Portico Magazine, Fall 2016

FALL 2016

UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

U OF G RESEARCHERS ARE HELPING TO TACKLE ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST CHALLENGES:

HOW TO FEED

9 BILLION P.21

The art of craft beer Royal City Brewing Co. taps into the popularity of small-batch brewing. p.24

Planting the seed

Mike Dixon uses space technology to boldly grow where no one has grown before. p.15

First-rate food

U of G’s innovative approach to local and sustainable campus food. p.28

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Contents

24 16 14

32

FEATURES

14 On the job Allison Day takes her kitchen online.

15 Q&A Mike Dixon uses space technology to grow food in barren places.

16 Feast or famine

COVER PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK PHOTOS (THIS PAGE): DEAN PALMER; ALLISON DAY

Evan Fraser’s five-part plan to fix our broken food system.

VOICES

SECTIONS

4 Editor’s note 4 Loose cannon 5 President’s message 34 Class notes

6 Around the ring

IN EVERY ISSUE

6 Coursework 11 Ask an expert 28 This I know 30 Alumni spotlights 36 Passages 37 Time capsule

@porticomag

News and views from around campus.

10 Discovery U of G research, innovations and ideas.

31 Alumni matters Events, updates and class connections.

COVER STORY

21 A new food revolution How researchers are aiming to ensure a safe and well-fed future.

24 The craft of beer making Royal City Brewing Co. taps into small-batch beer.

38 Last look The Yukon Gold potato turns 50.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 3

Editor’s note Fall 2016, Vol. 48, Issue 3 LOOSE CANNON @shannoncowan Pleased to see @porticomag featured a drawing by @theurbangeog in its summer issue. Now where did I put my crayons?

@vanaqua Check out @porticomag’s Alumni Spotlight article on #vanaqua’s head vet Marty Haulena. @rebecca hannam Learned something new in @porticomag @RobertaBonda was a @UofGuelphOAC aggie!

The future of food In Evan Fraser’s book Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, the U of G professor outlines how food has changed the course of history. Thriving societies have been built on the exchange of food surpluses, but when crops failed, cultures have fallen into poverty, famine and war.

Today, we live in an age of astounding agricultural productivity — the United Nations estimates there are about 2,850 daily dietary calories available for every man, woman and child in the world that should provide more than enough to feed every person a good diet.

And yet, there are two billion overweight or obese people and 800 million undernourished people globally. We waste onethird of the food we produce.

Unless we change the way we produce food, our supplies will be in jeopardy.

In this issue we devour all

things food. We take you into U of G’s Food Institute and learn about the looming food crisis from Fraser, the institute’s new director. We also examine how U of G is taking up the challenge of fixing a broken food system with its cross-disciplinary Food From Thought initiative.

Food brings us together — we couldn’t put together an issue like this without a few features that will tantalize your taste buds! And we explore the art, science and business of food — and drink — with stories of alumni making a mark in the food industry.

We can provide only a sample of the impact of Canada’s “Food University” on the industry. But with this issue, we hope to whet your appetite for learning more about how food production and consumption is shaping the world.

Stacey Morrison Editor

LETTERS

Joan Caruso, DHE ‘54, shares her completed colouring page of the McLaughlin Library from our Summer issue.

i was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry in 1985 and I immediately recognized one person in the photo on page 37 (Time Capsule) of the Summer 2016 magazine.

The woman fourth from the left in the front row, wearing a white lab coat and safety glasses, is my old friend Margaret Hunt. She

was a valued instructor, lab demonstrator and sessional lecturer in the Department of Chemistry for many years. She then joined Occupational Health and Safety, where she worked until she retired.

—Frances Sharom, U of G professor emeritus

Connect with Portico @porticomag 4 | PORTICO Fall 2016

porticomagazine@uoguelph.ca

porticomagazine.ca

PUBLISHERS

Daniel Atlin, vice-president (external) Chuck Cunningham, assistant vice-president, Communications and Public Affairs EDITOR

Stacey Morrison ART DIRECTOR

Janice Van Eck WRITERS

Susan Bubak, David DiCenzo, Kevin Gonsalves, Lori Bona Hunt, Wendy Jespersen, Teresa Pitman, Andrew Vowles PHOTOGRAPHERS

Dean Palmer, Amanda Scott

Portico is published three times a year by Communications and Public Affairs at the University of Guelph.

Opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or the University.

FEEDBACK

Send letters and story ideas to porticomagazine@uoguelph.ca or by mail to Communications and Public Affairs, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ont., N1G 2W1. We reserve the right to edit all submissions.

ADVERTISING

Send advertising inquiries to Stacey Morrison at s.morrison@uoguelph.ca or 519-824-4120, Ext. 58706.

ADDRESS CHANGES

Send address changes to: alumnirecords@uoguelph.ca or 519-824-4120, Ext. 56550, or by mail to Records c/o Alumni Affairs & Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ont., N1G 2W1.

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Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Portico Magazine, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ont., N1G 2W1.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Reflective thinking can transform the world

S

low down. How often do you hear that these days?

We live in a fastchanging world, one that often seems to value quick reaction over deep reflection.

Who has time to slow down in a world where we measure time in tweet- and Instagramsized chunks?

Certainly we all have to be more nimble and ready to take advantage of short-term opportunities. Like driving along a winding road, you need to follow the twists and turns from minute to minute.

That’s reactive thinking, or adapting to the here and now.

But those kinds of opportunities aren’t the only ones that matter. Often the really important issues are bigger and more complex. Defying quick and easy solutions, big problems require us to think longer-term and in more strategic ways.

Reflective thinking rises above the here and now to consider not just what we’re doing but also why. Is there a better road to your destination, one that will help you avoid all that white-knuckle steering in the first place?

Feeding our growing world is one of the grand challenges of our day. How will we provide enough food for the nine billion people expected to share this planet by mid-century, all while sustaining the planet’s ecosystems?

@porticomag

We can grow more food, but that’s only part of a much bigger and more complex answer. Relying only on growing more food is reactive thinking, like steering along that winding road.

Reflective thinking is transformative thinking.

Finding better routes to our

Defying quick and easy solutions, big problems require us to think longerterm and in more strategic ways. destination will involve transforming how we feed the world.

That’s the point of Food From Thought, a new long-term project at U of G funded by a $77-million investment from the federal government. I invite you to learn about this digital revolution in food and farming systems in this issue of the Portico.

Meeting this century’s pressing food challenge will take the creative efforts of many bright minds. Universities such as the University of Guelph are places where this kind of reflective thinking needs to happen.

It’s food for thought and, more importantly, Food From Thought.

Franco Vaccarino President and Vice-Chancellor Fall 2016 PORTICO | 5

COURSEWORK

A taste of food basics “SOMETIMES THE ACCIDENT IS EDIBLE, SOMETIMES NOT. THERE’S A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY IN EVERYTHING YOU DO.”

For students who skipped home economics — or didn’t pay attention in class — Alison Crerar’s “Understanding Foods” course is feeding their brains and stomachs.

It comes as no surprise to Crerar that some of her first- and second-year students don’t know how to use kitchen appliances or even how to turn them on. They may have grown up in families that were too busy to prepare home-cooked meals and relied instead on take-out and frozen dinners.

“You definitely see the learning,” she says. “They gain that

6 | PORTICO Fall 2016

Student Katelyn Chadder measures ingredients in Alison Crerar’s course.

confidence because they know the ‘why’ of what’s happening. They’re able to adapt recipes and create their own recipes because they know how one ingredient interacts with other ingredients.”

Students learn not only the basics of cooking but also the science behind food preparation and food safety. They then apply their knowledge in a food lab, which consists of a fully equipped kitchen and pantry. Whirlpool recently donated eight new stoves, a washer/dryer and a stand-mixer to the kitchen.

Not to be confused with U of G’s food science program,

“Understanding Foods” is aimed at non-science students such as those in hospitality and nutrition — the course is a requirement for both degrees.

Students learn about a new food group each week and try recipes using those foods. They began the fall term learning about salads, followed by fruits, then vegetables. When cooking vegetables, Crerar recommends adding a small amount of lemon juice to Guelph’s alkaline water to keep them from getting slimy.

A popular class recipe is beef stew — Crerar often gets emails from former students asking her for the recipe. “It comes out when they try to impress their significant other’s family.”

The baking component of the course teaches students how to use common ingredients found in cakes, muffins and desserts.

“Even though they’re all the same ingredients, but in different ratios, you get a totally different product,” says Crerar, who studied nutrition at U of G and took the course she now teaches. The order in which ingredients appear in a recipe also matters. Adding lemon juice too early to a lemon meringue pie, for example, will turn it into soup.

As for grading, the proof of the pudding isn’t in the eating.

Students are graded not on how well they execute a recipe but on how well they demonstrate their learning of the material. Crerar can tell how their concoctions taste by the looks on their faces.

“Accidents happen, but they learn from accidents,” she says.

“Sometimes the accident is edible, sometimes not. There’s a learning opportunity in everything you do.”

–SUSAN BUBAK

PHOTO: SUSAN BUBAK

Around the ring CAMPUS NEWS AND VIEWS

NUMBER CRUNCH

U of G’s new $45-million Athletic Centre includes a fitness centre, event centre, triple gym, multipurpose rooms and a central lobby with a climbing wall. Here are more stats:

$1.5 MILLION Cost of high-tech fitness equipment

1,300

11 Number of lockers

Number of multipurpose rooms

15,000 Number of additional athletic programming hours

2,200 8,0 00

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Number of seats in the event centre

STUDENT LIFE

PEOPLE

Students launch ‘green’ coffee cups campaign

Lawrence Hill, a creative writing professor, has been invested into the Order of Canada, considered the country’s highest honour.

A campaign organized by students and supported by U of G’s Hospitality Services aims to encourage the use of reusable coffee mugs on campus through customer incentives and an advertising campaign to reduce single-use cups.

About 25,000 cups of coffee are sold each day on campus, A campaign mostly in disposable organized by cups. students aims “This is problematic to encourage due to the resources required to the use of manufacture and transport these reusable coffee single-use products, and their mugs. significant contribution to landfill waste,” says Alison Tindall, a student co-leader of the campaign.

Tindall, along with students Tasia Wong, Monique Chan and Marion Davies, partnered with the Feeding 9 Billion program started by Evan Fraser, a U of G geography professor. The program aims to improve environmental sustainability and food security locally and globally.

The campaign includes: • A new stamp-card program rewarding purchases of hot drinks in reusable mugs; • Convenient public sinks for washing mugs; • Posters explaining the environmental effects of consumers’ choices and savings from reusable mugs (Hospitality Services charges any hot drink as a “small” if purchased in a reusable mug, which saves $150 a year for the average customer); and • Cashiers’ verbal recognition of reusable mugs.

