19 minute read
AlumNotes
Read more details on these alumni achievements in the Alumni & Friends section of King’s website: www.ukings.ca/alumni
70s
Ray Oake, ’74. Upon retiring from teaching physical education in Sydney, N.S., Ray continues his exercising. Between running in marathons around North America and kayaking at Big Pond, he skates weekly. In Ray’s submission he notes that the question is, “Did Ray pay Marie for the skates?”
For Arthur George Theuerkauf, BA’73, LLB, Q.C., law has been central to his career, first as an RCMP officer and then later becoming a crown prosecutor in Dartmouth. Art is an excellent and long-time golfer; he knows the rules, just make sure you don’t cross the line when playing with him!
80s
On October 31, 2020, Christine Davies, BJ(Hons)’83, retired from CBC Newfoundland after almost 34.5 years with the corporation. During her career, she worked at every CBC station in the province as a reporter for radio and TV, studio director, producer, music librarian, and radio archivist. She continues to reside in St. John’s.
Sue Farrell Holler, BJ(Hons)’84, recently won an Alberta Literary Award—the R. Ross Annett Award—and the US-based High Plains Book Award, for her novel Cold White Sun, based on the true story of a child refugee who was smuggled into Canada. The book was also a finalist for a 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award. The result of months of intense interviews and detailed research, Holler considers writing this story one of the top experiences of her life.
After a 32-year career with the Nova Scotia Public Service in a variety of departments and roles, Shirley (Wall) Hazen, BA(Hons)’85, retired as a Director at the Department of Business on October 31, 2019. Shirley is enjoying creative endeavours and an active volunteer life. After
90s
Militia Man is a documentary directed by Lisa Clifford, BJ(Hons)’92, a journalist formerly of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, who has covered the International Criminal Court for more than a decade. Despite spending millions of euros, the International Criminal Court has shed little light on the war crimes of Congolese militia man Germain Katanga, or properly compensated his victims. Militia Man is the story of a flawed war crimes trial and the families shattered by the politics of international justice. two years of a peaceful retirement, Mark Hazen, BSc(Hons)’85, is coping with the disruption. In mid-2019, Mark launched his woodturning business Rotational Matters. He invites you to check out some of his creations on his Rotational Matters social media.
In December 2019, Luanne Walton, BA’86, was promoted to the position of Senior General Counsel in the Constitutional, Administrative and International Law Section at the Department of Justice Canada. She specializes in the Canadian division of powers.
John Burchall, BJ’93, began a Doctor of Ministry program in Public Theology in the fall of 2020 at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, St. Paul, Minn. In 2009, John graduated from the Howard University School of Divinity, Washington, DC, and he is also a 2010 graduate of Georgetown University Hospital Chaplaincy Residency. In July 2013, John was ordained in the American Baptist tradition.
John has worked for the Montgomery Hospice of Rockville, Md., and Ecumen Hospice of the Twin Cities respectively. Currently, he is a Certified Peer Support Specialist under the Minnesota Department of Health and working in Suicide Prevention and Mental Health.
He is also President of the Toastmasters Club 75, Minneapolis, Minn., and a Community Board Member of Blaisdell YMCA. John and Janessa Hope Kohls of Baldwin, Wis., were married on February 20, 2020 at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minn., where he is an associate minister.
Ida Gallant-McLean, daughter of Alex McLean, BA(Hons)’96, and Claire Gallant, was born in November 2019 and has been enjoying the attention of two housebound parents and a doting older brother and sister. Alex is co-artistic director of Halifax’s Zuppa Theatre, currently working from home after a number of cancelled festival appearances elsewhere in Canada. Claire runs Halifax’s Bite-Sized Kitchen, a company devoted to teaching children hands-on skills in the kitchen, also dormant during the COVID-19 pandemic. The upside has been lots of family time in the garden, as well as occasional latenight conversations about the philosophy of mind. Ida thoroughly approves of it all. QUEENSBOUND, an audio project founded by KC Trommer, ’93, in 2018, has launched a dynamic new website. QUEENSBOUND seeks to connect writers across the New York City borough and showcase and develop a literature of Queens. On queensbound. com, you can navigate the Queens subway and hear all 33 poems from 2018 and 2020, including from past Queens Poets Laureate Paolo Javier and Maria Lisella (you can find Trommer’s poem on 46th Street).
