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KING’S CELEBRATES 56 NEW ACADEMIC ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIPS
DEBRA DEANE LITTLE AND ROBERT (BOB) LITTLE did an extraordinary thing for King’s this year. They chose to fund 14 new renewable scholarships to be awarded annually to incoming students to the Foundation Year Program (FYP) who also play varsity sports for the Blue Devils.
“It’s a selfish act for us to do this in a way because we want to help and we want to give back,” Little said, of the initial $1.4 million gift that he and his wife Debra gave from the Deane-Little family’s Alpha Aquilae Foundation.
Conversations between Debra Deane Little, Robert Little and the university began last February when the family decided to make their gift to support scholar-athletes. Things moved quickly, and the first Debra Deane Little and Robert Little Academic Scholarships for Varsity Athletes were awarded this fall.
“I couldn’t even imagine it working out better. The strategy and everything lined up…we’re really really happy that we got off to this start,” Bob said.
‘IT ALLOWS ME TO CONTINUE MY STUDIES’ Luke Dyment is a first-year FYP student and Blue Devils rugby player who was chosen to receive a scholarship.
He was mowing lawns in Tyne Valley, P.E.I. last summer to pay for his education, and described the moment he opened the letter telling him he’d won a scholarship as “so special.”
“It allows me to continue my studies… and be able to take steps toward my future knowing that I have the support and confidence of two outstanding donors who contributed this award,” Dyment said. He was speaking at a reception held in King’s gym in September to celebrate the benefactors and recipients. “For that, Debra and Bob, I cannot thank you enough for your generosity and consideration.” Fourteen Debra Deane Little and Robert Little Academic Scholarships for Varsity Athletes are given out each year. Each $5,000 incoming scholarship is renewable for up to three years, provided the student maintains scholarship standing. This means as many as 56 scholar-athletes will hold a Debra Deane Little and Robert Little Academic Athletic Scholarship by 2022/23 and in subsequent years. Also, for the next three years, the family has agreed to offer 14 additional renewable scholarships to scholarathletes in each of the three upper years while the first three years of scholarships are being offered to incoming students.
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE IN WHOLE ATHLETICS DEPARTMENT Isabelle Roach is a fourth-year science student at King’s, Blue Devils volleyball team captain, and King’s 32 nd Rhodes Scholar. She also received a Debra Deane Little and Robert Little Academic Athletic Scholarship this year and spoke at the September reception, thanking Debra and Bob.
“It’s not only financial support for the athletes at King’s but it’s a vote of confidence in (Athletics Director) Neil (Hooper) and (Athletics Coordinator) Trish (Miles) and every single athlete in our department.”
Roach spoke about the excellence of a King’s education, and its uniqueness. “It’s something you don’t get anywhere else—
FIVE OTHER THINGS THAT MADE NEWS IN ATHLETICS IN 2019
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: President Bill Lahey flanked by Debra Deane Little and Robert (Bob) Little at a celebration of the new Debra Deane Little and Robert Little Academic Scholarships for Varsity Athletes held in King’s gym. Isabelle Roach and Luke Dyment, two of the scholarship’s recipients, thanking Debra and Bob on behalf of all the scholar-athletes. A large crowd gathered to celebrate at the reception. Robert (Bob) Little and Debra Deane Little at King’s.
especially in the FYP program,” she said. “We’re full-time students, we’re trying to be the best players we can be, and to be financially supported is just a show of support for our whole athletics department so thank you guys so much.”
President Bill Lahey said these new scholarships are a vote of confidence in our scholar-athletes, our academic mission and our athletics program.
“It is because of the King’s approach
—Bob Little to combining the life-changing benefits of a collegial academic life with those of continuing dedication to competitive sports that we rightly refer to the winners of Deane Little Scholarships as our scholar-athletes,” President Lahey said in his speech. “It is also worth recognizing that our model of competitive sports, in which athletics is another dimension of a holistic education of the whole person, is as traceable to Oxford and Cambridge as are many of our College traditions and the essays and tutorials of our Foundation Year Program.”
Bob Little said he believes King’s is a special school with an opportunity to take its reputation even further.
“By investing in the academic-athletic scholarship we feel like there’s an opportunity to really ratchet up King’s place not just in Canada but in the world. For us that’s exciting.”
Little ended his speech at the reception by directing comments to the many athletes gathered there.
“I would encourage you to keep believing in yourselves and being compassionate. In today’s world there’s a lot less compassion than there should be but I’m confident in the end it’s going to win and a lot of negativity out there is not going to survive quite frankly. Deb and I wish you all the best and thanks very much for having us. We’re enjoying this.”
