UTSC Commons Fall 2015

CUTTING THROUGH THE CLUTTER: Researcher digs deeper into hoarding p8

CITY LIVING: What makes a city livable for everyone? p10

FALL 2015

News

Insights

Research

Culture

Community

WILD TORONTO: Meet your animal neighbours p20

KEYNOTE

A magazine for the alumni, friends and community of the University of Toronto Scarborough Fall 2015 Volume 5, Issue 2 Produced by the Department of Communications & Public Affairs 416-287-7089, utsccommons@utsc.utoronto.ca Editor Chris Garbutt

What can gown do for town? The word campus suggests an inward-looking community, set apart. That may have made sense several generations ago.

But a modern university campus must be deeply engaged with both the local and the global.

One of the great strengths of Toronto is U of T, and likewise, the GTA is a great strength of all three U of T campuses.

UTSC and the eastern GTA are inextricably tied—physically, economically and emotionally. We draw upon its people, culture and environment for our students, research and learning, and we accept a responsibility to contribute to its intellectual, economic, cultural and athletic vibrancy, and quality of life.

What we do—or fail to do—has an enormous impact on the city/region around us and on the world we inhabit.

That’s why the extent to which we are not just “in” a city but also “of” it is critical to our academic enterprise. We are not “hidden behind the trees.”

And we’re not a satellite located in a community of bedrooms. We’re an internationally recognized, research-intensive university committed to a rapidly maturing area of the GTA. We offer exceptional experiential and Co-op education so that students can gain first-hand knowledge of the issues they study, at home and abroad.

As thought leaders we conduct research, teach and advise on challenges like building sustainable, affordable transit; planning and financing infrastructure that attracts and supports business, artists and creative professionals; and creating a sustainable environment. We contribute to a better-prepared workforce, increased employment, smarter local development and inclusive, humane citizenship. UTSC’s interdisciplinary programs enable us to foster innovative collaboration among departments and disciplines, addressing universal problems such as poverty, inadequate schools and poor health care, whether these problems are manifested near or far.

The university of the future looks a lot like UTSC today.

Bruce Kidd, OC, PhD, LLD Vice-President, University of Toronto, and Principal, UTSC We are most grateful for the contributions of Professor Rick Halpern, who has stepped down as dean and remains a tenured U of T professor. Rick brought progressive leadership to our academic program over the past six years, leading significant enrolment growth and helping to make UTSC a destination for innovative programming that is engaged with the community.

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Principal Photographer Ken Jones Communications Intern Sayada Nabi Art Direction, Design & Production Hambly & Woolley Inc. Editorial Advisory Group Pankaj Aggarwal Associate Professor, Department of Management Maydianne Andrade Professor, Department of Biological Sciences Andrew Arifuzzaman Chief Administrative Officer Dan Bender Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies Joe Hermer Associate Professor, Department of Sociology Shelley Romoff Director, Communications & Public Affairs Georgette Zinaty Executive Director, Development & Alumni Relations To contact us, please visit UTSCCommons.ca, email utsccommons@utsc.utoronto.ca or write us at UTSC Commons, Communications & Public Affairs, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 UTSC Commons has a circulation of 30,000 and is published twice a year by UTSC’s Department of Communications & Public Affairs. All material is copyright © 2015 University of Toronto Scarborough and may be reprinted with written permission. Alumni receive the magazine free of charge.

For information about how you can support University of Toronto Scarborough, please contact Development & Alumni Relations at 416-287-7115, advancement@utsc.utoronto.ca or at the postal address above.

Visit us online UTSCCommons.ca Facebook facebook.com/utsc1 Instagram & Twitter @utsc The University of Toronto Scarborough respects your privacy. We do not rent, trade or sell our mailing lists. If you do not wish to receive the magazine, please contact us at 416-978-2139 or 1-800-463-6048 or address.update@utsc.utoronto.ca

UTSC COMMONS

CONTENTS

FALL 2015

features

10 16 20 22 25

WHAT MAKES A CITY LIVABLE?

Housing? Transit? Bicycle lanes? All of the above? by Donna Paris

STUDENTS AND THE CITY

UTSC students make their mark on the urban landscape through work placements.

22

mosaic NOT WORTH ITS SALT

What is road salt doing to our water? p2 BREAKTHROUGH THINKING

Lessons from policing on how we handle workplace stress. p4 DID YOU KNOW?

by Elaine Smith

There’s a lab at UTSC devoted solely to the study of cities. p5

TORONTO THE WILD

DISCUSS

There are millions of people in this city, but there are other inhabitants of the urban landscape.

by Patchen Barss

IT’S A DOUBLE LIFE

UTSC alum Ravi Gukathasan has embraced a more human way of doing business. And he’s only getting started. by Berton Woodward

PRIVATIZING THE PEACE

Police are under pressure to reduce costs.

Is it time to privatize some of their work?

by John Lorinc

Above: Ravi Gukathasan (BSc, 1982) wants to do more than make a profit in his business.

He wants to make a better workplace—and a better community.

Cover: Illustration by Tom Froese.

Visit us online at

What is the role of art in a city? p6

UTSCCommons.ca

campus news

Pan Am ignites excitement at UTSC. p28 Student leader wins exclusive 3M award. p29 Preserving the rock-cut churches of Ethiopia. p31

meeting place

Pollster has his finger on the pulse of Canadian public opinion. p32

from the field

Hoarding is getting a lot of media attention these days.

One researcher is digging deeper through the rubble.

by Chris Garbutt p8

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1

MOSAIC Ideas & Observations

NOT WORTH ITS SALT?

In Toronto, the local water supply is good.

But we’re destroying it with pollutants, especially salt.

Salt is the most popular de-icing element for keeping Canadian roads safe for cars and pedestrians. That salt is then flushed into our groundwater and aquifers, contaminating our lakes and our drinking water.

UTSC environmental science researchers Mandy Meriano and Carl Mitchell are conducting two separate hydrology projects assessing the movement of water.

“We look at water flows, chemistry 2

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and factors related to pollution,” Mitchell says.

He’s studying the watershed at Mimico Creek, in the west end of Toronto. “The biggest pollutants in urban systems are easy to measure but hard to control, like salt,” Mitchell says. In winter, salt concentration in water systems is higher, and that is linked to the use of road salt.

Meriano’s project looks at the impact of urbanization on waterflows, both on the surface and in aquifers— the underground layer of waterpermeable rock—in the Frenchman’s Bay watershed in the eastern GTA. As the area was urbanized, it was expected that there would be a lot more water runoff, since cities set out to convey water in a direction away from where we live. But, Meriano says, “what we

found was very exciting. The aquifer system receives just as much water as it did before urbanization.”

Although the quantity of water didn’t change, quality did. With urbanization comes more cars, more buildings and more pollutants being flushed into the groundwater.

As the city ages, its surfaces become more pervious, allowing more water to seep through so the slow groundwater system becomes a reservoir for contaminants.

“There used to be a time when we used aquifers for drinking water. We can’t do that anymore because the water is too salty. If we can’t drink the water, animals like fish and birds can’t either. Maybe you and I aren’t really going to feel that impact,” Meriano says, “but future generations will.”

MOSAIC

PROMINENT CHEMIST NAMED VP RESEARCH

Award-winning chemist Heinz-Bernhard Kraatz is UTSC’s new vice-principal, research.

In this role, Kraatz is responsible for stimulating new research and supporting and strengthening ongoing activities, as well as enhancing the research environment for undergraduate and graduate students. He will also work to advance collaboration among the three U of T campuses.

Kraatz succeeds Malcolm Campbell, a leading expert in plant biology and an international authority on the regulation of gene expression in plants and the biochemical composition of plant matter.

Kraatz joined U of T in 2011.

He has served as Chair of UTSC’s Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences since 2012. Kraatz’s research has focused principally on creating new materials to detect bio­ molecules ranging from DNA to proteins to whole cells and even biological processes. This has implications for the detection of viral infections, cancer and other diseases. He is also involved in research that probes the under­ lying molecular causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Of his new position, he says, “I see my role as that of an advocate for and facilitator of our increasingly robust research enterprise.”

STUDY PATH FOCUSES ON URBAN CREATIVITY A new minor will allow students to

get hands-on experience in learning about the connection between cities and culture.

