Guelph The Portico Magazine, Winter 2013

WINTER 2013

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Analyzing soil and rock

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contents the portico • winter 2013

3 — president’s page • BetterPlanet update — 8 • grad news — 30

in and a ro u n d the university niversity of Guelph alumni and the campus community pay tribute to the late chancellor emeritus Lincoln Alexander. Anita Stewart is appointed U of G’s first food laureate, the animal cancer centre is officially opened, and president Alastair Summerlee receives international recognition.

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— 10 — cover story

GUELPH RESEARCHERS STUDY MARS LANDSCAPE Canada’s contribution to NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission is centred here at Guelph where physicists are analyzing the composition of rocks and soil on the red planet.

alumni matters heerleaders and football players welcomed the Wakeford/ Moccia wedding party to Alumni Stadium, while other grads got together for hockey, golf, baseball and the Hall of Fame ceremony honouring former varsity athletes.

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4 — 17 — THE MEDIA CALL U OF G On all things food, especially in a crisis, reporters routinely call a Guelph expert for objective analysis and comment.

on the cover For physicist Ralf Gellert, a Mars globe is a useful classroom prop.

PHOTO BY DEAN PALMER

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— 20 — WHEN ANIMALS ENTERTAIN HUMANS

Portico online

Historian Susan Nance looks at the treatment and the legacy of circus elephants in North America.

More U of G news at uoguelph.ca/theportico

— 22 — GREAT GUELPH GRADS A vaccine developer and a children’s entertainer talk about studying at U of G and following their hearts.

College News Look inside for news from your college and alumni association. See page 19.

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Editor Mary Dickieson Assistant Vice-President Charles Cunningham Art Direction Peter Enneson Design Inc. Contributors Susan Bubak Lori Bona Hunt Wendy Jespersen Shiona Mackenzie Teresa Pitman Andrew Vowles, B.Sc. ’84 Advertising Inquiries Scott Anderson 519-827-9169 Direct all other correspondence to: Communications and Public Affairs University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 E-mail m.dickieson@exec.uoguelph.ca www.uoguelph.ca/theportico/ The Portico magazine is published three times a year by Communications and Public Affairs at the University of Guelph. Its mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promote pride and commitment within the University community. All material is copyright 2013. Ideas and opinions expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the ideas or opinions of the University or the editors.

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CANADA’S FOOD UNIVERSITY A PLACE OF AMAZING STRENGTHS o u l i k e ly c au g h t last year’s headlines about the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, but did you catch the connection to the University of Guelph?

That robotic vehicle carries a device for analyzing Martian soil and rock that was built by an international team of scientists led by Guelph physicists.Those physicists are now monitoring and analyzing results beamed back from that instrument in a specially equipped facility just a Martian stone’s throw from my office.

It might seem like a greater distance to go from discussing the red planet to talking about the food on your table here on Earth – but you can trace both topics back to Canada’s “food university.” That rover instrument is hardly the first instance of soil and rock analysis involving Guelph scientists. For that, go right back to the roots of the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC).

By the late 1800s, agriculture students and faculty here were studying and testing soils, learning about nutrient needs to improve crop production. By the time U of G was founded almost half a century ago – and continuing into the 1970s – OAC experts mapped soils and developed tools to help establish a national farmland classification system still used today.

U of G researchers continue to develop solutions not just for food production but for processing and distribution, economics, safety, and health and nutrition.

Food-related studies span all seven of today’s colleges here on the main campus and at our regional campuses and research stations. As Canada’s food university, this is the place for innovative food research and solutions to food-related problems.

For proof, look at a few more recent headlines.

Last year, we strengthened our international food reputation by appointing what we believe to be the world’s first food laureate – Anita Stewart, an expert on Canadian food and cuisine and a longtime friend of the University.

A December cover story about the global food crisis in Canada’s Walrus magazine was co-written by geography professor Evan Fraser, Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security.

Prof. Ralph Martin has completed his first year as Loblaw Companies Limited Chair in Sustainable Food Production. The chair is a Canadian first; the result is leadership in teaching, research and industry collaboration to advance Canada’s food-production system.

Even our students and wider community have come to the table, with hundreds of people taking part in world record-breaking campaigns on campus to package meals for famine relief abroad.

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PHOTO BY ROSS DAVIDSON-PILON

They join a growing cluster of experts who have made Guelph the go-to place for commentary, advice and research on all aspects of food from soil to table. Just look at the story in this issue of the Portico highlighting recent media analysis and commentary by our researchers on food safety, food security and generally all things food.

No one plans to grow food on Mars anytime soon.

But it’s not such a leap from the interplanetary project outlined in our cover story to food production studies back in OAC where environmental sciences researchers are studying ways to grow plants for food to sustain longdistance space missions. Maybe we will one day be called the universe’s food university.

Here at Guelph, we’re now looking to bring together those wide-ranging strengths and interests to launch something of our own: a proposed food institute. The institute will offer experts both on and off campus a forum to exchange ideas, innovations and information on food production and processing, food safety and security, and the impact of food on culture, economies and the environment.

For nearly a century and a half, we’ve been leaders in food production, processing and delivery. As many of you know, food quality and safety already make up a key pillar of our BetterPlanet Project fundraising campaign.

Now we need to apply our knowledge and experience to do more, both nationally and internationally.

Call it a giant leap for humankind, one that our research curiosity can help us take right here on Earth.

Alastair Summerlee, President

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U of G Mourns Lincoln Alexander

Tributes posted online by U of G alumni: “He lived a larger than life life;” “He called me a ‘mover and a shaker’ of the future at my 2006 convocation. I will remember that always;” “If we could all strive to understand and view the world as he did, what a place this would be.”

h a n c e l lo r e m e r i t u s Lincoln Alexander, the University’s longestserving chancellor and one of Canada’s most groundbreaking and influential leaders, died Oct. 19 at the age of 90.

“He was an amazingly giving man, and thousands of University students, faculty, staff and alumni have benefited from his devotion, kindness and generosity,” said U of G president Alastair Summerlee, who spoke at a state funeral Oct. 26 in the chancellor’s adopted hometown of Hamilton, Ont., and at a memorial service on campus Oct. 29. “He will be remembered, greatly missed and loved always.”

Members of the University community and many grads posted tributes on U of G’s Facebook page. The memorial service is available on the University’s YouTube channel; find links on the U of G homepage.

Alexander was appointed U of G chancellor in 1991 and served an unprecedented five terms. He conferred degrees on more than 20,000 graduates at convocation.

His rapport with students was legendary,

U OF G PHOTO ARCHIVES

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and he always spoke to every graduate. In 2007, at the end of his final term, he was named “chancellor emeritus” to recognize his years of dedication to the University.

Alexander’s life is often described as one of exemplary firsts. Among them, he was the first person in his family to attend university; Canada’s first black MP; the first black chair of the Workers’ Compensation Board; the first visible minority appointed as Ontario’s lieutenant-governor; and the first person to serve five terms as U of G’s chancellor.

He published a memoir, Go to School, You’re a Little Black Boy, in fall 2006. “My book is aimed at people who think they can’t do something or think they’ll never make it,” Alexander said then. “I’d like to think I’m helping convince others to never give up.”

Alexander was born in Toronto Jan. 21, 1922, and grew up there and in New York City. At age 20, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political economics from McMaster University, attended Osgoode Hall Law School

and was called to the bar in 1953. He was first elected MP for Hamilton West in 1968.

While in Ottawa, Alexander also served as an observer to the United Nations in 1976 and 1978 and was appointed labour minister by then prime minister Joe Clark in 1979.

Several Ontario schools, buildings and a highway have been named after him. Among his many awards, Alexander was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada and to the Order of Ontario. In 2006, he was named the “Greatest Hamiltonian of All Time.”

Three U of G awards carry his name: the Lincoln Alexander Outstanding Leadership Award, the Lincoln Alexander Medal of Distinguished Service and the Lincoln Alexander Chancellor’s Scholarship. On campus, a refurbished teaching and research building called Alexander Hall honours his commitment to the University.

Predeceased by his first wife, Yvonne Harrison, Alexander is survived by his second wife, Marni Beal; his son, Keith; his daughter-in-law, Joyce; and his granddaughters, Erika and Marissa.

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university U OF G APPOINTS FOOD LAUREATE nita Stewart, an expert on food and Canadian cuisine, will serve as the University’s first food laureate. Her two-year role as honorary food ambassador will highlight U of G contributions to the culinary life of Canada.

“My goal is to explore how U of G has set our national and international tables with both talent and ingredients,” said Stewart, “and while I’m at it, I intend to recognize some very real culinary heroes whom all of Canada can celebrate.”

Stewart founded Cuisine Canada to promote the growth of Canadian food culture. She was the first Canadian to earn a master of arts in gastronomy, has authored or co-authored 14 books on Canadian foods and wines that include many U of G examples, and appears regularly on CBC Radio.

Stewart also created Food Day Canada, which evolved from her World’s Longest Barbecue in 2003 to support Canadian farmers after that year’s BSE crisis.

Stewart has helped U of G celebrate its own food history and participates in the University’s annual Good Food Innovation Awards that recognize restaurants showing culinary creativity with local ingredients. She received an honorary degree from U of G in 2011 and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2012.

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Visitors view OVC’s linear accelerator at the opening of the animal cancer centre.

New OVC Cancer Centre State-of-the-Art

PHOTO COURTESY ONTARIO VETERINARY COLLEGE

sue bank for storing biopsies for future investigations; examination, treatment and procedure rooms; and family visiting areas.

“The level of sophistication is similar to what you find in human medicine,” says Kevin Hall, U of G’s vice-president (research). “Scientists can perform clinical trials that parallel human research and use new cancer therapies, which will deepen our understanding of cancer. It means we can help fight and even prevent the disease in humans while improving care for our pets.”

Officially opened in September, the centre is named for the late Mona Campbell, a longtime U of G donor and animal advocate whose $9.5-million bequest has supported the OVC cancer centre. It is also supported by donations from the OVC Pet Trust Fund.

Stone says Canada’s most comprehensive animal cancer treatment and research centre will raise awareness of cancer in animals and attract top students and researchers to Guelph.

Anita Stewart

PHOTO BY ROSS DAVIDSON-PILON

o f G ’ s n e w Mona Campbell Centre for Animal Cancer offers the most advanced tools for cancer diagnosis, treatment and teaching. Located at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), “the centre will maximize the quality of life for animals living with cancer and provide world-class training for veterinarians and cancer specialists,” says dean Elizabeth Stone.

The centre emphasizes an interdisciplinary team approach to cancer treatment, ranging from medical, radiation and surgical oncologists, technicians, interns, graduate students and support staff to a clinical counsellor for clients making difficult decisions for their pets.

Clients have access to investigational therapies, clinical trials and state-ofthe-art technology, including a linear accelerator for radiation therapy that targets cancer cells while minimizing harm to healthy tissues.

The centre also provides chemotherapy and oncology wards; a tumour tis-

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in & around the university Young Drivers Easily Distracted

PHOTO BY GRANT MARTIN PHOTOGRAPHY

Lana Trick

ar crashes are the leading cause of death for teens 16 to 19. That worries psychology professor Lana Trick, who along with other researchers hopes to find ways to reduce the risks faced by young drivers.

Trick is principal investigator on a project funded by AUTO21 Teen and Novice Driver Network, a Government of Canada Networks of Centres of Excellence program.

Her studies take place in a driving simulation lab on campus whose stationary car surrounded by environmental screens conveys the feeling of driving down a busy street.

Cellphones, text messaging, onboard computers and infotainment systems all present risks to drivers, but for many teen drivers, the biggest hazard may be the person sitting beside them. “We know that having another young person in the car increases the risk of collision,” she says. “An older person, such as a parent as a passenger, reduces risk. Risks are

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highest when both the driver and the passenger are young males.”

Her research looks at the relationship between the young driver and the passenger.