1Athletics Director Neil Hooper was awarded Athletic Director of the Year by the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) at the 2019 CCAA Hall of Fame Banquet in Calgary in June.
2King’s badminton team won the Atlantic Colleges Athletic Association (ACAA) Championships for the second year in a row.
3King’s badminton team capped offa historic year at the CCAA-ACSC national tournament in Truro, N.S. Benn Van Ryn and Bryce Mason captured a men’s doubles silver medal—King’s first national medal in any sport—while Sam Lawther and Sam White finished fourth in mixed doubles.
4Thirty-four Blue Devils athletes received Academic Excellence Awards at the Athletics Banquet. Additionally, 19 were named Conference All-Stars.
5A new King’s-branded bus means the Blue Devils ride in style. Athletics Director Neil Hooper and Athletics Coordinator Trish Miles were all smiles when it arrived on campus in September.
TALES FROM THE QUAD
JOURNALISM SCHOOL JOINS CONSORTIUM King’s School of Journalism joined a national investigative reporting network based out of Concordia University involving students, professors and working journalists who undertook a year-long investigation into lead in Canada’s drinking water. Their stories were published across the country on Nov. 4, 2019, with local reporting by Master of Journalism students Megan O’Toole and Lyndsay Armstrong, under Professor Pauline Dakin’s, MFA’15, direction, appearing in Star Metro Halifax and elsewhere.
L TO R: Lyndsay Armstrong, Megan O’Toole, Pauline Dakin
KING’S PARTNERSHIP WITH UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY LAW STRENGTHENS
Dean Ian Holloway from the University of Calgary’s Law School came to King’s in the fall to discuss their curriculum and the partnership that gives Foundation Year Program students provisional pre-admission into their program. With about 1,100 to 1,500 applicants a year and only 130 places in Calgary’s law program, King’s students have a considerable advantage in the applicant pool.
6 TIDINGS | WINTER 2020 CLOCKWISE FROM L: Adri Vanos, Nick Harris, Katie Clark, Sam Sharp, Tessa Hill
AND THAT MAKES FIVE LORAN SCHOLARS King’s welcomed two new Loran Scholars this year: Tessa Hill and Sam Sharp, both of whom are enrolled in the Foundation Year Program, bringing the total number of Loran Scholars currently at King’s up to five. Loran Scholars receive a renewable four-year award valued at over $100,000. It’s Canada’s largest and most comprehensive undergraduate merit-based award. There are 35 recipients each year and King’s is one of 25 partner universities.
MACLENNAN LECTURE 2019 LOOKS AT MEDICAL EXPEDITION TO EASTER ISLAND
“Mesmerizing,” is how medical historian and hematologist Dr. Jacalyn Duffin described five years of research she’s put into uncovering the mysteries of a 55-year-old Canadian medical expedition to Easter Island which attempted to survey its entire biosphere and for which no final report was ever written. The 2019 MacLennan Visiting Scholar in the History of Science and Technology, Dr. Duffin spent two days at King’s talking with students, faculty, members of the expedition and their family members, and interested members of the public about “Stanley’s Dream” and her incredible career as a researcher, educator, writer, academic and emeritus Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at Queen’s University. “It just blew me away, that Canada would have led such a complex expedition to this remote part of the world,” she said.
Dr. Jacalyn Duffin
“Our approach to legal education is different...we believe that our mission is to prepare students for the legal profession [of the future that] they’re going to join,” Dean Holloway told students gathered in the President’s Lodge for his lecture “The Language of Law.”
Dr. Holloway also hosted a Q&A in which he talked about the UCalgary Law curriculum and future of legal education. He said the missions of King’s and UCalgary Law fit together perfectly, adding: “One of the great things about a legal education is it teaches you how the world works.”
SLAVE LIVES MATTER LECTURE IMPLORED RESTORATION OF HUMANITY
“They were still people. Don’t treat them as if they were not human,” said Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield in talking about slaves during his lecture Slave Lives Matter: Biographies of Black Slaves in the Maritimes. As King’s continues its inquiry into possible historical connections to slavery, it welcomed Dr. Whitfield, a professor of US and Canadian history at the University of Vermont, who gave a glimpse into the stories of some slaves in the Maritimes during the 17th and 18th centuries, and also reminded the crowd to restore the humanity to slavery.