Culture, Creativity and Cities allows students to take interdisciplinary courses with similar themes and use the credits towards earning a minor.

“It looks at how cities foster creativity and innovation through culture, which shapes their development,” says Dan Silver, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, where the new minor is based.

The minor culminates with a new fourth-year “capstone” course, which will give students a chance to apply their learning in a practical way.

“In the capstone course, students will be able to get their hands dirty collaborating and working on data as they create their final research project,” says Clayton Childress, assistant professor in Sociology.

As an interdisciplinary path focusing on urban creativity, this program is unique. “We think we’re getting ahead of the pack,” Childress says.

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breakthrough thinking

It’s no secret that police officers work

in high-stress environments.

Not only do they arrive at crime scenes, confront violent offenders, and approach victims (or, in worst cases, their survivors)—they may also come under suspicion and experience intense public scrutiny.

It’s challenging to face these pressures while focusing on serving and protecting.

A new UTSC study sheds light on the implications of this high-stress environment. UTSC Management Professors Julie McCarthy and John Trougakos, along with Bonnie Cheng from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, explored the effects of this high level of stress on RCMP officers. They found that it’s a serious concern for employee health and well-being—and also for the organization’s bottom line.

“Police officers, like all of us, have a finite amount of resources they can 4

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draw on to cope with the demands of their job,” explains McCarthy, an expert on work-life integration and stress management. “If these resources are depleted, then high levels of workplace anxiety will lead to emotional exhaustion, and this will ultimately affect job performance.”

The study, which surveyed 267 RCMP officers from across Canada, also found that good relationships with peers and supervisors can help reduce the harmful effects that workplace anxiety can have on officers and their performance.

If supervisors and co-workers are empathetic and provide emotional support by listening to an officer, this goes a long way in fostering a positive work environment, says McCarthy.

These strong interpersonal relationships are built on high levels of understanding and trust, which allow individual needs to be met.

“Our findings highlight the

importance of programs that allow employees to recover, build resilience and develop strong social support networks in the workplace.”

Statistics about anxiety in the modern workplace are alarming, with one survey showing 41 per cent of employees from a range of industries reporting high levels of anxiety. The hope, McCarthy says, is to highlight the importance of having strong social support networks, not only in high-stress occupations but in any line of work.

“Organizations like the RCMP have taken great strides in developing techniques to buffer the effects of anxiety among their officers,” she says. “Our hope is that this research will trigger conversations among other organizations about the debilitating effects of a stressed-out workplace and the importance of developing strategies to help workers cope with workplace anxiety.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS / Jonathan Hayward

THE STRESS OF POLICING Good relationships at work can ease anxiety

MOSAIC

DID YOU KNOW? Students, faculty benefit from Cities Lab

Tucked in the middle of the UTSC library is a space devoted to a better understanding of cities.

Shared by the departments of Human Geography and Sociology, the Cities Lab is both a research space and a seminar room. Faculty members work with teams of undergraduates on research projects, using highspeed computers with specialized software such as geographic information systems (GIS) and NVivo, which is used for qualitative research.

The lab supports teaching and research into urban trends and transformations, with a unique focus on the growth and development of cities. “Cities and urbanization are central to the way the contemporary world is being transformed, and present a wealth of research opportunities,” says Professor André Sorensen, chair of the Department of Human Geography, “as well as a wide range of career options for our students.”

The need for a dedicated lab comes primarily from UTSC’s City Studies program, which now has 240 students, plus a growing Co-op program.

NEW TWISTS IN TORNADO RESEARCH UTSC research helps predict

Bottom: © Clint Spencer / iStock

tornado activity, and reveals that Canada has more tornados than we thought

What if tornado activity could be forecast months—or even seasons—in advance?

Thanks to a new model developed at UTSC, this could soon be possible.

“We want to predict ahead to the following year or even years whether tornado activity will be above or below average in a given area so we can plan accordingly,” says Vincent Cheng, a postdoctoral fellow in UTSC’s Ecological Modeling Lab. The model was developed by Cheng, Professor George Arhonditsis

and Professor Bill Gough in UTSC’s Climate Lab, along with colleagues at Environment Canada. It uses largescale atmospheric variables like those used by weather forecasters.

The aim is to reproduce a historical record of the atmosphere over time, by looking at the instability of the atmosphere and at the vertical windshear—the change in wind speed and wind direction at different heights.

As well as its role in forecasting, the model would allow for fuller reporting of tornado activity. Many tornados occur in remote areas, where people aren’t around to observe and report them. “From observations there are only about 60 reported tornadoes in Canada per year,” says Cheng, “but the number is more like 150.”

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DISCUSS CITIES AND CULTURE Artists, public spaces and communities

The world is an urban place, and it’s only going to become more so. Cities are magnets for people seeking opportunities for employment and creative pursuits.

What issues arise when people come together in urban environments? What role do artists play? And how do we ensure that everyone is included? We posed these questions to Margaret Kohn, professor of political science and acting director of the Centre for Ethics, and Will Kwan, associate professor and program director, Studio program, in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, who also teaches master’s students in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design on the St. George campus.

Margaret Kohn: One of the challenges

for policy-makers and planners is to figure out how we can enable the circulation of people to leisure activities, to work, and to engage in the activities they want to take part in.

Will Kwan: As cities sprawl, there are fewer hubs for people to congregate in, and participate in civic life.

Another issue that arises is gentrification, and artists are notorious for being part of that. I’m wondering, in 6

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your research, what you’re finding out about artists and what we do to neighbourhoods.

MK: What concerns me are the projects that privilege cultural development over a more holistic approach. For instance, a neighbourhood might be enthusiastic about supporting below-market-rate housing for artists because that can have the effect of raising property values. But building public housing for immigrant families doesn’t have that same commercial benefit and can receive less priority.

WK: The majority of artists don’t make a lot of money. They eventually get priced out of those areas as well.

There is a hierarchy in cultural industries: web designers, architects and university professors might be part of a larger creative class that participates in that gentrification process because they are able to adapt to rising rents and property values more easily than artists.

I’m looking for a live/work space myself, and I can’t actually find this kind of space. Just condo developments that reflect a bohemian kind of aesthetic.

MK: The famous Bohemian Embassy on Queen West?

WK: There was no bohemian community there to begin with! This idea of a bohemian, creative lifestyle has been detached from actual practitioners, from actual makers and people who are building an artistic community.

MK: Public spaces don’t have to be well known to play an important role.

Dufferin Grove Park is in my neighbourhood. It’s known for community involvement. People there have

started a number of volunteer-based programs. Some generate small amounts of revenue, which then fund programming. These initiatives are driven by community needs at a low cost, with norms of accessibility and the community informing what they choose to do. That is really wonderful and it makes the neighbourhood what it is.

WK: Organizations like Artscape in Toronto are trying to create belowmarket spaces for artists. There is a shortage of affordable workspace for artists here because a lot of the industrial spaces have disappeared.

I just came back from Hong Kong where rapid migration of small manufacturing industries moving up to Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta means there is suddenly industrial space that artists are now moving into all over the city.

“ Public spaces don’t have to be well known to play an important role.”

MK: One aspect of the relationship between art and the city that we haven’t talked about is street art.

It’s this wonderful kind of free art experience where the city itself sort of turns into a work of art.

WK: Street art has a distinct place in contemporary art. It’s popular and circulates easily in the media and does not necessarily result in a high-value

DISCUSS

object. There is a distinction between what someone like Banksy does and what we consider mainstream contemporary art, which is associated with theory and exclusivity.

MK: So what do you think about something like Nuit Blanche, which is curated? It isn’t exactly about street art, but it is bringing art into the street through conventional artistic institutions.

WK: Nuit Blanche is great for one

reason: my students go, and they see that what they’re studying has such a presence in the city. There’s also public art. That includes everything from commissions to collaborative and participatory community art projects that try to build longer-term engagement.

MK: So there’s a role to be played for different types of public art, and public spaces too. I was talking to one of the architects who was involved in

redesigning Nathan Phillips Square.

He was incredibly sensitive about how to use design elements, public furniture and art to create a sense of democracy and community. The design and arts community is doing very cutting-edge work right now about how to revitalize public space and how to bring out its potential.

WK: There is a range of public spaces.

We have to be imaginative about them.

