinguistics and the recently formed undergraduate major in cognitive science of language. “What is unique about the department is it has the most diversified faculty. We have experts in a suite of languages and this global profile attracts scholars from around the world in search of innovative pedagogies for foreign-language teaching and learning.” For example, John Colarusso special-izes in dying languages and has worked on some of the least spoken languages in the world, including the Ubykh, which has 81 consonants, and just three vowels. Colar-usso is one of three people in the world with a working command of this language. The department's teaching success is evident in its graduates who enter such fields as medicine, law, psychology, pub-lic relations, information sciences, speech pathology, and endangered language revi-talization. Roxanne Lai ’03 used her honours lin-guistics degree to become a physician for disadvantaged populations. She works in Vancouver as a substitute doctor, filling in for family physicians. She chose humani-ties, focusing on languages, psychology and culture as she felt it provided her with the “human side.” She adds:“ … the humanities are much more interested in big picture issues. During the tougher parts of the training process, it was nice to have that different perspective.” Aaron DeVries ’07 has also pursued a unique path since graduation. With his degree in hand, he travelled to Cameroon, Africa to work on a language development project. Using the phonological analysis training he had learned, DeVries helped revise and establish an alphabet for the unwritten language of Kenswey Nsey. The new alphabet is now used to document health and agricultural information.

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Making brain w

aves

and market-specific languages are required.” As we age, eyesight, bone density, mem-ory, even language weakens. But for aging immigrants – a growing segment of North America’s population – greater impediments exist. Studying “contact languages” – those spo-ken by immigrants who merge their dialects into a new language when they settle in a new community – professor Anna Moro has found that aging immigrants face chal-lenges in health care settings because no one effectively speaks their language. They often have limited education and did man-ual labour resulting in limited integration with the dominant language. “Depending on the individual’s level of proficiency or if a care provider speaks the contact lan-guage, there are issues with understanding how to take medications or expressing your problem when the interpretation is lost,” she says. Sometimes interpretation is lost due to age-related or cultural differences, add pro-fessors Vikki Cecchetto and Stroinska, who are leading a joint study looking at aging immigrants who during their working life had different degrees of functional use of English. “Sometimes when an elderly per-son complains, it is just a call for personal interaction rather than a real cry for help,” Cecchetto says. “Sometimes they are just asking for attention. They’re not asking for a pill.”

Our continued interaction with technology is also providing numerous areas of investiga-tion. Can computers replace people? It’s not a new question. But for translating online text and voice, the answer right now is no, say Ivona Kucerova and Tae-Jin Yoon, two new faculty members interested in compu-tational linguistics and the structure of lan-guages and experimental phonetics. Website translations, for example, are challenging. If a German website offers to translate words into English, some of the translation will be garbled, Kucerova says. “Part of the reason is because the software is built by engineers who … do not know much about language. I have worked with computational teams to try and figure out how we can apply linguistic knowledge into these translation programs and create some-thing that performs better.”

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JD Howell

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Seriously sustainable

It isn’t easy being green, as the song goes, but the challenge of sus-taining the environment has seeped into the very core of the Uni-versity campus, influencing every decision on how buildings are constructed, lunches are served and garbage is collected. And while this way of thinking has become much more fashion-able in recent years, moving firmly into the mainstream, it’s noth-ing new at McMaster. Since a sustainable building policy was implemented in 2005, McMaster has ensured every new building and major renovation meets tough environmental standards, cutting edge standards, in fact. More efficient lighting systems have been installed; rainwater harvesting systems—built onto rooftops—capture rain and chan-nel it into the wastewater supply; a growing number have been retrofitted; computers use set-back programs, which automatically power down the machines until morning. One by one, these mea-sures have lessened our carbon footprint, and while good for the environment, they have also resulted in savings upwards of $1.5 million annually due to reduced energy consumption. “We are making some very good progress on the sustainability agenda,” says Roger Couldrey, interim vice president administra-tion. “As a University we need to be a leader on these kinds of issues and demonstrate to our community that we are forward thinkers.” While campus buildings are the biggest culprits for greenhouse gas emissions, five sites, including the recently opened Engineer-ing Technology Building, are constructed to meet LEED standards, known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—a green building rating assessment system that considers such aspects as the national climate and local construction practices.

The new engineering building, designed to achieve LEED gold certification, also houses an eco-friendly café that serves mostly local and organically produced foods served on take-out contain-ers made from renewable resources. Campus-wide, McMaster is using biodegradable take-out bags, compostable cutlery and recy-cling cooking oils into fuels and soaps. More recently, sustainable initiatives have extended to office supplies. New contracts with office and paper suppliers Grand + Toy and Buntin Reid stipulate that less packaging material is used, fewer trucks make deliveries to campus and products are more sustainable. It means heavy trucks delivering supplies to campus will be reduced to 100 per year, down from more than 3,200, lead-ing to significant greenhouse gas savings. It also means a cost sav-ings of as much as $2.3 million to the University during the five-year term of the contract. Grand and Toy has designed new reus-able totes as part of its McMaster contract to significantly reduce cardboard boxes coming to campus. People are making a difference too, either by carpooling, riding a bike to campus, or recycling and reusing outdated technological devices through an IT equipment collection and swap. The Univer-sity has also recruited “sustainability ambassadors,” who volunteer to promote environmental initiatives in their work area and cham-pion the cause. Andrew Pettit ’04, a sustainability ambassador in the Department of Athletics and Recreation, is motivating his colleagues by encour-aging them to compost, even if that means taking home their food scraps. “It’s a small measure, but an important one,” he says. “It’s all about integrating sustainable practices every day into University life.”

