New Trail Spring 2015

SP R IN G 2015

UNIVERSIT Y OF ALBERTA

ALUMNI MAGA ZINE

THE CURE for

cancer research W W W.NEW TR AIL .UALBERTA .C A

Science and medicine are discovering what patients have known all along:

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Your needs will change as your life and career evolve. As a University of Alberta Alumni Association member, you have access to the TD Insurance Meloche Monnex program, which offers preferred insurance rates, other discounts and great protection, that is easily adapted to your changing needs.

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

Due to provincial legislation, our auto and recreational vehicle insurance program is not offered in British Columbia, Manitoba or Saskatchewan. *Average based on the home and auto premiums for active policies on July 31, 2014 of all of our clients who belong to a professional or alumni group that has an agreement with us when compared to the premiums they would have paid with the same insurer without the preferred insurance rate for groups and the multi-product discount. Savings are not guaranteed and may vary based on the client’s profile. ® The TD logo and other TD trade-marks are the property of The Toronto-Dominion Bank.

S P R I N G 2015 V O L U M E 71 N U M B E R 1

On the cover: Cancer research today brings together experts from fields as diverse as nutrition, computer science and health law in the quest to bring better diagnosis and treatment to patients. Read more on page 18.

Illustration by Sébastien Thibault

features 18

18 Teaming Up to Conquer Cancer

Researchers are speeding discovery by breaking down barriers and finding allies in unexpected places

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30 Minds Without Borders

The value of diversity goes deeper than the obvious; it can be a source of innovation and creativity

36 It Takes a Global Village

As Indira Samarasekera’s presidency ends, she ponders an international legacy — and time with her grandchild

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NE W TR AIL .UALBERTA .C A

Supervising Editors Mary Lou Reeleder Cynthia Strawson, ’05 BA, ’13 MSc, Editor-in-Chief Lisa Cook, @NewTrail_Lisa Managing Editor Karen Sherlock Associate Editor Christie Hutchinson Art Director Marcey Andrews Senior Photographer John Ulan Digital Editor Karen Sherlock New Trail Digital Shane Riczu, ’12 MA, Ryan Whitefield, ’10 BA, Joyce Yu, ’07 BA Staff Writers Amie Filkow, Sarah Pratt, Bridget Stirling Proofreader Sasha Roeder Mah Advisory Board Anne Bailey, ’84 BA; Jason Cobb, ’96 BA; Susan Colberg, ’83 BFA, ’91 MVA; Glenn Kubish, ’87 BA(Hons); Kiann McNeill; Robert Moyles, ’86 BCom; Julie Naylor, ’95 BA, ’05 MA CONTACT US Email (Comments/Letters/Class Notes) alumni@ualberta.ca Call 780-492-3224; toll-free 1-800-661-2593

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departments

Mail Office of Advancement, University of Alberta, Third Floor, Enterprise Square, 10230 Jasper Ave., Edmonton, AB T5J 4P6

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Your Letters Our Readers Write

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Bear Country The U of A Community

Facebook U of A Alumni Association

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Whatsoever Things Are True Column by Todd Babiak

Twitter @UofA_Alumni

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Continuing Education Column by Curtis Gillespie

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Question Period Pam Ryan on libraries of now and tomorrow

Address Updates 780-492-3471; toll-free 1-866-492-7516 or alumrec@ualberta.ca

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What’s Brewing Column by Greg Zeschuk

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Books Alumni Share Their New Work

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Events In Edmonton and Beyond

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Class Notes Keeping Classmates up to Date

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In Memoriam Bidding Farewell to Friends

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Photo Finish The Picture-Perfect Finale

TO ADVERTISE lesley.dirkson@ualberta.ca This University of Alberta Alumni Association magazine is published three times a year. It is mailed to more than 180,000 alumni and non-alumni friends, and is available on select newsstands. The views and opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Alberta or the U of A Alumni Association. All material copyright ©. New Trail cannot be held responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs.

ISSN: 0824-8125 Copyright 2015 Publications Mail Agreement No. 40112326 If undeliverable in Canada, return to: Offi ce of Advancement University of Alberta, Third Floor, Enterprise Square 10230 Jasper Ave. Edmonton, AB T5J 4P6

newtrail spring 2015

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OFFICE OF ALUMNI RELATIONS

Robert Moyles, ’86 BCom Interim Associate Vice-President Tracy Salmon, ’91 BA, ’96 MSc Director, Alumni Programs Kara Sweeney Director, Alumni Engagement Coleen Graham, ’88 BSc(HEc), ’93 MEd Senior Manager, Strategic Initiatives

ALUMNI COUNCIL EXECUTIVE President Glenn Stowkowy, ’76 BSc(ElecEng) President-elect Mary Pat Barry, ’04 MA Executive Member at Large Ron Glen, ’89 BA(Spec), ’04 MBA Vice-President: Affinity Chris Grey, ’92 BA, ’95 MBA Vice-President: Centenary Wanda Wetterberg, ’74 BA(RecAdmin) Vice-President: Communications Glenn Kubish, ’87 BA(Hons) Vice-President: Education Charlene Butler, ’09 MBA Vice-President: Histories & Traditions Jason Acker, ’95 BSc, ’97 MSc, ’00 PhD, ’09 MBA Vice-President: Students Sheena Neilson, ’06 BSc(Pharm) Vice-President: Volunteers Tom Gooding, ’78 BSc(MechEng) Board of Governors Representatives: Jane Halford, ’94 BCom Rob Parks, ’87 BEd, ’99 MBA Senate Representatives Cindie LeBlanc, ’01 BA Sunil Agnihotri, ’05 BA, ’12 MA

Graduate Studies Chris Grey, ’92 BA, ’95 MBA Law Ian Reynolds, ’91 BCom, ’94 LLB Medicine Vacant Native Studies Carolyn Wagner, ’06 BA(NativeStuHons) Nursing Keith King, ’04 BScN Pharmacy Sheena Neilson, ’06 BSc(Pharm) Physical Education and Recreation Wanda Wetterberg, ’74 BA(RecAdmin) Public Health Paul Childs, ’05 MPH Rehabilitation Medicine Linda Miller, ’89 BSc(OT) Science Fred Johannesen, ’84 BSc(Spec) Members at Large Darryl Lesiuk, ’87 BA, ’91 BCom, ’07 MBA Jessa Aco, ’14 BCom Ken Bautista, ’99 BEd David Johnston, ’94 BA Ayaz Bhanji, ’91 BSc (Pharm) Emerson Csorba, ’14 BA(Spec) Della Lizotte, ’10 BA(NativeStu) Christine Causing, ’97 BA Julie Lussier, ’11 BCom Nick Dehod, ’11 BA Steven Dollansky, ’09 BSc, ’12 JD Amy Shostak, ’07 BA EXCEL’85 BCom Kevin OFFEEXXCCEELLLL OF Higa, L EO E LE LEL River Wilson, ’01 BA, ’06 MSc(RehabMed) SILVER SILVER SILVER

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It was such a simple question: What should people eat while they are undergoing cancer therapy? But 10 years ago U of A nutritional scientist Catherine Field, ’88 PhD, had no good answers.

“Patients asked so many questions about nutrition during and after their treatment, but we had no science-based answers,” she told New Trail.

This simple question led Field, a registered dietitian and a professor in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, to look more closely at omega-3 fatty acids. Could omega-3s, long recognized as important nutrients, play a role in the treatment of breast cancer? The results of Field’s studies were groundbreaking: treating human breast tumours with the fatty acid before chemotherapy killed more malignant cells than the chemo alone.

EEXXCCEEL team isE Onow F EXCEL pursuing trials in pre-clinical models, and she O OFF Field’s LEL LE LLEE L SILVER SILVER her findings into an answer to the original isSILVER working to translate question: dietary recommendations for patients during chemotherapy.

EX OFFICIO CASE CASE CASE CASE 2014 President 2014 2014 2014 Honorary 2014 2014 It is an exciting development, and one that never would have WA W W AR A A ARR AARR AR R RA Indira D S Samarasekera DDSS PPRRO GR DSS PPRROOGGRR D DS PR O GR OG PR O G come about if Field had not been part of a translational research Interim Vice-President (Advancement) FACULTY REPRESENTATIVES collaboration with colleagues in oncology and physical education.

Colm Renehan EXEX EX EX EX X EXCE Academic Representative X EC OF OF C OF OFCEOLFLCEX OF OCFEE LLELL LLCELL LL CELL OF LL O F E CELL E E E LE MBA LE LE LE LE LE LE solutions LE LE The to today’s problems are bigger than one person, Acting Dean of Students Jason Acker, ’95 BSc, ’97 MSc, ’00 PhD, ’09 SILVER SILVER SILVER Robin Everall, ’92 BA(Spec), ’94 MEd, ’98 PhD whether it is physicians and researchers working together to address Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences CASE CASE CASEGraduate CASE Association OFFEEXXCCEEL CASE CASEthe Reint Boelman, ’97 BSc(Ag) EXStudents’ C EL CEL needs of a cancer patient (page 18) or scientists from every O F EX LLLE OF O LE 2014 Susan 2014 LE LE Cake L W 2014 LELE W Arts A A A W A A A SILVER SILVER A SILVER A SILVER R R R R globe A R R DA R R R R AR R the RD A corner working together to find a better treatment for R R GR O G G R DS P DR Dof GR RPD S DPSRPORGO G SO S PD D S P R O GStudents’ Union S PROG R SO G PRO S PR O Glenn Kubish, ’87 BA(Hons) diabetes (page 30).

The thorny problems of the 21st century cannot CASE CASE CASE William Lau, ’13 BSc(Nutr/Food) Augustana 2014 2014 2014 2014 WA Wbe answered by a lone researcher working late hours in a lab. They Sandra Gawad Gad, ’12 BSc AR A A A A R RRDD R RD G D S P R O G R F E XFCEEX C E GFR E XF CEEX C EXCE X CF EE X C E EX E SS PPRRO S P R OOGF E O OO F EXC OF O O O LL O OF LL LL LL L ELL ELL LL LL Business E E E E E E E L require diversity of Cbackgrounds, experiences and thought.

Ea rich E Charlene Butler, ’09 MBA These are the kinds of challenges that are uniquely suited to X X X EFXC E E E C C C XCEL X F F F F E E C E E E E F O O O O O LLELL LL LL LL O Campus Saint-Jean LE E CASE CASE E LE LE LE LE LCASE LE the University of Alberta. Here we have philosophers, engineers, Marty McKeever, ’02 BEd SILVER SILVER A A A A A A A A A R R R R R R R R RD R R D R D R G G R Geducators, RD R RD RD and doctors, all being asked to think in new and Gscientists G D Dentistry O O S P SR OP D S S PDRS OPGR O G S PROG S PROG RS PRO P RS P R O CASE CASE CASE CASE Vacant different ways. Each year the U of A produces more than 8,000 new 2014 2014 W EXCE A EX E X C E X CEEX C EF E X C E A W A FA A F EXC EX F EXCEL Education ORFDA R OCFE L G RE LRLA OR D ORFD OR D ready AR OF L O F E L CRE L to bring O L LO LL GRRLOLG R alumni, solutions into the world. These are L OG L L E D S P R O G RL ES DPSRPOR E E E S PR E ES P R OLG E their own SEOP GRAND Heather Raymond, ’82 BEd, ’86 Dip(Ed), SILVER BRONZE GOLD the ways in which the university makes a positive difference in the ’95 MEd, ’02 PhD CASE CASE CASE CASE CASE CASE world, and one of the reasons I wanted to remain connected to this Engineering E XFCEEX C E E X EXCE E XCE F EXCEL OWINNER O F OWINNER O F O F C E L WINNER OF LL LL LL LL L AE AE AE AE A L Tom Gooding, ’78 BSc(MechEng) EA E A and R R R R R its alumni.

R R RD AR R D R D AGRR G R institution RD R RD RD G G G G G G G D D D S PRO S P RS OP R O S P R O S P R SO P R O S PRO S PRO S PRO Extension As you receive this issue of New Trail, my time representing the Nikki van Dusen, ’96 BA, ’10 MA CASE CASE U of A’s quarter-million alumni is coming to an end. I am preparing EXCCEELL XEC ECC EXCEL F EEX F EXCELLL F EXCELL OFOF EX OF EOEOFOF ELELLLLELE LLE EO EO EE L E E LE E CL A A LCELCRL R A A CL A R L CR R L R R DA R R D RD R D over RD to hand S P SR OP GR O G S P R O G the role of Alumni Association president to Mary Pat S PDRS OPGR O G S PROG Barry, ’04 MA. The two years I have spent serving U of A alumni have CASE you to each of you who have helped to make EXCE EXCE E X CCASE E X E X CASE EXCE OF O FE L OF O F O FC E L C E L OF LL LL LL L L L been wonderful — thank E E E E E E W W WAW W W A AR A A A AR A A A A A RR D RADR RRDD RRR RSD SILVER GGRR A GOLD D S PR O G R GGG DS PR O GR D SS P R O G R SD SP R O S SPPR OO O PRO PR this such a rewarding experience. I encourage other alumni to get #3 - Circle text is spaced out closer to style of original logo. first logo is all Avenir, second logo is Stone Serif Semi and MetaPlus medium.

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We would like to hear your comments about the magazine. Send us your letters by post or email to the addresses on page 1. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

involved and experience the benefits of staying connected to the university.

As Mary Pat begins her new role at the end of this month, she takes the helm at a particularly inspiring time. This year we continue to celebrate the Alumni Association’s 100th anniversary with the association’s first Leadership Summit on May 22, featuring the Be a Difference Maker lecture by Rick Hansen, ’11 LLD (Honorary). Of course, we will have some extra reason to celebrate at this year’s Alumni Weekend Sept. 24-27.

Ours is a very active group of alumni — a group that cares passionately about the university and its role in our city and province — and there are plenty of ways for you to get involved.

Come back to campus and see what is happening at the U of A; take advantage of alumni volunteer opportunities; share your experiences with potential students; or come to an alumni event where you can reconnect with your peers or your passion. Turn to the events listings on page 48 for a list of upcoming opportunities to get involved. Mary Pat and I hope to see you soon.

Glenn Stowkowy, ’76 BSc(ElecEng), President, Alumni Association

CurmudgeonAB@ curmudgeonAB2 @UofA_Alumni Re winter New Trail – never fails to amaze me how these historyoriented issues always mention #CKUA but never @CJSR

These profiles of past alumni are great!

Good to see what they have done and where they are now!

–BERNARD LEONG

Keep in touch between New Trail issues.

Find web-exclusive stories, videos and more online, or sign up for our monthly email, Thought Box by visiting newtrail.ualberta.ca.

Meet the Incoming President Get to know David Turpin through this series of videos before he takes office as the University of Alberta’s 13th president on July 1.

More About Your Favourite Predators Get more (gory) details about how these six marine predators hunt, catch and digest their prey (page 10).

New Trail Best in the West in Post-Secondary Magazines

New Trail was honoured recently as the best magazine in its category within western North America.

The publication earned gold in the Best Magazine category (circulation greater than 75,000) in February from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education District VIII, which honours excellence in postsecondary publications. New Trail also earned a gold for Best Special Issue for the Winter 2013 Impact Issue.

University of Alberta communicators earned 29 CASE VIII awards overall, including honours for writing, design, photography and illustration, video and social media.

District VIII is geographically the largest of the eight North American CASE districts, encompassing the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana; the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; and the Yukon, Northwest and Nunavut territories.

The Queen of Hugs Stole My Heart It might have been hockey night in Canada, but it was Lois Hole, ’00 LLD (Honorary), night in Tees, Alta.

Prepare to Take on a Second Career Plus five money tips from David Tims, ’85 BA(Hons), ’87 MBA, a man who manages billions.

Three Ways a Smartphone Could Literally Save Your Life Researching pocket-sized solutions. newtrail spring 2015

3

RESEARCH IN THE NEWS U of A research is always garnering media attention. Here’s the lowdown on what’s been causing a buzz.

Popping the Myths of Knuckle Cracking

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newtrail.ualberta.ca

TRANSIT PASSES HELP HOMELESS YOUTHS

Dwelling on pain could slow recovery Patients who logged daily pain diaries reported recovery rates that were slower than those who kept no regular record of their symptoms. The study by the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry examined the effects of such a diary on patients with acute lower back sprains.

At the three-month point in their recovery, only 52 per cent of patients who kept a diary reported recovery, while 79 per cent of patients who did not keep a diary did so.

“It’s just more evidence suggesting that how we think about our symptoms affects our symptoms,” says Robert Ferrari, ’88 BSc(Med), ’90 MD, ’10 MSc, a clinical professor in the faculty’s Department of Medicine and a practising physician.

“Symptoms are everything when it comes to the sense of recovery.” –SCIENCEDAILY

Homeless youth who were given free transit passes or bus tickets had dramatically fewer encounters with police and better personal safety, according to a recent study led by Miriam Steward from the Faculty of Nursing. The 40 teens involved in the project, called Routes to Homes, were also able to attend school more regularly and search for jobs thanks to their ability to safely manoeuvre around the city. –EDMONTON JOURNAL

Kid chefs make healthier choices The most effective way to encourage kids to eat and enjoy healthy food could be to get them involved in preparing meals.

Researchers from the School of Public Health surveyed Grade 5 students and found those who helped their parents prepare meals showed an increased preference for fruits and vegetables over junk food. They were also more certain about the importance of healthy food choices.

The overall goal of the research is to decrease the burden of chronic disease on society. Healthy eating does that by promoting bone and muscle development, learning and self-esteem. –GLOBE AND MAIL

THINKSTOCK

“Pull my finger,” the joke embraced by school-aged kids and embarrassing uncles the world over, is now being used to settle a decades-long debate about what happens when you crack your knuckles.

A team of researchers led by the University of Alberta used MRI video to figure out what happens inside finger joints to cause the distinctive popping sounds. The answer? Bubbles.

“We call it the ‘pull my finger study’ — and actually pulled on someone’s finger and filmed what happens in the MRI. When you do that, you can actually see very clearly what is happening inside the joints,” explains lead author Greg Kawchuk, a professor in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine.

MRI video that captured the moment of each knuckle cracking in real time — less than 310 milliseconds — showed the sound is associated with the rapid creation of a gas cavity within the synovial fluid (which lubricates the joints) as the joint separates. “It’s a little bit like forming a vacuum,” Kawchuk says. “As the joint surfaces suddenly separate, there is no more fluid available to fill the increasing joint volume, so a cavity is created, and that event is what’s associated with the sound.”

The video also showed a white flash appeared just before cracking, which no one has observed before.

Kawchuk would like to use even more advanced MRI technology to understand what happens in the joint after the pop, and what it all means for joint health. –BRYAN ALARY

ALUMNI IN THE NEWS U of A alumni who made headlines recently

Leanne Brown, ’07 BA, was named one of Forbes’ 2015 30 Under 30. The author of Good and Cheap, a cookbook for people with limited income, Brown sells books using the “get one, give one” philosophy to reach people in need. The second edition is set for release July 14, and her next project is a retail venture with Workman Publishing Company. –FORBES

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIUS CSOTONYI, PHOTO PROVIDED

Lorne Tyrrell, ’64 BSc, ’68 MD, renowned for his work in treating viral hepatitis, has been recognized with one of Canada’s most prestigious awards: the 2015 Killam Prize for Health Sciences. The director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology and professor in the U of A’s Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology has dedicated decades of research to developing vaccines for viral hepatitis B and C, including an oral vaccine for hepatitis B now licensed in 200 countries. Five Killam prizes of $100,000 are awarded annually by the Canada Council for the Arts. –EDMONTON JOURNAL

SNAKES AT LEAST 40 MILLION YEARS OLDER THAN WE THOUGHT We’re going to need a lot more candles to celebrate the snake’s birthday. We now know that the creatures are much older than scientists previously believed — by 40 to 67 million years — thanks to research published by an international team that included U of A professor Michael Caldwell, ’86 BPE, ’91 BSc(Hons).

Until now, the oldest known snake fossil dated back 100 million years. This new research, which re-examined fossil material found around the world as long ago as the 1850s — some of these fossils previously misidentified as lizards — proves snakes existed 140 to 167 million years ago. That means snake evolution might be more complex than previously thought.

Former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, ’07 LLD (Honorary), was to be installed as the seventh chancellor of Dalhousie University at the end of May. McLellan was appointed associate professor of law at the U of A in 1980 and later served as associate dean and dean of the Faculty of Law. McLellan was Liberal MP for EdmontonCentre from 1993 to 2006. –CTV NEWS Greg Abel, ’84 BCom, was named a possible successor to American businessman Warren Buffett by Charlie Munger, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Abel, who heads the company’s energy division, was named one of two people likely to become CEO of the US$365-billion corporation should Buffett step down. –BLOOMBERG BUSINESS

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CAMPUS NEWS A brief look at what’s new at the U

DiscoverE, delivered by students in the Faculty of Engineering, has won a record third Google Roots in Science and Engineering Award. The group runs classroom workshops, clubs, events and camps for more than 26,000 youth every year. This year’s $25,000 award will go toward creating DiscoverE’s second massive open online course, introducing students to Java and teaching them to program apps.

