THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
FALL 2025
FROM 10 WEEKS TO 10 YEARS
A JOURNEY OF SERVICE IN THE ARCTIC BY SIMA SAHAR ZEREHI ’97
+ THE GR AND ADVENTUR E
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Avanti Ramachandran ʼ09 PRESIDENT, UTSAA
The Support System Every New Graduate Needs Last June’s graduation speeches gave us a powerful reminder of how we can better support our newest alumni. From conversations I’ve shared with members of our young alumni community, a common theme emerged about how the transition from student to young professional can be both exhilarating and overwhelming. In my speech, I shared their reflections with the graduating class, focusing on embracing setbacks as opportunities for growth and prioritizing well-being. I advised the Class of 2025 not to bear the pressure of “you can do anything” but take the actionable approach of “start where your curiosity pulls you.” It’s a vital message that highlights our role as a community: providing a supportive space where young alumni can feel a sense of belonging without the pressure of having it “all” figured out. As members of the UTS Alumni Association, we have the opportunity to be the support system every new graduate needs. We can be the mentors who offer a listening ear and the connections that help them navigate their early careers, much like the alums who guided me. Our community is more than just a network; it’s a collective that understands the unique challenges of a UTS education. Entering the new school year, the UTSAA Board of Directors and I are hoping to foster a culture of open communication and genuine connection. By showing up for our young alumni, we not only empower them to build their careers but also strengthen the very fabric of our community. Thank you to all those who have reached out and applied to join the UTSAA Board – we have a full slate of directors this school year and I’m looking forward to advancing and strengthening our community. I hope you can join us – we welcome your thoughts and ideas. ■
UTSAA BOARD OF DIRECTORS
US
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UNIVER SI
LU VE
T
TORON OF TO
LS HOO SC
TY
AR RA BOR ITA
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SCHOOLS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 371 Bloor Street West, Room 250 Toronto, Ontario M5S 2R7
PRESIDENT
Avanti Ramachandran ’09 Avanti.Ramachandran@utschools.ca
VICE PRESIDENT
Aaron Chan ’94
Aaron.Chan@utschools.ca
PAST PRESIDENT
Aaron Dantowitz ’91
HONORARY PRESIDENT
Dr. Leanne Foster
Aaron.Dantowitz@utschools.ca
Leanne.Foster@utschools.ca
TREASURER
HONORARY VICE PRESIDENT
Hana Dhanji ’05
Hana.Dhanji@utschools.ca
Garry Kollins
GKollins@utschools.ca
SECRETARY
Geoffrey Hung ’93
Phone: 416-978-3919
Geoffrey.Hung@utschools.ca
E-mail: alumni@utschools.ca Web: www.utschools.ca/alumni Facebook: www.fb.com/utschools
DIRECTORS
Ross Bartlett ’75
David Grant ’72
Ross.Bartlett@utschools.ca
David.Grant@utschools.ca
Winnie Cheng ’11
Ian Lee ’87, P ’27
Instagram: @utschools
Winnie.Cheng@utschools.ca
LinkedIn: University of Toronto Schools
Isabella.Chiu@utschools.ca
Isabella Chiu ’13 Rose Dotten
Rose.Dotten@utschools.ca
Ian.Lee@utschools.ca
Graham Mayeda ’92
Graham.Mayeda@utschools.ca
David Morgan ’63
David.Morgan@utschools.ca
Meg Proctor ’84
Meg.Proctor@utschools.ca
Lily Quan ’87
Lily.Quan@utschools.ca
Luke Stark ’02
Luke.Stark@utschools.ca
Tina Yuan ’12
Tina.Yuan@utschools.ca
Julia Pomerantz ’12
Julia.Pomerantz@utschools.ca
UTS acknowledges we are situated on the traditional territory of many Indigenous nations including the Anishnabeg peoples – the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Chippewa – as well as the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, which is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that the land is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. We are grateful to honour this land through our dedication to learning and ongoing commitment to Truth and Reconciliation.
CONTENTS 8
FROM 10 WEEKS TO 10 YEARS A journey of service in the Arctic by Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97, chief of strategic operations for the premier of Nunavut.
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THE GRAND ADVENTURE UTS alumni blaze trails, travel uncharted waters and even unravel the mysteries of time: Dr. Jessica Ware ’95, Alex Hutchinson ’93, Dan Rubinstein ’91, Dr. Elizabeth Turner ’83, Paul “Harv” Wright ’70 and Dave Lang ’70, P ’99.