Seriouslysustainable

Sustainability Facts:A campus-wide ban on plastic bags will divert 10,000 bags per year from the landfill■■McMaster diverts 63 per cent of waste on campus from landfills, through an expanded ■■recycling programWater fountains on campus have been retrofitted with spigots to encourage the use of ■■reusable bottlesDrought-resistant plants are now used in campus landscaping ■■Expanded bike storage facilities have been installed■■

by Chantall Van Raay

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Alumni Directions

Online and loving it

Instilling pride

Rebecca Bentham ’02Alumni Association President

Karen McQuigge ’90Director, Alumni Advancement

When I was a student at McMaster two decades ago, the only way to count your friends was to actually sit down and do it. 1. Lynn. 2. Cara. 3. Angie. 4. Scott, and so on. It took forever. I remember thinking back then that what I really needed was some sort of device that magically con-nected me to my friends using electronic hocus-pocus and provided me with an up-to-the-second friend count at a mo-ment’s notice. You can imagine my joy, therefore, when Facebook came along. With just a couple of mouse clicks on my newfangled computer, I was able to quantify my 37 friends. The old me would have wasted half a day trying to figure that out. Facebook, in addition to being a con-venient friend counter, is a big part of something called Web 2.0, which is basi-cally a jargonistic way of saying web-pag-es-where-the-visitors-create-significant-portions-of-the-content. People also call Web 2.0 stuff “social media,” which to me means a friendly television reporter, but who am I to ignore the tide of progress? McMaster and the Alumni Association have jumped aboard the Web 2.0 revolu-tion. We are social media butterflies. I’m even starting to get into this new thing they’ve got called tweetering, twitting, twooting or whatever. In fact, the Alumni Office issues tweets Monday to Friday on our Twitter account: McMasterAlumni. Our Facebook page has almost 5,000 followers. We have a new video series called “Mac in a Minute” that offers the latest McMaster news on the McMaster-UTV channel on YouTube. The McMaster Alumni Association is also Argentina’s

most popular Google search of 2009. OK, just kidding on that last one. These are just a few of the ways Web 2.0 is extending the McMaster experience beyond the edges of campus. McMaster students have created a popular website called www.macinsiders.com that pro-vides a venue for students to share in-sights, tips, advice, news and even recipes (among other things). Back on the alumni front, the McMaster Alumni Association is a co-sponsor – along with the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour – of www.discoverpsychology.ca, a web source for lectures and colloquia featuring Mac professors discussing interesting is-sues in psychology with content designed to be useful for students, faculty, staff, alumni and the general public. This web-based series has become wildly popular, with new lectures going up every week during the academic year. Videos of the lectures are available on the website. You can even access the content on the uber-cool iTunes site. I would like to thank Joe Kim for his hard work on the Discover Psychology project. The Web 2.0 has revolutionized the way people around the world are using the internet, transforming it from some-thing not much different from watching television into a giant conversation involv-ing potentially everyone in the world with a computer. The McMaster Alumni Asso-ciation is part of the conversation and we hope you are too.

In his final letter just weeks before he died, Bernard Freeman Trotter ’15, a member of McMaster’s Honour Roll wrote, “I have more than I deserve … but I give a great deal back again.” This timeless message has relevance to

us all. We have much to be thankful for and in turn, we have an individual respon-sibility to give back. When I heard Mr. Trotter’s words in a speech given by President Peter George at a Remembrance Day celebration, I was filled with pride, contemplating the alumni who have served all over the globe. It also reminded me of the responsibility we have as an Alumni Association to keep McMaster part of our members’ lives. The association has undertaken a strate-gic planning process to review our values, vision, mission and strategy and prepare action plans for the next few years. Recently, we sent out an engagement questionnaire to assess the needs and wishes of alumni and focus on current pro-gram strengths and areas in need of refine-ment. We will use this feedback to inform our discussions as we move through the strategic planning process. We enjoyed an excellent response rate to the survey and would like to thank those who took the time to share their feedback with us. We are pleased to see that alumni share in our tremendous pride in their alma mater and we hear the call for a greater awareness of the opportunities available to become involved. Whether you live near or far, I urge you to keep McMaster as part of your life. I en-courage you to bookmark the University’s website so that you can keep up-to-date with its plans and regularly check the Alumni website. I also ask that you make it your goal to attend some events in your area, take a stroll through campus, or find ways to con-nect like following McMaster on Twitter. Through your connection you will be-come aware of the great stories McMaster has to tell, such as the appointment of Patrick Deane, who begins his term as Mc-Master president on July 1, 2010. As the current vice-principal academic of Queen’s University, Deane brings ex-tensive and distinguished experience in Canadian universities and a demonstrated commitment to alumni and the broader community. He promises to be another outstanding McMaster president. Alumni engagement is a major objective of the association. We believe that a closer relationship with the University brings a greater sense of identity and belonging. It puts a focus on our responsibility to the students of today and tomorrow so that we may bring our skills to bear on foster-ing a new and better world.

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shipped their four-wheel drive vehicles to Vladivostok and traversed into Stalin’s gulag dis-trict along the “Road of Bones,” travelled and camped along Lake Baikal, through Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, along mountain ranges and valleys, through Russia to the seaport of Murmansk, through European countries to the final destina-tion – Southampton, England. The adventure took almost six months and covered more than 30,000 kilometres.

