New Trail WInter 2008/2009 by University of Alberta Alumni

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Machine Exposes Secrets of the Universe Prosthetic Arm Wired to Amputees Nerves Doctors Regrow Human Teeth .. .

Looking ahead to the next 100 years

A l u m n i

M a g a z i n e

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As a professional financial advisor, my mission is to provide trustworthy advice, quality investment alternatives and personalized services to help my clients attain their investment objectives. Let’s put that mission to work for you today. Call me to schedule a no-obligation meeting at your convenience. I will work hard to earn your trust and confidence through a personalized, knowledgeable approach to investment planning.

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Working Class The future of the workplace just might be user-friendly

The World is Not Enough Presenting the biggest machine the world has ever seen

What’s Up Doc? Predictions and prescriptions for the future of health care

Legal Aid Question period about the past and future of the law

Impressive Furnishings Fifty-five new chairs set the table for Campaign 2008

What About Bob? One reason why Edmonton’s live-theatre scene is second-to-none

Cine-File How getting kicked out of school kick-started an education

Grey Matter Only a quarter century separated him from his fellow students

Playing the Back Nine Giving comes naturally to a grad who’s still got game

Every Picture Tells a Story Five friends tell a tale about four decades of creation

Doha Daze If camel-riding’s not your thing, try going shopping in a gondola

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Your Letters Our readers write to us

Presidents’ Addresses

Landmarks

Keeping classmates up-to-date

67 In Memoriam

Bear Country

70 Scrapbook

55 Alumni Events Our alma mater branches out

Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to Office of Alumni Affairs, University of Alberta, Main Floor, Enterprise Square, 10230 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, AB T5J 4P6

University pages to be proud of

60 Class Notes

Accolades, honours and other milestones Goings-on around the U of A

58 Bookmarks

Bidding farewell to friends Homecoming 2008 remembered

72 Tuck Shop Taking a page out of the past

HERE’S HOW TO REACH US ... E-mail your comments, questions, address updates, and class notes to alumni@ualberta.ca. Join the Alumni Association’s online community at www.ualberta.ca/alumni. Call the New Trail reader response line at 780-492-1702. To advertise in New Trail contact Bonnie Lopushinsky at 780-417-3464 or bl5@ualberta.ca New Trail, the University of Alberta Alumni Association magazine, is published quarterly (circulation: 125,000). The views and opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the University or the Alumni Association. All material Copyright ©. New Trail cannot be held responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs.

S TAY I N T O U C H On the Move? To keep receiving New Trail wherever you go call 780-492-3471 or 1-866-492-7516 (toll-free in North America) or e-mail your address change to alumrec@ualberta.ca. Winter 2008/2009

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Director Susan Peirce, ’70 BA Supervising Editor Rick Pilger Editor Kim Green Associate Editor Sarah Ligon Contributing Editor Jodeen Litwin, ’90 BSc Art Director Lisa Hall, ’89 BA Advisory Board Deb Hammacher Ruth Kelly, ’78 BA John Mahon, ’76 BMus, ’83 MBA Douglas Olsen, ’86 BSc, ’88 MBA, ’92 PhD OFFICE OF ALUMNI A F FA I R S

Executive Director Susan Peirce, ’70 BA Associate Director/Manager, Alumni Education Programs Rick Pilger Associate Director/Manager, Alumni Branches Gina Wheatcroft, ’94 BEd Executive Project Manager Coleen Graham, ’88 BSc(HEc), ’93 MEd Finance and HR Administrator Jacquie Reinprecht Coordinator, Alumni Branches Andrea Dunnigan, ’03 BCom Assistants, Alumni Branches Cristine Myhre Riyaz Sharan Coordinator, Alumni Chapters John Perrino, ’93 BA(RecAdmin) Assistant, Alumni Chapters Vi Warkentin Communications Manager Kim Green Communications Associate Sarah Ligon Assistant to the Director Diane Tougas Assistant, Alumni Education Angela Tom, ’03 BA Coordinator, Graphic Communications Lisa Hall, ’89 BA Coordinator, Electronic Communication Services Debbie Yee, ’92 BA Coordinator, Alumni Recognition Jodeen Litwin, ’90 BSc Assistant, Alumni Recognition Ishani Weera, ’04 BA Coordinator, Research & Marketing Tracy Salmon, ’91 BA, ’96 MSc Assistant, Alumni Services Ann Miles Receptionist Donna Bell Coordinator, Alumni Special Events Colleen Elliott, ’94 BEd Assistant, Alumni Special Events Ashley Hunka, ’05 BA Coordinator, Students & Young Alumni Chloe Chalmers, ’00 BA HOW TO CONTACT THE OFFICE OF ALUMNI AFFAIRS

Write to us at: University of Alberta, Main Floor, Enterprise Square, 10230 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, AB T5J 4P6 Phone: 780-492-3224 or toll-free in Canada and the U.S. at 1-800-661-2593 Fax: 780-492-1568

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Winter 2008/2009

Letters

ALUMNI COUNCIL 2008–2009

The Nurse Made

Executive Committee President Jim Hole, ’79 BSc(Ag) Past-President / Vice-President Nominating & Bylaws Heike Juergens, ’72 BA, ’79 MEd, ’87 PhD Vice-President: Awards Deni Lorieau, ’73 BA Vice-President: Centenary Jim Hole, ’79 BSc (Ag) Vice-President: Scholarships Stacey Denham Gibson, ’95 BA(Aug), ’98 LLB Board of Governors Representatives Dick Wilson, ’74 BA, ’75 LLB Bill Cheung, ’86 LLB Vice-President: Student Life Anand Pandarinath, ’93 BSc(For), ’00 MBA, ’00 MFor Senate Representatives Kerry Day, ’80 LLB Judy Zender, ’67 BA Vice-President: Volunteer Engagement Stephen Leppard, ’86 BEd, ’92 MEd, ’03 EDD Secretary Jennifer Rees, ’80 BSc (PT) Faculty Representatives Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences Anand Pandarinath, ’93 BSc(For), ’00 MBA, ’00 MFor Arts Colleen Judge, ’87 BA, ’90 MA, ’99 PhD Augustana Stacey Denham Gibson, ’95 BA(Aug), ’98 LLB Business Jane Halford, ’95 BCom Dentistry Cornell Lee, ’01 BSc, ’03 DDS Education Don Fleming, ’76 BEd Engineering Jim Funk, ’78 BCom, ’86 BSc(Eng) Graduate Studies Marlene Keanie, ’86 BEd, ’01 MEd, ’07 EdD Law Bryan Kickham, ’71 BA, ’74 LLB Medicine Larry Jewell, ’63 BA, ’68 MD Native Studies Heather Taylor, ‘97 BA (NS) Nursing Carol Duggan, ’59 Dip(Nu) Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Rose Anne Lawton, ’73 BSc(Pharm) Physical Education and Recreation Hugh Hoyles, ’66 BPE Public Health Grant Frame, ’87 BSc, ’93 MHSA Rehabilitation Medicine Anne Lopushinsky, ’79 BSc(SPA) Campus Saint-Jean Deni Lorieau, ’73 BA Science Mark Polet, ’77 BSc Members at Large Terry Freeman, ’82 BCom Brent McDonough, ’77 BSc, ’79 BEd Ex Officio Executive Director Susan Peirce, ’70 BA Graduate Students’ Association Ben Whynot Students’ Union Janelle Morin Academic Dr. Frank Robinson U of A Vice-President (External Relations) Sandra Conn Honorary President Indira Samarasekera

At the University’s 100th birthday Nursing Alumni Brunch during Homecoming 2008 three ladies wore their old-style uniforms. It brought back memories of the ritual of the student uniform which helped hospital staff identify the level of each student’s training. First-year students wore a blue underdress with black stockings and shoes. Black shoes were exchanged for white at the end of the first year. It was the custom for students to toss their black shoes into the North Saskatchewan River to signify the end of first year. The first-year student would also receive her cap at a “capping ceremony” after completing six months of classroom training. To the rest of the hospital staff, blue meant that this first-year “probie,” as we were called, needed a lot of help. Most of us were only 18 years old. The second underdress was pink, and cuffs were added to the uniform at the end of the second year. The basic uniform consisted of a starched underdress, a starched collar, starched cuffs (in the third year), a starched bib and skirt or apron. It was put together with removable buttons and safety pins. The whole thing was washed, bleached, heavily starched and ironed in a large press in the hospital laundry. Uniforms were returned to the student weekly, folded and pressed flat. There was a clean bib and apron for each day and two or three underdresses for the week. We starched and folded our own caps. This was the dressing routine for each working day: • Shower or wash in the communal bathroom and use one of the eight toilets. • Return to your room and put on those undies. • Take out the curlers and do the hair.

• Pull on the elastic nylons and girdle or garter belt. • Insert the removable buttons into the holes down the front of the dress. • Pin the starched collar onto the tab at the back of the dress neckline with a safety pin. • Put on the dress, do up all the buttons, and pin the front of the collar together with the UAH pin. • Pin the bib and apron together with two pins at the front waistline. Cross the bib “straps” at the back and pin them to the back waistline with two more safety pins. Insert the removable buttons into the buttonholes in the back of the apron. • Crawl into this contraption and button up the waistline at the back of the apron. Pin the overlap under the waistband with a safety pin. Adjust the back straps and repin if necessary. • Tuck the bib under the collar at the neckline so the UAH pin shows. • Put on the nametag. • Add cuffs to the “pinks” if you are a third year student. Use safety pins to attach them to the dress and then add cuff links. • Make a curl of hair on the top of your head and use a bobbie pin to attach the cap to it. Use two more bobbie pins at the base of the cap. • Resign yourself to putting up with the itchy collar for eight to 10 more hours. • Don the freshly polished white shoes. • Throw the UAH cape over the shoulders and head over to the hospital through the tunnel or across the street for breakfast at 0630. Resilient, resourceful, persistent and dedicated are words used to describe the nurses of those years. We had to be to get through this ritual of the uniform. Sharon Acheson, ’66 Dip(Nu) Calahoo, AB

A “Banner” Year

hand in [Autumn issue, pg. 52]. I

I am so delighted that — perhaps, with the help of my icon of St. George in the Spring 2008 issue [pg. 43] — the Banner of St. George, lost in the 1980s, and made so long ago by the ladies of Wantage, England, has been found. It is very important that the University keep these wonderful traditions going, and I hope that I have been able to help, if only in some small way. Now for what might seem like a quantum leap, I would like to remind everyone about the film about the “Mad Trapper of Rat River” that Alberta’s Myth Merchant Films made and U of A professor Owen Beattie had a

studied physical and forensic anthropology under Dr. Beattie when he first came to the U from Vancouver and closely followed his making of the film on the Franklin Expedition. And I have been pondering about whether there is a small chance that Beattie and his forensic team would consider making a film about the relics of the saints of Canada and the miracles they are believed to have performed? It’s such an amazingly rich subject historically and so visually resplendent, as there are icons of all the saints of Canada, let alone those of the last 2008 years

A Long Tradition

more the fact that I just did not

I entered the U of A at 17 on a three-year Tegler Scholarship. At the same time I juggled a job with the Edmonton Bulletin [a newspaper published from 1880 until January 1951] as their reporter from the University. The year was 1932. But I did not graduate until 1936, as I also wrangled a year as an exchange scholar at the University of Toronto —my ambitions being to follow in the footsteps of my great idol, journalist Matt Halton [’29 BA, ’56 LLD (Honorary) New Trail, Spring 2008]. One of my memorable achievements along that line was an interview with Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, which was printed in The Gateway as well as the Bulletin and won a great deal of attention all across the country. R. B. was not really well liked.

know how the job should be done.

After graduation I went on to

In 1942 I married R. J. Cave, an officer in the RAF who, after 20 hours of flying time, was sent to Canada to teach other young men to fly under the Empire Air Training Scheme. I ended up living in England for a year before returning to Canada where we settled in Vancouver and where my husband enjoyed a great success in civil engineering and town planning. His first project was to redesign the town of Trail, BC. My oldest son’s daughter, Caroline Cave, ’99 BFA, attended the U of A and is acknowledged as one of the foremost stage actresses in Canada. My other connection with the U of A is my oldest brother, Earl Buxton, ’42 BA, ’48 BEd, who taught at the U of A’s Faculty of Education for 20 years and was also the author of

work at various newspapers

a number of school textbooks,

across Canada, but never won a

which became standards of sec-

great reputation. I’m not blaming

ondary English programs nation-

the fact that I was a woman, but

wide. Edmonton’s Earl Buxton

around the world. And it would get Beattie and his team out of the cold for the winter, with fewer risks to his and his students’ lives. Sheila Clegg-Lazzary, ’94 BA Edmonton, AB

We Three Kings I am enjoying immensely the Spring edition of New Trail. I spend the summer in Canada and only read the magazine when I return to Texas. After reading about all the important people who spent time at the U of A, I read the Classnotes and realized you had evoked a most enjoyable memory for me. The note from Nis Schmidt, ’61 MD, ’67 MSc, telling about his continuing to

Elementary School is named in his honour. Many other of my relatives have graduated from the U of A. I made it to the celebration of the U of A alumni whose graduation year ended in a “6” in 1996 but unfortunately missed the 100th anniversary celebrations, as I am now almost 94. Evelyn V. Cave, ’36 BA Vancouver, BC Editor’s Note: The interview Evelyn refers to appeared in the October 13, 1933, edition of The Gateway. It took place as former prime minister Bennett was about to board his private train car named “Mildred” the day after a talk he had given at Convocation Hall. It raised a few eyebrows across the country because of some rather impolitic remarks Bennett made regarding students finding work to fund university studies (given as the country was just beginning to emerge from the Great Depression) and women in general. Referring to his

sing with William “Bud” Phillips, ’60 BA, in the Vancouver Men’s Choir, brought back memories of hearing Bud sing at Strathcona Baptist Church. I never hear “We Three Kings” without thinking about the boys who sang, one of them being Bud. I remember Nis from medical school, but was far behind him. Thanks also for the article a few years ago about Molly Adshead, ’36 Dip(Nu), who was one of my Explorer leaders at the same above-mentioned church. I love getting this magazine. Loretta Mark Green, ’63 Dip(Nu), ’64 Dip(Nu), ’66 BSc(Nu) Dodd City, TX

speech of the previous day, Evelyn said, “It is hard to impress students with the wonder of the opportunities facing them if they all find it difficult to continue their university course through lack of funds, and they face unemployment when they graduate.” Bennett responded with: “Why can’t they find work? It is because they feel they are entitled to make a choice. There is plenty of work to be done — but it is not the kind which they wish to do.... How many girls do you know who are willing to go out and do housework? Not many! Everyone would rather look to the government than go about their work as they would do in normal times.” When Evelyn told Bennett that her “intended occupation” after graduation was to be involved in “political affairs,” he made light of that ambition when he replied: “Don’t you realize it is an extremely difficult undertaking for a woman? How do you intend to become associated with such affairs?” Winter 2008/2009

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Calling All Pembinites Thanks to Muriel Solomon, ’73 BSc, ’75 MD, for her Letter to the Editor and photo of the house committee of Pembina Hall in the Autumn New Trail [pg. 5]. It made me think back to the many happy years I spent living in Pembina Hall. I wasn’t the first member of my family to attend U of A and live in residence. My father, James L. Paterson, ’47 BSc, ’48 MD, also attended the U of A. I remember how Pembina Hall had been so beautifully renovated, and I felt fortunate to be moving in just after it was completed. As the president of Pembina Hall (1975-77), I was invited to speak at the opening ceremonies in November 1975 (see photo above, I am on the right and with me is Mrs. Grant Sparling). After being a residence for women only, Pembina Hall became coed that year. Most of the students were graduate students and medical students. We had some great parties, in particular Halloween!

What happened to Rhonda, Judy, Jack, Ron, Michel, Liz ... and all the rest of the Pembinites? I have fond memories of my wonderful friends in Pembina Hall, and I would love to hear from you (chaslorn@shaw.ca). I am a composer, piano teacher and artistic director at the Kelowna Community Music School. Lorna Paterson, ’78 MA Kelowna, BC

’Ello Mate I was delighted to learn that our one-time national cricket coach, John Buchanan, ’88 MA [Autumn issue, pg. 20], and his family had shared and enjoyed the experience of attending the University of Alberta and living in Edmonton. I also enjoyed the description for non-cricketers of how the game is played. Like the Buchanans, our family enjoyed our time at the U of A and our experience of Canadian life immensely. John Murray, ’91 PhD Sydney, Australia

Pot Pan It was with great interest that I read the article in the Autumn 2008 edition of New Trail written by Ileiren Poon [“Pot Heads,” pg. 14]. Though the website mentioned in the story (www.kenyanceramics.org) does reference Potters For Peace on their site, this should also have been done in the article. Unfortunately, the story suggests that Abdullah Saleh is the designer of “this revolutionary new ceramic water filter.” In fact, the same technology has been used in Central and South America since the early 1980s, where it was first developed

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Winter 2008/2009

Good Sport

Training Plan during the Second

John Buchanan, may well be the winningest coach in cricket, but his record of 69 wins out of 91 test matches falls well short of making him the sporting world’s winningest coach, as the article in your Autumn 2008 [pg. 20] issue suggests. That honour must surely go to J. Percy Page, ’61 LLD (Honorary), who coached the Edmonton Grads women’s basketball team from 1915 to 1940, compiling a record of 502 wins and 20 losses.

World War. Page was also a for-

Art Davison, ’51 BSc Edmonton, AB Editor’s note: Good point. The sentence should have read that he was arguably the winningest coach in “professional” sports history. Page organized the Edmonton Commercial Grads women’s basketball team in 1914. The “Grads” travelled internationally and played at four Olympic games: Paris (1924), Amsterdam (1928), Los Angeles (1932) and Berlin (1936). They never lost a game on their international tours and held the world women’s basketball title for 17 consecutive years. The team was disbanded in 1940 when its gymnasium was taken over by the British Commonwealth Air

by Dr. Fernando Mazariegos. In 1998, following the widespread destruction caused by hurricane Mitch, Potters For Peace began mass production of these same ceramic filters for distribution to local people. Since then, under the leadership of Ron Rivera, ceramic water filter factories have been introduced in 17 other countries, including Kenya in 2007. Rivera’s goal was to establish 100 factories around the world that could provide both the filter as well as employment for local craftspeople. Unfortunately, Rivera died suddenly this summer, following a brief bout with malaria. His goals will now need to be

mer lieutenant-governor of Alberta, and Edmonton’s J. Percy Page High School is named in his honour.

Analogue Prologue My father, James Alfred Harle, was head of the Electrical Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering from 1947 to 1964, when he retired. I read in the Special Edmonton Journal Report of “The University of Alberta at 100” something about the acquisition of a LGP-30 digital computer. This got me thinking, as I remembered an analogue computer being installed at about the same time in the Power House building. I found a story about the computer in “History Trails” and thought to myself that if the digital computer was mentioned in the Winter 2007/2008 Issue of New Trail [pull-out calendar — December —following pg. 78] then why not the analogue computer? Graham L. Harle, ’55 BSc(Ag), ’59 LLB Edmonton, AB Editor’s note: For a story on the five-tonne analogue computer, go to www.ualberta.ca/alumni/ history/faculties/67sprcomp.htm.

assumed by others who, like him, will work relentlessly to help achieve a world where water-bourne diseases are not a necessary part of anyone’s life. I am personally glad to see that others such as Saleh and Kenyanceramics are taking up their own projects aimed at better health through clean water. If any of your readers are interested in more information about other projects for clean water or Potters For Peace, you may access Claysure.org, or Pottersforpeace.org. Dr. David K. Wagoner Charlotte, NC

You’re Welcome... x 5

Caper Redux

I left a voice message on the Alumni Affairs answering machine saying I had not received the Winter issue celebrating 100 years of the U of A and requested a copy. It soon arrived in the mail, and I was delighted to have it — a wonderful history. Thank you for your quick response.

I have just finished reading the delightful story about “The Caper” in the Autumn edition of New Trail [pg. 26]. It was of particular interest because I knew all the Aggies mentioned in the story. But I had never heard about “The Caper,” so obviously the perpetrators didn’t do a lot of bragging about their activities. My own “Caper” involved a small group of Assiniboia and Athabasca Hall residents sneaking into St. Stephen’s and removing the taps from the sinks, disabling the toilets with coat hangers so they couldn’t be flushed and spreading honey on the seats for a “special” thrill. Everything went according to plan, and the plumbing parts were left on the steps of Pembina Hall with a sign that read “to the girls in Pembina from the boys in St. Steve’s.” Unfortunately, a caretaker arrived and put the parts in a locker, probably mumbling something about a careless plumber. The Edmonton Journal carried a story about “the theft” and a St. Steve’s spokesperson said some of the parts were so old they couldn’t be replaced, so new parts were bought to make things functional again. Finally somebody, perhaps a perpetrator, told officials where the parts had been left, and they were returned, but that wasn’t until three or four days after they went missing. The next act in this little play saw a night watchman sitting outside the dining room in Athabasca Hall. The watchman had told Reg Lister [New Trail, Spring 2008, pg. 6] that he thought he could identify one of the culprits. He pointed out a Faculty of Education student who Reg confronted and who admitted his involvement. That student was presented with a bill

Joyce Anderson, ’52 BA, ’53 BEd Burnaby, BC *** A huge thank you for the excellent anniversary articles in New Trail. Beverley Zielke, ’63 Dip(Nu), ’64 BSc(Nu) Whitehorse, YT *** My New Trail finally made it to the East Coast on Friday, and I have enjoyed reading (and rereading) our article [“SUB ... Head” pg. 29]. Thanks for the pleasure — great editing. Iain Macdonald, ’64 BA Fletcher’s Lake, NS *** I have enjoyed the last three issues of New Trail immensely. Many thanks for all the interesting stories. Elise Maltinsky, ’88 BEd Yellowknife, NT *** Now that I have recovered from my surprise (New Trail, Autumn 2008, pg. 63) it’s time for a little thank-you note. Naturally I am very pleased that you printed a brief review of my book, Lep and the Dirty Synapse, but I am also utterly amazed since I sent the book to you in 2004! How could it possibly appear on someone’s desk after four years? Anyway, you made my day in two ways: the neat little picture with the review and the strange discovery that even books can be reincarnated. Thanks folks.

Bert Nelson, ’48 BEd Sechelt, BC

(my memory is that was less than $100) and everyone involved chipped in and paid their share. Recently I turned to the 1951 Evergreen and Gold yearbook and, lo and behold, there at the bottom of page 84 is the fellow presented with the bill — Clifford William H. Evans, ’51 BEd. If memory serves, our “Caper” took place in February 1949.

skills can be taught, as can such

Everett McCrimmon, ’51 BSc(Ag) Picton, ON Editor’s note: When not pulling pranks, McCrimmon (pictured above) was very busy during his U of A tenure, serving as the student editor — and a term as assistant sports editor — for the Evergreen and Gold yearbook. He was also involved with the Mixed Chorus, the Radio Society and the Agricultural Club.

ognizing they need to deepen the

things as recognizing opportunities, gathering resources and launching companies. I don’t get why the basics aren’t taught at university. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to convince TEC Edmonton and other local venture capitalists of the importance of offering this training. Everybody thinks they can pick winners from the available pool of talent rather than recpool. The only hope of producing a well-educated population of entrepreneurs is to create an oncampus entrepreneurial culture. As I try to find the people I need to make my business a reality, a story Guy Kawasaki tells keeps coming to mind. He was hired to project manage a new product launch for an existing computer company. He entered

Drive Counts

the project partway through when

I have an idea that could go a long way toward making the U of A truly unique and world leading. I think the U needs to make entrepreneurial training part of every degree. I am the CEO of several small, local companies. One company is developing a unique approach to turning low-grade iron ore bodies into valuable metallic iron. One of the things I have learned from building this company (and previous business ventures) is that PhDs often don’t make the best entrepreneurs. My partners (all either PhDs or, in one case, working towards one) are great people and outstanding engineers and scientists. However, if I left it up to them we would be stuck in pre-production forever. I am not saying that the education the U of A offers is in any way defective, just deficient. There are no courses in leadership, entrepreneurship, team building and project management. I know these

the product only had one feature that tested well. It was a little trashcan icon. Starting from there, six months later Kawasaki’s team rolled out the first Macintosh computer. Drive counts. Dennis Chute, ’78 BSc Sherwood Park, AB

Global Connection Hello New Trail and the U of A Alumni Office from the parents of Steve Johnson, ’01 BPE/BEd, [“En-Gaijin Times,” Autumn 2008, pg. 32]. We were very excited and pleased to see Stephen’s piece published, along with some photos that even we had not seen! We appreciate the connection that New Trail provides between us and “our university” and the spectrum of global endeavours pursued by its people. Thank you. Howard Johnson, ’66 BSc(Eng) St. Albert, AB Winter 2008/2009

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Memory Lane Your Spring issue recently resurfaced, and I have been going through it with interest. I remember Reg Lister [pg. 6] well, from being in residence in both Assiniboia and Athabasca Halls. He was a great guy and always very helpful to students. I also met Maimie Simpson, ’22 BA [pg. 7], several times and found her a bit formidable, but very intriguing. It was also nice to find out that one of my favourite crime writers, the late Michael Dibdin, ’70 MA, [pg. 21] was also a U of A grad. And I was pleased to see a picture and read about my friend Bill Carr, ’43 BEd [pg. 50], a fine actor who I appeared with on campus in the one-act Shaw play, How He Lied to Her Husband. I was also privileged to take the Shakespeare course of the legendary U of A professor F. M. Salter. I’ve been happy to indulge in nostalgia for my days at the Uof A, now stretching back over 70 years. C. Del Pine, ’41 BA, ’42 Dip(Ed) Calgary, AB Editor’s note: The first actual writing course offered at the University of Alberta was taught in 1939 by F. M. Salter. In his book, The Way of the Makers, published in 1967 as a “new rationale on the art of writing,” Salter sets out firm guidelines for

both writers and teachers. “A teacher’s job,” he writes, “is not to pander to self-expression, which could make instruction but vanity indeed, but to aid students in self-creation. Every really wise teacher sees in what his students are, a stepping stone to what they might become; for the attainment of that becoming, no discipline is so helpful as that of writing.” When delivering the 1992 F. M. Salter Lectures on Language, internationally renowned writer Rudy Wiebe, ’56 BA, ’60 MA, described his former mentor as a “vital influence,” an inspiring teacher who possessed a “great mind” and was “a superb reader.” Salter was also a former editor of The New Trail, which was created in 1942 as a successor to The Trail, before taking on its current name of New Trail in the 1970s.

Happy (Belated) Birthday! The Autumn 2008 issue is a delight. The University is to be congratulated on achieving its centenary and New Trail on the excellent coverage of the centennial year. I am prompted to say that I also observed my 100th birthday this year (January 16). Shortly after my birth in Killiney, Ireland (now Dun Laoghaire), my parents settled on a homestead near Cairns, AB (no longer in existence), between Metiskow

and Cadogan. On the death of my father, when I was 10, my mother moved to Edmonton to find employment so that we could live and I could receive an education. I attended Highlands Junior High School and Victoria High School before enrolling at the University. I am most grateful for my mother’s wonderful help and for the privilege of having attended the University of Alberta. It’s a joy and an honour to celebrate with the University this year, and many thanks for your special issues of New Trail. Reverend N. Dermott McInnes, ’28 BA, ’31 BDiv North Vancouver, BC

The Mad Trapper... of the Prairies? I have enjoyed reading New Trail for years, but nothing has spurred me to write to you until I saw the article about Albert Johnson [Autumn 2008, pg. 52]. My two older brothers and I drove with horse and cutter five miles to the town school in Wainwright, AB. Our journey took us across a section of open prairie with a grove of trees — there were no neighbours. In the ’30s we listened to the story of Albert Johnson on the radio and how he had eluded the Mounties and they didn’t know where he was. My older brother teased me by saying he might be

hiding in the grove of trees. I had no idea how far the North was from us. I always thought Johnson was a mad Englishman, but now I find he was probably Norwegian, which brings his story closer to home as my parents were from Dovre, Norway. Ruth Wilson, ’46 BSc(HEc) Bowmanville, ON

Corrections: In the Autumn 2008 issue of New Trail (pg. 51) we incorrectly wrote that David Baine served as president of the U of A’s Association of Professors Emeriti. *** In the Autumn 2008 issue of New Trail we ran a story called “The Caper” (pg. 26) that was co-written by Harvey Buckmaster, ’50 BSc, and Paul Sommerville, ’49 BSc, (pictured here) whose photo we neglected to run with the piece. Our apologies for this oversight.

We would like to hear your comments about the magazine. Send us your letters via postal mail or e-mail to the address on page 2. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

Connectivity nectivi ity more than just a firm handshake Conference Services 6

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Winter 2008/2009

780-492-6057 | con conference.services@ualberta.ca nference.services@ualberta.cca

ith this fourth, and final, issue he University of Alberta is entering celebrating the U of A’s centeits second century in challenging nary, we have a mix of stories that times. The worldwide community is in look ahead to whatsoever things might the midst of a massive period of transibe true in the next 100 years of the tion. Information and communications U of A’s history. Will the flying cars technology, molecular biology and nanand commutes to campus with jet otechnology are converging and transpacks promised in such magazines as forming every part of our experience, Popular Mechanics and Popular from energy use to health care. These sophisticated technologies are rapidly Science ever come into fruition? Well, becoming critical to how we communinot likely. But we are well on the way cate with one another, how we exchange to being able to do such things as and create knowledge, and how we grow new teeth, wire up a prosthetic tackle and solve problems. How univerarm to someone’s nerves and muscles sities of the 21st century respond to so that it can be used more like a real these new challenges will be the test of one, and tailor medical treatments to their strength and the measure of their match patients with the genetic characexcellence. I am excited about the future. teristics of their diseases. The University of Alberta is, I believe, How do we know we’ll be able to Nanotechnology researchers in "bunny suits" at in an excellent position to make major do these things? Because we’ve already the U of A. contributions in learning and discovery begun to explore these new frontiers that will transform lives and sustain quality of life for future right here at the U of A. In fact, many of the things we may generations, especially in a number of key areas. be able to do in the future might only be constrained by the Home of the National Institute for Nanotechnology, we are amount of money available to do them. What happens if 95 national leaders in this emerging field, building global research becomes the new 75? Where does the money come from to partnerships, pioneering innovative industry-university agreecare for all those people living that long or do they all conments, and attracting the best nanotech scientists in the world. tinue — thanks to fitness regimes, healthy living and modern We’re also leaders—and have been for decades—in energy medicine — being productive members of the workforce and environmental research, from oil and gas exploration to their entire lives? soil reclamation to water conservation to climate change in the Although the stories in this issue don’t attempt to answer Arctic. As Canada’s population ages, the University of Alberta those weighty questions, they do bring them to the forefront. will be leading the way in innovations in medical research, Of course, we don’t really know what the U of A will be like health sciences education and health care. 100 years from now or what new fields of study we haven’t To complement cutting-edge scientific and technological even conceived of yet might be commonplace then. But one advancement and discovery, the U of A will also be at the goal the University has set for itself could be realized a lot forefront of social sciences, humanities and fine arts research, sooner than that — becoming one of the top 20 universities creating social innovations that will affect how we respond in the world by 2020. We’re already moving on up. In 2007, to the changes and transitions that lie ahead. We will create the U of A was the recipient of $461.4 million in sponsored cultural and artistic innovations that will feed our imaginaresearch income, moving it from fifth in the country to second, tions and souls, and help us understand ourselves, our past behind only the University of Toronto. For 2008, the U of A and other cultures with greater depth and clarify. is also ranked 74th best in the world by the prestigious Times We enter our second century charged by knowledge Higher Education-QS World University Rankings and is in energy, propelled by the momentum of 100 years of achieve30th spot out of the 180 North American universities. ment and accomplishment. I predict that it’s going to be a Twenty in 2020 ... here we come. phenomenal ride. Hang on!