REGULAR FEATURES UTS Board Report . . . . . . . . 4 Principal’s Report. . . . . . . . . 4 Giving Back. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 In School. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Alumni News. . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
PUBLISHER
PROOFREADERS
ON THE COVER
Martha Drake
David Haisell Meg Proctor ’84
Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97, chief of strategic operations for Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok, is the cover story author. This photo was taken on top of the hill in Iqaluit, and her parka was made by the premier’s wife Parniga, from fox fur and commander fabric. The mitts are sealskin with rabbit fur lining.
MANAGING EDITOR AND STAFF WRITER
DESIGN
Kimberley Fehr
PageWave Graphics Inc.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Dewey Chang, Martha Drake, Kimberley Fehr, Emma Jenkin ’03, Michael Hudson/The Anglican, Dahlia Katz, Kara Lysne‑Paris, Paul Terefenko/ The Lavin Agency, Paul “Harv” Wright ’70, Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97. PRINTER
Colour Systems Inc.
ABOVE
Polar bears taken by nature and adventure sports photographer Paul “Harv” Wright ’70, in Churchill, Man. last year, one of six alumni whose exploits are featured in The Grand Adventure. CONTRIBUTORS
Peter Buzzi ’77, Martha Drake, Dr. Leanne Foster, Avanti Ramachandran ’09, Rev. Tom Sherwood ’66, Jeffrey Simpson, O.C. ’67, Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97.
Published spring and fall, The Root is available to all alumni, parents and friends of UTS. The Root is also available at: www.utschools.ca/root. Contact us at alumni@utschools.ca or 416-978-3919 to update your address or to receive your copy electronically.
THE ROOT NEWS The Root received an Honourable Mention in the 2025 National Magazine Awards: B2B in the best feature article professional category for the spring 2024 article, “All Saints: UTS alumni altruism touches the heart of our city,” written by Managing Editor Kimberley Fehr and designed by Kevin Cockburn of PageWave Graphics Inc.
UTS BOARD REPORT
Peter Buzzi ’77
Board Chair, UTS
PRINCIPAL’S REPORT
Dr. Leanne Foster Principal, UTS
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THE ROOT | FALL 2025
Our Year of Strategic Learning As the world undergoes rapid technological transformation and faces increasing political uncertainty, UTS carries a profound responsibility to prepare our students to lead with purpose in an ever more complex global landscape. Our Strategic Plan is the school’s north star, guiding us with intention and ensuring our work remains firmly aligned with our mission, vision and values. It enables us to anticipate and respond thoughtfully to change rather than react to it. In doing so, we advance our mission to ignite the brightest minds to make a difference in the world. We strengthen our vision of academic excellence, enriched through our unique affiliation with the University of Toronto and our partnership with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Above all, we remain steadfast in upholding the values that define our community, championing anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion for all. Over a year has passed since the UTS Strategic Plan (strategicplan.utschools.ca) was launched in September 2024. During this time, UTS proudly joined Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS), a community of independent schools committed to excellence through rigorous standards and continuous whole-school improvement. Now our commitments are manifesting into broad impact across our plan’s five pillars – Leading in Learning, Inclusion by Design, Belonging and Wellness, Impact with Integrity and Better Together. In the first year of our plan, our focus on Leading in Learning strengthened our technology curriculum with challenging real-world applications that prepare students to excel in their chosen fields. We provided a dedicated space for UTS VEX Robotics, expanding the program to more students by hiring a full-time Computer Science and Robotics teacher. The new role of director of AI integration is providing high-level leadership, professional development and expertise to staff and students as AI rapidly integrates with society. A new technology-focused summer course was launched, and the UTS Cybersecurity Club received dedicated support – both initiatives designed to help students build skills in emerging and high-demand fields. Our academic results continue to reflect the UTS tradition of excellence. In the 2024–25 school year, our students achieved outstanding AP exam results, with mean scores once again significantly exceeding both Ontario and global averages. A total of 284 students wrote 629 AP exams, demonstrating both the breadth and depth of learning across our community. Under the pillar Impact with Integrity, we took key actions to uphold our commitment to Truth and Reconciliation and Right Relations, which included the introduction of a new M4 (grade 10) English class, “Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Métis and Inuit Voices,” that deepens student engagement with Indigenous histories, cultures and contemporary issues. We also refined the UTS Board of Directors recruitment process, supporting diversity of membership and bringing broader perspectives to governance and strategic decision-making. And most importantly, an enhanced bursary