A swath of U of A land in southern Alberta will be forever conserved in its current state with no future development allowed. The university signed an agreement with Western Sky Land Trust to ensure the 4,856-hectare Rangeland Research Institute–Mattheis Ranch near Brooks, Alta., remains an intact living research lab. The ranch, donated to the university in 2010 by alumni Edwin, ’57 BSc(PetEng), and Ruth Mattheis, ’58 BA, is home to a diverse ecosystem and about 30 at-risk species.

The U of A will lead a national network for glycomics research, the study of carbohydrates, or sugars, in biological systems. The Alberta Glycomics Centre at the U of A has been chosen to host the Canadian Glycomics Network, or GlycoNet, a federally funded program that unites 60 researchers from nearly two dozen post-secondary institutions with industry, government and international partners. GlycoNet is focusing on five key areas of research: chronic disease, diabetes and obesity, rare genetic disease, antimicrobials and therapeutic proteins and vaccines.

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5 Reasons Not to Fear a Climbing Wall

by Jay Smith, ’02 BA(Hons), ’05 MA

BEGINNER S WELCOMEARE 4 OTHER YOU SHOURE ASONS LD IT A TRY GIVE

+

The Physical Activity Wellness Centre is now open on campus. The sustainably designed 17,000-square-metre facility houses social areas, a double-decker fitness centre and sports research space. It also houses a two-storey climbing wall that, at up to 4.5 metres high, ranks among the tallest in Canada. A $10M donation from Dick, ’74 BDes, ’75 LLB, and Carol Wilson, ’74 BEd, helped fund the Wilson Climbing Centre and the Hanson Fitness and Lifestyle Centre, named for Carol’s father.

Alumni can access the new facility with their ONEcard. For those eager to try out the new climbing wall but who are nervous or inexperienced, program co-ordinator Dallas Mix, ’14 BEd, offers these tips.

1

NOT JUST FOR SUPERHEROES Mix, who helps design and regularly remake the climbing routes at the Wilson Climbing Centre, says they’re designed for all abilities and body types.

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CLIMBERS ARE A FRIENDLY BUNCH Attitudes, be gone. Most climbing centres strive to create a welcoming environment for newcomers who want to (ahem) learn the ropes. The public can

rent equipment, sign up for adult and children’s classes and enrol in summer camps for kids.

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IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT UP Climbing facilities typically offer three types of climbing.

“Bouldering” involves moving both vertically and horizontally without a rope (good for beginners). “Top-roping” is done with a partner, who holds one end of a rope that is passed through an anchor at the top of the wall

and attached to the climber’s harness. In “lead climbing,” the rope trails behind the climber, who passes it through “quick draws” anchored in the wall as he or she climbs. It’s trickier and can mean longer falls.

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HOW TO READ A CLIMBING WALL It may look random, but the colourful holds scattered across a wall are placed deliberately to create routes of varying difficulties. Red is easiest, followed by

black, green, blue and yellow, the hardest.

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BLAZING THE TRAILS Bouldering routes are called “problems” because solving them is as much about smarts as it is about strength.

When Mix sets a route he’s inspired by many things, such as the features of the wall or a hold that enables a “really cool movement.”

Mainly, he says, his goal “is to ensure everyone has the best experience possible.”

PHOTO BY NICK CROKEN

U of A teams netted five national championships this season.

The Bears volleyball and hockey teams and the men’s and women’s curling teams were champs in Canadian Interuniversity Sport.

The Bears and Pandas tennis team won the national title in non-CIS play. The U of A has won at least one championship per year for the past 21 years.

THINKSTOCK

Brain Difference Discovered in Stutterers A new study sheds light on the brain mechanisms underlying stuttering.

A U of A research team used MRIs to examine brain development in children and adults, and determined that the grey matter in a region of the brain responsible for speech, known as Broca’s area, develops differently in people who stutter.

The results do not indicate for certain that an atypically developed Broca’s region causes stuttering, says research lead Deryk Beal, assistant professor in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. However the findings support the need for a long-term study of brain development to compare the brain growth of children who stutter with that of those who don’t — as well as for that of those who stutter and recover.

“That will help us know how the brains of children who stutter and recover change to achieve fluent speech. We can then start to change our treatments so they affect all kids in this way,” says Beal, who is also executive director of the U of A’s Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research, a self-funded centre helping people overcome stuttering since 1985. –BRYAN ALARY

DIGESTIVE BACTERIA IN INFANTS LINKED TO ALLERGIES A new study has found that infants with fewer kinds of bacteria in their digestive tracts are more likely to become sensitized to foods such as egg, milk or peanuts.

Infants who developed food intolerances also showed altered levels of specific types of intestinal bacteria called enterobacteriaceae and bacteroidaceae, researchers from the U of A and the University of Manitoba discovered. Their study used bacteria in infant stool samples collected at three months and one year old. They plan to examine the young participants again at ages three and five.

In the hunt for new ways to prevent or treat allergies, the researchers theorize that modifying gut microbiota may be one way to battle allergies.

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A VOICE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

STUDENT LIFE

Claire Edwards may be the most civic-minded young woman ever. The third-year political science student is hoping to work with a human rights organization in D.C. this fall through a Washington Center internship. She chairs the City of Edmonton Youth Council. She’s president of the Student Network for Advocacy and Public Policy, where she works with students to lobby political leaders. Her own advocacy has ranged from eliminating bottled water use in her high school to getting a student trustee on the Edmonton Public School Board. In short, Edwards is an expert on getting young people involved in their communities.

How can young people get more involved?

Volunteer and leadership opportunities are great for preparing youth for the future.

When I talk about getting students engaged in their schools, I hope that translates 8

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into active citizenship when they’re older. Being on a community league, for example, may seem like an adult thing, but it’s a great opportunity to see your work translated into something tangible.

We often hear young people are apathetic. Do you believe that’s the case?

I don’t think my generation

is less engaged; I think they’re disempowered. Youth don’t think they’re powerful, so they sit at home. And I don’t think that’s just youth. There’s an epidemic in our society that says, “It doesn’t matter if I vote. It doesn’t matter if I donate to charity. It doesn’t matter if I go out on the picket line.” So it’s important that we start telling youth, as early as

possible, that every little bit does matter. That’s what citizenship is about.

What can organizations do to include young voices?

On boards, I’m always the token young person. If organizations are going to give youth a seat at the table, it has to be to learn from them, not as a placeholder. –BRIDGET STIRLING

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

What got you interested in being active in civic life?

When I was in Grade 10, I took part in a leadership program that connects students to non-profit agencies to learn about human rights. That was my first exposure to social justice work. My parents aren’t activists, and I’m the first person in my family to go to university, but my parents taught me that actions have an impact, whether you’re big or small.

My first experience of lobbying was pitching the idea of a student trustee on the school board. I coldcalled public school board chair Sarah Hoffman, ’04 BEd, ’08 MEd. At the time, it was terrifying, but I thought, “How has no one thought about this before?”

FROM THE COLLECTIONS

UNCOVERING CAMPUS TREASURES The University of Alberta Museums house many objects that provide students and researchers with a deeper understanding of the world’s mysteries. Here we uncover items from some of the university’s diverse collections.

Changing perceptions of human prehistory These projectile points, acquired recently by the Bryan/Gruhn Archaeology Collection, are from the Middle Stone Age — about 90,000 years BP, or before present — from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These harpoon casts are exquisite examples of bone workmanship exhibiting significant technological advancement, supporting the idea that behaviourally modern humans evolved in Africa. The Bryan/Gruhn Archeology Collection contains more than 10,000 prehistoric and historic objects from around the world.

© Michael Neugebauer

An Evening with Dr. Jane Goodall PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, UN Messenger of Peace

Wednesday September 9, 2015 Winspear Centre Edmonton

Summer prints are all about Canadiana Christopher Pratt, one of Canada’s iconic painters and printmakers, captures the unbeatable sensations of a summer road trip in this recent donation to the U of A’s art collection. Summer of the Karmann Ghia enhances the contemporary Canadian holdings of one of North America’s strongest print collections, used regularly in the Print Study Centre for teaching and research.

PHOTOS BY JOHN ULAN

April showers bring May flowers This Calypso orchid is a local species that flowers back to life in spring and is one of the roughly 130,000 specimens in the Vascular Plant Herbarium, a research and teaching resource that captures biodiversity from the year 1816 to the present. U of A botanists are busy preparing for Botany 2015, an international conference of several societies with more than 2,300 participating plant scientists, hosted for the first time in Edmonton this July.

All across campus are the 29 interdisciplinary collections that make up the University of Alberta Museums. This unique model distinguishes the U of A as one of the world’s great public universities. The collections are used daily for teaching, research and community engagement, and many are open to the public. museums.ualberta.ca

In support of the Ilsa Mae Research Fund at Muscular Dystrophy Canada

and the

Tickets starting at $41 on sale now at the Winspear Box Office or www.winspearcentre.com presented by

© the Jane Goodall Institute

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by sarah pratt illustration by pulp studios

FROM THE WORLD’S LARGEST HABITAT, THE OCEAN, COME BIZARRE TALES OF SIX PREDATORS SEEMINGLY SPAWNED IN A LABORATORY NIGHTMARE. Like creatures from a low-budget horror movie, these six marine invertebrates are among the most fantastic and efficient killers of the deep, hunting and devouring prey with ingenuity and precision. Lindsey Leighton, associate professor in the U of A’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, describes some of his favourite marine predators, so prepare yourself for the most ghastly ocean death rituals by creatures who are anything but spineless.

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With its two club-like arms, this invertebrate can unleash the fastest predatory strike on the planet: 80 km/h and 880 Newtons of force. If a major leaguer could accelerate his arm at onetenth this speed, he could throw a baseball into orbit. Legend says the mantis shrimp can break aquarium glass or even a human bone.

Don’t be fooled by this marine gastropod’s size or good looks. Lying in wait, it smells prey by extending a tube-like proboscis, then launches a barbed harpoon. A deadly cocktail of neurotoxins paralyzes the victim. The cone snail pulls its still-living dinner into its mouth and eats it whole. Some can even kill a human.

The moon snail oozes along the ocean floor — and pity the poor bivalve it finds.

An expandable appendage secretes chemicals, including hydrochloric acid, that soften a spot on the prey’s shell, while a tongue-like organ covered in teeth scrapes away the weakened shell. Days later, the snail breaks through and sucks out the flesh of its prey.

A man’s hand has an average grip of 660 kilopascals. Saltwater crocodiles have a bite force of 25,500 kPa. Meanwhile, the seemingly innocuous stone crab is armed with a crushing claw that can exert at least 96,000 kPa. “If it gets hold of your finger, it’s like having it run over by a dump truck,” says Leighton.

Imagine a blind cannibal with 12 to 13 arms creeping along the ocean floor on thousands of sensitive tube feet. Once it wraps itself around the victim, it extrudes its stomach, which can slip through even the smallest gaps in a bivalve shell. Digestive juices dissolve the prey’s flesh, giving new meaning to clam on the half shell.

Despite this crab’s bashful name, it is bold on the hunt. The unusual-looking calappid’s right pincer features a specialized curved tooth that it inserts into the prey, then cuts a channel along the shell like using a can opener. When the victim is exposed, the crab’s left forcep-like pincer extracts the meat from within.

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When Food is Your Enemy

by SARAH PRATT

For people living with a recurrent C. difficile infection, everyday mealtime becomes a painful test.

Patients can’t properly digest food, and the joy of eating becomes suffering as each meal tears its way through the intestines. U of A researchers are finding that an ancient solution — fecal transplants — is giving patients back their lives when other treatments have failed.

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of gastrointestinal hell, Susan Brothen cried with relief when she was finally able to eat a tomato, lettuce and mayo sandwich.

In spring 2014, Brothen suffered from a recurring bacterial infection that left her with endless bouts of diarrhea, fevers and abdominal pain. On her worst days, she would go to the bathroom up to 13 times; good days meant five or six trips.

For four months she was scared to leave the house because she had no control over her bodily functions. She lived on mushed salmon mixed with a bit of rice.

“Every time I ate I would be in the bathroom within a half-hour,” says Brothen. “My body wasn’t getting any nutrition, I had no energy and I lost 30 pounds. I had no appetite and I would gag on my food. All I thought about was food and the bathroom. It was affecting everything in my life.”

She eventually learned the culprit was a recurrent clostridium difficile infection, also known as RCDI, a bacterial infection that developed when she used antibiotics to treat a blocked salivary gland.

Getting sick from antibiotics? It’s possible because antibiotics disrupt the normal populations of gut microflora, making the environment friendlier for nasty bacteria such as C. difficile. It grows quickly and produces toxins that cause illness. In the competition for limited resources in the gut, sometimes the bad guys win.

Typically, people with C. difficile infections are prescribed another antibiotic. But for the unlucky patients who develop a recurring infection, symptoms return within days of stopping treatment. Some end up on a seemingly endless cycle of illness and antibiotics long after the original illness is gone. Recurrent C. difficile deprives patients of the ability to live normal lives and costs the health-care system millions annually.

Patients have traditionally undergone treatments that are more invasive and prone to side-effects, such as surgery or repeated rounds of antibiotics. Recently, a different method is gaining popularity: fecal microbial transplant. It’s literally

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

after four months

transplanting healthy donor feces into a patient’s gut to replenish normal bacteria levels and ensure the intestines are healthy and working as they should.

Relief comes almost immediately for those who undergo a fecal transplant, says one of two people performing the procedure in Alberta.

“Patients often feel better the next day. It’s amazing,” says Dina Kao, ’94 BSc(Spec), ’99 MD, ’08 MSc, associate professor and a gastroenterologist at the University of Alberta Hospital. “This is the most rewarding work I have ever done.”

Kao has performed fecal microbial transplants as what is termed investigational therapy since 2012, and has successfully treated more than 140 people with recurrent C. difficile.

According to Kao, the procedure could save the provincial health-care system at least $10,000 per patient. Clinical trials

By the Numbers Alberta records about 3,000 cases of C. difficile annually, equalling 21,300 hospital days.

————— C. difficile is ranked second in all Alberta hospital-acquired bacterial infections.

It costs the provincial health-care system $32 million annually.

————— Fecal microbial transplants (FMT) could save the health-care system at least $10,000 per patient, says Dina Kao. This includes the cost of antimicrobials, hospitalization and emergency room visits.

—————

$1,388.08:

cost of a fresh-sample FMT colonoscopy

$1,414.90:

cost of a frozen-sample FMT colonoscopy

are also underway to use the procedure to treat inflammatory bowel disease and hepatic encephalopathy, which is the loss of brain function brought on by liver disorders.

Most patients choose a colonoscopy as the delivery method for the fecal transplant. Other options include an enema, a feeding tube or an oral treatment that involves taking 40 pills in an hour. Patients who need more than one transplant can usually have another done two to 14 days after the first. As for donor feces, every precaution is taken to ensure a healthy sample is harvested.

Most of the donors are nurses, tested to ensure excellent overall health and safe specimens. The prepared fecal suspensions are stored as fresh and frozen fluid; the use of one or the other depends on availability.

Before and after the procedure, Kao closely monitors the patient’s gut bacteria. Within days or even hours of a transplant, the mix of bacteria changes radically, returning quickly to a healthy combination predominantly of Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, bacteria essential in a healthy human gut. “It’s like having two arms and two legs — the combination of these bacteria are normal for us,” says Kao. Brothen started to feel better immediately after her fecal transplant, and by the next day was able to leave behind her salmon-and-rice diet. “That sandwich tasted so good,” she says. “I hadn’t eaten greens in four months.”

The future of fecal transplants is one of hope and continued research. “There is so much we don’t know about fecal transplants,” says Kao. “Health Canada considers it investigational therapy and recently they have said they want to put in some regulations to ensure the safety of patients. There will probably be some regulation changes in the future, but we don’t yet know what those look like.”

Brothen hopes the treatment helps as many people as possible. “If someone told me that I would have a fecal transplant, I would have said they were nuts,” she says. “But when you’re sick you will do anything to get better. Dr. Kao gave me my quality of life back.” new trail spring 2015 13

whatsoeverthingsaretrue

Second Chance at a Second Tongue

AS A YOUNG MAN GROWING UP IN ALBERTA, THERE WAS HUMILIATION TO BE FOUND IN TRYING TO SPEAK PROPER FRENCH. AS A GROWN MAN WITHOUT A SECOND LANGUAUGE, THE HUMILIATION HAS TURNED TO REGRET.

toward the end of winter , a national organization called le Français pour l’avenir, French for the Future, invited me to deliver a speech.

The audience was high school students in francophone and immersion programs who must soon decide whether to continue their studies in French or in English.

I was, in many ways, an odd choice of speaker. Growing up, my father had conspiracy theories about Pierre Trudeau and his plans to punish the West with cruel language laws.

Neither he nor my mother had gone to university. The only time we heard anyone speak a language other than English was when we skipped the television channel from 11 to 13. I still think of 12 as the French-iest number.

In high school, I took French classes but only because it was required for university acceptance. Often I am haunted by the way we treated Madame Hoffman. Actually trying to speak French properly, with an accent, would have been like walking around with no pants. It wasn’t until I was in university that it occurred to me that my hometown, Leduc, had a French name.

Graduating from university also required pesky second-language requirements. It seemed such an imposition at the time, an annoying ritual that served no purpose. It’s not like I would ever live or work in Quebec or a foreign country. And besides, I spoke the language everyone wanted to speak, the language of the Queen and Brad Pitt: English!

Then I moved to Montreal.

The shame set in on my second or third day in the city, and it has remained with me for almost 20 years. I had been 14

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an idiot. My blessed parents had been idiots. My friends had been idiots. All that time, when I was goofing off, I might have been learning French. And Spanish. Italian, German, Mandarin.

As I write this, I am preparing to make a business presentation to French winemakers. I lived in Montreal for several years, and in France for more than a year, but there remains a huge gap between my thoughts and my ability to express them in French. Why should they trust one euro of their money with a person who makes grammatical errors when speaking their language?

Then I will be working in Iceland.

I have ordered a book called Colloquial Icelandic, but the best I can hope for is a reception like I had in Kenya, where I spoke guidebook Swahili: smiles, pats on the back, an E for effort.

John Ralston Saul, a sometimesAlbertan, is the founding patron of French for the Future. His dream is a Canada where everyone is at least trilingual. This seems an impossible dream until you go to Europe, or Africa, or the Middle East, or Asia, or the cities of Latin America.

The organizers of the French for the Future conference, at the U of A’s Campus Saint-Jean, asked me to speak because I became serious about French at a late age — so late that I will always have a funny accent, always make

grammatical errors, always sound “foreign” to a native speaker of French.

But I had gone to all the trouble of taking classes at the Alliance Française, through the U of A Extension program.

They asked me to speak because they could smell the regret on me. It is among our most powerful emotions when we harness it for the good of 16-year-olds.

When I arrived to make the speech, I learned it was supposed to be delivered in French. I blacked out for a minute or so. But thanks to years of suffering, and an ego so battered by humiliation that it no longer guards against risk, I told the students a 40-minute cautionary tale in my second language. Form met content.

Every error was another reason for them to continue en français, lest they arrive on a stage one day, 40 and balding and ruining the subjunctive.

Learning French and Spanish, which I have done since leaving university, with a relatively miserable and saggy brain, has turned out to be the most profitable decision I have ever made — economically and spiritually.

When you learn a second language and you travel or work abroad, you see how it transforms your experience.

While I take full responsibility for my past stupidity in the matter of language, I must say the young people of today have astounding opportunities.

Students at the U of A can study abroad and connect with mentors and alumni networks all over the world.

I’m already brainwashing my two daughters, who speak French better than I do. Languages and international experiences aren’t optional: this is just what serious people do. It’s an essential part of their education.

“Did you do it, Daddy? When you were in school?”

I think of Madame Hoffman. And I regret.

Todd Babiak, ’95 BA, co-founded the company Story Engine and has published several books, including Come Barbarians, a national bestseller.

PHOTO BY SELENA PHILLIPS-BOYLE

by Todd Babiak

The Art of Patience

WHERE DO YOU START WHEN LIFE TELLS YOU IT’S TIME TO SLOW DOWN? CURTIS GILLESPIE OFFERS LESSONS LEARNED ALONG THE PATH TO FORBEARANCE

Learning doesn’t end when you accept your degree.

