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EESTI ELU neljapäeval, 23. detsembril 2021 — Thursday, December 23, 2021
Three generations of Vaikla-Mägiste family women graduate from McGill University Tiiu Vaikla Põldma, PhD This spring, Olivia Vaikla graduated from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at McGill University. Her specialty is Anatomy and Cell Biology, in which she undertook an Honours research project in her final year of study. Through the past years of exposure to the innovative and research-focused McGill environment, she has dis covered a passion for scien tific investigation, prompting her to explore the extracellular matrix and its connections to skeletal development for her thesis. She has also been an active participant in mental health and environmental sustainability ini tiatives throughout her time at the university, promoting im proved well-being for McGill students and the surrounding community. With a final cGPA of 3.74, and recognition for her research efforts on the Dean’s Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research List, she has many accomplishments marking her time at McGill University. With this achievement there are now three generations of McGill University graduates in our Vaikla-Mägiste family. This is quite a feat for a first-genera tion immigrant family from Estonia! Olivia is the youngest
daughter of Jaan Vaikla, my brother, and his wife Paula. When Olivia started at McGill University in the fall of 2017, she began a third generation of our family to enter into our alma mater. As a family we are extremely proud of her! We recently reminisced about these events, and recalled the amazing feat of her grand mother, my mother Ilve Mägiste Vaikla, when she arrived in Canada as a displaced person with her family. Olivia’s grandmother and my mother, Ilve Mägiste, was born in Tartu, Estonia in September 1936. With her family, and as the youngest child, she fled from the Soviet invasion in September 1944, via Tallinn. Her family was one of the last to escape in late September, during the final invasion and just before the borders were closed. She and her family escaped to Germany where they lived in Displaced Persons camps until they were spon sored to come to Canada in 1949. Those years were tough and tragedy struck the family when her father, prominent Tartu resi dent and agricultural minister Aksel Mägiste, died suddenly of cancer in 1950, in Montreal. He was just 50 and she was just 13. It was a difficult time both
On the Baking Sheet: PiparkoogiMaania’s edible art Vincent Teetsov
(Pärnu maantee 6).
Wandering through Tallinn’s snowy streets must be one of the most wintry things you can do. The smell of wood smoke from chimneys tumbles below while you traverse the cobble stones. The night sky is a lumi nous bottle green. Ice curls off the edge of the staircase on Lühike jalg. City lamps cast shadows on fallen snow and colourful old buildings. However, a stoic march through the cold is best capped off with something warm, spicy, or tangy. Gingerbread meets at least two of these criteria, but can also be an aesthetic delight. This is what PiparkoogiMaania MTÜ has shown through their yearly exhibitions at Tallinn’s Disaini ja Arhitektuurigalerii
And it’s not just shown through gingerbread in its most typical small cookie form. Gingerbread has branched out as a dessert into new artisanal spaces. As they explain, “PiparkoogiMaania is an art exhibition where there is only one condition – everything must be made of gingerbread. Every year, about a hundred profes sional creative people take part in the exhibition – ceramicists, metal artists, textile designers, interior designers, graphic artists, etc.” The exhibition, organized by Mari-Liis Laanemaa and Pelle Kalmo, has been around since 2006, and each year it has a different theme. 2021’s theme was music. Before, it was
One of PiparkoogiMaania’s past photo contest winners, “Uue aasta Mehhaanik” by Silvia Sillaots. Photo: piparkoogimaania.ee
dealing with the family loss and adjusting to life in a new coun try, new languages (English and French), and going to school. In 1954, Ilve was accepted into the Bachelor of Arts program at the Faculty of Education at McGill University. She pursued her interests in art and languages alongside her de sire to obtain a teaching degree. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1958 and then again with a teaching degree one year later from MacDonald College, a teaching college at McGill University. Some 40 years later in 1994, as the next generation Vaikla (Põldma), I was exploring my options on furthering my educa tion, after having pursued a professional career following my graduation from Ryerson in 1982, with a Bachelor in Interior Design (Honours). 