program continued our efforts to ensure every student who should be at UTS can attend and participate fully, without financial barriers. For the 2025-26 school year, a record $3.1 million in bursary support is being provided to students, reaching 21 per cent of the student body, significantly increasing access and affordability compared with previous years. These are just a few of many exciting initiatives that are bringing the Strategic Plan to life at UTS. Through these efforts, we ensure that we thoughtfully and strategically uphold the legacy of excellence and inclusion at our school. At the same time, we prepare our students to lead the way into the future, contributing to an equitable society in an interconnected world, while epitomizing the timeless UTS values of respect, accountability, honesty and integrity in all that they do. ■
GIVING BACK
Martha Drake
Executive Director, Advancement
PHOTO: Dartmouth Libraries
Of the many awards granted at this year’s UTS Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, there is one that connects deeply with this issue of The Root, tying together the themes of the Arctic and the war plaques featured in the Looking Back section under the banner of Giving Back, the focus of my writing. The Allan Crawford Prize in Chemistry and Physics is one of our school’s oldest awards, having been established in 1924 by Allan’s father, Professor J. T. Crawford (no relation to the first headmaster of UTS, H. J. Crawford), who was among the first masters at UTS when the school opened in 1910. This year marks the 101st anniversary of the granting of this award to an S5 (grade 11) student who achieves the highest mark in both S5 Chemistry and S5 Physics. While the centennial of the Allan Crawford Prize in Chemistry and Physics may be reason enough to celebrate it, for me, the story behind the award is a fascinating part of UTS history. Allan Crawford graduated from UTS in 1918, having been awarded the first Edward Blake Scholarship in Science, and then attended the University of Toronto to study geology, paleontology, chemistry and mineralogy. In 1921, U of T President Sir Robert Falconer was asked by Canadian Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson to nominate an assistant for his next expedition. Given Allan’s scientific scholarship and his good health, he was selected as commander and scientist of the 1921-1923 Wrangel Island Expedition, despite his youth and inexperience. Allan was one of four scientists who were dropped off by a steamer named the Victoria at the uninhabited Wrangel Island, which lies in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Russia. They were accompanied by an Iñupiaq woman named Ada Blackjack to care for the team, and a cat named Vic (after the boat). The inexperience of early exploration resulted in insufficient food for the group. In January 1923, Allan and two other explorers attempted to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia in search of food, and were never seen again. The fourth scientist died of scurvy, leaving only Ada Blackjack and Vic the cat to survive the exploration. Reports of scientific findings written by Allan Crawford and the other scientists made it back to Stefansson, but they came at the cost of the scientists’ lives. In 1924, Allan’s grief-stricken father created the prize in memory of his son. That same year, the boys of UTS erected a plaque to commemorate Allan’s sacrifice and heroism as commander and scientist of the 1921-1923 Wrangel Island expedition. Over a century later, the spirit of Allan’s dedication to science lives on at UTS as his plaque joins the war plaques displayed at the Eureka! Entrance at Huron Street, and the award in his name inspires and encourages our students in the pursuit of the sciences, furthering our mission to ignite the brightest minds to make a difference in the world.
Allan Crawford and Vic the cat on Wrangel Island.
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IN SCHOOL
UTS returned to the world of golf in the 2024-25 school year after a hiatus, thanks to coach Alan Kraguljac, Biology and AP Research teacher. Two of our players made OFSAA – M3 (grade 9) student Jessica captured the silver in the High School Division and M3 Stella shot an incredible 88 and 85 in the Open Division for club players. The team had eight players in its first year, as well nationally ranked golfer M4 (grade 10) Dawson on the sidelines with an injury (he recovered in time for the summer season and swept the Canadian Junior Boys National Championships). “I think the game is a representation for life and reflects the nature of how life goes,” says Dawson. “You have to deal with the bad bounces and good bounces and just move on.”
UTS is a place of great traditions, new and old. UTS and the UTS Parents’ Association partnered to launch our first Welcome Back Barbecue in the fall of 2024. It was so much fun and such a great way for families, students and staff to gather together at the beginning of the school year, that we did it again this year. The sounds of our Jazz Combo and a student rock band wafted over our outdoor plaza as we enjoyed barbecue fare served by UTSPA volunteers. Students played games like football in the park – and our new owl mascot Hoodini hammed it up – giving the event a festive air. It was a joyful occasion for us to get to know each other and spend quality time together as the new year began.