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7

from the field

ALL ABOUT STUFF

UTSC prof sorts through the truth about hoarding

On September 24, 2010, a cigarette dropped from a balcony in downtown Toronto landed on a balcony below filled with papers and boxes. The fire that resulted caused more than $1 million in damages.

While the cigarette triggered the fires, the Ontario Fire Marshal focused on the “excessive amount of combustible materials” on the balcony and in the apartment, which initiated a flurry of public discussion about hoarding and its dangers.

“It’s interesting that the attention was on the dangers of hoarding and not smoking,” says Katie KilroyMarac, an assistant professor of Anthropology at UTSC. “In the last 10 to 15 years, hoarding has emerged as a media spectacle, a public health issue and a mental health disorder,” she says. While once consi­dered a symptom of other disorders, the American Psychiatric Association now lists “hoarding disorder” as a separate diagnosis.

Kilroy-Marac is taking an ethnographic approach—studying by observing day-to-day activity—to better understand the subject. She’ll be volunteering with front-line service providers in Toronto who intervene in hoarding cases. She’s also interviewing the well-intentioned members of what she calls the “clutter management industry”—professional organizers who help people sort their stuff.

“It’s a peculiar disorder,” says Kilroy-Marac, noting that medications for similar disorders aren’t effective for this group. “It’s not the stuff that causes the distress, even if it is affecting their quality of life 8

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or health. It’s the anxiety about the removal of the stuff.”

The common response to hoarding, or at least the one seen on TV, is likely not going to work, at least long term.

“Some people think that the solution is the extreme clean,” says Kilroy-Marac. “But this is really only a short-term solution, and it can add to an already traumatic situation.” The trauma can be made even worse for renters, who can face eviction.

Tidiness is something we’ve been socialized to do throughout our lives, notes Kilroy-Marac, so a one-time fix might not address the deeper underlying issues. “I fear that it may not be representative of the real issues.”

It was during a research study in Senegal that Kilroy-Marac began to think deeply about the difference between what we consider worth keeping and what we should throw away.

“People would pick through my trash, because some of those things weren’t trash to them,” she says.

So while hoarding may be a symptom of an out-of-control consu­mer society, our interest in it represents a certain anxiety about the stuff with which we surround ourselves.

“Among certain classes, there has been a radical turn away from conspicuous to inconspicuous consumption,” she says. “We spend less on stuff, and more on experiences such as vacations and education.”

By seeing their work first-hand, Kilroy-Marac aims to better understand what service providers are facing, so policy-makers can better respond to people with the disorder rather than simply teaching them to be clean.

© Ekely / iStock

by Chris Garbutt

FROM THE FIELD

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9

Coffee shops, housing, bike paths, transit and business opportunities are all important. But in the end, a livable city is one where everyone belongs

By Donna Paris Illustrations by Tom Froese

WHAT MAKES A CITY LIVABLE? 10

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11

TODAY, MOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD live in cities, but choosing

which city is often a personal decision. Perhaps we grew up there or our family and friends are there.

Or we might be seeking work opportunities, amenities that matter to us, or simply a place where we will be accepted and included.

“It’s the same basic set of issues in North America, but people are very diverse. There isn’t just one formula,” says Professor André Sorensen, chair of the Department of Human Geography at UTSC. “There’s a whole range of income levels in any city.

Rich people can pretty well buy the livability they want, so you have to look at lower-income levels, where people have less capability to do it themselves.” He says it’s important to maintain the infrastructure and water, power and communication networks, along with parks, libraries and museums, since public facilities are more sustainable than private ones.

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Getting around For a livable city, a well-designed transportation system is paramount.

“As we plan for cars, it takes away from the enjoyment of places for non-drivers,” says Steven Farber, assistant professor in the Department of Human Geography. “And in studies, even in places where non-drivers outnumber drivers, we still see more space allocated to cars.”

Farber points to one study of the Annex, a mixed-income Toronto neighbourhood. It showed that only 10 per cent of the people using the stores and sidewalks arrived by car, with the rest having walked, biked or used public transit. Yet the sidewalks are narrow strips without room for

“ ARE WE GOING TO DEVOTE PUBLIC SPACE TO THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE OR TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE BASICALLY USING THE SPACE TO GET THEIR CARS THROUGH?” © fotoVoyager / iStock

A roof over your head Along these lines, affordable housing is “essential,” says Sorensen. “In cities such as London and New York, everyone but the really well-off are being priced out of decent-quality housing.”

And Canada, he says, has dropped the ball when it comes to this issue.

One model he points to, however, is Options for Homes, a non-profit corporation that creates opportunities for affordable home ownership by providing down-payment loans.

One of its most recent developments is Cranbrooke Village, in a north Toronto area well-served by public transit and close to shopping and restaurants. Cranbrooke Village has amenities such as car sharing, a boardroom and a rooftop garden.

WHAT MAKES A CITY LIVABLE?

Right: © urbancow / iStock

“ YOU NEED MEETING PLACES: PARENTS NEED TO MEET OTHER PARENTS, KIDS NEED TO MEET OTHER KIDS.”

bicycle parking, and about 75 per cent of the public space is devoted to cars and parking. “Then you start to get into justice issues,” says Farber, “and it really becomes about how we are going to devote public space...to the people who live there and enjoy it or to the people who are basically using the space to get their cars through.”

Urban planners and municipal governments are increasingly aware of how to make spaces more livable and create public spaces where people have the freedom to enjoy leisure activities. And that’s important, says Farber, so that people can conduct their lives in a way that’s pleasurable, rather than feeling that just getting from place to place is a drudgery.

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13

“I think there is a big upswing in interest in making cities more livable, especially as more affluent people return to the cities in North America,” he adds. “I think that Toronto sometimes gets it right, but often it doesn’t.

Toronto’s waterfront is such a huge amenity enjoyed by so few people, for instance.” He notes that getting to The Beach neighbourhood is really difficult, taking up to an hour on the Queen streetcar from downtown.

“Why have we given priority to cars?”

“IT’S A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE: WHO IS THE ONE DOING THE LIVING HERE?”

Read more about UTSC and cities at UTSCCommons.ca

© ribeiroantonio / iStock

Meeting places Farber adds, however, that the city has allowed some great development along the waterfront with small shops, places to eat and drink, and biking and walking paths.

“When they take away street space

and make playgrounds, for instance, those are the types of things that make neighbourhoods work. You need meeting places: parents need to meet other parents, kids need to meet other kids.”

This year, Toronto was named the world’s best city to live in overall in a report by the Intelligence Unit of The Economist. “Livability is a slippery concept,” says Zack Taylor, until recently an assistant professor in the Department of Human Geography.

“The Economist and others have indexes that rank cities, mixing together different measurements, from affordable housing to housing access, high-quality education, low pollution…but these types of indexes have been favoured for serving uppermiddle-class livability.”

14

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WHAT MAKES A CITY LIVABLE?

Who benefits?

Taylor believes that livability is related to opportunities for people, the ability to support themselves, and access to a wide range of life choices.

“You need to have a city where people are able to get around at a low cost and do it in a way that doesn’t compromise their health or security.” He points to Johannesburg, where people are afraid to stop at intersections for fear of getting hijacked, and American cities such as St. Louis, where some people view public transit as if it were an extension of social services, meant only for a certain strata of society.

Girish Daswani, assistant professor in UTSC’s Department of Anthropology, points to problems with how the term “livable city” is used. He says it can be “a catchphrase, something that is celebrated by urban planners and policy-makers who want to find out where to put community gardens and pathways. But at the same time, people don’t really share the experience of what it means to live in certain parts of a city.”

Toronto may rank high in livability ratings, but Daswani says the city doesn’t have good affordable housing, and we gloss over that fact. “It’s a question of perspective: Who is the one doing the living here?” Many important questions get hidden, he says. For example: What is it like for a person of colour? What is it like to be carded just because you are black? He says the experience of living in Toronto can differ greatly depending on which part of the city you’re in, your race, your gender and how much money you earn. For example, your access to what the city offers can depend, to a large extent, on how often a bus runs in your neighbourhood.

Defining “livability” Toronto does deserve some credit, says Daswani, but it’s important to notice who’s asking the question of which cities are most livable and how the question gets answered (the indicators and measurements used).