“Is it different if the person is a good friend or a stranger?”Trick asks. “What if we try to engage a co-operative relationship between the two people in the car by having them play a co-operative game before they start driving?” She’ll compare that outcome to results when driver and passenger engage in a competitive activity before driving.

Other network researchers are analyzing car accident databases to learn the effects of alcohol and other drugs and to see whether graduated licensing programs and laws banning cellphones while driving have made a difference. One of Trick’s students is looking at a video-game approach that provides instant feedback (warning buzzers) to learn the effects of being rewarded for good driving habits.

PHOTO BY SUSAN BUBAK

Dirty Money Affects Spending Habits

Theodore Noseworthy

r o f. T h e o d o r e N o s e w o r t h y , Marketing and Consumer Studies, coauthored a 2012 research report that says people are more likely to spend dirty, crumpled currency and hold on to new bills.

He says it’s an important finding for many reasons, mostly because it challenges

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some long-held beliefs that we perceive only the nominal, or face, value of money. “We tend to regard currency as a means to consumption and not a product itself,” he said.

“In other words, it should not matter if it’s dirty or worn, because it has the same value regardless. What we show is that money

is indeed a vehicle for social utility, and that it’s actually subject to the same inferences and biases as the products it can buy.”

In five different studies, the researchers gave subjects new or old bills and asked them to shop and spend. In all the studies, people spent more and took more chances with older worn money.

All the studies found the same main reason: an aversion to “dirty money.” “It’s the ‘ick’ factor,” Noseworthy says. “People want to rid themselves of worn currency because they are disgusted by the contamination from others.” On the other hand, people valued crisp new bills and often chose to spend them only when others were watching.

“It turns out money itself can be part of conspicuous consumption,” he says.

In an economy driven by consumer spending, this research has caught the eye of authorities who print new currency and take “old” money out of circulation. It may also interest Canadian authorities who recently introduced more durable polymer bills that will likely look “new” longer.

Read U of G daily news at www.uoguelph.ca

PHOTO COURTESY AUBURN UNIVERSITY

U of G President Receives International Awards

President Alastair Summerlee, centre, receives Auburn University’s International Quality of Life Award from Auburn dean June Henton and congratulations from Tye Burt, vice-chair of Guelph’s Board of Governors and chair of The BetterPlanet Project.

umanitarian work in Africa and his contributions to higher education and science have earned two prestigious awards for U of G president Alastair Summerlee.

He received the Award of Highest Honour from Japan’s Soka University in September. In December, he was awarded the annual International Quality of Life Award from Auburn University during a ceremony at the United Nations in New York City. Previous recipients of both awards include Nobel Prize winners, heads of state and internationally recognized philanthropists.

Founded by educator and philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, Soka University is located near Tokyo.The school encourages students to use education to promote peace and to contribute to society. Summerlee was recognized for his leadership at Guelph, especially for promoting “a philosophy of putting students at the centre of all undertakings.”

The Auburn University award was created in 1994 during the UN’s International Year of the Family to recognize significant and lasting contributions to individual, family and community wellbeing, locally and globally.

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Summerlee is known as an “innovative teacher, internationally acclaimed scientist, visionary administrator and passionate humanitarian,” said June Henton, dean of Auburn’s College of Human Sciences. She cited his efforts to improve access to education for girls and women in the Dadaab famine refugee camp in Kenya and his six-year term as chair of the World University Service of Canada, one of the country’s leading international development agencies.

The awards also recognized his leadership in civic engagement and volunteerism, his award-winning teaching, and his research in biomedical sciences.

A Guelph professor since 1988, Summerlee was named president in 2003. He received a 3M Teaching Fellowship in the same year, and continues to teach undergraduates, supervise graduate students and conduct research.

During his visit to Japan in September, Summerlee presented Ikeda with an honorary degree from the University of Guelph-Humber. Ikeda was nominated for his lifelong commitment to inspiring students to promote peace but had been unable to travel to Toronto to receive the award.

NOTEWORTHY • A survey by The Impact Group has ranked U of G as Canada’s most inventive university, in number of inventions per faculty and in proportion to research funding.

• Profs. Alejandro Marangoni, Food Science, and Rosario Gomez, Languages and Literatures, were named among the 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians by Guillermo Rishchynski, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations.

• Members of the University community donated more than $560,000 to the United Way in 2012.

• Cross-country runner Joanna Brown won bronze Oct. 20 in her first showing at the World Under 23 Triathlon Championships in Auckland, New Zealand. She finished with a time of 2:14.12 and, at age 20, was the youngest competitor on the podium. Brown is a secondyear marketing student at U of G. • Going beyond traditional grading, U of G aims to demonstrate student knowledge and achievement by adopting University-wide learning outcomes in critical and creative thinking, literacy, global understanding, communication, and professional and ethical behaviour. U of G is one of the first Canadian universities to adopt such across-the-board learning benchmarks for all degree programs and specializations.

• For the first time in U of G sports history, all of the University’s varsity teams made the Ontario University Athletics playoffs last fall.

• DNA barcoding developed by U of G researchers has proven up to 88 per cent effective in authenticating natural health products. It’s a crucial finding, as the health products industry is under-regulated worldwide and as mislabelling poses economic, health, legal and environmental implications, says Prof.

Mehrdad Hajibabaei, Integrative Biology.

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The Better Gryphons Aim for Top Tier

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Terroir Extraordinaire Supports BetterPlanet

Rosalie and Bob Whitelaw

Leadership gift for library

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PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE

ALUMNI AFFAIRS AND DEVELOPMENT PHOTO

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Artist’s concept for upgrades to U of G’s fitness and recreation centre

The new facility will be partially funded through student contributions pledged in a 2008 referendum. “We’re asking others to also make an investment in the future of our community,” adds Kendall. “Inactivity is being called a pandemic, and we can help change the face of healthy living in Guelph and beyond.”

PHOTO COURTESY DEPARTMENT OF ATHLETICS

of G archivists were enthusiastic when Robert Whitelaw offered files from his former fertilizer business to the library’s rural history collection, but they admitted that the library is running out of storage space. Planned renovations seemed a long way off, so Whitelaw stepped forward with a $500,000 gift to kick-start the expansion.

In addition to archival space, the library renovation will enlarge the exhibition area and create a multi-purpose room with the latest technology for lectures, classes, receptions and conferences.

Whitelaw’s Agrico documents will enrich the library’s rural life and agricultural archives, already one of the finest in North America.

“It’s the oldest fertilizer company in the country and has been a leader in the business since the 1920s,” he says. “Agrico is an economic and agronomic innovator with a history that should be preserved.”

He joined the company in 1965, became a major shareholder and eventually sold the company to La Coop Fédérée.

“With its long agricultural history, the University of Guelph was my first choice to be custodian of the company documents,” he adds.

U inamar Corporation CEO Linda Hasenfratz and U of G president Alastair Summerlee enjoyed the company of 200 guests at the Sept. 22 Terroir Extraordinaire fundraising event hosted by Linamar and the Hasenfratz family. The event raised more than $100,000 for the University’s BetterPlanet Project. Almost 30 U of G student volunteers from the hotel and food administration program assisted with the event, which featured a moveable feast with five garden settings and a locally sourced menu.

ryphon Athletics has announced a fundraising goal of $20 million to complete its long-range building and renovation plan.

“Our goal is to have one of the best outdoor and indoor athletics facilities in Canada to complement our leadership position in sports and recreation, and to build a sense of community and connection in Guelph,” says athletics director Tom Kendall.

First outlined in 2010, the athletics master plan includes ongoing renovations to Alumni Stadium and installation of an eight-lane running track, the new Gryphon Field House and the outdoor soccer complex. It also includes a new fitness and recreation centre for campus members and community users. Kendall says U of G’s current indoor recreation facilities are aging, limited and over capacity.

Planet Project TD Fund Champions Agri-Food Sector

LOVE OF HORSES LEADS TO BEQUEST lympic equestrian Lorraine Stubbs has taken steps to ensure her passion for horses and farming will live on in perpetuity. Her gift of a life insurance policy to the University of Guelph will create the Lorraine Stubbs Equine Fund at the Ontario Veterinary College to benefit the health and well-being of competitive

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Frank McKenna, left, with OAC dean Rob Gordon

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The research fund will be managed by the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC). It will support research and outreach activities in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics and in other campus departments.

OAC dean Rob Gordon said the goal is to ensure timely, credible and independent policy analysis of important issues, and to inform policy and regulations in agri-food and other areas such as energy, environment and health.

“There is no denying the social and economic importance of food and agriculture in Ontario,” said Gordon.

“Informed policy is a cornerstone of the OMAFRA innovation agenda; it can balance the varying interests of society, enhance the competitive position of producers, improve the agri-food economy and mitigate unintended consequences.”

TD Bank has supported student bursaries and awards, infrastructure and other investments in capital campaigns at U of G since 1968. The new gift will be distributed over 10 years.

dressage horses as well as mare reproduction, clinical care and research. She has also designed a gift plan that will benefit the University of Guelph and farmland conservation.

“Given the school’s long history with horses and an understanding of and appreciation for rural conservation, it’s a comfortable choice for me,” says Stubbs.

She says both planned gifts were easy to execute, and hopes other donors will consider a similar path. When the ownership of a life insurance policy is transferred to U of G, not only does the University become the beneficiary, but also the donor can make the premium payments as an annual tax-deductible charitable gift.

“It’s a win-win scenario,” says Stubbs.

“I view my contributions as a responsibility to my sport, to the equine industry and to continued excellence in veterinary care and research. I chose the University of Guelph as the future custodian of my lifelong passion. I hope that others will be inspired to do the same.”

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ALUMNI AFFAIRS AND DEVELOPMENT PHOTOS

h e U n i v e r s i ty o f G u e l p h has received a $750,000 gift from TD Bank Group to create the TD Agricultural Policy Research Fund, which will support economic research and analysis on new farm policies, especially those affecting the health and prosperity of the agri-food sector and rural communities.

“We are a leader in our commitment to addressing challenges in the agri-food sector,” said president Alastair Summerlee.

“This will be a vital complement to the funds provided by our partnership with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA).”

“TD is pleased to support the University of Guelph on this important endeavour,” said Frank McKenna, deputy chair of TD Bank Group. “We want the University to continue to drive cuttingedge research on agriculture, agri-food and rural development. These are key issues to the Canadian economy, and we hope they will share their research widely, as these issues impact us all.”

GUELPH RESEARCHERS DETERMINE THE

Curiosity Takes Story by Andrew Vowles Photo by Dean Palmer Mars rover images courtesy NASA and partner institutions

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A lone in his hotel room last summer, physicist Iain Campbell was in tears.

Scheduled to speak at a conference in Fort Worth, Texas, in early August, the Guelph emeritus professor had spent a restless night.

It wasn’t nerves over his talk that kept him awake but a make-or-break moment for what he calls “the biggest single research ven-

ture in the University of Guelph’s history.”

Relief came only after he flicked on the television news that morning.When he saw a clip of NASA engineers jumping around a control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., he exclaimed aloud,“Ah, thank God.” Not just that.“I was in tears; all the tension came out.” Almost

COMPOSITION OF ROCKS AND SOIL ON MARS

Left to right: Iain Campbell, Glynis Perrett, Nick Boyd, Ralf Gellert, Irina Pradler and Scott VanBommel.

U of G to Mars nine months after being launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on its 80-million-kilometre journey, the Curiosity rover had touched down on Mars, carrying with it U of G’s latest contribution to interplanetary exploration.

Officially called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the minivan-sized rover carries 10 scientific instruments designed to

sniff, scratch and scan the Martian atmosphere and landscape. Among them is a key geology device called an alpha particle Xray spectrometer (APXS) for analyzing rock and soil. It was designed by an international team of scientists led by Guelph physics professor Ralf Gellert. For the next two years, that team – directed by U of G

researchers working from a specially built control centre on campus – will help guide the rover mission and interpret information returning from a brand-new perspective on Mars. The goal of the $2.5-billion mission is to seek evidence that the red planet might have supported life – and to tell us something about life on Earth as well.