Donald Wray ’62 received the 2009 Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario Award of Outstanding Merit. The award is the highest honour the institute can bestow. 1970s Luke Chan ’74 has been inducted into Hamilton’s Gal-lery of Distinction. McMaster’s associate vice-president inter-national affairs has travelled extensively between Canada and China, developing MBA programs in China at the for-mer Beijing University where many senior managers in the Chinese steel industry have been trained.

Rocco Di Matteo ’76, graduated from McMaster with a BA and then received a B.Ed. from the University of Toronto. In 1979 he began teaching with the Toronto Catholic School Board, then with the Dufferin-Peel

Catholic School Board and is currently teaching with the Niagara Catholic School Board. He has taught Grades 2 to 8 as well as English as a second language and special education. He has been married to Angela for 29 years and they have four children.

John R. Evans ’72, a former chairman of Torstar Corpora-tion, was awarded the first H. J. Crawford Award for lifetime achievement from the Univer-sity of Toronto Schools (UTS). Evans holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto and a doctorate from Oxford University. He served as the first dean of McMaster’s medi-cal school and president of the University of Toronto. He was chairman of the Torstar board of directors from 1993 to 2005.

Mark Evered ’72 has been appointed the University of the Fraser Valley’s fifth president and vice-chancellor.

Anthony Giovinazzo ’78 has been appointed president and chief executive officer of Cannasat Therapeutics Inc. Douglass Grant ’71 retired June 2009 as professor of mathemat-ics at Cape Breton University after 38 years of service. He will continue to serve as assis-tant dean of science for 10 months, after which he and wife Kathy Moskovsky ’68 plan to settle in Kitchener-Waterloo.

1950s Walter Stayshyn ’58 has retired as superior court justice of Hamilton. 1960s Joost “Jock” Brandis ’68 received the 2008 Albert Schweitzer award. The former aircraft loadmaster has worked as a camera and lighting tech-nician and received an Emmy in TV Sports Broadcasting in 2002. Since 2003, Brandis has worked as the director of research and development for The Full Belly Project. He was recently involved in the con-struction and facilitation of a groundnut-shelling assembly line and improved-efficiency water pump in Malawi.

Alum

ni A

lbum

Joseph Hollick ’68 received the 2009 Canada Tourism Volunteer of the Year Award. For the past decade Hollick has located, photographed and documented waterfalls and cascades in Hamilton, produced three Waterfalls of Hamilton post-ers and promoted the water-falls to the public and various government agencies.

Peter Penner ’62, professor emeritus of history, Mount Allison University, and his wife Justina Janzen Penner, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Aug. 9, 2009.

Herb Schoch ’67, an associate professor in accounting and finance at Macquarie Univer-sity, Sydney, Australia, recently embarked on a self-drive adventure through Siberia and Mongolia with his wife, Jessie, and friends. They

Charles “Chuck” Johnston ’49, a professor emeritus of history, was given an Ontario Senior Achievement Award for “keep-ing history alive.” The award, Ontario’s highest honour for seniors, recognizes his efforts spent researching and writing the biographies of those listed on McMaster’s Second World War Honour Roll. Despite experiencing serious, degenerative vision problems after his retirement from McMaster, Johnston, with the assistance of his wife Lorna, tracked down papers, relatives and friends of the fallen to complete the project. In addition, Johnston has also authored two books chronicling McMaster’s history.

1940s

Keeping history alive

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McMaster Times - Winter 2010 25

Ronald Ho ’70 was appointed chairman of Ascent Partners Group Ltd. in Hong Kong.

Anda Kett ’76 retired as a teacher from Bloomsburg Public School where she incorporated her arts background into her teaching. Since retiring, she has painted images and experiences of her life, including her gar-dens and her travels to Europe.

Tom Matthews ’79 resigned as headmaster of Hillfield Strath-allan College to assume his second headmaster post at St. George’s School in Vancouver.

Carolyn Milne ’75 was inducted into Hamilton’s Gallery of Distinction. The former presi-dent and CEO of the Hamilton Community Foundation helped more people get involved and engaged in helping others by raising the community founda-tion’s profile. Kalpana Raina ’79 was appointed to the board of directors of Information Services Group, Inc. Raina is a senior execu-tive from the financial services industry with operating and marketing experience in India, Europe and the United States.

1980s Scarlett Antaloczy ’80, who has two practices in Hamilton in Chinese and natural medicine, has lived and worked in Boston, Los Angeles, and London, England and her sing-ing voice has been featured on The Simpsons. She lives in Hamilton and has performed at the Lincoln Alexander Centre in Hamilton.

John Aveline ’89 and Catherine Cleveland ’90, and big sister Laurel, welcomed a new baby, Hester Mary Cleveland Aveline, in February 2009.

Dona Rae Bowers ’81 has been named Family Physician of the Year by the College of Family Physicians of Canada. Bowers,

from Ottawa, Ont. is dedicated to an inner-city patient popu-lation in her role as director of health services at Somerset West Community Health Centre and champions immigration health issues and HIV/AIDS. Nicholas Brathwaite ’82 was appointed to the board of advi-sors with Riverwood Solutions.