It’s important to note what gets included and what doesn’t. To make

TORONTO IS OFTEN LISTED AS ONE OF THE MOST LIVABLE CITIES IN THE WORLD, “BUT THESE TYPES OF INDEXES HAVE SERVED UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS LIVABILITY.”

improvements in an area, it’s important to talk to people who live there, instead of simply deciding what people need.

Perhaps, then, the “livable city” itself is a concept that needs to be nurtured, tackling the question from different angles and with a vision for the future. Canada’s aging population is one factor that will have a tremendous impact on our cities in the next decade or so. “We built our cities around children and neighbourhoods around schools,” says Zack Taylor.

“Now what will happen when people over the age of 65 outnumber those under 15?”

Ultimately, livable cities are defined by the people who live there and the lives they lead. “What I’ve heard from people who come to Toronto is that there is an acceptance of diversity, and it’s a very welcoming and inclusive culture that is created in terms of livability,” says Sorensen. “It’s essential to feel that you become part of a place and not to feel as if you are an outsider.”

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Students and the City U of T Scarborough is set among trees and dedicated green space.

But there’s no doubt it’s an urban campus with urban students.

This is especially true of Co-op students, who become part of Toronto’s large urban workforce as part of their education

By Elaine Smith

Planning and Politics

Abbas N. Ali

1

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ABBAS N. ALI believes his earlier Co-op term as an organizer for Olivia Chow’s mayoral campaign gave him the boost in experience he needed to land his current Co-op job—a coveted role with the City of Toronto’s planning division.

Every summer the division hires 20 students to canvass businesses citywide to update employment information. Ali had applied each year for the past few years before succeeding.

“Working on the Chow campaign built up my resumé and skills,” he says. “I was part of the organizing fellowship program. And then I was hired as an organizer in charge of three wards with my own volunteers to manage.”

In his current Co-op position, Ali goes to businesses to collect information. “I’m representing the city,” he says. “Communications, accountability and responsibility are key, and I have to be able to deal with different situations while keeping my composure.” He believes his work on the Chow campaign “showed I could do that.”

This fall, Ali will begin his fourth year as a Co-op student at UTSC, majoring in city studies and human geography. His current Co-op experience has solidified his determination to become an urban planner, a job that unites his love of all things urban and his political perspective.

STUDENTS AND THE CITY

Katrina Furlanetto

“With this job, I’m learning so much about Toronto and visiting places I never would trek to otherwise.

It has been an eye-opener. I’ve discovered that our city is made up of many different cities [neighbourhoods] with unique environments, people and businesses. I’ve grown in my appreciation for the city where I live.”

A Flood of Experience KATRINA FURLANETTO is spending the summer on a lake. But it’s all in the service of urban water management—a subject she’s excited to learn about. She has a Co-op position with the water resources department

in her hometown of Richmond Hill.

“I hadn’t really explored the municipal sector before, but it has piqued my interest,” says Furlanetto, a UTSC master’s candidate in environmental science. “It’s more focused on the human side of things than my previous work. I can understand how the human influence affects water quality in an urban setting.”

“I am looking mostly at storm water management and at Lake Wilcox, a lake in town,” she says. “I’m collecting data based on sediment and water quality, seeing if various storm ponds are doing the job they are expected to in handling floods and erosion, and learning how to plan for management into the future.”

Furlanetto’s Co-op research report

looks at the management strategy for Lake Wilcox, updating it using new data. In addition to earning her a grade, it will benefit her employer and the citizens of Richmond Hill by allowing the department to use the most current data in resource planning.

The Co-op placement has convinced Furlanetto to focus her career on water management, whether that means ecology, urban management, or a mix of the two.

“This placement has made me realize the amount of effort and time required for policies to be created and implemented before making a difference,” she says.

“When you see the process, you understand why.”

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A Walk in the Park UTSC Co-op students DEVIN BENCZIK and MIRADI AFIOUNI each found a great place to escape the density of the city without leaving town: Rouge National Urban Park.

The park, which stretches from Scarborough to Markham to Pickering, has provided Co-op terms for Benczik, an English and history major, and Afiouni, a city studies and public policy major. The pair spent a term in 2014 working for the park’s external affairs and visitor information division, and Benczik has

Devin Benczik & Miradi Afiouni

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returned this year for a term as a heritage interpreter.

Last summer Benczik and Afiouni surveyed visitors about their experiences in the park and how they could be improved. They also helped organize and staff events, such as bird walks for children and a YMCA games day for youth.

“I developed my communications and interpersonal skills working there,” Afiouni says. “I also saw how getting public input is very important, and learned how the process was done and how the information was used.”

This summer Benczik is back in uniform, educating people about the

Rouge and other parks in Ontario and about wildlife in the city. He sets up an information booth regularly in various locations in the Markham area. He creates the programs himself, working from an outline and using Parks Canada documents and interviews with experienced staff.

“Everything I do is geared toward an urban audience,” Benczik says.

“I show the locals that there are lots of opportunities to hike and experience wildlife right here in the city. A lot of people don’t know that the park is here,” he adds. “I’m letting people know about their 47-squarekilometre backyard.”

STUDENTS AND THE CITY

Esther Kang

An Eye for Infrastructure ESTHER KANG, a Co-op student in management and international business, spent the summer preparing for a semester abroad in Germany. At the same time, she gained a completely different experience as a Co-op student with Toronto Hydro.

Kang, who is entering her third year at UTSC, had a Co-op term in customer communications with the utility. She

made sure residents were alerted before hydro crews arrive to repair aging infrastructure near their properties.

She helped explain what’s happening and worked with project supervisors to allay any customer concerns.

Kang thought her position would be a desk job. Instead, she found herself calling on customers in various Toronto neighbourhoods. “I didn’t know any parts of Toronto,” says the Sault Ste. Marie native, “but I’ve learned the geo­graphy pretty well.”

Kang says dealing with customers can be challenging. But, she adds, “I have refined my diplomatic and negotiation skills, and that will be really useful going forward. This position has taught me how to behave in a professional workplace.”

The experience has had a major effect on her career plans. “Because I interact with customers, I’ve realized that I want to do something that includes building relationships with people,” she says.

“I don’t want to be isolated at a desk.”

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Toronto is world famous for its diversity. But its rich blend of cultures and languages pales in comparison to the variety of wild animals that call the city home.

By Patchen Barss

Toronto the

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TORONTO THE WILD

SIDLING THROUGH RAVINES AND PARKS,

Clockwise from left: © GlobalP / iStock; © Abby_Normal / iStock; © Yuri / iStock

creeping across gardens and lawns, swimming down rivers and scrambling up trees, a panoply of beasts makes our city denser and more diverse than any mere human census would suggest.

Researchers from many disciplines have discovered how rich Toronto’s animal community is; their work debunks the illusory divide between urban and rural living. Here in Toronto, we’re living in the wild.

Who speaks for the raccoons?

Susannah Bunce, an assistant professor of human geo­ graphy at UTSC, is engaged in a multi-partner research project that examines aspects of Toronto’s hidden wild nature. She works with colleagues from U of T, York University and with wildlife organizations. One goal is to unlock some of the complicated relationships between Toronto’s humans and our animal neighbours.

“Regulation tends to be the result of a discursive process between those affected by legislation and those making the laws,” she says. “But animals can’t speak for themselves.”

When the City of Toronto holds wildlife workshops and public consultations, Bunce is interested in who partici­ pates, and how the discussion is framed. Very often, she says, the conversation is more about how humans can use the city’s wild areas the way they want, rather than about how people and wild animals can share the space.

Susan Ruddick, professor of geography at U of T’s St. George campus and principal investigator for the project, sees the legal framework questions as part of a bigger conceptual challenge. “We’re trying to break down the idea that the urban environment and nature are somehow different or external to one another.”

“Toronto prides itself on being a ravine city,” Ruddick adds, “but in a very pristine and anthropocentric way.

We walk our dogs, go for picnics. Anything that challenges human activity, like raccoons or coyotes, becomes a perceived threat.”

Toronto: one big (and silky) web-hosting service Speaking of perceived threats, if you are reading this story in Toronto you are currently surrounded by spiders. The city is home to more than 200 spider species, ranging from ambush predators like the Six-spotted Fishing Spider to web-spinners like the Bowl and Doily Weaver.