President Lahey, Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield and Dr. Dorota Glowacka
Dr. Abraham Rudnick
ACADEMIC PAPERS CONCERNING SCHOLARLY INQUIRY NOW IN
The four academic research papers that form the backbone of King’s scholarly inquiry on connections between King’s and slavery are all now in and posted on King’s website at www.ukings.ca/ slavery-inquiry-research. They were commissioned by President Lahey and each essay has been reviewed by a panel consisting of representatives of the King’s community and academic historians from outside of King’s with expertise in relevant fields of historical scholarship. The inquiry’s next steps are now in development and will be shared with the community later this year.
SCHOLARSHIPS FURTHER ACCESSIBILITY
On March 14, Minister Tony Ince read Resolution No. 836 in the Nova Scotia legislature recognizing the role of the Prince and Dr. Carrie Best Scholarships in making education more accessible for African-Nova Scotian and Indigenous students at King’s.
2019 SAUL GREEN LECTURER EXAMINES THE RELEVANCE OF BIBLICAL ANALOGIES TO HEALTH-CARE TRANSFORMATION “We trust our health-care providers too much,” psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Abraham Rudnick told the audience at the Dr. Saul Green Memorial Lecture at King’s this fall—a lecture that was in turns challenging, empowering and provocative. He encouraged everyone to do research. “I want my patients to be better informed. I want to stand corrected.” The premise of his lecture was to examine counterfactual or ‘what if ’ thinking through Biblical examples.
TRUE STORIES FROM KING’S MFA IN CREATIVE NONFICTION
MFA STUDENT WINS RESEARCH BURSARY Australian-born Toronto travel writer Amanda Lee has won the MFA Research Bursary worth $1,500. The bursary is intended to help the student undertake research for their book project, which they would otherwise not be able to pursue. It’s made possible by the generosity of award-winning journalist and nonfiction writer, Mary Janigan, a supporter of the MFA program since its inception, and her husband, respected business leader Thomas Kierans. Amanda Lee is using the prize to fund research into a book she’s writing about opal mining.
SUMMER MFA RESIDENCY WELCOMES JORDAN GINSBERG AND ALICIA ELLIOTT Jordan Ginsberg, editor-in-chief of Hazlitt and editorial director of Penguin Random House Canada’s new Strange Light imprint, was this year’s King’s MFA Editor in Residence. Alicia Elliott, a Haudenosaunee writer, was the MFA’s Writer in Residence for the Summer 2019 MFA residency. Her acclaimed collection of essays A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was published in 2019.
BEST NONFICTION BOOK PROPOSAL GOES TO STACY MCLEOD Stacey McLeod, MFA’19, won the first Penguin Random House Canada Prize for Best Nonfiction Book Proposal. It celebrates excellence in creative nonfiction, is valued at $2,500 and includes consultation with a Penguin Random House Canada Editor, as well as an offer by Westwood Creative Artists to represent the author.
MFA MENTOR APPRENTICE ALSO INSTRUCTOR OF NEW, NONCREDIT WRITING COURSES
Cooper Lee Bombardier, who holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Nonfiction and a Master of Science in Writing/Book Publishing, as well as a BFA in Illustration, and is a queer and trans writer working primarily in creative nonfiction, was named as King’s MFA mentor apprentice for 2019-20. He is also one of the instructors teaching King’s new noncredit writing workshops.
“AN INELEGANT SOLUTION TO A NONESSENTIAL PROBLEM”: ON WAITING, NON-ARRIVING, AND EATING DINNER WITH ANNE CARSON
After Anne Carson delivered the 2019 Alex Fountain Memorial Lecture, I spent months writing poems on the theme of waiting. In preparing to write this reflection, I returned to those poems only to discover that they had been building, unbeknownst to me, together towards an arrival in this work. What follows is drawn from those notebooks, the lecture and Carson’s novel Autobiography of Red
by Julia-Simone Rutgers, BJ(Hons)’19
TELL ME RUSTY, HOW DID IT ALL GET STARTED? the sky says to notoriously-waited-upon literary figure Godot, who is going by Rusty here. The non-arriving. This line is spoken at some point in the midst of Anne Carson’s Lecture on the History of Skywriting, which she presented to a room of eager listeners on a late January 2019 evening in Alumni Hall. In the lecture, Carson is the sky, offering a succinct autobiography on writing, on becoming, and notably on the peculiar precept of non-arriving.
The night of the lecture I had affixed a pin (a gift from my mother, who years ago had seen it and thought of me) to the shirt beneath my jacket. It’s a black and white photo of Carson in the same jacket and tie she wore that evening—she is stoic, steely, striking. Over the years the pin has served as a memento of a poetic inspiration that has long shaped my own creative voice.