Kathy Chorneyko ’85 works as a pathologist at Brantford Gen-eral Hospital. After graduating, she was accepted into medi-cal school at the University of Western Ontario and completed her residency in Ottawa and Hamilton. She then worked as a pathologist in the laboratory at Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph’s Hospital, Hamilton. Frank Dilazzaro ’80 was appointed president of Systa-genix Wound Management, based in Gatwick, England. David Dobson ’86 was appointed executive vice-president and president of Pitney Bowes Management Services. He will also lead the development and deployment of an enterprise sales and solutions group for Pitney Bowes.

Andrew Hrymak ’80 is the new dean of the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Engineering. He was previously professor and chair of McMaster’s Department of Chemical Engineering and director of the Walter G. Booth School of Engineering Practice and the McMaster Manufactur-ing Research Institute.

Basanti Majumdar ’87 was inducted into Hamilton’s Gal-lery of Distinction. The McMaster professor of nurs-ing is an international scholar, educator and researcher and a member of the association of Indian and Inuit Nurses of Canada. She has served on the board of directors for Hamil-ton’s Catholic Family Services.

Alumni Album

Gordon Milne ’74 is keeping the flame alive for some of Canada’s greatest Olympians. During the last decade, Milne has been commissioned by the Canadian Sport Centre to produce a series of large-scale portraits celebrating the achievements of some of Canada’s greatest Olympians. His current collection of 12 portraits will be unveiled during the 2010 Vancouver Olym-pic Games. Milne has also enjoyed a long-term relationship with the Alberta Ballet during which time he has produced several portraits of dancers. These portraits mark the incep-tion of a new collection of work called Art & Dance honouring Canada’s elite dancers and choreographers. For more informa-tion visit www.gordonmilneart.com.

Marco Marrone ’80 was appointed chief financial officer and executive vice-president, finance of Canadian Tire. Michelle Muldoon ’87 screened her first short film at the Action On Film International Film Fes-tival in Pasadena, Calif. in July. Potluck received the Best Com-position Award and was named one of the 2009 Women of Film Award winners. Steven McRoberts ’84 was appointed vice-president, corporate development with Geologix Explorations Inc.

Prakash Patnaik ’80, of Ottawa, has been appointed to the Applied Vehicle Technology Panel of the Research & Tech-nology Organization of NATO.

Giuseppina Sciarra ’89 was appointed vice-president mar-keting for ConAgra Foods Canada.

Peter Sloly ’89 was named dep-uty police chief of the Toronto Police Service.

Sasa Stevanovic ’88 recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his company 1•2•1 Personal Trainers Inc. Stevanovic gradu-ated from McMaster in physical education and is a certified master trainer, certified golf conditioning specialist and post-injury rehab specialist.

Jonathan Walsh ’82 is employed at the Upper River Valley Hos-pital in Waterville, N.B. as an operating room nurse. His wife of 21 years, Cynthia, is also an operating room nurse in the same facility and they have three children. Fred Whiteside ’80 was appointed vice-president of product development with Equitrac Corporation.

Fanning the Olympic flame

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Alumni Album

Chantall Van Raay

Wearing a three-piece suit and climbing the corporate ladder was never in Tal Dehtiar’s ’05 plans. The McMaster business graduate had another idea: he would empower those less fortunate around the globe, treat them equally and pay them fairly. With his hugely success-ful charitable organization MBAs Without Borders and a new footwear company, Oliberté, in Africa, the 29-year-old has achieved his goal. Dehtiar helped launch MBAs Without Borders in 2004 while an MBA student in the DeGroote School of Business. The charity has established 100 projects in 25 countries, rang-ing from creating renewable energy products in Nicaragua to establishing health insurance programs in India. Since the business was acquired last year by CDC Devel-opment Solutions, Dehtiar has ramped up his new business, Oliberté, which manufactures urban casual shoes made from Liberian rubber and Ethiopian leather. The shoes are made at a small rubber-processing plant in Ethiopia and exported around the world. The shoes can also be ordered at the Olib-erté website: www.oliberte.com. “With the shoe company, the more shoes we sell, the more people we employ and the bigger impact we have,” he says. “We’re not a charity. It’s not about starving children. What we want to do is treat Africans equally and pay them fairly. This is a great way to showcase Africa to the world; to show that Africa is here and has potential in the world market.” Oliberté is the first company to market premium urban-casual footwear exclusively made in Africa. This season, Dehtiar will appear on CBC Television’s Dragon’s Den, a pro-gram showcasing entrepreneurs pitching business ideas for investment from top business brains.

Tal Dehtiar and workers in his Ethiopian plant examine a design for one of the premium urban-casual Oliberté shoes made from Liberian rubber.

Shoes for equality

1990s Jasmine Albagli ’99 gave birth to Sophia Allison Albagli-Hansen on July 24, 2009 in Ottawa.

Shelly (Michelle) Burich (Hood) ’90 won the Canadian Public Relations Society Don Rennie Memorial Award for excellence in government communications. Terry Flynn, assistant professor in the DeGroote School of Busi-ness, is the society’s new presi-dent. Burich resides in Williams Lake and works for the Cariboo Regional District as manager of communications and protocol. Shirley Forsyth ’92 was appointed director, leadership development at Sun Life Finan-cial in Waterloo. Forsyth is also completing an M.Ed. degree at Brock University, and recently completed her 14th full mara-thon and 25th half marathon. She also volunteers with the Bay Area Leadership program through Volunteer Hamilton. Rosemary (Larmour) Godin ’95 was ordained in the United Church of Canada in May and is serving the pastoral charge of Moorefield-Rothsay in Ontario. This change brings her back to Ontario after a 25-year career as a journalist and politician in the Halifax area.