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NASA IMAGES BY UNITED LAUNCH ALLIANCE, HUBBLE, CURIOSITY AND NASA/BILL INGALLS

Planetary neighbours “It’s possible we are all Martians.”That might sound like jet lag talking – or maybe “Mars lag.” Gellert had just returned to Guelph in late October, following three months spent in California living and working on Mars time at JPL; each day on a slower-rotating Mars is 40 minutes longer than our own.

But no, the Guelph physicist is serious.

Imagine a habitable early Mars having collided with, say, a huge meteorite that launched a chunk of the red planet rocketing across space. Might a Martian organism have survived the journey, landing on the neighbouring planet and sowing life that, over the ages, would ultimately give rise to physicists and other humans?

“What if Martian life forms were knocked out and made it to Earth?” asks Gellert. Even if a lowly microbe arose on the red planet independently from the

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unspooling of life on Earth, that discovery would carry implications rivalling that of “Earth-is-round” magnitude, he says. Adds Glynis Perrett, a PhD student with Campbell and a member of the Guelph APXS team for four years: “If we found life on Mars, that would be just incredible.”

Before looking for life, look for water – life’s prerequisite as we know it – or at least for a watermark left on the landscape. That was the goal of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that landed on Mars in 2004. Both of those rovers carried an earlier version of the spectrometer, designed by scientists in Germany, including Gellert at the time. It was the APXS on Spirit that detected the first in situ evidence of water bound up below the Martian surface, a finding reported in 2010

by Campbell, Gellert and Guelph colleague Prof. Joanne O’Meara. Although Spirit has since fallen silent, its twin is still going

beyond its best-before date, still aiming beams of alpha particles and X-rays at Martian rocks and soil, and relaying data back to scientists here on Earth.

After his former team at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry broke up in 2005, Gellert landed a faculty position at Guelph. He assembled a new research team to complete designs for an upgraded version of the APXS – funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) – for the next Mars rover. Curiosity carried that new instrument to Mars last summer and now transmits data back to a Mars APXS operations centre in U of G’s MacNaughton Building. APXS researchers based at Guelph are among only a few scientists worldwide involved with not one but two Mars rover expeditions at the same time.

Following the Curiosity landing, Gellert even spent a few shifts at JPL receiving and

A – NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft was launched Nov. 26, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., beginning an eight-month interplanetary cruise to Mars.

B – The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this shot of Mars on Aug. 26, 2003, when the planet’s orbit brought it within 55.8 million kilometres of Earth.

C – This self-portrait of the Curiosity rover was created by stitching together 55 images taken on Oct. 31, 2012.

D – NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., celebrated Curiosity’s safe landing in Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012.

Panoramic views from three Mars rovers in approximate true colour: E – Spirit’s winter location April through October 2006. Left of centre, a trench dug by the rover’s wheel exposed bright white sulphur-rich salty minerals in the subsoil.

Similar samples analyzed by U of G scientists contained up to 16 per cent water.

F – Opportunity photographed layered rocks in 2004 that are thought to be either volcanic ash deposits or sediments carried by water or wind.

G – Curiosity’s ultimate destination is Mount Sharp, located 20 kilometres away from its landing site.

E

F

G

IMAGES BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/CORNELL/ARIZONA STATE, NASA/JPL/CORNELL AND NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

analyzing spectrometer data from Opportunity, although, as for most of the 400 MSL scientists monitoring developments around the clock last summer and fall in Pasadena, it was mostly eyes on the new rover beginning its hunt for signs of habitability on Mars.

New generation of explorers Seated in Guelph’s APXS operations centre downstairs from Gellert’s office, Perrett spins a Mars globe in her hands to locate a spot near the equator. This is where Curiosity landed last August, in a 150-kilometre-wide bowl called the Gale Crater. The crater lies between an expanse of pocked southern highlands and smooth northern lowlands believed to have been an ancient sea. Rising five kilometres from the floor of Gale Crater itself is Mount Sharp, the rover’s ultimate destination.Why? Perrett says satellites orbiting Mars have detected rock layers, clays

and sulphates on and within that peak – all hints of the physical and chemical effects of now-vanished water.

As of mid-December, Curiosity was still several kilometres away from that formation.

Trundling along at an average speed of 30 metres an hour, the vehicle will take a while to get there. But along the way, the rover is already living up to its name. In late September, its robotic arm contacted a chunk of igneous rock nicknamed Jake Matijevic.

Bombarding the rock with those X-rays and alpha particles, the coffee cup-sized APXS turned up a range of chemical elements more like those of Earth rocks than like formations found elsewhere on Mars by the earlier rovers. Visit www.jpl.nasa.gov for updates and photos.

Apart from Campbell pacing his Texas hotel room, all of the Guelph physicists gathered in California last August to witness

Curiosity’s touchdown.Watching the monitors in a JPL room, they waited through what NASA called “seven minutes of terror” as the rover made its unprecedented landing involving a heat shield, parachute and sky crane.

Scott VanBommel, who completed his master’s degree with Gellert last fall, says those few minutes were “probably the highlight of my life. I’ll never forget when they announced the landing. The whole room erupted.” For months while the craft travelled to Mars, he was playing mind games. “I remember telling people, ‘It’s going to work.’ It was the only way I could cope with the suspense of not knowing.”

Post-doc Irina Pradler got involved with the rover team only after arriving at Guelph in 2011. An experimental particle physicist, she had studied in Russia and Germany. “I couldn’t even dream about being involved in an interplanetary expedition.”

Winter 2013 13

A

APXS CHRONOLOGY: A – Nick Boyd, left, and Ralf Gellert prepare for the installation of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) sensor head during testing at NASA’s

D

B

Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2008.

B – The APXS appears in the centre of this photo taken by Curosity’s mast camera after a successful landing on Mars.

C – Artist’s concept of Curiosity as it

uses its Chemistry and Camera instrument to investigate the composition of a rock surface.

D – F – Curiosity aimed its APXS device at a rock nicknamed Jake Matijevic on

E

IMAGES BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS AND NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH/CSA

Recalling the Curiosity landing, she says, “It was one of the most exciting days in my life to be there, to share that moment with brilliant engineers, brilliant geologists.”

For months, Nick Boyd counted down to the landing not just in Earth days but in Martian “sols.” Now APXS operations lead, he has been involved with the Mars project since 2006; he studied physics for his undergrad at Guelph and completed a master’s degree in engineering in 2012. He says his

14 The Portico

moment of truth came with the first grainy images taken by the rover’s camera, including a shot of the vehicle’s shadow on the Martian surface. “We’ve taken better images, but that has a special place in my heart. It was the first confirmation that the last six years of effort were worth it.”

Living in Mars time With touchdown, the entire team shifted into Mars time. Hundreds of scientists, including

Boyd and Gellert, spent the next 90 days at JPL, helping to plan and guide the rover’s activities and analyzing the instrument data.

Boyd slipped away once to serve as best man at his brother’s wedding at home in Picton, Ont. Even then, he felt the tug of Martian gravity. “I was sitting in my tuxedo between photos and the start of the reception, creating a file on my computer that had to be transmitted to Mars later that night for upload into the APXS instrument.”

C

Sept. 21. The purple circle indicates where the APXS trained its view, and the close-up shows the rock surface in more detail.

G – The graph produced by U of G

scientists shows the abundance of elements in Jake and a calibration target (red line) as measured by the APXS. Compared to previously found rocks on Mars, “Jake is kind of an odd Martian

rock,” says U of G’s Ralf Gellert. “It’s high in elements consistent with the mineral feldspar and low in magnesium and iron.” These results point to an igneous or volcanic origin for the rock.

G

F

During that three-month period, Pradler, VanBommel and Perrett travelled back and forth for two-week monitoring stints at JPL. Besides the Guelph members, the APXS team includes collaborators from the University of New Brunswick, the University of New Mexico and the Australian National University, as well as CSA scientists.

If they found the landing otherworldly, many of them have also found working with the rover to be a surreal experience, for sev-

eral reasons.Tacking 40 minutes onto the day means that work periods on Earth and Mars cycle in and – mostly – out of sync. Because Curiosity’s working day rarely lines up with that of ours, the researchers’ shifts occur at any time of the Earth day or night. Says Gellert: “Only the rover works from nine to five. When the rover works, you sleep.”

As well, scientists can communicate with the rover for short periods only twice a day, when orbiting satellites pass above Curiosity.

So instructions and data may be relayed to and from Earth-bound antenna arrays only at set times; it takes five to 30 minutes to send a message from one planet to the other. Researchers need to plan their days within a tightly scripted timeline, working in shifts with partners worldwide to receive and analyze today’s data, and co-ordinating instruction sequences for tomorrow’s rover and instrument activities.

Besides the APXS, other devices aboard

Winter 2013 15

PHOTOS BY ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

The Royal Ontario Museum holds about 15 Martian meteorites among its collection of “space rocks.” Here, mineralogist Kim Tait and technician Ian Nicklin use a diamond-wire saw to cut paper-thin rock slices for study by researchers such as U of G’s Iain Campbell.

Curiosity perform chemistry and mineralogy, take pictures or look for organic compounds in samples scooped from the surface and deposited into a mini-lab in the rover’s belly.Those devices need to operate in sync.

“You’d better move the robot arm out of the way if the ChemCam laser needs to shoot,” says Gellert.

By late October, team members had returned to Guelph and were beginning to settle into a routine closer to a regular if lengthened working day. The control centre for the global APXS group – built with CSA funding – is located in the MacNaughton Building, just around the corner from a ground-floor display case highlighting aspects of the mission. Here APXS team members work in shifts to monitor the device, analyze data and communicate with scientists worldwide in co-ordinating that day-by-day interplanetary choreography.

Unexpected encounters Back at Guelph, the team also has access to tools that will help in running the APXS mission and interpreting results from Curiosity.

16 The Portico

One is a copy of the spectrometer device mounted on the rover’s arm.That will allow the researchers here to troubleshoot, mimic or anticipate what the rover encounters a world away. “If we see anything strange on Mars, we can try to simulate it here,” says Perrett. “I call it the twin or the stunt double.”

In 2008, the U of G physicists used a specially constructed clean room in Gellert’s lab to calibrate the actual Mars-bound device, which was built by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. in Brampton, Ont.The APXS was then delivered to NASA, where Gellert and Boyd installed it during testing at JPL. One floor down from Gellert’s U of G lab, Campbell has spent decades working with an instrument called a proton microprobe. Filling an entire lab and connected to a particle accelerator, that device beams protons at varied samples including rocks and air pollutants. In order to analyze the results from that technique, called protoninduced X-ray emission (PIXE), he and colleague John Maxwell developed special software decades ago. Now that software package – modified for Curiosity’s alpha par-

ticles and X-rays instead of protons – is being used by the APXS team to help interpret data from the Mars rovers.

In fact, it was PIXE that in 2004 prompted a call to Campbell from Rudi Rieder, Gellert’s then boss in Germany. Rieder had settled on Campbell’s software package for analyzing results from the APXS instrument destined for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

Campbell laughs as he recalls turning down that initial request: sorry, too busy, he said.

Things changed, including closure of the German institute. That was when Gellert joined U of G, bringing his ideas for the new rover instrument.

Now Campbell has a new plan. “It would be nice to get some Mars rocks.” Nobody plans to visit the red planet in person anytime soon, let alone lug back samples, but the Guelph physicist has cultivated ties with the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, which holds several Martian meteorites in its collection. In a real-life version of Gellert’s interplanetary stone-throwing scenario, those rocks arrived on Earth after ejection from the Martian surface in collisions with comets or asteroids. Campbell hopes to examine paper-thin slices of those ROM meteorites, akin to human tissue samples under the microscope of a medical lab technician.What he learns from looking at those rocks will give scientists a different angle on interpreting data from Curiosity, he says.

