Celebrated baseball star Fergie Jenkins ’04 (honorary) is featured on a new commemorative stamp from Canada Post honouring both Jenkins and Black History Month in Canada. The stamp was released in February 2011.
ALUMNI ALBUM
Edward Nolan ’04 was called to the Bar by the Law Society of Upper Canada in the spring of 2010 and has joined in the practice of law with Fyshe, McMahon, LLP in Hamilton. His area of concentration is in union-side labour and employment law. Nolan continues to engage in community activism, a skill he nurtured at McMaster while writing for The Silhouette. Erin Callery ’05 married Andre Solecki on Oct. 31, 2009. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in June 2010 and began work as a lawyer with the law firm of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP in Ottawa in August 2010. Pete van Hengstum ’05, ‘08 completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at McMaster, and just finished his PhD at Dalhousie. His research area is underwater caves. His doctorate revealed that underwater caves are preserving a plethora of information about climate and sea-level changes that has never before been explored. Clara Blakelock ’06, ’10 is about to embark on a six-month internship in San Fernando, La Union, Philippines for Sustainable Cities, sponsored by a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency. She will be working with the municipal government of San Fernando on projects related to community-based waste management. She will be keeping a blog while she is there: http:// garbageintern.wordpress.com. Daniella Pacenza’06 and Phil Ciapanna ‘06 were married on Dec. 11, 2010 in Stoney Creek, Ont. The couple recently celebrated eight years together after their first date during their sophomore year at McMaster. They are both educators in the Hamilton area.
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Abigail Santos ’06 went on a trip down to Argentina in late fall to be a contestant on the first season of the forthcoming TVtropolis program Wipeout Canada. Santos is featured in Episode 13, which will air this spring. Back in Canada, she is now working as the marketing and admissions coordinator for the Ontario Dental Education Institute in Ancaster. Jeremiah Brown ’07 moved to Victoria, B.C. after graduation. He started learning how to row, inspired by the men’s eight gold medal performance at the Beijing Olympics. He came in second place at the last national championship in the men’s heavyweight single scull, which earned him a spot on the national team. Brown has been training full time on the national team since Jan. 1, 2011 in preparation for the 2012 Olympics in London. He is eager to meet fellow alumni for partnership opportunities that would allow him to cover his cost of living while training full-time for the Olympics. Vanessa Vega ‘07 and Marc Dougan ‘07 were married Aug. 20, 2010 at the Liberty Grand in Toronto. They met the second day of welcome week in their first year. Vega has returned to McMaster and is in her final year of the physiotherapy program.
2010s Armeen Khan ‘10 and Fahim Ahmed ‘07 were married on Jan. 6, 2011 in Bangladesh. Yaser Jafar ’10 is a technical sales representative with Texas Instruments in Toronto. Khurram Usman Naveed ’10 recently joined Husky Injection Molding Systems in Bolton, Ont. as a manufacturing technician. Mark Reinders ’10 is working for Bermingham Foundation Solutions, based in Hamilton. He and Nicole MacDonald ’09 are planning their August 2011 wedding.
McMaster midwives lend a helping hand in Haiti They travelled to Haiti intending to share their expertise, but McMaster midwifery graduates Tonya MacDonald ‘04 and Karen Hayhoe ‘09 ended up just as much students as teachers. “We showed them how we do things,” says MacDonald, who trained local midwives and birthing assistants to use fetal heart monitors and other electronic devices, “but they also showed us how they do things.” She recalls a hot, sluggish afternoon at the local centre where she was stationed: a light-hearted banter struck up between the foreign volunteers and the Haitian midwives over birthing positions. To avoid the delay of using a translator, the women took to acting out more and more animated – and vocal – displays of being in labour. It may have been unconventional, but it was an effective way to share useful experiences. MacDonald tells the story with an ear-to-ear smile. “These are high energy people committed to women.” MacDonald was placed in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince, which mostly consisted of a makeshift tent city. Stationed three hours away in Hinch, Hayhoe worked at one of the few rural facilities equipped to do caesarean sections, where women in labour would arrive on donkeys, home-made stretchers, or in wheelbarrows. Arriving for the first time, Hayhoe was horrified by the conditions at the centre. The beds, arranged like a dormitory in one open room, had no curtains or privacy. A basin was placed at the foot of each bed for waste. The obstetricians would not operate until a woman’s family had paid for the necessary antibiotics, with sometimes fatal consequences. Reflecting on her experience, Hayhoe could only conclude that “women in Haiti are the toughest, most resilient you’ll meet.” In addition to working at the birthing centre, Hayhoe acted as a guest lecturer at the centre’s midwifery school. There, she trained the students on neonatal resuscitation, a simple, low-tech procedure that was not yet being taught at the school. “Before, babies who didn’t cry when they were born would be left to die,” she says. “A lot of babies were saved that wouldn’t have been.” The two women express enthusiastic admiration for the high energy and skillful hard work of Haitian women in the face of terrible poverty and unhygienic conditions. “I don’t want it to come across that I came with my superior North American skills,” says Hayhoe. “They are very skilled midwives. I left totally impressed with the women of Haiti.” Both MacDonald and Hayhoe practice in Hamilton, and both hope to return to Haiti in the future.