Martha Gulati ’91, a preventive cardiologist at Northwestern University, and other health care professionals participated in a roundtable discussion on health insurance reform with U.S. vice-president Joe Biden last August at Chicago’s Sinai Community Institute.

Michael Heenan ’95 has joined the Credit Valley Hospital as director of quality, performance and risk management. An MBA graduate, he is now a part-time sessional lecturer in Health Services Management at the DeGroote School of Business and resides in Milton with his wife and daughter.

Damian Holsinger ’99 is a lec-turer in neuroscience and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience in the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney. After graduating from McMaster, he completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne. He now lives in Sydney with his wife, Natalie, and two children, Mitchell and Olivia.

Amanda Jamieson-Bain ’97 and her husband, Adam, welcomed their second son July 28, 2009. Colten Christopher Jamieson Bain joins his two-year-old brother Peyton. Jamieson-Bain is currently on leave from her personal training and pilates instructing job in Mississauga. Catherine Krasnik ’97, a third-year psychiatry resident who has also earned her MD, PhD, B.Sc. and Arts & Science degrees from McMaster, was awarded the APA/Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellowship in Public Psychiatry.

Andrew Lockie ’96 is the new executive director of the United Way of London & Middlesex.

Brenda Matthews ’94 and Ed Matthews were married in June 2008 in Victoria, B.C. They welcomed their first child, Kara Aisling Matthews, on May 10, 2009. Brenda works with the National Research Council’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics.

John T. Mayberry ’99 joined the board of directors of Fort Reli-ance. He started with Dofasco in 1967 and joined the execu-tive in 1987. He was president and CEO from 1993 to 2002 and chairman and CEO from 2002 to 2003. He is now the chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia.

Kaede Ota ’98, a research fellow with the Hospital for Sick Chil-dren, is a certified diplomat of the American Board of Medical Microbiology.

Page 28: Winter 2010 McMaster Times

McMaster Museum of ArtFierce: Women’s Hot-Blooded Film/Video January 28 - March 27, 2010 Maureen Bradley, Dana Claxton, Allyson Mitchell, b. h. Yael.

Curated by Janice Hladki, Associate Professor, McMaster University

The Gulf in Historic Maps (15th-19th centuries) continues to March 13, 2010 From the private collection of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council – Ruler of Sharjah

Muse Me: Summa 2010 April 10 - May 1, 2010 The McMaster School of the Arts’ graduating studio art student exhibition

www.mcmaster.ca/museum

Maureen B

radley, Birthday Suit Managem

ent: a 21C

Hom

age to LIsa Steele (2001, 10 min), detail of video still

engage. inspire. discover.

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McMaster Times - Winter 2010 29

Shelley (Vanderbeld) Pretty ’96, husband Mark and son Alex, welcomed a daughter, Natalie Melissa Pretty, on Aug. 5, 2009. Michael Wissell ’92 has been appointed senior vice-president, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. 2000s Maegan Baird, Paul DiIanni, Jonathan Trentadue and Nata-lie Tutunzis are immersed in a 10-month Ontario Legislature Internship Program. The 2008 political science graduates are among 10 recent Canadian university graduates selected to participate in the annual pro-gram that places them at the centre of the political process in Ontario. The interns are working closely with both a government and an opposition MPP and gaining a comprehen-sive knowledge of the legisla-tive process and an insider’s look at Queen’s Park.

Sarah Clark ’08, a member of the Georgian Sound Band, has been awarded a $2,500 Bob Cringan and Lois Legge music award. Peter Czerwinski ’09, aka Furious Pete, has an ironic story. In the winter of 2002 he was hospitalized with anorexia at the Toronto Sick Kids Hos-pital but in 2007 smashed res-taurant records, competed in online eating contests and did challenges that were described as impossible. Visit www.furi-ouspetedocumentary.com to watch a video documentary on his story.

Doug Csima ’07 won a silver medal at the World Rowing Championships in Poland. His goal is to compete for Canada at the 2012 Olympic Games. Brianna Davies ’02 has been appointed corporate secretary with Dacha Capital. The cor-porate lawyer works as a legal consultant to several publicly traded and private companies in the mining industry.

Kristin Demaline ’01, and husband Philip Forget, wel-comed their first child, Ade-laide Eve Forget, on April 1, 2009. Demaline is manager at a Toronto forensic accounting firm.

Amanda Gibson ’06 and David Tulumello ’05 are planning a winter wedding for Dec. 18, 2010 in Markham, Ont. They met in 2003 through McMaster’s Science Society Club.

Troy Grennan ’05 received the title of Fellow from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. His research is focused on HIV and interna-tional health. He was recently selected as one of 30 physicians worldwide to attend the Gorgas Institute in Tropical Medicine in spring 2010 in Peru. He will obtain specialty certification in travel and tropical medicine.

Andrew Gunn ’05 incorporated a new company, Canadian Inter-views Publishing, and started an online publication called Canadian Interviews. The site, which profiles prominent, inter-esting Canadians, is located at www.canadianinterviews.com.

Seralathan Kamalanathan ’07 and Sharmila Sanmuganithi ’07 launched a website looking at the differences between compa-rable and contrasting pairings. Questions include: What makes white eggs different from brown eggs, a sweet potato dif-ferent from a yam and curtains different from drapes? The site is located at www.differencebetween.net.