Hospitality Services plans to integrate mugs into U of G’s existing “iamreusable” program, which allows patrons to borrow reusable dishes for to-go meals.

“This campaign will draw on the University of Guelph’s commitment to environmental sustainability, and to inspiring long-term, pro-environmental behaviour in its students and staff,” says Ed Townsley, executive director of Hospitality Services.

Karen Menard has been appointed assistant vice-president (institutional research and planning). She previously held leadership roles with Trillium Health Partners, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and McMaster University.

David Mirvish is stepping down as chancellor of the University of Guelph due to increasing work and personal responsibilities. The search for a new chancellor is under way.

Jess Notwell, an international development and sociology PhD candidate, has been awarded a Vanier scholarship worth $50,000 a year for three years. She is researching women in nongovernmental organizations.

Barry Smit, professor emeritus in the Department of Geography, has been inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his work in climate change.

Rene Van Acker has been appointed dean of the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) for a five-year term.

He was previously OAC’s associate dean (external relations) and a professor in the Department of Plant Agriculture.

Tony Vannelli, dean of the College of Physical and Engineering Science, has been named a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Square feet of social space, including a student lounge @porticomag

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 7

Around the ring NOTEWORTHY

U of G receives $30 million for new spaces and laboratory upgrades

Food keeps truckin’ across campus A new food truck has rolled onto campus. Hospitality Services recently introduced the funky-looking Caffeine Canteen, which offers coffee and baked goods made in a new specialty kitchen — the third such kitchen on campus — located in Creelman Hall.

The new kitchen’s baked goods include pastries such as scones and muffins, as well as some specialty breads.

The Caffeine Canteen will also have a grill to supply breakfast sandwiches for outdoor events or for a quick grab-and-go between classes.

The new truck is intended to help alleviate long morning coffee and food lines at the University Centre in particular. It will serve locally roasted Planet Bean coffee.

U of G’s existing food truck, Gryph N’ Grill, which served about 7,500 meals in its first year of operation, has an updated menu for the fall. A changing daily menu will feature items such as THE NEW burgers and fish tacos.

TRUCK IS Hospitality Services has invited INTENDED other Guelph food truck operators TO HELP to take part in on-campus activities ALLEVIATE such as sporting events and special LONG activities. Partner food trucks will be MORNING able to accept University of Guelph COFFEE meal cards.

AND FOOD LINES AT THE UNIVERSITY CENTRE.

8 | PORTICO Fall 2016

Students now have a choice of food trucks on campus.

• A biosafety Level 2 production animal research isolation unit that will improve research and training, and will enhance researchers’ ability to identify and prevent threatening infectious diseases; • A food innovation centre to accelerate research and innovation, foster industry partnerships and expand food manufacturing training; • Expansions and renovations in U of G’s Library; • Renewal and renovation of research spaces in the MacNaughton Building; and • New research and collaborative spaces in the Reynolds Building.

PHOTO: AMANDA SCOTT

CAMPUS NEWS

The University of Guelph will receive more than $30 million from the federal and provincial governments to enhance research and innovation facilities.

The funding will allow the University to undertake one of its largest-ever infrastructure improvement projects, involving six initiatives across campus.

“This critical investment will allow us to expand our world-class facilities, and the reach and impact of U of G innovations,” says president Franco Vaccarino. “The new spaces and resources will also facilitate the exchange of new ideas and opportunities, providing benefits for decades to come.”

About $26.2 million will come from the federal Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund (SIF). The province will commit $4.7 million and U of G will contribute $35.7 million, for a total investment of $66.6 million.

A key SIF project is a dedicated bio-carbon innovation and commercialization centre to be housed in U of G’s Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre.

As the first such lab in the world for enhancing bio-carbon manufacturing, this new bio-carbon centre will make plastics from engineered green composites and study their use in sustainable manufacturing, specifically the automotive sector.

Other funded projects are:

CAMPUS NEWS

CAMPUS NEWS

College of Business and Economics gets new home

U of G recognized for energy efficiency

After two years of renovations and upgrades, Macdonald Hall is the new home of the College of Business and Economics (CBE).

Macdonald Hall was built in 1903 and served as a residence.

The renovations have kept the history and character of the original building intact while providing modern amenities for staff, faculty and students.

Features include modern classrooms with state-of-the-art technology for presentations and

visual learning; collaborative learning spaces; student group offices; and open gathering spaces on all three floors.

In addition to a new home, CBE is celebrating its 10th anniversary — since 2006 it has been developing leaders with a social conscience, environmental sensibility and commitment to their communities.

NOTEWORTHY

U of G’s leadership in energy conservation and sustainability has been recognized with a $5.8-million energy-saving incentive from the provincial government’s Save On Energy program. The funding rewards projects that reduce energy consumption.

The University will use the funds to offset construction costs of its $15-million thermal energy storage system, the only one of its kind in Ontario.

The thermal energy storage system works like a giant battery. The system chills water at night when energy costs are lower, reducing demands on the provincial power grid.

Chilled water is piped to the central utilities plant to cool campus facilities during warm daytime hours, and is returned to a giant water tank for nighttime cooling. The 30-metre-tall tank holds 22 million litres of water.

Since becoming operational this past summer, the facility has reduced U of G’s energy bill by about $2.5 million, in addition to supporting Ontario’s goal of a cleaner and more renewable energy supply.

Grad wins Olympic bronze Sociology graduate Britt Benn, BA ’14, won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio this summer as part of Canada’s Women’s Sevens rugby team. The team defeated Great Britain to take third place in the sport’s Olympic debut.

For more information, visit uoguelph.ca/business.

STUDENT LIFE

PHOTO: SUSAN BUBAK

In September, more than 5,000 students moved in to residence and participated in Orientation Week. More than 350 events included a concert, pep rally (left), college lunches and president’s welcome. @porticomag

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 9

Discovery RESEARCH, INNOVATION, IDEAS NOTEWORTHY

Tipping presents challenges for restaurants Tipping in restaurants is a widespread practice in need of reform, according to a new study by University of Guelph professors.

They found tipping poses significant challenges for restaurants, with managers seeing difficulties in hiring chefs and maintaining a cordial workplace environment. Surprisingly, servers welcomed changes to how tips are divvied up, even at the risk of less income.

Recently published in the Journal of Foodservice Business Research, the study includes interviews with nearly 100 managers and servers, and 160 online surveys.

“This may be the first study looking at how tipping affects restaurants; it creates many issues for them, the biggest one being inequity in pay,” says co-author Prof. Bruce McAdams, Department of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management. “Servers are generally making twice what those in the kitchen do, leading to a talent drain there. There are not enough chefs.”

Although a few restaurants in North America have attempted to address this issue by eliminating tipping and paying set salaries to staff, some servers have resisted.

10 | PORTICO Fall 2016

“The average server in our study earned $18 per hour in tips, plus minimum wage,” says McAdams. “That adds up to nearly $28 per hour, so you can see why servers would not want to eliminate tipping.”

The study found some servers even resisted promotion to management because they would take home less pay.

Tipping can cause problems for managers, including rivalries and poor service by servers focused on tips and competing for certain shifts or restaurant sections, says co-author Prof.

Michael von Massow, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics.

The survey found nine out of 10 servers supported pooling a portion of tips. It also found most managers and servers believe tipping rewards those who provide good customer service.

“Some customers also feel tipping ensures they get good service. What has been found, though, is most people tip within a certain window, regardless of service,” says von Massow.

ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK

FINDINGS

Mock retail space explores foodpurchasing behaviour A new mock retail space at U of G will allow researchers to explore consumers’ food purchasing, consumption and reaction to food advertising.

Funded by a gift from Longo Brothers Fruit Markets, Inc., the new research facility in the College of Business and Economics will explore several areas related to consumers’ relationship with food, including how we value and learn about different foods, and our decision-making when purchasing and consuming foods.

The space will look like a grocery store, including fully stocked shelves, and will be equipped with monitoring cameras and eye-tracking equipment.

Researchers will be able to gauge consumers’ responses to grocery store flyers or television advertisements, nutritional information, and surveys before and after their trips to the store.

“The facility will allow business and economics researchers, as well as faculty from across the University, to collaborate on food-related research at the consumer end of the supply chain,” says Julia Christensen Hughes, dean of the College of Business and Economics.

ASK THE EXPERT

FINDINGS

PHOTOS: SHUTTERSTOCK

Making fish farming more efficient More sustainable aquaculture in Canada and abroad is the goal of a novel research project that brings together experts in fish nutrition and engineering.

The researchers aim to make fish farming more energy efficient, saving money for producers in Canada’s nearly $1-billion aquaculture industry and producing more healthful fish for consumers.

The U of G project may also offer a low-cost alternative for running small-scale fish farms in developing countries, says Prof. Wael Ahmed, School of Engineering.

Using engineering smarts, he’s refining airlift pumps in order to deliver water and nutrients more cheaply and reliably than traditional centrifugal pumps used on fish farms.

“Efficiency is the key to build “ EFFICIENCY sustainable energy systems,” says IS THE KEY Ahmed, whose GryphEnergy lab TO BUILD studies energy use and efficiency in a SUSTAINABLE variety of applications.

ENERGY The airlift pump works by forcing SYSTEMS.” compressed air into fish tanks or cages. This closed recirculation system moves water and nutrients through the tanks more efficiently than old-style pumps, he says.

That could mean thousands of dollars in energy savings, key for farmers running on narrow profit margins and looking for cost savings wherever they can find them.

Besides saving energy and reducing production costs, Ahmed says his patented technology may also help improve water quality in farms.

He’s installed his sustainable energy system in U of G’s fish nutrition research lab run by Prof. Dominique Bureau, Department of Animal Biosciences.

They’ve tested the set-up for delivering water and nutrients in hopes of helping Canada’s growing fish farming industry. Findings so far show the system can reduce energy use by up to 70 per cent over conventional pumping systems. It’s also less noisy than the traditional pump-driven design.

In 2012, Canadian fish farmers produced 174,000 tonnes, worth about $870 million.

Both researchers hope to adapt the system for cheaper fish farming in developing countries. “It’s important to have access to energy in developing countries and rural areas,” says Ahmed.

They’re working on scaling up the system for testing in several Ontario fish farms, including a trout farming operation in Parry Sound. They also plan tests with public and private farming partners in Vietnam and Indonesia.

@porticomag

Why should I consider buying “ugly” produce?

The next time you go grocery shopping, don’t turn up your nose to an asymmetrical apple or a forked carrot; they’re just as nutritious as more perfect-looking produce and they cost less.

Loblaw introduced “Naturally Imperfect” produce last year, offering up to a 30-per-cent discount to whet consumers’ appetites. The line has since expanded to offer more items, including peppers, onions and mushrooms.

Prof. Mike von Massow, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, thinks it’s a great initiative. “We know that more than half of the food that is thrown out at the household level is fruits and vegetables.”