We are all lifelong learners whether we pursue lessons in a class or a lecture hall — or these lessons pursue us. This is the first of a regular series of essays by Curtis Gillespie, ’85 BA, reflecting on the continuing opportunities for education that life throws our way, sometimes when we least expect them.

i’ve always loved shortcuts, even though they sometimes turn into long cuts, such as the time (my wife likes to remind me) I drove us down a British Columbia logging road to save us an hour. Or it would have, had we not ended up on a nerve-shredding onelane road in the rain, dodging careening semi-trailers spilling timber. Shortcuts aren’t just about driving, either. If I can heat my coffee in the microwave at the same time I’m loading the dishwasher, or if I’m able to iron shirts while catching the hockey game, well, the entire day gets an upgrade. But I’ve come to learn over the years that this love of shortcuts is, in fact, a less-than-ideal aspect of my character. It’s impatience.

I knew it existed, but, until recently, I considered it less a flaw than a fuel source — sometimes a person needs to push hard, right?

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Wrong.

Last summer I was putting a new blade into a retractable utility knife.

The lid of the blade box was jammed shut. Rather than walk the 20 steps to my tool shelf to find the right tool to open it, I tried to pry it open manually.

I was applying some force to it when the lid gave and my hand swept across the blade tips, opening up a bone-deep gash in my index finger. The slit was so pure and so deep that it didn’t even hurt or start bleeding for a good five seconds. But then it began to pour blood, and pain liquefied my torso. I had to drive myself to the hospital with one hand — the hand that was also trying to staunch the bleeding from my finger.

It seemed only fitting that the most painful part of the entire sorry episode came when the doctor had to place a disinfecting needle straight into the very depth of the gash. I swear it touched bone. All this because I didn’t have the patience to spend 10 seconds finding the right tool, making me (sorry, I can’t resist) the impatient outpatient.

Later that summer, we were driving to the Okanagan in B.C. for our family holiday. At one point, while cruising through a sleepy village at 20 kilometres an hour, my phone went off. I managed to ignore the ring but saw that a message had been left.

Radically overestimating my centrality to the universe (or even to the people who know me), I decided to check the message while driving. My wife and children took exception to this and declared that since the message was obviously more important to me than their safety, it was clear I didn’t care about them. I laughed, or tried to, but one of my daughters gave me a devastatingly level stare and said, “We’re not kidding.”

I took these, and similar events happening around the same time, as signs that maybe patience was an art I needed to school myself in. But what is patience, anyway? And what is the opposite of patience? Impatience? Not quite, because impatience suggests an

ILLUSTRATION BY KELLY SUTHERLAND

c­ontinuingeducation

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

by Curtis Gillespie

inability to wait, a temporal quality, whereas patience suggests a kind of calm acceptance, a spiritual quality.

I would suggest that the opposite of patience is rage, even solipsism, a kind of selfishness. In reality, it’s not about me, that guy who cut me off. The girl fumbling with her bank card at the grocery till isn’t doing it solely to make me late picking up my daughter from soccer. She’s not doing it for any reason.

This is the point of patience, is it not, to separate the action from the outcome?

To let things unfold. To accept.

Not that it’s always easy. One day in the dead of this past winter, I came to a four-way stop close to our neighbourhood and pulled up to the intersection just a foot or two ahead of a sedan entering from the right.

We both came to a full stop at more or less the same time. Normally, I’d have taken the three-inch advantage I owned as a sign that I had the right of way. No, I told myself, be patient, force yourself to wait, allow the other car to go first. I flicked my headlights, the universal signal to indicate to another vehicle that it may proceed.

Except that apparently this driver had not been schooled on universal signals. I flicked again, a little more quickly. Nothing. I waved my hand, motioning for them to go. Nothing. It was as if the driver had proceeded to the intersection only to succumb to a narcoleptic fit. Non-issue, I said to myself. If that person doesn’t want to proceed that is his or her prerogative.

Let it wash over you.

Donning a cloak of imperturbable calm I took my foot off the brake and eased into the intersection, at which point the hitherto immobile sedan to my right shot off its spot like a rocket car on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, spurting directly towards me, causing me to hit the brakes to avoid a collision. “You IDIOT!” I shouted. “What a …”

The rest is unprintable.

I drove home rattled. If that was all it took to shatter my evolving monastic serenity, then what chance did I stand

with the more important challenges of life in which true patience would stand me in good stead?

Ruminating on this question, I began to see that I was frequently impatient without even knowing what endpoint I was so desperate to get to. Impatience is expressed in all of us in so many small but damaging ways. I recognize my impatience when I channel surf, skim books, get fidgety in long conversations, eat too quickly. I don’t know for sure if this is the main point of practices like mindfulness or books like Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slow — that impatience robs us of appreciation — but that’s sure how it feels when I’m being impatient.

Our culture has long viewed various expressions of impatience — such as ambition, energy, drive, assertiveness, directness — as positive traits, but are they really? If we like to say that something is worth the wait, then why are we so regularly unwilling to wait?

Certainly, technology doesn’t help. Too many of us crave the dopamine hit of our email ping and are obsessed with the incredibly important and selfreferential things our smartphones promise us every minute or so (research has shown that people with smartphones check them, on average, more than 700 times a day).

But it’s not all about technology. Our upbringing imprints many things upon us. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a loving household, but I was also one of six children, close in age, and in our tiny house we fought — often literally — for space, privacy, control of the TV, beds, bathroom time, attention and even food. It was a fun but relentlessly Darwinian childhood.

And I’m not exaggerating when I liken our dinner-table routine to a pack of slavering hyenas hunched over an antelope carcass on the Serengeti.

Patience meant getting stuck with antelope hooves on your plate.

I think my mother must have understood the psychological pressure, because she actually tried to get our family, even my laconic father, to adopt

meditation when I was about 14. The practice didn’t stick, sadly. For my own part it was impossible to concentrate during morning meditation because the mantra our Nepalese teacher had given me, ing, was impossible to repeat without thinking of hockey, due to the charismatic presence of one of the first Swedes to ever play in the NHL, Inge Hammarström, who was then with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Every time I tried to empty my mind, all I saw was a puckrushing defenceman.

Such was my upbringing.

I’ve started meditating again, since it can’t hurt and even if I can’t concentrate or empty my mind, at least the 15 minutes of silence is a bonus. I find it challenging, though the acceptance of the wandering mind helps. I’ve also attempted to adopt other methods of patience-cultivation.

I have once or twice tried to sit silent and still, without electronics, for a few minutes here and there with no other purpose than to just be, though that mostly just reminds me of my tinnitus.

I have altered my driving habits, though there is still the occasional reversal.

I’m trying to be more patient, to be tall grass in the wind, though sometimes I still get mown short by the other half of my nature.

Everyone says it’s a process, so I’ve also tried to make it a process to share with others. For instance, I handed this essay in late even though I finished it early, only because I hoped to present my editor with a patience opportunity. She has expressed the depth of her gratitude through her actions, in that I have yet to receive further assignments. Her patience is impressive, indeed, and I will undoubtedly learn something from it.

Curtis Gillespie has written five books, including the novel Crown Shyness. His magazine writing on politics, sports, travel, science and the arts has earned him seven National Magazine Awards.

He lives in Edmonton with his wife and their two daughters. newtrail spring 2015

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Researchers are breaking down boundaries and finding allies in unexpected places, speeding up discovery in the hunt for answers

BY AMIE FILKOW ILLUSTRATION BY SÉBASTIEN THIBAULT

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“EVERYONE HAS A CANCER STORY.

“PEOPLE SEEM TO INTUITIVELY UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A LONG BATTLE THAT’S GOING TO REQUIRE A SUSTAINED EFFORT.” – TIMOTHY CAULFIELD

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When I was first diagnosed, every person I met told me theirs.”

Tanya Prochazka’s own cancer story involves nearly a decade of hope in the face of daunting odds and repeated disappointment. It’s about holding on to that hope, even beyond her own life.

An internationally acclaimed cellist who has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the wedding ceremony for Wayne Gretzky, ’00 LLD (Honorary), Prochazka’s life in the past few years has been full of weddings, births, laughter and milestones. Back when she was first diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer, she never thought she’d be around to see any of these milestones, but this mother of three grown children and four young grandchildren has defied the odds.

Few ovarian cancer patients live more than five years after diagnosis; she’s on year nine. (“I’m not even in the data,” she says.) With the support of family, friends and a phalanx of dedicated health practitioners, the former University of Alberta music professor has endured three surgeries, four gruelling rounds of chemotherapy plus one of radiation. “It all gets very hazy because you just leap from one treatment to the next. You forget what it’s like to be normal.”

Even after chemotherapy proved ineffective, Prochazka kept trying. She participated in a clinical trial in Seattle and explored other experimental treatments, including nitroglycerine. She donated a biopsy sample of her cancer to the provincial tumour bank for a U of A research project.

“I just wanted to be there to see my children go through their lives and help them with their children,” she said a year ago. But nothing has halted her cancer, and there are no more treatments to try.

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES Cancer continues to be the leading cause of death in Canada. Last year, more than 191,000 new cases were diagnosed and 76,000 Canadians died from cancer. Even more alarming are these numbers: two out of five of us will develop cancer in our lifetimes and one out of every four will die from it.

Between private donations and public funding, more than $500 million is invested in Canadian cancer research each year. But is it money well spent?

Statistics from the Canadian Cancer Society, which tracks cancer survival rates, would suggest it is. When the organization started funding research in the 1940s, just 25 per cent of Canadians diagnosed with cancer survived. Today, that number is 60 per cent. Of course, survival rates tell only part of the story. There’s a bigger question for anyone touched by this disease: Will there ever be a cure?

The question is at once impossible and surprisingly easy to answer. There can be no capital “C” cure for cancer because cancer is not one thing. Breakthroughs in DNA sequencing have shattered the naïve assumption that cancer is a single-gene disease. Cancer is a catch-all for more than 200 varieties of abnormal cellular growth, each one able to mutate and evolve.

In The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, oncologist and author Siddhartha Mukherjee describes cancer as “a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than even we are …. If we, as a species, are the ultimate product of Darwinian selection, then so, too, is this incredible disease that lurks inside us.”

Even within one type of cancer, such as lung cancer, thousands of molecular profiles could exist, each responding differently to treatment. To further complicate matters, the severity, activity and progression of the disease can differ vastly from one patient to another. And then there’s the astronomical cost and painstakingly slow process of medical research and drug development.

These factors make cancer a spreading, moving target that can’t be eradicated with a single silver bullet.

“People seem to intuitively understand that this is a long battle that’s going to require a sustained effort,” says Timothy Caulfield, ’87 BSc(Spec), ’90 LLB, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the U of A and research director of the Health Law Institute. “Big promises have been made — big promises that haven’t necessarily been fulfilled. But people see the successes we’ve had with childhood leukemia and breast cancer, for example, and they’re willing to continue the fight. You see that in the public support for charities and fun runs and people wanting to donate.”

CANCER SUCCESSES AT THE U OF A 1970s Biochemists Alan Paterson and Carol Cass discover and characterize “nucleoside transport” — how cells absorb anticancer drugs.

1980s Biochemist Chris Bleackley and collaborators discover granzyme-B, molecular bullets that immune cells use to destroy cancer cells and can be used for targeted cancer therapy.

2000s Nanotechnology researchers Linda Pilarski and Chris Backhouse, ’85 BSc(Hons), develop the lab-ona-chip device that can test for up to 80 different genetic markers of cancer.

2010s Nuclear radiologist Sandy McEwan oversees the first CT scan to use a cyclotron-produced medical isotope to detect cancer — a safer, cleaner alternative to medical isotopes made from nuclear reactors.

2014 Cancer biologist John Lewis leads a prostate cancer research team that pioneers a technique to capture realtime video of cancer cells metastasizing, revealing how the cells attack the tissue from the bloodstream to form a new tumour. new trail spring 2015 21

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“AS A BASIC SCIENTIST I CAN DO AMAZING THINGS IN THE LAB AND HAVE BREAKTHROUGHS THAT GET PUBLISHED IN ‘NATURE,’ BUT THEY MAY HAVE NO IMPACT ON PATIENTS BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE OR RESOURCES TO BRING IT TO THE CLINICAL NEXT STEP.” – JOHN LEWIS

SKATING WITH GRETZKY “I’m tired of seeing my patients die,” says cancer physican John Mackey, ’90 MD, a fierce advocate for research, who links patient care back to the lab bench.

Mackey is a medical oncologist who treats breast cancer patients and a professor of oncology in the U of A’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry. He serves as director of clinical trials at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton and is co-founder of Alberta’s pioneering provincial tumour bank, now part of the Alberta Cancer Research Biorepository.

Sitting in his clinical office at the Cross, fishing through a stack of papers for a journal article, he laughs, “I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none.”

In fact, it’s difficult for Mackey to choose just one of his projects to talk about. He begins describing one, then interrupts himself to mention another. He falls silent for a moment, mentally flipping through all of the projects he wants to share.

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

RESEARCH ROADBLOCKS Few understand the complexities of the disease better than cancer researchers.

Strategies to target treatment to certain cancers have saved lives, while other cancers, such as pancreatic and brain cancer, remain a mystery.

In the quest to understand, diagnose and treat cancers, scientists, physicians, universities and funding agencies are coming to realize something that patients such as Prochazka have known all along: when it comes to cancer, you can’t do it alone.

There is a growing realization that a “race to be first” model of research, the romantic image of a lone researcher in a lab finding “the cure,” will not work. The best approach to tackling cancer now appears to lie in more — and better — collaboration from the moment a research project is conceived.

This is the crux of what’s known as “translational research.” It involves, in part, breaking down disciplinary barriers to build teams of experts from different fields who share ideas, resources and results. Translational research also refers to “translating” scientific discoveries from the laboratory to the treatment of patients, sometimes called “bench to bedside.”

It’s a feedback loop of discovery and treatment, in which basic cancer research leads to new treatments and better patient outcomes, which, in turn, help direct further avenues of research.

When a biochemist, an oncologist, a biomedical engineer, a nutritional scientist and a biostatistician work on a research project together, they bring different questions, expertise, insights and points of view to bear on the problem. This makes the research process more effective, ideally shortening the time it takes for new discoveries to move through

the research pipeline from an experiment at the lab bench to detection or treatment at the cancer patient’s bedside. [Editor’s note: Read about one such translational research discovery on page 2.]

At its core, translation is about clearing roadblocks on the twisting and expensive pathway from basic scientific discovery to patient care.

In an academic setting, this means breaking out of departmental silos and separate buildings. It means establishing ways for scientists in the lab to share what they know with health practitioners who treat patients — and vice versa. It means creating opportunities for collaborative research projects that tap into a research university’s greatest strength: its wealth of expertise in diverse disciplines.

“As a basic scientist I can do amazing things in the lab and have breakthroughs that get published in Nature, but they may have no impact on patients because I don’t have the knowledge or resources to bring it to the clinical next step,” says John Lewis, who holds the Frank and Carla Sojonky Chair in Prostate Cancer Research at the U of A and leads a team in translational prostate cancer research.

“We have to start using a broad spectrum of experts with diverse skills to tackle this in a very different way,” says Stephen Robbins, scientific director of the Institute of Cancer Research in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which funds more than a quarter of all cancer research in the country — the single largest investor.

It’s not that collaboration is new. What is new is how broadly the network of collaboration stretches, the diversity of the collaborators and how early in the process the connections are formed. Funding models, research facilities and even purpose-built buildings are shifting to support this integrated, team-based approach.

Cancer physician John Mackey (left) and biochemist Ing Swie Goping are studying why some breast and ovarian cancer tumours respond to treatment while others show resistance.

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One of Mackey’s most promising lines of inquiry is a collaboration with U of A associate professor of biochemistry Ing Swie Goping.

They’re striving to understand why some patients respond to chemotherapy while others show resistance. Specifically, they are looking into taxanes, aggressive chemotherapy drugs used in the treatment of breast and ovarian cancers. Despite the highly toxic therapy, cancer relapses in nearly 40 per cent of breast cancer patients and 70 per cent of ovarian cancer patients.

When Goping proposed a collaboration, Mackey was eager to be involved, having seen his patients suffer from the harmful side-effects of taxane therapy, which in some cases can even cause death. “As doctors, if we don’t understand the biology, our treatment strategies will simply be empiric, like randomly throwing darts at a wall without knowing the direction to aim,” he says.

The team is developing an antibody-based diagnostic kit that will help breast cancer patients and their doctors determine whether the difficult treatment might be beneficial.

Goping discovered that a protein called BAD (Bcl-2-associated death promoter) acts as a predictive biological marker that indicates whether a patient will respond to taxane treatment. Since taxanes require BAD in order to eliminate the cancer cell, patients with the protein in their tumours respond better to the therapy.

The team is continuing to test its hypothesis in larger numbers of tumour specimens but, based on the findings, the biomarker could potentially spare hundreds of Albertans from having to undergo this difficult treatment without any benefit. For patients whose tumours have high levels of the BAD protein, the hope is that they will be more willing to soldier through the taxane therapy with the odds in their favour. Knowing they have the biomarker would give them a reason to hope.

The project demonstrates what basic research and clinical medicine can achieve through collaboration, when people from different disciplines contribute a variety of insights and approaches.

“Collaboration was absolutely necessary for this project to move forward, for us to expand our knowledge and reach our conclusion,” Goping says.

As a medical oncologist who sees patients on a daily basis, Mackey recognized the need for a diagnostic tool to help target treatment. The tumour bank he co-founded provided samples for the research on taxanes. (Open to all researchers, the biorepository has blood and tissue samples of more than 40 types of cancer from more than 20,000 participants.) Pathologist Judith Hugh, another key member of the translational team, can “read” each tumour sample and determine its grade and diagnosis. Cancer surgeon Todd McMullen, ’91 BSc(Spec), ’97 PhD, who also has a background in biochemistry, provides surgical input to help acquire specimens. Biostatistician John Hanson, ’64 BSc, ’68 MSc, analyzes vast amounts of research data and interprets the results.

Mackey is enthusiastic about the depth and breadth of talent with which he works.

“Most of what I do is like skating with Gretzky,” he says. “You get a few goals, but most are because of the talented people you’re collaborating with. I work with people who know things I don’t know and that’s really where the sparks fly and the advances happen. When people approach the same problem from different directions, patients win.”

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ONE QUESTION, MANY PERSPECTIVES Translational research brings investigators with diverse expertise together early in the discovery process. Presented with a clinical problem like drug resistance in cancer, each team member will see the problem from a different perspective and ask questions unique to his or her specialization.

As those questions are shared and shaped by collaborators’ input, they become more refined — yielding clues, guiding new research directions and leading to solutions and better outcomes. Here’s a hypothetical example.

FROM PETRI DISH TO PATIENT For centuries, doctors have also often been scientists — treating patients, examining specimens, dissecting cadavers, writing up their discoveries, finding cures. Some of the biggest medical breakthroughs of the 20th century were made by physicians who lived double lives as scientific investigators. Jonas Salk was a trained medical doctor who branched out into virology research and discovered the polio vaccine.

Canadian Frederick Banting was an orthopedic surgeon who co-discovered insulin and won the Nobel Prize. The Harvard pathologist Sidney Farber experimented with antifolate drugs as anticancer agents in the 1940s to develop the first chemotherapy and ran a clinical trial for children with leukemia.

In recent decades, however, a great divide has grown between scientists in the lab and health practitioners who see patients in the clinics. Like travellers in parallel

Bioengineer Can we design nanoparticles to make smarter chemotherapy that targets the resistant cells?

Kinesiologist Are there differences in blood flow to the tumour that might be linked to patients’ physical activity levels?

universes, they are searching for similar answers but often their paths only rarely and randomly intersect. Why is there such a disconnect between scientific discovery and its application?

For one thing, each is busy with their own work: busy caring for patients, busy writing papers and grant applications, busy teaching and busy doing the research that will help them renew their funding — the crucial financial backing that can make or break a research

Computer Scientist Which combinations of biomarkers define the people who respond to the drug versus those who don’t?

Immunologist Are there genetic or environmental factors that affect the immune systems of the two patients?

Pharmacologist Are the resistant cells pumping the drug out of the cell?

Surgical Oncologist Did the patient whose disease is harder to treat have tumours in proximity to major blood vessels that feed them nutrients?

CLINICAL PROBLEM Why are one patient’s cancer cells responding to treatment X while another’s are resisting it?

Nutritionist Do dietary differences or deficiencies make cells respond differently to treatment?

Health Economist What are the implications of the treatment for the health-care system in terms of cost and patient care?

Cell Biologist Did the resistant cancer cells grow faster or slower than the sensitive ones?

Pathologist What do the resistant cells look like and how do they act in comparison to the sensitive ones?