That prospect excites scientists such as Perrett, a lifelong rockhound who minored in geology while completing her physics undergrad at Guelph. Holding that russetcoloured globe aloft, she says early Mars probably looked more like its planetary neighbour, until something happened billions of years ago. Because dynamic plate tectonics forever alter the Earth’s crust, much of our planet’s early history has been erased. But in its arrested landscape, Mars holds its history and perhaps ours. “We’re learning about our own planet because Mars is showing us what may have happened to Earth,” she says.

Getting a closer look at those rock samples also excites Kim Tait, the ROM’s curator of mineralogy. “This is a snapshot of what could have happened to our planet under different conditions,” she says. Was there water or life on Mars? “The best way to find out is through Curiosity – and by studying the rocks as they come to us.” ■

Keith Warriner

When a food crisis hits… …the media call U of G

BY LORI BONA HUNT reporter that very minute? The reporter wanted to know how the outbreak could happen and, more important, what people could do to protect themselves and their families. Oh, and could he explain it so that people of all ages and backgrounds could understand?

And that was only day one.The Canadian Food Inspection Agency soon expanded its recall of products manufactured at XL Foods, which processes a third of the coun-

try’s beef. By October, the number of products on the recall list was in the hundreds; stores and food chains across the country were affected. Warriner was inundated with media requests for weeks.

This is the new normal for Warriner, a U of G microbiologist and food science professor. He and other Guelph faculty and researchers have emerged in recent years as the go-to people for media – and for indus-

Winter 2013 17

PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE

Keith Warriner’s telephone started ringing almost immediately after the first reports of E. coli contamination at an Alberta meat-packing plant surfaced in September. Make that telephones: work, cell, home.

His email inbox was flooded, too. It was the media calling.Would he drive to Toronto for a live TV interview that afternoon? How about doing a radio show at 6:15 a.m. the next morning? What about talking to a newspaper

Warriner says working with the media can be unpredictable and occasionally timeconsuming, especially when it involves spurof-the-moment trips to television studios in Toronto. But it’s a role he has come to embrace. “I look at it as an opportunity. It’s a way to get a message out, to talk about what’s important,” he says.

Given that U of G has become known as Canada’s “food university” due to its reputation as the place for innovative food research and solutions to food-related problems, he also considers it his responsibility.

“When I am called to give an opinion based on my expertise, I am doing my job: educating people. I should be telling journalists whether there is an issue here, whether people should be concerned.”

After all, the people researching and teaching about food should be the ones talk-

ing about related problems such as disease outbreaks, he says. As for having to simplify his research in order to help the general public understand it, Warriner just smiles and says, “I don’t know the big words myself.”

Humour aside, the Guelph professor is known for developing decontamination methods to improve food safety, including an effective way to sterilize seeds used to produce bean and alfalfa sprouts – culprits in major food-borne illness outbreaks around the world.

He and his research team also discovered a method that could effectively eliminate salmonella contamination by combining a bacterium naturally found on tomatoes with viruses that infect the pathogen.

So when reporters were looking for experts to discuss the 2009 tomato salmonella outbreak,Warriner’s name topped the Google

Food Experts…

Carlton Gyles Brita Ball

Sylvain Charlebois

PHOTOS BY SUSAN BUBAK AND MARTIN SCHWALBE

try and the general public – on all things food, especially in times of crisis.

“Whenever I am covering a food story, I always think of Guelph. Guelph has become the food expert mecca,” says Jennifer Tryon, who covers health and food issues as a national correspondent for Global National news. “I always know that I will be able to find someone who has studied the issue and will be able to speak objectively about it, someone who will not be swayed necessarily by industry or by private interest.”

Media are often approached by people looking to gain by promoting a particular angle on a story, she adds. “As a journalist, you are sometimes not sure what the truth is.You need someone you can trust to help you sort through the industry jumble, and I’ve always found there are experts at Guelph who can help you do just that.”

If there is a food issue making headlines in Canada, U of G researchers are bound to be found “in the news.” With food scientist Keith Warriner, these are among U of G’s “mostcalled” food experts.

Food Distribution – Whether asked to write a commentary, chime in on a debate or provide expertise or an opinion on television, radio or in newspapers, Sylvain Charlebois, the associate dean of research and graduate studies in

18 The Portico

the College of Management and Economics, is always game. Charlebois is an author and expert in food distribution and safety. He belongs to the national expert advisory committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and co-produced the 2012 Food Price Index forecast with U of G economics professor Francis Tapon.

Food-borne Illness – During the E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ont., in 2000, pathobiolo-

gist Carlton Gyles became the U of G face and name for expertise on the issue. He gave dozens of media interviews, discussing water monitoring, techniques used to test for the bacterium and controlling the risk of contamination. Gyles began studying E. coli more than 35 years ago and was among the first to pinpoint how a toxin produced by the bacterium could cause illness. Now retired but still working, he was in the news recently discussing the merits of a national E. coli vaccine.

and Mail, to name just a few.

It is a role he never imagined taking on when he arrived at U of G 10 years ago from the United Kingdom. “Food safety was hardly ever spoken about over there,” he says. “In Canada, people care; people are worried.”

Warriner admits there was a learning curve. “Going live: that used to scare me a bit. The last thing you want to do is mess up.” In fact, he was so frazzled after his first live CBC Radio interview that he thought it would be his last. “I rambled on and on.”

He admits to rarely watching himself on television or listening to his own radio interviews. “I get anxious about making mistakes: what I didn’t say that I should have said. I’m more comfortable with it now, but still there are times.” His 11-year-old daughter, however, never tires of seeing her dad on the small screen.

Warriner understands why other researchers may be hesitant to take on the role, but he says there’s a need for expert commentary.

Does he worry about backlash from industry or government for being outspoken? Quite the opposite: he says the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, which supports much of his research, has “been nothing but supportive.”

In 2008, after he did numerous interviews about the listeriosis outbreak, he was called by Maple Leaf Foods and asked to work with the company on various projects.

“They called after hearing me on (a CBC Radio show) The Current.”

He has also found many new research partners this way. “I just had a guy ring me up and say, ‘I saw you on TV; I want to discuss a collaboration.’” ■

John Cranfield

Evan Fraser

Alfons Weersink

…in the News

Food Safety – Brita Ball has lived up to her name, picking up the ball in Guelph’s dormant Food Safety Network and becoming its co-ordinator. She studies safety management systems in the food processing sector, food safety and quality assurance. In media appearances during the XL Foods recall, she discussed proper cooking and sanitary procedures for consumers.

Food Prices – When the media turns its attention to implications of rising food prices, no one

is more in demand than Prof. Alfons Weersink in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics. Raised on a cash crop farm near St. Marys, Ont., he’s an expert on government and environmental policy and is well-known by the media for his ability to explain the dramatic causes and effects of the global food crisis.

Weersink’s departmental colleague, Prof. John Cranfield, is also a sought-after source of expertise on consumers’ eating and buying patterns following disease outbreaks and food recalls.

Food Security – How and why does human culture depend on food, and what happens when a culture runs out of food? These are the questions media often pose to geography professor Evan Fraser, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security and co-author of the book Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.

Fraser has written about the fate of humanity and become a sought-after media expert and consultant on the global food crisis.

Winter 2013 19

PHOTOS BY MARTIN SCHWALBE, DEAN PALMER AND ANDREW VOWLES

search list – and he was happy to respond.“It’s another way of discussing what you’ve discovered, to get your name out there,” he says.

All of Warriner’s research findings have been published by peer-reviewed journals, “but who reads those things? To go on national TV, to be asked what you think about something based on what you do for a living, well, that’s as good as anything, isn’t it?”

In recent years Guelph’s food experts, including Warriner, have had plenty of media opportunities. Food issues and crises have made headlines regularly: the global food crisis, the Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak in 2008, a new E. coli strain in 2011, the frozen beef recall last spring and, most recently, the XL Foods recall.

In October and November alone, Warriner appeared on CTV’s The National, Global National and Canada AM, and in the Globe

professor susan nance

not everybody…

t’s a difficult story for both people and elephants, says history professor Susan Nance, but it’s a story she believes should be told. Her new book, Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus, begins in 1795 when the first elephant was imported into the United States and ends in 1907 when the first elephant born there was killed by her owners because she’d become completely unmanageable.

“The circuses marketed their elephants as happy performers,” says Nance. “Many Americans saw them as belonging in circuses, but behind the scenes, those elephants lived lives of quiet desperation. Adult elephants tolerated close human contact only with great effort, and many were treated violently. Some would eventually try to escape or lash out to protect themselves, and they represented an enormous workplace and public safety hazard. Many circuses publicly strangled or shot their most dangerous elephants to death when they ran out of other management options.”

Because of those incidents, Nance says, some people perceived elephants as “nasty, jealous, vicious brutes or inherently broken animals that had no business in the United States.”

These two conflicting images of elephants – genial performer and vicious brute – could co-exist partly because 19th-century circus advertising used both: the former appealed to children and women, the latter to teen boys and men. In the 20th century, especially after the release of the sentimental Disney film Dumbo in 1941, circuses tried to retain public sympathy by covering up violence between humans and elephants.

I

20 The Portico

Nance became interested in this topic when she discovered the many memoirs written by circus people and saw how many stories they told of people killing elephants and elephants killing people. “It seemed incredible to me that elephants were such a problem in the 19th-century U.S., so I had to know why,” she says.

A book about animal history is unusual and, some historians believe, not really appropriate. Nance obviously disagrees. “We have books focusing on every other kind of history – women’s history, environmental history – and I believe we need to be addressing the issues of animals.” Scheduled to be published next month by Johns Hopkins University Press, Nance’s book also tackles the question of whether these elephant experiences matter to history. “I think it does,” she says. “They are not just background noise; the population of elephants I studied had everything to do with how circuses looked and how they worked or didn’t work.”

She says circus history also exposes our human limitations with wild animals. “When we approach animals, we tend to overestimate our abilities.

“People thought they could manipulate elephants and put them to work, as they had done with sheep, dogs and other animals. The Americans who ran travelling circus shows had limited understanding of elephants’ needs, to be sure, but also saw them as a transient inventory, like workhorses, meant to be used for short periods of maximum productivity.To them, circus elephants were really a kind of show business commodity, not a precious wild being,” says Nance. “By the time the circuses realized that elephants might be more trouble than they were

BY TERESA PITMAN

worth, audiences had come to expect that ‘circus equals elephant,’ so there seemed no turning back.”

Nance uses current scientific research into elephant welfare and psychology to reinterpret the historical stories of elephant behaviours and explain why normally quiet, compliant elephants might suddenly attack a keeper, audience member or other animals.

“We know that elephants have very sophisticated minds,” she says. “They are similar to humans in terms of their emotional range and their thinking.” Elephants captured and sold to a circus in the 19th century had to fight their natural survival instincts to cope with confinement, travel and dominance training.

Nance says elephants sometimes failed at obedience because they just weren’t designed for close and subservient contact with humans. She gives the example of a female elephant killed by its owners in 1907 because it was “completely unmanageable.” Like humans, elephants mature slowly and rely on older elephants to learn how to manage their emotions, physical needs and massive strength.“Being an elephant is not just to have an elephant body; there is a cultural aspect as well,” she says. Even this elephant’s handlers admitted that the young female suffered because her mother and other elephants were kept chained and unable to teach her how to cope with her surroundings.

Nance hopes her historical research will make a difference for elephants living in circuses and zoos today.

She commends people in the industry who have admitted that captivity does not allow elephants to be elephants and praises the Toronto Zoo’s decision to move its remaining elephants to a sanctuary. “It’s better for them

and better for us to phase out hands-on management of elephants and their confinement in small spaces.”

Nance says elephants in the wild often walk 50 kilometres a day searching for food, so confinement produces health problems such as obesity, foot disease and boredom. She suggests humans are not effective surrogates for autonomous elephantine ways: “Elephants survived at large without our help for millennia, so money spent on elephant captivity might be better spent protecting endangered elephant communities in Africa and India.