Two-thirds of that waste is avoidable, he adds.

Imperfect produce usually doesn’t make it to grocery stores because of consumer perceptions that it’s lower quality.

Instead, these fruits and vegetables are often sold at farmers’ markets, used in juices or thrown out.

Consumers have grown accustomed to perfect produce because that’s what grocery stores have traditionally offered. “It’s clear that it has to do with a disconnect between our food and us,” says geography professor Kate Parizeau, who studies food waste.

“When we grew our own food it was easy to understand that this carrot next to the ugly one grew in the same conditions. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Von Massow says food often gets wasted because it’s no longer suitable for its original purpose, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used for something else. Overripe bananas, for example, can be used in banana bread or smoothies.

He also recommends keeping track of the food you already have so you don’t buy the same items at the grocery store. And don’t throw something out just because it has reached or passed its best-before date, which is only an indication of when the product has reached its peak, not when it has expired.

The researchers partnered with the City of Guelph and York Region to analyze food waste and develop strategies to minimize it. Composting food waste reduces its environmental impact, but it’s a costly service for cities to provide.

“I often tell people that if you’re throwing 20 per cent out, and you go buy five bags of groceries, you might as well leave one at the curb because it’s going to end up there anyway,” he says. “Why double the trip?”–SUSAN BUBAK Fall 2016 PORTICO | 11

Discovery

NOTEWORTHY

Psychology professor Lana Trick hasn’t driven since grad school. But the prospect of saving lives, and preventing injury and costly damage on the roads, will fuel her studies of motorists’ behaviour and performance with a new state-of-the-art driving simulator at the University of Guelph.

A cross-campus research team of psychologists, computer scientists and engineers will inaugurate the new driving simulator, considered unrivalled by any other university in Canada.

Equipped with a new simulator vehicle and motion capture system, the DRIVE Lab (Driving Research in Virtual Environments) is intended to help strengthen U of G’s leading research role in road and motorist safety.

Not only are vehicle crashes a leading cause of injury and death, but they also cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year in health and social welfare expenses, says Trick.

Along with computer scientist Blair Nonnecke and engineer Michele Oliver, she will run simulations designed to help improve traffic laws and regulations, enable carmakers to design safer vehicles, build better roads and even provide useful information to drug companies.

The new equipment — a specially outfitted Pontiac G6 hardtop convertible — replaces the lab’s first driving simulator installed in 2005.

The simulator includes viewing screens that project a wraparound, virtual-reality driving environment. Linking to the Google mapping function will allow the screens to project real-live scenarios, such as driving around downtown Guelph.

It also includes a motion-capture system of cameras for observing subjects’ activities, including their use of in-vehicle devices and equipment.

The DRIVE Lab allows researchers to challenge subjects with road hazards, from inattentive pedestrians and poor weather and visibility, to heavy traffic and reckless behaviour by other motorists.

It also permits the team to gauge in-car distractions such as GPS systems, passengers and even the driver’s emotional state. Research suggests three out of four crashes involve lack of attention, says Trick.–ANDREW VOWLES

12 | PORTICO Fall 2016

PHOTO: DRIVE LAB

New high-tech driving simulator strengthens research in road and motorist safety

FINDINGS

LEADING EDGE

Selfless people have more sex

Finding a cure for kidney disease Prof. Nina Jones, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, received a nearly $750,000

New research from U of G and Nipissing University shows that people who help others are more desirable to the opposite sex, and have more sexual partners and more frequent sex.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology, shows that altruists were found to have greater success in dating and sex.

Pat Barclay, a psychology professor at U of G, and Prof. Steven Arnocky from Nipissing, interviewed about 800 people about their relationships and propensity for helping others, including giving to charity, donating blood, helping strangers cross the street, donating winnings and helping classmates.

After controlling for age and personality, altruists were found to have greater success in dating and sex.

The study found that while altruism is desirable in both genders, it increases lifetime dating and sex partners for men more than for women.

The findings support previous studies on food sharing by hunters, which found that men who hunt and share meat enjoy greater reproductive success.

grant to study podocytes, the cells responsible for filtering activity in the kidney. She was also named to the College of New Scholars and Scientists.

IN THE NEWS

PHOTOS: SHUTTERSTOCK

Battling drug-resistant pathogens Battling disease-causing bacteria, including potentially deadly microbes resistant to current therapies, is the goal for U of G microbiologist Chris Whitfield, whose research will be boosted with a prestigious $2-million federal grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Whitfield hopes to help point industry toward better vaccines and antibiotics. @porticomag

A stinging discovery Prof. Alex Smith, Integrative Biology, was part of a team that discovered and described 20 previously unknown species of wasps in a remote location in northwestern Costa Rica. The team named the wasps after elementary schoolchildren from several nearby communities. Smith used DNA to identify the wasps, which are mostly found in cool and wet tropical cloud forests, among the most endangered areas in the tropics.

#PokeBlitz boosts biodiversity Morgan Jackson, a U of G entomology student, has harnessed the popularity of Nintendo’s Pokémon Go mobile game and created the #PokeBlitz hashtag to connect gamers and biologists online, and boost interest in biodiversity. Since the game’s launch, Jackson and fellow “wildlife identifiers” have helped put names to various insects, birds and other animals for players from around the world.

Machine learning Graham Taylor, an engineering professor and expert in machine learning, has been named a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Azrieli Global Scholar.

He will receive $100,000 and work with a network of 18 researchers from five countries for two years to pursue answers to “the most difficult challenges facing the world today.”

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 13

WHO

Allison Day, BA ’10

Blogger, food stylist and photographer, cookbook author JOB

BEETS ARE an often overlooked vegetable, but Allison Day, BA ’10, is trying to change that with her Yummy Beet food blog. Aside from beets, you’ll find almost every type of produce presented in a rainbow of colours along with “vegetable forward” recipes to prepare them yourself.

Now living in Hamilton, Ont., Day studied sociology at U of G and then completed a postgraduate program to become a registered holistic nutritionist, specializing in natural foods. “That inspired me to get in the kitchen and start experimenting,” 14 | PORTICO Fall 2016

she says. “I grew up in the country surrounded by farms and tons of produce, and that really inspired me to learn more about where my food came from and pay more attention to what I was eating.” She admits that beets aren’t her favourite vegetable, but decided to name her blog after them as a pun on a news beat.

When her younger sister was diagnosed with celiac disease and lactose intolerance, Day began experimenting with recipes that were gluten- and dairy-free. “It helped me understand there are people who can’t eat certain foods, and they still

Day’s latest book, Purely Pumpkin, features recipes for pies to pizza.

want to have foods they enjoy and love,” she says. “It shows people with food allergies or intolerance that they can still eat really tasty food, and it doesn’t need to be expensive or from a box.”

Aside from her blog, Day has published two cookbooks: Whole Bowls features gluten-free and vegetarian recipes; and Purely Pumpkin features recipes using the gourd in everything from pies to pizza. She is also a regular contributor to Food Network Canada and has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Prevention and SHAPE. Preparation can make or break a vegetable dish, she says. Despite her background as a nutritionist, “it took me a long time to learn how to prepare things properly.” Roasting vegetables, she adds, brings out their flavour more than boiling or steaming them.

Seasonings, especially salt, are key ingredients in her recipes. “I use more salt than normal,” says Day. “I think salt is a good thing. It really brings out the natural sweetness and savouriness of vegetables.” She also uses acidic ingredients such as lemon, lime and vinegar to make flavours pop.

When she isn’t working on her own cookbooks, Day spends most of her time on her blog. She does her own food styling and photography, making each meal look like a work of art. She also works on sponsored content for various brands, which involves testing recipes, taking photos and promoting them on social media.

She says photographing inanimate objects like food can be challenging.

“Setting the ‘scene’ for a shoot can take longer than the actual photography process,” says Day, who also photographed all the images in her cookbooks. “Styling dishes makes a mess. From start to finish, a photo shoot for one dish can take two hours before post-production.”

Presentation can make even the blandest foods look mouthwatering. People eat with their eyes first, she says, so she tries to make each photo “inviting and warm, so someone wants to reach into their screen or into the book and grab it.”

–SUSAN BUBAK

Try a recipe at www.yummybeet.com.

PHOTO: ALLISON DAY

On the job

Q& A How scientist Mike Dixon is using space technology to combat food scarcity on Earth Prof. Mike Dixon, School of Environmental Sciences, is an expert at growing food in places where food has never been grown before. Whether it’s mimicking the harsh environment of Mars or the extreme temperatures of Canada’s Far North and the Middle East, Dixon’s research — which employs cutting-edge LED lighting and space technologies — could hold the answers to complex problems of the future, including climate change, space travel and, perhaps most pressing for humankind, food scarcity.

PHOTO: PETER POWER PHOTOGRAPHY

P: Why is this research so important?

Mike Dixon: In Northern Canada,

food security is mainly an economic issue. We currently import perishable produce and fly it into remote places at great expense. It’s difficult for people to get fresh food and they can’t grow their own food outside. In the Middle East, they’re projecting the day when they will have to survive without oil. The deserts of Kuwait, where it’s 50 C, and the snow banks of Yellowknife, where it’s -50 C, have equally profound food security issues but the solution is identical: space-related technology.

P: How are you growing plants in barren places?

MD: We’re using controlled environment technologies to produce food year-round in places where you would never consider sticking a seed in the ground. It’s technology that we’ve developed for growing food in space — the next worse place after Northern Canada to grow food has got to be the surface of the moon or Mars. @porticomag

We’re hoping to put a pilot-scale installation in the Northwest Territories and there’s already a prototype in Kuwait growing vegetables in an otherwise hostile environment. We hope to explore high-value perishable crops like strawberries, sweet peppers, herbs and romaine lettuce, along with medicinal herbs, which have a higher profit margin.

P: What role does light play in the technology?

MD: A plant is a product of its environment and responds to every environmental variable — carbon dioxide, light, temperature, humidity, nutrients and water. The advent of high-intensity, high-efficiency LEDs gives us the power to fine-tune the environment control. With the colour of

In The Martian, Matt Damon’s character grows potatoes on Mars. Could that really happen?

“Yes, the arithmetic was good — previous NASA research supports it. Our work is to fill in the blanks more precisely.”

the light, you can change the size, shape, taste and colour of a plant. Plants are the ultimate challenge because they’re so sophisticated in their physiological responses to light.

P: Do you think controlled environment agricultural systems will provide solutions to food security issues?