Nurse What patterns of symptoms—loss of appetite, nausea, swollen joints—have been observed in the patients who respond to treatment? newtrail spring 2015

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Prostate cancer researcher John Lewis (left) leads a translational team at the U of A that includes Srijan Raha, ’14 BSc, a graduate student in the Cancer Sciences program.

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PHOTO BY RYAN WHITEFIELD

program. Funding models have, until relatively recently, generally backed a project’s principal investigator, not his or her collaborators from different fields. University faculties and departments have tended to be silos of distinct disciplines with experts focused on advancing knowledge in highly specialized areas. Finally, doctors and scientists, nurses and pathologists, nutritionists and statisticians don’t speak the same language, and that can create hurdles to collaboration.

“Until you put the framework in place for collaboration to occur, and provide drivers to encourage it, it doesn’t happen as often as it should,” says prostate cancer researcher Lewis.

Talk of interdisciplinary collaboration and translational science has been around for 20 years, but the idea is only now gaining widespread traction in Canada and shifting the culture of science. “We’re speaking in language now that we couldn’t speak before,” says the CIHR’s Robbins. Funding models now often encourage and even require this model of research. Federal initiatives such as the Networks of Centres of Excellence and CIHR — which has a mission to “create new scientific knowledge and to enable its translation into improved health” — are focused on helping bridge the gap between basic and clinical science.

The U of A is doubling down on collaboration by creating a research centre and initiative — to support cross-disciplinary teams and accelerate research — the new Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta, or CRINA. The goal is to connect hundreds of cancer specialists (Mackey, Goping and Lewis are among them) on campus and at affiliated institutions. These connections facilitate teamwork, streamline research and push clinical trials forward.

Collaborators from medicine can connect with their colleagues in engineering, science, nursing, nutrition, public health and law, simply by walking across the pedway. Multiple disciplines can contribute their expertise to navigate the policy, ethics and economics involved in getting a new drug from the petri dish to the patient. Even buildings and infrastructure are being purpose-built to encourage collaboration. The Edmonton Clinic Health Academy, built on the U of A’s North Campus in 2011, for example, is an attempt to dissolve physical boundaries between health-care disciplines.

“More and more universities and research centres are working in this translational space and trying to bring transformative groups together,” says Robbins. “In every case the focus is on helping patients much faster.”

It takes an average of 17 years for potential treatments to go from drug discovery to delivery, says Deborah James, former executive director of CRINA. That’s an excruciatingly long wait for anyone living with cancer. “Across Canada, universities and governments are working to create programs that are going to facilitate translation much better.”

Perhaps the greatest value in a translational approach, from a health perspective, comes from the increased focus on the patient, says James. “It’s starting with a different question — one from the patient perspective, from the clinical perspective.”

Patients are part of the collaboration in other key ways. In 2013, looking for ways to help his wife, Prochazka’s husband, Arthur,

read about the work of U of A cancer biologist Lynne-Marie Postovit, a codirector of CRINA, and contacted her.

Postovit — who holds three endowed chairs in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry — leads a translational research team that has identified a cellular biomarker that could one day be detected in blood for early screening of ovarian cancer. Prochazka agreed to donate a biopsy sample of her cancer to the provincial tumour bank, which contributed to Postovit’s research.

“Patients don’t realize it, but they can really help push research forward,” says Postovit.

LOST IN TRANSLATION Not all are won over by the promises of collaboration and translational research.

Some see risks to the kind of unfettered research they consider critical to scientific advancement.

There is some concern this model might increase the push toward commercialization and the expectation that universities should be economic drivers. The worry is that pressure to translate scientific discoveries and show a “return on investment” could create bias and put research teams in danger of exaggerating results and initiating a premature rush to market.

In reality, biomedical science moves forward in tiny, unsteady (and often retraced and highly regulated) steps, according to health law professor Caulfield, a member of CRINA who has worked on translational projects in genomics and stem cell research.

Pressure to accelerate this process can lead to hype, he says, which can skew results and also risk damaging public trust in academic research.

“We need to be careful about overpromising. The problem is a lot of these translational projects are big science projects with huge teams, so you need those big dollars,” says Caulfield. “And in order to get those big dollars, you need to promise big. It’s a real policy new trail spring 2015 27

INVENTING AND REINVENTING If cancer research has a story to tell, it’s one of epic victories and heartrending setbacks. The ending remains uncertain, but the central theme might best be summed up by author and oncologist Mukherjee: to keep pace with this malady, research needs to keep inventing and reinventing, learning and unlearning strategies.

Tanya Prochazka’s cancer story is still unfolding.

She has stopped treatment and is in palliative care 28 newtrail.ualberta.ca

“MY HOPE IS THAT OVARIAN WILL FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BREAST CANCER, WHERE MORE WOMEN SURVIVE THAN NOT.” – TANYA PROCHAZKA

at her home in Edmonton. Still, she has found reasons to hope. She hopes for a day when her children and grandchildren do not have to live in fear of a cancer diagnosis. A day when research and medicine, working together, will have found early detection techniques and targeted therapies for many cancers.

“I’m making sure my daughter gets screened every year. She’s only 30, but she’s not going to do what I’m doing.

No way,” Prochazka says. “My hope is that ovarian will follow in the footsteps of breast cancer, where more women survive than not.”

That’s the hope that drives researchers and clinicians, patients and caregivers alike. By attacking cancer from multiple perspectives, disciplines and entry points along the spectrum of research, by asking probing questions from every vantage point, perhaps researchers can help more people survive — or better yet avoid — a cancer diagnosis.

Since they first met nearly two years ago, cancer biologist Postovit has stayed in touch with Prochazka. “When I interact with cancer patients and survivors, I’m humbled, but I’m also driven even more to make a difference,” she says. “I may not be able to change that patient’s life in the moment, but they are always in the back of my mind, inspiring me to go further.”

PHOTO BY RYAN WHITEFIELD

challenge, trying to frame this in a way that talks about the big solutions so you can get the long-term big money to do this research. You need sustained funding to fulfil these promises.”

Yet, Caulfield adds, having a group of experts working together can also be a powerful way to limit research hype. “When you’re a lone researcher and you’re trying to raise your hand above everyone else, you’re more likely to have biases than if you’re in a big research team where there’s internal validation.”

Another criticism of translation gets at the heart of what science is all about: curiosity and experimentation.

A funding-based translation timeline could limit the freedom of scientists to ask pure research questions and have experiments fail, perhaps preventing the serendipitous discoveries that have sometimes resulted in groundbreaking treatments — from the penicillin mould in Alexander Fleming’s petri dishes that proved to be a powerful antibiotic, to a dangerous explosive called nitroglycerine that was patented as dynamite by Alfred Nobel but was later found to treat heart disease.

“Every discovery that we make in the lab is a true discovery from the cell point of view, but it might not have an impact on cancer treatment,” explains biochemist Goping. “It might, however, have an impact on how the eye develops in a baby, or on whether Alzheimer’s is going to progress slowly or quickly. In 25 years we might say, ‘Oh, that’s really interesting for another disease,’ but because the focus now is on translation, it will force that discovery into the cancer translation pipeline.”

Despite the potential risks, the popular consensus among doctors, scientists and health researchers seems to be that the trend toward collaboration and translation is on the right track.

“You need interdisciplinary teams because basic researchers are not experts on clinical outcomes,” says Caulfield. “Scientists may have some new exciting invention in the laboratory, but how it plays out in the clinic is pretty complicated. Is it really better than what’s available, long term? What is the real value of this for patients and for the health-care system? What are the benefits of this new invention from a health policy or health economic perspective?”

“We can achieve much more than the sum of the parts by doing this,” says Robbins. “It’s much better working with 10 great minds than one great mind.”

Tanya Prochazka (right), who has undergone years of treatment for ovarian cancer, visits last summer with ovarian cancer researcher Lynne-Marie Postovit, a co-director with the university’s new Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta, or CRINA.

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Why ‘thought diversity’ makes tapping into global experience more important than ever

NDS

WITHOUT BORDERS

by Omar Mouallem // Illustrations by David Vogin

“WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK,” says Nermeen Youssef, mimicking the classic movie line with a sweeping gesture across the lobby of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology at the University of Alberta. A fantastical science park it is not, but, to the young PhD candidate, these wood-panelled walls decorated with paintings of such Canadian Medical Hall of Famers as virologist Lorne Tyrrell, ’64 BSc, ’68 MD, actually do house magic.

Before arriving from Cairo in 2009, Youssef knew the Alberta capital not for its hockey team, nor its mega-mall, but for its university. More exactly, she knew it for the Edmonton Protocol, a method of islet cell transplantation and the closest thing yet to a cure for Type 1

diabetes — it was discovered under this very roof. So when picking a place to study the cardiovascular effects of antidiabetic drugs, she zeroed in on the U of A. “I’m very lucky to be here,” she says, before buttoning a white coat over a stylish cardigan. “These are very

famous people I’ve only read about in papers — the actual people who did the Edmonton Protocol. They’re pioneers.”

Youssef, too, is pioneering.

Her name is on a patent that could replace insulin injections with a safer and easier treatment. The team she belonged to at the U of A’s Alberta Diabetes Institute, before she left to focus on her thesis, is working to engineer a person’s own fat cells to secrete insulin in response to blue light.

It could spare some diabetics from ever needing another insulin needle again. newtrail spring 2015

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Research at the U of A looks a lot different than it did 16 years ago when doctors James Shapiro, Shapiro, ’01 PhD, Ellen Toth, Ray Rajotte, Rajotte, ’71 BSc(ElecEng), ’73 MSc, ’75 PhD, and five other scientists made history. Today, the U of A is ranked by Times Higher Education as 87th of the 100 “most international universities” based on diversity on campus and faculty collaboration with international colleagues on research projects. Forty per cent of the U of A’s professorship is from abroad.

International student enrolment at Alberta post-secondaries, as a whole, increased by 22 per cent from 2003 to 2012, according to the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies of British Columbia, which promotes diversity.

In the lab, this international shift is reflected on the whiteboard around the corner, which, every year, fills with New

Thought diversity posits that more important than social variances are cognitive ones. Put another way: different perspectives are the true value of inviting diversity to the table.

If you do this, the natural byproduct is a diversity of thought. And a natural byproduct of that is innovation and creativity.

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Year’s greetings in Farsi, Chinese, Polish, Slovakian and Arabic.

The institute has become the United Nations of science labs.

Led by Peter Light (who was recruited to Canada from Britain) the institute didn’t actively seek to diversify the lab. The groundbreaking innovations of the past have simply made the lab attractive to some of the best researchers in the world. And if that original research team had such a profound impact drawing from the best in Canada, just imagine what this group can do with the best in the world.

IT WAS IN 1983 THAT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR THEODORE LEVITT COINED THE TERM “GLOBALIZATION.” He was referring to the globalization of markets, but in the little more than 30 years since, nearly every facet of life has become borderless. Two decades later, in their 2006 international bestseller Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott, ’78 MEd, ’01 LLD (Honorary), a leading authority on innovation and globalization, along with co-author Anthony D. Williams, put it this way: “We are witnessing the reweaving of the social, political and economic fabric that binds our planet, with long-term consequences that are as, or more, profound than the industrial revolution.”

Today we use technology designed in one country, manufactured in another and assembled at home. Lunchrooms like Youssef’s are multilingual. Grade 12 students’ Facebook feeds fill with ads from international colleges.

Entrepreneurs are just as likely to collaborate with people from five countries as five provinces. And you are probably more likely to get tech support from Pakistan than Winnipeg.

“Clearly, all business is international business because you’re competing against companies from all over the world,” says Rikia Saddy, ’88 BA, a

Vancouver-based author and marketer.

“And your team is worldwide.” Saddy collaborates with partners in Europe because doing so can cut project timelines in half. “I can work all day, then hand things off to a graphic designer in Denmark. Then they work all night, and I wake up and it’s done. A three-month project becomes a five-week project.”

But the collision of perspectives and the mashing of heterogeneous minds goes beyond economic benefits.

The true advantage isn’t cost savings, argue Tapscott and Williams, but the possibilities for growth, innovation and diversification.

As globalism expands, we’re discovering the impact of breaking homogeneity — in classrooms, in offices, in politics — and learning how a variety of backgrounds, experiences and points of view can invigorate collaboration. In other words, we’re unlocking the true value of diversity.

AH, DIVERSITY. Is there another English language word that has provoked more nervousness in the boardroom?

Since the concept of workplace diversity took hold in the 1970s, efforts to hire racial, gender and sexual minorities have become a multibillion-dollar industry, with America collectively spending US$8-to-10 billion a year on diversity training, according to one estimate.

As the City of Edmonton’s diversity and inclusion consultant, who has trained some 10,000 public servants since 2008, Candy Khan, ’96 BA, ’08 MEd, realizes there is some skepticism about her field. “Diversity in the ’70s would have meant, ‘Let’s just hire people who are visibly different — women, Aboriginal and persons with disabilities — and let’s just put a checkmark beside each,’ ” says Khan, who recently returned to the U of A to complete her PhD on adult education.

She thinks the subsequent affirmative action plans have failed.

Instead of creating meaningful

inclusion, they created a numbers game.

Today, diversity includes historically disadvantaged groups including the sexual and gender minority community, and her work with the city goes much deeper than “just counting heads,” she says. The goal, not only through hiring but also through policies and public programs, is to recognize and reflect the growing diversity of city residents and remove barriers to civic involvement.

Khan believes that diversity training is a business imperative. “We’re no longer competing for local labour but for global labour.”

So when Khan consults with her colleagues, she asks not which visible minority groups are missing, but which personal experiences are absent.

“There’s a shift in philosophy,” she says.

“Diversity, to me, is really about your experiences. We’re always looking at diversity of ideas, thoughts.”

Thought diversity, or “informational diversity,” is a relatively new term in Khan’s field. It posits that more important than social variances are cognitive ones. Put another way: different perspectives are the true value of inviting diversity to the table.

If you do this, the natural byproduct is a diversity of thought. And the natural byproducts of that, says Khan, are innovation and creativity.

A number of studies appear to back this notion. In one, professors at Columbia Business School and University of Maryland examined top firms in the Standard & Poor’s Composite 1,500 index. They wanted to see if companies with more women in top management performed differently.

They did in firms that focused on innovation. Those companies saw a US$44-million increase in value when there were more senior-level women compared to companies that did not have women in those roles. “Female representation in top management,” it reads, “brings informational and social diversity benefits to the top

management team, enriches the behaviours exhibited by managers throughout the firm, and motivates women in middle management.”

Another team of American researchers, in 2004, wanted to know if racial diversity had any impact on collaboration. White students were assigned either a white or black collaborator (acting as a student) and tasked with discussing, then writing essays about, tough social issues. When a collaborator presented a dissenting opinion, the listening student believed it to be more novel when the speaker was black. Also, students were more willing to consider and include diverse points of view in their essays after being in a group with someone different.

THE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTAND THE VALUE OF DIVERSITY IS TO THINK LIKE A BIOLOGIST. Imagine all the world’s forests were made up of only poplars. And all the world’s marine life were salmon. And all the world’s fruits, apples. Not only would the world be dreadfully boring, but it would also be vulnerable to mass destruction. All it takes is one phenomenon — a virus or invasive species, for instance — to threaten preservation. A variety of life keeps our ecosystems robust and adaptable — that’s why biodiversity is so important in biology.

The pine beetle infestation that has devastated interior British Columbia is one example of what can happen when new trail spring 2015 33

biodiversity breaks down. The most recent crisis came about in the early 2000s, the result of warmer winters (colder weather typically keeps the insects in check) and a decades-long increase in dense, mature pine forests along with a decline in vegetation such as montane grassland. Pine reproduce at a terrific rate and fill ecological voids — until the right beetle comes along and devastates half of the trees in a region in the span of a couple of years. “You can have an epidemic of economic and life loss, simply because

you’ve created an excellent place for pests or disease,” explains U of A biology professor Heather Proctor, ’86 BSc(Hons), whose research focuses on the diversity of mites and lice in birds.

“There’s not enough variety to avoid susceptibility to that disease.”

Or take heritage chickens. Proctor has a personal interest in heritage chickens, which are being studied by some of her U of A colleagues.

Industrial farming has bred impressively productive poultry that produce a lot of breast meat, and fast. But the animal

is also genetically depauperate, the opposite of diverse, meaning a single strain of the wrong virus (or the right one, from the virus’s point of view) could wipe out a flock.

“Higher biodiversity at the genetic or species level is thought to improve both resistance and resilience,” says Proctor, who sees parallels in the concept of thought diversity. The biology department is an example, she says. The different “subcultures” — a geneticist, ecologist and field biologist, for example — bring different lenses to science. This diversity creates undergraduate students who can see biological systems from many angles.

“They’re intellectually flexible,” she says.

“If you have a workplace with different types of humans and culture, then it’s analogous to having a nice flock of heritage chickens. People will see things in slightly different ways.” It may not be as efficient, but in the long run the workplace becomes more agile and yields better results. “A more diverse business culture will be able to respond more rapidly because there will be more ideas to draw from,” says Proctor. “You can call it your business genome.”

THAT’S DIVERSITY ON THE GENETIC LEVEL. What about on the cognitive level? What happens psychologically, neurologically, when we engage with dissimilar people?

A 2013 study involving Katherine W. Phillips, a professor at Columbia Business School, found that when Democrats were told to present an idea to Republicans, participants were far more prepared. Writing for Scientific American, she explains, “Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.”

That’s not to say that diversity doesn’t also complicate environments.

It has been shown to cause discomfort, distrust, interpersonal conflict, miscommunication and less cohesion,

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Weber has come to embrace the cultural according to Phillips. But it does frictions. “I like the challenge,” he says. appear to make us better at solving “To face these difficulties you have to complex problems, even in the invent ways of working around them.” scientific community. Poring over 2.5 The benefits of encountering other million academic papers published cultures and ways of thinking even between 1985 and 2008, researchers extend to the brain. from Harvard found that articles by Over the past four years, Weber has ethnically diverse research groups begun living part time on Hokkaido and were cited more often and published took an intensive Japanese language in higher-profile journals than course. Learning the language has had homogeneous teams. an impact on more than just his working Just ask Andrzej Weber about relationships. If we could zoom in on the benefits of diversity. The U of A his brain, we’d see neurological changes anthropology professor and director from learning a second language. of the Baikal-Hokkaido Archaeology A number of studies point to positive Project leads scholars from seven effects from learning to think in a nations investigating ancient huntersecond language. Multilingual people gatherer culture in two parts of the are exceptional multi-taskers. They world: Siberia’s Lake Baikal and the are better able to weed out irrelevant Japanese island of Hokkaido. He began information. Memory, decision-making, studying the former on his own 25 years standardized testing — a growing body of ago, but soon realized the potential of evidence shows that all these improve multidisciplinary research. “The fact with linguistic diversity. that it was international was really a For U of A psycholinguist Leo Mos, natural consequence of looking for the ’66 BA, ’69 MSc, ’74 PhD, the greatest best experts out there in academia,” value in different languages is the he says. He quickly learned there are advantage of other world views. As you also unintended benefits. “People have express yourself in another language, different perspectives and knowledge giving expression to the world around about the local context, environmental you, you begin to understand the context, archeological context, that manner in which other people — this otherwise would be impossible to other linguistic group — live and acquire on your own.” think. In other words, by speaking That knowledge pool has grown their language, you better understand since fieldwork in Japan was added in their culture and perspectives on the 2011 — though that has brought some world. “To have globality is to know cultural complexities, as well. Whereas the discourses of other peoples,” says Russia’s hierarchical authority tends Mos. “That’s what we lose when we lose to make for efficient decision-making, diversity of language.”

Weber says, the Japanese culturally prefer consensus, meaning they can be THE TECTONIC PLATES THAT averse to definitive negative answers.

DIVIDE CONTINENTS HAVE, “They will keep meeting until the last FIGURATIVELY, SHIFTED AND person is on-board.”

COLLIDED. We find ourselves On the other hand, the Japanese navigating a new geography in have a deep appreciation for archeology technology, science, business, activism, matched by few other cultures, so education and media. In this more community support has been enormous, integrated world, where migrating talent pushing Baikal-Hokkaido findings into national news on an almost weekly basis. circulates through the planet’s literal

As you begin to express yourself in another language, giving expression to the world around you, you begin to understand the manner in which other people live and think. In other words, by speaking their language, you come to better understand their culture and their perspectives on the world.

and digital ports, intellectual resources are quickly replacing other “natural resources” as a source of wealth and well-being.

“The future,” write Tapscott and Williams, “therefore, lies in collaboration across borders, cultures, companies and disciplines. The countries that focus narrowly on ‘national goals’ or turn inward will not succeed in the new era. Likewise, firms that fail to diversify their activities geographically and develop robust global innovation webs will find themselves unable to compete in a global world.