But before you reach for your smacking shoe, consider that spiders eat 12 million kilograms of insects every year in Toronto. They might seem like the creepiest of the crawlies, but they help keep the city livable.

Maydianne Andrade, a professor of biological sciences at UTSC, often finds herself speaking on behalf of our eightlegged frenemies.

“One of my outreach goals is getting people to think about the sheer mass of biting insects that can be eaten by spiders,” she says. “They’re also an important source of

bioprospecting—their silk could be used to produce every­ thing from Kevlar to artificial blood vessels.”

In speaking up for spiders, Andrade knows she has her work cut out for her. “I think people care about bees because of all the horrific tales of colony collapse disorder.

Fewer people have that response to spiders.”

Still, she hopes Torontonians who create bee-friendly gardens may also be willing to make spiders welcome.

Spiders, who disperse by creating silk parachutes to carry them aloft on the breeze, benefit from green spaces and green roofs—and from not being squashed in a frenzy of terror and revulsion.

Beware of goldfish Not every wild animal in Toronto just wafts or wanders into town.

“Goldfish are present in nearly every urban environ­ ment on the planet,” says fish speciation expert Nathan Lovejoy. “People grow them in tanks and then just release them down the drain or in ponds. We’re actually wondering if some species will be invasive.”

Goldfish breed easily in the wild, and adapt quickly to their surroundings, rapidly changing colour and size.

The jury is still out on whether their adaptations will lead to peaceful coexistence with other fish, or if they’ll start forcing native species out.

Lovejoy, an associate professor of ecology and evolu­ tionary biology at UTSC, has interests that go beyond defending ecosystems against the possible menace of goldfish. He researches how “geographic distribution relates to the genesis of biological diversity.”

When organisms move into a new area—or when an area is transformed by, say, a city being built on top of it—natural selection can start to favour different qualities.

Generation by generation, the organisms within a population can trend toward different colour, size, feeding habits, mating habits and other defining charac­ teristics. Lovejoy tracks species via DNA barcoding, which uses short sections of genetic material as unique identifiers. Over time, this can help identify species that have evolved or invaded.

Like his colleagues, Lovejoy observes that most Torontonians remain unattuned to the wildness of their surroundings.

“When Europeans come to Toronto and see a black squirrel, or even raccoons, they go crazy,” he says. “They see them as wildlife species. Native Torontonians walk through paths and parks and streets and see these animals all the time, and ignore them or are irritated by them.”

Unpacking our relationship with urban wildlife will get only more urgent over time, says Susannah Bunce.

“Wildlife is now being written into the fabric of the city,” she says. “For me, the driving question concerns how we rethink the increasingly blurred boundary between the urban and the wild. As urban environments spread, we have to think about ways to intermingle.”

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Photography by

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It’s a double life— and that’s a good thing Scarborough businessman and UTSC alum Ravi Gukathasan has embraced a new kind of bottom line for his company. But that’s just the beginning

By Berton Woodward

Riley Stewart

I

F YOU MEET RAVI GUKATHASAN

(U of T PhD, 1986; UTSC BSc, 1982), he is bound to strike you as a joyful person— bright eyed, high energy, full of smiles and laughter. In October 2013, he had every reason to be joyful about his nearly three decades in business. His Scarboroughbased company, Digital Specialty Chemicals (DSC), was booming—best year ever. He had a great, highly educated staff with a very low attrition rate and was poised to expand. But, he says, “I was miserable— totally unhappy.”

He felt everything he was doing was wrong. “I asked myself, what am I building in this corporation? We were like every other corporation, just building it to make money. I could have started crying.” It’s not as if he hadn’t been generous to his employees. In 2008 he had transferred 12.5 per cent of the company to his staff—a share worth millions—for a price of just $12 per person.

“That was my guilt,” he says. “I thought that was how I was going to save my soul. I never regretted it, but I was still miserable.”

His October crisis was the beginning of a journey. In the ensuing months, he would learn about a business concept called the dual bottom line, and start a small revolution at DSC. Dual bottom line means that employees’ human development is as important as the company’s financial results. Gukathasan says he stood in front of his 60-plus employees and apologized. “I told them, ‘For 28 years, I have spent over $20 million in capital investment in this company, but in terms of human development, I haven’t spent even $1 million.’”

The basic idea is that an organization becomes all about learning and education. Employees, even at ground level, learn in detail about the organization, including financial

information and what their colleagues do. Then they apply that learning to how they work and make their own decisions about how to meet the company’s goals.

It doesn’t stop there: they are also expected to become better people—more cooperative, more generous, more developed. Performance reviews include both financial and human metrics.

“I call it emancipation of the people. I’m not exaggerating,” says Gukathasan. “They are truly free. Every task is based on learning and knowledge creation—they have to learn. We truly believe it sets the stage for them to get liberated and become a better human being.”

The old way, he says, involved top-down command and control. “Our operators were just a pair of hands.”

The new way requires everyone to be a leader as well as a servant, he says. Gukathasan knew not everyone could handle this kind of change and was not afraid to deal with that. Late last year, he swept out nine key executives, including his chief financial officer and his director of sales and marketing. “I needed a new mentality to go forward.”

As the process continues, Gukathasan hopes to add a third bottom line: environmental sustainability, no small matter in a chemical company. The firm already has high standards, using sophisticated scrubbers that get rid of harmful waste and emissions, but he feels it can do even better.

Gukathasan has also beautified the neighbourhood, creating a public park on half of DSC’s four-acre property on Coronation Drive. In the future, he hopes to help improve life in the surrounding community. “My dream,” says Gukathasan pointing to the north side of the long block, “is to own this whole street.”

Where do such visionaries come from? Gukathasan’s story runs parallel to that of many other Tamils who UTSC Commons | Fall 2015

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have settled in Canada, with a high concentration in Scarborough. He grew up just outside Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, where his parents were civil servants. Early on, his father recognized the growing tensions between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority. In 1974 the family moved to England, where the young Ravi attended high school and became a lifelong fan of the Liverpool Football Club. But 1970s Britain was not always a happy place for visible minorities, and when his father asked if he’d like to attend university in Canada, he was ready to jump. The family re-settled in northern Scarborough. Gukathasan, always good at science, was accepted at what was then U of T’s 13-year-old Scarborough College. He says he was one of only two Tamil students.

A dual bottom line reports both financial and human metrics.

“I call it emancipation of the people. I’m not exaggerating” He tried some arts courses, but Gukathasan quickly doubled back to science, where Professor R.T. Hemmings instilled in him a love of inorganic chemistry. “My goal was to get ‘Dr.’ in front of my name,” he says with a chuckle.

“My parents wanted me to do medicine, but I didn’t have the discipline. So I went for a PhD in chemistry.”

Gukathasan completed his PhD in 1986 at U of T. But he had also acquired a taste for business, from working with a friend to sell T-shirts to university clubs. Then, as luck would have it—and Gukathasan is a big believer in luck— a prominent Toronto educator and businessman, Harry Giles, asked U of T’s chair of chemistry if he knew someone who could help him solve a problem with a chemistry-related venture. The chair said, “Talk to Ravi.

He’s an entrepreneur.”

That relationship led to start-up funding for DSC in 1987, with Gukathasan offering highly specialized chemical products that could be scaled up quickly from laboratory amounts to commercial volumes and delivered on a tight deadline. Today they are used in everything from pharmaceuticals to electronic chips. Through it all, Gukathasan’s chief operating officer has been his wife, 24

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Dr. Caroline Schweitzer (BSc, 1982), a fellow U of T and Scarborough College grad whom he met at the downtown campus. They have two teenaged children.

As DSC grew to its current revenue level of nearly $25 million a year, Gukathasan plowed some of the profits into art, including Aboriginal carvings that are on display in the lobby. He also created a mini-park by planting 74 trees on the barren property he acquired in 2000. A large, polished memorial stone sits at the mini-park entrance. It is carved with the names of the 135 soccer fans who died in two notorious 1980s stadium riots involving Liverpool FC. Gukathasan sees these riots—Heysel and Hillsborough— as terrible failures on the part of police. And he’s added the names of the two Toronto people who died in the Danzig Street mass shootings in 2012. “I felt, how could I do this without acknowledging our own neighbourhood?”