MD: Absolutely. It will happen as the technology gets deployed on a larger scale and becomes more economically possible. The technology exists, and the interest, initiative and feasibility are obvious. The need is clear. It all depends on money — it’s the only limitation. –DAVID DICENZO

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 15

feast famine

EVAN FRASER HAS A PLAN TO FIX OUR FRAGILE FOOD SYSTEM BY ANDREW VOWLES

E

van Fraser’s career epiphany came one afternoon in the early 1990s while he was weeding a strawberry patch. That day, during a summer spent working on his grandfather’s fruit farm near Welland, Ont., Fraser was thinking about next steps beyond his university anthropology studies, including the possibility of taking over the farm. Then his step-grandmother drove up in her air-conditioned Lincoln Town Car and lowered the window to say hi.

Until her 50s, Kay Fraser had stayed at home to run the farm along with Evan’s grandfather, Frank, a graduate of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College. Feeling restive, she decided to take the advice of one of her sons to become a stockbroker. “That unleashed a formidable force,” says Fraser. Starting with a few well-off acquaintances, Kay built a clientele and a new lifestyle for herself. “She almost certainly earned more in commissions that afternoon than I made all summer on the farm,” says Fraser, laughing in his Hutt Building office, which displays black and white family photos on the farm. “Not only that, her commission was paying my wage.”

16 | PORTICO Fall 2016

Instead of farming, he opted for grad school — better to write and talk about farming, he thought. “I’ve got food in my genes, both from a consumer and a producer perspective,” says Fraser, whose father is an animal welfare scientist and mother is a U of G graduate who has run a bed and breakfast.

That decision ultimately landed Fraser at U of G in 2010 to take up a new Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security. Geography professor John Smithers was department chair when Fraser arrived. Sporting a neck scarf and looking “like a cross between the Tasmanian Devil and Grover on Sesame Street,” says Smithers, the new guy “blew into the building with a bundle of energy and enthusiasm.”

Today Fraser is a bit more measured, but only just.

Wearing a heavy checked shirt, jeans and running shoes, Fraser, a youthful-looking 43, might be taken for one of his own grad students, with all the energy of a twenty-something. “He’s very enthusiastic and optimistic,” says Dave Hobson, a technology transfer manager in U of G’s Catalyst Centre and Fraser’s weekly jogging buddy. “He’s not motivated by material things and money. We had a meeting two days ago with three people in suits, and Evan shows up in a T-shirt and khaki green slacks.”

In public talks about our collective food future, Fraser paces the stage and delivers his points with the impassioned cadences of an evangelical TED talker. He

PHOTO: DEAN PALMER

OR

BIODIVERSITY supply chains

productivity

GRANTS

food security

evidence-based

technology PARTNERS modelling

DIGITAL REVOLUTION

efficiency

collaborative

science

sustainability

education

research agricultural innovation

global food

entrepreneurialism

ENVIRONMENTAL

MONITORING

economy

BIG DATA

lays out his view of the food crisis in a crisp, punchy style whose folksy language doesn’t detract from the seriousness of his message. “There is a mismatch between what we produce and what we know we should be producing, and if we are to nutritiously feed the future, there needs to be a realignment in terms of the world’s agricultural systems,” he tells the audience at this fall’s annual president’s dinner.

Says Smithers, “He really does have an appreciation that food is a basic human need that we can’t take for granted. The things he’s interested in are part of the campus DNA — not just food but justice and development elements. Justice and equity map onto the food legacy.”

That message reflects what Fraser has learned since that day in the strawberry patch. He studied anthropology at the University of Toronto (U of T) before completing grad degrees in forestry and environmental studies at U of T and the University of British Columbia.

After his PhD in 2002, he worked in a policy institute with former MP Lloyd Axworthy. A year later, he headed to the United Kingdom for a position at the University of Leeds, which was launching a new school of sustainability.

By the time he returned to Canada, Fraser had published numerous academic papers and book chapters. He’d also begun attracting mainstream attention for his more popular writing. He arrived in Guelph in the midst of media interviews about his new book, co-authored with journalist Andrew Rimas, called Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. The book explores how mismanaged agro-ecosystems have contributed to hunger and other issues that led to unrest and conflict in parts of the world, including the 1930s American dust bowl and the Irish potato famine.

That lesson has repeated itself more recently, says Fraser. The 1990s Rwandan genocide was preceded by periods of drought or environmental degradation that spurred migration into already crowded urban areas.

“ I ’m worried that many North Americans assume that everything is okay with our food system.”

18 | PORTICO Fall 2016

“ The big arcs of history are precipitated when food systems are not sustainable.”

Similarly, he says, a drought in Russia cut off Kremlin wheat exports to the Middle East in 2010, which helped spark the 2011 Arab Spring. “Some of the big arcs of history are precipitated when food systems are not sustainable,” he says, adding that population growth and climate change often expose other political and economic problems, making civic unrest and international conflict much more likely.

At U of G, he set about developing a food security research, teaching and outreach program to address what he says is one of the world’s greatest challenges: how to sustainably and equitably feed the projected human population on Earth by mid-century. The Feeding Nine Billion project is intended to provide sound information on food systems and food security.

Kelly Hodgins, MA ’15, is project coordinator of Feeding Nine Billion. She came to U of G in 2013 to study the role of businesses in food security and was taken by Fraser’s friendly demeanour — a first impression that was only strengthened when he invited his grad students for Thanksgiving at his home. “This food prof is actually cooking food and bringing people together around food,” she recalls. “He’s walking the walk.” Other grad students have looked at food waste, local and global food systems, climate change and urban migration, and urban agriculture. Fraser says he likes to mentor students with activist leanings and prefers not to micromanage, calling his supervisory style “benign neglect.”

Two years ago, Fraser and Hodgins launched the Feeding Nine Billion challenge, a two-day contest that sees student teams from a handful of universities designing ideas for improving food security. This year’s event held in early September brought together more than 40 University of Guelph undergrads from across campus. Feeding Nine Billion has teamed up with U of G ’s transdisciplinary “Ideas Congress” course run

by Profs. Dan Gillis, School of Computer Science, and Shoshanah Jacobs, Department of Integrative Biology.

The class is intended to help students develop their food security ideas, and to connect them with related

initiatives both on and off campus. “The idea is to impart skills and confidence for students to make a difference in the world,” says Hodgins. “We’re engaging students in social innovation.”

Widening their audience, the Feeding Nine Billion team has made an animated YouTube series on the global food crisis, which has been viewed more than 280,000 times, and has been used as a teaching aid in university and high school classrooms. Fraser continues to write extensively about food in articles that have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Walrus, Foreign Affairs and CNN. In 2014, he published a graphic novel, called #Foodcrisis, whose imaginary apocalyptic narrative shares Fraser’s five-part prescription for staving off a global food disaster: improved food distribution, sustainable higher farm production,

tunities to do big things,” says Fraser. “There’s huge momentum.”

It’s perfect fodder for someone described by friends and coworkers as a big-picture thinker and an investigator driven as much by curiosity as by conviction. He’s accompanied U of G ecologists Kevin McCann and Neil Rooney to Cambodia to look at small-scale fishing and farming, and he spent 10 days with population medicine professor Cate Dewey, “bouncing around in the back of a beat-up Land Rover in rural Rwanda” to see rice-growing projects run by the World Bank and small-scale farming by HIV-positive women in remote mountain villages.

Those experiences — and their lessons about the social nuances of sustainable production — play into Fraser’s own research studies of the social and environ-

“ The things he’s interested in are part of the campus DNA — not just food but justice and development elements.” — PROF. JOHN SMITHERS support of local food, environmental protection and public engagement.

Fraser says food security is an intergenerational issue — one whose solution will lie largely with today’s younger audience, including his three children ages 6, 11 and 13. It’s tomorrow’s producers and consumers that he has in mind when publishing a graphic novel or airing those YouTube videos. “I’m worried that many North Americans assume that everything is okay with our food system,” he says. “The food crisis of 2008 to 2011 suggests otherwise.”

This summer, Fraser was named director of the University of Guelph Food Institute, a portal that connects Guelph food researchers with Canadian and international partners to improve food systems, and to raise Canada’s profile in the global food economy. Earlier this fall, he took on another challenge when he became scientific director of a seven-year, $77-million project called Food From Thought (FFT), involving more than 100 U of G researchers and many more partners in Canada and abroad. Fraser says Food From Thought is a huge boost for team members and the entire campus of what’s billed as Canada’s food university. “This has created oppor@porticomag

Fraser’s five part plan for staving off a global food disaster: 1. Improved food distribution.

2. Sustainable higher farm production.

3. Support of local food.

4. Environmental protection.

mental effects of food price volatility and ways to reduce waste in global food systems. We need 21st century technology to solve this century’s challenges, says Fraser, but we need to be mindful of potential consequences. Those technologies could accelerate the decline of rural communities and leave farmers disenfranchised, both here and abroad. “What does a self-driving, GPS-guided tractor do for a farmer in Malawi?” asks Fraser, who also plans to study data ownership and privacy issues in agri-food systems along with U of G engineers and computer scientists.

Fraser figures he’s making change in wider ways than he could have done back on his grandfather’s fruit farm. It’s his global view on food security that in turn lures tomorrow’s potential change-makers to work with him. Referring to his grad students, he says young researchers are equally drawn to U of G by its combination of rigorous academics and a chance to contribute to real-world change.

“We have to strive to explore the full complexity of these issues,” says Fraser. “There’s no simple populist answer about food and sustainability. I’m determined to try to explore these issues in a way that’s accessible and relevant.”

5. Public engagement.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 19

The University of Guelph’s

150-year love affair with food

For more than a century, U of G has been at the forefront of all things food, from research and innovation to education and elevating campus food options.

1874

1999

Ontario Agricultural College is established.

U of G establishes Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety.

1894 Apiculture training and research begins.

1914 Ice cream technology course begins.

2010

1956

Loblaw Chair in Sustainable Food Production is established (first in North America).

Cheese making technology course is established.

1966 Gary Johnston breeds Yukon Gold potato at U of G.

1973 Hospitality Services becomes a self-operated food service department to feed students on campus.

2012 Feeding Nine Billion project launches.

2012 The Food Institute is established.

2012 U of G becomes the first university to appoint an official “Food Laureate.”

1975

2015

HAFA Restaurant (now PJ’s Restaurant in the Atrium) opens, giving students hands-on experience.

First campus food truck, Gryph ’N Grille, rolls out.

1989

The new, high-tech Dairy Barn opens in Elora.

Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare opens.

1999 Bob’s Dogs sets up shop on campus.

20 | PORTICO Fall 2016

2008 Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming launches.

2015

2016 Food From Thought initiative launches.

A new food revolution U OF G’S FOOD FROM THOUGHT PROJECT WILL LEVERAGE BIG DATA TO HELP ENSURE A SAFE AND WELL-FED FUTURE

ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK

BY ANDREW VOWLES

@porticomag

T

he next time you sit down for a meal, line up for takeout or cruise the aisles of your supermarket, consider this: You want safe, fresh food, but how much will you pay for it? You want affordable, abundant food, but what if you save money at the expense of the environment or your health?