“Effectively, it’s globalize or die.” new trail spring 2015 35

President Indira Samarasekera ponders an international legacy and a global future — plus spending time with one very special grandchild

I T TAK ES A

GL BAL VILLAGE

BY LISA COOK

second term as University of Alberta president draws to its close June 30, she leaves the university with multiple legacies. One major theme has been her focus on globalism and international opportunities, including her parting gift to the university: an endowment establishing the Indira V. Samarasekera Global Student Leadership Fund to support students in their pursuit of education and mind-broadening experiences beyond Canadian borders. New Trail asked Samarasekera what globalism means to her and how it might shape U of A alumni of the future.

Here are some highlights from the conversation.

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Why did you choose globalism as a focus for your legacy at the U of A? The Global Student Leadership Fund is very personal. I was able to leave Sri Lanka and travel to the United States, and eventually to Canada, because there were resources available to me. My parents were in no position to support an education for me outside the country, and so I think about what that seed of investment meant to my own life. It has been more than I could have imagined.

As the world becomes a place in which talent and ideas flow freely, we need to tap into that incredible, dynamic collision of ideas and talent.

You think about nature: the reason we have such a rich world is that nature is diverse. If all the plants were tomatoes and we had a plague, we’d be wiped out. Diversity creates resilience. And so globalization has the potential to increase the resilience of the global commons.

à

à So then, how do you think these kinds of international travel experiences change people, especially students?

Students immersed in another culture, in another part of the world where there is a different set of challenges, come back with a much more complete experience. It helps them to develop entrepreneurial

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

AS INDIR A SAMAR ASEKER A ’ S

President Indira Samarasekera (left) photographed with her granddaughter and daughter in Vancouver this past spring. new trail spring 2015 37

spirit, a cultural understanding, empathy, a sense of gratitude for what they have. It also helps them to develop a sense of obligation, because if they want to preserve the quality of democracy we have, then they’re going to have to work at it. From a very personal point of view, I think that is critical. à You’ve used the term “global citizen” in the past. Is this what you mean by that?

That’s right; it’s a two-way process. A citizen has rights and responsibilities, so a global citizen is someone who has a very clear understanding of his or her rights as a global citizen and therefore what his or her responsibilities are — not only in preserving those rights but in enhancing those rights, which means helping others. You know, I really think it’s about each one of us being able to live life to its fullest potential. That’s what global citizens are able to do.

By and large, you want to live today so that tomorrow you feel like you haven’t wasted that day. I think it’s that notion of purpose, of saying, “What difference can I make?” and of challenging yourself and how you live life every day. I think that’s what it’s all about. When you see people who live life with purpose, you see people who are joyful, are engaged, who are optimistic, who are hopeful. And you see people who have no purpose and they’re lost. It’s the business of living purposefully that is crucial. à In your time here, the U of A has also embraced an international sensibility. Is being global as important on an institutional level?

At an institutional level, it positions you much better to understand what’s going on around the world. I’ll give you an example: I was very proud when the University of Alberta was invited to join the Worldwide Universities Network, a network of 16 universities from around the world. à Wait, only 16 universities in total?

Yes, only 16, including universities in the United States, Europe, South Africa, Hong Kong, China. … Being at those gatherings is like having radar about what the issues are in other parts of the world, what the challenges are for higher 38 newtrail.ualberta.ca

education. If an institution is unplugged from that then it can’t possibly chart its own course in a way that will serve it most efficiently in the future. It’s about having access to intelligence.

Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. And so how do you get the wisdom? You get the wisdom by being connected to different people in different places in the world. I think that’s crucial for the institution. à How do you see international students fitting into that equation?

I think the more we educate students from Alberta, Canada and the world, we are building a family of U of A alumni who are well plugged in wherever they live. An alumnus who is originally from Hong Kong might end up living in Alberta, someone from Alberta might end up living in Malaysia, but they provide a kind of network that your new alumni and your students can connect with: mentoring, internship opportunities, travel abroad, study abroad. The investments a university makes today in international connections are going to benefit generations of students for a very long time in the future.

Whatever your business — whether it’s in the arts, industries, manufacturing, whatever it is — the reservoir of talent and ideas is much larger globally than locally. If you build an organization based on a limited amount of talent and ideas, you’re not going to be as successful as an entity that knows where to go to get what it needs to build a successful enterprise.

Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.

What we’re now discovering is that the more diverse a person’s experience, the more he or she can think more broadly and bring solutions and offer up new ideas. You know, I think this is why we’re waking up to the whole question of diversity in every form — not just the obvious, the apparent, differences. The invisible differences among people are just as important as the obvious ones.

Don Tapscott [’78 MEd, ’01 LLD (Honorary)], who is now one of the world’s most significant global thinkers, is all about networks and connections.

His books are changing how businesses are thinking about things. He’s talking about creating global platforms to solve our challenges. This truly embraces this notion of the next generation’s capability to move big issues forward. à And now you’re moving forward.

What do you hope to accomplish in your next role?

Be a good grandmother! [laughs] I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I’m looking forward to it. I had a wonderful grandmother, oh, my gosh. I think she had such a profound influence on my life, and I’m not sure I would be where I am if not for her influence. She was a very global person, and I’m thinking back to the conversation that you and I just had. She was living in Sri Lanka, a colonial country, and her mother — this was my great-grandmother — started something called the International Women’s Club. In Sri Lanka!

When I was growing up, my grandmother spent all her time at this International Women’s Club because by then her children had grown up. I couldn’t understand what on Earth she was doing there all the time, but I’d go to the club with her and she’d have people talking about women’s issues and playing mah-jong. It was truly their effort to understand the world in their own way in a small country like Sri Lanka.

So now I’m thinking, OK, I’m where my grandmother was. I don’t have to worry about my children, so what can I do that might have some parallels? What can I do so that my granddaughter — who I hope will be the president of the University of Alberta in 50 years — might say the same thing about her grandmother?

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by BRIDGET STIRLING

Pam Ryan,

’93 BA, ’95 MLIS

Pam Ryan has always felt happiest in the library. While she loves the traditional materials and programs libraries offer, the director of collections and technology is also at the forefront of Edmonton Public Library’s efforts to provide public access to new resources and technologies. It’s just one of the reasons EPL received the 2014 Library of the Year award from Library Journal magazine and Gale Cengage Learning. Although she’s now an administrator, Ryan will always be a librarian at heart.

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

How has being a librarian evolved?

Librarians still develop and provide services for the communities that it’s their mandate to serve. I think we’re more responsive to what our communities need. For example, Edmonton Public Library has outreach workers who provide services and supports inside and outside library walls to support at-risk individuals. The library is open to everybody; it’s one of the last public spaces. We have people from all walks of life in our libraries, and some people need assistance. One of the reasons the outreach program is so popular is the clients will say, “I already feel safe in the library.” We also have a community librarian at every branch whose role is to spend time outside of the library connecting with community organizations and learning how the library can help them meet their goals.

How do you see the current role of the public library? How is that role changing? Public libraries have always been about equitable access to culture and information and a space for it all to take place. We still share books, but we also have video games, comic books, graphic novels, as well as digital collections of eBooks, movies, music

and online courses. We still have book clubs, but now we also have “learn to use open-source robotics kits” programs. But things like access to new technology — to me it is about one of the last public spaces where communities invest and take care of each other so that everybody has equitable access to shared resources.

What’s the Makerspace at the main branch? How have library visitors responded to it? Some Edmontonians own 3-D printers, some have high-end computers, but we want to make sure that everybody has access to those tools. We provide these technologies [which also include a bookmaking machine, gaming consoles, green screens, two sound recording studios and mixing booths], and people can come as individuals or together as a community to learn and grow. It’s been really surprising to people — the kinds of things that we have in there, that it’s staffed and we provide support.

Why are public libraries including services like makerspaces, computers and literacy vans?

Libraries were one of the first places to offer Internet access and computer access for free. That’s still one of our most popular services. The things that

people are doing on computers have obviously changed since we first put them in, but libraries have always been about equitable access. So whether it’s technology or resources, a makerspace provides access to everyone.

The epl2go vans provide both regular literacy services, such as our early literacy programs, as well as digital literacy programs. Edmonton is growing at a huge rate. Despite the fact that we’re building a number of branches [around the city], there’s still a lot of need. The literacy vans are designed to get out into underserved areas — schools, daycares, seniors centres, community leagues and all of those places where they don’t have a library yet.

What does winning Library of the Year mean for you? I was so incredibly proud of all the staff who got to share in it. It has put a spotlight on the really good work that we’re doing in Edmonton and shown that it really is top-of-the-world work in public libraries.

EPL’s mission is “we share,” so we’re happy to share our story with everyone who contacts us because that benefits all public libraries.

This interview has been condensed and edited. new trail spring 2015 41

what’sbrewing

by Greg Zeschuk

Getting Crafty

FROM WATER CHEMISTRY TO HOP-ROASTING METHODS, CRAFT BREWS CAN BE AS INTRICATELY FLAVOURED AS FINE CHEESE

WELCOME TO MY INAUGUR AL CR AFT BEER COLUMN for New Trail. While some of you may recognize me as one of the founders of the Edmonton-based video game company BioWare, I can promise you that I take my beer market research very seriously. Not only have I earned my beer-judging certification, I also write about beer, lobby for craft brewers and shortly plan to do a little craft brewing myself.

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of famed London porters, which are well-hopped, brown malt beers.

Innovations in technology also had a role to play in craft brewing. The rotary kiln allowed for even roasting of malt and quickly replaced directfire kilns that left malt smoky and unevenly colored. Pale beers wouldn’t exist without this technology. And I bet you didn’t know that 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics nominee Carl von Linde’s first industrial refrigerator was made for German brewery Spaten in 1874, as an alternative to storing aging beer in underground caves filled with ice. Clearly, beyond simple revelry, the desire for good beer pushed the scientific and engineering envelope on many fronts.

Today, having travelled broadly and sampled beer in many locations, I can say that Alberta is blessed with one of the best craft beer selections anywhere in the world. Our open-border, privatized system allows certified agents to bring in beer from anywhere in the world. At last count there were more than 4,500 varieties available in Alberta, and most of those are craft. We also have a burgeoning local craft scene.

Next time we meet, I’ll go into detail on what’s happening here in Alberta.

Greg Zeschuk, ’90 BMedSc, ’92 MD, is executive director of the Alberta Small Brewers Association and a beer judge recognized by the Beer Judge Certification Program. He is a beer writer for AskMen.com and runs a beer media channel called The Beer Diaries.

THINKSTOCK

Most of my future columns will discuss and review specific beers, but since I’m writing this column in the middle of winter for a spring publication, I’d rather not be telling you about the latest and greatest winter beers as you’re drinking delightful spring offerings on the patio. Instead, I’ll provide an overview of craft beer and its origins.

One of the best questions I’ve fielded on the desirability of craft beer is, “Why craft beer? Isn’t there enough massproduced beer out there already?” To my mind, craft beer is analogous to fancy cheese. While one could exclusively eat Kraft Singles cheese slices, many people also want to explore other flavours.

Historically, different flavours of cheese reflected geography. Craft beer is no different. The variety of barley, the type of hops and even the chemical composition of the local water dictated the style of beer a region produced.

The globally dominant Pilsner, a type of pale lager, wouldn’t exist without the Moravian barley, Saaz hops and extremely soft water around Pilsen, Czech Republic, which created a clear, clean, golden and lightly bitter beer that became the world standard. Similarly, the high-sulfate water of Burton-uponTrent, England, was instrumental in the creation of today’s hottest beer, the India Pale Ale, due to the way it enhances the beer’s bitter character.

Likewise, the high-carbonate water of London improved the roasted character

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BOOKS

U of A alumni share their new books, including a history of ink, a graphic novel about two Aboriginal brothers and a reflection on 100 years of ALES. Compiled by BRIDGET STIRLING

КДPITДL

CAPITAL

Novela

La presente obra aparenta ser una novela histórica; sin embargo, el lector descubrirá de inmediato que se trata más bien una fantasía política salpicada de mucha nostalgia. A raíz de la muerte de “El Caballo,” máximo líder de un país caribeño, antiguos alumnos de una vieja academia militar en Jaimanitas, se reúnen ahí para celebrar la llegada del capital libertador a la Isla. Si bien el capital inicia la destrucción de un fallido ancien régime socialista, cabe preguntar si podrá abrir las puertas a una verdadera democracia en la vida pública de la Isla.

JOSÉ M. ALONSO-SED

Novela

ISBN: 1-59388-263-7

PortadaCapital2.indd 1

Home Again: Canadian Football 1995–2014

by Frank Cosentino, ’69 MA, ’73 PhD, Lulu Press ——— Home Again tells the story of the Canadian Football League from 1995 to 2014, a period full of ups, downs and surprises.

The year 1995 represents the only time in history when a team outside Canada won the Grey Cup. The Grey Cup champion Baltimore Stallions and other American teams were unable to survive past the 1995 season. The Stallions were later resurrected and reincarnated in 44

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КДSTЯO

КЦЬД

КOMЦИISMO

EDICIONES UNIVERSAL 8/21/2014 2:57:51 AM

Kapital Capital

by José M. Alonso-Sed, ’70 MA, ’83 BCom, ’90 PhD, Ediciones Universal ——— At first glance a historical novel, Kapital Capital soon becomes a political fantasy peppered with great nostalgia for Cuba’s past way of life.

Upon the fictional death of Fidel Castro, alumni of a military academy in Havana gather for an unusual high school reunion to celebrate the arrival to the island of a liberator.

Residential Schools: With the Words and Images of Survivors

by Larry Loyie with Constance Brissenden, ’72 MA, and Wayne K. Spear, Indigenous Education Press, firstnationswriter.com ——— This full-colour national history features seven chapters, more than 45 survivor memories in support of the text and more

PHOTO BY RICHARD SIEMENS

Ha publicado una colección de cuentos CONTAZAR / DEDMONTONIANS (Montezuma Publishing, 2007). Uno de ellos, “Fuga,” ganó premio en el Festival Literario “Metrópolis Azul,” Montreal, Canadá, 2005. También tiene un poemario bilingüe, DIÁLOGO DE DIFUNTOS (Dialogue for the Death), 2010.

КДPITДL CAPITAL

JOSÉ M. ALONSO-SED

nació en Santa Clara, Cuba. En la década del sesenta vivió en los Estados Unidos donde se recibió de B.A. en Whitworth College.

Después terminó su M.A. y Ph.D. en el Canadá, donde pasó veinte años enseñando español en varias universidades. Desde 1987 vive en el sur de California en donde se dedicó a la educación en San Diego State University y otros colleges. Hoy día escribe y se dedica al estudio y práctica del derecho civil como paralegal.

Montreal as the Alouettes, and in 2014, the Ottawa Redblacks entered the CFL to make it a nine-team league once again.

JOSÉ M. ALONSO-SED

Overcoming Conflicting Loyalties: Intimate Partner Violence, Community Resources and Faith

by Irene Sevcik, ’61 BA, Michael Rothery, Nancy Nason-Clark and Robert Pynn, University of Alberta Press, uap.ualberta.ca ——— To date, little has been published about the place of spirituality in working with survivors of intimate-partner violence. This book examines the intersection of faith and culture in the lives of religious and ethnocultural women in the context of the work of FaithLink, a unique community initiative that encourages religious leaders and secular service providers to work together.

P

eople might assume that science broadcaster and awardwinning author Jay Ingram, ’67 BSc, ’09 DSc (Honorary), wrote a book about Alzheimer’s because he has had personal experience with the disease. And he has — three of his family members have died of dementia. But that’s not why the former co-host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet wrote The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer’s.

“I wanted an anatomy of the disease, a natural history,” he writes in the introduction. “Where does it come from? What causes it? Is it a natural part of aging? How are we trying to combat it?”

We asked Ingram what most surprised or intrigued him while writing this, his 14th book. Here’s some of what he said.

■ We Are Living a Lot Longer: In countries such as Sweden and Japan, for every four years that pass, human life expectancy rises by one year. Gains early on were made by reducing infant and child mortality, but these days the years are being added at the other end, with the result that we now have a new category of age: the “oldest old.”

■ Sister Mary’s Mystery: Sister Mary — a 100-year-old recruit in the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of dementia and old age involving 678 Catholic nuns — was intellectually sharp just before she died at 101. But the autopsy of her brain revealed a profusion of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, the deposits discovered

by psychiatrist and pathologist Alois Alzheimer, called “plaques” and “tangles.”

Given that these are diagnostic of Alzheimer’s disease, how did Sister Mary escape their dementing effects?

She and others like her remain a mystery.

■ Personality Puzzles: Long-term studies of large numbers of people have revealed some puzzling associations. For instance, conscientious individuals — those who, once having planned a course of action, carry it out dependably and thoroughly — are less likely to develop the disease, whereas those who are cynical are more likely. The puzzle is in linking these characteristics, which seem to be aspects of

The Dismantling of the Mind

personality, with the organic changes in the brain that mark the disease.

■ The Aluminum Theory: In the 1970s and early ’80s, scientists believed that aluminum encouraged or even triggered deposits in the Alzheimer’s brain.

They could see them in the microscope; they were convinced that the higher the aluminum level in the drinking water, the higher the rate of dementia. Today the theory has been largely discounted.

■ Brain Reservists: Some individuals are able to withstand the destructive force of plaques and tangles in their brains, and maintain their cognition intact. They have something vaguely called “brain reserve” or “cognitive reserve.”

But what exactly is that?

The best guess right now is that this is the cumulative protective effect provided by a mix of influences, such as education, circulatory health, physical fitness and a variety of personal qualities from an individual’s leisure activities to the size of her head. One drawback: those with great brain reserve show few symptoms as the number of plaques and tangles grows, but there is a threshold, and once that’s hit and the reserve exhausted, the brain’s decline is rapid and steep.

than 120 images. The book is the ninth collaboration between the authors. Loyie is a survivor (former student) of St. Bernard Mission residential school in Grouard, Alta.

The Social Life of Ink

by Ted Bishop, ’72 BA(Hons), Viking Canada, penguinrandomhouse.ca ——— Curious about its impact on culture, literature and the course of history, Bishop sets out to explore the story of ink.

From Budapest to Buenos Aires, he traces the lives of the innovators who created the ballpoint pen — revolutionary technology that still requires exact engineering today. An inquisitive and personal tour around the world, this book asks us to look more closely at something we see so often that we don’t see it at all.

Niches: Where Do You Fit in a Crazy World?

by Michael MacMillan, ’73 PhD, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform ——— This is a book about you, your relationships and where you best fit in life’s journey. Following an exploration of love, the fundamental focus of the book is discovering what work you do best and harmonizing it with how you earn your living.

MacMillan endeavours to illustrate how to find one’s true niche. The book promises that newtrail spring 2015

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BOOKS

its hints, steps and 10 real-life stories will resonate with readers and inspire the courage people need to make their way to their real work and true passion.

A Year of Days

by Myrl Coulter, ’00 BA(Hons), ’01 MA, ’07 PhD, University of Alberta Press, uap.ualberta.ca ——— Following her mother’s death, Coulter returned to the eulogy she wrote for the funeral and expanded it into meditations on the troubling absence of what had been a fraught relationship.

The result is 15 personal narrative essays that travel through the vacations, annual holidays, special occasions and ordinary days each year brings. In A Year of Days, Coulter quests for the mother who is already gone and yet remains.

Tannion

by Wayne Elsner, ’76 BSc, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, wayneelsner.com ——— Lightning is always powerful and occasionally deadly. The bolt that hits Jim Tannion, however, is different. It gives him skills and abilities that make him think he could be the closest thing to a superhero the world has ever seen, skills he could use to heal any injury, enhance his body and control the bodies of others with only a touch.

Then he discovers he can kill.

Tannion knows he has to keep his new-found skills a secret.

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Winterkill

by Kate Asha Boorman, ’00 BA, ’04 MA, Harry N. Abrams ——— In the woods outside Emmeline’s settlement, a powerful enemy lurks, one that wiped out much of the population generations ago. Inside the walls, Emmeline is watched for Waywardness — the rulebreaking behaviour that sent her grandmother to her death. Emmeline knows she shouldn’t go into the woods, but there’s something calling to her.

The Outside Circle: A Graphic Novel

by Patti LaBoucane-Benson, ’90 BPE, ’01 MSc, ’09 PhD; art by Kelly Mellings, ’00 BFA, Anansi, houseofanansi.com ——— In this graphic novel, two Aboriginal brothers surrounded by poverty, drugs and gang violence try to overcome centuries of historic trauma to bring about positive change in their lives. The book is drawn from the author’s 20 years of work on healing and reconciliation of Aboriginal men.