Jim Hole, ’79 BSc(Ag) Alumni Association President Chair Centenary Committee

Indira V. Samarasekera, O.C. Centenary Honorary Co-Chair President and Vice-Chancellor Winter 2008/2009

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Never say... “Never” Louise Miller, ’71 BSc(Nu), ’79 MBA, was the recipient of the Canadian Medical Association’s (CMA) 2008 Medal of Honour. Miller suffered a spinal cord injury resulting in paraplegia in 1984. Since that time she’s been a tireless advocate for people with disabilities and, in particular, those with spinal cord injuries. To that end, she acted as co-chair of the City of Edmonton Custom Transportation Services Advisory Board from 1985 to 1987. At the same time, she served as vice-chair of the Canadian Paraplegic Association and as a member of a subcommittee that formed the Alberta Paraplegic Foundation, which continues to fund spinal cord injury research. The CMA Medal of Honour recognizes personal contributions to advancing medical research and education. “Louise Miller’s dedication to the advancement of medical research, health care and health education related to spinal cord injuries is nothing short of inspirational,” says CMA President Brian Day. “She is a very worthy recipient of this award.” In 1978 Miller became the first female non-politician elected to the board of directors of Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital, serving five years of her six-year term as vicechair. Perhaps her greatest achievement is co-founding the Spinal Cord Injury Treatment Centre Society (www.scitcs.org). SCITCS works to help people with spinal cord injuries to become more self-reliant through support, education and research. Miller has been the rock of that organization since its inception in 1987, providing leadership and direc-

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tion for the society and volunteering countless hours to its success. Miller also spearheaded the creation of the Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) exercise clinic in 1993, and the SCITCS FES Research Facility in 2006, both located at the U of A. SCITCS has contributed over $1.2 million in research funding to the University. A past recipient of the U of A’s Alumni Award of Excellence (2003), Miller was also invested as a member of the Order of Canada in 2000. Miller is the 25th recipient of the CMA Medal of Honour, the highest award bestowed upon a person who is not a member of the medical profession. “I have never stopped for a second to think that I can’t do something,” says Miller. “I have always thought that I could find a way to get it done.” Photo: Louise Miller receiving the 2008 Canadian Medical Association’s Medal of Honour for her efforts on behalf of people with disabilities — to her right is Brian Day and left is CMA CEO Bill Thor.

Have A Seat Gane Ka-Shu Wong was awarded a $4 million iCORE Chair in Biosystems Informatics. Wong has a joint appointment in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Medicine. He is also associate director of the Beijing Genomics Institute and a guest professor in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The relentless improvement in our ability to acquire molecular data at lower costs is a unifying theme behind Wong’s research. Working with collaborators in the medical school at the U of A, he is developing methods to help identify pathogens in idiopathic inflammatory diseases. Wong also maintains strong ties with the Beijing Genomics Institute in China, which is a prominent member of an international consortium that is now sequencing 1,000 human genomes to identify all but the most rare polymorphisms in a global human population. “My work has focused on finding ways to bring speed and cost-savings to DNA sequencing and applying the data to enhance selective breeding of useful plant species,” says Wong. “Incredibly, only about 100 plant

species DNA sequences have been analyzed in this manner, so this project has real potential for new discoveries that can make nature work for us.”

Wonder Woman Margaret Ann Armour, ’70 PhD, was named by the Women’s Executive Network as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 in the Category of Champions. This category acknowledges women who have made distinct and quantifiable difference to the advancement of women in the Canadian workplace by either helping to advance greater opportunities for women in traditional careers or acting as an agent of change on a national level. Armour, the associate dean of Science (diversity), is a founding member and former vice-chair of Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science and Technology (WISEST), a position she held for over 20 years. Often touted as Canada’s premier ambassador of science, she has worked through WISEST to encourage

young people, especially young women, to consider careers in the sciences and engineering through numerous community outreach programs. Previously she has also been the recipient of the Order of Canada (2006) and a Distinguished Alumni Recognition Award (2004), as well as being named one of the 100 Edmontonians of the Century.

Research Accolades Hong Zhang won the 2008 Syncrude/ASTech Innovation in Oilsands Research award for his close work with industry to develop advanced image processing software, which gives equipment operators an effective means to measure ore particles. James Hoover, ’78 BSc, and long-time collaborator Antony Olekshy, ’77 BSc(Eng), ’80 MSc, won the AVAC/ICORE/ASTech Outstanding Achievement in Information and Communications Technology and Innovation award for their work developing Avra Software Lab Inc., a U of A spinoff company that provides software development services and acts as an industrial test bed for research.

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bear country

of A researchers have identified the oldest permafrost in North America — its “best before” date is a cool 740,000 years ago — and their findings may have significant implications for our understanding of the effects of global warming. Duane Froese, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, led the team that found the ancient ice while on a research dig at the site of an old gold mine in the Yukon. By dating a layer of volcanic ash resting on top of the ice, Froese and his colleagues were able to determine its minimum age, and, more importantly, that it did not melt during the balmier periods in the Earth’s history that

occurred around 120,000 and 400,000 years ago. This new information may lead scientists to revise current models predicting the impact of global warming on permafrost. As temperatures rise, organic matter locked up in the permafrost thaws, releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, which causes temperatures to rise even higher. Permafrost underlies a quarter of the land in North America (and about half of all land in Canada), and when it melts, it turns the land into “soup,” damaging infrastructure. Froese’s findings indicate that ancient, deep stores of permafrost, such as the one he found, may thaw more slowly than previously thought. He

Charles Choi

Cool research Duane Froese examines an ice wedge in the Klondike.

warns, however, that this is not an excuse to ignore global warming. “This isn’t to say we’re out of the woods or anything like that,” he says. “The deep stores are probably stable, but we still have a lot of potential impacts from melting of shallow permafrost.”

Tuck Tent T

Showing off a cinnamon bun in the Tuck Shop tent — 1,300 buns were sold.

he recent Homecoming 2008 featured a comeback of sorts for what was once the unofficial centre of campus life — Tuck Shop. For over 50 years this venerable student hangout served as a home-away-from-home for countless students who met there to drink coffee, argue arcane points of philosophy or eat the famous cinnamon buns, the recipe for which was preserved by long-time U of A employee (and one-time Tuck employee) Joyce Kerr. During Homecoming, the Tuck Shop tent — where Kerr herself showed up one day — was a meeting and staging area for alumni who could visit over a coffee and cinnamon bun, register for events or get information. Giveaways included a special

edition of The Gateway and book bags commemorating the University’s centenary. The tent was also a staging area for campus tours and the Campus Express golf carts, which shuttled people around the campus. Many people and organizations contributed to the success of the Tuck Shop tent, most notably Raymond James, the financial services holding company that was a Gold Level sponsor of the Tuck Shop tent, helping bring back a lot of fond memories for those who remember Tuck Shop as a special friend. To read more about Tuck Shop or to get the cinnamon bun recipe go to www.ualberta.ca/alumni/history and click on Campus Life & Traditions.

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It’s been a banner year for U of A biology professor Philip Currie. He’s had a hand in two important dinosaur discoveries: one, the first known record in North America of a species of dinosaur no bigger than a chicken; the other, the discovery of a two-tonne, multi-horned monster creature that is a whole new species of dinosaur. Albertonykus borealis, the smaller of the two, was only 75 centimetres long, ran on two legs, and probably used its tiny forelimbs for digging into logs in search of termites. Currie led the team that unearthed 70-million-year-old bones in 2002 at a dig in Alberta’s Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. Until recently, the bones sat in storage at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, AB, Phil Currie before University of Calgary paleontologist Nick Longrich decided to study them. Currie and Longrich co-authored the paper outlining their findings that appeared in the August 2008 issue of the journal Cretaceous Research. Currie’s second big breakthrough was the identification of the new species, Pachyrhinosaur lakustai, named after Al Lakusta, a former junior high-school teacher and amateur fossil-collector who dug up the bones outside of Grand Prairie, AB, in the 1970s. This dinosaur resembled other Pachyrhinosaurs, such as the Triceratops, but it had more than one horn on its nose and even more horns growing out of its shield-like skull. Of further significance to this latter find is the fact that a large herd of both young and old of the creatures—possibly as many as 27—were excavated from the site, indicating that Pachyrhinosaurus did indeed care for their young.

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Albertonykus borealis and (below) Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai — as they probably looked in their prime.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones

A Rare Find “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” —J. Wellington Wimpy

impey, the lovable character many know from the Popeye comics and cartoons, would have been in hamburger heaven over the recent announcement by U of A professor Lynn McMullen, ’80 BSc(HEc), ’88 MSc, ’94 PhD, and a team of scientists from the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences that it just might be possible to have their burger medium-rare ... or, heaven forbid, even rare. As of now, the threat of E.coli bacteria in the meat means that the only safe way to consume ground beef is by cooking it all the way through to a well-done state. With a steak, grilling the meat will kill the pathogens that exist primarily on its surface, but because ground beef mixes the inner with the outer it has to be prepared differently. What McMullen — who heads the research team with U of A colleague Michael Gänzle — has been attempting to do, with some success, is introduce a “good” kind of bacteria that has proven to stop the E.coli from propagating. “I’m not going to say just yet

that what we’re doing is killing the E.coli,” she says, “but we know we can stop it from growing.” Over the last 20 years, McMullen has been tinkering with the friendly micro-organism, lactic acid bacteria, which is found in cheese and yogurt and, to a lesser degree, in meat. Just recently, she and her team isolated one kind of lactic acid that puts the kibosh on the E.coli growth. Although nowhere near ready for commercial application, McMullen’s research has shown promise of possibly aiding in making meat safer to consume. Although the sanitation process currently in place is very effective, it, in a sense, throws out the baby with the bathwater by attempting to eliminate all bacteria, including the good kind. “Bacteria compete with each other,” says McMullen. “So when we take away the good ones in the sanitation process, we may be giving E.coli a chance to grow better. I’m saying let’s put the good ones back in and see if we can control E.coli.”

Alumni Snapshot 2008 Where do all the grads go when they leave campus? Well, to put it simply, almost everywhere. Outside of Canada and the United States, the U of A has grads that receive New Trail in a total of 137 other countries around the world. The largest collection of alumni abroad who receive New Trail resides in China (1,400), while the next two countries with a significant U of A presence are Australia (509) and England (434). We also mail the magazine to grads in such countries as New Zealand (125), Kenya (79), Qatar (19), Nepal (15) and Iceland (10). Sadly, we have no presence in Liechtenstein, Svalbard, Djibouti, Kazakhstan, Kiribati or

Lynn McMullen investigates a “steak tartare.”

Kyrgyzstan and — saddest of all at this time of year — Christmas Island. (After all, how cool would it be to mail a magazine to where Santa most assuredly keeps a summer residence?)

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Ocean Spray A

bout 94 million years ago the world’s seabeds that once teemed with living creatures harboured about as much life as a tropical reef that’s been dynamited and cyanide-laced to put brightly-coloured fish in home aquariums. What caused this mass annihilation of numerous species in the marine environment has only now come to be understood after U of A geochemist research associate Steven Turgeon brought some rocks back to his lab for analysis from a limestone quarry in Italy. Although Turgeon says that “we were actually looking for something else,” what he and U of A professor Robert Creaser found was evidence of deep ocean volcanic activity — probably originating in the Caribbean region — that depleted the oceans of oxygen and made them a toxic stew that was unable to sustain many forms of marine life. Interestingly enough, the time frame in question was also a period when dinosaurs were kings of the world,

Calgary Centre’s New Digs 12

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while in the oceans, says Turgeon, “a lot of the bottom dwellers bit the dust.” By studying the rock sample he’d brought back from Europe, Turgeon was able to determine that the metres-thick layer of organic material in the limestone was caused by massive amounts of ocean organisms falling onto the seabed. After the underwater eruptions, the hot lava acted as a catalyst that initially stimulated the growth of plankton and other

ith an Open House on January 29, 2009, the University of Alberta will officially open its newest location in southern Alberta — “Calgary Centre.” The street-level space in the heart of downtown Calgary boasts a state-of-the-art classroom, boardroom and meeting rooms, as well as a team of permanent staff who will provide service to the more than 20,000 alumni, donors, partners and potential students in Calgary and the surrounding area. “This truly is a significant move forward,” says Andrea Marsh, associate

marine organisms. However, these life forms soon ran out of nutrients, died and sank onto the oceans floor where they were eventually transformed into oil. The new findings are significant in light of the current condition of global warming and in helping to understand how our planet handles radical changes in its biosphere. It’s also interesting in that — although humans weren’t around at the time — the planet recov-

director of external relations for Calgary. “Twelve years ago we opened up in the city with a small office in the middle of an office tower. Now, with this significant expansion, we have room to expand our services and educational offerings and build our presence in the community. This location is definitely the place to be for local alumni and friends who want to connect to the University of Alberta.” If you are interested in world-class executive education delivered in Calgary, or in studying at the U of A in Edmonton

The Digital Age T ered from that massive environmental shock to its system. “There is no reason why this couldn’t happen today,” says Turgeon, who also points out that we could probably weather an event similar to what happened almost 94 million years ago. “We’re pretty resourceful,” he says. “But I don’t think we’d be in great shape.” Photo above: The limestone quarry in Italy that was once under water.

or Camrose, drop in for information. If you would like to know about a U of A research program, how to hire a co-op student, make a donation or offer your time as a volunteer, the Calgary staff can help you. There are also representatives on hand from the Augustana campus, the School of Business and the Faculties of Engineering and Rehabilitation Medicine. The Calgary-based U of A staff would also like to hear from alumni. How would you like to connect with your alma mater and fellow alumni? What services or programs would you

he information age has been busy digitally embracing all former print-only publications, including those of the U of A. Some time ago the student newspaper The Gateway had all its past publications digitized and now it’s New Trail’s turn. If you go to www.ualbertacentennial.ca and click on “digital archives” and then “publications” you’ll find digital archives of all the various manifestations of the alumni magazine, which has been around in one form or another since 1920. The digitally archived editions currently end in

like to see expanded in the Calgary area? Contact the Calgary office with suggestions and questions at 403-718-6375 or at calgary@ualberta.ca and plan to attend the Open House to experience all that the new location has to offer.

2006, but selected stories from 2003 to the present can be found at www.ualberta.ca/newtrail. Other U of A publications to get the digital treatment include Gateway’s one-time rival called Poundmaker, which ran from 1972 to 1974. Plans are also afoot to have many other university publications online, including the Evergreen and Gold yearbooks and such faculty magazines as Iatros (Medicine and Dentistry), The Orange (Education) and Faculty of Arts in Review. The University’s in-house newspaper Folio will also eventually be accessible online.

Andrea Marsh and EnCana executive vice-president Gerry Protti, ’74 BA, in the new Calgary Centre.

University of Alberta Calgary Centre Open House Thursday, January 29, 2009 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. #120, 333 – Fifth Avenue SW (access off 3rd St.)

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Working Class Could the future of the workplace possibly include such things as pay deductions for overtime and on-site personal trainers?

aybe flying cars and jetpacking to work haven’t taken off yet, but what about robots doing the household chores? Almost there. For instance, take Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner from iRobot. The 34-centimetres-in-diameter and less than 9-cm-high dirt inhaler has been around for over five years now. A large contact-sensing bumper mounted on the front half of the unit allows Roomba to bounce off objects as it automatically goes about vacuuming a floor. Roomba can also be recharged from a home base whose infrared beacon it automatically seeks out when its charge is running low. Also, at a recent demonstration at Tokyo University, humanoid robot HRP-2 served tea and washed dishes, while researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology unveiled a robot called Mahru that is not only capable of doing household chores, but it can also dance. Of course, as with most new technology, a robot doing human work has its downside. For one thing, robots don’t take home paycheques to support families. They also make it increasingly likely that their human owners might not get off their butts to do any physical activity. Which brings us to U of A Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine professor Douglas Gross, ’77 BSc, ’03 PhD, who looks into the future of the workplace by first looking to the past. “A couple of hundred years ago,” he says, “it was really a matter of trying not to get killed at work. We got pretty good at that. Then we went through a phase where we just tried not to get injured. Today we’re mostly worried about pain at work.

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“But what I see coming around the corner for us may not be totally related to work, but is going to impact that area. It’s the obesity epidemic that’s related more to a general lifestyle trend. It’s going to affect productivity and general workplace health.” Since obesity is already a major problem throughout the nation, maybe we could try some innovative ways to combat it in the workplace, such as, “an under-desk stationary cycle that actually powers the computer,” Gross says. “Maybe you have to pedal it so that it charges your computer for 15 minutes. After that, your computer shuts off so you have to go back to cycling.” Gross suggests another nifty idea that, although it wouldn’t help with an overweight workforce, could be used to cut down on office strain and thus on worker absenteeism. “You could design a chair hooked up to a computer that monitors your posture,” he suggests. “And if your Douglas Gross posture is incorrect for a certain amount of time you get a message on your computer that says ‘straighten up,’ or ‘go take a break.’ If that doesn’t work then you could have, say, an electrical shock.” ccording to a 2004 study by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, since the early 1970s, obesity—defined as a body mass index of 30 or greater— has risen by 50 percent in people aged 20 to 64, and more than half of Canadians are

here are computer-assisted posture monitoring devices. Apparel designer Lucy Dunne has been creating wearable technology for over 10 years with the goal of expanding garment functionality Hardware & power through the use of source technology. Her Wearable Posture Sensor Monitoring Vest channel uses a fibre-optic sensor to detect the curvature of the spine. Through a Bluetooth connection, posture data is sent to a computer which provides feedback and reminders to the user of the workstation to correct their posture when they lapse into an unhealthy position.

Physical therapy professor Iain Muir has another idea to improve the workplace: “pay deductions for working overtime.” Muir thinks the workplace would be a much happier venue if no one worked overtime, and, he says, “think about the effect it would have on your personal life. Workers could actually have one of those again.” In a more serious vein, Gross says, “I think the biggest constant in the workplace is change, and I think companies have to help people cope with change. The best way to do that, now and in the future, is by training and keeping people up to date on how to do their job in the best possible way.” overweight or obese. The Heart and Stroke Foundation also called fat “the new tobacco” because of the huge public health risk. The fatter people are, the more susceptible they are to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

Muir also thinks health issues, including mental health, will be a major challenge for employers and employees alike in the years ahead. At the present Iain Muir time he thinks most companies’ intentions are good, but employers really don’t have a clue what they’re doing or how to begin implementing a health component into the daily work routine. “They take a shotgun approach,” Muir says, “putting in fitness programs and giving employees fitness passes and starting non-smoking programs. They seem to be taking an approach of ‘let’s just do a bunch of things’ without really understanding what the actual issues are in the workplace.” ccording to Active Healthy Kids Canada, one out of four kids between the ages of two and 17 is overweight or obese. That number tripled between 1981 and 2004 and has risen by another 36 percent from 2003 to 2006.

Muir adds that, in the near future, employers need to get a grasp on what their employees’ specific needs are. “If management thinks they can give people some stretching time, that’s really just scratching the surface of the problems. I think the workplaces that are going to do well are the ones that have good management-employee relations, where management is willing to be flexible in how the work is done.” One only has to remember someone’s New Year’s resolution — perhaps your own — to realize that, as Muir says, “There’s evidence out there that fitness programs usually have quite a high initial uptake, but then they drop off. So the cost-benefit isn’t that high. People who tend to use them at workplaces are people who tend to use them anyway.” So the bigger challenge is not necessarily just to have a fitness or wellness initiative at place in the work environment, but to get everyone to buy into the program.

Nursing professor Kaysi Kushner, ’78 BSc(Nu), ’01 PhD, has some ideas on how to keep people in the workplace fit. She suggests bonuses — either Kaysi Kushner monetary or some other form of reward or compensation — for those who work out a certain number of times in a month or who lose excess weight. “Those would be great fun,” she says. “Let’s reward people for doing well. It doesn’t even have to be just money, there might be ways that things are built in, creative things, like a vacation day.” Most companies with a substantial number of employees, and even some quite small enterprises, have some sort of regime in place to address occupational health and safety issues. The University of Alberta, for example, has workout facilities available for all its employees. But, for Kushner, the next step is to look at the bigger picture and take into account the actual characteristics of an organization. The challenge is to empower everyone involved in that organization, to give everyone some measure of control over what they are tasked with doing each day and how they go about achieving results, as well as having a system in place for recognizing that those objectives have been met.

1999 Canadian study pegged the financial impact of obesity at a staggering $1.8 billion for 1997 alone — the direct costs of only 10 obesity-related illnesses. “There is a lot of documentation that shows that there is less sick leave, less stress leave, and there’s greater stability in a workplace where people feel valued and have some control,” says Kushner. “People tend to stay in a work environment where they have those conditions.” That, of course, directly

affects the bottom line because constant employee turnover is an expensive proposition when each new employee has to be trained to catch up to where her predecessor left off. “The reality is that if you can somehow empower your employees it pays off in terms of better stability and you spend less time orienting new staff,” says Kushner. Another form of workplace employee enhancement that could become increasingly common in the future is the provision of some sort of on-site employee f an individual rehabilitation, therloses five to 10 apeutic services or percent of their occupational health body weight, they advice. Gross cut their risk of points to the fact that some workdeveloping diaplaces are already betes by 60 perbringing in occupacent. That’s only tional health teams 10 pounds for a to deal with 200-pound man. employee issues. “They’re bringing occupational therapists in to actually be there and interact in the workplace, which gives the therapist a better idea of the job demands,” Gross says. “This gives you quicker and more ready access to care and that means more productivity in the long run.” Whether or not this proactive stance to workplace health and wellness issues will become common practice will be determined by a number of factors, not the least of which is being able to afford to implement measures that make the workplace more user-friendly. And although Kushner optimistically thinks that, “Canada is a place that is really focused on making the workplace a safer, happier and healthier place,” if the world economy continues to spiral out of control, employees may be willing to put up with a lot less change and a lot more status quo just for the sake of having a job ... any job. — Quinn Phillips

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The World is not Enough A new machine, 20 years in the making, is poised to give us a deeper and more profound understanding of how the universe works and possibly write a new script for the future of physics oger Moore — no, not that Roger Moore — is as excited as a teenager with the key to dad’s Ferrari in his hand as he stands in front of his audience explaining the difference between him and, well, that Roger Moore. He’s using the Moore + Moore equation to make a point while talking about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that was turned on September 10 at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN). The LHC is a gigantic particle accelerator — the largest machine in the world — that runs in a circle for 27 kilometres under French and Swiss soil near the city of Geneva. The purpose of the LHC — which took almost 20 years and over $9 billion to construct — is to propel two beams of protons towards each other for a head-on collision that will produce energies similar to those created less than a millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang that happened at the moment time began, about 14 billion years ago, when all matter and energy were one. Why do scientists want to know what happens when two beams, each 16

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hurtling protons at close to the speed of long. ATLAS and LUCID combined light with as much energy as a 40-tonne will provide the eyes that allow physitruck travelling at 484 kilometres an cists to see what happens when particles hour, smash into each other? Well, for are accelerated to close to the speed of one thing, says Moore, a U of A physics light and smashed into each other. professor who worked on the LHC However, all this will have to wait project, “Like Columbus setting sail in for a bit as the LHC suffered a malfunc1492, we have an idea of what tion during powering tests on we think we might discover September 19. Temperatures of but, also like Columbus, we the super-cooled magnets that may find our own undiscovpower the machine and have ered continent in the way, and to be kept at near absolute who knows what discoveries zero rose to almost 100°C, we may make upon its shores. causing a tonne of liquid But no matter what happens, helium to leak into the tunnel. the probability of discovering Repairs will cost around $25 something new is more than million and take months, U of A’s Jim Pinfold. Above: Simulation of a much to the relief of doomsay100 percent, so we know we detection of the theowill see something new or ers who believe that creating retical Higgs boson unexplained in the LHC.” conditions that replicate the “In a sense we are creating a time beginning of time will cause a black machine to go back to the birth of the hole to form and life as we know it to universe,” says U of A physics professor end — oddly, many in this group also Jim Pinfold, who also worked on the believe aliens landed in Roswell and project and built the LUCID sub-detecNASA faked the moon landing. tor, part of the much larger ATLAS Meanwhile, back on Earth, what detector that stands seven-storeys tall, those most involved with the science of weighs 7,000 tonnes, and is 48 metres all this think they may find — although

“The LHC is a discovery machine. Its research program has the potential to change our view of the universe profoundly, continuing a tradition of human curiosity that’s as old as mankind itself.” —CERN Director General This computer-generated image shows the location of the 27 km LHC tunnel (in blue) on the Swiss-France border. Part of the pre-acceleration chain is shown in grey.

some physicists hope they don’t — is proof of the elusive Higgs boson, a subatomic particle named after Peter Higgs who first proposed it in 1964 as a way of explaining how matter has mass. It’s over this quest taking place at CERN in Switzerland that the two Roger Moores theoretically meet up, as Moore the professor compares himself to the actor most famous for his portrayals of Simon Templar in TV’s The Saint and his seven outings as James Bond. Professor Moore likens himself to a fundamental particle such as a photon, that is mass-less, ambling down a corridor. This professor Moore particle has no mass because all the other particles walking past him in the Higgs field present in the corridor couldn’t care less about him. They just go about their own business and everyone keeps an equal distance from each other. But were the actor Roger Moore particle to stride down the same corridor he would attract a crowd of other particles (the Higgs bosons) eager to have a face-to-face encounter with a famous celebrity. Thus, the actor Roger Moore particle would have a very high mass as he moved down the corridor, the result of all the other particles clustered around him. Likewise, if there was a rumour that Roger Moore the actor was going to be striding down that corridor at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday — although no real person

would be there — the Higgs boson particle paparazzi would still gather and form little high-mass groups at various points in the corridor, thus explaining how otherwise mass-less elementary particles cause matter to have mass. Theoretically, physicists say, the Higgs field prevails throughout the cosmos: any particles that interact with it are given a mass via the Higgs boson. The more they interact, the heavier they become, whereas particles that never interact are left with no mass at all. What scientists have been working with for years with the Higgs boson is a theory of the fundamental constituents of matter and how they react together. This theory is called the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The only problem is that it’s still just a theory because no one has actually seen, measured or quantified any Higgs boson. So, for all intents and purposes, the Standard Model of how the universe works just might be wrong. Scientists will find it much easier to believe that the Higgs field and Higgs boson exist if they actually see the Higgs particle itself. This physical evidence of the Higgs boson would lend proof to the Standard Model of how the universe works that physicists have more or less relied on for 30 years. Most scientists would prefer not to be wrong about the Standard Model

Robert Aymar

and look forward to Higgs showing his head to prove they were right all along. But there is another group of scientists who hope all efforts to prove the existence of the Higgs boson fail. One of those scientists is British theoretical physicist and author (A Brief History of Time) Stephen Hawking who has gone on record as saying he hopes the collider will not find the Higgs. “I have a bet of $100 that we won’t find the Higgs,” Hawking said on British television. “I think it will be much more exciting if we don’t find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong and we need to think again.” One might consider Hawking’s bet a little self-serving as once the physicists have proved the Standard Model works then, essentially, one of the great mysteries of the universe will have been solved and funding would be hard to come by for, well, such things as the LHC. Other groups with a vested interest in having Higgs remain incognito include those with a kind of aesthetic prejudice against the Standard Model, finding it inelegant and hoping a more elegant solution might be found. Be that as it may, if the Higgs is found, then the principles of the Standard Model of how the universe works stand and the LHC will have been successful in filling in some rather large holes in our understanding of the Winter 2008/2009

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nature of matter and the history of the universe. (The LHC might also help provide answers for other long-time head-scratchers such as: Why is gravity so incredibly weak it can be overcome by the repulsion between the soles of your shoes and the floor? What is all that dark matter in the universe? And why is there no anti-matter in the universe?) But if no Higgs boson is found, then it’s back to the drawing board. Some physicists, like Hawking, who believe and hope the LHC will disprove the Standard Model, are pulling for evidence supporting a theory known as super symmetry, or SUSY, which predicts the existence of five different types of Higgs bosons. Pinfold himself suspects the Standard Model is wrong and is a leading member of the ATLAS collaboration that hopes to discover the evidence for a deeper underlying theory. He’s also heading up another international experiment at the LHC. Pinfold and his team are searching for an elusive, almost mythical, particle called a magnetic monopole. A monopole is a particle with a single magnetic charge. It has either a north or a south pole, but not both. “It is probably of more import than the Higgs particle,” says Pinfold, “and if it were found it would be even more revolutionary than the discovery of the Higgs particle. A monopole would have amazing properties.” Ironically, one of the “amazing” properties ascribed to the monopole is the capacity to be accelerated to extremely high energies in very short distances. In only one kilometre it could achieve 10 times the energy that will be created at CERN, thus making large particle acceleration rings such as the LHC obsolete. Pinfold’s experiment, known as MOEDAL (monopole and exotic object detector at the large hadron), is remarkably simple and inexpensive. Canadian universities have contributed $400 million to the LHC’s ATLAS detector unit, while MOEDAL’s cost is a relatively paltry $200,000. “The experiment ‘parasites’ off the LHC-b experiment (one of the big four 18

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ATLAS beam pipe installation. Note the person standing in the centre.