Elephants know best what they really need.”

American circuses once imported hundreds of elephants, but Nance predicts the animals will be almost extinct on this continent within a generation. She notes that elephants rarely reproduce in captivity and that the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 bans importation.

Nance has also studied the history of other animals used to entertain humans and is writing now about the rise and fall of dog-racing tracks in the United States. She says tracks for racing greyhounds originated in the 1920s but had a surge in popularity and growth in the early 1990s – possibly because the opening credits of the popular TV show Miami Vice featured images of the dogs galloping along the course. “Many cities invested in putting up dog tracks that were never profitable,” she says, adding that journalists helped to expose the animals’ sometimes grim living conditions along with injuries and large numbers of young dogs killed when graded off the track. “It’s much like the elephant story. Track operators find it increasingly difficult to stay relevant, since our values often change in response to animal experience.”

POSTERS: HATCH LITHOGRAPHIC COMPANY, BARNUM & LONDON: JUMBO THE CHILDREN’S GIANT PET, 1882; ERIE LITHOGRAPH, COLE BROS.: QUARTER MILLION POUND ACT; UNKNOWN ARTIST, COOPER & BAILEY, GREAT LONDON: ONLY BABY ELEPHANT EVER BORN IN CAPTIVITY, 1880; STANDARD, ROBBINS BROS. RAILROAD: BINGO; NEAL WALTERS, HOXIE BROS. CIRCUS: GIANT JUNGLE BEAST – ALL INK ON PAPER FROM THE JOHN AND MABLE RINGLING MUSEUM OF ART TIBBALS DIGITAL COLLECTION NANCE PHOTO BY ANDREA GÖREÇ / BOOK COVER JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS

…loves a circus

Winter 2013 21

VACCINE DEVELOPMENT BEGINS WITH DETECTIVE WORK

ucked away in a strip mall in Cambridge, Ont., is Canada’s only manufacturer of autogenous swine flu vaccines: Gallant Custom Laboratories Inc. These vaccines aren’t destined for a doctor’s office but will be shipped to farms across Canada to inoculate livestock.

Jackie Gallant, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’82, started the lab in 1995 after she lost her job when the Guelph lab she was working for shut down. Four years later, her company needed more space, so she relocated it to the 10,500square-foot facility in Cambridge.The vaccines are produced, bottled and labelled on-site. The lab employs 11 people, including Jackie as president and her eldest son.

Her husband, Adrien, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’81, says the lab is a well-kept secret that deserves more attention. “We want the secret to get out.”

Aside from vaccine production, the lab performs diagnostic work to determine how an animal died. “It’s like a crime lab,” says Adrien of the CSI-like detective work that goes on there. Autogenous vaccines are made of antigens, which are inactive viruses or bacteria, explains Jackie: “We actually have to find an organism on a farm to make the vaccine.The veterinarian has recognized a disease problem in a herd or a flock.”

Gallant Laboratories focuses primarily on swine but occasionally receives samples from other animals. Most of the samples consist of swabs or tissue that a veterinarian collects during a post-mortem of the animal. “We can get body parts,” she says. “We get ears occasionally.” Samples arrive from across the country. Once the organism has been identified, production of the vaccine takes four to five weeks. The vaccine is not designed for animals that are already sick, she says. It’s designed to protect new animals coming into the herd or facility.

Pathogens recovered from tissue samples are grown in the lab and deactivated, rendering them harmless yet still recognizable by the immune system.

When an animal is vaccinated, its immune system produces antibodies that attack the foreign invaders. If the animal encounters the same antigens again, the antibodies will recognize and destroy them. It takes two to three weeks for most livestock vaccines to take effect, and Jackie says the animal usually needs a second vaccination for long-lasting protection.

Each vaccine the lab produces is tailored to fight a specific disease and must be customized according to the type of animal, its physiology and its age.Vaccines developed for pigs are often administered to lactating sows because their colostrum will pass on immunity to their piglets. “That’s a more efficient way to vaccinate

great guelph grad

T

22 The Portico

really young animals,” she says, adding that it’s also more cost-effective than vaccinating each piglet. Within the first few days of life, piglets are particularly vulnerable to a life-threatening form of diarrhea called scours, which can be controlled with a vaccination.

Much like human influenza vaccines, swine flu vaccines must be customized each year to target a specific combination of strains. “There are a lot of diagnostic tools that have increased our efficiency in identifying strains,” says Jackie. One of those tools is called polymerase chain reaction, which identifies a bacterium based on a piece of its DNA, much as a fingerprint identifies a criminal. “That’s a method that’s really catching on in diagnostics. It’s been an enormous aid in identification and comparison.”

A pathogen sample that the lab can't identify will be sent to the University of Guelph or a lab in Montreal for further analysis. “It doesn’t happen very often, thankfully,” she says. “We don’t really like surprises.” She explains that pathogens aren’t restricted by borders and can vary greatly by region; even those found in Canada and the United States can be different. That’s why vaccines need to be one-size-fits-all. “The challenge for a commercial vaccine company is to create a vaccine that can protect against all of those variations.”

Jackie decided to go back to school when her son Steve was five years old. Back then, she was known as Jackie Hucker. “We started school together,” she says.

“He started kindergarten and I started university. I’d always wanted to go back to school and had an interest in veterinary medicine and lab work, so I chose Guelph because of the veterinary side of it.”

Even in high school, she knew that she would prefer working in a lab to being a vet. She says the microbiology education she received at U of G was key to her success after graduation. “I’m one of the lucky ones because I use it every day.” She maintains ties with the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC); her lab often participates in research projects. The lab also supports a scholarship for post-graduate research in immunology.

“It was just one way of supporting and extending research in immunology,” says Jackie. “We try to gear it toward swine and poultry.We thought those areas might not get a lot of attention.”

She is also a strong supporter of Global Vets, an OVC program that sends veterinary students to developing countries. “I think it’s a phenomenal opportunity for students to see how other countries and cultures operate their veterinary medicine programs.”

jackie gallant

PHOTO BY SUSAN BUBAK

Jackie Gallant’s lab in Cambridge, Ont., manufactures livestock vaccines for use on farms across Canada.

Jackie met her future husband in 1978 on her first day at U of G. Both she and Adrien were mature students, but they were known by a less polite title back then. “We were ‘older than average,’ as they called it,” she says. “The ‘older than average’ student lounge is where we met.”

Not many children can say they witnessed the moment their parents first met, but Steve was there when their eyes met across a crowded student lounge. “I think it was over the doughnuts,” says Jackie with a laugh as she recalls meeting Adrien for the first time. “My son

was helping himself quite happily to the doughnuts.”

Adrien had decided to go back to school to study agriculture after earning a degree in Moncton, N.B. He now works as a fertilizer consultant. Steve is now 39 years old and works in the lab. The Gallants have another son and a daughter, both of whom are pursuing careers in the theatre and film industry.

“I think what Jackie has done will inspire a lot of young people,” says a proud Adrien. “She started from nothing.”

BY SUSAN BUBAK

Winter 2013 23

MUSICIANS SPORT MESSY HAIR: ACCOUNTANTS, NOT SO MUCH

i s c a r e e r wa s p r o c e e d i n g just as he’d planned. Brian Morcombe, BA ’96, had a Guelph degree in management economics, his accounting certification and a job with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, one of the top firms in the country. By the time he was 26, Morcombe was already a senior manager travelling the world to work with major clients.

Then one day his young son asked him to bring his guitar when they went to the park near their home in Guelph.“After the kids ran around for a while, I pulled out my guitar and sang a song,” recalls Morcombe. “People started to gather around. I played for more than 45 minutes, and the crowd kept growing. At the end, someone came up and asked for my name and phone number.”

That person passed his name to the Guelph Public Library, and he received a call asking him to perform at a library event. It went well, and they called him again.

“They told me people were asking them to have me back.” The audiences for his shows became so big that the library had to close its doors to stop any more from coming in.

Other libraries, then festivals, began calling. “Eventually, I had to ask for a three-week leave from work because I had a little tour going,” he says. As the tours and performances took up more time, he decided to leave the firm to focus on his music full-time. He now performs across Canada and the United States.

His Music with Brian and Friends stage show features dancing partners Melody the Hippo and Alan the Lion.

Musicwithbrian.com offers free songs, video, lyrics and educational material as well as an opportunity to purchase Morcombe’s three CDs and a DVD. Last spring, he found himself back outside his old office in downtown Toronto. “I actually parked in my old parking spot,” he says. “I made sure my hair was messier, though; musicians tend to have a different approach to fashion than accountants.” He was headed down King Street for the announcement of the 2012 Juno nominees. Morcombe’s album Everyone was nominated in the Children’s Album of the Year category.

He didn’t win the Juno but remembers the awards ceremony as a highlight: “To go in the room with all these famous people, these incredible talents – I was literally standing next to Blue Rodeo and watching Deadmau5 on stage just a few feet away – it was amazing.

“I was thinking: ‘In my previous life, I was meeting here with the likes of Paul Godfrey; now I’m being recognized for a completely different talent.’”

Morcombe’s wife, Susan MacKay, was obviously

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24 The Portico

excited about the nomination. “You deserve it and I’m not surprised,” she told him, but Morcombe adds, “I think she was surprised. I was!” He says her support has been crucial to his success, and it hasn’t always been easy.

“She married an accountant, and then one day I woke up and said, ‘I want to be a musician.’”

MacKay is a psychological associate with a Guelph master’s degree in developmental psychology. She may have figured things out even before he did because “music time” with their own children had taken over their living room and become a family tradition.

Truth is, Morcombe’s love of music was always there, hovering in the background. He began playing the organ when he was six but soon quit. It wasn’t until middle school that he learned to play the saxophone and discovered his passion for music.

“The sax is such a cool instrument,” he says. “My brother (Stuart Morcombe, B.Comm. ’95) played the trombone, and in the evenings we’d just jam and improvise. We had loads of fun.”

In high school, Brian’s ability to play and improvise music got him into the regional arts program at Mayfield Secondary School in his hometown of Brampton, Ont. “In my final year, I was on stage 126 times; we performed in places as far away as Vancouver, Halifax and Texas.”

His parents, though, didn’t see music as a viable way to make a living and encouraged him to find “a good, solid career” – like accounting.

But the music lingered. While working at a summer camp after high school graduation, Morcombe offered to teach the kids some music. “They said, ‘Great, get some guitars.’ But I didn’t know how to play the guitar,” he recalls. No problem. He taught himself guitar, then taught the kids, and learned a few other instruments along the way.

Knowing how to play multiple instruments means Morcombe can introduce kids to a greater variety of music than many children’s performers can. His shows are also built on his ability to write songs. In fact, the Juno-nominated Everyone CD has all original music.

“That was a real gamble,” he says. “Our previous CDs were 50-50 original music and traditional songs that parents would know and recognize, but we found our original songs were popular in our shows.”

Morcombe’s new career has an important bonus: more time with his family. His three children are now nine, seven and two, and enjoy travelling with Dad to festivals and events instead of waving good-bye at the airport as they did during his accounting years.

brian morcombe

PHOTO BY BOB HOUSSER

Brian Morcombe’s show includes friends Melody the Hippo and Alan the Lion.

What’s next? “I think TV is our next frontier,” he says. Morcombe has already met with people at Disney, Treehouse, Nickelodeon and other networks to discuss possibilities and is developing a broadcast-ready DVD. “For years I was an accountant for people who took

big risks and accomplished big things,” he says. “Now I’m trying to put into action the things I learned from them and the advice I gave them. When opportunities like this arrive in your life, you have to embrace them.”

BY TERESA PITMAN

Winter 2013 25

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Crazy Ideas Make Movies VERYONE TOLD Naomi Jaye she was crazy. “In retrospect, they might have been right,” she says.

Making a film in Yiddish – a language she does not speak – with non-Yiddish-speaking actors was her crazy idea.

Now she’s crossing her fingers that the risk will pay off.