Knowing I would have an opportunity to speak with Carson over dinner that evening, and being propelled by a tingling journalistic instinct, I prepared a number of questions to ask her. By the time we sat down to eat, however, it had become clear she didn’t much like being asked questions, so I chose the one I thought would yield the most practical response.
The 2020 Alex Fountain Memorial Lecture will be held at King’s on Thursday, February 27. Cree artist Kent Monkman, known for his provocative interventions into Western European and American art, will discuss challenging the colonial perspective in history. Monkman was recently commissioned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York—two monumental history paintings for the Great Hall and the creation of a new performance piece. His lecture at King’s will be livestreamed at ukings.ca if you’d like to watch it on-line.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Anne Carson delivering the 2019 Fountain Lecture at King’s, looking ‘stoic, steely, striking’. Julie-Simone Rutgers displays the Anne Carson pin her mom gave her. Rutgers’s Anne Carson pin.
“Anne, in your writing you have a knack for seamlessly drawing seemingly disparate details and concepts together—how do you see the disparate things as connected?” I asked.
In response, she told me that connecting the disparate things is simply about thinking: first intuiting and later thinking out why they were intuited that way. 1 On paper this seems quite simple but in the space of that movement, from intuiting to discovering why things were intuited as such, there is a period of waiting. There is a period of time where the thinking is a kind of non-arrival; the ideas fall but do not fall into place. 2 There is a period of time wherein there is nothing to write.
I re-read Carson’s Autobiography of Red (a novel in verse) shortly after the lecture, searching again for inspiration. In it, our hero Geryon says: “Everyone seems to be waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Ancash replies. “Yes, waiting for what,” said Geryon. I understand Autobiography of Red, much like History of Skywriting, to be the story of a becoming. Each is the story of a creative force being thrust into being; the heroes face desire, longing and pain until eventually staring down the ineffectual certainty of their voice.
Through it all, driving them onward, is the fact of non-arriving. Autobiography of Red continues a short while later to note that, with Geryon, “overhead / the sky waited too.”
In January I took myself to the edge of the Northwest Arm to look upwards and try to trace which direction the clouds were moving. I tried to decide whether they were stratus or perhaps nimbus clouds blurring the afternoon sun. I tried to imagine where they were going, what they were writing.
“Waiting is at the meeting point of blue and orange—impossible, sturdy, ephemeral, the dream image that stays clear after waking,” I wrote in February, from that same rocky and cloud-gazing shore.
“When I am waiting here I am always here, and in every waiting moment here, since being here and not here simultaneously is much the point of waiting.” Why don’t I arrive? Rusty asks amidst the lecture.
This strikes me as a familiar question. I have long felt at the mercy of my non-arrival, caught on the edge between myself and time, time catching up to me and time stretching away before me. I have often found myself frustrated, waiting for the intuitions to become ideas, for voice to arrive. Always ahead is another terrifying blankness, another promise springing forth from nowhere and as yet unfulfilled.
Not to arrive, we learn from Rusty, is tricky, layered work.
I say all of this to offer what Carson calls “an inelegant solution to a non-essential problem.” Here the problem is what to make of the non-arriving—how to grapple with the uncertainty between intuition and connection, with the profoundly human fact of waiting.
If I take Carson’s word for it the solution, inelegant as it may be, is to think through it, trusting in the intuition. To trust that in the boundless non-arrival, somewhere, is the becoming.
In the waiting and perhaps never arriving, is the trembling fortitude of voice.
1 As this was not actually an official interview, these are not an exact transcript, and rather a patchwork of memory and the notes I took in my journal that night.
IT’S HIP TO BE HYP
Forty-one students, King’s largest-ever Humanities for Young People (HYP) class, spent a week ‘thinking through fear’ at King’s last summer.
The grand finale to their busy week was a public symposium at Halifax’s Central Library featuring two keynote speakers: activist and freelance journalist Desmond Cole, and the critically acclaimed author of Hysteria and other titles Elisabeth de Mariaffi. Both Cole and de Mariaffi discussed the social and political dimensions of fear.
The theme for HYP 2020, its fifth iteration, is aptly “Hindsight.” Yep—Hindsight is 2020!
If you know a bright and highly motivated 15- to 17-year-old who would enjoy spending a week living and learning at King’s this summer, please refer them to hyp.ukings.ca.
TOP: 2019 HYP students toured the Halifax Harbour during one of their outings. BOTTOM: A 2019 HYP student asks a question at the public symposium.
LAWRENCE HILL DELIVERS LECTURE ON THE STORIES OF AFRICANCANADIANS
Each year, the Armbrae Dialogue brings high school students to King’s to participate in a two-day symposium on a contemporary, pressing topic. The 2019 topic was The Story Not Told.