Lindsey Kettel ’09 and Cory Minkhorst ’09 won the James Dyson National Design Award for the invention of a light-weight foldaway cargo carrier for bicycles.

David Kideckel ’05 participated in the Novartis International Biotechnology Leadership Camp in Cambridge, Mass., a week-long event where post-graduate students in business, science and medicine were engaged with some of the world’s leading professionals in biotechnology. Kideckel’s team captured first prize for the best business plan proposal.

Carol Anne Lapointe ’09 was among 10 winners of the 2009 NEADS Equity Through Educa-tion Student Awards Program. Lapointe graduated with a com-bined Honours BA in Women’s Studies and Cultural Studies and Critical Theory.

Kirsty Locke ’01 and Bob Robinson were married on Aug. 14, 2009. They reside in Sudbury, where Locke is a medical student and Robinson is employed by the Ministry of Natural Resources. Jennifer MacKinnon ’09, a teacher, mother of three and a world traveller, enrolled in McMaster’s medical school after her youngest reached junior kindergarten age. She now serves her home community of Chatham, Ont. as a family physician. Joanna Maracle ’07 distributed sandwiches for the homeless in Toronto after being inspired by Stephen Lewis ’79, who was dared to sing Ain’t Too Proud to Beg on CBC’s The Hour. In addition to feeding the home-less, her proceeds support the Stephen Lewis Foundation's HIV/AIDS in Africa initiatives.

Stephanie McLarty ’03, and her business partner Tina Gokstorp, were selected as finalists for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The two

co-founded CTAR Corp., which helps companies manage their obsolete and excess telecom equipment by reselling, donat-ing and recycling it. Ian Paquette ’04 joined Sensen-brenner Hospital in Kapuskas-ing, Ont. last fall as a medical resident. Paquette, who holds a nursing degree from McMaster, comes to the profession via the military route and will return to the armed forces to fulfill a four-year commitment.

Drew Smith ’02 has had one of his songs featured in a major Hollywood movie. Melee, a song written and performed by the Hamilton alt-rocker, is heard in the movie Stepfather, a remake of a 1987 horror flick.

Justin Waxman ’06, and Eric Pilon-Bignell, developed Energy Drink Gum, a sugar-free, low calorie gum, which is manu-factured using a cold process to ensure that the release of caffeine and taurine in the gum is slow and consistent. The gum was initially sold out of the back of their cars around McMaster and Queen’s univer-sities but, in less than a year, now sells to more than 10,000 stores in Canada and 11,600 in the United States.

Wendy Woods ’04 is the founder of The Refinery, an image consulting company offering boutique shopping tours in the greater Toronto area. She has appeared on The Real Life, Star Report and has contributed content to MUM Magazine. She also hosts workshops at Seneca College, York University and Shopgirls.

Alumni Album

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Mike Barnes ’95 has published his seventh book The Lily Pond: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, Myth and Metamorphosis (Biblio-asis, 2008). The book tells of the author’s 35-year struggle with bipolar disorder.

Robert W. Boschman ’99 has published In The Way of Nature: Ecology and Westward Expansion in the Poetry of Anne Brad-street, Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt. The monograph is built on Boschman’s doctoral thesis.

William Broughton ’86 has published The Historical Development of Legal Apologet-ics (Xulon Press). He considers the histori-cal development of legal apologetics from the first century to the present, and legally proving the veracity of the resurrection as the means of Christian salvation.

Heather Cadsby ’61 has released Could be, a collection of poems about the unexpected and often wry coincidences of life.

Jane Christmas, Hamilton author and Mc-Master media relations manager, has re-leased Incontinent on the Continent (Grey-stone Books). A bestseller, it chronicles a funny and poignant six-week journey to Italy with her elderly mother to patch up their relationship.

Joanna Emery ’89 has published Weird Food: From Grilled Spiders to Maggot Stew, a non-fiction paperback filled with facts about the unusual foods eaten around the world. For more information, visit www.lonepinepublishing.com.

Darrell Epp ’05 has released a collection of poetry entitled Imaginary Maps (Signature Editions).

Mark Fuller ’95 has published his first book, Sustainable Stakeholder Strategy, available at www.amazon.ca

Krista Johansen ’94 published Torrie and the Dragonslayers, the fifth in the award-winning series for children ages 8 to 12. Go to www.pippin.ca/kvj/Torrieandthe-Dragonslayers.htm for information.

Jane Galbraith ’76 has released Baby Boom-ers Face Grief: Survival and Recovery (Traf-ford Publishing).

Scott Kenney ’93 has released Canadian Victims of Crime: Critical Insights (Toronto: CSP/Women’s Press, 2009). For more infor-mation, visit www.cspi.org.

Lisa Lynam ’99 has published Triathlon for Women, a guide for women on how to get the most out of their triathlon endeavours. The book covers fitness development, smart nutrition choices and race planning.

Dawn Martens ’86 has published A is for Aria, an alphabetized journey through the world of opera. For more information, visit www.firstchoicebooks.ca. Burke Penny ’69 published Beyond the Call (Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative As-sociation). The book follows the story of 33 members of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals sent to Hong Kong as part of “C” Force, the 2,000-member Canadian contingent dispatched to bolster the British colony’s garrison in October, 1941.