Jaye is used to risks. She took a year off after finishing high school in Toronto to travel in Europe before enrolling at U of G. “I was interested in the London semester because my mom is British and I wanted to spend some time in Britain.” She was hesitant because Guelph seemed so small, but decided to take the risk. Her theatre classes inspired her, and her semester in London resulted in lifelong friends.

After graduating in 1996, Jaye found work doing costume design for TV and film productions. “I soon realized that it’s the director who makes all the interesting and creative decisions, so I wanted to direct.” She took an international directing internship in Paris and made her first short film when she returned.

She was then admitted to the Canadian Film Centre’s director’s lab, an intensive six-month program followed by another six months spent making a film. A grant from the Canada Council for the Arts allowed Jaye to make her third short film.

Then she wrote her first feature film, The Pin, and attended a program called Women in the Director’s Chair at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

It took her more than five years to make The Pin: “One of the biggest challenges is raising money.”

Still, she had a story to tell, begin-

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26 The Portico

Naomi Jaye

ning with an elderly religious guard at a morgue who sits with those who have died until they are ready for burial. When a body is wheeled in one day, the guard realizes it is a woman he met and fell in love with during the Second World War, when they were both hiding in a barn.

The main female character is based in part on Jaye’s grandmother Leah, who died in 2003.“All her life she had an intense fear of being buried alive.

She made my father promise that he would prick her hand with a pin to be sure she was really dead,” says Jaye.The man in her film makes the same promise to the woman in the barn and, in the end, is able to keep it.

“It is about finding hope and beauty in times of trauma, proclaiming life in the midst of death,” she says. Because of its content and lan-

guage, the film has been championed by the Jewish community, but Jaye says it is really a universal story.

She had planned to shoot the film in Russian or Lithuanian. “I wanted the authenticity of having them speak their language; language takes you immediately to a time and place.

Then I realized that the young Jewish people in my film would actually speak Yiddish as their first language, and I found myself making a Yiddish film with English subtitles.”

For screening updates, check her website www.thepinmovie.com.

Jaye is already working on her next film and is developing a musical called Waxing Poetic about a Hungarian esthetician who is cursed. Yes, she knows filming a musical is a risk, but Jaye knows all about taking risks.

BY TERESA PITMAN

matters Gryphons Join Hall of Fame

other team in the last 70 years.

Coached by Bud Folusewych, the hockey champs included Hall of Fame athletes Brad Pirie, Mike McParland and Ray Irwin.

The 1998 women’s rugby team won the national CIAU championship after five consecutive years as OUA champions. The team was led

by All-Canadian Maria Gallo and included OUA All-Stars Andrea Murphy, Jenny Thompson, Tara Trussell and Bree Warner.

Agriculture and veterinary students playing football in the 1930s were known as the Guelph Aggies.

Led by coach Fred “Baldy” Baldwin, the Aggies won five national championships. Seven members from that decade have been inducted into the Gryphon Hall of Fame as individuals.

From left: Sean Sepulis, Sarah Hall and Rob Wesseling

ATHLETICS PHOTOS

HE D EPARTMENT of Athletics welcomed three athletes, two championship teams and an entire decade’s worth of football to the Gryphon Hall of Fame on Sept. 21.

Sarah Hall, B.Comm. ’88, dominated the pool as a Gryphon from 1985 to 1988. A three-time Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union (CIAU) qualifier, she was among Canada’s top eight in 1988 with her times in the 50and 100-metre breaststroke.

Sean Sepulis, BA ’01, won national swimming medals every year from 1997 to 2001, including three CIAU gold medals in 2001. He was an Ontario University Athletics (OUA) All-Star with the Gryphons and belonged to the national swim team from 1997 to 2004.

In football, Rob Wesseling, BA ’95 and M.Sc. ’97, was a three-time CIAU All-Canadian and Academic AllCanadian, and the centrepiece of a strong offensive team that won the Yates Cup in 1992. After graduation, he was a first-round pick of the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League (CFL).

The 1979 and 1980 men’s hockey teams won back-to-back Ontario University Athletic Association championships, a feat matched by only one

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Our Ambition Built on Success he University had many successes in 2012, and we’re eager to embark on goals for 2013. The BetterPlanet Project has surpassed the $140-million mark on its way to achieving our $200-million goal.

Supported by donors, alumni and friends, the campaign has enjoyed incredible results. In 2011-2012, donations to the University of Guelph totalled $27,588,730, a 20-per-cent increase from the previous year and the largest annual amount raised in U of G history. Since The BetterPlanet Project began, donations to the University have

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increased more than 117 per cent. Thanks to our dedicated alumni, donors and friends, the University is able to invest in research, facilities, teaching and learning while nurturing our next generation of leaders.

There were many great accomplishments in 2012. Highlights include the following: David Mirvish was installed as chancellor; U of G was named Canada’s most inventive university; our fall-season varsity teams all made the Ontario University Athletics playoffs, with our football team reaching the Yates Cup game; and a grassroots fundraising effort raised $1 million in only two weeks to build an international-calibre track in Alumni Stadium.

Through the work of faculty, staff, students and alumni, we are making a difference. We value the opportunity to learn more about how Guelph grads are working, both personally and professionally, to help create a better planet. Please share your story with us at www.thebetterplanetproject.ca.

JASON MORETON ASSISTANT VICE-PRESIDENT, ALUMNI ADVANCEMENT

Winter 2013 27

alumni matters COMING EVENTS

28 The Portico

Find more alumni events at www. alumni.uoguelph.ca and visit the U of G home page for campus events open to the public.

OACAA Tees Off AC GRADS ENJOYED a day of golf Sept. 7 at the Ariss Valley Golf and Country Club. Funds raised will support student activities and help strengthen the partnership between the college and the agri-food industry.

From left to right: OAC ’62 classmates John Burton, Bill Harrison, John Pawley and Glenn Powell.

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PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE

Jan. 25 • OVC Reception at OVMA Dean Elizabeth Stone will host a reception for OVC grads at the Westin Harbour Castle, Queen’s Quay Room.

Feb. 7 • Florida Winter Excursion Relax on the water during a cruise to Franklin Lock. Board at 10:30 a.m., enjoy a lunch buffet and return at 3:30 p.m. Tickets $32.50 + tax (USD). Contact: Bert Mitchell, 941-9216426.

Feb. 18 • OVC Reception at Western Veterinary Conference Join OVC alumni for a reception at the Four Seasons Las Vegas, hosted by Dean Elizabeth Stone. Details: www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/ events.

Feb. 27 • MBA Alumni and Student Mixer Meet at the Farmhouse Tavern in Toronto at 6:30 p.m. for a fun event hosted by owner Darcy MacDonell, B.Comm. ’02 and MA ’10.

Enjoy a food demonstration while reuniting with friends and grads. Details: www.alumni. uoguelph.ca/events.

March 6 • Florida Alumni Picnic Escape the cold Canadian winter and connect with U of G grads in Florida. The annual picnic will take place at Maple Leaf Estates Recreation Center in Port Charlotte, beginning at 10 a.m. $20 USD per person for lunch with wine and dessert. Reserve by Feb. 27 with Lyle Rea at 941-505-0183.

March 16 and 17 • College Royal Enjoy family fun at the 89th annual College

Royal: livestock shows, dog and cat shows, square dancing, logging competition, photography show, flower arranging, and seeds and forage competitions as well as campus tours and a lecture series. Details: www. collegeroyalsociety.com.

March 23 • OAC Alumni Association Curling Bonspiel This annual Aggie event will be held at the Guelph Curling Club. Details: www.alumni. uoguelph.ca/events.

April 30 • UGAA Board Nominations Don’t miss this deadline for nominations to the University of Guelph Alumni Association board of directors. Details: www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/ ugaaboard.

June 14 and 15 • Alumni Weekend 2013

ALUMNI AFFAIRS AND DEVELOPMENT PHOTO

CAREER NIGHTS AND NETWORKING Alumni volunteers will meet on campus with graduating students to network and share career experiences.

Jan. 23 • CBS Career Night Jan. 23 • HAFA/HTM Career Night Jan. 23 • OVC Business Club Jan. 24 • CSAHS Career Night Jan. 29 • School of Engineering Career Night Jan. 29 • CPES Career Night Find career night details at www.alumni. uoguelph.ca/events, including how to get involved in future networking events.

CAMPUS CO-OP STILL VITAL AFTER 100 YEARS he fellows in this 1913 photo are dressed differently than today’s U of G students, but they were concerned about many of the same issues when they established the Guelph Campus Co-operative – the availability and cost of textbooks, and finding a decent place to live.

The principles behind the co-op remain the same, says Tom Klein Beernink, manager of housing and member relations.

The campus co-op will celebrate its 100th anniversary with events throughout the year.

Visit www.guelphcampus.coop to tell your coop stories and learn about anniversary events.

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WHO’S WHO CORRECTION HIS PHOTO, which appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of The Portico, was incorrectly captioned. Celebrating with students at the official opening of the University’s new engineering complex are Frank Hasenfratz, chair of the board of Linamar Corp., left, and engineering alumnus Wolf Haessler, founder of Skyjack Inc.

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Find more U of G alumni news and events at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca

PHOTO BY SPIRITS INTRIGUED PHOTOGRAPHY

Gryphon Green Draws Wedding Party

Gryphons in Love ttending university isn’t just about the books, lectures and keg parties; sometimes we’re lucky enough to meet our soulmate along the way. Just look at grads Scott Moccia and Terra Wakeford, who celebrated their wedding day in true Gryphon style by taking advantage of a new campus venue.

Scott and Terra met in 2003, just months before they both started their degrees at Guelph. Their relationship blossomed from there, and they wanted to capture that love in their wedding pictures at a place known only as home.

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UELPH GRADS HOLDING their wedding reception at Cutten Fields last summer just couldn’t resist hiking across College Avenue for a photo in U of G’s newly renovated stadium.The happy couple are Terra Wakeford, B.Sc. ’08 and DVM ’12, and Scott Moccia, B.Eng. ’08. Other members of the wedding party are, from left: Evan Slinger; Wyatt Job; Chris Peters, B.Sc. ’07; Ed DeLay, B.Eng. ’09; Jason Muller; Mark Allen; Tracy Wakeford, BA ’11; Whitney Wakeford, graduating from U of G in 2013;Vanessa Gilmor, B.Sc. ’08; Lauren Hungler, B.Sc. ’07; and Rachel Stadnyk, B.Sc. ’07 and DVM ’12.Terra and Scott live in Guelph; she works at Westmount Animal Hospital in New Dundee, he is a business analyst for OVC.

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1974-75; Robbie Keith, 1958-59 and 1959-60; Stu O’Neil, 1957-58; and Hugh Mitchell, 1978-79. Front row: Max O’Neil, 1960-61; and Tom Sawyer, 1962-63.

ATHLETICS PHOTO

ALUMNI AFFAIRS AND DEVELOPMENT PHOTO

HOCKEY DAY OCKEY ALUMNI , family and friends, along with current Gryphon hockey players, celebrated their varsity connection at the annual Hockey Day in Gryphonville Nov. 17.

Team captains from 1949 through 1979 were honoured at a reunion that included a game of shinny, a dinner banquet and a chance to watch the hockey Gryphons beat the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Back row, from left:Ted Brown, 1973-74 and

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Exactly 10 years earlier, in the fall of 1993, I saw my future wife for the first time during a U of G lecture. She was wearing a blue denim jacket and bandana, and was carrying her signature blue canvas bag. She came in and sat at the far end of the same row that I was in. It took me two years to get that first date.

If you want to know the rest of my story, or if you’d like to submit your own romantic tale, visit our “Gryphons in Love” contest website at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/inlove. You can share your story and a photo for a chance to win a romantic dinner for two in your hometown and some U of G swag.