Tackling these issues is the point of Food From Thought (FFT), a new $77-million project involving researchers at the University of Guelph. The seven-year project announced this fall will bring together more than 100 Guelph researchers along with various external partners. In the

process, they’re addressing another paradox: how to produce enough food for a growing human population — predicted to reach nine billion people by mid-century — without ruining the Earth’s ecosystems in the process.

“We’re talking about changing the way we produce food in Canada,” says population medicine professor Jan Sargeant, one of 10 principal investigators in the project.

Feeding all of those people will require more food. But our efforts to grow more food increasingly threaten the very life supports — air, water, soil and biodiversity — that sustain our agri-food system.

“We want to sustain these ecosystem services while putting

food on our plates,” says Malcolm Campbell, a professor and vice-president (research). He researches plant-environment interactions in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and he’s the institutional lead for the Food From Thought project.

“Those two challenges collide and create one super-challenge.”

Agriculture consumes water and mineral resources. Farming is our largest source of water pollution through runoff of fertilizers and pesticides. Livestock contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the health of animals and people.

Some 30 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 21

“Population growth and urbanization are pushing up our demand for food while climate change, volatile energy prices and water scarcity are going to make food harder and more expensive to produce,” says geography professor Evan Fraser, scientific director of Food From Thought. “Additionally, for all the good things that agriculture can do, we have to acknowledge that in many parts of the world, agriculture causes major environmental problems.”

Production is one side of the problem. The other side is consumers. We waste almost onethird of the food we make, and what food is not wasted is poorly shared. Parts of the world struggle with obesity, while others endure malnourishment and hunger. But the United Nations estimates that there are about 2,850 dietary calories available daily for every man, woman and child on the planet. “There’s more food available per capita today

We waste almost onethird of the food we make, and what food is not wasted is poorly shared. than at any point in human history,” says Fraser.

In this century, how we produce and distribute food — and what kinds of food we produce — will be a more important issue than simply producing more calories.

What’s needed today, say FFT principals, is a “digital agricultural revolution” that will allow us to grow more and safer food on less land and with fewer inputs.

“The digital agricultural revolution will deliver the right amount of food at the right location for real-time management of 22 | PORTICO Fall 2016

Food From Thought principal investigators

Malcolm Campbell Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Kari Dunfield School of Environmental Sciences

individual plants and animals,” says Campbell. Precision agriculture will rely upon information technology and “big data” to produce food. Those information tools will serve as the brains in robotic milking systems; in drones and satellites that monitor soil moisture for irrigation requirements or optimum planting times; and in smartphone apps that allow farmers to identify insects in their fields to help predict and control pest infestations.

Imagine self-driving tractors that automatically plant, fertilize and irrigate crops without wasting seed, nutrients or water.

Under Food From Thought, these tools will help researchers study food safety, sustainable food production and agriculture’s impact on biodiversity.

FOOD SAFETY & LIVESTOCK HEALTH

Jeffrey Farber Department of Food Science

Evan Fraser Department of Geography

Paul Hebert Department of Integrative Biology

Big data is increasingly important to ensure food safety and livestock health. Current attempts to keep livestock healthy have contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which threatens both animal and consumers’ health.

Pathobiology professor Bonnie Mallard is using genomics to screen and breed healthier livestock lines. Her patented immune response profiling technology identifies animals with naturally high, average or low immunity to various pathogens. This allows breeders and farmers to select animals for better disease resistance, and benefits consumers eating products from healthier animals treated with fewer antibiotics and other drugs.

Food science professor Jeffrey Farber worked for Health Canada for about 25 years before joining Guelph in 2015, where he runs the Canadian Research Institute

for Food Safety. He plans to research innovative technologies for reducing food-borne illness, particularly in low-moisture foods such as nuts, dried apples, dried strawberry and chocolate.

Farber says big data will allow researchers to look at varied problems. Imagine simulation systems that allow scientists to model how pathogens behave as they travel through the gastrointestinal tract and their effects on gut microbes. For consumers, that might lead to new products such as probiotics in food that nurture good gut bugs and help control the bad ones. On a larger scale, imagine being able to weave data about microbial pathogens with geographic information systems designed to capture weather and climate patterns. Farber says that kind of information could help predict food-borne disease outbreaks.

His work intersects with studies by Jan Sargeant, who has led Guelph’s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses for eight years.

Preventing the spread of disease from animals to humans will also be easier with better information systems, says Sargeant. She says integrating production information with data on disease spread will help predict and stem infectious disease outbreaks. “We can do more meaningful things to prevent disease outbreaks in animals, thereby improving animal health and welfare, and protecting human health.”

SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION Big data can help make farming more efficient, allowing farmers to shrink agriculture’s environmental footprint. “Agriculture creates a leaky system,” says plant agriculture professor Clarence

Swanton, who studies how plants compete and communicate to thwart pests and disease. Referring to excess use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers that feed algal blooms and dying water bodies, he says, “You can look at any watershed and see the impact of agriculture.”

Elsewhere on campus, Guelph crop scientists are using genomic information to develop more nutritious plant lines suited to local conditions, including simulating changes expected to be wrought by climate change. Learning more about farm animal genetics offers a route to breeding livestock that converts feed into meat or milk more efficiently — U of G researchers have already improved Canada’s dairy industry by providing producers with more efficient breeding stock that cause fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

And they’ve developed crop varieties that are more productive and hardy.

By improving farm operations, those tools may help keep costs lower for both farmers and consumers. Ten years ago, Swanton bought 100 acres near Eramosa north of Guelph, where he now grows corn, wheat and soybeans.

Swapping his weed scientist lab coat for his farming dungarees, he ponders the effects of this summer’s drought in southern Ontario.

He harvested fewer soybeans than normal this year, and wonders whether he might have improved his harvest by finding a more drought-resistant soybean variety or a more targeted monitoring system to track field conditions.

AGRICULTURE & BIODIVERSITY Farming practices cause up to 270,000 square kilometres of the Earth’s land mass to be deforested @porticomag

or turned into desert every year.

That has to stop, says integrative biology professor Paul Hebert: “Our need to feed humanity is despoiling vast amounts of land.”

We also lose untold numbers of species that play a role in ecosystems and ultimately sustain human life.

Under the International Barcode of Life project, he and other researchers around the world intend to catalogue species in an effort to preserve organisms and ecosystems. DNA barcoding, a technology developed by Hebert, distinguishes species by reading a telltale snippet of their genetic material. Analysis and cataloguing takes place on campus at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics within the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario.

Beyond mapping biodiversity, DNA barcoding has proven useful in identifying mislabelled food items in restaurants and supermarkets; in regulating the crossborder movement of endangered species; and in enabling Canadian food exporters to demonstrate product authenticity. Hebert imagines new uses for barcoding on the farm of the future.

“By next summer we will deploy a DNA-based monitoring system across southern Ontario that will track shifts in the density of crop pests,” he says. Much like a network of weather stations collecting information about rainfall or temperature, this system will analyze insects from traps deployed in farm fields to alert farmers about emerging pest problems. Ultimately, he says, the technology will allow farmers to diagnose problems right in the field and apply pesticides only where and when they’re needed.

Far from pitting agriculture and biodiversity against each other,

U of G’s Food From Thought principal investigators

Food From Thought will bring together agricultural scientists and ecologists. It has to, says Swanton. “In agriculture, a less diverse system is easier to manage,” he says.

“ Is there a sweet spot of production while preserving biodiversity?”

Bonnie Mallard Department of Pathobiology

Kevin McCann Department of Integrative Biology

Jan Sargeant Department of Population Medicine

Clarence Swanton Department of Plant Agriculture

Tina Widowski Department of Animal Biosciences

“It’s a change of thought: How to make the system more diverse to enhance ecosystems and maintain agricultural production?”

Farming in one place can affect an ecosystem thousands of miles away, says Kevin McCann, an ecologist in the Department of Integrative Biology. Snow geese feed on grain grown in the southern United States, bulking up for their annual migration north to Canada. Plentiful farm crops mean more snow geese, which mean larger flocks arriving in Hudson Bay. The result: the Hudson Bay lowlands are decimated as explosive numbers of geese strip the landscape of vegetation.

“This is a global issue, and needs people thinking from the local to the global scale,” he says. “Is there a sweet spot of production while preserving biodiversity?”

Campbell thinks there is, and that Food From Thought can help find it. He expects the initiative will yield ideas for increasing food production while protecting ecosystem services, supporting the agri-food economy and ensuring healthful food for consumers.

“To ensure food security, we must safely, sustainably and nutritiously feed the world’s growing population while protecting the world’s biodiversity,” he says.

“The University of Guelph, and Canada, will lead the world in meeting this challenge.”

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 23

The craft of beer making ROYAL CITY BREWING CO. TAPS INTO POPULARITY OF SMALL-BATCH BEER AND LOVE OF GUELPH STORY BY SUSAN BUBAK PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEAN PALMER

U

ntil two years ago, Cameron Fryer’s experience with beer included a robust appreciation for the beverage and jobs that included almost every aspect of beer aside from actually making it. “I sold it, promoted it, served it, mopped it off of floors and delivered it,” says Fryer of his history with beer. “It just seemed like a natural thing to transition into making it professionally.”

24 | PORTICO Fall 2016

Fryer, BA ’04, and Russell Bateman launched Royal City Brewing Co. in 2014, turning their passion for beer into a thriving Guelphbased business. “Russ and I started up the business because we really like beer, and we saw an opportunity in Guelph to come in and be a more local player,” says Fryer.

Starting their own brewery allowed them to be their own boss, but neither of them had much beer-making experience.

Fryer’s brewing knowledge was

limited to a crash course on beer making he received while working an earlier job at Great Lakes Brewery in Toronto. After learning the basics from the head brewer, he began making beer at home. The learning process was “trial and error — mostly error,” says Fryer.

Since then, he and Bateman have honed their beer-making skills into an art.

Royal City Brewing’s small scale and unique flavours set it apart from other breweries. When it

opened, the brewery had just enough equipment to brew beer for its taproom and a handful of licensees. Since then, the brewery has expanded in size and capacity, and has made about 200 different types of craft beer. By next year, Royal City Brewing expects to be “one of the bigger small breweries in the province.”

Fryer studied history and German at U of G, but it was an elective beverage management course that piqued his interest in craft beer. @porticomag

Drinking his first Rauchbier, a German smoked beer, was a pivotal experience, introducing him to the diversity and flavours of different beers. “It’s now one of my favourite styles and has inspired a lot of our own brewing,” he says.

After graduating, he got a job teaching English at a high school in Nuremburg, Germany. “I actually landed in the beer heart of Germany,” says Fryer. Aside from teaching there for just over a year, Fryer spent time “learning about beer

Cameron Fryer in the taproom at Royal City Brewing Co.

and tasting a lot of beer, and that furthered my interest in it.”