Lhadon Tethong, BA’98, is co-founder and director of the Tibet Action Institute and was awarded the National Endowment for Democracy’s 2019 Democracy Awards. Lhadon leads a team of technologists and human rights advocates in developing and advancing open-source communication technologies, nonviolent strategies, and innovative training programs for Tibetans and other groups facing heavy repression. She currently serves as co-chair of the International Tibet Network, the global coalition of Tibet-related non-governmental organizations.
Kathryn Burton, BA’98, was named chief of staff to Boston, Mass., Mayor Martin J. Walsh. She officially stepped into the role on March 9, 2020. Prior to working as chief of staff to Mayor Walsh, Burton was director of operations for New Boston Ventures and previously worked as chief of staff for thenstate treasurer Steven Grossman.
In January 2021, Amelia Hadfield, BA(Hons)’96, took up the position of Dean International at the University of Surrey, in addition to retaining her posts as Head of Politics and director of the Centre for Britain and Europe.
Terra Spencer, ’99, has been working as a solo performer and songwriter since 2018. She released her first album in 2019, touring the Maritimes, Ontario, the U.K. and Europe. Her second record, Chasing Rabbits, was recorded in Halifax and released in November 2020. It is a bundle of winter songs, reaching back to Terra’s experience leaving home for university until the present day, about her life as a musician and mother alongside fellow King’s alumnus, Andrew Kasprzak, ’97. Their daughter, Sarah, who plays the French horn on Terra’s album, is currently in the Foundation Year Program (FYP)!
2000s
Megan Wennberg, BJ’04, has directed a documentary titled The Killing of Phillip Boudreau. The film tells the complicated story of a death that tore apart the Nova Scotian community of Isle Madame, a postcard-perfect collection of Acadian fishing villages off the coast of Cape Breton Island.
Sam Mednick, BJ(Hons)’05, a King’s journalism grad who was kicked out of South Sudan by its government in October 2019, and praised in a subsequent New York Times editorial, has had her first TEDx Talk posted online. In her TEDx Talk, Mednick talks about what it’s like to report from such a place, and the value of paying attention to this kind of “forgotten” conflict. Mednick is a freelance journalist and the Burkina Faso correspondent for the Associated Press. She’s worked and lived all over the world including Africa, Asia, South America, Europe and the Middle East covering conflict, post-conflict and development stories. Written and directed by Ariel Nasr, BA(Hons)’05, The Forbidden Reel was shown at the Atlantic International Film Festival. The film is a chronicle of the efforts Afghan filmmakers took to preserve their national cinema against civil unrest. Marco Chown Oved, BA(Hons)’05, received the Environmental and Climate Change Award from the Canadian Association of Journalists for his feature Life and Death Under the Dome, which looked at the deadly 2018 heat wave in Montréal and what can be done to prepare for more frequent and hotter urban heat waves in the future.
Sam Worthington, BJ(Hons)’05, and Yolana Wassersug, BA(Hons)’08, were married on December 28, 2019, at the Prince George Hotel in Halifax. Sam teaches at Dalhousie and Yolana works in the Registrar’s Office at King’s. Their wedding party included dear King’s alumni friends, Jesse Hiltz, BA(Hons)’08, and Michelle Arbus, BA(Hons)’09.
Vanessa Green, BJ(Hons)’07, launched her own content marketing consultancy, Greenlight Content, in September 2020.
Emma Yardley, BJ’07, won silver in the Destination Travel (Newspaper) category at the 28th Annual North American Travel Journalists Association Awards for excellence in travel journalism for her article, “How to See Iceland by Boat,” published by the Globe and Mail, and a bronze in the Cruises (Print Publication) category for “Beyond the Fjords,” published by VIE Magazine.
Lee Nelson, BA’08, has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Bodies from Below: Decomposition, Death Certificates, and the Politics of ‘Natural’ Death,” before his committee in the Science & Technology Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His dissertation focuses on human decomposition research within the forensic sciences, specifically forensic entomology, and how the category ‘Natural Death’ within death certificates affects forensic research and naturalizes environmental injustices. Jessica J. Lee, BA(Hons)’08, was awarded the 2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction for her memoir Two Trees Make a Forest.