BRAD ROONEY, ADA ’93 AND B.SC.(AGR.) ’97 UGAA PRESIDENT

ALUMNI MEET AT JAYS GAME

Call for UGAA nominations

LMOST 60 U OF G grads met in Toronto for a Blue Jays game on Sept. 12. Left to right: Jen Gonzales, B.Sc ’04; Aaron Verdoch, BA ’05; Nadia Rosemond, BA ’05; and Emily Ambos, BA ’07.

he University of Guelph Alumni Association needs strong ambassadors to volunteer their skills and experience. Nominate yourself or someone else who can represent the voice of alumni. Details at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/ugaaboard.

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Paralympic runner promotes active living S THOUSANDS OF FANS cheered in London’s Olympic Stadium, Paralympic track runner Jason Dunkerley could barely hear Josh Karanja, but they both knew what they had to do: keep running until they crossed the finish line. And they did, winning bronze in the 1,500-metre and silver in the 5,000metre at the 2012 Paralympic Games.

It was guide runner Karanja who gave Dunkerley the medal-winning news. “I actually didn’t know,” says Dunkerley. “The crowd was so loud.”

Dunkerley’s brother, Jon, also competed in the 400-metre and the 4x100metre relay, achieving a personal best.

The brothers, who were born blind, got their first taste of the runner’s high while attending a school for the blind in Northern Ireland.The school introduced them to a variety of sports, including running, swimming and wrestling.Their family moved to Canada when Jason was 13; he completed his Guelph degree in international development in 2003, specializing in Latin American studies and Spanish.

He has run with Karanja for the past year. Karanja also competes himself and received a track scholarship from Eastern Michigan University. “He’s great at guiding, but he’s also a great training partner,” says Dunkerley. “It’s just Josh being mindful of the two of us and being the eyes for the two of us.” As an experienced 5,000-metre runner, Karanja was a perfect match for Dunkerley, who says he wants to focus on training for longer races as he gets older.

He also earned a bronze medal at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing and one silver medal each from the Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004) games.

After returning home to Ottawa

PHOTO BY PHILLIP MACCALLUM/CANADIAN PARALYMPIC COMMITTEE

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Jason Dunkerley, left, and his running guide Josh Karanja compete for and win silver in the men’s 5,000-metre final at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

with his 2012 medal, Dunkerley says he avoided the “post-Paralympic hangover” by going back to his daily routine at the Active Living Alliance for Canadians with a Disability, where he works. “Fifteen per cent of Canadians have a disability, and very few of them

participate in sport or physical activity,” he says. “Active living can be for people of all abilities. It’s transformational. It doesn’t have to be about going to the Paralympics or being a competitive athlete.”

BY SUSAN BUBAK

news 1950s

Fish is a great example of what it is to be a Perth Medal winner.”

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Ross Ainslie, DVM ’52, has been looking after Halifax pets for 60 years. He was recently interviewed by CBC reporter Paul Palmeter about his many contributions to veterinary care in the Halifax area.Ainslie has established 10 veterinary hospitals in the community and still practises parttime. In 2005, he received the Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Animal Care. In 2011, the Nova Scotia House of Assembly recognized his long service and outstanding contributions to the veterinary community. The Nova Scotia Veterinary Association has also recognized his dedication to the profession, his clients and the community.

BUD INGS, RIGHT, WITH P.E.I. PREMIER ROBERT GHIZ. ■

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Ralph Fish, DVM ’52, received the 2012 Perth Medal from the Town of Perth, Ont. He has been a member of the Rotary Club of Perth for more than 55 years, has supported the Perth Blue Wings Jr. B hockey team, and has been involved with the local curling club. He is a past-president of the Chamber of Commerce and an active member of the Central Canada Veterinary Association. Perth Mayor John Fenik commented: “Dr.

Albert “Bud” Ings, DVM ’52, is one of three 2012 recipients of the Order of Prince Edward Island, recognizing his contributions to veterinary medicine and the broader community. In 2009, he received the Atlantic Award of Excellence in Veterinary Medicine and Animal Care. He recently published his second book, Vet Behind the Ears, about his experiences as a P.E.I. veterinarian.

1970s

etired business professor Bill Braithwaite writes about a special group of Guelph grads who participated in the 1997 London business semester. “The four months that Liz (his wife) and I lived and worked with these students in the fall of 1997 was the most enjoyable experience I had as a teacher.

We regard these young people as part of our family and try our best to keep in touch with them.”

Not only do these grads stay in touch, but they’ve held a reunion every five years; their third get-together took place Sept.

22 at Cutten Fields in Guelph. Back row, left to right: Bill Braithwaite, Kevin Winik, Brady Dunlop, Brad Cressman, Kate (Finlay) Dickson and Rebecca Harth. Front row: Andrea (Robson) Feddema, Barb (Jibb) Farrell, Elizabeth Braithwaite and Susan (Street) Wooldridge. Absent: Chris Antonik, Natalie Caldwell, Emily Field, Carolyn Gaudet, Martha Gonder and Barry McGroarty.

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Fiona King, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’77, has retired from the dog boarding and grooming business and says she loves spending her summers on a sailboat.

■ James McRae, MA ’77, has published a book called World Awakening and is writing a second volume with the working title The African Diaries. Since graduating from U of G, he has earned a master’s degree in social policy from Carleton University, worked at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Environment Canada, and volunteered with CUSO in Botswana. He has also worked

in mental health, addiction and community development.

■ Milica Pavlica, BA ’79, has been employed at McMaster University since 1986. She worked previously for U of G’s Central Student Association and the McMaster Students’ Union.

■ Kevin Wall, BA ’77, is returning to Canada after living in the Unites Stated for many years, especially in Philadelphia. He recently graduated with a biostatistics certificate from the University of California, San Diego, and earned credentials in elec-

tronic health records. He has a new position as a clinical analyst at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Services in Whitby, Ont. An avid ballroom dancer, he hopes to reconnect with friends and family and meet new people close to the GTA.

1980s ■

Jerry Claessens, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’80, has been general manager of Lely Canada Inc. for the past six years and was recently asked to open the Latin American market for the company’s line of dairy

Winter 2013 31

PHOTO COURTESY BILL BRAITHWAITE

PHOTO BY DESMOND DEVOY

RALPH FISH, LEFT, AND JOHN FENIK.

Prof hosts “family” reunion

All in the Family

Guelph grads in the Bogaert family, standing, from left: Michelle, George, Rick, Robin, Debbie, Peter and Greg. Seated: current students Jordan and Brittany, and 2012 grad Katlyn.

his is a tale of three Bogaert brothers who left the family farm in Wallaceburg, Ont., and studied at the University of Guelph. Each one earned a degree but, more importantly, met his future wife on campus. Their lives over the last 40 years have been busy growing careers and families, including four second-generation Bogaerts who have also pursued post-secondary education at U of G. Peter Bogaert, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’78, and Debbie Portwood, B.A. ’77, married in 1978. Peter and brother George operate joint business interests, with Peter’s main focus on management of the family’s Sydenham Farms. Debbie is an elementary school teacher with the St. Clair Catholic District School Board. She and Peter have four children, including son Greg, ADA ’01, who followed his father into agriculture studies at Guelph. Greg works in partnership with his father and uncle in the farm operation.

George, ADA ’82, and Michelle Stevens, B.A. ’84, were married in 1985. George’s main focus is managing Select Finishing, a custom coating operation in Wallaceburg. Michelle is a health educator with the Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit. Their two children are now at U of G. Brittany will graduate this year with a degree in arts and science. Jordan is completing a co-op program in mechanical engineering and plans to graduate in 2014.

Rick, BLA ’84, is the third Bogaert brother in this story. He married Robin Porritt, B.A.Sc.’86, in 1986. His career has included 26 years at landscape architectural and multidisciplinary design firms in Detroit and Toronto. He recently became urban and landscape implementation manager for the $1.4-billion Windsor Essex Parkway. Robin is a case manager in health and social services for the City of Windsor. They have two children, including daughter Katlyn who graduated in June with a B.A.Sc. degree in adult development and well-being. She is working on a master’s degree in social work at the University of Toronto.

“It started with three brothers and their spouses who had pride in being graduates of the University of Guelph and encouraged their children to seek a great quality post-secondary education,” says Rick.

“We all have enough positive Guelph memories to last a lifetime.”

PHOTO BY RICK BOGAERT

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equipment, including the Lely milking robot. His family will stay in Canada while he commutes to Lely’s new Latin American base in Valinhos, Brazil.

■ Raymond Fung, BA, ’85, completed a master’s degree in fine art at the U.K.’s University of London in 2011 and now lives in Shanghai, China.

■ Marc Hurwitz, B.Sc. ’83 and M.Sc. ’88, has been appointed an assistant professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management in the School of Business and Economics at Wilfred Laurier University. He also co-runs FliPskills Consulting, a business dedicated to improving leadership, followership, partnerships and innovation in organizations.

■ Monique Leclerc, M.Sc. ’82 and PhD ’87, studied agrometeorology at U of G and is now on faculty at the University of Georgia, where she received the D. W. Brooks Award for excellence in global programs.

■ Joanne Moran, BLA ’84, writes to say she recently visited the School of Landscape Architecture and found the campus “as beautiful as ever!”

■ Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, B.A.Sc. ’82, and Clint Chapple, B.Sc. ’82, M.Sc. ’84 and PhD ’90, are both faculty members at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN.They discovered their U of G connections – living in the same residence and finishing their undergrad degrees in 1982 – when they met at a Purdue awards ceremony last summer where both received major awards. A biochemist, Chapple won a university-wide award for outstanding research.

By manipulating a compound in plant cell walls called lignin – the substance lends structural strength but hinders conversion of plants into other materials – he has helped improve processing tech-

niques for making paper from pulp. MacDermid Wadsworth is a professor of human development and family studies and director of Purdue’s Center for Families and its Military Family Research Institute. She studies work and family life relations, and received a new Purdue award recognizing faculty excellence.

■ Donna-Beverly McKee, BA ’86, earned an undergraduate degree in nursing at the University of New Brunswick, completed northern clinical training through McMaster University and finished a master’s degree at the University of Victoria. She is now completing a master’s in public health at Lakehead University and works for the Government of Nunavut as director of population health for the Kivalliq Region.With her partner, Michael Patterson, she is raising their five children: Hayden, Moyrah, Rhonyn, Shayne and Broghyn. When not flying up and down to the Arctic, the family can be found in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley.

■ Catherine Milne, BLA ’83, and John Gibson recently celebrated their 25th year in the garden centre industry with their Farmgate Gardens. Their eldest daughter, Catherine, is working toward an education degree.

Their daughter, Alexandrea, will finish high school this spring and son, Nicholas, is in Grade 9.

■ Laurene Liversey Park, B.A.Sc. ’81, was invited to speak at the annual conference of the Japan Association of Life Organizers in November. She is certification program director of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization and a past-president of Professional Organizers in Canada.

■ Mark Stainer, B.Sc. ’84, is senior managing director and national industrial director for the real estate firm Cushman &

Wakefield in Toronto.

■ Lorraine Tawfik, B.Sc. ’80, is a statistical/accreditation/information analyst for Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y. She reports that her son completed an MBA in May and is teaching at a community college.

Her husband is a professor at Farmingdale State College.

■ Caroline Young, ODH ’85, worked as a rose breeder in the Netherlands for 16 years before moving to Nova Scotia three years ago to complete a master’s degree in divinity at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax.

■

Lori Quinlan, BA ’94, of Barrie, Ont., started at U of G with the class of 1988 but delayed her studies because of family responsibilities. Now she’d like to reconnect with friends from the late 1980s. Contact her through

Homecoming 2012 Memorable

he Sept. 24 Homecoming football game was a memorable one for U of G alumni and Gryphon players. Almost 300 grads visited the pre-game Manulife hospitality tent and supported the Gryphons as they defeated the University of Toronto. The Gryphons went on to play in the Nov. 10 Yates Cup but lost the Ontario University Athletic final to McMaster University.

Alumni reunions were held at Homecoming for Redmen football, the Engineering Alumni Association, the School of Biological Science Alumni Association and Gryphon men’s basketball. Players from the 1966 to 1976 basketball teams and their guests gathered around coach Garney Henley for this photo.