Fryer and Bateman grew up together in Aurora, Ont. They both attended U of G, but Bateman left before graduating to start his own business.

Royal City Brewing is brimming with Guelph pride (the city is also known as the Royal City). The walls of the taproom are lined with posters of their beer labels, which reference Guelph landmarks such as the covered bridge and Exhibition Park.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 25

“When we first got going, we really wanted to be Guelph’s brewery,” says Fryer. “We wanted to share the enthusiasm and the love that we have for this place through what we’re doing beer-wise.”

Two-thirds of the brewery’s 15 staff are U of G graduates, including freelance graphic designer Cai Sepulis, BA ’02, who designs their retro labels and packaging. “We want to be Guelph’s brewery and she draws Guelph,” says Fryer. “She does some of the best labels and design work in the industry.”

The label for Gordon Hill Hefeweizen, for example, depicts a cyclist on the arduous Gordon Street hill. “I used to ride my bike up that hill every day,” says Fryer.

He now lives in the Ward — a short walk from the brewery — which inspired their 100 Steps Stout.

Smoked Honey, Hibiscus Saison and Exhibition IPA are the brewery’s core brands, followed by its “Royal City regulars”: 100 Steps Stout, Suffolk St. Session Ale and Two Rivers Unfiltered Ale. Other beers such as Earl Grey Porter and Autumn Ale make seasonal appearances, while specialty blends such as Pear Vanilla, Octoberfest and Chocolate Raspberry are brewed once a year. Rotational brews and one-offs are also added into the mix.

Fryer and Bateman came up with the idea for Smoked Honey before they started the brewery. “That was the one recipe we knew we were going to go with,” says Fryer, describing it as a hybrid of his two favourite beer styles: an English brown ale and a German smoked lager. The flavour is created using beechwood smoke malt and local honey, which is fermented out for a light finish.

For Hibiscus Saison, Royal City Brewing works with The Custom Tea Company, which provides the hibiscus tea, and Escarpment Labs, 26 | PORTICO Fall 2016

What is craft beer?

“Craft beer is not determined by the size of the brewery, but by the way it makes its product,” says Royal City Brewing Co.’s Cameron Fryer. The main ingredient in a craft beer is grain, whereas macro brews typically use corn syrup, a cheaper alternative with a similar sugar profile that produces lightcoloured, lightbodied beers.

which provides the yeast. Both companies are run by U of G grads, and received funding support from the Hub, an entrepreneurship program run by the University’s Centre for Business and Student Enterprise. “We just started it in May, and it’s been flying out the door,” says Fryer of the hibiscus brew. The tea infusion gives the beer a pink hue and a juicy tartness.

Fryer describes the current popularity of craft beers as a “reawakening” of beer tastes in Canada from the standard light lager. “I think people’s palates are really adapting and changing now,” says Fryer, adding that his father is among the newly converted.

When developing new flavours, Fryer and Bateman work backward, starting with their vision for the final product, then selecting the ingredients and processes to get there. “What do we want the final

product to taste like?” says Fryer.

“What do we want in that glass?”

Much like a chef decides which flavours pair well together, Fryer and Bateman try to come up with flavour combinations that make good brews. “We’re just trying to imagine what goes well together and tastes well together, and how to get it in beer,” says Fryer.

Certain flavours come from the yeast itself, whereas other flavours are added at different stages. “You can affect the outcome of the flavour of the beer at every stage of the brewing process,” says Fryer.

He compares the beer-making process to making a cup of tea: just add hot water to grain instead of tea leaves. Mashing replaces steeping, where water is added to the grain and heated to extract the sugar. The resulting liquid goes into a kettle along with other flavouring agents. The starch is

The perfect pairing Beer and cheese have more in common than you might think, sharing a long history as farmhouse fermentation products.

Certified beer expert Mallorie Edward, who teaches a beer seminar series at U of G, offers five beer and cheese pairings to please the palate.

broken down into simple sugars such as glucose and maltose, which are easier for the yeast to digest, and then rinsed.

The sugars are boiled for pasteurization to eliminate any bacteria that can negatively affect flavour and to evaporate excess water.

Hops represent the majority of flavouring agents and are added early or late in the brewing process. A heat exchanger rapidly cools the beer from 100 C to 20 C to kill any remaining bacteria. Fermentation takes about two weeks.

Despite the work perk of regular taste testing, working with beer all day has its downside. “My overall beer consumption has gone down quite a bit since we opened,” says Fryer, adding that brewing beer is hot and heavy work. “You’re covered in it and wearing it at the end of the day. You don’t always want to drink it when you get home.” @porticomag

Fresh goat’s cheese with a German or Belgian wheat beer.

A soft brie or a washed rind cheese with a Belgian-style beer.

Sharp cheddar with a traditional English IPA. Aged Gouda with a Marzen or Oktoberfest lager, or a malty Germanstyle beer.

Blue cheese with a barrelaged porter or stout.

Unorthodox yeasts on the rise Of all the ingredients in beer, yeast has the most impact on its flavour.

The alcohol in beer is the byproduct of yeast fermentation. As yeast feed on sugar, they produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. Different yeasts produce different flavours, depending on their genetics.

Those single-celled microorganisms are turning into big business for microbiology grads Nate Ferguson, B.Sc. ’12, and Richard Preiss, B.Sc. ’14, and graduate student Angus Ross. In 2015, they launched Escarpment Labs, which develops yeast strains for breweries across Canada.

Royal City Brewing has been a testing ground for many of their yeasts. “We’ve been working with them since day one,” says Preiss. “Before they even opened, they were the first brewery we approached with this idea of producing local yeast in Ontario.

They were very supportive of that idea and they continue to be really supportive.”

Their research and development involves producing new flavours of beer using different combinations of yeast and trying them out on consumers. Escarpment Labs received a grant from Gryphon’s LAAIR (Leading to Accelerated

Angus Ross, left, Richard Preiss and Nate Ferguson (not pictured) develop yeast strains at Escarpment Labs.

Adoption of Innovative Research) program to work with Prof. George Van Der Merwe, Molecular and Cellular Biology, to study and commercialize Ontario wild yeast strains for craft beers.

Their fermentation facility is currently housed at Royal City Brewing, where they ferment test samples of yeast to see how they grow, taste and smell. They measure flavour compounds in U of G labs.

“We’re making these test beers, these experiments, inside a brewery, so it’s a saleable product,” says Preiss. Some of their specialties include saison and sour beers made with yeast blends that aren’t found in traditional beers. “They create a profile that no one yeast alone can create,” he adds. “They’re very yeast flavour-driven beers. It’s a really good showcase of what yeast can do in beer.”

Getting the beers out to consumers is as easy as selling them in the brewery. “I think it’s really great that we get so much support from the brewing community here,” says Preiss.

“That’s really rewarding, being able to taste the end result that someone has created with our products.”

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 27

This I know

I

f you order a burger at the popular 100 Mile Grille food outlet in the University of Guelph’s Creelman dining hall, Mark Kenny can tell you exactly where all its parts come from: the meat is procured 28 | PORTICO Fall 2016

from local farmers and formed into patties at the University’s own meat processing facility; seasonal tomatoes and onions are grown nearby; the buns are made by a local artisan baker; and even the condiments, including spicy

ketchup, mustard and barbecue sauce, are made from scratch with local ingredients. To sweeten your accompanying tea or coffee, there’s honey from the campus apiary.

“Good food is a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding,” says Kenny,

PHOTO: AMANDA SCOTT

How to serve the best campus food in Canada

staff, faculty and students in 17 outlets across campus, as well as specialty foods for catering events on campus. U of G’s Hospitality Services is one of only three independent food service departments at a Canadian university that directly employs a staff member with CSCMP accreditation to purchase food and manage contracts; many other institutions use outside catering companies to feed students.

U of G further sets itself apart by serving foods that are grown and processed on campus. Arctic char, for example, comes from the Alma Aquaculture Research Station, and more than 1,800 kilograms of honey produced at the Honey Bee Research Centre is served every year.

Veggies that can’t be used right away are processed on campus, vacuum-sealed and frozen for use over the winter, and a commercial-grade smoker adds flavour to mushrooms, ribs and chicken.

Kenny’s commitment to procuring locally means he knows many of the 75 nearby farmers who supply food to the University on a first-name basis. When he deals with larger distributors, he requests Ontario-grown foods whenever possible.

“I like to share the stories of the food we are serving, and that means sharing the stories of the people who produce that food,” says Kenny, who is active on Twitter (@100mileMark Kenny’s procurement manager for favourite mark) and often posts Hospitality Services and a campus meal: mouth-watering photos A “Royale with certified supply chain of the day’s specials.

Cheese” burger management professional and fries from Kenny balances his the Gryph ’N (CSCMP). “It’s worth it love of food with a solid when we see the faces of Grille food truck. business background and the students as they taste an artist’s sensibility. He what our chefs have made.” started working in restaurants at Kenny’s job is to source the raw 14 and went on to earn a business goods to feed more than 20,000 diploma. He enrolled at U of G as @porticomag

A quick bite of the menu served by Hospitality Services to 5,000 students on move-in day in September 27,000 brownies made by U of G chefs 8,000 apples from Martin’s Family Fruit Farm in St. Jacobs 15,000 buns made locally

by Canada Bread 2,400 tomatoes from Elmira Produce Auction Cooperative

a mature student and took courses ranging from film studies to art history, but before he could graduate, the food world lured him back.

“The students here [at U of G] are educated about food,” he says.

“They’ve travelled; they’re used to foods that would have been considered exotic not long ago.”

Kenny taps into the diversity of the chefs on campus to respond to that desire for variety. “We have chefs from 15 different cultural backgrounds here, so they can bring those flavours to our meals,” he says. A popular dish on campus is fish moilee with Indian spices served at InFusion, a pan-Asian cuisine kiosk in the University Centre.

Surprisingly, pickles have been one of the tougher foods to source locally. Kenny searched for months before discovering Lakeside Packers in Harrow, Ont. “Now we buy them by the skid.”

He also started ordering cheese from Bright Cheese and Butter in Woodstock.

The only downfall to serving such great food is students don’t want to leave. One student leaving campus told Kenny, “I don’t know what I’m going to eat now — I’m so used to the great food here.”

–TERESA PITMAN

1,020 kilograms of cold meats 900 kilograms of lettuce

Make your own fish moilee – get the recipe at porticomagazine.ca.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 29

Spotlight

Serving delicious dishes from unique locations Greek yogurt is a blank canvas for Emily Wight.

The former Gryphon varsity basketball player was travelling in Australia and New Zealand when she fell in love with the luxurious product that tasted delicious with any fresh topping.