Gillian Richardson ’69 has published Ka-

boom! Explosions of All Kinds (Annick Press, 2009). She has authored 16 children’s books and numerous short stories and ar-ticles for children. For more information, visit www.books4kids.ca.

Caroline Stellings ’83, a children’s author and illustrator, recently released The Mala-gawatch Mice and the Cat who Discovered America (University of Cape Breton Press). She also authored a novel for ages 9 to 12, called The Contest (Second Story Press). Rakesh Varma ’81 has released Mystical Musings (iUniverse). Alan Walker ’01, professor emeritus of mu-sic, has released Hans Von Bülow: A Life and Times. Walker provides the first full-length English biography of Bülow, viewed as an eminent concert pianist, a respected (and often feared) teacher and music critic, an influential editor and a composer.

Lisa Walpole Finch ’90 has published her story, “A New Tradition” in the recent an-thology Christmas Traditions: True Stories that Celebrate the Spirit of the Season (Adams Media). Her first story “The Other Field Trip” appeared in Living the Serenity Prayer (Adams Media, 2008). Another story, “A Hemingway Tale” was published in The Ultimate Cat Lover (HCI Books, 2008).

McM

aster Writes

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Tom Cowper ’77, aged 55, died Nov. 22, 2008 in Kelowna, B.C. He is survived by his wife Janet, son Michael, daughter Joanna, mother Florence, three sisters Jackie (Chuck) Allison, Val (Scott) Fargey, Janet Teare, in-laws and many nieces and nephews.

Katherine (Kay) Davidson (Bell) ’48 died Sept. 12, 2009. The long-time employee of the Children’s Aid Society of Ham-ilton had lifelong friends from McMaster and was an enthu-siastic alumna and supporter. She attended all reunions and met with her McMaster friends regularly. She is survived by husband David and children Martha ’86, Lynn and Allan, and seven grandchildren.

James C. Firth ’39, aged 92, died Aug. 11, 2009. He is survived by daughters Mary, Lindsay, Leslie, grandchildren Tina, Ju-lie, Mark, Katharine, Morgan, and great-grandchildren Kelsey, Samantha, Holly, Emma, and Nicole. He was predeceased by wife Katharine and daughter Alison.

Maureen Greenway ’74 died in January, 2009. She graduated from the Faculty of Social Sci-ences.

William Reinhold Gross ’54, aged 80, died Sept. 21, 2009. He graduated from McMaster with a degree in history.

Norman M. Howard ’60 died Oct. 1, 2009. He was an elementary teacher and principal for the Wentworth County Board of Education for 38 years before retiring in 1990.

Mary Syme Linholm ’38 died Sept. 23, 2009. She graduated from McMaster’s Faculty of So-cial Sciences. Barbara Lucille Sandison (nee Telfer) ’41, aged 91, died in Sep-tember 2009.

Bill McLean ’59 died Sept. 26, 2009. He was dedicated to the protection of the environment and natural resources during his conservation career, which began in 1959.

Szczepan (Stephen) Piwowar ’48 died Sept. 28, 2009. He gradu-ated from the Faculty of Social Sciences, and majored in politi-cal economy.

Elmo Richards ’65, aged 77, died June 26, 2009. He is survived by his wife Shirley-Jane, sons Alan of Peterborough and Bryan and his wife Kimeva of Saskatoon, siblings Denny (Carolyn) of Mississauga, and Marsha (Charles) of St. Thomas, grandchildren Kahla, Brock and Tatiana, step-grandchildren Erika, Nicole, and Brett, and step-greatgrandchild, Norah. Born in London, Ont., he was a retired teacher of the Norfolk Public and Secondary School Boards, and a retired Simcoe real estate agent and appraiser of 25 years.

Keith Rosebrugh ’51, aged 85, died June 28, 2009. He was a navigator during the Second World War and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. He worked in the electronics sales business in Buffalo, N.Y., after graduation, then in Kitchener, Ont., and finally in Ottawa with a one-year stint in Washing-ton, D.C. He was predeceased by his wife Gladys in 1984, and is survived by three children and four grandchildren.

Victor Skretkowicz ’64, died July 22, 2009 in Dundee, Scotland. The McMaster varsity oarsman and football player earned an MA from the University of New Brunswick and a PhD from the University of Southampton. He was a distinguished Renais-sance scholar, senior lecturer and recently an honorary re-search fellow at the University of Dundee. His family includes his wife Carole and their son

Gavin, whose twin Bruce died earlier, and his sisters Felicia and twin Florence (Skretkowicz) Sage ’63.

Gene Sutton ’66, aged 64, died Aug. 3, 2009 from complica-tions from an aggressive infec-tion. She was a Hamilton ama-teur sport icon, who had a PhD in sports psychology.

Victor Topchy ’58 died April 15, 2009, in Baltimore. He is sur-vived by his wife Nora, children Nestor, Olivia and Alexander and grandchildren Tessa, Alan, Minerva, Annika, and Alena, sister Larissa and nieces Nila and Vita.

Audrey Tory ’53, aged 78, of Sackville, died Sept. 24, 2009. Born in Dymond Township, Temiskaming District, Ont., she was the daughter of Russel and Gertrude (Rice) Upton. She is survived by husband Elmer, son Kevin (Christine) and grandson Michael. She was predeceased by her parents and her daugh-ter Heather.