Laurel Collins, BA’09, was elected the Member of Parliament representing Victoria, B.C., in October 2019. Prior to her election in the House of Commons, Collins was an instructor at the University of Victoria and a city councillor.
Laura MacKenzie,
BJ(Hons)’10, and
Vincenzo Ravina,
BJ(Hons)’10, were married on August 3, 2019, in Cape Breton, N.S. They met at King’s in 2008 thanks to journalism faculty Fred Vallance-Jones putting them together as editing partners in Reporting Techniques. Laura now works as an English language instructor at ISANS. Vincenzo appeared on season 7 of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, presenting an original magic routine called Mind-Reading Glasses. The episode aired on August 3, 2020. Good things happen on August 3rd!
Christina Macdonald, BA(Hons)’09, became a partner of Kimball Law in January 2020. Christina joined the firm as an articled clerk in 2017 and became an associate lawyer after being called to the Nova Scotia bar in 2018. She and Ian Sinclair, ’06, who first met in FYP 2004-05, now live in Wolfville, N.S. John Packman, BJ(Hons)’09, built a corporate portrait and video business. He has pivoted into broadcasting livestreamed talks, interviews and festivals since COVID-19 began. He recently completed video work for the Toronto International Festival of Authors and Material Sampling: A Making + Thinking Symposium.
Lachlan MacLeod, BA’10, and Cassie Guinan, BA’13, are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Ivy Louise Guinan MacLeod, on September 24, 2019, in Halifax, N.S.
2010s
Evany Rosen, BA(Hons)’10, is the co-creator of the hilarious TV series New Eden, a true-crime mockumentary about an all-female cult in 1970s B.C., which quickly implodes due to the incompetence of its narcissistic and lunatic leaders. Not only did Rosen co-write the series, but she also stars as one of the lunatic leaders.
Justis Danto-Clancy, BA(Hons)’11, and his partner Justin Blanco, won the Sopinka Cup, the National Trial Advocacy Competition, in March 2020. To place first, Danto-Clancy and Blanco had to first win the Arnup Cup, the Annual Trial Advocacy Competition for Ontario law schools, and then beat seven other top-tier teams at the National Trial Advocacy Competition, all of whom won their respective regions.
Danto-Clancy is now in his third year of a law degree at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., where he was the 2019-20 president of the Law Students’ Society. Moira Dann, MFA’16, has a book deal with Touchwood Editions for a book entitled, Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Objects. It’s a “wonderful, nerdy history connected to items found in what used to be the home of B.C.’s biggest family of interesting settler stinkers, the Dunsmuirs.” The book is scheduled for publication in spring 2021.
Taylor Saracuse, BA(Hons)’16, is in a Yellowknife-based band called PIT!. They are an R&B/soul group and their first EP Modern Mating Calls was released on May 7, 2020, funded by the N.W.T. Arts Council. You can listen to PIT!’s EP on Bandcamp.
Lorax B. Horne, BJ(Hons)’16, was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Lorax is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Guardian, Newsweek, CBC, Maisonneuve, the Globe and Mail, and Elle Canada. They were recently named Editor in Chief for Distributed Denial of Secrets, a publishing collective aimed at enabling the free transmission of data in the public interest. Horne is currently developing Hacks and Hackers, a memoir-driven book about the intersection of technology and people.
Abagail Bumpus, BA(Hons)’18, graduated with distinction from the University of Leeds with an MA in Curating Science. The program was housed in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. Abagail’s dissertation was titled “Our Emotional Connection to Living Collections: Understanding How We Collect Plants at the
Intersection of Our Biological and Digital Environments.” It explored plant collection practices within Facebook groups, discussing both traditional botanical practices and memes! She hopes to explore the topic further, perhaps in a doctoral program.
2020s
Jennifer Bain, MFA’20, won gold in the 2020 Travel Media Association of Canada Awards in the Sports, Recreation and Adventure (Online Publication) category for “How to catch a baseball game in Cuba? Be relentless,” published by the Daily Beast and bronze in the Destination Travel category for her article “The Trouble with Teen Angst,” published by the Globe and Mail.