“Everything was geared towards getting yogurt,” says Wight, B.Comm. ’07, of the trip with her now husband. “I cried my last day because we couldn’t get any.”

Her new love of Greek yogurt gave Wight the idea to open a similar business in Toronto. With high storefront rents and a specialized menu, finding a location was the first hurdle. She needed foot traffic, and after many walks along the PATH, a 30-kilometre pedestrian walkway beneath the Financial District, Wight saw the potential of going underground. In 2013, she launched Astarté Fresh Yogurt Bar — the first of its kind in Canada — under King Street West.

“It’s the perfect spot for my business,” Wight says of the PATH, which is used by 200,000 people daily. “I’m more morning focused. To get people comfortable with my concept, I had to be in front of them early and thinking of yogurt.”

Wight’s quick grab-and-go yogurt bowls have hit a mark with her largely corporate clientele who are rushing to work and need a quick, 30 | PORTICO Fall 2016

healthy breakfast. “I’ve converted tons of people into yogurt believers,” she says.

Wight, 30, says she’s an “outdoorsy” person, so the idea of working underground was an adjustment. And the venture was risky — she quit her corporate job “ I’VE CONVERTED as a national account TONS OF PEOPLE manager to start her business.

INTO YOGURT Astarté now serves BELIEVERS.” about 160 customers a day, offering up flavourful yogurt parfaits such as key lime, blueberry lavender, peanut butter and strawberry balsamic, and seasonal options like maple pumpkin. She sources the Greek yogurt from Shepherd Gourmet Dairy in St. Marys, Ont., and makes her own granola and preserves.

“I’m feeling reflective approaching my threeyear anniversary,” says Wight, who is expecting her second child. “I’ve walked the PATH and have seen a lot of places that have gone out of business. I’m proud I stuck it out.”

–DAVID DICENZO

James Carnevale’s “food truck” isn’t really a truck at all. He scoots around Toronto and serves delicious handmade frozen treats from a tiny, three-wheeled Piaggio Ape (pronounced “ah-pay”). Bar Ape is the city’s first mobile gelato shop, and although it’s only 40 square feet in size, it’s made a big mark on the city’s food scene — Carnevale’s lemon gelato bar was named one of the best frozen treats on a stick by Taste Toronto.

“I worked on it constantly and customized it,” says Carnevale of the blue 1982 Ape, which he worked on for four years before taking it to the streets in 2014.

The Ape’s size presented a few challenges: it’s actually classified as a motorcycle, so getting a permit was difficult, and because there’s no room to prepare classic gelato, Carnevale had to get creative — he decided to make the gelato in advance and form it into quick-serve bars. The vehicle’s battery-powered freezer holds a few hundred of the hand-moulded, chocolate-dipped creations, which come in unique flavours such as saffron, pistachio and chocolate hazelnut.

With the crowds clamouring for his gelato, Carnevale, who completed U of G’s ice cream technology short course and honed his skills in popular Toronto gelato shops, recently opened a walk-up storefront.

“I’ve always liked it and I always made it at home,” he says of gelato.

“I knew it was something I always wanted to do.” –DAVID DICENZO

PHOTOS: ASTARTE YOGURT; TORONTO FOOD TRUCKS

u Also try

Alumni matters COMING EVENTS Jan. 19, 2017 The Frosty Mug Cheer on the men’s hockey team for Gryphons Winter Homecoming.

Jan. 25, 2017 Florida Alumni Excursion Join other alumni in Fort Myers, Fla.

ALUMNI NEWS

We want to hear from you!

R

etailers are always asking for our opinions: How was your shopping experience today? What products do you buy regularly? They use customer surveys to make certain their products and services are relevant and meaningful, and they make changes based on the data they receive.

We’re also interested in ensuring our offerings are relevant and meaningful to alumni and donors. An electronic University of Guelph alumni survey is in the works and will be launched in early 2017. We want to know you better! What type of events do you like to attend: professional development or networking, or both? What group discounts are the most appealing to you? Are there services we should offer to benefit more alumni of all ages?

We’re interested to know what you want from your alma mater and how you prefer to stay connected. Your voice is integral — the survey results will shape our alumni programming, services and offerings.

We need to hear from as many of our 140,000 alumni as possible. Please take a moment to update your contact information (www.alumni. uoguelph.ca/update) to ensure your voice is heard.

Stay tuned — we look forward to learning about you. And, of course, you’ll have a chance to win some great prizes!

Brandon Gorman, B.Comm. ’06 President, UGAA

Jason Moreton, BA ’00 Associate Vice-President, Alumni Advancement

Feb. 18, 2017 She’s Got Game Celebrate the commitment and excellence of U of G female athletes and women’s sport programs.

March 1, 2017 Florida Alumni Annual Picnic Reunion Join other alumni in Port Charlotte, Fla. June 9-10, 2017 Alumni Weekend Mark your calendars for the marquee alumni event of the year.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony officially opened the renovated Macdonald Hall in October. l-r: Amy Cote, Julia Christensen Hughes, George Schmalz, Franco Vaccarino, Duncan MacPherson and Justin Dourado.

For details and a full list of events, visit www.alumni.uoguelph. ca/events.

GRAD PERKS

Take the train

Why drive when you can relax and ride the rails?

Special business class rates for alumni start at $59 with Via Rail. @porticomag

Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada

Enjoy an underwater adventure! Alumni and families enjoy a 15 per cent discount on general admission tickets.

Delta Guelph Hotel and Conference Centre

Special discounted rates are available for alumni in Guelph’s only four-star hotel.

For details on these special offers, visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/promotions.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 31

Alumni matters

FEATURED EVENT

Homecoming The weather was perfect for U of G’s Homecoming celebrations Sept. 24, as alumni, family and friends gathered to cheer on the Gryphons as the team faced the Western Mustangs. Despite a disappointing 50-16 loss, the Gryphon spirit was strong thanks 32 | PORTICO Fall 2016

to a sold-out crowd. Other highlights included a live band and a food truck zone.

The University of Guelph Alumni Association hosted a sold-out pre-game party at Brass Taps in the University Centre with more than 150 alumni in attend-

ance. For only $25, attendees enjoyed a burger-bar lunch, alumni swag and a ticket for the football game.

The Gryphon/Redmen football reunion was also held during Homecoming. Football alumni attended a dinner at Creelman

Members of the 1966 Redmen football team attended a reunion to celebrate their 50th anniversary, above.

Hall, toured the new athletics facilities and attended the game.

Eight members of the 1966 Redmen team attended a reunion to celebrate their 50th anniversary. The 1996 Gryphons also marked a milestone, celebrating their 20th anniversary. @porticomag

A soldout crowd cheers on the Gryphons football team at Homecoming; fans enjoy a pre-game party at The Brass Taps, above middle.

ALUMNI EVENT

Alumni go out to the ball game In August, more than 400 alumni and friends cheered on the Toronto Blue Jays as they took on the Tampa Bay Rays. The sold-out event — the second of its kind for the 2016 season — included a pre-game reception, an alumni rally towel and a game ticket. Stay tuned for another baseball event in the 2017 season.

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 33

Alumni matters CLASS NOTES

1950s

John Dugan, DVM ’54, has received several awards, including a Golden Jubilee Medal, Diamond Jubilee Medal and a St. John Ambulance Service Medal.

1960s

Bruce Hunter, Dipl. ’62, invites OAC class of 1962 members to a 55th reunion during next year’s Alumni Weekend on June 9 and 10, 2017. There will be a class gathering and a dinner banquet at PJ’s Restaurant.

1970s

Mary Ruston, BA ’75, opened a bed and breakfast called Butterflies Three in the Grand Bend area on Lake Huron.

John Gordon, BA ’76, was inducted into the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame. He has worked as a reporter and editor, and in golf communications for 30 years. He has also

The OAC class of ’62A recently celebrated its 54th reunion First row, l-r: Earl Graham, George Johnston, Rae Mahaffy, Harold Foster, Dan Bailey, Bob Murray, Gene Brahaney, Steve Pallet, Elgin Awrey and Bill Batty.

Second row, l-r: Dick Helmer, Jim Sellers, Ross Shantz, Lloyd Meek, Jim McHolm, Stew McCarthy, Eric Steele, Murray Trimble and Gaye Hoskin.

Back row, l-r: Bill McEachern, Mike Wilson, Eric Christensen, Neil McVittie, Barry Connelly, Walt Atkinson, Bill Dykes, Barry Everson and George Maskell.

authored eight books about golf. Along with a family friend, he created the annual Mikey’s Tournament for Autism, which has raised more than $300,000 to support a resource centre for families and children affected by autism.

Kenneth Anderson, BA ’77, won an international award for a leadership training program that his company, Ken Anderson & Associates, developed for the Ontario Real Estate Association.

1980s

Janet Cooper-Webb, BA ’87, is the chefowner of Orchard House Gourmet, a chef and catering service in Guelph. She also teaches at a culinary college and is a food safety trainer. She says her job is “allowing me to share my experience and love of healthy, local food — I love my work!”

Patrick Dowds, BA ’88, has been an elementary school teacher with the Halton Catholic District School Board for 27 years and recently moved with his family

34 | PORTICO Fall 2016

PHOTO: SUBMITTED BY DICK HELMER

Robb McQueen, B.Sc. ’83, retired as head of guidance at Aldershot School in Burlington, Ont., at the end of June 2016. He and his wife, Sharon, moved to Nova Scotia to enjoy retired life.

to his hometown of Milton, Ont. He says: “We enjoy visiting the U of G campus at least once a year. It’s so awesome to see how much it has grown since I graduated.

Guelph has always had one of the prettiest campuses in Canada.”

Guy Gilron, B.Sc. ’84, M.Sc. ’88, recently completed the directors education program jointly developed by the Institute of Corporate Directors and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and received his ICD.D designation, indicating a commitment to excellence in the boardroom. He is a senior environmental scientist and principal at Borealis Environmental Consulting, serves as a board member for the Canadian Ecotoxicity Workshop and is an editorial board member of an international journal.

1990s

Patrick Lawrence, M.Sc. ’91, has been appointed associate dean (social and behavioural sciences) in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Toledo, Ohio.

(l-r) Karen Kirkland, Julie (Petch) Goldhawk, Karen (Hawrychuk) Myers, Patricia Jamieson, Melissa Dean and Gale (Frizzell) Repta have been getting together for an annual “Guelph Girls” reunion since 2003. They met in 1966 at Wellington College (now the College of Arts). Says Myers, who lives in Eugene, Ore.: “When I fly in every summer, the magic happens all over again and we pick up where we left off last year. But this year is special, marking our 50th anniversary of friendship full of wicked laughter, joy and outrageous fun.”