Celebrated author Lawrence Hill, DCL’18, delivered the keynote lecture to a capacity-crowd of high schoolers and community members in Alumni Hall as part of the Armbrae Dialogue at King’s on Nov. 13. Speaking about the stories of African-Canadians, he said, “Slavery’s story in Canada isn’t an untold story...it’s a story most people haven’t listened to.” CBC Halifax’s Information Morning host Portia Clark moderated the Q&A. Answering questions about the call to write, Hill said it’s “an act of liberation” and that writing fiction gives him a freedom to get to his own truths: “Fiction is where my heart beats hardest.” The audience responded with a standing ovation.
FACULTY HONOURS
photo: Nick Pearce
CHRIS ELSON RECEIVES ORDER OF ACADEMIC PALMS In April, King’s faculty member and Chair of Dalhousie University’s French Department, Dr. Chris Elson, BA(Hons)’86, was invested into the Ordre des Palmes Academique (Order of Academic Palms), a national order bestowed by the French Republic to distinguished academics and figures in the world of culture and education.
The French Ambassador to Canada, Kareen Rispal, was in Halifax for the investiture ceremony which took place in the Dalhousie Arts Centre. King’s President William Lahey was among the speakers to congratulate Dr. Elson, along with Dalhousie’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean Frank Harvey and Dalhousie’s interim President Peter MacKinnon. “…Chris is one of the world’s foremost experts on Canadian writer Scott Symons and French poet and thinker Michel Deguy. He’s admired as an astute editor, translator, and writer. But despite expertise in some of the most challenging philosophy and poetry ever written, he’s also remarkably down to earth,” President Lahey said in his remarks. “An elderly Mennonite woman, after meeting Chris, even said: ‘I didn’t realize that he was a professor. He was so nice I just assumed he was a plumber or something.’ ” Toutes nos félicitations, Dr. Elson.
SYLVIA HAMILTON AND SHIRLEY TILLOTSON RECEIVE 2019 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S HISTORY AWARDS It’s a history-making year! Two of King’s faculty members have been recognized for deepening our understanding of the past. Sylvia Hamilton (left) is receiving the 2019 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media. She has been teaching documentary journalism at King’s since 2004. Hundreds of King’s students have benefited from Hamilton’s immense knowledge, steadfast guidance and firm, gentle nature. All the while, her award-winning body of work uncovering stories of the struggles and accomplishments of African Canadians has grown. She’s a filmmaker, essayist, poet, public speaker and multi-media artist.
Historian and King’s Inglis Professor Shirley Tillotson (right) is receiving the 2019 Governor General’s History Award for Scholarly Research for her book Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy. It was published by UBC Press in 2017 and has been called a ‘trailblazing study.’
“It is indeed extraordinary for two King’s community members to be receiving these national awards in the same year, and lovely that one recognizes achievement by a journalism professor, and the other achievement by a humanities professor. Please join me in wishing both Sylvia and Shirley our deepest congratulations for these honours, and gratitude for their many contributions to King’s and society,” President Lahey said in a community email.
PRESIDENT LAHEY HONOURED FOR EXCELLENCE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION King’s President and Vice-Chancellor William Lahey received the 2019 Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Excellence in Public Administration at a ceremony at Government House on Oct. 24. This award is given annually to a public sector practitioner whose contributions to public administration exhibit the highest standard of excellence, dedication and accomplishment. It is presented by the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia who serves as patron of the award. In his acceptance speech, President Lahey said, “To be recognized for excellence in one’s profession is a great blessing. It is doubly so when the honour comes from one’s peers based on the nomination of respected colleagues. It is triply so when the honour is conferred by the Lieutenant Governor in Government House.
Forgive the self-indulgence if I say, ‘Not bad for a kid who started out on a chicken farm and woodlot in Miramichi’… In today’s more cosmopolitan world, it probably does not seem noteworthy that a New Brunswicker should be honoured for public administration by the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. But from where I started in life, it seems like a miraculous thing. As an adopted Nova Scotian, who owes so much to Nova Scotia, it makes me very proud.”
And that’s not the only honour President Lahey received this year. He was appointed Chair of the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents (CONSUP) and is now leading this advocacy organization that represents 10 of Nova Scotian universities. Plus, he received the “Friend of the Acadian Forest” award from the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners and Operators Association for his independent review of forestry practices in Nova Scotia. King’s is thankful to President Lahey and his wife, Kathryn Lassaline, for giving King’s the honorarium he received for his independent review to create one of the major gifts that helped endow the now re-instated Prince Scholarship.