Gukathasan has donated $500,000 to UTSC to support the study of Tamil culture and also a DSC scholarship.

If he realizes his vision of buying up a long stretch of Coronation Drive, he hopes to consult with UTSC environmental experts on how to improve the land.

“By bringing nature back,” he says, “can we renew a dying urban community? My answer is ‘Yes’.”

For now, though, he is focused on turning his company into a true dual-bottom line operation, a process that took flight last year after he met U.S. management guru Kazimierz Gozdz at a Harvard conference. The conference was on deliberately developmental organizations. It was there, says Gukathasan “that I learned for the first time why I was miserable.”

Gozdz is now advising the company on what Gukathasan expects will be a five-year process. The time frame roughly corresponds to his aggressive schedule for making DSC a $100-million company, boosted by a recent injection of funding from Intel Capital, a division of the chip-making giant. Gukathasan believes DSC will perform much better in its new form, but says this is not his motivation. On the contrary, “I will even slow down if I have to, in order to help the dual bottom line.”

As the transition takes hold, DSC employees have worked out a new schedule, converting the operation from a seven-day to a five-day week. “Why should only the executives get the weekends off?” asks Gukathasan.

Meetings have also been transformed. “Everybody talks.

Everybody speaks their mind,” he says. “There are no politics, no corridor conversations. We have meetings as a true community.”

Gukathasan has come a long way since he sold T-shirts to his fellow students. “I truly believe you can inspire people, and inspiration is not based on a single bottom line,” he says. “It’s a collective, holistic perspective. You can do things differently.”

PRIVATIZING THE PEACE They’re being asked to do more, but their budgets are under increasing pressure. Perhaps it’s time to rethink private policing

third rail in most democratic societies, and calls to cut funding for cops are often seen as political suicide. But U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, facing severe budget pressures, has made dramatic moves to rein in police expenditures. National police expenditures have shrunk by 20 per cent since 2011, and the number of officers patrolling British communities could plummet further by 2020.

This has drawn warnings from police unions, predicting mayhem and the need for paramilitary units. Some top police officials are also calling for large-scale mergers of the 43 police agencies in England and Wales, according to the Financial Times.

© Deborah Baic / The Globe and Mail

By John Lorinc

LAW ENFORCEMENT SPENDING has long been the

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“ THERE NEEDS TO BE AN HONEST AND OPEN DISCUSSION ABOUT REORGANIZING POLICE MANPOWER IN A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE.”

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or non-emergency tasks to others who would be given highly specific enforcement powers—either private security companies or civilian peace officers.

“It’s policing we should be spending money on,” says Hermer, “not just the police.” He notes that the federal government commissioned research on the “civilianization of policing” last year. “There needs to be an honest and open discussion about reorganizing police manpower in a way that makes sense,” he says.

Policing costs are driven by equipment and technology, but also by crushing salary expenditures.

With hundreds of experienced Toronto officers now earning over $100,000, payroll outlays can gobble up as much as 85 per cent of a police services budget. Moreover, because cops can’t strike, arbitrators reward them with generous annual increases.

This cost escalation has prompted the close examination of a “tiered policing” approach to delivering routine aspects of policing services. The approach relies not on sworn officers, but on what are known as police community support officers (PCSOs), as well as private security guards.

A 2014 discussion paper from the Canadian Police College reports that the number of PCSOs in the U.K. has

grown to 15,000 since 2002, resulting in “considerable” savings. Written

by Paul McKenna, a public safety expert at Dalhousie University, the paper also cites U.K. survey results that show PCSOs as being popular with residents, who say their presence makes communities more welcoming and less susceptible to street crime.

Vancouver and Winnipeg have community safety officers—distinct from police officers and with a more limited range of duties.

The tiered-policing approach has direct parallels in health care.

Surgeons with several years’ training should not be treating cuts and bruises.

And in recent years, there has been a move by health ministries to create integrated health care teams that include physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, nutritionists, midwives and other allied health professionals.

Hermer notes that in Canada a range of specific and limited policing functions is already being delivered by private firms or civilian enforcement agents. These include airport security teams and municipal bylaw officers. Universities, transit authorities and public housing agencies employ peace officers; some park wardens have recently been granted the right to carry weapons, and Ontario’s privately managed

THE CANADIAN PRESS / Jonathan Hayward

O

ther jurisdictions have already embarked on this kind of law enforcement triage. In the aftermath of the credit crisis, California lost 4,000 sworn officers and 3,000 civilian support staff between 2008 and 2011. In Australia, a private firm called Suburb Safe launched a fee-based community policing service last year using a combination of technology, vehicle patrol presence and personnel hired exclusively from the neighbourhoods being policed. Similar firms have sprung up in the U.K. In Canada, police agencies have not experienced this kind of attrition and outsourcing—not remotely. But critics on both the left and right say Canadian cities are spending too much on policing, especially since crime levels are at record lows.

“Between 2001 and 2012, police officers per 100,000 population in Canada rose 8.7 per cent while the crime rate declined by 26.3 per cent,” wrote Livio Di Matteo, a Lakehead University economics professor, in a September 2014 study for the Fraser Institute.

Joe Hermer, an associate professor of sociology at U of T Scarborough, believes Canada’s police services need to find ways to delegate mundane

Olympic security officials show what Olympic spectators can expect for security screening during an exercise in Vancouver, B.C. in February 2010

PRIVATIZING THE PEACE

nuclear plants are guarded by private SWAT-like guards.

Moreover, organizers of major events hire private security. In total, Vancouver’s Winter Olympics, Toronto’s Pan Am & Parapan American Games and, on a different note, Toronto’s 2010 G-20 summit saw hundreds of millions paid to private security forces, to augment police ranks. “The size of those events demands private security at a low level,” says Hermer, noting that organizers look for a “mixed economy” of policing.

However, in jurisdictions such as the U.K., where fiscal pressures have prompted governments to outsource policing tasks, the urgent drive to cut costs may take precedence over detailed planning. The move to privatize should prompt municipalities and other orders of government to return to first principles, cautions Hermer.

“What type of policing do we have, how do we pay for it and how do we ensure accountability?”

He points to the enforcement checks that police make on large trucks travelling provincial highways. He sees these as an example in which “...you could imagine a large security company doing [this] routine enforcement.” Police say some of their officers have been killed while doing routine highway checks. But Hermer’s response is that it need not be an either/or proposition; the private contractor would be assigned to perform very specific duties.

By delegating more mundane duties, police services could direct more resources to less visible forms of criminal activity, such as child pornography and corporate fraud.

Police oversight boards might also consider creating more stratified authority, and boosting the ranks of unarmed special constables. “The city is often looked at [by police services] like a huge crime scene,” Hermer says.

“But a majority of police interactions [with civilians] are peaceful.”

However, such potential reforms raise questions about training, equipment and the thorny topic of

police accountability. The latter has been under the microscope recently due to a series of appalling killings by police in U.S. cities, and—closer to home—a surge of criticism about carding in Toronto. (To “card” is to stop citizens and record various personal details, even though they aren’t criminal suspects. It has come under heavy criticism for being racially biased in practice.)

Considering accountability in the case of PCSOs, Paul McKenna says they must be carefully trained and then “embedded” in the police service. In jurisdictions that use them, PCSOs tend to be answerable to staff sergeants, who are part of a chain of command that extends up to the police chief and the police oversight body.

Private contractors are a different story. Hermer says firms whose personnel perform specified tasks are bound by commercial contracts.

Private agencies, he observes, are not obliged to uphold rights laid out in the Canadian constitution. He says a legal contract, if drafted precisely, may provide adequate accountability— but this is a highly controversial point.

Susan Eng (UC, 1972), is a former Chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board and an outspoken critic of certain police practices. She

“WHAT TYPE OF POLICING DO WE HAVE, HOW DO WE PAY FOR IT AND HOW DO WE ENSURE ACCOUNTABILITY?”

says that despite all their flaws, law enforcement agencies, unlike private firms, are governed by civilian oversight bodies. This means they will always be answerable to the public at large. But “in the private security business,” she says, “the checks and balances are completely missing.”

Eng, who is now vice president for advocacy at the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, says, “The citizens have to consent to be policed.” (Hermer and Eng both contributed to a 2005 University of Toronto Press anthology, Re-Imagining Policing in Canada.)