Alumni: Hire a co-op student or new grad

Recruit Guelph

PHOTO: SUBMITTED BY KAREN MYERS

www.recruitguelph.ca

• Post co-op, full-time, part-time and summer jobs year round • Co-op: No waiting for a match! Just post, interview and hire!

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Fall 2016 PORTICO | 35

Alumni matters

2000s

Adrian Roelands, Dipl. (Agr.) ’03, and his wife, Jodi, have been named Ontario’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2016.

They operate Roelands Plant Farms, an expanding greenhouse operation near Forest, Ont. Kristen Wallace, BA ’08, got married in February 2016 and completed her master’s degree in higher education and leadership at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

Jesse Kirshenbaum, B.Comm. ’10, is co-founder of Bardown Sports, Inc., which creates hockey apparel that is sold in more than 300 stores across North America and Europe. The company also produces apparel for almost every university in Canada, including clothing for the U of G Gryphons.

Kevin Sukhu, M.Sc. ’10, and Sarah Law, B.Sc. ’14, received an award on behalf of their compressed time frame nursing class

at a Western University award ceremony.

The class won for exemplifying qualities and leadership skills critical to the field of nursing.

Salim Timo, PhD ’13, is an assistant professor with Le Centre INRS–Institut Armand-Frappier, in Laval, Que. Stuart Cameron, BA ’16, is enrolled in the University of Toronto’s master of social work program.

Erin Sherwood, B.Sc. ’16, is attending the New York Chiropractor College.

36 | PORTICO Fall 2016

Passages ALUMNI 1930s Janet Atkins, DHE ’37, April 17, 2016.

1940s Edwin Clark, BSA ’41, May 27, 2016.

Constance Young, BSA ’41, M.Sc. (Agr.) ’43, July 26, 2016.

Clarence Eccles, BSA ’44, Aug. 13, 2015.

Gordon Winter, BSA ’47, April 25, 2016.

William Cresswell, DVM ’48, July 27, 2016.

Leonard Gibson, BSA ’48, Sept. 8, 2016.

Alan Potts, Dipl. ’49, Aug. 6, 2016.

1950s Wallace Diehl, DVM ’50, March 9, 2015.

William Le Ber, BSA ’50, May 22, 2016.

David Armstrong, BSA ’51, Aug. 1, 2016.

Stanley Boyd, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’51, July 17, 2016.

Fenton Carroll, Dipl. ’51, July 28, 2016.

Bernard Flaherty, BSA ’51, Dec. 5, 2015.

John Greenway, DVM ’51, June 30, 2016.

Peter MacDonald, Dipl. ’51, April 27, 2016.

William MacLennan, BSA ’51, Aug. 12, 2016.

Paul Muller, M.Sc. ’51, Feb. 17, 2016.

Robert Shantz, Dipl. ’51, April 1, 2016.

Kenneth Tipper, DVM ’51, July 31, 2016.

Errol McWatt, DVM ’52, July 27, 2016.

Wyman Jacques, BSA ’53, Aug. 18, 2016.

John Summers, BSA ’53, M.Sc. (Agr.) ’59, Aug. 2, 2016.

Ruth Gillespie, B.H.Sc. ’54, March 29, 2016.

John Thomson, DVM ’54, May 24, 2016.

Christoffel Wolff, Dipl. ’54, Oct. 20, 2015.

Ed Manuel, Dipl. ’55, BSA ’59, June 14, 2016.

Ralph Hardy, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’56, Hon. D.Sc. ’97, Aug. 2, 2016.

Salvatore Carioto, DVM ’57, Sept. 1, 2016.

Norma Price, B.H.Sc. ’57, Aug. 16, 2016.

1980s Pamela Widdis, B.A.Sc. ’81, May 5, 2016.

Morris Samson, DVM ’83, Aug. 17, 2016.

Brad Martin, Dipl. ’85, Aug. 19, 2016.

1990s Suzanne Simpson, B.A.Sc. ’96, July 12, 2016.

2000s Christopher Philip, B.Comm. ’06, June 10, 2016.

David Gangadeen, B (Appl. Comp.) ’07, July 17, 2016.

Kimberly Kassik, B.Sc. ’07, June 2016.

Hasnul Abdollah, B.Eng. ’16, June 9, 2016.

FACULTY, STAFF & STUDENTS Cornelis (Kees) De Lange, faculty, Aug. 1, 2016.

David Fell, student, Aug. 19, 2016.

Mary Rogers, professor emerita, July 15, 2016.

Akash Patel, student, May 16, 2016.

Wendy Tompkins, staff, July 29, 2016.

1960s Murray Stephen, BSA ’60, July 8, 2016.

Paul Betteridge, Dipl. ’62, May 26, 2016.

Donald McInnis, BSA ’62, Feb. 24, 2016.

Austin Walsh, BSA ’62, April 6, 2015.

Nelson Giles, Dipl. ’64, Oct. 2, 2015.

Richard Poth, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’67, Jan. 5, 2016.

Ruth MacPherson, B.H.Sc. ’68, Aug. 26, 2016.

1970s Douglas Cuddy, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’70, July 13, 2016.

Robert Thurston, DVM ’71, Jan. 15, 2015.

John Percy, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’72, July 28, 2016.

Eric Goodliff, Dipl. ’73, Feb. 15, 2013.

Marvin Krawec, BA ’73, May 16, 2016.

Matthew Wozenilek, BA ’73, April 27, 2016.

James Johnson, Dipl. ’74, Sept. 27, 2016.

Kaija Metuzals, B.Sc. ’75, Jan. 15, 2016.

David Lane, BA ’76, May 18, 2016.

Leslie Ballentine, B.Sc. ’79, June 12, 2016.

To honour alumni who have passed away, the University of Guelph Alumni Association makes an annual donation to the Alumni Legacy Scholarship.

Time capsule

THE YEAR

1980 The University of Guelph’s campus pub, originally called The Keg, was established in 1974 and later became The Brass Taps.

Operating from the second floor of the University Centre for 42 years, the pub holds many fond memories for alumni, from indulging in a Design-a-Wich (design-your-own sandwich) and delicious poutine and nachos supreme, to watching the first-ever Toronto Blue Jays game in 1977. Today, The Brass Taps serves pub fare, including gourmet burgers, curries and classic lattice fries.

It also has 26 draught taps and 17 television screens to enjoy.

We think this photo was taken around 1980 but the exact year is unknown — can you provide a date? Or can you identify any of the people? Send us a note and let us know!

ON CAMPUS

OFF CAMPUS

+ The College of Physical Science (now the College of Physical and Engineering Science) celebrates its 10th anniversary.

+ Millions of viewers tune in to the TV soap opera Dallas to learn who shot lead character J.R. Ewing.

+ The Macdonald Stewart Community Art Centre (now the Art Gallery of Guelph) opens with an exhibition featuring pieces from U of G’s Canadian art collection. + Singer Gordon Lightfoot entertains at Homecoming.

+ Six Iranian-held U.S. hostages escape with help from Canadians. + John Lennon is shot and killed by a crazed fan. + The Pac-Man video game is released.

+ The first day of FM broadcasting occurs for U of G’s new radio station CFRU-FM.

Do you have a memory to share from your time at U of G? Email a high-resolution photo to porticomagazine@uoguelph.ca and it could appear in Time Capsule. @porticomag

Fall 2016 PORTICO | 37

Last look

Your favourite specialty spud isn’t necessarily a genetic descendant of Yukon Gold potatoes.

But in another way, those gourmet potatoes in your supermarket or on your restaurant dinner plate might owe something to that popular named variety developed a half-century ago at the University of Guelph.

Even just naming a potato suggested that “it was special, it tasted better than the average potato,” says Vanessa Currie, a plant agriculture technician. “It opened the door for the idea of the potato going from just being a potato with no name to something special.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the potato bred by Gary Johnston at U of G. In 1966, two years after the University’s 38 | PORTICO Fall 2016

establishment, Johnston bred Yukon Gold, which reached Canadian growers in 1981.

Johnston, a graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College, died in 2000, but his idea — a potato with a name — lives on.

Earlier, a potato was just a potato.

“It was sustenance,” says Currie.

“Potatoes were something people ate every day.”

After the Second World War, new immigrants arrived in Canada from Europe, particularly Belgium and the Netherlands. They brought with them different tastes.

Currie says Johnston worked to accommodate those changing tastes. In the mid-1900s, that idea was a bit revolutionary.

Today consumers can still buy an

ordinary 4.5-kilogram bag of generic potatoes for two dollars. But you can also buy a premium bag weighing a third as much for more than twice the price.

And many of those new potatoes are marketed with monikers that sound more like something in the beauty products aisle rather than the produce aisle.

Referring to a variety sold by one supermarket chain, Currie says, “They wouldn’t have gotten to Strawberry Blonde without Yukon Gold in between. A generation of consumers has grown up thinking of Yukon Gold. Now the bar is raised.”

–ANDREW VOWLES

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

YUKON GOLD POTATO TURNS 50

Alumni Travel Program Educational travel to places you’ve dreamed about

alumni.uoguelph.ca/travel

Create a legacy that lasts forever.

Start planning yours today.

To learn more about bequests and planned giving, contact Ross Butler at 519-824-4120, ext. 56196, or bequests@uoguelph.ca

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Ask for your quote today at 1-888-589-5656 or visit melochemonnex.com/uoguelph The TD Insurance Meloche Monnex program is underwritten by SECURITY NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY. It is distributed by Meloche Monnex Insurance and Financial Services Inc. in Quebec, by Meloche Monnex Financial Services Inc. in Ontario, and by TD Insurance Direct Agency Inc. in the rest of Canada. Our address: 50 Place Crémazie, Montreal (Quebec) H2P 1B6.

Due to provincial legislation, our auto and recreational vehicle insurance program is not offered in British Columbia, Manitoba or Saskatchewan. *Nationally, 90% of all of our clients who belong to a professional or an alumni group (underwritten by SECURITY NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY) or an employer group (underwritten by PRIMMUM INSURANCE COMPANY) that have an agreement with us and who insure a home (excluding rentals and condos) and a car on July 31, 2015 saved $415 when compared to the premiums they would have paid with the same insurer without the preferred insurance rate for groups and the multi-product discount. Savings are not guaranteed and may vary based on the client’s profile. ® The TD logo and other TD trade-marks are the property of The Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Project : Annonce TDI 2016 Client : TD Assurance File # : 35-MM9714-15_MMI.AL1.EN•uoguelph(8.125x8.25)

Province : Ontario Publication : The Portico Size : 8.8.125x8.25 Color : Quad

Proof # : 2 Due date : 02/01/2016 Designer : Jordane Bellavance

Hamelin-Martineau Inc. • 505, boul. de Maisonneuve O, Bureau 300 • Montréal (Québec) H3A 3C2 • T : 514 842-4416 C : jordane@hamelin-martineau.ca

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