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

Fundamentals of Public Relations and Marketing Communications in Canada

by Colin Babiuk with Leah-Ann Lymer, ’90 BA, and William Wray Carney, editors, University of Alberta Press, uap.ualberta.ca ——— Experts in public relations, marketing and communications have created a comprehensive textbook specifically for Canadian students and instructors. Logically organized to lead students from principles to their application, and generously supplemented with examples and case studies, the text is meant for post-secondary classes and to serve as a reference for established professionals and international communicators working in Canada.

The Civic-mindedness of Trees

by Ken Howe, ’82 BMus, Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd., wolsakandwynn.ca ——— Howe’s poems promise witty and philosophical meditations on the haunting presence of the natural world, and on the familiar presence of humanity within it. In this book, eccentric odes to oak trees and ground squirrels renew the mysteries of plant and animal life; it is not only an idealized Eden untouched by people, but a world, also, of highways that skirt the abyss and of “the great ruined jobsites of space.”

A Century of Solutions: A History of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences (ALES), 1915–2015

by Curtis Gillespie, ’85 BA(Spec), University of Alberta Press, Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences, ales.ualberta.ca ——— ALES is 100 years old. Founded in 1915, it has, over the course of a century, provided an education to more than 12,000 of Alberta’s sons and daughters and conducted groundbreaking research of global importance. This book chronicles the faculty through a fascinating array of characters and their stories, discoveries, setbacks and successes.

The Body in Question(s) Le Corps En Question(s)

by Cristian Berco, Sean Caulfield, ’92 BFA, ’96 MFA, and Isabelle Van Grimde, University of Alberta Press, vangrimdecorpssecrets.com ——— This publication was produced in conjunction with a creative research project that brought together contemporary dance, visual art and academic research to produce an exhibition/performance exploring contemporary perspectives of the body. Twelve essays in both French and English discuss the creative and collaborative process of developing the dance and visual art pieces for the exhibition/performance.

Old Bones: A Casey Templeton Mystery

by Gwen Molnar, ’48 Dip(Ed), ’49 BEd, ’78 BA, Dundurn, dundurn.com/books/old_bones ——— While helping with a real dinosaur dig at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Casey Templeton finds a piece of dinosaur tooth. Excited, he spends all afternoon looking for the rest of the tooth, but all he ends up with is a nasty sunburn. Lying in his hotel room that night, he hears two men planning a robbery of precious artifacts from the Tyrrell. Casey will have to use all his ingenuity and skills to thwart the planned heist. Can he do it?

The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer’s

by Jay Ingram, ’67 BSc, ’09 DSc (Honorary), HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., jayingram.ca ——— This award-winning science writer charts the history of Alzheimer’s from before it was noted

by Alois Alzheimer right through to the 21st century, as researchers continue to search for a cure. In the spirit of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, this book is for those who want to find out the truth about an affliction that courses through families and, in some cases, inexplicably affects people early in their lives.

When the Bubble Bursts: Surviving the Canadian Real Estate Crash

by Hilliard MacBeth, ’71 BA, Dundurn, dundurn.com/books/when_bubble_bursts ——— Investment manager MacBeth believes that Canadians have too much of their investment capital and savings tied up in real estate when better opportunities are about to appear. He argues that Canada is in the midst of a real-estate bubble that will soon burst. What can Canadians do to prepare financially for retirement and to take advantage of the coming buying opportunity?

From the Elephant’s Back: Collected Essays and Travel Writings

by Lawrence Durrell with introduction by editor James Gifford, ’06 PhD, University of Alberta Press, uap.ualberta.ca ——— Best known for his novels and travel writing, Durrell defied easy classification within 20th-century modernism. Recontextualized, these 38 essays and letters reveal Durrell’s maturation as an artist. Durrell fans and scholars will treasure this selection of rare non-fiction.

Painted Faces on the Prairies: Cantonese Opera and the Edmonton Chinese Community

by Helen Kwan Yee Cheung, ’13 MA, University of Alberta Press/Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, uap.ualberta.ca ——— This exhibition catalogue traces close to 100 years of Cantonese opera in Edmonton within the changing dynamics of the Chinese community. It tells a story of life experiences on the Prairies by highlighting the inextricable relationship between the Edmonton Chinese community and Cantonese opera as this cultural practice moves deftly through historical periods between 1890 and 2009.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James

by Emma Hooper, ’03 BA(Hons), Hamish Hamilton (Canada), Simon & Schuster (United States), hamishhamilton.ca ——— Otto finds a note left by his wife in the kitchen of their farmhouse in windswept Saskatchewan. Eightythree-year-old Etta will be walking 3,200 kilometres to see the ocean, but somehow, Otto understands.

He took his own journey once before, to fight in a faraway land. With Etta gone, Otto struggles with his demons of war. Hooper was featured as one of The Guardian’s most promising debut novelists of 2015.

The Chinchaga Firestorm: When the Moon and Sun Turned Blue

by Cordy Tymstra, ’91 MSc, University of Alberta Press, uap.ualberta.ca ——— In 1950, the biggest firestorm documented in North America burned 1.4 million hectares of northern Alberta and British Columbia forest. The fire’s smoke was seen around the world, causing the moon and the sun to appear blue. This is a historical study of the effects of fire on the ecological process. Using technical explanations and archival discoveries, the author shows the beneficial yet destructive effects of forest fires. Tymstra tells stories that demonstrate people’s spirit, resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and persistence in the struggle against nature’s devastating power.

No, Really, Where Are You From?

by Nancy Ng, ’97 BA, selfpublished, nancyngsite.com ——— Ng tells the true stories of how eight Chinese individuals negotiated the experience of being a visible minority in mainstream Canada. With insight and inspiration, Ng writes of these remarkable people’s experiences with their Chinese culture from childhood to adulthood.

Tell us about your recent publication. Mail your write-up and book to New Trail Books, Office of Advancement, 3rd Floor Enterprise Square, 3-501, 10230 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton, AB, T5J 4P6.

Or email a write-up with a high-resolution cover image to alumni@ualberta.ca. newtrail spring 2015

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ALUMNI EVENTS

ALUMNI WEEKEND SEPT. 24-27 Centenary celebrations continue with an Alumni Weekend for the record books. It’s a time to reunite, reminisce and make new friends. With performances, tours, speakers and more, there’s something for everyone — including the unveiling of the Alumni Association’s special gift to the U of A. Whether you’re celebrating a reunion or finding out what’s new on campus, come and join the fun. alumni.ualberta.ca/weekend

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES ON YOUR WAY TO THE U OF A EDMONTON | MAY 20 Share your campus story with students who are considering attending the university this September. Volunteers will be on hand to chat with future students and share a few tips about the U of A.

SUMMER OF SERVICE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY CAMROSE | MAY 30

Stay involved with the U of A through one of the more than 50 active alumni chapters around the world. Check online for information about events near you.

ALBERTA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS SPRING SPRINT EDMONTON | MAY 30

EDMONTON | MAY 21 Venture Mentoring Service Insights Luncheon

SOUPED UP CALGARY | JUNE 6

EDMONTON | MAY 22 Be a Difference Maker featuring celebrated Paralympic athlete Rick Hansen

GREEN CHALLENGE RED DEER | JUNE 7

TORONTO | MAY 27 President’s Alumni Reception OTTAWA | MAY 28 Alumni Reception with Kris Wells from the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services

CAMPUS SPRUCE UP EDMONTON | JUNE 27

RIVER VALLEY CLEANUP EDMONTON | JULY 18 WEED PULL LETHBRIDGE | JULY 25 HABITAT FOR HUMANITY EDMONTON | AUG. 7 & 8 CALGARY | AUG. 15 HIGH RIVER | AUG. 15 TORONTO | AUG. 22 More at ualberta.ca/alumni/volunteer.

LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

EDMONTON | JUNE 18 Educated Palate: BBQ

EDMONTON | MAY 22-23 Be part of the alumni community’s amazing 100-year history of volunteerism by participating in the Alumni Leadership Summit.

Be a Difference Maker featuring celebrated Paralympic athlete Rick Hansen MAY 22 | FRANCIS WINSPEAR CENTRE FOR MUSIC Creating Cultures of Leadership and the Power of “Lollipop Moments:” Keynote Address with Drew Dudley MAY 23 | LISTER CONFERENCE CENTRE Leadership Sessions MAY 23 | LISTER CONFERENCE CENTRE

CALGARY | SEPT. 25 First Annual Calgary Golf Classic

Visit alumni.ualberta.ca/volunteer/leadership-summit for details on conference sessions, schedule and registration.

CALGARY | MAY 28 Calgary Educated Palate: Learning About the Canadian Wine Industry EDMONTON | MAY 31 Alumni and Student Memorial Service CALGARY | JUNE 4 20th Annual Spruce Meadows Dinner

Dates are subject to change; events are added daily. For more or to register, visit

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SHORELINE CLEANUP VANCOUVER | JULY 11

newtrail.ualberta.ca

THINKSTOCK

REGIONAL ACTIVITIES

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1. Jean Bolger, ’53 BSc, Helen Jull, ’53 BA, and Caroline Hart, left to right, visit at the alumni reception celebrating outgoing U of A President Indira Samarasekera at the Calgary Golf and Country Club in March.

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2. Aboriginal women’s trio Asani performs onstage at Uplifting!, an Edmonton community event celebrating President Indira Samarasekera’s decadelong tenure at the U of A. Photo by Richard Siemens

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3. Dental Alumni Association president Bill Sharun, ‘72 BSc, ’74 DDS, (left) reunites with classmate Ward Edwards, ’74 DDS, at an alumni reception held at the Pacific Dental Conference in Vancouver.

Photo by Cheryl Deslaurier 4. New York City-based fashion designer Michael Kaye, ’88 BA, poses with models wearing his couture dresses at an event to open World MasterCard Fashion Week in Toronto in March. Photo by Simon Downey

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5. Author David Halton signs books for alumni at the Edmonton launch of his book Dispatches from the Front: The Life of Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War. In the book, David explores the often tumultuous personal life of his father, Matthew Halton, ’29 BA, ’56 LLD (Honorary), a senior CBC correspondent during the Second World War. Photo by Epic Photography/Ian Jackson 6. Renowned writer and science broadcaster Jay Ingram, ’67 BSc, ’09 DSc (Honorary), presents “The Giant Walkthrough Brain,” a musically driven performance and virtual tour of the human brain, at the Timms Centre for the Arts in April. Photo by Ryan Whitefield, ’10 BA

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CL A SS NOTES

’49 Lila Engberg, BSc(HEc), was proud to see the Lila Engberg Scholarship in International Development presented at the University of Guelph in November 2014. The $4,500 scholarship is awarded to a full-time master’s student, entering the collaborative program in International Development Studies, whose research is focused on poverty alleviation, economic empowerment of women and/or ways to improve livelihood security for women and families in developing countries.

1950s

’53 Joyce Cutts (Mattson), Dip(Ed), ’54 BPE, former Pandas basketball and volleyball player, wrote to say that she attended the 2014 U of A Alumni Weekend to celebrate 60 years since her graduation.

During the presentation of the Sports Wall of Fame inductees at the Alumni Awards ceremony, Joyce was introduced by the MC, who noted she was wearing her 60-yearold sports-award jacket. The jacket still fit her and it was in such good shape that she was asked to donate it to the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation’s collection. Joyce says she is pleased that it will not be forgotten.

In 2014, Joyce competed for the ninth time at the International Tennis Federation Super-Seniors World Team Championships in Antalya, Turkey. She was on the over-80 team, one of only four people in her age group chosen from across the country, and Canada has won this age division for three consecutive years. As part of the Canadian team, Joyce has travelled to Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Croatia, the United States and now five times to Turkey, and has made friends from all over the world. “Keeping up my physical strength and tennis ability has given me lots of satisfaction,” Joyce says.

“Who knows? I may be back for my 65th alumni celebration when I am 87 years old.”

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children and did a lot of travelling.

Their summers were spent sailing on Wabamun Lake.

I have two children and taught for a while after taking education courses at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, where we lived for three years. Eventually, back in Calgary, I hung out my shingle as a technical editor and worked on some big (and I mean BIG, seven- and nine-volume) reports. Some of these assignments took me to interesting places, i.e. Newfoundland and Australia. I also taught two-day workshops on technical report writing at universities, colleges and companies across Alberta.

Muriel and I share a lot of interests. We are opera lovers, avid readers and Scrabble players. Muriel played bridge and golf and cross-country skied. I used to hike, skate, ski and swim. In my retirement, I have taken up quilting.

We both served (at different times) on the council of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, and for 17 years on the camps that hold iron ring ceremonies for engineers.

Our letters to each other have covered all of the above and more — the weather, politics, incidents and accidents, class reunions, grandchildren. You name it, we commented on it.

Muriel said to me once: ‘We must be the last letter writers left in the world.’ Well, this little eulogy is for the letter writing, not the letter writers. Our handwriting has turned into a scrawl that neither of us can read, so, though it won’t be the same, we are switching to gabbing on the phone on Mondays.”

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

1940s

’48 Virginia MacKay (Webb), BSc(CivEng), below left, shared the story of her lifelong friendship with Muriel Cheriton (Smith), ’46 BSc(ElecEng), below right: “The computer age may be making handwritten letters obsolete, but for two U of A graduates, it has been a treasured way of keeping in touch for decades. Muriel and I have been writing to each other every week or two for longer than we can remember.

If we had kept our letters, they might have been a record of the changes in manners and morals over the last half of the 20th century, because when we went to university in the 1940s, society was still functioning with Victorian-era ideas and rules. Believe it or not, women’s brains were thought to be inferior to men’s, so it was assumed that women could not possibly do the work that men do.

The first girl in Alberta to disprove that idea may have been Esther Rabkin, ’35 BSc(ElecEng). After Muriel and I graduated, a few more girls graduated around 1950, and then there were hardly any until the ’70s.

Since then, the number of female engineering graduates has increased, and today Alberta has more than 10,000 registered professional engineers who are women.

Muriel and I grew up during the Great Depression and the Second World War. We were only able to go to university because we lived at home, worked during summers and received bursaries amounting to only a few hundred dollars. We could buy all our textbooks for the year for $20.

Muriel met Ross Cheriton on her first job in Toronto. They later set up a consulting engineering firm in Edmonton, raised six

WE’D LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU’RE DOING. Tell us about your new baby or your new job. Celebrate a personal accomplishment, a volunteer activity or share your favourite campus memories. Submit a class note at alumni.ualberta.ca/connect/class-notes or email alumni@ualberta.ca. Notes will be edited for length, clarity and style.

’57 Valeria Ferguson (Liss), BSc(HEc), writes: “After completing a home economics course at the Vermilion School of Agriculture (now Lakeland College), I enrolled in home economics at the University of Alberta. The University Reserve Training Programme offered summer employment in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and upon graduation, I was commissioned as a flying officer in the regular force.

The Air Force was anxious to train commercial dietitians, and I was sponsored for a year’s training course. I transferred to No. 1 Wing in France — Canada’s first NATO fighter wing — where I worked in food service and was delegated to escort VIP ladies passing through to other parts of Europe. I chatted with Margaret Thatcher, then a member of British parliament, and had the pleasure of spending

four delightful days with Lady Henrietta Banting, Frederick Banting’s widow.

After my discharge from the service, I earned my master’s in education in 1973 and was hired as a senior foods teacher by the Vancouver School Board. In addition to training foods students to produce cafeteria meals, I set up a program to provide a daily nutritious lunch to elementary school children in need.

When I retired, I moved to British Columbia’s Okanagan area and became involved with the Air Force Association of Canada and Royal Canadian Legion activities.

When I learned that an ex-PoW officer, W.C. Trotter, was denied his PoW allowance because he applied five days after the deadline, I decided to act. With the help of colleagues and the media, the issue was successfully resolved.

I held several positions with the legion and Air Force Association. A legion service pin and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee medal were awarded to me. During a trip to Warsaw, Poland, I was presented with the Polish Army Medal in recognition of my liaison work with Polish personnel living in the Okanagan.

As the old-timers of Sangudo, Alta., began to pass on, it became my project to preserve their recollections, their humour and

entertaining past. To sustain these precious gems, I self-printed a book titled If yer gonna live in Alberta, ya gotta have a truck! A copy is available from the U of A’s Cameron Library.

Today, I live in the Extendicare facility in Mayerthorpe, Alta., where I devote my time and energy to the Lac Ste. Anne Historical Society and spirited games of Scrabble.”

Two members of the law class of 1957, Sanford Fitch, ’54 BA, ’57 LLB, left, and William Abercrombie, ’56 BA, ’57 LLB, were reunited at the swearing-in of Laura Stevens, ’83 LLB, to the Edmonton Provincial Court, Criminal Division. Kelley Abercrombie, ’13 Cert(OccHealthSafety), caught the meeting on camera.

Even our students are researchers As a third-year student, Justyna Jalosinski mapped “food deserts”— neighbourhoods located more than a kilometre from a grocery store. Her findings are now influencing the way we plan and manage communities.

Her work was supported by the Undergraduate Research Initiative, which is supported by donors to the Annual Fund. They have helped over 400 students like Justyna make a difference through research.

Please give to the Annual Fund to continue this great work.

Visit uab.ca/URI or call Jo-Anne at (780) 492-7587, toll-free (877) 992-7587

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CL A SS NOTES

1960s

’61 Ralph Haas, BSc(CivEng), ’63 MSc, a 2014 U of A Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, was honoured by the University of Waterloo on Dec. 5, 2014, at the official naming ceremony for the Ralph Haas Infrastructure and Sensing Analysis Laboratory.

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Anne and Jim Edgson on a visit to campus in March 2013

’66 Jim Edgson, BSc, retired in December 2014 after serving three terms as regional district director for Central Okanagan West. Jim writes: “The three terms I have served have been fulfilling, and were capped off with a $45-million commitment from the Province of British Columbia to improve Westside Road over the next five years — a project I have been part of since 2003, before I was even a politician. There were many significant things done while I was in office, but I announced in June that I would not run again. I honestly believe every politician has a shelf life, but some politicians do not realize it until they are voted out of office. I am very happy to say I made that decision on my own.

When I retired from Schlumberger in 1998, I wanted to retire but was not ready for it.

After eight years as chair of the Regional District of Central Okanagan West’s Advisory Planning Commission, I was still not ready to retire. Now that I have served three political terms and Anne and I have both turned 70, we want to get caught up on our personal life.

I now not only want to retire, I am ready to retire!”

Editor’s note: Regular New Trail readers might remember Jim and Anne’s story from the Photo Finish page of the Winter 2013 issue. You can see the story and photo and watch a video of Jim and Anne online at newtrail.ualberta.ca/winter2013/photofinish.

’63 David (Joe) Vassos, DDS, has been named the Aaron Gerskoff-Norman Goldberg Award winner for 2014. This highest honour awarded by the American Academy of Implant Dentistry was presented at its 63rd annual educational conference in Orlando, Fla., in November 2014. ’66 Mary Maxie, BA, is the author of romance and other novels (17 so far, with three more in the works) under two different names. She invites her fellow alumni to check out her website

at marymaxieauthor.com and to stay in touch to find out more about her upcoming books. ’67 Darwin Park, BPE, is one of the founders of Davies Park, an Edmonton-based executive search firm with offices in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto. The firm celebrated its 25th anniversary in October 2014 at the Francis Winspear Centre for Music in Edmonton, and the City of Edmonton declared Oct. 7 as Davies Park Executive Leadership Day.

LEFT PHOTO BY JONATHAN BIELASKI, TOP PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

’60 John McNeill, BSc(Pharm), ’62 MSc, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences in September 2014. After completing his studies at the U of A, he went on to earn his PhD at the University of Michigan. He has focused his work on cardiovascular problems associated with diabetes and their treatment and has published more than 500 manuscripts throughout his career. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences, and is currently a professor and dean emeritus in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia.

We all have a campus memory — whether it’s a personal moment or a shared experience that connects us all. Share your memory at alumni.ualberta.ca/connect/class-notes.

F O REV E R G RE E N & G O LD

SUMMER JOBS 101

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE ELLIS

What off-campus jobs lack in glamour and prestige, they sometimes make up for in life lessons BACK IN THE “DARK AGES” of the 1950s, when cars had carburetors and television screens had as much snow as a Winnipeg winter, I was a young seeker of truth, knowledge and cheap beer at the University of Alberta. For me, like most undergrads of that era, a summer job was what kept the wolf and the landlord from the door. And while a male student might dream of landing a job that would enable him to marry his boss’s daughter and live happily and richly ever after, my summer jobs were much less promising. They were, nevertheless, interesting.