Eng acknowledges that some policing activities are already being done by non-sworn personnel and professionals from outside police agencies. As an example, she points to the Toronto Police Service’s approach to communities that are overrun by gang activity. During and immediately after high-profile busts, which often include a range of law enforcement agencies, the Toronto Police Service deploys the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) and blankets the neighbourhood with SWAT teams.

In keeping with the precepts of community policing, this kind of follow-up requires police to move quickly, bringing in social workers, community and spiritual leaders, and people from other agencies to work with youth and prevent the recruitment of a new generation of gang members. “There is a time to intervene, but you have to follow through and stop the cycle,” says Eng. “And that is not about policing resources.”

Ultimately, says Hermer, the issues at hand may call for a completely new way to govern the broad spectrum of security and enforcement functions required in large urban centres. “Instead of having a budget for the police to do what they’re doing now, we [could] have a policing budget that may or may not include the police,” he says. “We need a change in how we think about what policing is.”

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CAMPUS NEWS This summer, spectators came to our sparkling new Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre and the new UTSC Tennis Centre to watch top athletes compete in the Pan Am & Parapan American Games. Swimmers broke more than 100 Pan Am records, including three world records in the pool at Parapan.

The fencing component of the Pan Am modern pentathlon also saw a world record toppled.

Members of the UTSC community were instrumental in making the games a success on campus. Thanks to all the staff, students and faculty who gave their time!

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1 Principal Bruce Kidd ignites UTSC’s Pan Am torch as the relay swung through campus.

2 Canada earned its first-ever Parapan medal in wheelchair tennis at the UTSC Tennis Centre, when Joel Dembe and Philippe Bedard captured bronze in men’s doubles.

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Far left: Scott Grant / Canadian Paralympic Committee

3 Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion leap from the platform in one of their gold-medal dives in the synchro diving event at the Pan Am Games.

CAMPUS NEWS

HIGH HONOUR FOR COMMUNITY BUILDER

Karen Young, a fourth-year

Psychology and Health Studies major in UTSC’s Co-op program, is the first UTSC student to receive the prestigious 3M National Student Fellowship, which recognizes 10 students across Canada each year for outstanding leadership.

“To me, leadership is about

bringing a community together,” says Young.

She’s done just that. Young cofounded the first campus-wide TEDx event at U of T, and also brought the C3 Inspire conference to Toronto, allowing aspiring student entrepreneurs to connect, collaborate and create new initiatives. Young also founded Minds Matter Magazine, U of T’s first student-run mental health publication.

PAN AM CENTRE GETS A GOLD OF ITS OWN

Canadian athletes aren’t the only winners to emerge from the Pan Am & Parapan Am Games.

The Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC) is the first UTSC building— and first new building at U of T— to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.

The sports and aquatics facility is equipped with geothermal heating, solar panels and LED lights, among other features. Forty per cent of the building’s heating and 99 per cent of the cooling in the venue is supported by a geothermal field, reducing the building’s energy consumption by 20 per cent. In addition to a green roof, the 1,854 solar panels have the ability to generate 593 kWh. Following in the footsteps of TPASC, UTSC’s new Environmental Science & Chemistry Building is also designed to the LEED gold standard.

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1 Some students from Seneca College will also be calling UTSC home.

2 Myrna Simpson is the first winner of an international award for soil science.

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A UNIVERSITY PATH FOR SENECA STUDENTS

A new academic transfer agreement

between Seneca College and UTSC allows graduates from Seneca’s new Arts and Science diploma program to enroll in UTSC courses if they meet certain admission requirements.

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the students will receive both a Seneca diploma and a U of T honours Bachelor of Science degree in four years.

“This agreement will provide greater access to higher education to a wider range of qualified students and will bring a new group of talented students to UTSC,” says Curtis Cole, UTSC registrar and assistant dean.

UTSC PROF FIRST TO WIN INTERNATIONAL HONOUR

Professor Myrna Simpson has had

a good year. Having received the UTSC Principal’s Research Award and a Discovery Accelerator Supplements award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, she’s now the first recipient of a new international award.

Simpson received the inaugural P.M. Huang Award at the July conference Interactions of Soil Minerals with Organic Components and Microorganisms in Montreal, in recognition of her work in understanding the evolving carbon cycle and the impact of climate change on soil. The International Union of Soil Sciences created the award this year to honour the late Dr. Pan Ming Huang, an eminent soil science researcher.

CAMPUS NEWS

TOP OF THE CLASS

Thanks to Anh Cao, UTSC received the

honour of having U of T’s top student for the third year in a row.

Cao, who completed his Bachelor of Science degree this year, is the recipient of the John Black Aird award for top student at U of T. He’s faced some tough times, especially when he realized that his scholarship from the government of Vietnam didn’t cover the full costs of attending school. But he says he found plenty of support from new friends in the UTSC community. “I learned that Canadians, and especially those living in Toronto, are very generous people.”

Cao also won a Governor General’s silver medal for being one of U of T’s most academically outstanding graduates. And his achievements extend beyond the classroom. He was an academic programmer in residence, worked as a teaching assistant, and also volunteered for two years with Hospice Toronto, providing comfort to terminally ill patients.

And Cao is not done with U of T— he’s now enrolled to earn a master’s degree in immunology.

THE ROCK-CUT CHURCHES OF ETHIOPIA Ethiopia is the world’s oldest

Christian nation, dating back to the 4th century. Hundreds of rock-cut churches line the country’s highlands, but little is known of how they are built. Now, thanks to a significant grant from the Arcadia Fund, the techniques to create these churches will be preserved for future generations.

“It’s an honour to be able to help preserve the knowledge that goes into the making of these cultural treasures,” says Michael Gervers, a UTSC expert on Ethiopian history.

Gervers will conduct and videotape comprehensive interviews with priests, parishioners and the few remaining master craftsmen responsible for carving

the structures, documenting the knowledge and techniques involved.

The $250,000 grant will cover two seasons of field work after which the video recordings, with transcriptions and translations, will be available online for at least 20 years.

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MEETING PLACE Alumni News

SPOTLIGHT

Still a student of Canadian public opinion

John Wright BA, 1980

If anyone has a finger on the pulse of contemporary Canada, it’s John Wright.

He knows, for example, that Quebeckers believe in legalizing marijuana and that despite British Columbia’s reputation as a province of nature lovers, Maritimers care most deeply about the environment. Based on all he’s learned, Wright characterizes Canada as patriotic, tolerant, pro-monarchy—and opinionated.

“When you look at public opinion on many issues over a long time, you really feel its currents,” he explains.

“You understand the rhythm and temperament of the country. Canada is a body—it has emotions and a way of thinking.”

The former UTSC student council president and campus radio station 32

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manager has spent the past 26 years analyzing the opinion trends of the nation at the Canadian arm of Ipsos, a global independent market research firm that operates in 88 countries.

As senior vice president of its public affairs strategic research division and managing director of its Global @dvisor international poll, Wright is the media spokesperson on policy, politics and consumer trends.

“I work with a global research team that constantly polls the world on events and issues, from energy use to human rights to social problems,” he says. “I study what humans in Canada do and think. Public opinion is about how people collectively think.”

Collecting data that give insight into the state of the country depends on devising effective polls. At Ipsos, most of the research is done online with panels of around 400,000 people.

Wright attributes his knack for posing the right questions to a thorough understanding of Canada’s social and political landscape.

Studying history and political science at UTSC gave him a solid knowledge base that helped to launch his career as a pollster.

“I found history most interesting because it’s how we gain understanding of today’s institutions and how they evolved,” he says. “The work I do at Ipsos relies on understanding the history of our institutions, issues, and events. Getting an accurate reading

of public opinion requires knowledge of this historical context and having a good institutional memory.”

Wright cites the mid-’90s’ same-sex marriage debate as an example of when context and careful questioning were essential in capturing a faithful picture of the country’s views. Knowing Canada to be tolerant, Wright and his team posed a question about a “civil marriage,” removing the divisiveness of religious church marriages and the option for none at all.

“We created a middle ground, and when the results came in, they were explosive,” he says. “By adding this one dimension, 70 per cent of Canadians accepted same-sex marriage. It changed the nature of the country’s debate and the way people talked about the issue.”