Margaret Lynch, MFA’20, is the winner of the 2020 Penguin Random House Best Nonfiction Book Proposal Prize. She won for her proposal for Transformed: When My DNA Changed, So Did I, her memoir of her journey to “become a better person” after a rare leukemia invaded her body when she was just 30.
The Lonest of Wolves, an award-winning documentary short directed by Ellery Platts, BJ(Hons)’20, and Travis Devonport, BJ(Hons)’20, premiered at the Atlantic International Film Festival as part of the NextGen Shorts Program.
Feleshia Chandler, BJ(Hons)’20, and Lucy Harnish, BJ(Hons)’20, directed a documentary short, The Mad Scientist of Hubbards, at the Atlantic International Film Festival, about local designer Allan Carver, whose large-scale constructions blend art and technology.
Danica Sommerfeldt, MFA’20, has launched an online bookstore and monthly book subscription service, Coastal Bookstore. Based in Port Moody, B.C., she hopes to open a brick-and-mortar store there in the very near future. For now, Coastal Bookstore offers a small collection of books, all of which have been personally researched and selected by Danica to ensure they offer good quality reads and represent diverse voices. Whilst launching a business in the midst of a global pandemic has been challenging, Danica has adapted and persisted in this adventure, and looks forward to opening the physical bookstore very soon.
IN MEMORIAM
Marion (Ware) Boyer, (BA’63),
May 16, 2020 Barbara (Jefferson) Brougham, (BA’51), June 19, 2019 Andrew Burns, (1956), June 10, 2019 Bernice Camachao, (Friend of the College), March 31, 2020 Silver Donald Cameron, (DCL’04), June 1, 2020 Catherine Campbell, (BA(Hons)’87),
September 1, 2019 Jennifer Casey, (BJ’11),
May 17, 2020 Donald Clancy, (1952),
September 11, 2019 Borden Conrad, (BA’69), January 29, 2021 Rosalie Courage, (BA’76), (Board of Governors 2018-21),
February 28, 2021 Armand Couture, (1968),
November 4, 2020 Edward Doering, (BA’58), May 20, 2019 C. Russell Elliott, (BA’37,
BDiv’52, DD’79),
October 2, 2020 Brian Fisher, (BA’81,
BSc(Hons)’85), January 1, 2021 Ilze Folkins, (Friend of the
July 17, 2020 Jack Hatcher, (BA’69),
March 24, 2019 James How, (DipJ’58),
November 19, 2019 Nancy King, (BJ(Hons)’95),
October 2, 2020 Christos Kritikos, (DCL’02),
January 31, 2021 Harvey Lewis, (1941),
October 13, 2020 Peter MacDonald, (1954),
October 6, 2020 Brian MacGillivray, (1990),
August 26, 2020 Gerald Nelson, (1946),
February 17, 2021 Valerie O’Brien, (Friend of the
College), February 9, 2020 Margaret (Latimer) Power, (BA’73), April 8, 2020 Peter Power, (BSc’53),
February 3, 2021 Margaret Saunders, (1953),
September 6, 2019 Lynn Sherren, (BJ(Hons)’80),
March 11, 2020 Margaret Smith, (1990),
January 4, 2020 Harold Stevens, (1958),
May 29, 2019 Douglas Troop, (1946),
November 6, 2020 John Wainwright, (1962),
October 3, 2019 Jana Wieder, (Friend of the
College), October 9, 2020 David K. Wilson, (1948, DCL’13),
June 29, 2020 Cherie (Tolson) Winters, (1964),
March 22, 2020
CANON ELLIOTT
by Rev. Dr. Ranall Ingalls, King’s College Chaplain
‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, or sought to change it. The point, however, is to love it.’ —Fr. Gary Thorne (with apologies to Karl Marx), final FYP lecture 2018
A DISTINGUISHED KING’S graduate finished his course this past autumn on October 2, ‘full of years.’ The Rev’d Canon Clark Russell Elliott (BA ’37, Div ’52, DD ’79), was 103. Over his long life he distinguished himself in many ways: as a faithful parish priest; as a social activist and community builder; as a friend, example and mentor. Readers who knew him will be able to add to this list. But it is perhaps as one who embodied the education that King’s seeks to give that he distinguished himself above all. In him knowing and loving met, and were not separated.