LHC experiments) in that it will utilize the same collision point,” Pinfold says. In the experiment, Pinfold and his team will place a specially designed plastic ball around the intersection where particles collide at the LHC. If monopoles form as a result of the collisions, they will pass through the ball, leaving unique scars as evidence of their existence. There will be no doubt about what particles left their mark. Because of its unique properties, the monopole would ionize 4,700 times more than other particles and leave a distinct trail. “It would be kind of hard to miss it,” Pinfold says. “There is no known particle that can mimic it. It will be very clear.” For Moore, it’s not really a question of black or white but it’s all the grey stuff in between that the LHC might allow scientists to see and study that excites him. Following his talk in a classroom of the Old Engineering Building, Moore’s audience was treated to a live video feed of a question-and-answer session with the scientists at CERN, who, just hours earlier, had sent a thin stream of hydrogen particles into increasingly larger particle accelerators until they were launched into the LHC circular tunnel. Once in the tunnel the particles passed through a thick blue tube surrounded by powerful superconducting

magnets cooled by the aforementioned liquid helium that leaked into the tunnel. The particles picked up speed as they completed the 27-kilometre circuit, and the image of that first beam of hydrogen particles was captured by ATLAS. Eventually the goal is to have these particles travelling in both directions in the LHC, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel. Swagato Banerjee, a research associate from the University of Victoria, is the “trigger man” for ATLAS, one of the on-call experts for the operation of the complex trigger and data acquisition system now being used to gather data on, in his words, “cosmic events, the many, many cosmic rays constantly passing through the Earth.” He says that the data acquisition system’s performance needs to be studied and subdetectors need to be calibrated well in advance. “So, we use the cosmic events to study the trigger rates by running the data acquisition system even if there is no beam in the detector.” Banerjee was on hand at CERN to witness ATLAS’ debut performance and says, “Seeing a machine this complex and that took as long as it did to build finally do the job it was meant to do was a delight. It’s like finally seeing your child being born after a long, long wait.”

ATLAS: Part of the biggest and most complicated machine the world has ever seen.

U of A physicists joined the ATLAS project in 1992, during the experiment’s early days. Back then, the Physics Department had just started a new particle physics program in what is now known as the Centre for Particle Physics, and ATLAS was a fledgling collaboration of fewer than 100 scientists worldwide. Over the past 16 years, the international ATLAS team has grown to about 2,000 members, including about 50 professors, students and technicians who are or have been based at the U of A. Moore says scientists at the U of A have been active leaders and participants in the Canadian team that built parts of the ATLAS particle detector.

Centre for Nuclear Research Because the cost of electricity is higher in winter — and running the LHC at CERN consumes as much electricity as it would take to power a major city — the particle accelerators (the LHC is the only major accelerator running at CERN, but the beams have to be accelerated in stages through

“We’re involved in everything from the planning and design to the building and installation,” he says. And Moore, like Pinfold, can’t wait to take that Ferrari of the physics world out for a spin and get it up to speed. There are only really two end results of the research they’re conducting under the European soil, and each is as exciting as the other. The discovery that Pinfold enthusiastically guarantees is either proof that the Standard Model is the best description of subatomic particle behaviour, or that major revisions in the Model must take place — either way, an important discovery has been made. “We expect to see the Standard Model Higgs boson and/or some new physics,” Technicians use various methods of transportation to get around the 27 km tunnel that houses the LHC.

smaller accelerators) are usually shut down between December and March, during which time maintenance work is done. As of this writing, the LHC is expected to be back in operation in the summer of 2009. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web (www). It was created

enthuses Pinfold. “If we don’t see the Higgs boson, then the Standard Model is wrong. Either way, the LHC guarantees a discovery. We are really building this to see all kinds of new physics. The last mystery of the Standard Model must be revealed or else the Standard Model is overthrown. “But in the end, a discovery is guaranteed. When you work on the ATLAS project you know you are working on the world’s most significant highenergy particle physics experiment — guaranteed to make a fundamental and major contribution to the sum of human scientific knowledge.” CERN, the LHC and ATLAS also mark a fundamental change in who’s on top in the world of experimental physics. It used to be that America was the front-runner in this type of research, able to attract the brightest minds and biggest funding. That advantage has now shifted to the Europeans. Although a collaboration of over 2,200 physicists from over 200 institutions in over 39 countries, the fact is that CERN is still in Europe, thus giving them the biggest sandbox bragging rights as they are in control of the largest and most complicated science experiment that the world has ever seen... if you discount the even larger and more complicated experiment that is the human race itself. —Kim Green Go to public.web.cern.ch/public for more information on CERN, the LHC or ATLAS. in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN who developed it to meet the demand for automatic information sharing between scientists working in different universities and institutes all over the world. CERN is not an isolated laborator y, but rather a focus for an extensive community that now includes about 60 countries and about 8,000 scientists. Although these scientists typically spend some time on the CERN site, they usually work at universities and national laboratories in their home countries. Winter 2008/2009

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When the University of Alberta was established in 1908, tuberculosis and pneumonia were among the leading causes of death in North America. One hundred years later, we have a much better handle on these and a host of other former life-threatening illnesses and diseases. But we still have a long way to go — especially in the developing world — and we have had to tackle new challenges, such as AIDS and the ever-rising number of people diagnosed with diabetes. With that in mind, writer Ryan Smith sat down with some U of A medical experts to listen to their predictions and prescriptions for the future of health care.

Tom Marrie Dean of the U of A Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry

One incredible statistic to me is that our total medical knowledge is doubling every seven years, so keeping up with that knowledge will continue to be a huge challenge for any health-care practitioner. It’s no good for patients if there are breakthrough advances in health care but their doctors don’t know about them. Up to now we’ve handled this challenge by trying to create more and more specialists — for example, if you’re a cardiologist, you only do one segment of cardiology — but that hasn’t worked. Having a lot of specialists doesn’t meet the health-care needs of the population You need someone to put everything together for you as a patient. So, we’re going to need more family doctors and general internists, for example, and we may have to set aside one day a week for them to study in order for them to be able to keep up.

Daniel Birch Professor of surgery and medical director of the Centre for the Advancement of Minimally Invasive Surgery

This is a very exciting time in the field of surgery. We are moving in a direction where we are able to perform more and more complex procedures, while at the same 20

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Another big change will be the continued shift from the paradigm where the physician is always the leader of the health-care team to a more interdisciplinary approach. For example, I think a lot of routine procedures in the future will be done by people other than physicians. To this end, we’re planning to set up the Edmonton Clinic so that we can train each member of the healthcare team — the physicians, the nurses and the pharmacists, for example — with a more integrated approach rather than train them separately, which is the way it has been done in the past. Finally, one thing that needs to remain constant in the way we train our physicians is that we must continue to emphasize the importance of empathetic care. No matter what happens in the future, people will always be frightened when they get sick, and the human touch is really critical to help people get better. We can never forget that.

time reducing some of the risks and negative outcomes often associated with surgery. In particular, some key advances have been made in the area of minimally invasive surgery. The simple idea behind this approach is to make smaller incisions in order to reduce the likelihood of postoperative complications, infection, illness

and recovery pain, all of which usually translates into improved outcomes, faster recovery times and reduced costs to the health-care system. Many of the advances in surgery have come in the fields of robotics, image-guided surgery and nanotechnology. We currently have two robotic surgery systems in our region. They are extremely efficient and accurate devices that allow us to avoid surgeon fatigue

Patrick MacDonald Pharmacology professor, Canada Research Chair in Islet Biology

Diabetes is such a multi-factorial disease — being impacted certainly by lifestyle, but also hugely by genetics — that it will likely require more than one game-changing breakthrough in the next 10 to 20 years to have a big impact on treatment or prevention. One of these breakthroughs is likely to come in the form of a better understanding of the genetics that underlie diabetes and how genetics interacts with lifestyle to either predispose or protect a person from the disease. A second important step that needs to be taken in the next 10 to 20 years, particularly with the wealth of genetic data that has already begun to flow, is a stronger understanding of how we as humans regulate our energy balance and how this process can be disturbed in diabetes. Thinking longer term, there is strong hope for regenerative therapies for diabetes. Whether these come in the form of stem-cell transplants to replenish the body’s supply of insulin or in the form of hormone therapy to regrow or expand the tissue that is damaged in diabetes, the ultimate goal is to restore a healthy energy balance without the need for ongoing drug therapy. Finally, perhaps the most significant obstacle to the largescale prevention of diabetes is the reversal of what has been described as an obesity epidemic. This will require the concerted efforts of educators, population health experts, governments and parents to ensure future generations are engaged in active and healthy lifestyles and not ones of lethargy fuelled by fast food. Perhaps in 100 years the days of mountains of french fries and extra-large, high-sugar soda pops, and the associated repercussions to human health, will be a distant memory.

and tremor and pursue more complex surgical treatments. Another fascinating advance is the development of natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery, which is considered to be scarless. The technique allows you to use an extremely flexible endoscopy device to travel through a patient’s mouth to his stomach, for example, and perform a procedure there, such as the removal of a tumor.

This type of surgery is currently being done in clinical trials around the world, and we are planning our own clinical study to use such a device in the surgical management of morbid obesity. A challenge for us is that these new surgical methods are a dramatic departure from what we’ve done in the past, and we will need a concerted effort to train our doctors and nurses in these advanced techniques.

Illustrations by Bo-Kim Louie Winter 2008/2009

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Sean Cash Professor of health and environmental economics

We’ve been really good in the past 50 years or so at intervening in illnesses and injuries and finding ways of extending life. If we see this pace of innovation in health care continue, it’s not unreasonable that in our lifetimes we will see people’s average life spans extend to 90 years and beyond. That’s really exciting, but it will also pose challenges. So far, our ability to extend life has outpaced our ability to maintain quality of life. If this trend continues, it will raise ethical issues, as well as

issues related to expense. We are already struggling with this in Alberta, with a shortage in long-term and palliative-care facility spots. This isn’t just happening here, it’s happening all around the world. I think we will have more and more debates about things like assisted suicide and what to do in cases where someone has had a traumatic event. We will also see more situations where we can keep a

patient’s body going, but his mental function is diminished and won’t improve, and we can’t get him back to where he can take care of himself. We’ll need to do research and develop innovative ways of intervening that take into account not just a person’s physical health but also his mental health, his future quality of living and the expenses involved. The challenges are not just medical and ethical but also social and economic.

Kim Raine Professor of public health

I think the most significant change we will see in health care in the future is a movement from a focus on sickness care to a focus on health and well-being. Research has shown our health-care systems influence only 25 percent of our health status. Genetics also play a part, of course, but by far the predominant influence on our health is our environment, whether it’s the physical, social or economic environment. We’ve seen a number of reports on health care in the past 20 years or so — the Mazankowski Report, the Kirby Report, the Romanow Report — and they have all pointed to the importance of promoting health through creating supportive environments. I think we are finally reaching a tipping point where we are ready to make a radical shift from a focus on health care to a focus on health promotion, which extends beyond the sickness-care system. The recent listeriosis tragedy, and the E.coli outbreak in Walkerton that killed seven and sickened 2,500 several years before that, are high profile examples of how factors outside of the health-care system can affect health. The obesity and diabetes epidemics that we have now are, in large part, a result of living in an environment that makes it easy for us be sedentary and overeat. I think more and more people are paying attention to the role of environment in our health and are recognizing the importance of investing in prevention and health promotion that goes beyond placing all of the responsibility for change on individuals. We are ready to promote broader change that makes the healthier choice the easier choice. Although we may be challenged by industry that profits from less-than-healthy choices, I believe that Canadians are ready for health and well-being to become a value in political decision-making. 22

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Kyle Whitfield Professor of health-care planning and community development

Linda Pilarski Professor of oncology, Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Nanotechnology and scientific leader for AHFMR Team Microfluidics

Currently, medicine works on the one-size-fits-all approach, but personalized medicine — the tailoring of treatments to match patients with the genetic characteristics of their diseases — is the medicine of the future. We call this molecular medicine, and, currently, it is only feasible by testing large numbers of individuals at the same time. We need to overcome this challenge, because personalized treatments require that a patient’s genetic profile is determined quickly and not delayed by waiting to acquire sufficient numbers of people for batch testing. However, microfluidic devices — small networks of wells and channels that replace large and expensive equipment — enable one-at-a-time testing at an affordable cost. Here at the U of A, we have developed a prototype microfluidic

“lab-on-a-chip” device that can determine the genotype of each patient immediately prior to testing; in essence, this is on-the-spot testing. Such readily available, automated, miniaturized genetic testing would allow doctors to identify those patients most likely to respond to new treatments, and those patients could then avoid the side effects of a potentially expensive treatment that is not likely to work for them. The health-care system can then allocate those treatments to the people most likely to respond positively to them. Such testing also allows doctors to identify genetic characteristics that predict predispositions to diseases for which preventive treatments may be available. Among other things, our team is also developing rapid tests to accurately identify infectious agents, such as influenza, malaria and hepatitis. Our hope is that such testing will lead to the provision of the best treatments for each patient, and this can be achieved at an affordable cost in any health-care centre in the world, no matter how remote.

In the short term, I think our healthcare system will continue in a crisis mode as we transfer from our current, outdated model, which is suffering from a lack of resources and relies too much on medical experts. How can one group know what is the best policy in all cases? But over the the long term we’ll move to a model that is more community-based and places more emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own health. Less and less, we will see one centralized group dictating the policies. As we move to this new model, we will see more and more patients forming advocacy groups and taking an active role in educating themselves and planning and organizing their own health care. We will also see communities come together to respond to broader health system issues. For example, research in rural palliative care tells us that people don’t want to be sent away to die in hospitals or acute care facilities. If they have a choice, they’d rather die in their own homes and communities. So, how do we accommodate this? It will take a concerted effort and a team-based, regionalized approach. I feel our aging population will trigger a lot of these changes, highlighting our significant and dire shortage of geriatricians. It may not be a glamorous field, but we definitely have a need for medical professionals to support our aging population.

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Evangelos Michelakis Professor of cardiology and Canada Research Chair of Pulmonary Hypertension

Medicine is changing dramatically, and the biggest change is the movement to molecular medicine. The way our system works now is that we do clinical trials involving thousands of people and then decide the majority response is the best response. That is, if we try a drug on 1,000 people and it works for 700 of them, we say everyone should use it. We do this because, more often than not, we don’t know how the drug is really working or the

true nature of the disease. But with advances in molecular biology and genetics, for example, we can create custom-made treatments for specific people or specific groups of people. In the early stages of this change, I think the biggest advances will come in cardiology and cancer, because that’s where the most research is happening now, and the breakthroughs we make will lead to so-called magic bullet therapies. Also, more and more you’ll see the diagnosis of conditions before they are even expressed. We have identified genes that make you susceptible to pulmonary hypertension and heart failure, for example, and we are working to

Terry Allen Professor of pharmacology and director of the U of A Centre for Drug Research and Development

Right now, there is a trend in health care toward more and more personalized medicines, and toward developing quick, easy and inexpensive ways to determine which therapies would be most appropriate for each patient, based on each patient’s genetic makeup. However, our challenge is to find better biomarkers — markers that correlate with patients’ disease progression — so we can measure patient response to a drug to see if the drug is effective. In addition, there are large numbers of new drugs coming from research advances made in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, for example, but right now we do not have effective ways of delivering many of these drugs to patients. They just get chewed up in the body before they can be effective. In my area of nano-medicines we have the means to make our drug delivery more effective; that is, make them

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develop preventative treatments for the people who have those genes. And we are already seeing other preventative measures, such as people getting mastectomies as soon as they discover they have the breast cancer gene. The advances in molecular medicine will also require us to have more generalists rather than more specialists, because this type of medicine crosses boundaries and needs to be understood across disciplines. And, just as we as physicians need to be more flexible, big institutions, such as the U of A, will need to be able to adjust to accommodate this new approach to medicine. Right now the clinical trial system is too big and expensive and that’s why it relies too much on industry. Institutions that are not prepared to make changes will be left behind.

more selective, more targeted, with less toxicity. The other major advance in pharmacology is the development of molecularly targeted therapies, such as Iressa, a newer cancer drug. Right now, with most of our therapies, it’s like we’re using a hammer — a crude, blunt instrument — to treat everyone in the same way, even though not everyone is the same. In the future, I think we’ll be able to fine-tune our therapeutic instruments so that each patient will receive a treatment based on a detailed understanding of the abnormalities underlying the individual patient’s disease. The treatment will also be based on the genetic makeup of the individual, which determines their ability to respond to the appropriate treatment. For example, some patients break down drugs more rapidly than others, and this is determined in their genetic makeup. Knowing this will help us find the right range of drug dose to treat their condition.

Timothy Caulfield Professor of law and public health, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy

If you go back 100 years, many of the biggest health breakthroughs were public health initiatives that were preventative in nature, such as advances in sanitation and water supply. You also had broad-based health preventions in areas such as antibiotics, which had implications not just for one disease but for many of them. These advances created massive improvements in overall health. But now we’re in an era where we focus on developing high-tech strategies to deal with chronic disease in an acute care model. What I’d like to see in the future is the convergence of the high-tech research, in areas such as genomics, with the development of preventative strategies that can fight chronic diseases in order to advance health care in a broad way. It will be expensive and complex to pull off, but that’s my hope, and I think we’re moving in that direction. From a health law perspective, I think we view many of the legal, ethical and social issues around these emerging technologies — in genetics, nanotechnology, regenerative medicine and stem cells, for example — in a relatively straightforward fashion. But just as the science is more complicated and nuanced than we originally thought, the social challenges they create are just as complex. So, I think we’re going to need to do a lot of empirical research to see how individuals and populations respond to, for example, genetic information. What do people do if they find out they are at risk to obesity? Do they improve their behaviour and

start eating healthier, or do they say, “Well, I’ve got the gene for obesity. I might as well live it up?” So, when we talk about laws that make it illegal to discriminate against people based on genetic predispositions, for example, we want those laws to be informed by empiricallybased evidence rather than by intuitive angst, as we have seen happen in the recent past.

Tarek El-Bialy Professor of orthodontics and biomechanical engineering

I see the application of tissue engineering as providing many major advances in dentistry in the near future. In particular, I’m thinking of periodontal tissue regeneration through the use of stem cells, substituting current root canal treatments with the tissue engineering of dental nerve and blood vessels inside the teeth, and tissue engineering of lower jaw joints (TMJ) rather than replacing them with artificial joints. I also think con-beam CT scanning — high-quality, 3-D X-rays designed for dental imaging — will become the standard of care in general dentistry, without any major objections from

oral radiologists. And I believe the use of LIPUS (low intensity pulsed ultrasound) will become the routine way to prevent and treat tooth root problems, especially after dental trauma. All of the applications I’ve cited are technologies currently in research and development and expected to be available for public use within the next 10 years. In 20 years, I think tissue engineering of teeth— the regrowing of teeth—will be a routine procedure that each dentist could do with the help of specialized cell biology laboratories. I also see gene therapy becoming widely implemented in the future and telecommunications being used to allow dentists to monitor a patients’ health remotely. Of course, all of this will rely, at least to some degree, on steady funding from our governments.

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Jackie Hebert Professor of physical medicine and director of the Adult Amputee Program at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital

There have been many huge advances in the development of prosthetic rehabilitation technologies in the last 10 years, many of them as a result of the U.S. government directly funding research to improve rehabilitation of wounded soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of these advances are already coming to fruition, such as bionic limbs, but what we’re seeing today is only the tip of the iceberg of what is to come in the next 10 years. For example, the next wave of prosthetics will build on the targeted muscle reinnervation procedure developed in Chicago and recently performed in Edmonton on the first two Canadian patients with arm amputa-

tions. The surgery involves rewiring an amputee’s nerves and connecting them to muscles they still have to allow them to operate a myoelectric prosthetic arm by thinking the same way they used to in order to move their hand. New prosthetics in the future will not only allow an amputee to move a prosthetic arm or leg in a desired way, it will also allow them to move individual fingers and toes. Also, some of the robotic technologies are amazing. For example, they’ve developed prototypes of a robotic brace for paralyzed people in which

Gregory Kawchuk Professor of biomedical engineering and physical therapy and Canada Research Chair in Spinal Function

The thing I’m excited about is the opportunity to do very simple things that can make a big difference, and the key will be to expand multidisciplinary health care. For example, the simple sharing of patients’ records electronically will make health care a whole lot easier for both patients and health-care practitioners. This type of low-hanging-fruit, interdisciplinary measure would be relatively easy to do and yet have a big impact in the near future. Within the field of spinal function, I think we’ll see the implementation of some really innovative technologies. For example, instead of simply replacing joints, we’ll replace them and make the replacements tunable. That is, the future holds the promise of sticking a disk in your back that allows you to 26

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simply pressing a button allows them to stand and walk. One of the major challenges we’ll face will be keeping up with the costs to pay for these new technologies. Funding support for rehabilitation advances is not as great as it is for major acute care, and as individual funding costs rise, I hope we’re able to maintain equal access to usable technology for all Canadians, not just the financially fortunate.

change the settings on it depending on what you have to do that day. You can make it a little stiffer, for example, if you have a long car ride ahead of you, or you can make it a little softer if you’ll be doing things that require more flexibility. So, I think we’ll see user-controlled joint implants in the next little while. On another note, I’m really excited about the future. I can’t wait to get up in the morning and get to the lab every day. But I worry that the lifestyle and the amount of work it takes to be successful in health-care research is becoming less attractive for the next generation of researchers, who, understandably, want more balance in their lives. So, as we have seen changes in the way physicians are no longer on call for the extended periods they were decades ago, maybe we have to find ways to change the job description for researchers — provide more flexibility and options — to attract bright young investigators in the future.

Legal Aid James Muir, a professor with a joint appointment in the Faculty of Law and the Department of History and Classics, gives some measured thought to our many questions about the future (and past) of law New Trail: What is the one constant in the practice of law that has never changed and never will? James Muir: There is no constant: all law changes.

NT: What’s the major difference between the way law is practiced today and the way it was 100 years ago? JM: There have been several changes in the law over the last century. First, the make-up of the profession has changed. There were no female lawyers practising in Alberta then. Today they make up a significant portion of all lawyers and account for half of all law students at the U of A. Second, the practice of law itself has changed as law firms have grown in size to the point where there are several in Canada that are national in scope and often employ over 100 lawyers.

While firms have grown in size, they have also narrowed the range of things they do. Many firms focus on one or two areas of law, and many lawyers practise in specialized areas. The offices are now also staffed not simply with lawyers and articling students, but with secretaries, administrators, clerks and paralegals. Many of these jobs did not exist — or at least not as we understand them today — 100 years ago. Third, there has been a significant change in the understanding of people’s rights. A wider variety of rights are recognized for more people than 100 years ago, and there are several different ways in which those rights can be protected or enforced from both infringements by the state and by private actors or firms. Although most people will never be directly involved in rights litigation, the changes in the understanding of rights

have fundamentally changed the way lawyers, law students and the general public understand the law. Fourth, the development of mass culture has radically changed the way the general public perceives the law. The popularity of both legal fiction and non-fiction in all media shapes both what people expect of the law and lawyers, and often what lawyers think about themselves.

NT: Is law still essentially taught the same way it was a century ago, and, if not, what is the major difference between then and now, and what differences might we see in the law students’ curriculum 100 years from now? JM: Legal education is radically different today. One hundred years ago most lawyers trained on the job in three- or five-year apprenticeships. By the 1950s, Winter 2008/2009

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legal training had moved to the university, but training was still very practise-oriented. Today, law is an academic field of study, and while there are tensions between teaching the trade and teaching the academics, the balance is clearly moving toward the latter.

NT: In a world where we’re

of cruelty to animals, formed to protect draft animals in urban spaces and to bring an end to animal blood sports such as cock fighting and bear or badger baiting. The ideas that animated these groups were then applied to neglected or, more often, poor children. Animal rights in the 19th century led to human rights in the 20th. I think it is reasonable to assume that human rights in the 21st century will lead back to animal rights by the beginning of the 22nd century.

already under surveillance 24 hours a day while in public — and often in private — spaces, what laws might have to be enacted to ensure some degree of privacy? Or is that a lost cause and is surveillance the socalled price we pay for security? JM: The initial premise that increased surveillance promotes NT: Are the laws currently security is flawed on a number in place sufficiently comof grounds. First, it starts from plete and coherent to an assumption that we are genencompass a future where erally insecure. The contrary is medical technology might true. In 16th-century London, enable an average lifespan before a regular police force well beyond what we expeand before street lighting, most rience today? people still lived their lives JM: This is really a question without being victims of crime. of legal philosophy. Alberta The justification for surveilis a “common law” jurisdiclance is that we are insecure; James Muir: “I think the most pressing legal issues will turn on the enviroment.” tion (as is most of Canada) the fact is that, at least as it where many of the basic relates to questions like crime legal principles and much of the law NT: One hundred years from now and terrorism, we are secure already. remains unwritten in statute form. might it be possible to see robots so Surveillance — much like increased senThis form of law is malleable to the advanced that the line has been tences for convicted criminals or the needs of the time. Judges and lawyers blurred between them and sentient death penalty — is sold as helping to are, after all, part of the broader socibeings so that laws would have to be prevent something that is not a signifiety. The law then can change to meet enacted to take into account their cant threat to most people. Once surthe needs of the time. It might not almost-human status? veillance begins, however, it becomes change at a rate we all appreciate and JM: As for robots, I don’t know. That normalized both on the part of those — because of its essentially judge-made is really a question about life and sendoing the watching and on those being character — it may not change in ways tience best left to philosophers at this watched. Those doing the watching that are acceptable to everyone. point. But, I think it highly likely that cannot imagine doing their jobs withNevertheless, it will keep pace. When rights currently accorded to humans out being able to see. Those being the right people, with access to power, alone will be extended in part to watched begin to believe that they are disagree with what judges decide, the other living creatures: primates and actually being protected on the one law can be changed by statute. It is other higher-order mammals at first, hand and that they have nothing to likely, in the long run, that more and but perhaps others, too. There is hishide on the other hand. We end up more Canadian law, including that torical precedent for this. One of the believing that we are somehow safer relating to medical technology or to starting points for child protection for being watched. Surveillance is the longevity, will become statute-based. agencies in Canada (and in the U.K. price we pay for not holding our govThis, certainly, is one of the trends of and U.S.A) was the founding and ernments, our employers and our the last 100 years. spread of societies for the prevention retailers accountable for their actions. 28

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NT: What ethical and expense-related issues do you see law having to address in a future where the average human lifespan could be over 90? JM: The major ethical and expenserelated issue facing the law today has little to do with changing longevity. Lawyers are becoming more and more expensive. As a result, access to law — and thus, access to justice — is becoming narrowed to an increasingly small group of individuals, businesses and associations who can afford lawyers. To the extent that longevity results in more people living a longer portion of their lives on fixed or limited incomes, this will be a problem. But really, the problem is one of growing income disparity in Canada, not an aging population.

NT: Are there currently laws on the books so hopelessly out of date that they should be declared officially defunct? And what laws or statutes currently on the books can you see being equally superfluous a century from now? JM: Although there may be a handful of statutes still part of the law of Alberta or Canada that refer to or regulate things that do not exist, this is really a question about politics. Some would argue that labour relations statutes that allow for the creation of trade unions are antiquated in the modern economy; others would argue that unions are more important than ever in the face of economic crises. Likewise, some today would argue that a law outlawing sodomy is obsolete, while others would argue that the absence of such laws poses a significant risk for our culture. Similar debates — whether on these questions or, more likely, on others — will animate legal debate over the century to come.

NT: Can you ever see a time when the time-consuming, adversarial nature of tort and criminal law will be replaced by something completely different? JM: Yes. Even today fewer and fewer disputes of either a criminal or a tortious nature end up at trial. There are

“Although most people will never be directly involved in rights litigation, the changes in the understanding of rights have fundamentally changed the way lawyers, law students and the general public understand the law.” good and bad reasons for this, but I expect that, particularly if the cost and time of litigation continues to rise, lawyers and injured parties will turn more frequently to alternatives to the trial to resolve disputes.

NT: What are arguable some of the most groundbreaking rulings in Canadian legal history from the past? JM: This past week, I taught the case of Christie v. Yorke. In this case, a black man is refused service at a bar he had drunk at before because of his skin colour, and the skin colour of one of his companions. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided that the bar was within its rights to refuse service to someone on the basis of race. The case is groundbreaking because it breaks no ground. The law was in the 1930s, and the common law remains today, that a business can choose to do business with whomever it chooses to do so, and it can base its choice on grounds such as skin colour, religion or sexual orientation. The groundbreaking in this case comes from the fallout: this is one of the key cases from the mid-century in Canada that propelled the human rights revolution forward. This speaks to the general issue of great cases. Groundbreaking rulings can set new law; there are several Supreme Court cases over the last 100 years, for instance, that have set law regarding Aboriginal rights and treaty rights. But often the groundbreaking cases propel not a change in the law, but political responses either in terms of making new

statute law to go around the judicial decision or by taking disputes out of the legal arena and into the political one.

NT: What does it take to be a good lawyer now, and will that quality still remain the same in the future? JM: A good lawyer is someone who can efficiently and deeply analyze a problem, effectively communicate with clients and other parties, propose courses of action that are appropriate for her or his client and efficiently follow through on the client’s chosen course of action. This requires reading, writing and speaking skills, empathy and good problem-solving ability. I don’t think this will change much over the next 100 years, although the way in which these skills are learned and applied certainly will.

NT: What do you think are going to be the most pressing legal issues of the near and the far future? JM: In both the short and long term I think the most pressing legal issues will turn on the environment (and especially the environmental consequences of human actions), and the economy (particularly the opportunities people have and disparities in opportunity and outcome). The former includes a range of things from the use of natural resources to a homeowner’s private property rights. The latter includes not only basic questions of rights for individuals, but the long-term effects of changing job opportunities and, to return to an earlier question, human lifespan and lifestyle on livelihood. Winter 2008/2009

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Impressive Furnishings… F

ifty-five chairs. That is how many new academic chairs have been endowed during Campaign 2008 through the generous philanthropy of alumni, corporations and community partners. But what does an investment of this kind mean in terms of tangible benefit to the community at large? Two recent chairs, The Dr. Charles A. Allard Chair in Diabetes Research and the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities Chair in Islamic Studies, are good illustrations of how philanthropy makes a difference in our lives.