It’s that mutability of public attitudes—and how demographic and population shifts affect them—that fascinates Wright. He and co-author Darrell Bricker have written two national bestsellers, and a third book, DemandShift, due in 2016, is about Canada’s changing demo­ graphics and immigration patterns and their effect on decision-makers and markets.

“People like me are interested in how people think and what affects them,” he says. “Going to work is like Christmas every morning. I can’t imagine being in a job where I’m not learning something every day.”

MEETING PLACE

WHO’S DOING WHAT

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Adrian Foster, Veridian Corp

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When Adrian Foster (BA, 1983) and his family moved to Clarington, Ontario, he got deeply involved in community organizations. In 2003, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal for his extensive community service. He soon became a local councillor, was elected mayor in 2010, and is now in his second term.

Foster’s vision for Clarington is rooted in service and quality of life.

“It’s easy to be cheap and build an area without amenities, but creating a great place to live is all about quality of life and relationships.”

Foster’s collaborative spirit is evident in his arts and culture initiatives, which he believes are essential to a thriving community. He started A Gift of Art, a not-for-profit collective that bolsters local artists’ careers; and For the Love of Art, a gala that brings the business and artistic

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communities together to benefit the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. In 2013, he received a second national honour: the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Foster studied psychology and French at UTSC, which led to work with children with disabilities and then a 26-year career in financial services. He credits his ability to wear many hats to the breadth and diversity of his education.

“As mayor, I know a little bit about a ton of different things,” he says.

“Because I have a broad skill set and education, it’s easy for me to embrace new roles.”

Sue Graham-Nutter (BA, 1981) is a city-building Renaissance woman.

She started several Toronto festivals, including Krinos Taste of the Danforth and the Roncesvalles Polish

1 Adrian Foster 2 Sue Graham-Nutter

Festival, which continue to flourish today. She’s also grown a consulting practice, Affinity Marketing and Public Affairs, working the gamut from government to non-profits to public television.

At UTSC, she studied Co-op public administration, shaping her ability to succeed in a breadth of industries.

“I learned how to build partnerships between layers of government and community,” she says. “My career path is not linear, but the common link is my expertise working both with and within government.”

Graham-Nutter’s current focus is health care. As executive director of capital redevelopment with the Rekai Centres, she manages a long-term care home in downtown Toronto and is also working to build a new home with an Alzheimer’s and dementia support unit.

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“Making a difference in society has always driven me,” she says. “I want to help families and create homes in which residents can live in dignity.”

Her desire to make a difference also encompasses volunteer work.

Graham-Nutter is the three-term chair of the UTSC Campus Affairs Committee.

“It’s an extension of my interest in city building through public projects,” she says. “As a member of student council years ago, I was involved in advocating for the Bladen Library. It’s very rewarding for me to return and participate in the further development of UTSC.” Raised in the world of hospitality and property management, Reetu Gupta (BBA, 2005) remembers handling rental agreements and shadowing general managers from a young age.

Now, as a vice president, she heads 34

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the sales and marketing of her family’s business, the Easton’s Group of Hotels, which her parents started 36 years ago in Port Hope.

It encompasses 15 hotels across Ontario and Quebec.

After completing her studies, Gupta headed the opening of two new hotels and banquet halls. In 2009-10, the company added six new hotels to its roster under her direction.

Currently, Gupta’s focus lies in rebranding the company as the Gupta Group and developing its new real estate division.

“Marketing is a passion of mine, and working with my family is a blessing,” says Gupta. “I’m able to talk about crazy marketing plans, and I have a lot of autonomy.”

She illustrated her flair for out-ofthe-box thinking with the 2011 launch of the company’s first condominium development, King Blue, in the heart

3 Reetu Gupta 4 Heather Kanabe

of Toronto’s entertainment district.

Her marketing plan focused heavily on social media, an unusual tactic at the time. “The area is inhabited by young, technologically driven professionals,” she explains.

“We talked directly to that demographic through social media to build momentum.”

Gupta lauds the entrepreneurial career path, which allows her to combine her passions.

“One of the great things about working for my own business is that I have the flexibility to work on personal projects,” she says. An avid fashion lover, Gupta is creating a clothing line that marries Western designs with South Asian fabrics. She plans to unveil the line, called Maya, in 2016.

During the summer months, Heather Kanabe’s professional calendar reads like a full dance card.

Reetu Gupta, Arthur Mola Photography

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MEETING PLACE

“When July hits, the race to the festival begins,” she says about the lead-up to this year’s event on September 27. Kanabe (BA, 2008) is festival director of The Word on the Street Toronto, which for 35 years has been the city’s largest free outdoor book and magazine fair celebrating the written word and literacy. She manages artistic programming and overall festival production—including author presentations, workshops, and a marketplace. The event attracts more than 215,000 attendees and about 200 exhibitors annually. Behind the scenes, Kanabe handles grant writing, finances, logistics, and staff and board management.

“It’s the one time of year when the whole publishing industry mingles with the public,” she says.

Kanabe cultivated her arts leadership acumen in UTSC’s Arts Management, a competitive program designed to provide students with a strong basis in the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in the arts business.

“The program really stimulated my career,” she says. “Arts Management is made up of an intimate group of people who know from the start that they want to manage arts organizations. It changes your mindset because you realize you’re pursuing something you love and your return is the ability to make a contribution to the discipline.”

Kanabe completed the fieldplacement stream, which enhances students’ understanding of arts management through a minimum of two non-credit placements.

She cites her Co-op positions at the

Royal Ontario Museum, the Scarborough Arts Council, and Women in Film & Television (where she worked for six years) as conduits to important connections within the Toronto arts sector.

Under Kanabe’s leadership, the event has received an increase of $120,000 in grants and a 25 per cent budget boost. This year marks a watershed for the festival: Kanabe has spearheaded an initiative to move from Queen’s Park Crescent (the location for the past 10 years) to a new venue at Harbourfront Centre. The change grew out of conversations between Kanabe and the International Festival of Authors, a literary organization housed at Harbourfront Centre and that now provides the festival with logistical support.

Kanabe notes that the sprawling crescent wasn’t conducive to walking, especially for children and the elderly, leading to inconsistent foot traffic in vendor and programming areas.

Harbourfront Centre’s proximity to Union Station is also a plus, since 25 per cent of attendees come from outside Toronto.

“I’m proud of facilitating this move,” she says. “We’ve increased programming space and accessibility.

It takes a certain eye to see how something can be re-imagined in a new place. I’m happy that the festival will be part of that landscape and continue to be a bright spot in the Toronto arts scene.”

A Co-op position at Deloitte helped to plant the seeds of entrepreneurship in Neil Selfe (BComm, 1988).

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5 Neil Selfe

“I had the opportunity to audit many small- and medium-sized businesses,” said Selfe. “I gained an immense appreciation for the courage it takes to start a business and the tremendous difference one can make in the lives of others if you’re successful.”

He kept this nugget of wisdom in mind even as he moved on to law school at Osgoode Hall. He built a successful career as a banker and lawyer before striking out on his own in April, when he became founder and CEO of INFOR Financial Group, an independent provider of strategic financial advice.

Since its inception, the company has ranked as one of the top independent domestic advisors in Canada.

“We have incredible clients who, like us, are entrepreneurs focussed on making a difference to society. That’s what we’re most proud of.”

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ANNOTATION

The roof of the Science Wing offers

panoramic views of the Highland Creek Valley—and an opportunity to take a closer look at the universe.

There’s a 30-cm reflector telescope up there. It was

installed in 1976, but had been out of use for the last 10 years.

Now, when the night sky is clear, members from

the UTSC community and anyone, really, can come take a tour led by a UTSC astrophysicist.

With the help of a grant

from the 50th Anniversary Legacy Fund, the telescope has been repaired and upgraded with new electrical, new eyepieces, a sun filter and a DSLR camera.

The telescope has captured

images as close as Mars, Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and Pluto, and as far as two galaxies away (that’s 23 million light years).

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UTSC Commons | Fall 2015

For astronomy students,

it is a chance to get a first-hand look at their subject material.

For pictures of what the telescope has seen and to book a visit, go to utsc-telescope. tumblr.com or contact Hanno Rein, Assistant Professor, Physical and Environmental Sciences: hanno.rein@ utoronto.ca. You can follow Prof. Rein on Twitter @hannorein.

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