1982 had been a busy year as Alar and I married the same week that I graduated and my sister Leena got married in Novem ber. However, the year ended tragically when our ema Ilve died suddenly of an aneurism at the age of 46 in December 1982. In September 1994, I was accepted into the Department of Culture and Values in Education at McGill to pursue a Masters of Arts (MA). This coinciden tally was exactly 40 years later fashion. Prior to that, ginger bread has been rolled into mythology, Estonian national symbols, the Olympics, toys, and art history. Each exhibition delves into a separate corner of thought and explores what gingerbread can signify. Accompanying the exhibi tions are photo contests, open to all, which showcase designs that incite awe and laughs alike. Whether you accidentally bake the bread for a little bit too long or knock everyone’s socks off with a crunchy, textural ginger bread dragon, making this artistic dessert is a playful endeavour. Previous competitors have come from as far afield as Switzerland and Hungary, true to gingerbread’s associations with trade routes, spices, and luxury goods. Especially his toric gingerbread traditions come from Poland, Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Naturally, Canada also cele brates these traditions with its own gingerbread competitions. One such competition is GingerCane, for which contes tants have been baking and accumulating hundreds of thou sands of dollars in donations for children’s hospitals in western Canada since 2010. This contest’s focus has been on constructing miniature ginger bread dwellings. Is there hope, though, if you haven’t honed your own home baking skills? Luckily, ginger
(to the year) that my mother had begun her studies, so it was both wonderful and poignant. I received my MA (Honours) in 1999, having done the masters part-time, as our son Julius was born in 1995. I was very proud to have been named on the Deans’ Honour List. At the same time I graduated I was encouraged to pursue my research interests and I was accepted into the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, to pursue a Doc torem philosophae (PhD.). I earned my degree in October 2003, about 4 years later. again I had been in the program parttime, as I concurrently worked full-time at Dawson College as the Program coordinator, and then transferring to work at Université de Montréal in 20002001, all the while still working with clients on projects as principal of Poldma Design. In September 2017, Olivia decided to pursue her Bachelor of Science at McGill University and was accepted with scholar ship into the Faculty of Medi cine and Health Sciences at McGill, here in Montreal. Olivia has now successfully completed her degree and is working as a researcher in the Reinhardt Laboratory at McGill University under an NSERC grant, continuing her Honours research studying skeletal de velopment. With her arrival and upon her graduation in May 2021, we became three generations of
Beyond PISA: Investment in top tech education key to Estonia’s success ERR, December 2021, Carlos Paniagua, technological founder of Glia The Estonian startup scene is flourishing and allows the country to punch well above its weight-class in the world, while continued efforts and focused investments in high-level tech education are n eeded to devel op and nourish the sector, Carlos Paniagua writes. I am a Guatemalan who has settled firmly in Estonia. I love saunas, dream of a remote sum mer cottage and am rarely seen without my bottle of Värska Vesi. Estonia’s smart policies have en abled me to study and build a rapidly growing global business here. I don’t take this environ ment for granted and strive to
bread recipes aren’t as fiercely guarded as they once were. In recent years, Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa has held workshops and sold gingerbread house kits. In Estonia, PiparkoogiMaania hosts school and corporate workshops at their exhibition space, where the public are taught how to make gingerbread, with pieces connected with hot sugar syrup, adorned with a sugar and egg white glaze, and topped with melted caramel candies.
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Ilve Mägiste Vaikla
Tiiu (Vaikla) Põldma
Olivia Vaikla
McGill University Mägiste / Vaikla women. We are all very proud of Olivia’s achievements and we are sure her grandmother is as well! contribute to improving it. Estonia’s policy decisions and investments over the past decade have focused on attract ing foreign talent, students and new business. In fact, nearly a quarter of IT employees in Estonia are foreigners. And for the past five years, the number of people moving to Estonia has surpassed the number of those leaving. I became one of those new arrivals when, in 2010, I set off for Estonia to complete my master’s at Tartu University. When the call came to be the technical co-founder of a start up, I moved to New York. By then, I’d seen enough to know I’d be coming back to Estonia eventually. When it was time to build our team, my mind went straight to my university times and the world-class tech community in Estonia. My (Continued on page 13)
PiparkoogiMaania adds, “Gingerbread was not only associated with Christmas, but was also made for holidays all year round: various religious holidays, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, but also for the New Year, weddings, baptisms, and other family holidays.” So it doesn’t need to be December to get baking! Here’s your prompt then to spice up the winter months. You can make your art and eat it, too.