The Dr. Charles A. Allard Chair in Diabetes Research

ike his father, renowned Edmonton surgeon Charles Allard, ’43 MD, philanthropist Peter Allard is always in search of solutions. He knows, for instance, that the solution to helping people with diabetes lies in research. That’s why, in 2007, he gave $1.5 million to the U of A to create a chair in honour of his father, who died in 1991. “You don’t make any strides without research money,” says Allard. “And the money has to be directed at clinical Peter Allard solutions.” There are enormous pressures on researchers today to find their own sources of funding, either through donations or grants. An endowed chair, such as the Allard Chair, allows worldclass researchers the financial security to focus their energies on their work, as opposed to spending precious time writing proposals and tracking down external funding. Ron Gill, the scientific director of the Alberta Diabetes Institute, currently holds the Allard Chair. Gill calls himself a “sober optimist” about the future of treatment for people with diabetes, a disease he’s gained a significant amount of knowledge about since beginning research in that field over 20 years ago. “I was ignorant at first,” says Gill about his initial foray into diabetes

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research in 1985. “I knew it was an annoying disease, and that people had to inject themselves with insulin, but I had no clue how devastating it is to people over time. You ask any family who deals with it and they’ll tell you it’s a grueling, exhausting process.” The Allard family itself has a considerable amount of first-hand experience with the disease. The disease has been prevalent in their family for several generations, and both Peter and his twin brother, Charles, are diabetics. “Obviously there’s an interest from a personal level,” says Allard, “but medical research is critical for everybody.” A side benefit of endowed chairs and research institutes such as the Alberta Diabetes Institute (ADI) is their role in promoting collaboration. ADI houses many diverse researchers under one roof, multiplying the opportunities for success in this cross-discipline environment. As Gill explains, “If you have two hockey teams of equal calibre, and one team practises on different rinks as individual players, while the other team practises together, and the two teams get together for a game, who’s going to win? Centres like the ADI give you a competitive edge, as well as immediate and intangible benefits that are hard to measure.” (Portion of Allard Chair profile reprinted with permission of Jamie Hall, Edmonton Journal.)

Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities Chair in Islamic Studies

uslims, especially those living in the Western world, felt an angry backlash in the days that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., as they did again with the more recent attacks in Mumbai, India. Recognizing the need for education and greater understanding of their faith, members of the Edmonton Muslim community created the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities (ECMC), which represents some 35,000 Muslims living in the greater Edmonton region. One of the Council’s main objectives is to educate the general public about Islamic beliefs and culture. To that end, the Council helped to raise $1 million towards the establishment at the U of A of Canada’s first endowed chair in Islamic studies. In July 2008, renowned scholar Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘ began his appointment as the first holder of the ECMC Chair in Islamic Studies. Most recently, Abu-Rabi‘ was a professor of Islamic studies and Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. In 2006, he was the Senior Fulbright Scholar in Defence and Strategic Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, and for 18 years he was also the senior editor of The Muslim World and has published numerous articles and 19 books, including the Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought. As the holder of the ECMC chair in Islamic studies, Abu-Rabi‘ will provide leadership in research and teaching and act as a catalyst for interdisciplinary scholarship in the Faculty of Arts. As well, in recognition of the pluralistic nature of Islam, he will engage with local communities on an ongoing basis to ensure equal representation.

President Samarasekera thanks donors to Campaign 2008.

Campaign 2008 Tops $500-Million Target A Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘

With the introduction of a new social studies curriculum in Alberta that focuses on citizenship, identity and history, Abu-Rabi‘ will also have an opportunity to help equip the teachers of tomorrow with better tools to understand Islamic cultures and communities as he forges links with the University’s Faculty of Education and the Province of Alberta’s Department of Education. “I am happy to be the first holder of the ECMC Chair of Islamic Studies at such a leading university in Canada,” says Abu-Rabi‘. “I am encouraged by the great support given by both faculty and students to Islamic studies here and am sure that this chair will be the first step towards a greater engagement between the U of A and the local Muslim communities and also between the University and the leading academic institutions in the Muslim world.” Integral to forwarding the academic mission and vision of the University of Alberta, endowed chairs exist in perpetuity and provide the University with the opportunity to recruit and retain internationally acclaimed researchers. An investment of $3 million is required to name and establish an endowed academic chair at the University. The full endowment will generate approximately $127,500 annually to support the research efforts of the chair-holder and the related research team.

bout 250 alumni, donors and friends were in attendance at the Timms Centre for the Arts in September to hear President Indira Samarasekera announce that the University of Alberta’s Campaign 2008 had surpassed its goal of raising $500 million. Campaign 2008 was launched in 2004 with the goal of raising only $310 million by the end of the University’s centenary celebrations in December 2008. But the bar was raised to $500 million once the initial target was hit. Significant gifts to the Campaign over the past four years include $37 million from Sandy, ’06 LLD (Honorary), and Cécile Mactaggart, ’90 LLD (Honorary), and family; $35 million from Capital Health; $10 million each from Alfred Wirth, ’05 LLD (Honorary), and Imperial Oil; $7.5 million from Daryl Katz, ’82 BA, ’85 LLB, and the Rexall Group and $7 million from EnCana. New gifts this fall include $2 million from the Métis Nation of Alberta, $1 million from TD Bank Financial Group and $1 million from outgoing chancellor Eric Newell, ’02 LLD (Honorary), and his wife Kathy, which was the “capstone” gift that carried Campaign 2008 to over $500 million. Campaign 2008 is the second-largest comprehensive campaign in Canadian history and was achieved through the generous support of more than 70,000 alumni along with corporate and community partners Following is an excerpt from President Samarasekera’s remarks at the Timms Centre to mark the accomplishment:

Even though we are not yet finished, the fact that today we have reached and surpassed the $500-million mark gives me a chance to stop and thank all those who have helped us achieve this success. Thank you to our donors who come from over 31 countries. Thank you to the individuals, families, community groups, corporations and industries who are supporting the U of A’s vision to build a university known for its excellence in learning and discovery. You have responded with financial gifts that range from $1 to $37 million, with remarkable gifts of artwork, library collections and land. Each one is vital to our success. With the help of our donors, we have created 55 new chairs and professorships — senior academic positions that attract top experts in the world to our campus. With the help of our donors, we are building an impressive legacy of student scholarships, awards and bursaries that will extend our ability to attract bright, new minds to the U of A long into our second century. Fundraising campaigns are about more than raising money. They provide the opportunity for our alumni, partners and friends to play a significant role in shaping our future. I hope that you will stay with us as we enter into our exciting second century. Together we will build a century that brings groundbreaking discoveries and advancements in energy, the environment, health sciences and the arts. A century in which we continue to challenge students to think critically, to pursue truth in all of its ambiguity and complexity, to prepare for full participation in society. A century in which the U of A will help our province build and nurture links with people and cultures and ideas across our country and around the world. Winter 2008/2009

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What About Bob? Edmonton boasts a live-theatre scene second-to-none in Canada. Much of the credit for that goes to one of the city’s native sons.

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Photo by Robert C. Ragsdale, courtesy Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives

“I

f someone had asked me in high school what I wanted to be, I would probably have said a dentist,” says Bob Baker, ’74 BFA, a slim and soft-spoken man, who, in fact, looks a lot like my dentist. So how did he wind up choosing a career in theatre, first as a dancer and then as an actor, before becoming an award-winning director and the first locally-born artistic director of Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre? “I didn’t really choose it,” he explains, “I think it chose me.” Although he had acted in plays throughout high school, the pivotal moment that decided his course, Baker recalls, was when he received an acceptance letter from Tom Peacocke, ’53 Dip(Ed), ’55 BEd, ’59 BA, thendirector of the U of A Department of Drama, informing him that out of the 250 students who had applied, he was one of the 16 chosen to join the fledgling BFA program. He had applied somewhat impulsively, but, once accepted, was eager to answer the call of the stage. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is serious. This is a serious thing,’ ” he remembers. From then on, thoughts of a career in dentistry faded into the background and dreams of a future in the theatre took centre stage. “I think very soon into entering the program I realized that this was the profession I was supposed to do.” That much would have been clear to anyone who saw him in his university days. In addition to being one of the stars of the Drama Department, he had a natural talent for dance and performed all four years with Orchesis, the University’s modern dance troupe. And already as an undergraduate he was helping run a theatre company, the Alberta Barter Theatre, which he

Baker as Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1978.

co-founded in 1972 with professor Larry Kadlec and fellow student Lee Livingstone, ’71 BFA, ‘72 MFA, with funds from a government Opportunities for Youth grant. The company, which took its name from the fact that admission was paid not in cash but in kind — including once in dripping ice cream cones for the entire cast—put on several full repertory seasons outside Corbett Hall. It was an ideal education for the man who would one day run some of Canada’s largest theatre companies. “We built and painted the sets, we sewed the costumes, we made the props, we lugged the piano outside every night, and we lugged it back in again,” he says, all in one breathe. Not much has changed for Baker then, except for the scale. As artistic director at the Citadel, he is responsible for everything that goes on the theatre’s three stages, from deciding which plays are staged to the type of seats the audience sits in and everything in between.

In addition, he directs several of the theatre’s shows each year. So he has a hand in every aspect of production, short of pushing the piano around. The 2008–09 season marks Baker’s 10th year as artistic director of the Citadel — the longest stint, and arguably the most successful, by any director since the theatre’s founding in 1965. And it has certainly been a stellar and storied rise to the top. Baker’s first big break came just a year after graduation, when he was touring out East with Les Feux Follets, a small, Montreal-based folkdance ensemble. “Someone said that Robin Phillips, who had just taken over as artistic director of the Stratford Festival, was coming to town on an audition tour. So I said, ‘I’m going to get myself an audition.’ ” He drove to Halifax on his day off, auditioned, and a few weeks later, at the tender age of 23, was invited to join the famous Shakespearean company. “My whole career’s been serendipitous in that way,” he muses, “I’ve made good use of the opportunities I’ve been given, but I’ve been given an awful lot of opportunities, and one has just led to another and another and another.” Serendipitous might be a bit of an understatement. The ’70s were perhaps the heyday of the Festival, and Bob shared the stage with such luminaries as Peter Ustinov, Jessica Tandy and Dame Maggie Smith. Although his roles were small, his four years at Stratford were a formative part of his training and came at an important crossroads in his life. “You couldn’t drag me out of the rehearsal room or the theatre,” he says of that time. Even when the director would clear the room for more private instruction, Baker would crawl back in on his hands and knees to

The Citadel Theatre

This year marks Baker’s 10th season as artistic director with The Citadel — the longest stint by anyone in the theatre’s 43-year history and the only time that position has been filled by a native Edmontonian.

watch them. “I couldn’t get enough,” he says, “And I think that’s where I learned to be a director.” After his fourth year at Stratford, the urge to direct had become so great that he actually wrote the Festival’s hiring committee and asked not to be offered a contract for another year. “I think I worded it that ‘I can offer more to the profession as a director than as an actor,’ ” he recalls. That was in 1978, and he has never looked back.

From his debut directing one-act plays in Vancouver, Baker’s rise as a director has been swift and impressive and has followed hand-in-hand with his growing career as an artistic director. After a few seasons teaching and directing on the West Coast, he was asked back to Edmonton in 1982 to be the artistic director of The Phoenix Theatre, which was floundering with only 200 subscribers and $30,000 in debt. In five years, Baker revived the theatre, and, in

the words of Edmonton Journal theatre critic Liz Nicholls, ’71 BA, ’76 Dip(Ed), ’78 MA, brought it a national profile for “hip plays, polished productions and sheer hustle.” Along the way, he raised the subscription rate 1,100 percent and inadvertently provoked the ire of the Citadel when he scheduled one of the Phoenix’s legendary parties on a Citadel opening night. After rescuing the Phoenix (sadly, it folded in 1997), Baker went on a victory lap around the world directing plays at The Shaw Festival, the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival, Boston’s Wilbur Theater and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, just to name a few, before being asked to man the helm of another sinking ship, The Canadian Stage Company. In 1990, when he became its captain, the Toronto theatre was a $5-million-a-year company that was $2.7 million in debt. Within two years, Bob’s innovative productions of such groundbreaking plays as Angels in America, Parts I and II, and his superior management helped pay off most of the company’s debt, and at the end of his tenure there, in 1998, it had a $7-million annual budget and a whopping 19,900 subscriptions (up from just 8,000 when he took over). Baker described the experience as akin to “righting the Titanic,” but after eight years there, he was exhausted and in great need of a change. That same year, while considering his options, he got an unexpected phone call. “Are you available?” an unidentified voice on the other end of the line barked. “Who is this?” Baker asked. “This is Joe Shoctor [’45, BA, ’46 LLB, ’81 LLD (Honorary)],” said the Citadel founder. “Well, are you available?” Although he was contemplating a careerchange, steering yet another leaky vessel through troubled waters was not what he had in mind. The Citadel wasn’t in as bad shape as the Phoenix or the Canadian Stage Company had been, Winter 2008/2009

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One to Watch: Amanda Lisman

The Citadel Theatre

When asked about the exciting talent coming out of the U of A and the Citadel, Bob Baker responded without hesitation: Amanda Lisman. Just a year out of the U of A’s drama program, Lisman was cast as the lead in the Citadel’s fall 2008 production of Pride and Prejudice. With more than three full hours of stage time alongside such theatre veterans as Lally Cadeau and James MacDonald, it was a stunning debut for the 25 year old. Edmonton Journal theatre critic Liz Nicholls called it a “ravishing performance” by an actor who “radiates intelligence and heart.” Every bit as mature and headstrong as the story’s protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, Lisman was not intimidated by playing one of literature’s most beloved heroines. “It’s definitely the most challenging part I’ve taken on,” she says. “It has extremely high highs and low lows, but it’s been a real treat every night to get up there and tell this wonderful love story.”

Tom Wood (right) stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in the Citadel’s production of A Christmas Carol, directed by Baker.

but it was stalled, its line-up bland, its box-office sales unimpressive. “The programming was so wrong for this community,” he has said of the Citadel in the ’90s. “No contemporary theatre, only classics and not done well. No diversity. A plate of warmed-over Ibsen or Shaw.” Furthermore, the Citadel had garnered a 34-year reputation of defining talent as “Someone from Elsewhere.” Yet being the first Edmonton-born artistic director of the Citadel was an offer the native son couldn’t refuse. “I’d been away for 12 years, but I knew 34

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I wanted to come back to the city, and I knew I wanted to come to the Citadel,” he explains. “I love the volunteer spirit of this city and the big-sky optimism. Here audiences go into a theatre and sit down and go ‘bring it on!’ ” And the Citadel’s audiences have enjoyed generous portions — multiple helpings even—of everything he’s dished out to them. (His lavish production of A Christmas Carol has sold out eight years in a row.) One of the first changes he made after arriving at the Citadel was to reopen its smallest stage, the Rice

Theatre, with four plays a year of an edgier, more controversial nature. The first play to open on that stage was Popcorn, a sort of Oliver-Stone-meetsQuentin-Tarantino thriller, which Baker himself directed. It’s a story about a pair of psychotic cinephiles on a murderous rampage, and in the second act an actress appears on an all-white set dying in a pool of blood for half an hour. Pushing the buttons of Albertans not only earned him the local Sterling Award for Best Director that year, but it has won him a loyal following. “We’ve created trust in the audience,” he says. “They may not like everything we do, but they will respect the choices and admire the quality.” As artistic director, Baker’s main focus is to plan the programming for the theatre’s three stages: 11 plays per year that balance the Citadel’s mandate for family programming and provocative theatre, musicals and the

classics, quality and scale. But Baker is also charged with creating an aesthetic both on and off the stage. “I’m ultimately responsible for the marketing, for anything creative that goes on the stages, for anything the audience touches — even choosing the carpet colours and things like that — because I want the theatre to have its own personality, its own style.” In addition to keeping up the Citadel’s appearances, Baker has raised its artistic standards and expanded its reach: commissioning new works, promoting Canadian theatre, and creating new opportunities for local talent. “When he came here he embraced the local theatre community, which has flourished,” says Liz Nicholls. “He’s really opened the Citadel’s doors, which used to be closed to them.” This season he’s scheduled four new plays, all by Alberta playwrights: The Forbidden Phoenix, by Marty

ply, as well as a healthy dose of humility about her extreme good fortune. “I’m still absorbing it. I’m still in shock, still pinching myself and saying ‘Really, am I going? How exciting!’ ” she explains. “It’s also amazing to me to even be at the Citadel just a year and a bit after I graduated from the U of A, so I’m pinching myself a lot lately.” And what does the rising star envision beyond Stratford? “If you had asked me that before Banff, I would have said ‘working through regional theatres like the Citadel and across Canada, and, eventually, Stratford.’ That was my 10-year goal,” she says. “So to get to the Citadel and Stratford within the year is just unbelievable.” Not so unbelievable to those who have seen her perform. “One can well imagine her as Roxanne,” says Nicholls. “She has a great future on stage.” And that is exactly where she hopes to stay. “There are many, many roles that I would love to play,” says Lisman. “I don’t think I’ll tire of pursuing work on the stage.” As Roxanne, Elizabeth or any other character, this young U of A grad is definitely one to watch.

Chan, ’90 BA; Extinction Song, by Ron Jenkins; Billy Twinkle, Requiem for a Golden Boy, by Ronnie Burkett; and a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by Tom Wood — the latter two commissioned by Baker specifically for the Citadel. “Doing new work has a huge future because it’s creation; it’s bringing new pieces of theatre to the world stage,” he explains. “So Edmonton and beyond is a big goal. We want to get our new work out — out of our city, into our country, and out of our country. That’s a big goal for the future.” After it makes its debut at the Citadel this fall, Billy Twinkle — an avant-garde, notfor-kids puppet show — will head off on a world tour. “It’s extraordinary,” remarks Baker. “It’s already booked in 30 theatres around the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne, London and the National Arts Centre.”

Photo by Don Lee, courtesy The Banff Centre

Baker selected Lisman — and 13 other emerging actors — from a national audition to participate in the inaugural year of his Professional Theatre Program, a co-production between the Citadel and the Banff Centre. During the 15-week program (eight weeks in Banff, followed by seven in Edmonton), the young actors received further training in voice, singing, scene study and even stage fighting, while being mentored by older, more-established thespians. Pride and Prejudice was their term project, so to speak. Lisman credits that experience, and Baker, for helping her make the next big leap in her career: from the Citadel to Stratford. In addition to several ensemble roles, she will play another famous heroine, Roxanne, opposite veteran stage and film actor Colm Feore in Cyrano de Bergerac in June 2009. “I truly believe that having the role of Elizabeth and having that responsibility really helped me in landing these roles at Stratford,” she says. “And Bob’s encouragement was instrumental in my going and auditioning with confidence.” Confidence is something the articulate young actress seems to have in abundant sup-

Amanda Lisman as Elizabeth Bennet in the Citadel’s Pride and Prejudice, 2008.

In particular, Baker has made use of the talent coming out of the U of A. In one Citadel production last season, Shinning City, four actors, the stage manager, the director and the designers were all U of A grads. And this year, Baker opened the season with Tom Wood’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice staring U of A alumni Amanda Lisman, ’07 BFA, and Stafford Perry, ’07 BFA, whom he personally mentored at a 14-week training program at the Banff Centre for the Arts this summer. “The number of U of A theatre grads that have stayed in Edmonton or come back to Edmonton to work is phenomenal,” he says. “It’s really great to know that we ‘learned good,’ and we come from very different decades of training in the department.” Still, as much as he’s done for local talent and Canadian theatre, Baker’s true love remains directing. To that end he directs three to four of the Citadel’s Winter 2008/2009

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Alumni Grand Prize Bohdan Zorniak, ’73 BEd, ’78 Dip(Ed) Ornamental Garden First: Brian Heidecker, Edmonton Second: Bohdan Zorniak, ’73 BEd, ’78 Dip(Ed) Third: Doris Wyllie, ’66 BSc(Ag), ’74 BEd Container Garden First: Patricia Cooper, ’57 BSc Second: Patricia Davison, ’60 Dip(Nu) Third: Kathleen Weber, ’74 BEd Floral Display First: Eugene Ewanyshyn, ’67 BA, ’70 BEd, ’78 MEd, ’86 PhD Second: Eugene Ewanyshyn, ’67 BA, ’70 BEd, ’78 MEd, ’86 PhD Third: Stacey Reinke, ’05 BSc Vegetable Garden First: Bohdan Zorniak, ’73 BEd, ’78 Dip(Ed) Second: Leonard Wankel, ’69 MA, ’71 PhD Third: Mary Semaka Small Scale First: Ellen Schoek, ‘72 BA, ’77 MA Second: Shirley Harpham, ’84 BSc Third: Maegan Lukian, ’06 BSc

Thank you for Growing Green & Gold

Photography (Garden) First: Jean A.H. Jackson, ’76 BEd, ’92 BA, ’97 Dip(Ed) Second: Brian Olthuis, ’70 BPE, ’71 Dip(Ed) Third: Greg Eitzen, ’86 BSc(Eng), ’92 MEng Photography (Nature) First: Brian Olthuis, ’70 BPE, ’71 Dip(Ed) Second: Mikhaila Skehor, ’08 BA Third: Wendy Morrow, ’08 BSc From Afar First: Leonard Wankel, ’69 MA, ’71 PhD and Judy Sefton, ’88 PhD

The Alumni Association thanks all those alumni and friends of the University of Alberta who celebrated the 2008 centenary of the University in vibrant green and gold in their front yards and backyards, on their balconies and in their homes. Hundreds of Albertans participated in the Association’s “Growing Green and Gold” initiative and the associated contest, which featured a number of growing categories, as well as display and photography categories for those whose thumbs are not so green. The winner of the Alumni Grand Prize, the major award in the Growing Green and Gold contest, was Bohdan Zorniak of Edmonton, who has a 1973 bachelor’s degree in education and a 1978 diploma in education. With the encouragement of his elder daughter, a 2008 graduate of the University, he and his wife sought out a wide variety of golden-blooming annuals to fill 60 individual planters. The Zorniak’s also incorporated a green-and-gold theme into their vegetable garden, highlighting the green-and-gold vegetables with the blooms of marigolds and sundial yellow portulacas. The Alumni Grand Prize includes two day’s free accommodation at both The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise Hotel and at The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel.

Sponsored by MBNA, the Association’s affinity credit card partner

Congratulations to all the Growing Green & Gold contest winners. More information and photographs of the firstplace entries can be found at the Alumni Association’s centenary website, www.ualberta.ca/alumni/centenary.

“The number of U of A theatre grads that have stayed in Edmonton or come back to Edmonton to work is phenomenal.” Gerard Yunker Photography

plays per year, roughly the same amount of work a successful freelance director would take on. A typical day finds him at the office by 7:30 a.m., where he’s in meetings and conducting rehearsals until 10 at night, six days a week, and that’s before a production moves onto the stage. “Then I don’t get out of here until 1:00 or 1:30 a.m., and I’m back again at 7:30 a.m.” Even in his free time — what little he has — he’s thinking about the theatre. He keeps running lists of plays he wants to produce by his bed and in his car, and he’s always reading new plays or revisiting old ones — roughly 30 to 40 plays per year. “To me, on my one day off a week, if I can sit in a hammock and read a couple of plays it feels like a holiday,” he says. “It’s kinda sick actually.” Baker, who lives with Tom Wood, his partner of many years, on an acreage just outside Sherwood Park, is also an avid gardener, but this year he missed Edmonton’s short growing season because he spent the summer in Banff preparing for Pride and Prejudice. Such a demanding workload, he admits, takes its toll: “It’s difficult to serve everyone’s needs when I’m running down the hall with the last crumb of my sandwich, late for rehearsal, and my staff says, ‘Do you want to approve these changes to the program?’ ” But he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I couldn’t be an artistic director without also being a director,” he says. “Directing fuels me, and fortunately I get to hire myself and choose the plays I want to do.” Often, the plays he chooses to direct are musicals — this season he’s directing the Citadel’s production of the Wizard of Oz — drawing on his background in dance and choreography. In the past he’s directed such musicals as West Side Story, Grease, Little Shop of Horrors, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Cabaret, for which he won Edmonton’s Sterling Award for Best Director. “It was a completely kick-ass, Broadwayproduction,” remembers Nicholls. “The quality of productions at the Citadel — led by his own — have really been enhanced in the last decade. People expect more and they get more.”

For all his achievements, though, there’s still one production that has eluded him. Baker’s dream is to one day direct Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, about the painter Georges Seurat. It’s a musical about the compromises an artist has to make and about living with self-doubt, about hitting a wall creatively but working through it. “It’s about stuff I can really understand,” he confesses. “But it’s an expensive show to produce and not a well-known-enough title for a regional theatre. “I think we could do a brilliant job of it, but if we put the kind of resources to the show that it should have, there’s absolutely no way we could sell the number of tickets to even get close to being affordable,” he laments. “If I were just a freelance director I’d be saying, ‘We gotta do this show!’ But as an artistic director, I’ve got to be responsible for the finances and resources as well.” He still hopes that one day he can direct the show as a chamber version, perhaps in one of the Citadel’s smaller theatres. But does he see himself sticking around long enough to see that dream become a reality—another decade, say? “I’m signed on until 2012, but we’ll see. It’s a very demanding job. It’s fulfilling

—and it would have to be to be this demanding,” he says. “But I’m happy in this community. I can see myself staying here and maybe divesting myself of some of the management portion of my job to some other unsuspecting individual and still directing and teaching.” Whenever the day of his departure may be, Baker’s 10 years at the Citadel have already left an indelible mark on the local and national theatre scene. “He really did energize the Citadel,” comments Tom Peacocke, his old mentor at the U of A. “All you have to do is see what’s happened over there: all three theatres open again. He’s embraced the community of actors and designers, using local professionals. He has increased by enormous strides the number of Canadian plays on the main stage. He’s built up subscriptions. And he’s a brilliant director of musical theatre. He can do it all.” “He’s one of those people that combines real artistic chops with marketing savvy,” remarks Nicholls. “It’s a rare and special combination and the Citadel has been the beneficiary.” Edmontonians can be thankful that the crown jewel of Alberta theatre cut his teeth on the stage instead of in a dentist’s office. —Sarah Ligon Winter 2008/2009

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Cine-File For one grad, getting kicked out of school was probably one of the best things to happen to him elcome to Panacea world headquarters,” says Josh Miller, ’77 BA, as he enters the boardroom of, well, Panacea Entertainment world headquarters, the Edmonton-based film and television company that he started in 2003. Panacea occupies 3,000 square feet of a two-storey building that was never meant to inspire and now just looks tired. But although Panacea may not occupy glamorous digs on the south side of the city, it’s still the only Alberta independent production company outside of Calgary producing TV series in the $800,000-per-hour budget range and feature films with budgets over $5 million. As the boss of Panacea, and the executive producer of most of the company’s projects, Miller is also probably the only person in Alberta (never mind Calgary) who can seriously say he felt his life was in danger after a significant encounter with a celebrity. That perilous encounter occurred back in the early 1980s when he was living in Los Angeles spending two or three days a week as a teleprompter operator to pay the bills, while using the rest of the time to write spec scripts. On the day in question, Mr. T (real name, Laurence Tureaud) of A-Team fame spent an hour or so putting on his trademark gold jewelry before stepping into a studio to do a public service announcement. “I don’t think he knew he was going to be using a teleprompter,” remembers Miller. “He wasn’t exactly illiterate. I mean, he could read, but he couldn’t read fast, and big words were a problem. And instead of being embarrassed by it he got mad at the teleprompter operator — me. I thought he was going to kill me.”

“W

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On another occasion, it was Miller who was challenged when he had to keep up with the cascading flow of words while running the teleprompter for “fast talker” John Moschitta (most famous for his FedEx commercials) who, in 1988, set the world record for fast-talking 586 words in one minute.