Mary Tremblay ’77, aged 65, died Oct. 13, 2009. She was predeceased by her son Ben Dolyniuk and her father Tom Drawbell and survived by her daughter, Karen Dolyniuk, and her husband Scott Brooks, her mother Ethel Drawbell, her brother Dave Drawbell and his wife Jackie, her nephew Jeff Child and his wife Lyndsay, her niece Devon Brucculeri and her husband Ed, and their fami-lies. Tremblay was regarded as a pioneer in the occupa-tional therapy program, first at Mohawk College and then at McMaster. She was renowned for her research on disabled war veterans and the disability rights movement.

June Laura (nee Charlesworth) Vargas ’41 died in 2008. She married a Mexican citizen Er-nie Vargas in 1948, and lived in Mexico until her death. She

learned Spanish, raised four children, did charity work at the Salvation Army, where she served as president for a term, helped hundreds of homeless dogs and cats, and founded her own lampshade manufacturing business.

William McKenzie (Mac) Youngs ’41 died Aug. 3, 2009.

James Morris ’41, of Vineland, Ont. died on Dec. 26, 2007. He graduated from the Faculty of Science.

Hulda Penner ’43, aged 86, died Oct. 9, 2009. She was prede-ceased by her parents Rev. John Aaron and Anna (Nikkel) Penner, and by brothers Nicho-las, Waldo and John. She is sur-vived by sisters Erna Janzen of Kitchener and Margaret Swartz (Herb) of Virginia, by sister-in-law Katarina Penner of St. Catharines and nephew David Janzen of Brantford, and many cousins, nieces and nephews.

George Serif ’51, aged 80, died Jan. 15, 2009. He was born in Saskatoon, and raised in south-ern Ontario, where he met and married Marylou Flumerfelt. They were married 60 years and raised three sons: Samuel, Laurie and Cary. He started his career as a biochemistry pro-fessor at Ohio State University, where he later became depart-ment chair. He was recognized in Who’s Who in America for his thyroid research. He was predeceased by his parents and two sisters and survived by his wife, sons, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, two daughters-in-law and two step-grandchildren. Norma Wright ’75 died Aug. 14, 2009, after suffering a brain aneurysm. She was an integral part of Burlington’s medical community for more than 25 years as a well-respected family physician who also practiced obstetrics.

In Mem

oriam

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34 McMaster Times - Winter 2010

The

Last

Wor

d

Pomp and circumstance, take off, eh?

Dave Thomas, one of the most recogniz-able and distinctive Canadian voices in the entertainment industry, shares a smile with President Peter George after being awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters at Fall Convocation.

One of McMaster’s famous alumni, comedian Dave Thomas ’72, received an honorary Doctor of Letters at Fall Convocation. Thomas has enjoyed a successful career in the entertainment industry since graduating, includ-ing writing and acting on SCTV and co-creating the iconic McKenzie Brothers with Rick Moranis. His speech had graduates and their families laughing and contemplating his words of wisdom. Below are excerpts from his “Follow your dreams” address:

… “As I look out over this crowd of distinguished staff, young intelligent hopeful graduates and reflect on the honour of being asked to speak to you today and receive an honorary Doctor of Letters, one thing comes to mind, what were you thinking? You’ve run out of real scholars now and you’re down to comedians? I don’t deserve this honour but I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either. So I’m going to take it. Receiving this honorary Doctor of Letters from McMaster University fulfills a lifelong dream – to get a university degree and do absolutely nothing to deserve it …

… Even though there were no theatre, TV or film courses offered at McMaster when I was a student here, in a strange way McMaster prepared me for my career in those fields because the McMaster Students Union funded a lot of extracurricular activi-ties that students could participate in. You could do plays, make 16-mm films, there was a radio station, a campus newspaper. I did them all. Martin Short ’72, Eugene Levy ’69 and Ivan Reitman ’69 were colleagues of mine at McMaster – when I mean colleagues I mean we used to drink beer together …

… My teachers at McMaster played a role too. They challenged me to make my writing relevant and craft my words in such a way as to leave an impact on Canadian culture and I took that challenge very seriously. I took the very staid, conservative image of Canadi-ans as polite, intelligent, fair-minded and politically neutral people and brought it into the new millennium with the iconic characters Bob and Doug McKenzie.

… Now, when you travel abroad, instead of being lumped together with the Swiss and other non-descript nations, you can hold your heads high as a country with a real identity, a country of beer-drinking, toque-wearing, jean-clad hosers.

… Oh ya, you can tell people all over the world to “take off, eh” and they’ll instantly know you’re Canadian and you can thank me for that and it all started here …

… I’m going to say one serious thing to you before I leave today: Follow your dreams. When I was in Dundas I dreamt of going to Hollywood, being on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, doing specials with Bob Hope, making movies, and Hollywood was as far away from Dundas back then that I might as well have dreamed about going to Mars … well, all my dreams came true because I let them.

… I never said I can’t do this or that’s unrealistic.’ I thought, What the hell, let’s give it a shot,’ and somehow, almost magically, the balls started rolling right here at McMaster. Here is where I made the friends, and did the shows that helped me follow my dreams. You’ve got only one life and one day you’ll be my age and when that day comes, no matter what has happened, if you look back on a life where you followed your dreams, you’ll most likely have no regrets. Remember it’s not the things you do in life that you regret. It’s the things that you didn’t do.”

JD Howell

Page 35: Winter 2010 McMaster Times
Page 36: Winter 2010 McMaster Times