At a time when most of Nova Scotia was populated by subsistence farmers, fishers, and foresters, he was born in the rural farming village of New Ross (July 10, 1917), into a large family, the sixth of nine children. Before he was 10 he went to live with his grandparents, answering a plea from his grandfather for help on the farm. Thus he grew up intimately acquainted with poverty, physical labour, and people who depended upon one another and cared for one another. Attending Christ Church in New Ross he also grew up familiar with prayer, worship, the poetry of The Book of Common Prayer, the beauty of the carpenter gothic buildings typical of Maritime Anglicanism, and the rhythm of fasts, feasts and seasons of prayer closely related to agricultural rhythms. The hymns chosen for his funeral speak eloquently of this world, where grew the roots of the great love for people that characterized his whole life. Shaped by love, he loved in turn.
His best-known book, The Briefcase Boys, recounts how as a deacon (1940) and then as a priest (1941) a passionate commitment to social activism and community development as a founding member of the Anglican Fellowship for Social Action (AFSA) sometimes led to misunderstanding. This was long before such activism became respectable in the 1960s. Friendship sustained him: the friendship of the Rev’d Dr. Samuel Prince, professor at King’s and a well-known sociologist; the friendship of a group of young clergy—the ‘briefcase boys’ of the title of his book; the friendship of members of AFSA in Nova Scotia and abroad. The same passionate commitment informed his pastoral care for the people of five Nova Scotia parishes: Pugwash, Bridgetown, Lantz, Fairview, and Liverpool. He served St. John’s Church in Fairview twice.
Canon Elliott was well acquainted with grief, for all the cheerful enthusiasm for which he was known and loved. With his first wife, Dorothy, he outlived their oldest son, Michael, who died not long after graduating from King’s. (A scholarship for a returning student in memory of Michael continues at King’s to this day.) Fr. Elliott also outlived Dorothy, and later their younger daughter Martha, as well as his second wife, Carol, whom he married several years after Dorothy’s death. With his marriage to Carol, he gained three step-children who became very close to him both before and after her death.
A cleric who worked with Canon Elliott for two summers recently wrote of him,
I remember many things, but above all his unremitting kindness. It was that,
I think, rather than social theory, that underlay his commitment to justice… He bore much sadness in his life but I think it only made him kinder.
Love for people and care for communi-
ties continued as Canon Elliott ‘retired’ to Wolfville. He did not believe in retirement. Instead, he devoted himself to the town and its people, making a connection with the local L’Arche community, volunteering with the local Interfaith Council, concerning himself with issues of housing, undertaking pastoral visiting, and joining a small group of Baptists, Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore Ignatian spirituality.
As age curtailed his activity, Canon Elliott continued to be nourished by contemplative roots planted in childhood and nourished at King’s. In a meditation written for friends and family the Christmas following his 100th birthday he wrote, “Only God Himself knows fully the saving power of waiting in love.” Those who have lived the vita activa as he did often find waiting and the end of life particularly difficult. He shows a remarkable poise.
Both nature and human nature seem to possess an inner rhythm of working and waiting, starting and stopping, speeding and stillness. Each year has its winter, each week its Sabbath, each day its night.
Trees bloom and shed foliage to wait for Spring. A seed waits in dark soil until the sun draws it up out of the soil. Every human needs to wait full nine months before separating from mother to fend for itself.
Near the beginning of the same reflection he quotes the elderly Pope John XXIII, “My bags are packed, I am ready to go.” In what follows he makes abundantly clear that these words do not arise from self-pity or a lack of appreciation for the gift of life or the goodness of temporal things. He was waiting for union with the same divine Love from which his pastoral care and social activism came. This gave meaning to his waiting, and sustained him in hope till he passed out of our sight. “God waits.… Some day He will be All-in-All again—and I will be home, where I belong.”
LEFT: Canon Russell Elliott, photo by Josh Hoffman RIGHT: The Elliott brothers. From left: Chester, Howard, Russell, Lewis, Albert and Robert Elliott. Taken outside the family home in New Ross, N.S., near the end of World War II.