“We all thought, that in its own minimalist way, it was very supportive, like a tough love environment.” But Miller didn’t exactly fast-talk his way onto the Hollywood A-list after arriving in Los Angeles right after finishing graduate film school studies at New York University in 1980. He didn’t even immediately launch himself on the industry at that time. Instead, he spent another year honing his writing skills at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies. Finally, in 1981, armed with all his new-found knowledge from two of America’s most prestigious film schools, Miller launched himself on the industry. “The industry shrugged,” he laughs. The journey that led Miller to L.A. probably began behind a piano in his parents’ house in Edmonton. A talented keyboardist, Miller started playing music professionally at 13. That early interest in music, combined with the thought that he could possibly make a profession out of it, continued on into his 20s and included being the

keyboardist for the R&B band Buckeye that played in clubs and bars throughout northern Alberta. But, in truth, if someone writing the script to his life was paying careful attention to the back-story, Miller really should have been called to a bar of an entirely different sort. “My grandfather, Abe Miller [’25 LLB], was the first generation to graduate from the U of A law school and also helped established Yellowknife’s first school for the mentally disabled, which is named in his honour.” says Miller. “My father, Tevie Miller, [’49 BA, ’50 LLB, ’91 LLD (Honorary)], was the first of the next generation to graduate from the U of A law school — he was also president of the Student Union, president of the Alumni Association and later became chancellor of the University. My sister, Cathy, [’74 BSc(Nu), ’77 LLB, ’00 LLM], was the first of the third generation to graduate from the U of A law school, and she’s now director of development and alumni relations for the Faculty of Law. I also have two cousins who are lawyers trained at the U of A, David Paul [’78 BA, ’84 LLB] and Marla Miller [’79 BA, ’83 LLB].” All this legal lineage came in very handy for one of the writing assignments he eventually started getting in L.A. Some of these jobs came his way just because he was a Canadian living there and it was a time when, if you had some Canadian content — such as a writer — you could get Canadian government funding. “I did some very mediocre TV shows,” Miller remembers. “One was Friday the 13th: The Series. One was the CBC’s attempt to replicate the success of The Beachcombers with

a series called Danger Bay. Then there was this very, very low-budget daytime courtroom drama series produced by Dick Clark called Trial by Jury hosted by Raymond Burr.” But there were some good things for him about that last show, which was such a flop in 1989 that it doesn’t even have any retro-kitsch credentials today. One: he could call back home and get all his research and legal anecdotes first-hand from his many lawyer relatives. Two: it provided a writing challenge as he had to crank out 17 halfhour episodes in 17 weeks. Three: it paid the bills. And four: it started him seriously thinking that maybe it was time to move on. After all, writing for a bad “telesoap” was a far cry from Josh Miller

where he began, which was right at the top of the Hollywood food chain with the deluxe honey wagons, the luxe catering and the free M & Ms (with the brown ones removed) that are all part of the package on an A-list movie set. “I had a very, very lucky connection to Hollywood,” says Miller. “My father’s legal secretary, a woman named Goldie Hiller, was the sister of Arthur Hiller,” [’02 DLitt (Honorary)]. Hiller, who’s from Edmonton, had a very long career directing films and TV in Hollywood and was the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1993 to 1997. When Miller’s dad suggested he write Arthur a letter, he did. “He told me he was coming up to southern Alberta to shoot Silver Streak starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder and invited me to c’mon down. That was in 1976. I was there for three weeks. That was it. I got the bug right there. “As soon as I got back to Edmonton I started looking into film school graduate programs in the U.S. I was accepted at three, but for me the best fit was NYU.” So the Edmonton native who had, by his own admission, not travelled much and had spent all his life in his hometown with the same friends and same support system, suddenly found himself with none of that on the naked streets of New York City. It was August of 1977, and Miller suddenly wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

“I was 22 when I saw Manhattan for the first time,” says Miller, “and you can well imagine I was absolutely a fish out of water. At the time it was peaceful and quiet and you might even say a little boring here in Edmonton. New York was anything but. For me just being in the city itself was half the education.” Back then the three-year graduate program at NYU started off with a sortof one-year boot camp that whittled down the student body from around 80 to about half that number. How you found out at the end of the year that you hadn’t passed muster was, as Miller says, a very Hollywood moment. “A list of names was posted on a board. If your name was on it, welcome to second year.” Some of Miller’s contemporaries during his tenure at NYU were Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes), who was in his class. In the class ahead of him was Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family), and in the one behind him was Spike Lee (Malcolm X), whom he remembers as having his own entourage even then. “Nothing was spoon-fed to us there,” remembers Miller about his time at NYU. “In fact, most of the equipment didn’t work. You’d go to one of the instructors or technicians and say ‘this is broken,’ and they’d shrug and say, ‘Go figure it out.’ Seriously. They didn’t hand anything to you there, and that was probably a good thing because it forced you to be self-reliant. Guess what? When you get out into the world it’s the same way. We all thought, that in its own minimalist way, it was very supportive, like a tough love environment.” Miller recalls that at the time he attended NYU tuition was around $1,600 per semester or $3,200 a year, He says that he’s heard it’s now northward of $25,000 a year to attend. It’s actually a lot northward of that. Tuition alone for NYU’s graduate film program is U.S. $19,437... per semester. For someone entering NYU’s undergraduate film program and choosing the living-in-residence option, the University estimates Winter 2008/2009

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Change— the Eco-Story about how he met while on a film set at NYU and the total cost for tuition, room and has now been married to for 25 years) board, books, personal expenses and U of A science professor-emeritus Larry had their first child. That was in 1988. meals at a cool $52,202 a year (don’t Wang and his friend of 50 years, Sam The twins followed in 1990. “We ask what the extra two bucks are for). Chao, teamed up to help rehabilitate started thinking at that point,” he says, “The top film schools have become China’s Yangtze River. “I’m not writing great shows, and a place where only rich people can Another of the company’s recent prowhere is the best place to raise kids? afford to attend unless they’re prepared ductions is a quite funny, low(ish) You know, all those questions. So we to go into terrible debt,” laments budget feature called Freezer Burn: The decided we were going to either move Miller. “It’s just not the same. At the Invasion of Laxdale, which spent a back to where my wife is from, same time, filmmaking has Long Island, or to Canada.” become democratized to some “I got one of those letters that That’s when the expression extent because of the digital tech“luck is the residue of design” nology. So you don’t really have comes into play. Miller was in to go to a film school, you can starts with ‘no doubt you are Edmonton introducing the new learn on the fly.” kids to their grandparents when he Which is sort of what Miller’s disappointed’ and ends with ‘you managed to snag a meeting with doing with one of his latest projCharles Allard, ’43 MD, who, at ects, Anash and the Legacy of the Sun Rock, a “youth quest series” can’t come back here for a year.’ ” the time, owned the Edmontonbased Superchannel and ITV. It shot in Whitehorse and Edmonton. turned out his timing was spot-on It’s based on a Tlingit Aboriginal as a position in script development had myth and is set in the 1800s when the month shooting outside Edmonton last recently opened up. “They offered me Yukon-based Tlingit people had first October. The $5-million-plus comedy the job,” he says. “The first ‘real job’ I’d contact with white people — not stars Crispin Glover (Back to the Future) ever had. I spent five years at Canadians, Russians. as an alien disguised as a Dutch oil comSuperchannel, which was great because At this point Anash has been picked pany executive who’s got the small town I learned a lot about broadcast TV, up for 13 episodes. It first aired on the of Laxdale all in a tizzy about his comwhich I knew nothing about.” Aboriginal People’s Television Network pany’s supposed plans for oil developAfter that, Miller moved on and made and also has international distribution ment in the region, while his real a deal with Minds Eye Entertainment — already lined up. The half hour-episodes intentions are to heat up the Earth so it a film company based out of Regina — — which cost around $400,000 each to can be turned into a resort destination to open an Edmonton office. He eventumake and were co-produced with Carol for extraterrestrials. Tom Green (The ally became a partner in that company Geddes of the Teslin Tlingit — are a Tom Green Show) plays a washed-up and stayed for eight years, during blend of live-action and animation with ex-NHL hockey player who’s the only which time he produced a number of a stand-alone animation-only sequence one not willing to cash in on the “oil TV shows, including 52 episodes of the that’s created here in Edmonton at a boom.” (The reason the aliens have choaward-winning children’s show he company called Rat Creek Design. The sen Canada as their resort destination is created called Mentors. series also has an interactive website because, as the Tom Green character “In 2003, Minds Eye grew a little (www.anishinteractive.com) created by says in the film, “They need a place full too big and needed to downsize,” says another Edmonton-based company — of polite people who are easily conMiller. “I sensed it was an opportunity Reel Girls Media, founded by Ava trolled and don’t question authority.”) to do my own thing. And it turned out Karvonen, ’91 BA. The site the comAll in all, as a little company trying well. In a tough market, both globally pany created for Anash recently won not to get too big too fast, Panacea is and locally, we’re more than holding the Best Production Award in the doing quite well for itself. Revenues our own. We’ve had steady growth primary school category at the NHK from its first full year of operation in every year, and our staff compliment International Japan Prize Awards and 2004 were $600,000. Three years later has grown to the huge number of six is also up for a Gemini award. that number had grown to over $5 people,” he grins. Other recent Panacea work includes million. The company is projecting Miller leans back in his chair at the a pilot for The Force, a half-hour docurevenues of almost three times that for requisite long boardroom table that, drama series hosted by Leslie Nielsen fiscal year 2008-09. like the building it sits in, is more (The Naked Gun), re-enacting a But starting up his own company in Baltic Avenue than Boardwalk, and taps criminal story from the case files of the his hometown was not the impetus his chin with his steepled fingers as he RCMP; a one-hour documentary called behind Miller’s move back to thinks about how to bring his story full1001 Performances: The Life and Edmonton. The talk about moving circle. “Here’s how the U of A played Times of a Male Belly Dancer; and a back home began to get serious when into all of this,” he says. I entered U of A one-hour documentary called Seeds of Miller and his wife, Michele, (whom 40

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Josh Miller (third from the left) back in the day when he played keyboards for Buckeye. Other band members are (L to R): George Goodall (bass guitar), Gary Hinton (guitar), Dave Bridges (guitar), Terry Fix (drums) and Tim Feehan (lead vocals).

thinking I would be following in the footsteps of my father and his father before him — straight into law. Turns out I didn’t want to do that. Being a musician I’d always been involved in creative endeavours — not that the law can’t be creative, it can. And although music had been a big focus from a creative standpoint for almost a decade, towards the end of that I said, ‘You know what? I’m not going to be a virtuoso musician, and in terms of selfexpression I’ve always been good in English subjects, writing.’ ” But no matter how good he might have been in English, he still had to show up to classes to pass his courses. “At the end of second year,” he smiles, “I got one of those letters that starts with ‘no doubt you are disappointed’ and ends with ‘you can’t come back here for a year.’ ” During that forced year off he made a living driving around town filling

cigarette machines (which in those days you could find even in hospital cafeterias). It was also during this time that he really starting getting seriously interested in movies, going to them not just on a Saturday night date with a bag of popcorn, but going by himself to see everything that came into Edmonton in the mid-1970s, going with an eye to dissecting them and studying them and learning from them. “So I went back to the U of A after the required year off,” he says. “There were no film courses then. But they had a really great theatre program. They still do. So I enrolled in that and spent almost all my time in the last two years at the U of A in the Fine Arts Building ... I studied plays, playwriting, directing, acting — all of that stuff. “I got this tremendous grounding in classical theatre at the U of A from some

amazing instructors. I was there when James DeFelice — who had his whole career there — was in only his first or second year of teaching. He’s a legend at the U of A and recently appeared in a cameo role in Passchendaele, the film Paul Gross [’97 BFA], made — who James also taught. He was absolutely inspiring, as were many of the other teachers. “I look back on that rich experience at the U of A and think that if I hadn’t had that I would have entered NYU with a much more shallow background. That richer background I received helped me understand something about dramatic structure and characters. So the University was ultimately the place where I began to acquire the requisite tools that would enable me to go on and make films. And for that, I will always be very grateful.” —Kim Green Winter 2008/2009

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Grey Matter In 1981, when opportunity knocked Ray Mullan, ’84 BA, opened the door to a future of possibilities

n the first week of September 1981, on the first day of classes, I was among the thousands of students taking a baby step toward a degree at the U of A. Nothing unusual there, as hundreds of thousands before me have done the same thing in the University’s first century. But the difference between my fellow students and me was that, at 54, I was more than a quarter-century older than most of them. I entered the workforce with the Canadian National Railway in Winnipeg when I was only 16. A transfer brought me to Edmonton in 1961 where I remained for 20 years before an opportunity for early retirement came up. I jumped at it, not only because I’d had quite enough of trying to placate disgruntled shippers and consignees, but also because I saw a golden opportunity to finally rectify something that had bothered me since 1943: no high school diploma. So after 38 years with CN, I packed it in and applied for entrance into the U of A’s Faculty of Arts. I visited the campus for the first time, where the dean interviewed me. Later I submitted a letter outlining why I thought I might be university material and before long found out I had been accepted. With the much-needed assistance of my youngest son, who was also a U of A student at the time, I survived the chaotic registration procedures and made it to the door of a classroom in the Humanities Centre for the first lecture in one of the courses I’d chosen — “English 215: Introduction to Literature.” That’s when panic hit. “What have I done?” I said to myself. “I can’t do this at my age! I haven’t been in a classroom for 38 years! Don’t make a fool of yourself, Ray.” But, damn it, I’d gotten this

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Ray Mullan on graduation day, 1984.

far and wasn’t about to give up. So, heart pounding, stomach churning, mind reeling, I passed through the open classroom door. The pre-lecture hubbub that had been wafting out of the classroom sputtered and ceased as the 20-or-so seated students — all bright, all smiling and all ridiculously young — caught sight of me. I took a step or two into the room and hesitated as 40-some eyes watched me intently. When I finally slipped into an empty seat in the first row (where no one else was seated) a burst of laughter erupted from my fellow classmates. I slunk lower in my seat, wondering what faux pas I had already committed to incite such hilarity. Moments later the professor, Mr. Weis, entered and took his place at the front of the class. That’s when I realized my fellow classmates were laughing because they thought I was the professor.

Mr. Weis was a good-looking young man who was almost the age of my eldest son. After introducing himself he handed out our reading list and announced that our initial assignment was to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then choose the character we thought was most important in the development of the plot and write a short essay supporting our choice. Oh God! While I had been a rather unwilling attendee at one or two of Shakespeare’s plays at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre and, to my surprise, had rather enjoyed them, I’d never read a play, any play, in my life. I soon discovered that reading one of the Bard’s plays for the first time is a daunting experience. While some of the words were clearly written in English, others were, as the saying goes, Greek to me. But I persevered and eventually chose the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father as my focus. After all, if it wasn’t for the Ghost, Hamlet would not have learned of his father’s murder and we’d be left with only a sulking prince for three long acts. I had never composed a literary essay before, but I had written literally hundreds of business letters in my career and foresaw no problem in banging out three or four pages on such a simple topic. A week after handing in my crisp, clean masterpiece it was returned to me bearing quite a bit more red ink than my original black type. It seemed that there was indeed a considerable difference between a business letter and a literary essay, a difference Mr. Weis went to great lengths to point out to me. In retrospect, I’m sure that his mark of 52 percent was considerably more generous than my rookie effort deserved, but amongst his voluminous comments were these words: “In all, your paper shows definite promise of greater things.”

Because I didn’t use my degree in any way to reenter the workforce, one might well ask just what benefit those years of toil and study and sometimeall-nighters brought me? The answer is simple. It brought me an enhanced appreciation of the written word and, more importantly, filled me with a glorious feeling of personal accomplishment and self-satisfaction, a feeling that enables me to walk just that little bit taller as I enjoy my retirement years. Another totally unexpected — but oh-so-heartwarming — benefit occurred this past autumn. One of my granddaughters was finding her college studies to be very difficult but, as she

subsequently told me, she said to herself: “If my grandpa can do it, so can I!” Now she’s doing just fine. To inspire, however unintentionally, someone you love is surely the greatest boon of all. And as I write this now, I look back on my years at the University of Alberta with great pleasure and with unbounded gratitude for the institution itself and its remarkable instructors who took an extremely mature student and helped him achieve his goal. And, although in the early days I sometimes found myself near drowning in their seas of red ink, their constructive criticism, their practical suggestions and their unflagging enthusiasm always buoyed me up until I learned to swim on my own.

It pleases me to think that Mr. Weis was perhaps a little correct in his assessment of my abilities because somehow or other I did eventually graduate — with distinction, no less — an accomplishment of which I am still very proud. As for Mr. Weis, two years after our initial encounter I had the good fortune to be a student in another of his classes. This time his red-ink comments on a writing assignment of mine were somewhat different and ended with: “This brings to an end my association with you as a student learning the craft of writing, and I must say you have rewarded my efforts on your behalf admirably.” Of course, Mr. Weis wasn’t the only teacher I encountered on my trek towards a BA, many of whom no doubt looked with some trepidation upon my grey-haired presence. But, without exception, all of these teachers were at least adequate in the educational task assigned to them, while most were excellent and a precious few could be termed “brilliant.”

Another Birthday... Another Degree obert Guy Williams, ’41 BSc, ’43 MD, is certainly not someone who can be accused of resting on his laurels ... or resting, period. In Edmonton for the recent Homecoming festivities, Williams was one of the U of A notables, receiving special recognition honouring the 65th-year of his graduation from the Faculty of Medicine. Following postgraduate work in surgery in Toronto and Edinburgh, Scotland, Williams enjoyed a successful career as a surgeon at the Calgary General Hospital — in which city he was also one of the founding members of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. His first wife, the late Mary Makar Williams, was a violinist of concert calibre who recruited the string players for the Orchestra and also acted as its concertmaster. And, until three years ago, Dr. Williams also had a hand in the operation of the Calgary Opera, including being its second president. Since his retirement from the practice of medicine in the ’80s, he has received his bachelor of arts in economics from

the U of Waterloo in Ontario and his bachelor of geology from Laurentian U in Sudbury. Currently, at the age of 89, he’s taking courses online with an eye toward completing a master’s degree in geology. At his June convocation from Laurentian U (where, not surprisingly, he was the oldest graduate) he was following in the footsteps of his three granddaughters who also graduated with bachelor of science degrees in geology from that university. One of them, Stephanie Jaworski (whose two sisters, Patricia and Maria, also have degrees in mining engineering), was on hand for the ceremony and made her presence known as he was accepting his degree from Laurentian’s president, Judith Woodsworth, by shouting out: “Way to go, Grandpa!” “He’s a good inspiration for us,” says Jaworski. “I hope we can be doing similar things when we get to be his age.”

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Playing the Back Nine Over his nine decades he’s taught about 10,000 students and known every U of A president, except the first one ... he also still plays a mean game of golf

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“You can’t imagine the difference between the department then and now.”

active staff member until 1980. During those decades, he estimates about 10,000 students passed through his various classes. “I remember a good many of the top students, and I remember the bottom ones,” he smiles. “Many instructors would give you the same answer.” Harris lists a number of his most notable students that include Lorne Tyrrell, ’64 BSc, ’68 MD, who established the Glaxo Wellcome Research Institute at the U of A; Brian Sykes, ’65 BSc, one of Canada’s top biochemists; and Gary Horlick, ’65 BSc, an internationally renowned expert in the field of spectroscopy. During his first decade as a lecturer, Harris found himself increasingly frustrated by the department’s huge teaching loads and by the lack of time and resources for research. Ironically, his

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o a select few on campus, the University of Alberta’s centenary is more than a celebration of history — it’s a trip down memory lane. Chemistry professor emeritus Walter Harris, ’38 BSc, ’39 MSc, ’91 DSc (Honorary), for example, has been aboard for the entire ride. Well, almost. The nonagenarian, who still maintains an office in the Chemistry Building, may not have been around in the days of Henry Marshall Tory, the U of A’s first president. But he has known every president since Tory, beginning with Robert C. Wallace, ’51 LLD (Honorary). When Harris was a freshman, it was an era when the president had a more personal relationship with the students (student enrollment wouldn’t break the 2,000 mark until the 1940s) and, each month, Wallace would deliver an inspirational lecture in Convocation Hall to the first-year students, who numbered about 400 in those days. Harris viewed the lectures as a privilege, rather than a tiresome obligation. “I thought they were great,” he recalls. “I really looked forward to them.” As a chemistry undergrad, Harris was also taught by some legendary names in the department, including E. H. Boomer, O. J. Walker and R. B. Sandin, ’16 BSc, ’19 MSc. During the Second World War he completed a PhD at the University of Minnesota and stayed on there to conduct research into synthetic rubber — an absolutely critical component of the war effort. “The Manhattan Project was the single biggest project in the United States, but synthetic rubber was second,” says Harris. “This continent had a one-year supply of natural rubber. The Japanese had Indonesia.” In 1946, Harris returned to the U of A to teach chemistry and remained an

frustration led him to one of his greatest contributions to the University. “I was the principal person responsible for the appointment of Harry Gunning [’83 DSc (Honorary)] as head of the department in 1957,” Harris says. “There were six Young Turks in the department, and we all really wanted to change things.” Gunning definitely delivered change. “He transformed the Department of Chemistry from a pathetic third-rate unit to a first-rate model that was copied by a number of other departments,” Harris marvels. “You can’t imagine the difference between the department then and now. It was a turning point for the University.” Despite Harris’s admiration for Gunning, the two occasionally locked horns. Analytical chemistry — Harris’s specialty — had fallen out of fashion

in many North American universities, and Gunning wanted to jettison it. “Gunning had come from the University of Toronto, which was throwing out analytical chemistry,” recalls Harris. “He wasn’t familiar with the stuff I had already done with analytical chemistry here. I saved the division — there’s no question about it. And the current analytical division is easily the best in Canada and among the best on this continent.” The battle won, Harris encouraged the appointment of another prominent analytical chemist, Ron Kratochvil. The two collaborated closely over the years and co-wrote a textbook on introductory analytical chemistry. Harris focused much of his research energy on gas chromatography (which was then a new field), with research partner Harry Habgood. Their work helped lay the foundation for the development of canola. “When you see these millions of acres of canola in Western Canada, that was possible because people in Saskatchewan used that technique for converting rapeseed to a useful oilseed. [Gas chromatography] also has enormous impact on petrochemistry and in determining and measuring tiny amounts of volatile materials in the food that you eat.” In 1974, when Gunning moved on to become university president, Harris took over as department chair — filling a daunting pair of shoes. “There were about 35 staff, and 33 had been appointed by Gunning,” Harris remembers. “There was an intense feeling that, with Gunning no longer as chairman, the place was going to collapse. I had to cool people down.” Harris made a point of listening to his colleagues’ many concerns. “My style was to tell my secretary, ‘Leave your door open, leave my door open, and if somebody wants to see me, don’t interfere with them.’ ” Harris’ biggest single project — and one of his proudest achievements — was to write the second edition of Chemical Analysis, a foundational document in the field. “Thirty months of 70 hours a week,” he says, still a bit weary at the

thought. “It took everything I could give it.” The book, which was translated into Chinese, Russian and Spanish, greatly boosted the profile of the U of A’s analytical chemistry division. After retiring in 1980, Harris kept up a busy pace. He spent 14 years as a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for Nuclear Waste Management and sat on several advisory committees for Alberta Environment (helping in the creation of the Swan Hills Hazardous Waste Treatment Facility). He also chaired the President’s Advisory Committee on Campus Reviews set up by Myer Horowitz, ’59 MEd, ’90 LLD (Honorary). (Harris still ranks Horowitz among the U of A’s greatest presidents.) In 1998, Harris also found himself somewhat taken aback when he received notice that he was about to be named a Member of the Order of Canada. “My daughter was visiting me at the time,” he recalls. “We were about to have lunch when the doorbell rang, and the postman gave me a special envelope. I opened it, read the first line and said to my daughter: ‘Oh my God, I’m getting the Order of Canada.’ Then I read the next line in the letter, and it said: ‘Don’t say anything about this to anyone before the official announcement in July.’ “It was totally, I mean totally, out of the blue,” Harris says. “It was an enormous honour.” These days, when Harris isn’t at his desk, he can often be found strolling — or riding his bicycle — on campus or playing golf across the river at the Victoria Golf Course. (“I don’t ride a cart,” he points out proudly.) He also fits in a weekly curling match at the nearby Granite Club. “This morning, we were tied in the 10th end and I had last shot. Well, I was heavy, by that much,” he says ruefully, his thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. Although Walter has already given much of his life to the University of Alberta, he doesn’t intend to stop. In 1996, Walter established the Walter and Phyllis Harris Graduate Scholarship in Analytical Chemistry, which he has been supporting with annual donations ever since. He has also made a specific

bequest in his will that ensures the entire proceeds from his Registered Retirement Income Fund are transferred to the scholarship endowment that bears his and his wife’s name. (Walter’s beloved wife passed away in 1992.) “I want to give something back. I just feel incredibly fortunate to have spent most of my life in a university atmosphere and particularly at this University. “It’s been great.What more can I say?” — Scott Rollans

How Walter’s Gift Works Walter has made a specific bequest in his will to have all of his RRIF proceeds transferred to the Walter and Phyllis Harris Graduate Scholarship in Analytical Chemistry. Because he named the U of A as the beneficiary of his RRIF, Walter’s estate will receive a charitable tax receipt. The resulting tax credits to Walter’s estate will eliminate the taxes due on the disposition of the RRIF on his final tax return. Including a charitable bequest in your will is an effective method of supporting the University without compromising your current living standards. As one of the many ways of making a gift to the University, bequests are usually one of the largest gifts an individual can make. Charitable bequests can help reduce the tax payable by the estate, thus allowing more of the estate to be used as desired.

If it is your intention to include the University in your will, or if you would like to learn more about how to do so, we would be pleased to hear from you. Name:______________________________ Address:_____________________________ ___________________________________ Telephone:___________________________ e-mail:______________________________

Please contact us at: Gift Planning Unit, University of Alberta Enterprise Square, 3rd Floor, 10230 Jasper Ave. Edmonton, AB T5J 4P6 Telephone: 780-492-0332 Toll Free: 1 (888) 799-9899 e-mail: giving@ualberta.ca Winter 2008/2009

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Five friends, four decades, three provinces, two oceans ... and one singularly lasting friendship

Every Picture I

f you could paint the story of Iris Walker, ’75 BA, Margaret Witschl, ’68 BFA, Sharon Moore-Foster, ’68 BA, Deanna Boucher, ’68 BA, and Lois Martin, ’51 Dip(Ed), ’69 BFA, ’72 MVA, you might begin beyond the canvas, before they knew each other, perhaps when they were little girls. You might begin the picture around the time each noticed in her own way that seeing and drawing was, for her, like speaking was for other people. It made sense of things. The painting would continue out of the frame, until it became visible on the outer edge of the canvas in lines of varying weight, value and texture that somehow seem to belong together, as when they first met in the studio—distinct and intersecting, and then more intensely overlapping, like the colours of a sunset. Five women, young and not so young, all arriving on the canvas full of anticipation. So you might choose hues of reds to paint them: tints that evoke passion, fire, heat, independence, celebration; the colour of courage, lifeblood and autumn leaves. Like the falling of the autumn leaves they would arrive, five women beginning and ending things, in abstract and literal line, shape and form, enrolled in a new program in the fall of 1964: a bachelor of fine arts at the University of Alberta.

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In the picture of the story of Sharon, Lois, Iris, Deanna and Margaret, 1964 might be a blood-red splash of oil paint, straight from a young heart defying a father who did not want her to “waste her time” taking a degree in fine art. Or it might be a still life featuring a common item of an uncommon colour, such as a beloved pair of red leather boots proclaiming identity as not a nurse or a teacher, but as a young artist-to-be. It might also be a tableau or a montage depicting a strong woman claiming an education within the boundaries of a marriage about to end along with an independent woman answering her own undeniable adventurous spirit that the others could admire and look to for strength in the years to come. And there in the

portrait of the vibrant young women you might dare a splash of watercolour (it is deceptively difficult to control water with a brush), opaque, varied and a bit subversive in the way it seems to enter the frame with quiet dignity — present and unmistakably belonging to the group. In the picture, the colour palette would begin to expand and form a more distinct pattern in 1964, a time when The Beatles single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” lands on the top of the U.S. pop charts and The Rolling Stones release their first album; a time when Jeopardy debuts on TV and Ford unveils the Mustang; a time also before Cosmopolitan magazine and Betty Friedan, before the free spirit of Margaret Trudeau, in the shadow of

“… drawing depends on seeing. Seeing depends on knowing. Knowing comes from a constant effort to encompass reality with all of your senses, all that is you. It is necessary to rid yourself of the tyranny of the object as it appears.” —Kimon Nicolaides (author of The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study)

Tells A Story From left to right, Sharon Moore-Foster, Deanna Boucher, professor Norman Yates, Margaret Witschl, Iris Walker and Lois Martin. The photo was taken at a restaurant in Victoria, B.C., in 2004.

B Jacqueline Kennedy who defined a more traditional image of women as pretty, stoic and silent. And then the picture would begin to resonate in new ways as more colours spill onto the canvas. Then you would begin to fill the frame and represent the lives of women who have remained friends for more than 40 years— forever, really— with the elements of their particular lives played out in the context of how artists and regular people define their existence: married, not married, children, bills to pay, health, illness, success and failure. And the picture would include the patience, tenacity and the support and encouragement— the “friendship with expectations”— given to each artist to help her find the precious space she needed to make art.

The picture would contain the inner and the external world— personal and political— a parent with Alzheimer’s, a battle with cancer, the losses and profits of the heart that make up a life. And the colours would deepen and mature, eventually gaining the confidence, ability and insight of women who are not young anymore; it would contain the strength and limitations of everything that had been learned, or refused to be learned— for these women do not speak in the colours of others. The picture of the story of Lois, Deanna, Iris, Margaret and Sharon would not seek a depiction of fame or recognition. Rather, it would seek to fix on the canvas the same essential element all of them have been trying to depict since they were little girls— to make sense of things.

ut going back to the beginning, to 1964, we find four of the quintet each ponying up a little over $200 in tuition to enrol full time in the BFA program in the first year it was offered at the University of Alberta (Iris took classes part-time). Margaret (the intellectual and one-time owner of the coveted red boots) and Sharon (who shoots from the heart) arrive in the BFA program straight out of high school, 17 and 18 years old respectively, kids ready — or so they think— for whatever life can throw at them. Deanna (the independent adventurer, the social commentator) was 25. She had taught for a few years in the Far North, and decided to pursue a degree in fine art. “I wanted to do something completely for myself,” she says. Lois (the wise mentor, the teacher) came to the program in her mid-30s after working to support her husband through two degrees. With his career established and her daughter entering her teens, it was now “her turn” to pursue her education. Iris, (the watercolourist who represents quiet dignity and strength) arrived in her mid-40s, after assuring her husband that “nothing would change” Winter 2008/2009

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at home. (It would take Iris 10 years to complete her degree.) They all have the same answer for why they arrived — since they were children, they needed to make art. All of the women went against the norm for their gender at the time. “My father told me that I should be more serious,” remembers Deanna. “But, I was paying my own way.” They all paid their own way. The separation of years between them didn’t ever matter; rather, it added to the depth of their friendship. Originally, the fine arts program and art gallery were located in an old Ring House (houses built from the early 1920s through to the 1940s to house the president and deans of faculties). Their studio space was located in an attic in the corner of the fourth floor of the Old Arts Building. They all say it was the long hours in the studio that honed the strong bond that developed between them during their undergraduate years. The studio where they practised the technical skills that would allow them to make more than “pretty pictures.” The studio where the light was so perfect was also the place where they dug deep. The studio where Margaret celebrated her 18th birthday by finishing her work and going out with Iris for her first “legal” drink. “There is something about the studio,” says Deanna. “All of us in that studio every day, we talked a lot — we cried a lot,” remembers Lois. “Painting is not joyful,” comments Deana. “It leaves you very vulnerable.” Sharon, Margaret and Deanna graduated together in 1968. Six years later, Margaret, who the group credits with being “the organizer,” initiated a trip to Europe. “That was a big thing,” recalls Iris of touring around Portugal with Deanna and Margaret in a beat-up white Volkswagen Beetle. Lois became ill in her third year and graduated a bit later. In her fourth year, Lois was invited to be one of the first students to study towards an MVA degree. After 48

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she graduated with that degree she took an appointment at the Alberta College of Art and Design coordinating its new printmaking program. Iris continued to take courses parttime while also working for her husband’s company, raising her three children, and maintaining the home front, until she eventually became “grandma with a car” — who also painted. Sharon married (twice), had two sons, and worked teaching art in Edmonton, including at the U of A Faculty of Extension. Margaret landed a job with the Alberta government in what was then the Department of Culture, helping to develop some of the programs that support the current generation of Alberta artists. Deanna, (who also sang professionally before university) returned to teaching to make a living, allowing herself to take a few left turns here and there — travelling abroad, teaching in the Far North, living and working in various locales across Canada. She eventually left high school teaching to focus on elementary school, preferring the younger students who, she says, “are more creative.”

Far left: Deanna Boucher’s “Upper North River” — acrylic on canvas, 36" x 24"; middle: Sharon Moore-Foster’s “Maya 1” — acrylic on canvas, 60" x 20"; left: Margaret Witschl’s “Banff Bandana” — acrylic on canvas, 23" x 30"; below: Iris Walker’s “Still Life” — watercolour 12" x 16".