My first job was pumping gas at a service station (41 cents a gallon for regular — only nine cents a litre!). I recall a customer coming in once to ask why her car ran fine for the first 20 minutes but then jerked its way down the road until finally stalling. It turned out it wasn’t an engine problem; it was an operator problem.

Needing a place to hang her handbag, the driver would pull out the choke lever and hang her bag from it, oblivious to the mechanical consequences. Which just goes to show that common sense isn’t always so common.

Another summer, as an employee of the local health unit, I learned that when inspectors checked out a restaurant, they finished by taking a swab and leaving the petri dish at the restaurant so staff could see the bacteria colonies growing on it. When the inspectors did this in one restaurant and returned to examine the results, there were no colonies whatsoever in the dish. The process was repeated, with the same perplexing outcome. While cleanliness might be next to godliness, no restaurant can be that close to God, so the inspectors thought they had a bad batch of petri dishes. Then they noticed some suspicious-looking fine lines on the surface of the medium. It turned out the restaurant’s owner had been using a fork to scrape off the bacteria colonies as soon as he saw them.

Which just shows that two wrongs don’t make a right — and four prongs don’t, either.

One of my summer jobs entailed inspecting garbage cans up and down my hometown’s

back alleys. On one occasion, I knocked on the door of a house to report something about their trash bins, and a young lady, who was known in our high school days for being rather (ahem) curvaceous, opened the door. Seeing her startled me and, using all the polish and savoir-faire I had acquired as a U of A freshman, I blurted out, “Good afternoon. I’m from the city. Your cans don’t have lids on.”

As soon as I uttered those immortal words I realized they could have been misinterpreted (which, of course, they were). The young lady started to laugh and I made a hasty, red-faced retreat, hoping she wouldn’t remember me.

Two days later, I happened to bump into her husband, who I also remembered from high school. He looked at me, smiled wickedly, and said, “My wife tells me her cans didn’t pass inspection.” Which just proves there are some days when one has no luck at all.

Perhaps my experiences were really a hands-on version of Human Nature 101, since they confirmed my opinion that most people are (reasonably) intelligent, co-operative and helpful, with only a small minority falling in the “not so much” category. But while my summer jobs were great real-life experiences, I must confess I never want to inspect another garbage can. On the other hand, while I realize cheap gas isn’t good for Alberta’s economy, one thing I wouldn’t mind seeing again is a gas bar offering a fill-up for 41 cents a gallon.

Chuck Crockford, ’62 BEd, is a retired professor of fine arts, who lives in Waterloo, Ont., with his wife, Arline, ’61 BEd, and Fergie, their “Titian red” 1986 Toyota Celica. newtrail spring 2015

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’70 Lawrence Nestman, MHSA, shared a tribute to Carl Meilicke, professor emeritus: “On a recent visit to Vancouver, my wife, Anne, and I met and had dinner with Carl Meilicke and his wife, Dorothy. At that time, I promised myself that I would write to New Trail to give public thanks to Carl, who set up the Master of Health Services Administration program in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at U of A in 1968. I was a member of its first graduating class in 1970, and I joined the MHSA faculty the same year.

Through the years, I have been reminded of Carl’s vision in setting up the MHSA program.

I have remembered his ability to garner the support of the community, his ability to attract funders and his courage to push forward with policies that made the program strong and highly respected. Carl’s leadership led the program to receive successful accreditation and recognition as a leading program in health services administration and research throughout North America. Carl was a leading thinker in the health services field and in the education of health services students. He was innovative and he enjoyed brainstorming and creative problem-solving.

His insight, patience and ability to look at the particular strengths of students were notable and contributed to the success, not only of the MHSA program, but also of the students themselves, who went on to make significant contributions in the health field.

Carl was a mentor and an inspiration throughout my career. He provided a road map for me when I moved to Halifax in 1980 to set up the MHSA program at Dalhousie University. I know that many others have felt Carl’s influence as well.” ’72 Richard Long, BCom, ’73 MBA, was honoured with the Master Teacher Award at the University of Saskatchewan’s fall convocation. A professor of human resource management at the U of S, Richard is pleased to report that the fifth edition of his text, Strategic Compensation in Canada, was published in 2014 and continues to be the market leader in its field.

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’73 Arthur Clendenan, BSc(Spec), wrote to share his grandfather’s unique connection to the U of A and Alberta: “My grandfather, Arthur Edmund Clendenan, attended and appears in the official photograph of the initial sod-turning at the commencement of building the U of A. He was employed as ship’s surgeon on several trips to Australia, and he climbed the Chilkoot Pass, crossing into Canada on ‘1 January 1900,’ on his way to the Klondike gold fields. Arthur staked and worked two placer claims in the Klondike before returning to work

in Dawson City, Yukon, as a medical doctor.

Arthur left Dawson City in 1902 and travelled overland to Edmonton. He and his partner came to what they called a ‘Grande Prairie,’ where they laid out a townsite and sold lots.

He was also the first deputy of health when Alberta became a province.” ’73 Larry Panych, BA, was named a distinguished investigator of the Academy of Radiology Research in June 2014 and joins the academy’s Council of Distinguished

Families who came to January’s Winterfest had the opportunity to take in some “cool science” demonstrations.

PHOTO BY EPIC PHOTOGRAPHY/IAN JACKSON

1970s

HONOUR THOSE YOU LOVE

Commemorative donations are a lasting and meaningful way to recognize a loved one while also making a difference in the lives of others.

REMEMBERING… Memorial donations honour a friend or loved one who has passed away. By making a memorial donation to the University of Alberta, you ensure a legacy that extends far into the future.

SOMEONE SPECIAL… Tribute donations celebrate important moments in a person’s life, such as graduations, birthdays, retirements, or weddings, while providing valuable support to your area of choice.

To commemorate an important occasion or make a lasting tribute to a loved one, please contact us: PHONE 780-492-4260 // TOLL-FREE 888-799-9899 // EMAIL giving@ualberta.ca

giving.ualberta.ca

CL A SS NOTES

70s Investigators. Larry received his PhD in radiological sciences from MIT in 1993. He is an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and chief of clinical MRI physics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

’76 Rodney Lee, BA, ’78 BEd, ’86 MEd, ’99 EdD, retired in August 2014 after 36 years in public education serving as a teacher, school administrator and, for the last nine years, deputy superintendent of Peace Wapiti School Division. Rodney writes: “In October, I received the Special Contribution to Public School Education award from the Public School Boards’ Association of Alberta based on a nomination submitted by Peace Wapiti Public School Division that focused on my ongoing advocacy for the public education system in Alberta.

Previously, I received the 2003 President’s Award from the Alberta School Councils Association recognizing my support and advocacy for the parent voice in education as expressed through school councils at the local and provincial level. From 1973 to 1975, while at Camrose Lutheran College (now the U of A’s Augustana Campus), I worked in various off-ice capacities supporting the Viking hockey team. The 1974-75 Vikings won the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association championship.

As a member of this team, I was honoured to be included in their induction into the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Augustana Wall of Honour in 2012. I currently live near Grande Prairie, Alta., with my wife of 33 years, Mary Lee, ’78 BEd, ’95 MEd, ’96 MEd, ’00 PhD, who is in private practice as a registered psychologist. I continue to teach as a sessional instructor for the University of Alberta in the Teacher Education North program offered in Grande Prairie. We have

four pampered horses and five very pampered cats, whom I will be spending more time with when Mary and I are not exploring the world.”

’79 John Hagen, MD, received the 2014 Mentor of the Year award from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for Region 3 (Ontario and Nunavut). The award recognizes John’s commitment to teaching and mentorship in his work as chief of surgery at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital. ’79 Roxanne (Ross) Hastings, BSc(Hons), ’84 MSc, has retired as curator of botany and acting head of life sciences after a 26-year career with the Royal Alberta Museum.

Roxanne was co-curator of the current Wild Alberta Gallery and is a North American expert on the taxonomy, systematics and biogeography of the widespread desert moss genus Grimmia.

Roxanne has since taken a part-time position as a visiting scholar with the Cryptogamic Herbarium in the U of A’s Department of Biological Sciences to continue research on moss systematics. Roxanne is also pursuing a personal photographic project, “Boundaries and Borderlands,” examining spatial and spiritual boundaries in Europe and Asia. ’79 Susan Horvath, MSc, was appointed president and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum Board of Governors in December 2014. Following a decade as a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario, Susan became a fundraising professional and then a philanthropic executive, holding leadership roles with organizations such as the Canadian Cancer Society and the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

1980s

’81 Wayne Renke, BA(Hons), ’85 LLB, ’90 MA, was sworn in on Feb. 5 as a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench. Prior to his appointment to the court, he was the vice-dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta and was the recipient of the faculty’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2001. ’82 Donald Kennedy, BSc(MechEng), ’88 MSc, ’05 PhD, was elected as a fellow of the American Society of Engineering Management. ’82 Tim Talbott, BSc(CivEng), recently retired after a successful 33-year career with Bird Construction, a national general contractor. Tim held a number of positions with Bird, culminating as president and CEO for his final five years with the company. Now that the demands of business will not require all his attention, Tim and his family plan to spend time at their cottage on Ontario’s Lake Muskoka and power boating on the oceans of the world, in addition to other land-based travel. ’83 Grant Beattie, BSc(ElecEng), received a kidney transplant in April 2014 in a paired exchange with his wife, Ofra Beattie, at the University of California Irvine Medical Center. Both Grant and Ofra are doing well, and he is still vicepresident of Genovation Inc. in Irvine, Calif.

’84 Susan Owen Kagan, BFA, recently celebrated 30 years since her graduation. Her sculptures can be seen in several places around Edmonton, including on the U of A’s North Campus. Many students past and present will be familiar with her work on the walls of ETLC, the Engineering and Teaching and Learning Complex. She was also commissioned to create Vessel of Soul, a Holocaust memorial on the Alberta legislature grounds. Susan is celebrating her graduation milestone with a retrospective on Jasper Avenue near the Shaw Conference Centre, featuring five large-scale, brightly coloured sculptures showing the range of her career from the mid-1980s to the present. The exhibit will be shown until July of 2015.

When she’s not sculpting, Susan is working as a preparator in the U of A’s Dino Lab or digging in Alberta’s badlands, where she found the specimen of Mercuriceratops gemini that made a big splash in the news in 2014.

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LEADER OF THE (ALUMNI) PACK The new president of the U of A’s Alumni Association chats with us about taking the helm in May.

WHO: Mary Pat Barry, ’04 MA NEW ROLE: President, University of Alberta Alumni Association

by SARAH PRATT

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

The most impressive thing about the U of A’s alumni body Our alumni are contributors on the world stage, in Canada and here in Alberta. The impact of this army of alumni is breathtaking and inspiring. More than 143,000 alumni — 75 per cent of our grads — live and work in Alberta. And, as of 2012, U of A alumnifounded organizations employed more than 1.5 million people worldwide — including one in five Albertans.

What further contributions will we make to Alberta, Canada and to the world?

Something that makes me nervous about the position Living up to the legacy of presidents of the past — Glenn Stowkowy, ’76 BSc(ElecEng), Jane Halford, ’94 BCom, and Jim Hole, ’79 BSc(Ag), being the most recent leaders — each of whom advanced a vision enhancing the Alumni Association contributions to the U of A. We’ve had 100 years of doing great things, are an asset to the university and are perfectly positioned to continue to grow the value we bring.

Most surprising thing about the Alumni Association Almost 40 per cent of the U of A’s 260,000 alumni have graduated within the last 10 years. This is extremely important when we consider our membership and the programming we’d like to provide them.

My favourite experience so far as a member of the Alumni Association It’s hard to pick just one.

Being part of the sock-ballrolling team for Sock Fight at Alumni Weekend 2014 was one highlight. It was backroom work, highly specialized, somewhat competitive. And seeing those sock balls enthusiastically tossed in a blizzard of green and gold in Quad — it was fun, it was inclusive, it was a celebration. At the end of the day, the socks went to charity, to communitybuilding. A close second experience: Winterfest.

The snow falling, lights sparkling in the night, performances, ice slides, fireworks, the lantern procession to haunting music — it was a bit of magic. The U of A brings us all so much in intimate ways that continue to inspire. We are fortunate. newtrail spring 2015

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CL A SS NOTES

’86 Lisa Nelsen, BMus, wrote to say: “In the last year, not only have I become a professor of flute and chamber music in the junior department at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England, but I am also an artist for the Classic Division of Yamaha U.K. and Europe, with prospects of also becoming a Canadian Yamaha artist.

When I entered the U of A as an undergrad, I had all my focus on becoming an actor, hoping to be accepted into the BFA drama course. My 58 newtrail.ualberta.ca

’84 Bonnie Gover, BA, wore her mother’s 1953 varsity jacket to celebrate the Alumni Association’s centenary kickoff at Green & Glow Winterfest in January. Gover’s mother, Julia Melnyk (Homeniuk), ’74 BEd, was a summer session ladies fastball champion and also played women’s singles badminton. On a recent visit to her family home, Bonnie found the jacket carefully stored away and decided to wear it to remember her mother and share their family’s multigenerational connection to the University of Alberta. Bonnie is a staff member with the U of A’s Department of Chemistry.

professors had other ideas — Fordyce Pier and Malcolm Forsyth were my mentors then — and now I have so much to thank them for.” Lisa invites other alumni to check out her website at lisanelsen.com.

’88 Darcy Tkachuk, BA, ’92 LLB, has been reappointed as the chairperson of the Yukon Review Board for another two-year term. He is also serving as the chief adjudicator of the Yukon Human Rights Panel of Adjudicators.

Pyrotechnics displays lit up the night at Winterfest in January, celebrating 100 years of U of A alumni.

TOP PHOTO BY LAUGHING DOG PHOTOGRAPHY/KAYLEE WATERFIELD, BOTTOM PHOTO BY EPIC PHOTOGRAPHY/IAN JACKSON

80s ’86 Ron Horton, BA, ’88 BEd, ’14 MEd, began a rugby club at the U of A in 1983 at the urging of his professor, Ieuan Evans. Ron had a passion for rugby and captained the Alberta junior team to take second place at the national championships that year. He joined with other U of A students from different clubs in Alberta, and the University of Alberta Rugby Club was reborn. His love for rugby also led him to coach at Salisbury Composite High School in Sherwood Park, Alta., and the experience spurred his interest in teaching, leading him to complete his BEd following his BA. But before he took up teaching, he took the opportunity to play rugby Down Under thanks to the support of his team, the Clansmen Rugby Football Club.

He later returned to the Edmonton area to teach and was an Alberta Excellence in Teaching Award finalist a few years later. At that time, he also began a startup web design company and went on to run the Canadian arm of an international software company. Ron then became interested in teaching English as a second language and went on to launch the Canadian English Academy. The academy has since provided ESL training and assessment to several educational institutions, including the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Lakeland College, and to companies locally and internationally. With the encouragement of Faculty of Education professor Olenka Bilash, ’84 MA, ’89 PhD, Ron returned to the U of A as a student once again and received his master’s in education in November 2014.

1990s

’91 Bill Cunningham, BCom, has been elected chair of the Board of Governors for Simon Fraser University. A commercial credit manager with TD Commercial Banking, Bill also sits on the board of directors of the Down Syndrome Research Foundation and has served on the boards of the SFU Alumni Association, the Vancouver Society of Children’s Centres, TD Friends of the Environment Foundation and the InnerChange Foundation. ’93 Denise Thomson, BA(Hons), ’95 MA, ’04 MBA, was the 2014 recipient of the Chris Silagy Prize, awarded by the Cochrane Collaboration, a global independent, non-profit network of health practitioners, researchers, patient advocates and others. The Silagy Prize is awarded annually to an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the nonprofit organization. Recipients are nominated by their peers. Denise has worked for the Cochrane Collaboration’s unit at the University of Alberta since November 2004. ’94 Clifford (Dale) Keefe, PhD, was appointed vice-president academic and provost of Cape Breton University. Prior to his appointment, he served as the interim vice-president academic and research and has also served as the dean of the Office of Research and Graduate Studies. ’95 Parmjit Sohal, MD, won the 2014 Reg L. Perkin Award for British Columbia. Canada’s Family Physicians of the Year are nominated by members of the College of Family Physicians

of Canada, with one recipient chosen for each provincial chapter. Parmjit is a clinical associate professor with the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia. ’95 Trevor Anderson, BA(Hons), premiered his film The Little Deputy at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film, a hybrid between a documentary and a Western, features a pair of well-known alumni, Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, ’01 BA, and Sarah Chan, ’03 BA. The nine-minute short film was Trevor’s second to appear at Sundance; the first was his fiveminute short The High Level Bridge, which played at the festival in 2011. ’97 Daniel Bzdel, BA, was recently appointed to the position of chief psychologist at the Drumheller Institution. ’97 Keykavous Parang, PhD, wrote to say that he is the associate dean of Research, Graduate Studies and Global Affairs at Chapman University. He also reports that three other professors with a U of A Faculty of Pharmacy connection are now part of the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the school. Reza Mehvar, ’88 PhD, is the department chair, and Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, ’07 PhD, is an assistant professor of pharmaceutics. Kamaljit Kaur, who completed a post-doc at the U of A, is an associate professor of targeted drug delivery and biomedical diagnostics.

’99 Matt Gilmour, BSc(Spec), ’04 PhD, was named scientific director general of Canada’s National Public Health Laboratories, including the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and the Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses in Guelph, Ont. In his new role, Matt is responsible for managing the delivery of laboratory public health and emergency preparedness programs, providing strategic scientific advice to senior officials and representing Canada’s top human health laboratories nationally and internationally. ’99 Trudy Iwanyshyn, BA(Criminology), was selected to attend the Governor General’s Leadership Conference in May 2015. Trudy is the director of Dangerous Goods, Rail Safety and 511 Alberta with the Alberta Ministry of Transportation. Outside of her work, she is actively involved in supporting volunteer organizations, including the United Way and the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and is a mentor with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Edmonton.

’97 Chad Lund, BSc(Spec), ’99 MSc, went on after studying pharmacology at the U of A to obtain his MD at the University of Ottawa. After specialty training in radiation oncology at the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre and a fellowship with the BC Cancer Agency, he became an attending radiation oncologist at the Fraser Valley Centre in Surrey, B.C., and clinical instructor with the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine. He is a member of the physicians advisory council for Dying With Dignity Canada. Chad lives with his family in the Vancouver area. He recently established the Lund Award at the U of A, an endowed award in the Faculty of Science specifically recognizing academic improvement in the biological sciences.

new trail spring 2015 59

CL A SS NOTES

2000s

’00 Robert Schinke, EdD, was named president of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, an international professional organization with members in 54 countries that promotes the field of sport and exercise psychology. He is also a faculty member at the School of Human Kinetics at Laurentian University and holds a Canada Research Chair in Multicultural Sport and Physical Activity. In addition to his appointment as president, he was also named as a fellow of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. ’05 Ming Lo, BDes, wrote to share the news that DeliveryTown, an Edmonton-based food delivery service startup, was acquired by Just Eat, one of the world’s largest online food ordering services. DeliveryTown was founded in 2010 by Ming Lo and Prem Eruvbetine, ’08 BSc(ElecEng). Shortly after, Sachin Gupta, ’08 BSc(ElecEng), joined the leadership team.

’06 Candice Lys, BA(Hons), is the co-founder and executive director of FOXY, an arts-based

Winterfest, which transformed Quad in January, kicked off the Alumni Association’s 100th anniversary.

sexual health education and leadership program that has reached more than 500 young women in 20 communities across the Northwest Territories. On Dec. 10, 2014, the program was awarded the $1-million Arctic Inspiration Prize, the first time (and by unanimous decision) that the entire prize has been awarded to a single organization. The funds will be used to expand FOXY to youth of all genders across Canada’s North.

’05 Joshua Bergman, BScN, is organizing the first annual Edmonton Pride 5K Run & Walk, to take place during the Edmonton Pride Festival. Scheduled to take place June 13, 2015, in Emily Murphy Park, the event’s proceeds will be donated directly to the Orlando Books Collective Entrance Award endowment fund through the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services (iSMSS) at the U of A. For more information, please visit yegpriderun.ca or follow @yegpriderun on Twitter and Instagram.

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2010s

’10 Samuel Oboh, MA, was inducted as the 76th president of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada.

’12 Lucas Crawford, PhD, has been named the Canadian Women in the Literary Arts critic-in-residence for 2015. A Vancouverbased researcher and writer, Lucas is the Ruth Wynn Woodward Lecturer in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. ’13 Michelle Rios, MFA, directed a production of The Secret Garden at Concordia University College’s Tegler Auditorium in November 2014. Her many theatre credits include roles in several Tony-nominated Broadway productions, and she has also appeared internationally on the operatic stage. Next up: the role of Flora in the upcoming feature film Frontera.