T

Impact of Giving “Choose your passions” is worldly advice from Murray McEwen, a philanthropist and long-time friend of the University of Guelph. Last year, Murray and 13,751 alumni and friends, corporations, associations and foundations made gifts to the University.

Please visit the Impact of Giving Report online at www.uoguelph.ca/impactofgiving to read about Murray’s gift to support students passionate about clean, safe water, as well a collection of other stories about how support has made a difference at Guelph.

Winter 2013 33

PHOTO BY SAM KOSAKOWSKI

1990s

U of G by sending email to alumnirecords@uoguelph.ca.

■ Deborah Rumble-Dani, BA ’95, is taking business courses and working as a parent governor for the nursery school attended by her son, Lyndunne.

■ Tammy Tipler-Priolo, B.A.Sc. ’90, of North Bay, Ont., will speak at the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference in May in Oshawa. She received her genealogy certificate (PLCGS) from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies in partnership with the Faculty of Independent Studies at the University of Toronto. She has more than 17 years of experience in consulting, researching, teaching and writing articles for www.BayToday.ca.

■ Phil Williams, B.Sc.’97, and Sandra (Gammond) Williams, B.Comm, ’97, have moved to Saint-Lazare, Que., with their

More vines lead to more wine

amie Slingerland, ADA ’79, director of viticulture for Pillitteri Estates Winery in the Niagara Peninsula, received a 2012 Premier’s Award for agrifood innovation. He leads the winery’s Verona appassimento project to produce the first Ontario appassimento (rackdried) wine made from Amarone grape varietals Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara.

PHOTO COURTESY PILLITTERI ESTATES

J

He was recognized for developing new grape varieties in Canada and for speeding up the process though commercial adaptation of experimental green-shoot grafting, which takes mere months to reproduce a few vine cuttings into thousands of vines in a greenhouse.

Through Niagara nursery VineTech, he located the only phytosanitary-certified wood cuttings of these varieties at a U.S. research facility. Green-shoot grafting was subsequently pioneered at the Vineland Research Facility with U of G professor Helen Fisher. Pillitteri harvested its first crop of the rare varieties The winery is a large producer of ice wines and the only Advantage HACCP Plus-certified winery in Canada, both areas managed by Slingerland.

sons, Jackson, 7, and Tyson, 4.

Phil is now product manager for Merial Canada Inc.

2000s

ALLISON BROWN ■

Allison Brown, B.Sc.(Env.) ’04, moved to Australia in 2007 and was a 2012 finalist in the prestigious Telstra Western Australian Business Women’s Awards.

She is an environmental systems and development manager for the Australia Pacific division of Barrick Gold Corp. Her respon-

sibilities include implementing environmental standards at nine properties in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Zambia and Saudi Arabia, and ensuring compliance across all Barrick mines in the division. She has helped create an environmental graduate program for the company and has promoted opportunities for women in the mining industry.

For the first six months of 2012, she was acting environment director for the division; she is now pursuing a master’s degree in environmental sustainability.

■ Chris Martin, BA ’00, moved with his wife, Erin, to Moncton, N.B., four years ago.

They have two children, Olive and Sullivan. He recently completed an education degree at Crandall University and is looking forward to raising his family and teaching in the Maritimes.

■ Tanya Springer, BA ’07,

Make your legacy a better planet.

For information on bequests and planned giving, please contact Ross Butler at 519-824-4120, ext. 56196, rbutler@uoguelph.ca, or visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca

34 The Portico

officer. She says, “I found it quite a coincidence that, out of a relatively small Guelph program, three of us are clustered here in Thunder Bay.”

2010s ■

Julia Del Monte, BA ’12, started studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in September.

■ Mark McGown, B.Comm. ’12, of Schomberg, Ont., and his hometown friend Jeremy Robertson are starting a travel/ backpacking web series called The Backpacking Project, beginning with a trip to Thailand and Costa Rica.

A graduate of the New York Film Academy, Robertson filmed a 2011 pep rally at U of G (posted on YouTube).

■ Zoe Waelchli, BA ’10, was recently accepted into the University of Zurich to begin a master’s degree in psychology.

Auctioneer sells legs and lights uctioneer David Moore, ADA ’83, says the Nov. 24 sale of orange lampshades in the University Centre brought back memories of his student days at U of G. The iconic light fixtures were replaced last summer and were sold via live and online auctions to benefit the University’s annual United Way campaign.

Moore remembers meeting other students for lunch under the cluster of orange lights, and the UC courtyard is where he got his start as an auctioneer in 1981. He was asked then to perform at a charitable “leg” auction where bidders bought a date for the evening by judging their bare legs. “Men were part of the fun, too,” he says.

“They’d shave their legs and wear high heels.”

A

After graduation, Moore went to auction college to master the trade lingo and started David Moore & Associates in Guelph in 1984. His wife, Carolyn, B.A.Sc. ’84, works as a food research analyst for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Overall, the U of G community donated $560,000 to the Guelph Wellington Dufferin United Way in 2012.

Recruit Recruit Guelph Guelph ph Hire co-op co-op students students ffor or o the Summer 2013 w work ork tterm erm Begin n posting jobs JJanuary anuary 7th, 2013 IInterviews nterviews begin begin JJanuary anuary 25th, 2013 P ost co-op Post co-op, full-time & part-time part-time jobs M Manage anage yyour our rrecruitment ecruitment process process online

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Winter 2013 35

PHOTO COURTESY DAVID MOORE & ASSOCIATES

wrote and produced a fulllength documentary titled “Of Mothers and Merchants” that was shown on CBC’s The Current in March 2012. She credits her experience at Guelph, especially the India semester, with giving her the education, tools and courage to tackle this project.The film looks at the underregulation of the commercial surrogacy industry in India.

■ Heather Vita, B.A.Sc. ’04, uncovered a U of G connection when she worked for the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre with Lauren Beach, B.A.Sc. ’09, and Alison McMullen, B.A.Sc. ’79.They all studied applied human nutrition at Guelph and have pursued health-related careers, although Vita is now working for the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation as a marketing and communications

PAS S AGES Johannes Aalders, PhD ’71, July 30, 2012 Robert Abell, DVM ’50, Oct. 15, 2012 Hon. Lincoln M. Alexander, H.D.La. ’09, Oct. 21, 2012 Frank Bell, BSA ’64, Sept 2, 2012 Keith Bennett, BSA ’49, Aug. 19, 2012 Margaret Blake, B.H.Sc. ’63, Oct. 13, 2012 Salvatore Bommarito, BA ’83, date unknown Jason Boverhof, B.Sc. ’97, Aug. 23, 2012 Stuart Bowman, BSA ’36, March 30, 2012 Lesley (White) Brown, B.Sc.(Env.) ’97, Sept. 8, 2012 Gerardus Bruin, PhD ’80, Aug. 1, 2012 Alan Bycraft, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’78, March 31, 2012 Carrie (Cook) Cadotte, DHE ’37, Nov. 8, 2012 Kwai Fong Chong, DVM ’60, July 17, 2012 Howard Colhoun, BSA ’50, June 20, 2012 Sarah Collin, MA ’96, Jan. 2, 2012 Dudley Collins, DVM ’56, July 21, 2012 Marion Crewson, DHE ’48, Oct. 13, 2012 Ralph Cutten, B.Sc. ’71, Oct. 5, 2012 David Davidson, BSA ’52, Oct. 21, 2012 Murray Dewart, BSA ’51, Aug. 31, 2012 Vijay Duggal, M.Sc.(Eng.) ’66, July 18, 2012 W. O. Edwards, BA ’72, June 7, 2012 Donald Fishman, DVM ’58, Nov. 15, 2012 Elizabeth (Clark) Fuller, DHE ’35, Aug. 26, 2012 Edward Greene, DVM ’75, Aug. 11, 2012 Peter Greenhow, BSA ’61, Oct. 9, 2012 Joan (Allen) Hamilton, B.H.Sc. ’55, April 1, 2012 William Harrison, DVM ’49, Sept. 2, 2012

36 The Portico

Lois (Tout) Heath, DHE ’37, July 18, 2012 Julia (Lane) Hillmann, B.H.Sc. ’60, Nov. 2, 2011 Hanna Hogarth, ODH ’88, May 31, 2012 Gary Holm, M.Sc. ’86, Aug. 16, 2011 Donald Hughes, DVM ’56, Aug. 17, 2012 Marilyn (Farage) Holm, M.Sc. ’85, Sept. 28, 2011 Ralph Honey, ADA ’61, Aug. 21, 2012 Jane Jarrell, B.A.Sc. ’75, Nov. 1, 2012 Stanley Klachan, BSA ’53, Nov. 22, 2012 Lancelot Lam, DVM ’73, Aug. 21, 2012 Marian (Sibbald) Lawson, DHE ’47, Dec. 31, 2010 Joseph Lomas, DVM ’43, July 9, 2012 Scot Lougheed, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’90, Oct. 25, 2011 Sharon Lynch, B.A.Sc. ’87, Oct. 31, 2010 Everett MacFarlane, ADA ’50, March 2, 2012 Ross MacLennan, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’67, Aug. 26, 2012 James Maki, BSA ’64, Oct. 25, 2008 Margaret (Thomson) Maki, B.H.Sc. ’64, Jan. 30, 2004 Carmen Marcinko, BA ’12, March 26, 2012 Lorna Marshall, MBA ’02, Nov. 21, 2011 Lyle Martin, ADA ’67, Feb. 5, 2012 Robert Mason, DVM ’86, Oct. 21, 2012 John Mbaya, PhD ’94, date unknown Nicole McCord, BA ’99, Aug. 18, 2012 Margaret (Merkley) McLaughlin, DHE ’37, Oct. 2, 2011 Bernard McSherry, DVM ’42, July 12, 2012 Jake Mills, DVM ’62, Nov. 8, 2012 Lloyd Minshall, BSA ’38, Aug. 14, 2012 Kenneth Orchard, DVM ’65, June 14, 2012 Pauline (Frankfort) Pattenick, DHE ’40, March 17, 2012

Ross Patterson, BSA ’49, July 7, 2012 Jean (Guest) Phoenix, DHE ’40, June 30, 2012 Helen (Sutherland) Pirie, DHE ’35, Nov. 15, 2012 Storm (MacKenzie) Poynter, DHE ’42. Dec. 22, 2009 MacDonald Reid, BSA ’53, Nov. 14, 2011 Bruce Reynolds, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’72, Aug. 4, 2012 Leone Riddolls, DHE ’37, Nov. 21, 2012 Carleton Ring, DVM ’35, April 24, 2012 John Robinson, BSA ’48, July 24, 2012 Neal Robson, DVM ’74, Sept. 12, 2012 Robert Roughley, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’74, Nov. 9, 2009 Charles Shane, BSA ’51, Aug. 26, 2012 Ola (Robertson) Shoom, B.H.Sc. ’52, Oct. 16, 2012 Leslie Shugar, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’75, June 2, 2012 Archie Sinclair, ADA ’66, Sept. 18, 2012 Phillip Tobias, H.D.Sc. ’90, June 7, 2012 Gwendolyn (Peters) Tonge, DHE ’59, Sept. 28, 2012 Ronald Trenton, DVM ’76, Aug. 2, 2012 Audrey (Ellsworth) Troup, DHE ’36, Feb. 9, 2010 Donald West, BSA ’49, March 31, 2012 Aaron Whalen, ADA ’01, May 7, 2011 Kathryn (Field) Zimmer, B.H.Sc. ’71, Aug. 25, 2012 FACULTY Parvathi Basrur, retired, Biomedical Sciences, Nov. 10, 2012 Eric Beauchamp, retired, Land Resource Science, April 17, 2012 Murdoch MacKinnon, retired dean, College of Arts, July 8, 2012 Stephen Rodd, retired, Rural Planning and Development, Sept. 6, 2012

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