“It was wonderful to come home and see what they had done that day.” hrough the ups and downs of children, marriage, illness and careers they could always rely on each other if they hit a rough patch. Sharon and Iris once used Margaret’s basement studio in a rented house in Edmonton, painting while their children were at school. “That was a wellused basement,” laughs Margaret, who would paint in the evenings after work and on weekends. “It was wonderful to come home and see what they had done that day.” Margaret stayed with Deanna for a year to get her bearings after a divorce. Lois’ marriage ended in the third year of her degree. While recovering from an ill-

ness, trying to negotiate raising a daughter on her own, working (not common for women in the 1960s) and school, Lois forged a very close relationship with Iris. “It’s not something you run across often,” says Deanna of the longevity and depth of their friendship. After they graduated, distance and circumstance didn’t seem to matter either. “Out of the blue,” a call will come from one friend or the other and “within minutes we have picked up where we left off,” Deanna says. “ ‘How’s it going?’ is always the question — meaning, Are you painting? Are you making art? Just talking

gets you all excited again. It’s vital — because there are times when you want to let go.” “We stimulated each other —the encouragement kept us going,” says Margaret. “Being an artist is not for the faint of heart.” Being an artist is a way of moving through life and its interruptions — learning from them — believing in the process and the way things fall into place, and then “responding with the energy of your own humanity,” says Sharon. “Somehow you have to be deaf and dumb. You have to be true to yourself, and so you are vulnerable.” “Being an artist is scary,” she concludes. Beyond friendship, they are also honest critics of each other’s work — another lesson from the studio and from an early mentor, professor Ron Davey. “He began teaching in the program in our fourth year,” Margaret recalls. Ron brought a sense of the wide world — the London School and New York schools, contemporary art movements that the young women had not yet been exposed to. “We had learned excellent technical skills, art history and design,” Lois recalls. “Suddenly we were exposed to the world. He had a way of making us think,” she says. “He taught us to reject the garbage, and to use our minds, not our fingers,” comments Deanna. “He taught us how to fly.” Winter 2008/2009

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Lois Martin’s #1 of “Free Trade” diptych, watercolour, 40" x 20".

ow, each flies in her own unique way while listening to a voice that continues to speak out over decades of interruptions. Sharon exhibited this summer at the ArtBeat gallery in St. Albert, AB. Her show featured a series of watercolours — a departure for her — painted when she was teaching in Tuscany, Italy, for the Faculty of Extension. Sharon’s landscape is typically the human body. She loves working with the tactile earthiness of clay to create sculptures, while her paintings are vivid, visceral and passionate — straight from the heart. “I would give two fingers for Sharon’s facility to draw,” says Margaret, whose own abstract paintings and photography, recently shown at the Multicultural Centre in Stony Plain, AB, is intellectual, influenced by printmaking and typified by the complex and subtle shades of earth and stone inspired by the colours she sees in her beloved Rocky Mountains. Margaret’s landscape is metaphysical — time and transformation. She remarried and lives and paints happily with the support of her husband, Harry, and three stepchildren, in Edmonton. Iris’ paintings reflect her character, as described by her friends: quiet, dignified and strong. A watercolour — a slightly abstracted cluster of pale lilac blossoms — hangs on a wall in her house. Quiet but compelling is the impression left by the blooms that open just so and take up the canvas with such confidence. “Watercolour is the most difficult,” she says — as anyone knows who has tried to create meaning from splashes of water on canvas or paper. At 88, Iris has recently had to pack up her paints; her waning eyesight no longer allows her

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to negotiate the interface between brush, colour and canvas. Lois remarried and moved with her husband and daughter to Victoria in 1980. She had a serious battle with breast cancer and then Wegener’s disease, which attacked her trachea. She now is primary caregiver to her husband, who was injured recently in a severe accident. She has kept painting throughout, and after experimentation with portraits and the beautiful flowers of Victoria (“they are everywhere,” she says), she has finally returned to her roots — the symbolic reflection and study of colour. Lois speaks through a digital voice box, and to protect her throat from the harmful airborne dust and toxins common to the use of pastels, she now works in water-based oils. She says that quitting was never an option. Her art has helped her to carry on throughout life. Now that she has rediscovered what she feels is her true artistic voice, she hopes to keep her mind and body well enough to make art for at least another 15 years. “You can never retire from art.” Deanna, whose work is perhaps more overtly political than that of the others, retired to the picturesque Nova Scotia town of Truro, and for her painting is, she says, “a compulsion.” Her journey has been about “opening her inner eye,” about questioning her life and the world around her. “I feel like I am a social

commentator,” she says. Recently Deanna exhibited a series of paintings in conjunction with the Alzheimer Society. The exhibit, “In Search of Memory,” featured works Deanna created while caring for her father, who has Alzheimer’s disease. Each of the five friends has had success “to some degree or another,” says Lois, who suggests that making art is not about becoming another Picasso. “If you want to know yourself,” says Lois, “take a drawing course.” Sharon quotes Kimon Nicolaides to describe the search for voice and truthfulness that an artist seeks. “To what the eye can see the artist adds feeling and thought. He can, if he wishes, relate for us the adventures of his soul in the midst of life.” And so, to paint the story of five women artists and their friendship of more than 40 years, the strokes of the brush would, all in all, try to capture the currents and continuity of life, the ebb and flow of a friendships’ evolution. It continues beyond the frame as it began when they were young. And in the spaces between the brush strokes you might hear the phone ring and the sound of a welcome voice at the other end of the line, the laughter and the tears that helped them all get through the striving and the imperfection and the interruptions. And the “sweet spot,” the anchor that is the backbone to all good paintings, might be a hint of the memory of the red light of the fading autumn sun streaming in through the window of the fourth-floor studio in the Old Arts Building, where five women met in 1964 and began their journey that would see them learn to speak the language of the artist. — Zanne Cameron, ’99 BA

High school teacher Neshali Weera, ‘07 BEd, takes us on a tour of Doha, Qatar — The Palm Beach of the Middle East

uring my final year at the U of A, I was surprised to be offered a teaching position with the Qatar-Canadian School in Doha, the capital of Qatar. At the time I was scrambling through my practicum and unsure whether anyone would ever buy the idea that I was a full-fledged teacher. But someone had taken me seriously, and, after the shock wore off, I found myself consulting a map to figure out exactly where Qatar is. For those of you, like me, who (until I was offered employment there) may never have heard of it, Qatar is a small peninsula — only a little larger than Cape Breton — that borders Saudi Arabia to the north and is surrounded by the waters of the Persian Gulf. The country was settled by Arab tribes from Saudi Arabia, so the culture varies little in terms of music, art, dress and cuisine from that of its neighbour. However, Qatar, unlike Saudi Arabia, has comparatively liberal laws. It was, for instance, the first Gulf country to allow women to vote and to hold senior government positions. Also unlike Saudi Arabia, it is legal for women in Qatar to drive. And although no formal dress code for women is enforced, most wear their traditional abaya, the fulllength black robe. It is also acceptable for women to leave their hair uncovered. For tourists and foreign workers, T-shirts and capris are an accepted norm; how-

Neshali Weera in the desert.

ever, baring your shoulders and revealing too much skin will be met with staring, honking horns and rude remarks— at least for women. This can be intimidating and extremely frustrating at times, and I learned that it’s best to dress more conservatively at first until you get a feeling for what’s accepted practice. The story of Qatar in the 20th century is one of incredible wealth and rapid change. Until the 1940s, the country was a small pearl fishing centre and one of the poorest states in the Gulf. But with the discovery of huge reserves of natural gas, it now possesses the highest per capita GDP in the world. In Doha, mammoth new buildings are being built at a breakneck pace, and it’s not uncommon to find foreign construction workers, barefoot and without any safety gear, skillfully balancing on narrow strips of wood as they rush to plaster the walls of a new edifice. Qatar’s population is approximately 825,000, but only about 20 percent of its residents are Qataris, while the remainder are mostly migrant workers from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines. Although these workers do not share in the wealth or privilege enjoyed by Qataris and expatriates from the West, they have formed a beautiful subculture in Doha, one where you can find Sri Lankan grocery stores doing business next to Indian sweet shops in traditional bazaar districts known as souqs. Hindi is heard spoken on the streets almost as often as Arabic, and, with the large Western expat community, Qatar has created a unique hybrid of Asian influence and Western consumerism within a rich Middle Eastern cultural tradition. Winter 2008/2009

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Living the High Life (on a low budget) On the streets of Doha, Hummers and Lamborghinis made a mockery of my used Toyota Echo. The lavish lifestyles of the people of Qatar are evident throughout the city as new spas and resorts continually crop up, each trying to outdo the other in its lavish appointments. One such luxury resort is Al Sharq, located at the south end of the Corniche, Doha’s popular promenade. The hotel itself is built around an ancient Qatari fishing village, but don’t let the understated look of the traditional architecture fool you: its rough stucco walls mask a 71,500square-foot spa with its own private beach. Inside, the decor is meant to resemble a sheikh’s palace, with opulent chandeliers dangling from the high ceilings and walls draped with lush tapestries and carpets. It’s hard to imagine that the home of the current Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, could be more extravagant. Luckily, you don’t have to be royalty to have a look inside the hotel. Although the rooms are pricey (ranging from $600 to $1,500 per day), tours are free. Just call or book ahead at the front desk. Another up-scale, yet economical, Qatari pastime is attending the horse races at the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club on Thursdays (equivalent to Friday in the Western calendar, as the working week starts on Sunday and ends on Thursday). As in all Muslim countries, gambling is illegal in Qatar, so horse racing is promoted as a “sporting event” for the whole family and is one of the few public events where you will see many women in the crowd. Although you can’t bet on individual horses, you can still get your fix by placing your name in the raffle box of the horse you think will win. One name is pulled out of the box of the winning horse, and the winner can go home with lavish prizes including cars, televisions and money. 52

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East Meets West Doha’s road to urbanization has taken deliberate cues from American popular culture. The intersection of Salwa Road and Suhaim bin Hammad Street is referred to locally as “Cholesterol Corner” because of its cornucopia of fast food joints and American-style restaurants. At Johnny Rockets, the waiters do a song-and-dance routine to tunes by the Village People, and every apple pie is topped with a mountain of vanilla ice cream and a small American flag. Nearby, Kountry Kitchen offers great southern cooking from po’ boys to grits and has walls plastered with posters of cowboys and even some of the Calgary Stampede. These “American” hot spots are popular with both expats and locals. Despite its sedate exterior, Doha does have a burgeoning nightlife. Because drinking — or even carrying — alcohol on the street can result in immediate deportation for foreigners (and worse for locals), there is no concentrated club district. Rather, clubs and bars are located inside hotels, which are permitted to serve alcohol. At the Mexicanthemed nightclub Paloma’s, the house cover band churns out “La Bamba” and other ghosts of the Top 40 charts for light-hearted dancing by a mostly European and American crowd.

For pub-goers, The Irish Harp at the Sheraton Hotel is the place to hear live Irish music and enjoy a Guinness. However, you have to be careful: at $10 a pint, the cost of a hangover at the Harp could well pay for a plane ticket to Ireland. Contemporary Qatar unfurls at City Center, Doha’s largest shopping mall, located in the new downtown district of the West Bay. Its four storeys offer more than 350 outlets, including some of the pillars of North American shopping such as French Connection, Nine West and Timberland. There are also a handful of tailors, Oriental rug dealers and even an Iranian sweets shop. Villagio is another popular shopping destination, especially with the younger crowd, with stores such as H&M, Virgin Records and Pull and Bear. Although not as large as City Center, it’s worth a visit, if only to see the indoor Venetian waterway. Unlike the pirate ship at the West Edmonton Mall, the gondolas at the Villagio will actually carry you and your bags from shop to shop. For purely local goods and colour, head to the downtown souq, which is centered on Grand Hamad Street. Generally, the souqs are organized by what they sell. For instance, the gold souq, just off Al Teeb Street, is brimming with jewelry, from the flashiest bling to the most intricately crafted pieces. In general, the Middle East is

Old and new collide in downtown Doha: construction continues at a breakneck pace (above), while many locals maintain ancient traditions (below). Facing page: The indoor Venetian waterway at Villagio where gondolas transport shoppers.

known for its lower prices on gold, so this is definitely the place to go if you are in the market for a gold watch, necklace or thrifty engagement ring (she need never know). There are also the fabric souqs, lined with bolts of colourful textiles, and the plant souqs, spilling over with greenery. However, if someone were to say “I’ll meet you at the souqs,” they are likely referring to the Souq Waqif, the main and most elaborate souq. The Souq Waqif is a traditional bazaar and the ideal place to find souvenirs and authentic Middle Eastern goods, from swords to houkas, woodwork to Arabic art. Tempting sites and smells compete for your attention throughout its maze-like corridors. The scent of gourmet dates stuffed with cashews, spices and orange rinds pulls you in one direction, while a young man unrolling an intricately woven silk rug and offering you a glass of sugary tea pulls you in another. Also unique to the Souq Waqif are the men who will offer to travel with you throughout the maze and carry your barrowful of purchases — in an actual wheelbarrow. After you have found the perfect gifts to send back to your family and friends (and a few things for yourself, of course), there are great restaurants and coffee shops located on the main strip of the Souq Waqif to enjoy. Tajine is a Turkish restaurant at the east end of

the strip with perfect perches for people watching either in the candle-lit interior or on the rooftop patio. The menu offers traditional foods such as tabooli (parsley salad) and seafood — the hamoor and kingfish are particularly delicious — and for the adventurous gastronomes there are goat brain cutlets and camel meat served in a spicy broth.

Beating the Heat (though it usually wins) During the summer months, the desert heat takes on a near-physical form: it travels up your nose so you can smell it; its vapours rise off the asphalt so you can see it. Although the winter months are cooler, even dropping down to 10º C, the summer is extremely hot and humid, with temperatures reaching upwards of 45° C. The best time to visit Doha is from October to May. But no matter what time of year you go, it’s important to develop strategies to deal with the heat. Spending time by the water was my tonic of choice. Many of the beaches in Doha are privately owned by the local hotels, so although you have to pay to get in (usually $20 to $30), it’s worth it for the added benefit of getting to wear whatever you want without hassle — including Western swimsuits. The sandy beach at the InterContinental Hotel, the

longest private beach in Doha, is my favourite. It is dressed with palm leaf thatched umbrellas to shade you from the sun and two bars where you can order food and — alcoholic — drinks. Many hotels, including the InterContinental, also offer sailing lessons. I spent Saturday afternoons with a group of inexperienced yet enthusiastic adults learning to sail at the Regatta Sailing Academy at the Four Seasons Hotel. From a boat in Doha Bay, you have a front-row seat to some of the Gulf’s amazing wealth, such as the Emir of Qatar’s luxurious yacht, docked nearby, and the local playboys whizzing by on their jet skis. I highly recommend giving jet-skiing a try. After all, there is no need to fear falling overboard; a dip in the bay is also a nice way to cool off. Winter 2008/2009

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The Desert For any traveller to the Middle East, a day or an overnight trip into the desert is a must. Much of Qatar remains uninhabited desert, and you are free to explore it for yourself in your own car (although you’ll need four-wheel drive and appropriate tires if you want to make it home again). If you desire to get off the beaten track, be sure to take your GPS, or better yet, a guide. The first time I ventured into the desert was when my parents were visiting, and we booked a reasonably priced dune-bashing desert drive through Gulf Adventure Tours. Our driver, Fahdim, picked us up at my house in a Land Cruiser with oversize tires and drove us across the Arabian Desert to the Inland Sea — a place known as Khor Al-Adaid — covering the routes that the Bedouin tribes once travelled. We roared across the sand, tearing up and down dunes at increasingly high speeds. We then exchanged the Land Cruiser’s leather seats for carpeted saddles mounted high atop camels — I’m not sure which was the bumpier ride. After a half-hour camel ride, we ended our journey near sunset at a Bedouin-style camp. Torches lit our way to a woven tent and a crackling fire. As the cool night air began creeping inside our tent, we sat on stacks of carpets, warming ourselves by the fire and drinking bottomless cups of hot, sweet tea. Dinner was sheesh tawooq (grilled chicken and vegetables) and tabooli — nothing extravagant, but it suited the rustic surroundings. We then spent the night chatting with the driver and passing around the sheesha pipe filled with aromatic mint-flavoured tobacco. The only signs of life beyond the glowing embers of the campfire were the hissing and spitting of the camels in the distance and the twinkling constellations in the night sky. Neshali Weera and her adopted Qatari cat, Puma, recently made the trip from Doha to Dewberry, AB, where she now heads the English department and teaches junior-high and high-school English at Dewberry School. 54

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Camels are still the best — if bumpiest — way to see the desert.

Finding your way around: Al Sharq Village and Spa Al Sharq Street, just off the southernmost end of Al Corniche Street Ph: 011 (974) 425-6666

Paloma’s

The beach at the InterContinental Hotel

The Irish Harp

The InterContinental Hotel Al Istiqlal Road, West Bay Lagoon Ph: 011 (974) 484-4444

The Sheraton Hotel Al Corniche Street Ph: 011 (974) 485-4444

Al Istiqlal Road, West Bay Lagoon Ph: 011 (974) 484-4444

City Center Mall

Qatar Races www.qrec.gov.qa Tajine

Four Seasons Hotel Diplomatic Street, just off the northernmost end of Al Corniche Street Ph: 011 (974) 494-8888

Kountry Kitchen

Regatta Sailing Academy

Villagio Mall

Southern end of Al Corniche Street, near D-Ring Road Ph: 011 (974) 443-7846

The Four Seasons Hotel Al Waab Street, between Ph: 011 (974) 550-784 Sport City and Hyatt Plaza www.regattasailingacademy.com

Souq Waqif Tajine Al Souq Waqif, Al Souq Street

Al Souq Street, by the Dow roundabout

West Bay, walking distance from the Sheraton Hotel Ph: 011 (974) 439-3355

Gulf Adventure Tours Al Amir Street, facing the Villagio Mall Ph: 011 (974) 422-1888 www.gulf-adventures.com

Johnny Rockets Near the intersection of Salwa Road and Suhaim bin Hammad Street Ph: 011 (974) 455-2792

Calendar of Alumni Events For more information about alumni events, contact the Office of Alumni Affairs by phone at 780-492-3224 or (toll-free in North America) 1-800-661-2593 or by e-mail at alumni@ualberta.ca. You can also check the alumni events website at www.ualberta.ca/alumni/events.

MARCH 2009 5

Alumni Reception & Hockey Game: Oilers vs. Senators in Ottawa Pre-game reception and charter bus to ScotiaBank Place. Tickets at www.ualberta.ca/alumni/ottawa.

Dental alumni are invited to join their fellow alumni for a reception at the Pacific Dental Conference in Vancouver. Fairmont Waterfront Hotel (900 Canada Place Way) in the Princess Louisa Suite. 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Questions? Contact Vi Warkentin at 780-492-2896 or e-mail vi.warkentin@ualberta.ca.

JANUARY 2009 9

Orthodontic alumni are invited for a night of Pandas hockey. Bears Den (private skybox in Clare Drake Arena) at 6:30 p.m., game starts at 7:00. Game ticket, refreshments, free parking. Cash bar. RSVP to www.ualberta.ca/alumni/orthobearsden by January 6. Questions? Contact John Perrino at 780-492-6566 or e-mail john.perrino@ualberta.ca.

10 Mixed Chorus alumni are invited for a night of Pandas hockey. Bears Den (private skybox in Clare Drake Arena) at 6:30 p.m., game starts at 7:00. Game ticket, refreshments, free parking. Cash bar. Cost: $5.00. RSVP to www.ualberta.ca/alumni/MCAABearsDen by January 8. Questions? Contact John Perrino at 780-492-6566 or e-mail john.perrino@ualberta.ca. 31 Public Health Sciences alumni are invited for a night of Pandas hockey. Bears Den (private skybox in Clare Drake Arena) at 6:30 p.m., game starts at 7:00. Cost: $5.00. Game ticket, refreshments, free parking. Cash bar. Cost: $5.00. RSVP to www.ualberta.ca/alumni/phsaabearsden by January 28. Questions? Contact Vi Warkentin at 780-492-2896 or e-mail vi.warkentin@ualberta.ca.

FEBRUARY 2009 5

Annual Skating Party & Dinner in New York City Participate in a New York tradition by joining U of A alumni for pasta and skating in Central Park. To RSVP or for more info, contact Reg at RMoncrieffDDS@aol.com.

10 Debt-Management Seminar Buy a few too many Christmas presents? Worried about your student loan? This free seminar will help you manage your debt and plan for your future. Representatives from the Student Financial Aid and Information Centre and Credit Counselling Services of Alberta share valuable information about managing student loans and other debt as well as budgeting advice to get ahead. 6:00 – 8:00 p.m., Lister Centre. To register or for more info contact Donna at 780-492-3224 or donna.bell@ualberta.ca.

22 Winery Tour: Napa Valley, CA The Alumni Association and the Alberta School of Business partner to bring you an exciting day of food, wine and fun in the sun. To RSVP or for more info contact alumni.business@ualberta.ca. 27/ 28

U of A Mixed Chorus alumni are invited to the 65th Anniversary Celebrations of the UAMC. March 27 — Skit Night; March 28 (morning) — Rehearsal/Refreshments/AGM; March 28 (evening) — Spring Concert at the Winspear. Questions? Contact John Perrino at 780-492-6566 or e-mail john.perrino@ualberta.ca.

APRIL 2009 11 “Eggs” marks the spot! Families with young children and candy-lovers of all ages are invited to a campus Easter egg hunt. You might even spot a real bunny! Hot chocolate reception will follow. Easter egg hunt begins at 1:15 p.m. in the main Quad, hot chocolate reception from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Free. To register contact Donna at 780-492-3224 or donna.bell@ualberta.ca. 25 Annual Alumni Brunch in Victoria, BC Join fellow alumni for a lovely meal and to hear special guest speaker professor Chris Backhouse, ’85 BSc, talk about his work in the field of nanotechnology. To RSVP or for more info contact alumni@ualberta.ca. 26 Annual Alumni Brunch & AGM: Vancouver, BC Professor Chris Backhouse will talk about his work in the field of nanotechnology at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. There will also be a silent auction. To RSVP or for more info contact alumni@ualberta.ca.

EDUCATION & TRAVEL 2009 13 Business Alumni Association invites you to enjoy a Golden Bears hockey game in the Bears Den at Clare Drake Arena. Friends, family and children welcome. 6:30 p.m. — pizza and pop. Game at 7:00 p.m. For tickets or more info call Traci at 780-248-1101 or e-mail traci.wilson@ualberta.ca. 21 U of A Pub Night in Ottawa at MacLaren’s (301 Elgin St.) to watch the Oilers vs. Flames. For more info contact Janet at 613-816-5688 and janet.e.lo@gmail.com or Greg at 613-421-8940 and gregory.pang@gmail.com. 28 Annual Alumni Brunch in Phoenix, AZ Join fellow alumni at the beautiful Paradise Valley Country Club. To RSVP or for more info contact alumni@ualberta.ca.

Book Club: Jan. 8/9, Feb. 5/6, Mar. 5/6 Walter Johns Alumni Circle: Jan. 22, Feb. 19, Mar. 19 Personal Retirement Planning (in Calgary): Mar. 21 Treasures of Southern Africa: Jan. 27 – Feb. 9 Expedition to Antarctica: Jan. 30 – Feb. 12 Cruise the Panama Canal: Feb. 5 – 16 Cruising Thailand and the Malay Peninsula: Feb. 26 – Mar. 8 Grand Tour of Egypt: Mar. 2 – 13 Senegal to Spain: Mar. 31 – April 13 For more information on Education and Travel programs contact Angela at 780-492-1835 or angela.tom@ualberta.ca.

Winter 2008/2009

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Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! The Alumni Association and the Office of Alumni Affairs would like to thank those who volunteered during Homecoming 2008. Whether you organized a class get-together, served coffee, drove a golf cart or stuffed envelopes — we couldn’t have done it without you! 1940 T. Alfred Gander, Medicine

1941

Walter Buck, Dentistry John Dewar, Physical Education Ranald White, Physical Education

Anna Josephson, Nursing (BSc) & (Dip) 1956 Mathew Romanow, Electrical 1943 Engineering Gerald Heath, Agriculture Dora Bilko, Pharmacy Doris Jewell, Commerce Terese Beauchamp, Home Economics Marianne Roberts, Physiotherapy Berniece Malone, Physiotherapy (Dip) Stanley Edwards, Law Marianne Roberts, Rehab Med (Dip) Robert Guy Williams, Medicine Lora Fried, Nursing (Dip)

1957

1944

Harry Laslop, Commerce

Edythe Markstad-Buchanan, Nursing (BSc)

1958

Phil Dickson, Agriculture Grant Olsen, Chemical Engineering 1945 Alex Sidjak, Chemical Engineering Michael Skuba, Education Don Thurston, Chemical Engineering Muriel Shortreed, Home Economics Bill Turner, Chemical Engineering Alice MacKinnon, Nursing (Dip) Ken Brown, Civil Engineering 1948 Mike Morin, Civil Engineering Helen Potter, Arts Ross Denham, Commerce Bruce Burgess, Civil Engineering James Duncan, Dentistry Bob Mason, Electrical Engineering Bud Finley, Electrical Engineering Keith Provost, Electrical Engineering Keith Stromsmoe, Engineering Physics Jack Scrimgeour, Electrical Engineering Barbara Kozoriz, Home Economics Bob Taylor, Electrical Engineering Allan Wachowich, Law Phyllis Fowler, Home Economics Nicholas Chepeha, Medicine F. Richard Matthews, Law John Marko, Medicine Steele Brewerton, Medicine Edward Tworek, Medicine John Lipinski, Medicine Ruth Agrios, Nursing (Dip–Feb) Joseph O'Brien, Medicine Margaret Puffer, Nursing (Dip–Feb) Bob Spencer, Mining Engineering Marion Cameron, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Muriel Hole, Nursing (BSc) Evelyn Anderson, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Marion Grimsrud, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Ross Shears, Pharmacy Kay Yaworski, Pharmacy 1949 Burt Demeriez, Physical Education Sheila McLaggan, Home Economics Wendy Jerome, Physical Education 1950 Patricia Meadus, Physical Education Joseph Gurba, Agriculture Marilyn McSporran, Public Health Frank Harrison, Agriculture Nursing (Dip) Cy McAndrews, Agriculture Freda Clemens, Rehab Med (Dip) Allan Schindeler, Agriculture 1958 – 1959 Ken Taylor, Agriculture Donald Basso, Geology Nicholas Spillios, Arts Keith Cole, Geology Bernice Olson, Household Economics Denis Fonteyne, Geology Mary Sereda, Pharmacy

1951 Paul Stelmaschuk, Agriculture Arthur Davison, Chemical Engineering Betty Mullen, Home Economics

1953 Neil Longson, Civil Engineering David Buchanan, Dentistry Ronald Mullen, Dentistry Ted Jacobs, Electrical Engineering Carol Reid, Home Economics Frank Haley, Medicine Joyce Choate, Nursing (Dip–Jan) Rita Calhoun, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Royden Fisher, Petroleum Engineering

1954 Edward Trott, Law

1955 Don Clark, Agriculture Jake Ens, Agriculture James Logan, Arts

1960

Jim Shinkaruk, Arts Joanne Lewicky, Pharmacy

1961 Allan Warrack, Agriculture Ella Palamarek, Education Janet Heaps, Rehab Med (Dip)

1962 Marlene Sorensen, Education

Homecoming Volunteers Greg Ash Shelly Baker Nikki Berreth Corrine Caithness Rob Campbell Sable Chan Chris Daniel

1963

1972

Jim Lockhart, Agriculture Marilyn Annis, Arts Jim Hutton, Chemical Engineering Sara Bowen, Home Economics Anne Russell, Law Gary Faulkner, Mechanical Engineering Roger Cumming, Medicine Sandra Lockhart, Nursing (Dip–Jan) Margo Wyley, Physical Education

Lemuel Mundorf, Physical Education Sherr Wadson, Rec Admin Harvey Lawton, Commerce

1964 Maurice Bastide, Commerce Larry Bourk, Commerce Myrna Empey, Physical Education Chuck Moser, Physical Education Ida Thomson, Physical Education

1965 Marilyn Sorochuk, Arts Gloria Publicover, Med Lab Science

1966 Doris Wyllie, Agriculture

1966 – 1967 Eugene Hunka, Education

1967 Larry Dufresne, Physical Education

1968 Larry Brocke, Agriculture Brian Colgan, Agriculture Gilbert Greenwood, Agriculture Terry Macyk, Agriculture Bill Burdenie, Chemical Engineering Derek Bennett, Commerce Donald Kemp, Commerce Ken Zender, Commerce Harvey Haiduk, Education (Dip) Eleanor Boddy, Law Val Pohl, Mechanical Engineering Christina Macyk, Med Lab Science Sheilah Stelmaschuk, Med Lab Science Richard Arnold, Medicine Murray Lieberman, Medicine Elizabeth Bonneville, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Lonnie Cowan, Occupational Therapy Laurel Erickson, Occupational Therapy Harriet Skagen, Occupational Therapy Wendae Grover, Physical Education Brenda Kane, Physical Education Ronald Kirstein, Physical Education

1973 Terry Carlyle, Dentistry Adam Germain, Law Brian Hesje, MBA Yusuf Karbani, MBA Cynthia Green, Nursing (BSc) Kathleen Starko, Nursing (BSc) Janet Lydiatt, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Alie van Schaik, Nursing (Dip–Sept) Daniel Allen, Pharmacy Rose Anne Lawton, Pharmacy Margaret Petrin, Pharmacy Roger Scott, Physical Education Tony Rabinovitz, Rec Admin Megan Hodge, Speech Pathology

1980 –1981

Alexandra Sheppard, Dental Hygiene (Dip) James (Derek) Allchurch, Law Leita Siever, Law Kevin Chrenek, MBA Brent Zeller, Mechanical Engineering Catherine Sandomirsky, Physical Education Denise McDermott, Physical Therapy Crystal McLeod, Physical Therapy Judy May-McDonald, Rec Admin

1981 Stephen Knowles, Physical Education Renate Sainsbury, Rec Admin

1982 Kim Koss, MBA Dawn Ringrose, MBA Tom Smillie, MBA

1983

John Kirk, Geology Ted Byrt, Commerce Samson Mah, Computer Engineering Brian McPherson, Dentistry Norma Jani, Education 1974 Peter Duckett, Law Jacqueline Blevins, Nursing (BSc) Sheila Scrutton, Education Lois Arnason, Physical Education John Tatlow, MBA Wanda Wetterberg, Rec Admin Doug Cox, Mechanical Engineering 1975 Edwin Birse, Nursing (BSc) Basic Shaffeek Ali, Agriculture Joanne Jette, Nursing (BSc) Basic John Lee, Civil Engineering Audrey Lack, Nursing (BSc) Basic Pamela Massel, Home Economics Maria Stadnyk, Nursing (BSc) Basic Judy Cooney, Medicine Caroline Shewchuk, Pharmacy Linda Lee Visscher, Nursing (Dip) Margie Gavriloff, Physical Education Chas Keys, PhD, Geography Colleen Britton, Physical Therapy 1976 Joyce Clark, Physical Therapy Karen Chisholm Bale, Home Economics Leanne Daneyko, Physical Therapy Carol Heck, Physical Therapy 1977 – 1978 Michael McTeague, Rec Admin Brian Gavriloff, Physical Education