PHOTO BY EPIC PHOTOGRAPHY/IAN JACKSON

’06 Ali Jones Jonzon, BSc(Kinesiology), ’10 MA, wrote to say: “I met my husband, Luke Jones, ’13 PhD, in grad school. I was working as the adapted physical education specialist in early learning at Edmonton Catholic Schools, but Luke got a job as a lecturer at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, so we’ve crossed the pond. We had our first child in October 2014, so our little boy, Erik, is what keeps me busy these days!”

IN MEMORIAM

The Alumni Association notes with sorrow the passing of the following graduates (based on information received between November 2014 and February 2015)

’32 Albert Leonard Aiello, BSc, ’36 MD, in November 2014 ’32 Aileen Marion Harmon, BA, of Mill Bay, BC, in January 2015 ’38 Ernest Adolphe Côté, LLB, of Ottawa, ON, in February 2015 ’38 Kathleen Jane Doeling (McRoberts), BA, ’39 Dip(Ed), ’55 BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’38 Margaret Sofia Mitcheltree (Freeman), BScN, ’72 Cert(AdvObst), of Calgary, AB, in November 2014 ’39 Barbara Leslie Measner (Conrod), BA, of Vancouver, BC, in December 2014 ’39 Harriet Bertha Younie (Caine), Dip(Nu), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’40 Roy Edward McKenzie, BSc(Ag), of White Rock, BC, in January 2015 ’40 Henry Peter Simonson, BSc, ’55 Dip(Ed), ’55 BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’41 Claude Andrew Campbell, BA, ’42 LLB, of Invermere, BC, in December 2014 ’41 Isabella Irene Dixon (MacKenzie), BSc(HEc), ’44 BEd, of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’41 Chapin Key, BSc, ’45 MD, of Vancouver, BC, in November 2014 ’41 Albert Victor Marcolin, BSc, of Trail, BC, in October 2014 ’41 Barbara Olive Peddlesden, BSc(HEc), of Calgary, AB

’41 Leslie Daniel Wedman, BA, of Vancouver, BC, in October 2014 ’42 G. Robert Inkpen, BSc(ChemEng), of Spokane, WA, in August 2014 ’42 Bohdan Michalyshyn, MD, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’42 Isabel Paddon (McCrea), Dip(Nu), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’43 Harvey Tansley Allen, BSc(Ag), ’47 MSc, of Bashaw, AB, in December 2014 ’43 Therese M. BeauchampO’Hanlon (Beauchemin), BSc(HEc), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’43 Janet Isabel Hartford (Martin), BCom, ’46 BEd, ’50 MEd, of Victoria, BC, in July 2014

’47 Gladys Evelyn Hamilton, BScN, in July 2014 ’47 Stephen Russel Hayden, BSc(ElecEng), ’49 MSc, of North Vancouver, BC, in November 2014 ’47 Sheila Josephine MacDougall (Plewman), Dip(Nu), of Victoria, BC, in November 2014 ’47 Lloyd Douglas MacLean, BSc, ’49 MD, ’89 DSc(Honorary), of Verdun, QC, in January 2015 ’47 Morris G. Yaworsky, BEd, ’48 BSc, of Belle River, ON, in December 2014 ’48 Kathleen Amy Hatch, Dip(Nu), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’48 Marion Elizabeth Irwin, BEd, ’58 BA, ’65 MEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’44 Helen Stuart Ramsay (McDougall), BSc(HEc), of Kelowna, BC, in August 2014

’48 John Townsley Mason, BSc, ’52 MD, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’44 Robert Alexander Wilson, BCom, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015

’48 Arthur Jacob Oswald, BSc, ’50 MSc, ’51 MD, of Santa Ana, CA, in October 2014

’45 Margaret Anne Crane (Miller), BScN, of Kelowna, BC, in October 2014

’48 Bruce Alfred Radford, BSc(ChemEng), ’50 MSc, of Toronto, ON,in February 2015

’46 Helen H. Dahl (Head), Dip(Nu), ’47 BScN, of Magrath, AB, in July 2014

’48 Carmen Jeanette Simon (Wilson), Dip(Nu), ’49 Dip(PHNu), ’50 BScN, of Calgary, AB, in November 2014

’46 Joseph Alexander Fraser, BSc(Ag), of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’47 Stephanie Anne Andrews (Kobylnyk), BSc(Pharm), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015

’49 Charles Edgerton Bewell, BSc, of Calgary, AB, in February 2015 ’49 Murray Simpson Boyce, DDS, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014

’49 Roy Sylvester Bue, BSc(MiningEng), of Kitchener, ON, in October 2014

’50 William Earl Blakely, BSc(EngPhys), of Bragg Creek, AB, in December 2014

’49 Eugene T. Cook, BSc(MiningEng), of Calgary, AB, in January 2015

’50 John Leonard Booth, BCom, of St. Albert, AB, in January 2015

’49 Elizabeth Ann Donald, BSc(HEc), of Red Deer, AB, in January 2015

’50 Patricia Joan Day (Hawkins), Dip(Nu), of Edmonton AB, in February 2015

’49 Doreen Hatfield (Exley), BEd, of Leduc, AB, in December 2014

’50 Alfred George LynchStaunton, BCom, ’53 LLB, of Qualicum Beach, BC, in December 2014

’49 Douglas Pemberton Howell, BSc(ChemEng), of Sidney, BC, in November 2014

’50 Ralph Roby Rowe, DDS, of Calgary, AB, in February 2015

’49 Bertram McClure Huffman, BSc(CivEng), of Onoway, AB, in December 2014

’50 Frederick Grant Wagner, BSc(Ag), of Regina, SK, in November 2014

’49 William Hall Lakey, BSc, ’53 MD, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’51 Anders Venor Calhoun, BSc, ’53 DDS, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015

’49 Dorothy Margaret MacLachlan (Thomson), BA, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014

’51 James Alfred Dockery, BSc(PetEng), of Calgary, AB, in October 2014

’49 Maurice William Pearce, Dip(Ed), ’51 BEd, in November 2014

’51 Samuel Sanvel Frohlich, BEd, ’71 Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’49 John Ephraim Reid, BEd, ’64 MEd, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014

’51 Murray Abrey Green, BSc(CivEng), of Newmarket, ON, in December 2014

’49 Maurice Cameron Roe, BCom, of Williamsburg, VA, in December 2014

’51 Betty Gertrude McFadyen, BA, of Calgary, AB, in November 2014

’49 Marian Rosalie Smith (McClellan), Dip(Pharm), of Creston, BC, in December 2014

’51 Shirley Elizabeth Smith (Douglas), Dip(Ed), of Vancouver, BC, in December 2014

’49 Grant Elroy Strate, BA, ’50 LLB, of Vancouver, BC, in February 2015

’51 Mary Irene Virtue, Dip(Nu), ’52 BScN, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014

’49 Jenny Little Sutherland, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’51 Gilbert R. Williams, BEd, of Victoria, BC, in November 2014 new trail spring 2015 61

IN MEMORIAM

’52 Mary Jean Hansen (Kiselycia), Dip(Ed), of Westlock, AB, in January 2015 ’52 Theodore Joseph Kryczka, BEd, of Coleman, AB, in November 2014 ’52 Jean Agnes Lang, Dip(Nu), of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’52 Patricia Ruth MacKay, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’52 Grant Lawrence Spackman, BSc(CivEng), of Calgary, AB, in December 2014 ’52 Lloyd Douglas Wilcox, BA(Hons), of Ottawa, ON, in October 2014 ’53 Elizabeth Antonio, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’53 Amelia Ann Madro (Pardell), Dip(Ed), of Bonnyville, AB, in December 2014 ’53 Harry Nolan, BSc(Pharm), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’53 Donald James Sampson, BSc(CivEng), of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’53 Martin Wesley Valentine, BSc(Pharm), of Red Deer, AB, in November 2014 ’54 Asnath Bauer (Heyn), Dip(Nu), ’56 Dip(Nu), ’60 BScN, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’54 Robert John Durrant, BSc(CivEng), of White Rock, BC, in September 2014 ’54 Albert Walter Hauptman, BSc, ’58 MSc, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’54 Kenneth Ivan Julson, BSc, ’56 MD, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014 ’54 Lorna Cecilia Jwaszko (Hartnett), Dip(PHNu), of St. Albert, AB, in December 2014 ’54 S. Arlene Kerr, Dip(Nu), of Calgary, AB, in February 2015 ’54 Dorothy Grace MacQuisten (Ranche), BSc(Pharm), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015

62 newtrail.ualberta.ca

’54 Shirley Ann McLeod, BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’54 Eldon Oscar Olstad, Dip(Ed), ’56 Dip(Ed), ’58 BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’54 Edward S. Pipella, BA, of Calgary, AB, in October 2014 ’54 Blanche Anita Vik, Dip(Ed), of Airdrie, AB, in November 2014 ’55 John Anderson Bell, BSc, of Vernon, BC, in December 2014 ’55 Robert James Bourchier, MSc, of Ottawa, ON, in September 2014 ’55 John Eric Fowers, BCom, in January 2015 ’55 Ranald Parke White, Dip(Ed), ’55 BPE, of Sylvan Lake, AB, in December 2014 ’55 Frank Victor Wiedeman, BSc, of Victoria, BC, in December 2014 ’56 Gerald Leo Beauchamp, BEd, ’66 Dip(Ed), of Red Deer, AB, in December 2014 ’56 Pamela Horton, BA, of East Brunswick, NJ, in December 2014 ’56 James Grierson MacGregor, BSc(CivEng), ’99 DSc (Honorary), of White Rock, BC, in January 2015 ’56 Frank Cornelius Toews, BEd, of Summerland, BC, in January 2015 ’57 Matilda Baerg, Dip(Ed), of Calgary, AB, in July 2014 ’57 Lawrence P. Wozney, BEd, ’73 BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’58 Ronald James Bednar, BSc(CivEng), of Edmonton AB, in December 2014 ’58 Reg S. Daniels, BSc(ChemEng), of Edmonton, AB, in October 2014 ’58 Sylvia Scott (Kuores), BSc(HEc), of Edmonton, AB ’58 Reginald J. Watson, BSc(CivEng), of Sundre, AB, in October 2014

’59 Myron John Babiuk, MD, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’59 Erica Loretta Greentree (Twardy), Dip(Nu), of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’61 John David Scott, BSc(MineralEng), ’65 BSc(MechEng), ’71 MSc, of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’61 Brian H. Woodhead, MD, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’59 Martin Blake Hocking, BSc, of Victoria, BC, in October 2014

’62 Erwin William Block, MD, of Vernon, BC, in December 2014

’60 Donald John Boyer, BA, ’61 LLB, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014

’62 Robert Kambeitz, LLB, of Creston, BC, in December 2014

’60 Sheila Westoby Brooks, BEd, of Calgary, AB, in February 2015

’63 George Buckle, BEd, ’75 MEd, of Kelowna, BC, in December 2014

’60 Lorne Elkin, BA, of Moose Jaw, SK, in January 2015

’63 Donna Cohen, BEd, of Calgary, AB, in November 2014

’60 Erwin Miklos, MEd, ’63 PhD, of Vancouver, BC, in December 2014 ’60 Patricia Winifred Peet (Green), Dip(Nu), of Penticton, BC, in January 2015 ’60 Joseph Steedman, BEd, of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’60 John Walchuk, BSc(ElecEng), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’60 Edward J. Wigmore, BA, ’63 BDiv, of Surrey, BC, in November 2014 ’61 Alexander James Dawson, BSc, ’69 PhD, of Honolulu, HI, in January 2015 ’61 Lorne Renee Hatch, BSc, ’65 MD, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’61 Bernard Trueman Keeler, PhD, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’61 Edward Melnyk, BSc(MiningEng), of St. Augustine, FL, in January 2015 ’61 Louis Ludwig Pade, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2014 ’61 Elisabeth Christine Robert (Schmidt), BEd, ’86 Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’61 Cameron Leo Ross, BA, ’82 MEd, ’92 PhD, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’65 Fred Oscar Schreiber, BEd, ’67 MEd, of St. Albert, AB, in February 2015 ’65 Mona Blanche Timko, BEd, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014 ’66 Marcia Carel Albrecht, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’66 Elsie Marion Rowe, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’66 David J. Wharton, MD, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014 ’67 Elizabeth Mary Atmore (Domecki), BA, of Vancouver, BC, in November 2014

’63 Frank E. Guzmits, BSc(CivEng), of Calgary, AB, in January 2015

’67 Lloyd Louis Baumgarten, BEd, ’70 Dip(Ed), ’72 Dip(Ed), ’79 MEd, of Red Deer, AB, in December 2014

’63 Alexander Kachmar, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015

’67 Walter Chernishenko, BEd, of Vegreville, AB, in February 2015

’63 Alden Clarke Spinney, BSc(CivEng), of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’67 James Neil Dancey, BSc(MechEng), of Calgary, AB, in February 2015

’64 I. Christine Lamb (Battell), Dip(Nu), ’93 BScN, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2014

’67 Ken Osamu Okamura, BSc(Pharm), ’70 MSc, of St. Albert, AB, in December 2014

’64 Nestor William Litwin, BA, ’66 BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2014 ’64 Thomas Edward Meraw, BA, of Westerose, AB, in February 2015 ’64 Robert Talbot Thomson, BDiv, of Brentwood Bay, BC, in February 2015 ’64 Metro Topolnisky, BEd, of Lamont, AB, in February 2015 ’65 Kenneth Dee Cahoon, BEd, of Orem, UT, in January 2015 ’65 Phyllis Cora Langley, Dip(Nu), of Victoria, BC, in August 2014 ’65 Marjory Jean Morrison, Dip(PHNu), of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’65 Lyle Marvin Schaitel, BSc, of Coronation, AB, in January 2015

’68 Gordon Willis Birbeck, BSc, of Red Deer, AB, in November 2014 ’68 Gordon C. Cuthbert, BCom, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’68 John Alfred Earle, PhD, of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’68 Alexander John Longmore, MEd, of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’68 Gerald Joseph Olsen, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’68 Donna Mae Strate, Dip(Nu), ’69 BScN, of Lethbridge, AB, in November 2014 ’68 Erik Thorsteinsson, BSc, of Calgary, AB, in February 2015 ’69 Sharon Joyce Robertson, BScN, of Thorsby, AB, in January 2015

’69 Zenovia Olga Sakowsky, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’75 Rodger Edward Doody, BEd, of Sedgewick, AB, in December 2014

’70 Linda Lou Renkas, BEd, of Buck Lake, AB, in November 2014

’75 Hanne Birthe Livingstone (Hansen), BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’71 Colette Lucie Bouthillier, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015

’75 Garnet William Millar, PhD, of Qualicum Beach, BC, in December 2014

’71 John L. Dorsey, BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’76 Ralph Conrad Armstrong, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014

’71 James Willis Moore, BA, ’73 BEd, of Rimbey, AB, in August 2014

’76 Kenny Eddie Buchkowski, BCom, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014

’72 Wai Kwong Chan, BSc(ElecEng), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’76 Robert Clarke Hill, BA, ’77 MA, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2014

’72 Nevis Charlotte Charchun, Dip(Nu), of Camrose, AB, in February 2015

’76 Edward Everest Johnson, BEd, of Lethbridge, AB, in December 2014

’72 Dianne Joyce Fischer, BA, of St. Albert, AB, in February 2015

’76 Hazel Greta McClarty (Lovlin), BEd, ’80 Dip(Ed), ’88 BA, of Brooks, AB, in November 2014

’72 Evelyn Lena MacAulay, BEd, of Calgary, AB, in October 2014 ’72 Peter John Maximchuk, BEd, ’74 Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’73 John Douglas Binder, BCom, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’73 Elsie Kazakoff, BEd, in December 2014 ’73 Larry Lewis Kowalski, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’73 Thomas Richard Walls, BSc(Spec), in December 2014 ’74 Lila Mabel Black, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’74 Paul Hilaire De Moissac, BEd, in January 2015 ’74 Kenneth James Hodgins, BEd, of Lac La Biche, AB, in December 2014 ’74 Audrey May Olsen, BMus, of Alberta Beach, AB, in November 2014 ’75 Monty Jay Audenart, BSc, ’77 DDS, of Red Deer, AB, in January 2015

’77 Margaret Ann Bolduc (Lencucha), BSc(Pharm), of Claresholm, AB, in November 2014 ’77 Leslie William Bryant, BEd, of Stony Plain, AB, in January 2015 ’77 Morris Fedun, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in October 2014 ’77 Ted Hardy Harrison, BEd, ‘05 LLD (Honorary) of Victoria, BC, in January 2015 ’77 Donald Wayne Lunty, BSc(Ag), of Forestburg, AB, in January 2015 ’78 Brian Harold Birchall, BSc(Ag), of Crossfield, AB, in November 2014 ’78 Frederick Daniel Christopher, BEd, of Sherwood Park, AB, in January 2015 ’78 Barbara Claire Gerst (Taft), BEd, of Calgary, AB, in November 2014 ’78 Richard Frank Haley, BSc, ’82 BSc(ElecEng), ’86 MSc, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’80 James Alan Brooke, PhD, of Saskatoon, SK, in October 2014 ’80 Andrew Wilbert McPhee, BA(Spec), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’80 Vi Olga Presley (Petriko), BA, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’81 Mary Hallam (Dutton), BEd, in October 2014 ’82 Corinne Giselle McKernan (Krebs), BSc, ’86 MD, of Calgary, AB, in December 2014 ’83 Marie Marule, BA, of Lethbridge, AB, in December 2014 ’83 Shelley Ann Tennant, BA, of De Winton, AB, in December 2014 ’84 John Kenneth Gregson, BFA, in January 2015 ’88 Glenn Armand J. Bilodeau, BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’88 Jean Campbell Harvey, BA, of Victoria, BC, in July 2014 ’89 Charles Nathan Bradford, BSc(ChemEng), of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’89 Robert Jorgen Petersen, BEd, of Kamloops, BC, in November 2014 ’90 Brian David Gaida, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’91 Bradlea Richard Borhaven, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’91 Maria Teresa Pires, BA(Hons), of Ottawa, ON, in October 2014 ’92 Curtis Michael Holowach, BSc(Spec), of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’92 Edward John Leach, BSc(PT), of Calgary, AB, in November 2014 ’92 Kevin Douglas Vestby, BScN, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’93 Deanna Michelle Christie, BSc(MechEng), of Hareid, Norway, in December 2014

’93 Vivian Inge Fritze, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’03 Lisa Marie Taylor (Pombeiro), BA, of Edmonton, AB, in September 2014

’93 Alice Veronica Nemeti (Bedner), BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014

’03 Rianne Christine Eglinski (Walker), BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014

’93 Sylvia Judyth Sharon Thorarinson (Lee), Dip(Ed), of Sherwood Park, AB, in November 2014

’04 John Leslie Muhlbach, BA, of Camrose, AB, in January 2015

’94 Gail Elizabeth Holliday (Saunders), Dip(Ed), of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’94 Donald Robert Koziol, BSc, of Wetaskiwin, AB, in January 2015 ’94 Patricia Ann Lohner (Blaeser), BSc, ’94 BEd, of Camrose, AB, in November 2014

’06 Dianne M. Drummond (Johnson), MSc, of Edmonton, AB, in December 2014 ’08 Chloe Emary Kaniusis (Brown), BEd, of Condor, AB, in November 2014 ’09 Shirley Szeto, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015

’94 Sheri Lynne Samuels, MD, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’94 Dora E. Sklove (Wootton), BA, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’95 Wilfred Eng Kiang Goh, BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’95 Carl Malenfant, BEd, of Red Deer, AB, in September 2014 ’96 James Hamilton Kelso, BEd, of Edmonton, AB, in January 2015 ’96 Trung Kim Vu, MD, of Calgary, AB, in January 2015 ’99 Carlito Mendoza Ocol, BSc(CompEng), of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’99 Richard Leonard Poirier, BSc, of Edmonton, AB, in November 2014 ’00 David Randolph Lambert, BA, of Edmonton, AB, in February 2015 ’01 Helen Margaret Coombs, BEd, of Spruce Grove, AB, in November 2014 ’02 Gayle Anne Hissett (Olsen), BScN, of Vegreville, AB, in February 2015

If you’ve lost a loved one who is a University of Alberta alumnus, contact alumni records at alumrec@ualberta.ca, 780-492-3471 or 1-866-492-7516. new trail spring 2015 63

A HEALTHY RHYTHM

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

The mesmerizing swell of drumming ďŹ lls the gymnasium of amiskwaciy Academy during a traditional Aboriginal celebration. The school is participating in Why Act Now?, a U of A research project aimed at better understanding the health of urban Aboriginal youth.

Educational materials are being piloted in amiskwaciy and other schools around Edmonton.

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