Howard Gibbins, Arts

1993

1994 Michael Tryon, Education (Dip)

1998 Jody Wachowich, Ag/Forestry Business Tamara Giles, Chemical Engineering Sheila Graham, English Wendy Boje, MBA Travis Braithwaite, MBA Erica Rabin Dance, Medicine Angela Wallace, Occupational Therapy Christine Hunter, Physical Education Karina Damgaard, Rec Admin

2000 – 2002 Andrea Fleck, 10th Floor Henday

2001 Sandra Pysklywyc, Rec & Leisure Studies

2002 Leigh Peters, Law

1978

1984

2003

Gregory Gulayets, Chemical Engineering Glen Davidson, Civil Engineering Allan Kwan, Civil Engineering Patrick Tso, Civil Engineering Drene Bertrand, Dental Hygiene (Dip) Rick Klippert, Dentistry Charles Gardner, Law Tom Gooding, Mechanical Engineering Richard Fedorak, Medicine Karen Grimsrud, Medicine Margaret Milner, Nursing (BSc) Margaret Barr, Pharmacy Karen Lee-Brown, Pharmacy Karen Jackson, Physical Therapy Michael Hanna, Rec Admin

Kenneth Shields, Master of Education

Merry Shields-Yoon, Dental Hygiene (BSc) Helen Massini, Dental Hygiene (Dip) Christina White, Law Fiona Halbert, Physical Education Jonathan Krywulak, Physical Education

1980

Glen Sustrik, Computing Science Albert Hoh, Dentistry David Allan, MBA Wendy Andrews, Physical Education

Margaret Johnson, Health Services Admin Nancy Clark, Med Lab Science Alison Poole, Med Lab Science

Mien Jou Sheida Kayat Sandra Konrad Audrey Kotelniski David Kravinchuk Trevor Kuebler Mary Laughren Cynthia Lazarenko Stuart Lindop Rose Litzenberger

1992

Nora Shea, Rec Admin

1971

Gordon Elliott Jean Elliott Dave Elliott Mirvat Eter Jihua Gong Tara Graham Bryan Gutteridge Andrea Hasenbank Kate Holt Lance Johnson

Brian Guspie, Medicine Barbara Ward, Medicine Karen Smilski, Pharmacy

Christopher Lui Mattie Matheson Janet Mills -Baron Kenneth Mitchell Marilyn Monson Rachel Mwesigye Xiao Ni Rendy Olthuis Nicholas Palamarchuk Jen Panteluk

1986 Jim Shinkaruk, Science

1988 Doug Wilson, Agriculture Michael Palamarek, Electrical Engineering Edward (Ted) Feehan, Law David Leeworthy, MBA Rob Agostinis, Medicine Cathy Giblin, Nursing (BSc) Janice Shute, Nursing (BSc) Shaniff Esmail, Occupational Therapy

1990 Mike House, Commerce Marie Stephenson, Education (Dip)

1991 Terry Danyluk, Physical Education

Joan Paton Karen Platten Mary Saretski Michele Shea Gladys Strilchuck Heather Tkachuk Terry Tobin Fran Trovato Kerri Tulloch Janet Valasatin

Jon Ward Linda Warner Michael Whidden Kelly Whitty Regina Wu Elizabeth (Betty) Wurtz Danyi Yang Mengying (Natalie) Zhang Zhuyin (Sarah) Zhao

2005 Nella Sabo, Commerce Carly Smith, Human Ecology Tara Connell, Physical Education Victoria Laidlaw, Sociology (BA–Hons)

2006 Maen Abou-Ghaida, Biological Sciences Tim Francis, Physical Education

2007 Michael Tryon, Education

Multi-year /Groups Mary Ohrn, Class E War Emergency Program Hazel McClarty, Jr. E Certificate Program Albert Mort, Vocational Education Clarence Preitz, Vocational Education Terry Shewchuk, Zoology Peter Jarvis, Master of Visual Arts Megan Strickfaden, Master of Visual Arts Tim Mallandaine, Music Laura Gibbons, Normal School Delcy Myers, Normal School

Hong Kong-vocation

early five years after she received her degree from the U of A, Carrie Lam, ’03 BCom, finally got to walk across the stage in a cap and gown to the flashing cameras of her family and friends. “When I actually crossed that stage and shook the hands of my dean, then the president and chancellor, I felt like I had finally graduated,” she says. On November 1, Lam was one of 208 U of A grads from across Asia who participated in the Hong Kong convocation ceremonies that were a part of the University’s centenary celebrations. Alumni from the classes of 1968 to 2008 attended from across China and as far away as Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Like Lam, many of the U of A’s international students finish the requirements for their degrees each April but are unable to stick around Edmonton until the June convocation. Even when they can be present for the ceremony, their friends and family can rarely attend. The Hong Kong event gave U of A alumni based in Asia the opportunity to participate in this important rite of passage and have their families present to celebrate their accomplishments. “The convocation ceremony was very powerful because it brought together graduates from many different classes and regions for an event that was, for us, even more special than the normal convocation, which only has graduates from one year,” says Trevor Mak, ’82 BCom, ’84 MBA, chair of the Hong Kong alumni committee that helped organize the event and who also convocated at this year’s ceremony. “By having that mix, it really showcased the depth and reach of the U of A throughout the world.” The Hong Kong event included a graduation ceremony, an open reception and a gala dinner. At the ceremony, participants donned the traditional cap and gown, as well as their faculty hoods, and received certificates of participa-

U of A grads (left to right) Fred Lee, ’01 BSc(Eng); Les Yiu, ’07 BCom; Taisa Ballantyne, ’08 BCE; Carrie Lam, ’03 BCom; and Kelvin Cheng, ’03 BSc(Eng), celebrate at the Hong Kong convocation. (Left) Registrar Gerry Kendal, ’73 BA, shakes the hand of Anthony Tam, ’74 BSc(Pharm), ’81 MBA. (Below) President Samarasekera and Linda Li, ’06 BSC.

tion and handshakes from their deans. Lam was particularly excited to be able to keep the ensemble, a gift from the University. “When I heard that the gowns were a gift, I almost broke into tears,” she says. “I felt like I really meant something to the U of A.” At the dinner following the ceremony and reception, 525 attendees enjoyed a traditional Chinese dinner and heard addresses by U of A President Indira Samerasekara, Alumni Association President Jim Hole and China Institute Director Gordon Houlden. After dinner, the Hong Kong Alumni Association, the University’s largest branch, ran a silent auction that raised more than $5,000 for an endowment that will provide financial assistance for underprivileged students from Asia attending the U of A. The Hong Kong event is the only U of A convocation that takes place outside of Canada, and this year’s ceremony marked the 10th anniversary of the first Hong Kong convocation. For his part, Mak hopes the Hong Kong festivities will become a more frequent tradition, “The opportunity to invite family and friends to share the joy of the convocation ceremony was unbeatable, and I hope we’ll do it again in the future.” Winter 2008/2009

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bookmarks Finding Rose: A Mother with Alzheimer’s, a Daughter in Search of the Past Caterina Edwards, ’73 MA, ’70 BA Although their relationship was always troubled, Edwards moves her mother, Rosa, into her home when she begins to show signs of Alzheimer’s. As Rosa begins to lose her memory and sense of self, Edwards digs deeper into her past to learn the truth about her difficult life: the ethnic cleansing of her people in Croatia, her exile and her husband’s — Edwards’ father’s — mysterious death. (Greystone Books, www.dpmibooks.com) The Shadow of Malabron Thomas Wharton, ’93 MA, ’91 BA Malabron is the terrible Night King of a world where stories come to life. When Will Lightfoot, a rebellious teenager, stumbles into Malabron’s story-world of dragons and talking creatures, he must face a host of perils if he is to find the gate that will take him home again. This first book in Wharton’s planned fantasy trilogy, The Perilous Realm, will be popular with young adult fans of Tolkien — and maybe a few adult ones. (Doubleday Canada, www.randomhouse.ca) Owls of North America Frances Backhouse, ’83 BSc Wildlife writer Frances Backhouse provides an indepth yet lively study of these fascinating birds. Topics include anatomy and adaptations, mating behaviours, egg-laying and chickrearing, feeding habits, communication and migration. With 70 colour photographs and detailed profiles of the birds and range maps for all 23 species, Owls of North America is a solid reference for birders, naturalists and general readers. (Firefly Books, www.fireflybooks.com) Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park 1909–1939 Jennifer Brower, ’04 MA, ’02 BA When Buffalo National Park was established in Wainwright, AB, in 1909, conservationists praised its attempt to save the continent’s largest and last herd of free-ranging plains bison. However, a lack of funding, failed breeding experiments 58

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and multiple health crises lead to the eventual demise of the herd — and of the park — by 1939. In this accessible, yet well-documented history, (including excellent photographs and footnotes), Brower seeks to preserve the history of the park before it, too, disappears. (Athabasca University Press, www.aupress.ca)

The Drowned Lands Stan Dragland, ’66 MA, ’64 BA Set against the bitter 1913 feud over water levels along the Napanee River in eastern Ontario, this novel follows three young friends, one of them deaf, who go on a hunt along the river despite encroaching danger. Dragland’s coming-of-age story, that also tells the tale of a community torn apart by tragedy, has been compared to the works of Cormac McCarthy for how it probes the relationship of humans to their natural environment. (The Pedlar Press, 416-534-2011) Goodbye Buffalo Bay Larry Loyie with Constance Brissenden, ’72 MA After years of living at a residential school, 13-yearold Lawrence returns home to find that the traditional way of life in which he grew up has disappeared. He feels alienated in both worlds until his grandfather helps him forge a new path. This is the fourth young adult novel by Loyie, an award-winning Cree author, and Brissenden, a freelance writer and editor based in Vancouver. (Theytus Books, www.theytus.com) Calm Things: Essays Shawna Lemay, MA ’05, BA ‘05 “Calm Things” is the title essay of Lemay’s collection of meditations about simple objects from daily life, about “falling in love with the world, plum by plum, apple by apple.” These short, thoughtful essays illustrate the deeper meaning that can be found in the ordinary and document the unique connection between the creative lives of Lemay, a poet, and her husband, a still life painter. (Palimpsest Press, www.palimpsestpress.ca)

Benny Bensky and the Parrot-Napper Mary Borsky,’68 BEd When their neighbor, Mrs. Graham, charges Rosie and Fran and their dog, Benny, with the responsibility of pet-sitting her parrot, Peanut, they think the job will be a walk in the park. But when Peanut becomes the latest victim in a parrot-napping ring, Benny, the dog detective, senses something is terribly wrong, and he and the girls set out to make it right. This is the third book in Borsky’s Benny Bensky series, for children ages 8-11. (Tundra Books, www.tundrabooks.com) The Other Side of the Coin: The Emerging Vision of Economics and Our Place in the World David Orrell, ’86 MSc, ’83 BSc In this book, best-selling author David Orrell uses mathematics and science to expose neoclassical economics, the dominant economic theory of the 20th century, as anachronistic and hazardous to our society, particularly in the way it creates gross inequality. Here, in a book part popular history, part manifesto, he explains an emerging alternative economic theory, one based on global realities, that makes room for ethics, social justice and future generations. (Key Porter Books, www.keyporter.com) Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939–1951 Kurt F. Jensen, ’72 BLS, ’71 MA, ’69 BA As a former Canadian diplomat, whose assignments included foreign intelligence work, Jensen is particularly well-positioned to tell the story of how Canadian foreign intelligence was established and outline its development during the postwar years. Drawing on newly released materials and exhaustive research, this book will greatly interest students, academics and specialists in the field, as well as anyone interested in the often mysterious world of foreign intelligence. (University of British Columbia Press, www.ubcpress.ca)

ontrary to common belief, health care insurance really began in Alberta and not in Saskatchewan,” says Robert Lampard, ’64 MD, ’66 BSc, ’67 MSc, author of the 732-page (including index) Alberta’s Medical History: Young and Lusty, and Full of Life. Five years in the making, the book covers a lot of ground—from profiling important and influential doctors to a chapter called “Snow Problem, No Problem” that tells of the ways physicians got to their sick patients (and got themselves home again) in winter. These included snowplanes—primarily a prairie phenomenon that consisted of a small, covered cabin that overlaid two narrow skis. They were propelled over the open, snow-covered ground by a rear-mounted airplane or car engine with a propeller affixed to it. In 1947, a reporter from Time magazine went along on one snowplane ride with doctor Thomas Argue and recounted his experience for the magazine’s readers. “Down the drifted road the snowplane skimmed. After a mile or so it turned off the road and cut across the snowy fields. It swooped over the four-foot drifts that had buried the fences. Two hours later it pulled up in the backyard of Charlie Lindbloom.” Once in Lindbloom’s farmhouse, Argue gave the Saskatchewan farmer’s 10-year-old daughter a general anesthetic and operated on her infected hand, then left for more house calls before heading home to Corning. It’s this kind of first-person, anecdotal reportage (complete with many period pictures and illustrations) that lends the book its personal touch. Lampard, who lives in Red Deer, AB, and was selected as one of Alberta’s 100 Physicians of the Century, also gives the U of A’s first president, Henry Marshall Tory, ’28 LLD (Honorary), his due. “Tory was remarkable,” says Lampard. “He came out here, and, from nothing and in only four years, created the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta.” That was in

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1912, and although it was not then a degreegranting program (students had to go to McGill or the U of T to finish their degrees), it would graduate its first students fully-trained at the U of A in 1925. Dr. W. G. Mainprize beside his Model 4 snowplane, ca. 1938. As for universal heath care having an that ambition has gone Alberta basis, Lampard points out that through some rough in 1933 the United Farmers of Alberta joined the Co-operative Commonwealth stretches, basically I think Federation (CCF), which was formed in it’s still alive.” Despite all the obstaCalgary in 1932. The CCF would go on cles facing him, Tory to become the New Democratic Party. used his legendary When Tommy Douglas became premier powers of persuasion of Saskatchewan in 1944 his CCF party — as well as his clear would fast-track what would later and lucid vision of what a great become universal health care in university should be — to carve out a Canada. However, as Lampard writes, university that was recently named the over a decade before the idea took hold 74th-best in the world by the prestigious in Saskatchewan, “Improved access to Times Higher Education-QS World health care in Alberta was viewed as a University Rankings. responsibility, nay duty, by the farmerAlthough Tory is a big part of the based United Farmers of Alberta.” For information about getting a copy early years of the U of A — insisting on including female students, fighting to of Lampard’s book, Tel: 403-340-5736 have the first faculty be one of arts or email robert.lampard@gov.ab.ca. and science rather than agriculture and *** hiring only PhDs, from as far away as oming in at a slightly more modest Harvard — his is, of course, not the only length (392 pages with over 130 story in 100 years of history. Macleod’s photos) is the contribution made to the University’s centenary by former U of A book (accompanied by a website — history professor Rod Macleod, ’62 BA www.ualbertacentennial.ca) is, as he says, a “look in a serious way at how — a book called All True Things: A the institution has developed, how it History of the University of Alberta, was different from other Canadian uni1908-2008. Macleod, like Lampard, is versities and what were the down parts equally impressed by the vision of the experience as well as the ups. To and breadth of imagination that end Macleod extracted a promise that Tory brought to bear from university administrators to allow on what was literally a him to tell the story in his own way so farmer’s field when the that he could write, as he says, “a real U of A was first proposed. history, not a public relations exercise.” “Tory had very high Copies of Macleod’s book are expectations,” Macleod says. available in Edmonton at the U of A “He wanted the UniverBookstore, Greenwoods’ Books and sity to be a leader, Audrey’s Books or online at not just another www.bookstore.ualberta.ca. mediocre univer-

Saskatchewan Western Development Museum, Saskatoon

Treasure Tomes

sity. And while Rod Macleod

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’61 Danny Daniels, BEd, ’73 PhD,

’47 BSc, ’49 MSc, from Surrey, BC, writes, “I was employed by the Food and Drug Directorate in Ottawa for 12 years as an analytical chemist for drugs and pharmaceuticals. I received my PhD from Ohio State U in 1961 and received an offer from the U of A in the same year to take up a teaching position that I retired from in 1984, after having spent two sabbaticals in England doing research in my area of expertise.” Leslie is a professor emeritus of pharmacy at the U of A.

vice-chair of Athletics Canada, was recently in Beijing as the head of the delegation for the Canadian team participating in the Paralympic Games. He is himself a competitive athlete, and he will be competing in the decathlon at the World Masters Championships, which will be held in July 2009 in Lahti, Finland.

’48 Murray Smith, BEd, ’74 PhD, professor emeritus of Physical Education and Sports Studies, writes to say that he remains active in sports psychology. “Following retirement, I enjoyed nine years serving as sport psychologist to Don Horwood’s outstanding Golden Bears basketball teams and was fortunate to be involved in the back-toback CIS championships in 1993 and 1994.” Murray is now in his 10th year with the Kelowna Rockets hockey team. He also adds that, aside from sport, he’s involved in organizational development, does management consulting with the Churchill Group of Companies in Edmonton, and has served for 10 years as a training consultant to the Canadian Petroleum Institute.

’50s

’51 Jocelyn Pritchard (Rogers), BA, celebrated her 80th birthday this year by giving a piano concert in Vancouver. There were about 200 people in attendance, and the concert raised over $5,500 for the Townships Project, a micro-lending activity in South Africa of which Jocelyn is the past chairwoman. During her undergraduate years, Jocelyn was the pianist for the U of A Mixed Chorus, soloist with the University orchestra and a performer with the Chamber Music Society.

’59 John Lingas, MD, writes from Portland to say, “I retired from clinical practice on January 1, 2004. To this day I still teach as a clinical professor four or five hours a week at the Oregon Health and Science University. These days I only teach the fellows sub-specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. I wish everyone well.”

’60s

’42 Leslie Chatten, Dip(Pharm),

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’62 Margaret Michaud, BEd, ’78 MEd, writes that since her retirement in 1984 she has founded the charitable organization called Friends for World Development (FFWD). “In the 10 years since its inception,” she writes, “FFWD established a number of small-scale industries enabling families in various remote villages to become self-reliant.” Margaret invites others to join her in this endeavour. She can be reached at 780-454-5707. ’64 Lorne Tyrrell, BSc, ’68 MD, was recently appointed by the Alberta Health Services Board to promote and coordinate research at Alberta universities and to look for ways to connect that research to clinical care in an effort to improve patient care for Albertans. Lorne is the former dean of the U of A’s medical school and holds the Canadian Institutes of Health Research/ GlaxoSmithKline Chair at the U of A.

’65 Ove Minsos, BSc, ’72 LLB, is on the board of directors and is one of the foundation leaders of the Edmonton Community Foundation, an organization that invests donor contributions in perpetuity to create legacies in the areas of arts and culture, health and wellness, community and social services, education and learning, as well as recreation, leisure and the environment. Other

The U of A conferred honorary degrees upon a leading medical ethicist and a Canadian political pioneer during fall convocation ceremonies on November 20. Preston Manning, ’64 BA, founder of the Reform Party, and Bartha Knoppers, ’74 MA, a lawyer, both received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees. Preston served as a member of the Canadian Parliament from 1993 to 2002 and as the leader of the opposition from 1997 to 2000. Since his retirement, he

has been a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and president and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. Bartha is a professor at the Faculté de droit and holds the Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine at the Université de Montréal. She is internationally known for her contributions to law reform and medical ethics, including work in the fields of stem-cell research, genomics, genetic testing, informed consent and patenting.

members of the board and foundation leaders include L. Neil Gower, ’72 BA, ’73 LLB; Rod Rode, ’72 BA; Yusuf Karbani, ’73 MBA; Karen Platten, ’74 BA, ’78 LLB; Joanne Beaton, ’97 MBA; and John Mahon, ’76 BMus, ’83 MBA. Honorary chairpersons for the Foundation include Louis Desrochers, ’52 LLB, ’78 LLD (Honorary), and Ronald Odynski, ’73 BA, ’74 LLB.

David Buchwald, BSc, ’68 MSc, spent the summer cycling with friends from his home in Victoria, BC, to Halifax, NS.

’66 Robert Benesch, BSc, ’67 MSc, writes that after graduation he went on to receive his PhD in theoretical chemistry at Queens University and taught in the computer science department at the University of Waterloo before joining the faculty of the Department of Mathematics at the Royal Military College of Canada in 1975. He was made full professor in 1983 and served as director of Computing Services and head of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department before retiring in 2006, after 31 years at the RMC. Robert is married to Louise Marie Benesch (Wehinger), ’67 BEd.

Four alumni were invested in the Alberta Order of Excellence in October, the highest honour the Province of Alberta can bestow on a citizen: University of Alberta’s legendary hockey coach Clare Drake, ’58 BEd, ’95 LLD (Honorary); founder of the Edmonton General Hospital’s palliative care unit Helen Hays, ’71 MD; philanthropist and chair of Canadian Natural Resources Allan Markin, ’68 BSc(Eng), ’02 LLD (Honorary); and former chair of the Calgary Airports Authority Thomas Walsh, ’49 BA, ’53 LLB, ’89 LLD (Honorary). Clare Drake

’67 Lester “Vern” Hemeyer, BSc, ’70 BEd, ’72 Dip(Ed), and Carol Hemeyer (Allen), ’72 BEd, of Lacombe, AB, wrote in to say that they’ve been married now for 41 years. “Both of us taught school— Carol, elementary, and Vern, high school. We have two children and eight grandchildren. We’re now retired and have been travelling to places such as India, Africa, Europe, South America, the Antarctic and the U.S.” Vern has also taken up truck driving, and Carol is involved with the Girl Guides and Village Mission church activities.

’68 Ray Protti, BA, ’70 MA, retired from his position as president and CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association in May 2007. He now resides in Victoria, BC, and was recently elected chair of the Board of Governors of the University of Victoria. He serves on a number of public boards and consults on national security and financial services issues.

’69 Kurt F. Jensen, BA, ’71 MA, ’72 BLS, writes to say that, “After 33 years with the Canadian Foreign Service, I retired in 2005; however, I have kept busy with some contracts and teaching at Carleton University, as well as with my writing.” Kurt’s book, Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 193951, was published by the University of Alberta Press last summer.

Kenneth Kolotyluk, ’65 MD, of Vancouver, was recently awarded the British Columbia Medical Association Silver Medal of Service, its highest honour. Among his many contributions to medicine in B.C., he is most proud to be one of the founding members of the province’s Screening Mammography Program, which was the first such program in Canada. He has been a previous recipient of the B.C. Medical Association’s gold medal for distinguished medical service and was awarded an honorary membership in the Canadian Medical Association. Ken was a general practitioner in Vancouver from 1966 to 1992, and was actively involved in medical organizations at the local, provincial and national levels. He left general practice in 1992 to become the first executive director of the

’70s

’70 Gregory Harris, BA, ’71 LLB, of Calgary, was recently appointed to the board of directors of Antioquia Gold, Inc. Linda Duncan, BA, ’73 LLB, has been elected to the House of Commons as the New Democrat MP for Edmonton-Strathcona.

’71 Frank Phillet, BA, of Edmonton, recently released a CD, Not for Everyone, with his band Magic Music. For more information, visit www. magicmusic.com.

Maye Davis, ’72 BSc, ’84 MEd, was recently awarded the B.C. Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Of the 20 teachers receiving the award, Maye, an eighth and ninth grade science teacher at Lake Trail Middle School in Courtenay, received hers in the category of “Environmental Awareness.” She is the co-founder of a local stewardship program called Project Watershed, where she remains a board director, and takes part in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ salmon enhancement program.

Society of General Practitioners of B.C., where he served until his retirement in 2004. Ken and his wife, Frances Kolotyluk (Shaw), ’63 BEd, are enjoying retirement in Vancouver, and he notes that, “We are members of CESO [the Canadian Executive Service Organization] and have done assignments in Costa Rica, Ukraine and the Philippines, as well as locally. We are also both members of Rotary International and enjoy meeting other Rotarians in our travels around the world.” Ken had an active art career as a watercolour painter for many years, but his current passion is photography. He has published three books of his photographs. When not involved with their CESO and Rotary Club activities, Ken and Frances love to get into their camper and drive around North America. Kenneth and Francis Kolotyluk in Egypt. Louise Miller, BSc(Nu), ’79 MBA, of Edmonton, received the Canadian Medical Association Medal of Honour on August 12. This award recognizes personal contributions to advancing medical research and education. Louise is co-founder of the Spinal Cord Injury Treatment Centre Society in Alberta.

Ruth Collins-Nakai, MD, ’98 MBA, received the Canadian Medical Association 2008 Medal of Service for her long and distinguished record of service to the medical profession, Canada’s health-care system and the care of patients around the world. Ruth is a former president of the CMA.

’72 Barbara Richardson, BA, was

Ernest Sorochan, BSc(Eng), was recently appointed a director on the board of Mainland Resources, Inc., a Nevada-based company engaged in the exploration and development of oil and gas resources. Ernest was most recently with the Compton Petroleum Corporation of Calgary, providing engineering support for areas in Southern Alberta.

recently appointed Canadian Ambassador to the Republic of Zimbabwe, with concurrent accreditation to the Republic of Angola and the Republic of Botswana. Since 2005, she has served as high commissioner for Canada to Bangladesh.

’73 Jan Reimer, BA, provincial coordinator of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters, hosted the world’s first global conference of shelter workers in Edmonton in September. Approximately 750 delegates from more than 50 countries attended. Doug Thomson, BCom, of St. Albert, AB, and Wayne Chodzicki, ’75 BCom, of Calgary, were both named fellows of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta at the group’s 2008 Merit Awards Gala held in Edmonton in June.

’74 Darcy Yule, BSc(Ag) retired in November 2007 after 34 years in forestry. Darcy worked for the Alberta Forest Service and Alberta Lands for six years following graduation before taking a job with the B.C. Forest Service, where he worked in Smithers, McBride and Campbell River. He writes that, now that he’s retired, “Being a grandfather, continuing as a judo instructor, motorcycling and golfing are no longer constrained by work.” ’75 Hal Kvisle, BSc(Eng), president and CEO of TransCanada Corporation, has been selected by the University of Alberta School of Business to receive the 2009 Canadian Business Leader Award. The award will be presented at an awards dinner on March 4, 2009, in Edmonton. Under Hal’s direction, TransCanada has grown into North America’s largest natural gas pipeline company. Previously, Hal held leadership positions at Dome Petroleum and Fletcher Challenge Energy. He is also one of the U of A’s 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients. Marvin Hough, BCom, ’77 MBA, has been appointed executive-inresidence focusing on international business at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. Previously, he served as regional vice-president, Asia, for Export Development Canada. Ken Newbert, ’76 BSc(Eng), has assumed the role of technical director for Cobalt Engineering. After 23 years as one of the founding partners of the firm, Ken has sold his shares in the company to the remaining management team and will do what he loves most — mentor the staff.

’77 Janet E. Russell, BA, writes to say that, “After completing my law degree I began to practice law in Calgary and am now a partner at Scott Hall LLP, where I have a civil litigation and family law practice. I am married to Glenn Miles, ’78 BA, and have three ski-racing children, so spend most of my free time in the winter working race courses.” Winter 2008/2009

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Several U of A alumni have recently been promoted within the ranks of ATCO. Owen Edmondson, ’73 BSc, ’79 MBA, was named group vice-president, business development finance. Bob Piro, ’79 BSc(Eng), has been appointed vice-president, operations. Paul van den Camp, ’76 BSc(Eng), was named senior vice-president, general manager for ATCO Noise Management’s Calgarybased operations and related U.S. branches. Gord McPhee, ’78 BSc(Eng), has been made vice-president, commercial, with ATCO Power. George Lidgett, ’85 BSc(Eng), has been appointed senior vice-president, operations, of ATCO Frontec and will be responsible for the company’s operations domestically and abroad. Brenda Hanson, ’88 BSc(Eng), has been named vice-president, commercial development, of ATCO Power, and Scott Arndt, ’97 BSc(Eng), has been named vice-president, operations, of ATCO Pipelines. Shimpachiro Ogiwara, BSc, of Kanazawa, Japan, retired as professor of physical therapy at the University of Kanazawa in March 2008 and received the Ishikawa Prefectural Governor’s Award for his contribution to health-care service. Sylvester Wong, BSc(Eng), of Yellowknife, NT, was recently appointed as governor representing the Northwest Territories on the Council of Governors of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Board. The Board was created in 1978 to promote the fundamental right of Canadians to a healthy and safe work environment. Paul Leeson, BSc, of Golden, BC, writes, “I am on career number three now: first with the B.C. Forest Service, then as a wilderness tourism entrepreneur and now as a helicopter pilot.” David E. Parker, BCom, has been appointed president of Finning (Canada), the world’s largest dealer of Caterpillar equipment. David joined Finning in 1998 and previously served as senior vicepresident. Prior to joining Finning, David held senior positions with EPCOR Utilities Inc. Eleanor Olszewski, BSc(Pharm), ’81 LLB, has recently joined the firm of MacPherson Leslei & Tyerman. In

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her practice she focuses on litigation, this includes the defence of health professionals and educators, loss of life and disability, professional disciplinary matters and commercial litigation. Leslie Ayre-Jaschke, BEd, ’04 MSc, writes to say that she was elected to the Peace River, AB, town council in October 2007. Leslie — who has lived in Peace River for 28 years and has raised two sons with her husband, Eric Jaschke, ’72 BCom, ’76 Dip(Ed) — also notes that she is keeping a blog about her municipal and related activities that can be read at leslieaj.blogspot.com.

’78 Diana Anderson, BA, recently won the City of Red Deer Mayor’s Recognition Award in Citizenship for her more-than-20-years of continuous voluntary service with Artwalk and other organizations. Diana retired in October from the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery after 30 years of service and plans to pursue new ventures, including consulting work with artists and museums and a new interior design business through Always Timeless Designs. Ruth Kelly, BA, president and CEO of Venture Publishing, was recently given the 2008 Honorary Diploma in Business Administration by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology for her entrepreneurial savvy as the founder of a nationally respected publishing enterprise and for her countless contributions to the community. Gail Black, LLB, was recently made an associate counsel with the Calgary office of Miller Thompson LLP, and William Fowlis, ’78 BCom, ’86 LLB, was recently made a partner with the firm. James Bancroft, LLB, has been named counsel to the Calgary office of Davis LLP. Craig Acott, BSc, ’81 MSc, of Calgary, has been appointed president of Norwest Corporation’s Canadian operations. Norwest is an employee-owned resources and energy consulting company.

’79 Roger Schilf, BSc, is one of the founding partners of the Edmonton-based architectural firm of Hodgson-Schlif Architects Inc., which opened this past summer.

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Refurbished guest rooms Modern kitchenettes Plasma TV in every room

David Marples with U of A president Indira Samarasekera

’80s

’80 John Musgreave, BCom, has been named a partner with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Edmonton. John joined the firm in 1980, transferred to London in 1989, was admitted to the partnership in 1994 and now returns to the Edmonton office in the audit and insurance group. Karen McClean, BSc, ’82 MD, was recently named governor-elect of the Manitoba and Saskatchewan chapter of the American College of Physicians. Karen is assistant dean of postgraduate medical education and associate professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Saskatchewan. Diane Young, BA, ’84 LLB, has been appointed president of the Canadian Bar Association Alberta. Diane is a partner with the Edmonton law firm of Ackroyd LLP. She practises in the area of creditors’ remedies, commerical lending and real estate.

’82 Sheena Bethel-Cox, BCom, writes from Basel, Switzerland, to say that she’s working for the Basel Area Business Development Office promoting the city as a business destination and assisting businesses that wish to locate there. Gerry Tywoniun, BCom, has been appointed to the position of senior vice-president of finance and chief financial officer for the Long Beach, CA, company of Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. Pacific Energy is an independent energy company engaged in the acquisition, development and exploitation of producing oil and gas properties in the Western U.S.

’83 Sue Luco, BEd, writes to say that since graduation she has taught primary school in northern Alberta and in the B.C. communities of Burns Lake, Port Simpson and Prince Rupert. She adds, “I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the U of A and have two brothers who graduated from there as well.”

’84 Dave Filipchuk, BSc(Eng), was recently appointed regional vice-president of Western Canadian Buildings operations with PCL Construction Management, Inc. He joined the company in 1984 as a field engineer and has worked for the company in numerous locations across North America.

David Marples, ’80 MA, a professor in the Department of History and Classics, was recently awarded the University Cup, the U of A’s highest academic honour. The award is bestowed once a year to a member of the academic staff who has achieved outstanding distinction in scholarly research, teaching, service to the University, and service to the community at large. David’s research focus is on Eastern Europe and the Ukraine, and he has been the director of the U of A’s Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine since 1996.

’85 Mona Hale, BCom, is the new vice-president and CEO of the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. Ben Mah, BSc(Eng), received a master’s degree in education from the University of Calgary in June 2008. He is currently an assistant principal of a Calgary-area junior high school. Jerry Turin, BCom, of San Jose, CA, was recently appointed chief financial officer of Bookham Incorporated, a leading provider of optical components, modules and subsystems. Peter F. Thompson, LLB, of Barrie, ON, writes that, for the second year in a row, one of his photos has been chosen to be included in the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation calendar. Another of Peter’s photos was recently chosen for the e-cover of Global Voices Caribbean Edition, which dealt with the hurricane toll in Cuba and surrounding areas.

’86 Paul Matson, BCom, received his master’s degree in political science from Arizona State University in 2007. Paul is the executive director of the Arizona State Retirement System, which oversees $25 billion of investments. Melody Davidson, BPE, will be the head coach of Canada’s women’s hockey team for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. She coached the Canadian women to gold at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and at the 2007 World Championship in Winnipeg. Peter Keohane, BA, ’89 MBA, ’90 LLB, has been made a partner with the Calgary law firm of McCarthy Tetrault.

’87 Laura Storey (MacGregor), BEd, of Sexsmith, AB, writes that she started a new job in September. “I will be teaching at the not-yet-fin-

ished Clairmont Community School when it opens in January. Until then, I am teaching music a la carte at two feeder schools in Sexsmith and Grande Prairie. Rolling the cart full of instruments from room to room, then driving between schools, has given me a new appreciation for the luxury of my own music room. Praying for January to come quickly.” Nick Radujko, BEd, of Wainwright, AB, has been selected as the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instructional services and has also been put in charge of system planning and improvement for the Buffalo Trails Public School jurisdiction. Formerly the director of curriculum and instruction for the region, Nick will remain responsible for curriculum and instruction services for the teaching staff but will also take on the lead duties of school analysis, programming and three-year plans.

’88 Robert McDonald, LLB, of Edmonton, and Robert Homersham, ’88 BA, of Calgary, have both been named partners with the law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain. Michael McAdam, BA, has left behind the deserts of Arabia for the lush tropics of Taiwan. Arriving in time for his first typhoon, he undertook his new position of teacher of ninth and 10th grade English at Taipei American School. He is attempting not to say anything rude while mastering Mandarin tones. Otherwise, he spends his time on Taipei’s excellent mass-transit system exploring the city’s nooks and crannies.

James T. Casey, LLB, has been named the new managing partner of the Edmonton office of Field Law, as Robert H. Teskey, ’69 BA, ’70 LLB, the firm’s managing partner for over 25 years, transitions to a new role at the firm.

’89 Uttandaraman Sundararaj, BSc(Eng), was selected to receive the Engineers Canada 2008 Medal of Distinction in recognition of his innovative teaching methods. A professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the U of A, Uttandaraman says it’s important to foster relationships between students so they can “discuss, idea-generate and problem solve together.” Correction: In the Autumn 2008 issue of New Trail, in which this note also ran, he was mistakenly listed as having received an MA in 2005.

Warren Sadoway, BSc(Eng), has been promoted to northwest area manager of the Trane Northwest Group, serving Edmonton and Northern Alberta. Warren has been an associate of Trane for over 21 years.

Darren Hardy, BSc(Eng), was recently appointed vice-president, operations, of Canadian Oil Sands Trust, effective September 2008. Previously, he was with Syncrude Canada Ltd.

Hemanta Sarma, ’88 PhD, is a recipient of the 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for his outstanding contributions to student learning. He was recognized for his role as a mentor to students and for “securing their welfare as individuals and success as scholars.” Hemanta serves as the Reg Sprigg Chair in Petroleum Engineering at the Australian School of Petroleum Engineering, University of Adelaide.

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’90s

’91 Darren Doige, BSc(Eng), writes that he has finally been transferred somewhere warm again during his oilfield-services career. From the frozen district of Wainwright, AB, to Roswell, NM, and back to Calgary (with a few extra districts in between), he is now Houston bound. His job in Texas will be to oversee the global product centre for Weatherford International. Leon Pfeiffer, BCom, of Edmonton, has been invited into the partnership at the law firm of Kingston Ross Pasnak LLP.

Brothers Sean Caulfield, ’92 BFA, ’96 MFA, an art professor, and Timothy Caulfield, ’87 BSc, ’90 LLB, a law professor — both at the U of A — have joined forces to create a new interdisciplinary project, “Imagining Science: An Artistic Exploration of Science, Society and Social Change,” that was part of the University’s “Festival of Ideas” this past November. Part book, part gallery exhibit and all intellectual and creative exploration, Imagining Science combines the talents of 10 artists and 10 social scientists to address some of the most pressing issues in bioethics today. The gallery exhibit runs through February 1, 2009, at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, and the book is available through the University of Alberta Press at www.uap.alberta.ca.

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’92 Sylvie Montier, LLB, of Spruce Grove, AB, and her husband, Richard Lee, founded the Canadian Search and Disaster Dogs Association in 2001. In October, Sylvie received Canada’s Outstanding Search and Rescue Achievement Award in St. John’s, NF, for her work with rescue dogs. Sylvie has taken her dogs as far afield as earthquake-damaged Peru on search-and-rescue missions, and she estimates that she spends about 15 hours per week training and conditioning dogs.

’93 Michelle Joljart, BA, has just returned to Edmonton from Afghanistan, where she worked for six-and-a-half months as a civilian with the Canadian Forces at the Kandahar Airfield. She writes, “The job was so far removed from anything I have been trained for, but the experience was extraordinary and worth every minute away from the comforts of my home, family and friends.” Nathan Whitling, BCom, ’97 LLB, was one of three recipients of the 2008 Canadian National Pro Bono Awards in Vancouver in September. Nathan and colleague Dennis Edney jointly received the award for their no-fee legal representation of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who has been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay since 2002. Connie Hykaway, BCom, ’97 LLB, and Andrea Beckwith-Ferraton, ’94 BA, were recently made associates at the Calgary office of Miller Thompson LLP.

’95 Natalie Iwaniuk (Lamarche), BSc(Nu), writes to thank “all of you for your kind support of my late hus-

Mariesa Carbone, BCom, has joined the Edmonton office of the accounting firm Meyers Norris Penny. Shawna Lemay (Heiman), BA, ’05 MA, writes that she and her husband, Rob Lemay, ’84, BFA, “have been working in our creative fields since graduating from the U of A and have two exciting, collaborative events this fall. The first is the launch of my book, Calm Things, essays about living with still life. The second event is an art show that Rob is mounting at Edmonton’s Douglas Udell Gallery, which uses my essays as its source of inspiration.”

’96 Collette Smith, BSc(Nu), of Edmonton, writes to say that she is a member of Speakers Bureau, part of the Canadian Mental Health Association-Edmonton Region’s speakers’ bureau, which “helps provide education to groups on various topics around life with mental illness

Colin Oberst, ’92 BEd, beat out 15,000 other entrants to win CBC’s “Anthem Challenge” contest for a new Hockey Night in Canada theme song. His one-minute-and-18-second Celtic-flavoured composition, “Canadian Gold,” has earned him $100,000, plus half of the song’s future royalties. “When you’re a musician and songwriter — and the hugest hockey fan — and the CBC presents such a contest, one doesn’t need to contemplate much,” he says, “I instantly began planning compositions.” and stigma reduction.” Collette was also the winner of the CMHA’s Lorayne Richardson Memorial Award for 2007. The award is given out for significant contributions in decreasing stigma and promoting acceptance of people with mental illness. Tim Goddard, PhD, was recently appointed dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island. Loretta Bogert-O’Brien, BSc, and her husband Daniel Bogert-O’Brien, ’00 PhD, have recently moved to Toronto after nine years in Ottawa and three years in Squamish, BC.

’97 Adam Pekarsky, LLB, has been appointed as a client partner in the Calgary law firm of Korn/Ferry Tim Lee, ’99 BA, of Vancouver, recently won the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s leading visual art prize. Valued at $50,000, the award aims to throw the spotlight on the work of Canada’s most

Host of CBC’s “The Hour”, George Stroumboulopoulos, and Colin Oberst (right) on the Hockey Night in Canada set.

Colin entered five pieces and says he feels extremely fortunate to have had one of them make it all the way. “The experience of meeting some amazing people and the support I received from across Canada will stick with me for life,” he says. Colin lives in Beaumont, AB, with his wife and their two children and teaches fifth and sixth grade at Holy Family Catholic School in southeast Edmonton.

International. Prior to joining Korn/Ferry, Adam was the western Canada director for professional development and recruitment at the law firm of Fraser Milner Casgrain. Janaya Ellis, BEd, is the lead singer and bassist in the reggae group Souljah Fyah, whose second album, Truth Will Reveal, received the award for Best Urban Recording at the Western Canadian Music Awards held in Edmonton in October.

’98 Cindy Brinkman (Ho), BCom, writes that she and Cameron Brinkman, ’98 BCom, were married in August 2005. The couple, who live in Edmonton, “were thrilled to introduce Carter Quinn to the world the following June.” She also adds, that in January 2008, “Carter

became a big brother when Declan Cole arrived.” Cindy works as a business analyst with ATCO I-Tek, while Cameron was recently admitted to the partnership of Meyers Norris Penny LLP, practicing in the Business Valuations and Litigation Support team, after having obtained his chartered accountant designation in 2001 and his chartered business valuator designation in 2005. Rosetta Khalideen, PhD, was recently appointed dean of the newly created Faculty of Professional Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley. Previously, she served as the director of adult education and human resource development with the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina.

promising young artists. Recently, Tim’s work has been featured in the Biennale of Sydney, Australia, and at a solo exhibit at the Hayward Gallery in London, England. 2008, 2 C-prints Edition of 5 + 2 AP, Courtesy Cohan and Leslie, New York; Lisson Gallery, London; Johnen & Schöttle, Cologne. Photo by Chuck Kochman.

band, Keith Iwaniuk.” Keith, ’89 BSc, died in June 2008. “Though we did not know each other while we attended school,” she writes, “we did fondly remember our years at the U of A.”

Tim Lee in front of his work: “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)/ Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black), Neil Young, 1979.”

’99 Grant Fedoruk, BSc, and his wife, Heidi Fedoruk, ’99 BSc, recently received the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in recognition of the work they perform at their clinic, Leading Edge Physiotherapy, which they have owned since March 2008. Winter 2008/2009

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Epic

’00 Alison Stevens, BA, began work as the aquatic programmer at the University of Victoria in March 2008. Alison is also a paramedic and works part-time with B.C. Ambulance on Mayne Island. ’01 Don Iveson, BA, was recently named one of the “Sizzling Twenty Under 30” in the magazine Edmontonians. In the municipal elections held in 2007, Iveson surprised many pollwatchers by beating an incumbent opponent and becoming, at 29, one of the youngest Edmonton city councillors ever. Four other alumni were included on the “Twenty Under 30” list: Jumana Jarrah, ’02 BSc, owner of New Balance Chiropractic Clinic; Ailynn Santos, ’03 BEd, owner of Whimsical Cake Studio; Brandy Burdeniuk, ’06 BA, the principal of EcoAmmo & Green Alberta; and Michael Brechtel, ’06 BCom, owner of Firebrand Media. ’02 Jennifer Kuchta (Pascoe), BA, of Edmonton writes to say that she’s pleased the Alumni Association is doing “great work on keeping me informed. I love receiving both New

Carolyn Peddle, ’05 MA, and Chris Sellar, ’00 BPE, ’03 MSc, were recognized by the National Cancer Institute of Canada with a prestigious award for the research they’re doing on the link between cancer and physical activity as part of their PhD studies at the U of A. The awards, which are for up to four years, are each valued at $22,500 per year, and there is additional funding available for conference travel. Both Carolyn and Chris research cancers that have not been widely studied from a physical activity perspective: Carolyn studies lung cancer and Chris colon cancer. Trail and e-trail, and both are very informative and interesting.” Jennifer notes that several of her relatives also attended the U of A: Marilynn Jean Berg, ’79 BSc(Nu), ’93 MEd; Ron Pascoe, ’82 BA, ’84 BEd; Lecia Berg, ’01 BSc(Nu); and Alaina Pascoe, who will graduate in 2008. ’03 Mark Haroun, BA, recently received the 2008 Canadian Authors Association’s Emerging Writer Award, which is presented to an author under 30 deemed to show the most promise in the field of literary creation. Currently, Mark is a story editor on CBC’s one-hour dramatic series, Heartland.

2009 Alumni

Weekend Thursday, October 1 to Sunday, October 4

Reconnect with friends from the U of A! Let the Office of Alumni Affairs be your party planner with help on contact lists, mailings & event planning. We’re looking for volunteers to help organize class reunions. If you’d like to help out, call Colleen Elliott at 780-492-0866 (toll-free 1-800-661-2593) or email colleen.elliott@ualberta.ca. For more information about Alumni Weekend and other upcoming events visit our website at www.ualberta.ca/alumni/reunion.

Let’s get this party started! 66

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’04 Ben Block, BCom, writes that he has recently launched Commercial Space, a bimonthly commercial real estate magazine distributed to over 20,000 businesses. Ben is the president of Sundial Graphics, an Edmontonbased design firm. Queenie Lung, BCom, was recently appointed chief financial officer of TVI Pacific, a publicly traded Canadian mining company.

’05 Ryan Matenchuk, BA, writes that he now lives and works in London, England, for ARCH Real Estate.

’07 Nathan Boroski, BSc(Nu), writes that after graduation he worked as an RN for the Northern Alberta Renal Program at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and then for the Southern Alberta Renal Program at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. “Now I have relocated to the small town of Kimberley, BC, where I have accepted the position of clinical nurse educator for the East Kootenay Health Region Renal Program.” Nathan adds that, through his new position, he hopes to educate other RNs on all aspects of renal disease and dialysis.

Nominate a grad student! Do you know an amazing alumni? Want to recognize an exceptional colleague? Nominations open for the GSA Awards starting in December! Nomination packages will be available online at:

www.gsa.ualberta.ca Awards include: *Graduate Studies Alumni* *Student Service* *Supervisor* *Research* *Teaching Assistant* *International Student* *Academic Staff* *Leadership*

In Memoriam The Alumni Association notes with sorrow the passing of the following graduates:

’50 Marguerite Isobel Frymire (McKay), Dip(Nu), ’51 BSc(Nu), of Kamloops, BC, in August 2008

Annabelle R. R. Weist (Jenkins), BEd, ’72 Dip(Ed), of Evansburg, AB, in June 2008

’33 Harriet Shiels (Smith),

Melvin James Cotterill, BSc(Eng), of Roseville, CA, in August 2008

John Humphries Breckenridge, PhD, of Surrey, BC, in July 2008

’52 Frances Vesterdal Thompson,

’67 Phyllis Mary Q. Mort (Babiak),

Thomas W. Dixon, BSc(Eng), of Coquitlam, BC, in May 2008

Dip(Nu), ’53 BSc(Nu), of Calgary, AB, in July 2008

BEd, ’71 BA, ’73 Dip(Ed), ’90 MEd, of Athabasca, AB, in October 2008

’40 Margaret Ruth Millar, BSc, of

’68 Stella Mildred Dyck (Pankratz),

Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

William Jarvie Aitken, DDS, of Prince George, BC, in July 2008

’42 Gig Gillespie Field, BA, ’47 LLB,

BSc(HEc), of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008

’85 John Kenney, BEd, of Westbank, BC, in 2005 ’86 Carol Elizabeth Fyfe, BSc(Nu), of Lacombe, AB, in September 2008 John David Beckingham, BSc, ’90 MSc, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008 Laurie Joan Meunier, LLB, of Lloydminster, AB, in August 2008

’87 A. Louise Lockhart, BA, ’04

’54 Buck Godwin, BSc(Ag), ’64

BSc(Nu), of Saskatoon, SK, in July 2008

of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

BEd, of Olds, AB, in October 2008

’69 George Edward R. Lingle, BA,

Vivian Blanche Melnyk (Craig), BSc, ’76 BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

C. Jean Morton Fryer, Dip(Nu), ’55 BSc(Nu), of Calgary, AB, in August 2008

’73 Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008

’88 Alf Bright, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

W. Fay Anderson, BCom, of Calgary, AB, in September 2008

Gabriel Camille Boulet, BSc(Ag), of Edmonton, AB, in August 2008

’43 Egerton Warren King, BSc(Eng), ’88 DSc (Honorary), of Edmonton, AB, in August 2008

’55 Robert Eason Horne, BSc(Pharm), of Calgary, AB, in August 2008

’44 Mary Agnes Bell, Dip(Pharm),

Robert James Edgar, BSc(Pharm), of Edmonton, AB, in August 2008

’45 BSc(Pharm), of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008 Louis, MO, in June 2008

’56 S. Grant Howard, BSc(Eng), of Penzance, England, in September 2008

Robert John Gray, BSc(Eng), of Vancouver, BC, in September 2008

William Rama, BSc(Eng), of Calgary, AB, in August 2008

’48 Berthold Figur, BEd, ’48 Dip(Ed), ’50 MEd, of Edmonton, AB, in May 2008

’57 Doug Aston, BSc(Pharm), of

’46 Jim Barton, BSc(Eng), of St.

George Thomas MacCallum, BSc, of Calgary, AB, in May 2008

Lloydminster, AB, in July 2008 Elinor Kay Glover, Dip(Ed), ’58 Dip(Ed), ’59 BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in April 2008

Larry William Rohatyn, BEd, ’72 Dip(Ed), of Peace River, AB, in October 2008 Richard Benner Morris, PhD, of Bailieboro, ON, in June 2008

’71 Ismay Carmella Russell, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in May 2008 James Emmet Devaney, BCom, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

’73 James Archibald Campbell,

Linda Laliberte Paulette, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in September 2008

’77 Michael Albert Kotyk, BSc(Eng), of Edmonton, AB, in August 2008

’79 Ronald Paul Lelievre, BSc, of

Harry Frederick Rogers, BSc(Eng), of Victoria, BC, in October 2008

W. Roy Riley, BCom, ’61 BEd, ’65 Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in August 2008

James Munn Craig, BEd, ’50 MEd, of Calgary, AB, in April 2008

’61 Herbert Malcolm Lott, BEd, of

John Sidney Davies, BA, ’50 LLB, of Victoria, BC, in June 2008

Marie A. Pool, BSc(Eng), of Victoria, BC, in October 2008

Lloyd Franklin Lindberg, BEd, ’50 BSc(Ag), ’66 Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008

’62 Bill Sowa, BA, ’66 LLB, of Edmonton, AB, in April 2008

Robert Eugene Pelletier, BSc(Eng), of Red Deer, AB, in October 2008

Judith Kay Padua, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

’64 Thor Andressen, BEd, ’80

Roland Walter Bick, BSc(Eng), of Reno, NV, in February 2008

Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

Stephen Benjamin Peta, BEd, ’56 MEd, of Lethbridge, AB, in March 2008

’66 Carl Michael Paproski, BSc, ’72 Dip(Ed), ’78 MEd, ’90 PhD, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2008

’91 Michael A. Kopach, BSc, of Camrose, AB, in September 2008

’98 Colin Curtis Lund, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008

’03 Christopher Royden Bird, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

Rae Irene Ramage (Demers), BSc(Nu), of Victoria, BC, in August 2008

Prescott Valley, AZ, in March 2008

Marcia Laurie Lynn Orobko, BCom, of Raymond, AB, in September 2008

’75 Donald James Mckay, BCom, ’78 LLB, of Edmonton, AB, in June 2008

’59 Grace Harvena Robinson, Dip(Nu), of Stony Plain, AB, in August 2008

’49 Fred Neal Spackman, MD, of Cardston, AB, in October 2008

’90 Kenneth Wayne Hefferon, BA, of McPherson, KS, in May 2008

’02 Folake Bolanle Ajayi-Obe, MSc, of Sarnia, ON, in August 2008

Ottawa, ON, in August 2008

William F. Ferguson, BSc, ’50 MD, of Edmonton, AB, in August 2008

Andrea Kathleen Kozdrowski, BA, of Onoway, AB, in June 2008

BCom, of Calgary, AB, in July 2008

’58 William Arthur Wiese, BCom, ’61 LLB, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2008

Marion Eileen Robb, Dip(Nu), of Vancouver, BC, in September 2008

MA, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

’78 Gerald Joseph Leger, PhD, of

Edmonton, AB, in October 2008 Wayne Lindsey Schultz, BSc(Eng), of Grande Prairie, AB, in September 2008

’80 Sandy Mitsuko Nakashima, BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in September 2008

’82 George Zbigniew Grosser, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008 Rita Jean Smith (Smith), BSc(Nu), ’90 MEd, of Sherwood Park, AB, in September 2008

’83 Alberto Angel Fantino, MA, of Edmonton, AB, in May 2008 Pamela Faye Bergh (Koskinen), BEd, of Cochrane, AB, in July 2008

Patricia Ann Tebbutt, MBA, of Edmonton, AB, in July 2008

Corrections: In the Spring 2008 issue of New Trail we inadvertently neglected to boldface the name of Frank Dorsey, ’38 BSC, ’43 MD, of Oliver, BC, who passed away in January 2008. In the Autumn 2008 issue of New Trail we also inadvertently listed Byron Lee Johnson, ’95 BA, ’01 BEd, in the In Memoriam section. Bryon is alive and well, and we apologize for the error. In the Autumn 2008 issue of New Trail we also inadvertently listed Helen Maria Fowler, ’68 BEd, in the In Memoriam section. Helen is alive and well, and we apologize for the error. *** Alumni interested in submitting remembrances about U of A graduates can send a text file to alumni@ualberta.ca. Tributes are posted on the “Memory Lane” webpage at www.ualberta.ca/alumni. Winter 2008/2009

new trail

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Call for more information about: Grand Tour of Egypt March 2 –13, 2009; from $2,735* + air Senegal to Spain March 31–April 13, 2009; from $9,429* + air Tulip Time in Holland and Belgium April 18 –26, 2009; from $2,088* + air Cruise: from Singapore to Dubai April 30 –May 18, 2009; from US$5,395* + air Celtic Quest - Spain to Scotland May 11 –23, 2009; from $6,395* + air Flavours of Burgundy & Provence June 7 –18, 2009; from $3,241* + air Alumni Campus Aboard in Ukraine and Romania June 23 –July 6, 2009; from $2,795* + air Cruise the Face of Europe June 30 –July 15, 2009; from $5,095* + air Lake Como, Dolomites & Venice July 2 –12, 2009; from $2,550* + air ACA Bohemia July 28 –Aug. 5, 2009; from $2,695* + air Passage of Peter the Great Aug. 21 –Sept. 3, 2009; from $3,745* + air Northwest Passage Sept. 1 –16, 2009; from $7,695* + air Village Life in the Dordogne Sept. 17 –25, 2009; from $2,930* + air China Discovery Oct. 21 –Nov. 2, 2009; from $2,895* + air Bella Toscana Oct. 20 –30, 2009; from $3,125* + air Alumni Campus Abroad on the Amalfi Coast Nov. 18 –26, 2009; from $2,995* + air * All prices are per-person, double occupancy; single supplements apply. Some prices may be subject to change.

IMAGINING TUSCANY A Photography Workshop in Cortona, Italy

June 9–16, 2009

oin us for a remarkable learning experience that combines wonderful photographic opportunities with good food, fun and fellowship. Imagining Tuscany, an eight-day photography workshop, provides an opportunity for alumni and their family and friends to discover the beauty of central Italy as part of an exceptional learning experience. It is designed for the digital photographer — particularly those wishing to explore the capabilities of their digital camera. Led by acclaimed international photographer Jim Vecchi, Imagining Tuscany features classroom sessions and daily photo walks around and about Cortona. Both in class and on location, participants will receive expert instruction geared to their particular needs.

Imagining Tuscany June 9 – 16, 2009 $3,095 per person, based on double occupancy, not including transportation ($380 Single Supplement) Bring a Guest! We offer a special rate for companions not participating in the workshop activities. $2,320 — includes meals, accommodation, and major excursion to Pienza/Montepulciano. For more information, visit our website at www.ualberta.ca/alumni/cortona

Learn to get the most from your digital camera (while having a great time) Included in the Imagining Tuscany program • Expert instruction in the classroom and on location in Cortona. • Walking excursions through nearby towns and the Tuscan countryside. • Seven nights’ accommodation at one of Cortona’s premier hotels. • Breakfast each morning at the hotel, one lunch in Montepulciano and dinners at five of Cortona’s best restaurants.

Call 492-1835 or toll-free 1-800-661-2593 or visit www.ualberta.ca/alumni/ed

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The U of A hosted its biggest reunion ever, September 18 – 21, to celebrate the University’s centenary. Here’s some of the action from Homecoming. 1: Eugene Hunka, ’69 BEd, is happy to be back on campus ... 2: ... as is Gordon McIntosh (professor emeritus from the Faculty of Education). 3: More hugs for Homecoming alumni at the Golden Bears football game. 4: Tour of the campus trees led by Department of Renewable Resources professor Paul Woodard. 5 & 6: Enjoying cinnamon buns at the Tuck Shop Welcome Tent. 7: Banners welcomed grads back to campus on a warm September weekend. 8: Alumnus George

Kostashuk, ’49 BSc, is all smiles 9: Campus Express golf carts took grads around campus. 10: A grad in the Tuck Shop Tent wearing a small sandwich board that says: “I haven’t changed a bit. How about you?” 11: Some members of the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine class of 1988 — (L to R) Blain Katzberg, Ginny Brown, Tracey Airth-Edblom, ’85 BA, Tim Hall, Shaniff Esmail, ’93 MSc, ’05 PhD, Lynn Wallace, Steve Kuyltjes,

Lori Craig. 12: Joelle Fawcett-Arsenault, ‘04 BSc(Hec), receives her Horizon Award from President Indira Samarasekera at the Alumni Recognition Awards. Fawcett-Arsenault, an advocate for the treatment and support of people with eating disorders, also spoke at the Walter Johns Alumni Circle lectures. 13: (L to R) Garry M. Lindberg, ’60 BSc(Eng) and H. F. Lloyd Pinkney, ’52 BSc(Eng) — Distinguished Alumni Award recipients 14: Patrick Whitney, ’74 BFA, talks at the forum, “Towards A Sustainable Future: Three Perspectives.” Whitney also received an Alumni Honour Award. 15: Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre was all decked out for the Centenary Gala Dinner. 16: Ellen Schoeck, ’72 BA, ’77 MA, with

William Kent, ’31 BSc(Eng) — the U of A’s oldest grad attending the Gala Dinner. 17: Emanuela Bocancea, ’07 BA, a U of A master’s student in classical archaeology, with New York-based designer Michael Kaye, ’88 BA, who designed a special gown using the U of A tartan. 18: Ian Tyson (centre) and band performed a great gig at the Gala. 19: Half-time fireworks at the Golden Bears Homecoming football game that ... 20: ... was watched by a large crowd ... 21: ... and even saw a couple of streakers bare all. 22: The City of Edmonton put on a special display of the Great Divide Waterfall on the High Level Bridge, featuring the U of A’s green and gold colours. 23: We had our cake ... and ate it, too.

Photos by Akemi Matsubuchi, Zoltan Kenwell, U of A Creative Services, Tracey Edblom, Shelagh Kubish, Tyrel Brochu, U of A Alumni Affairs.

Winter 2008/2009

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tuck shop

Oh Happy Day This photo—taken during the late 1920s or early ’30s—is of the Shiloh Baptist Church singers (most likely taken before or after a campus concert). Edmonton’s Shiloh Baptist Church and the Good Hope Baptist Church in Keystone, AB, were the largest black Baptist churches in Alberta. Early black immigrants to Alberta were not exactly welcomed with open arms. In 1911, the Edmonton Board of Trade even filed a petition in the hope of outlawing black immigration. That’s why blacks living in the province relied on each other and the establishment of community-driven initiatives—such as churches and gospel choirs—to combat prejudice. The Edmonton-based Black Pioneer Heritage Singers trace their family roots to the immigration of these black pioneers from the southern U.S. Junetta Jamerson—a fifth generation descendant of an African-American family that settled in Wildwood, AB — is the founder and director of the Black Pioneer Heritage Singers and says, “Authentic black gospel, true to our distinct heritage of faith, is not an expected part of Alberta’s cultural fabric. Yet those who encounter it seldom soon forget their experience. It’s amazing that a sound which is obviously Southern, is now uniquely Albertan. And although the people pictured in this photo aren’t the Heritage Singers, they are our great aunts, great uncles and cousins!” “Afro-American music is a gift to the world,” adds Heritage Singers musician Reno Guimond, ’80 BA. “Its power lives on in the hearts of those who listen and play.”

new trail

Winter 2008/2009

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