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THE ROOT | FALL 2025
What does artificial intelligence mean for the future of education? In June, UTS collaborated with two University of Toronto leaders – Dr. Susan McCahan, University of Toronto associate vicepresident and vice-provost for digital strategies, and Dr. Steven Katz, associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) – to present “Shifting the Success Paradigm in an AI World: Navigating new paths to academic success” to our community. “Humans are cognitive misers,” says Steven. “AI provides an irresistible route to save intellectual power. It will be a real temptation to outsource what we find hard. We have to ask ourselves what we will miss in terms of the novel contribution of the human being?” Susan says that with knowledge readily available at our fingertips, “It’s your unique perspective that’s going to be critically important.” By cultivating essential “power skills” such as collaboration, adaptability and critical thinking, education is shifting to give students the tools and agency to shape our rapidly changing world. The event marked the beginning of a deeper, ongoing dialogue with U of T and OISE.
In School
UTS is poised to help shape the future of education, says Jill Strimas, the new head of senior school. “Education is undergoing significant and rapid changes, and it is crucial that we focus on helping young people develop resilient, creative and flexible mindsets that are required to navigate change and help shape a better, more just, future,” says Jill. Deeply committed to fostering voice and agency in young people, she’s been a dedicated independent school educator for nearly two decades, which included progressive leadership roles at Branksome Hall and most recently, as the director of academics at Upper Canada College. Her curriculum innovation, which included extensive work with the International Baccalaureate Organization, earned her the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2022. She began her career teaching English, film studies and philosophy, and is a graduate of University of Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
The final UTS Assembly of the 2024-25 school year took an emotional turn as we said good-bye to two of our greats. “On behalf of all the students past and present, we want to say a few words to honour the man, the myth and the legend – the notorious Dr. Paul Harkinson, who’s been a history teacher here for over 30 years. So, can we hear some noise for Dr. Harkinson?” said M4 (grade 10) Katerina, who along with M4 Aryanna, paid tribute to Paul. In typical history teacher fashion, Paul in turn gave thanks to three civilizations: the Indus River Valley and ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro known for their remarkable drainage; Meroë in ancient Kush on the Nile, with a one-eyed woman warrior named Queen Amanirenas; and Dynastic China and empress Wu Zetian, the only woman to ever become the emperor of China. S6 (grade 12) Justine paid tribute to Math Teacher Sandra DellaMaestra, retiring after 27 years at UTS. “She somehow made calculus feel less scary and even fun. But more than that, she’s always been someone who truly cares about her students, not just how we do in math, but how we’re doing in general.” Math Teacher Adam Brown, who also shared gourmet lunches with Sandra for 20 years, praised her for the compassion she shared with him and the younger teachers, and her unrivalled professionalism, before hugging her goodbye.
UTS has now been to near space! Members of the UTS High Altitude Society launched a balloon, sporting the UTS logo and the Canadian flag, that soared 33 kilometres above sea level. M4 (grade 10) Sasha programmed the camera and tracking and M4 Kevin helped to build the camera system. Sasha launched the balloon on May 6 from the Claireville Conservation Area near Brampton, but as the balloon passed 32 kilometres above sea level the signal died completely. They drove near the estimated landing spot and found the signal. The balloon was at 5,000 metres and falling fast! But then the signal died again. “What followed next was, perhaps, the longest half-hour of my life,” says Sasha. “I was staring into the spectrogram: could we get a signal and find the balloon payload?” Sasha found the balloon’s final resting place south of Beeton, 37 kilometres from where it launched.
For more UTS news and views, check out our website at utschools.ca.
THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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FROM 10 WEEKS TO A Journey of 10 YEARS Service in the Arctic BY SIMA SAHAR ZEREHI ’97
Directional signpost at the Inuit community of Pond Inlet, on the northern tip of Baffin Island. The hamlet is also called ‘Mittimatalik’ in Inuktitut, and known as the “Jewel of the North” for the beautiful mountains, scenic fjords, glaciers and icebergs. Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97 took the photo during the Northern Premiers’ Forum, a meeting of the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut premiers hosted by Nunavut in May 2024. PHOTO: Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97
IT’S JULY 1, CANADA DAY, and I’m standing on the ridge behind my home, looking out over the Arctic Ocean. It’s 15 degrees Celsius – unseasonably warm for Iqaluit – and the sea ice has already broken. This month marks 10 years since I first arrived in Nunavut. I stepped off the plane just before Canada Day in 2015 with a single suitcase, expecting to stay 10 weeks as a CBC reporter. If you talk to anyone who has moved to Nunavut and chosen to stay, you’ll hear similar answers: the sense of community, the warmth of the people, the vast, breathtaking landscape of ice and sky, and the opportunity to make a meaningful difference. Quite simply, there is nothing like living in the Arctic. I say this as someone who has also lived in Tehran, Ankara and Rome – each of which shaped me in important ways. Yet it is Nunavut that has redefined my understanding of leadership, community and the purpose of service. My first major assignment was covering the federal election – a whirlwind introduction to the politics, communities and daily realities of the territory. It was a crash course in the stark divide between Canada’s North and South. I spoke to Nunavummiut – residents of Nunavut – about the infrastructure gap and what it meant to hold such a vast stretch of Canada’s coastline without a single deep-sea port. I reported on the housing crisis in one of the coldest climates in the world, on health care challenges in a territory with one hospital serving 25 fly-in communities, and on food insecurity in a place where traditional harvesting has been systematically disrupted and every grocery item must be flown in from the south. In the past decade, Iqaluit has transformed. New housing dots the hills. A modern airport welcomes travellers. The city now boasts an aquatics centre, a third hotel and conference facility, and even a coffee shop that could hold its own in Toronto’s trendiest neighbourhoods. But the most profound transformation has been in me. Before joining the Premier’s Office, where I serve as chief of strategic operations, I worked with the Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA), the Inuit organization that represents communities across Baffin Island and the High Arctic, managing Inuit-owned lands and advancing the region’s THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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PHOTO: Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97
CHIEF OF STRATEGIC OPERATIONS A DAY IN THE LIFE
Running strategy behind the scenes for Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok, no two days are ever the same. 6:30 a.m. – Coffee and headlines, scanning how Arctic issues are playing out across Canada and the world. 8:30 a.m. – Morning huddle with the Premier’s Office. 9 a.m. – Brief Premier Akeeagok on priorities, schedule and political updates. 9:30 a.m. – Call with the deputy minister to prep for cabinet. 10 a.m. – Back-to-back meetings on nation-building projects: Arctic Security Corridor, Kivalliq Hydro Fibre Link, Qikiqtarjuaq Port and Iqaluit Hydro. 1 p.m. – Call with federal counterparts on housing and infrastructure. 2 p.m. – Pre-interview with CBC’s The Current for a Nunavut segment. 3 p.m. – Draft speech on arctic sovereignty and security strategy. 3:30 p.m. – Call with Agnico Eagle Mines on community engagement. 4 p.m. – Meeting with Baffinland Iron Mines on summer shipping. 4:30 p.m. – Team update on Nunavut Land Use Plan. 5 p.m. – Wrap up, plan for tomorrow and check in with media. Evening – Daycare pick-up and a walk along the beach with my toddler, watching tides shift as quickly as the news cycle.
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“ I came to the North seeking adventure but found purpose.”
– Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97
social, cultural and economic well-being. It was there that I first met P.J. Akeeagok, then a newly elected QIA president with a bold vision for Inuit advancement. At QIA, I was part of the team that furthered the Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area Agreement – protecting a vast seascape often called the “Arctic Serengeti.” This region is home to most of the world’s narwhal, major populations of beluga and polar bear and immense seabird colonies, all sustained by nutrient-rich currents that make it one of the Arctic’s most productive ecosystems. For Inuit, it has long been a place of harvesting, travel and cultural continuity now safeguarded in a way that both honours Inuit rights and creates new economic opportunities through conservation jobs, training and community development. During my time at QIA, I was also part of the team that helped bring about Canada’s formal apology for the Qikiqtani Truth Commission, an important step in acknowledging past harms and advancing Reconciliation. I was there the day the apology was delivered, and the memory stays with me. The room was filled with Elders who had been waiting for this moment for decades. Many clutched photographs of parents, siblings and children who had been sent south for tuberculosis treatment and never came home, buried in unmarked graves far from their families. The air was heavy, almost unbreathable at times, as the words of apology were spoken. Around me, I heard
muffled sobs, the quiet release of grief carried across generations, mingled with the strength of a people who had endured so much. Through roles in journalism, Inuit organizations and government, I’ve travelled to nearly all of Nunavut’s 25 communities. From Grise Fiord, where mountains meet glaciers under a sun that never sets, to Sanikiluaq, known for its prized eiderdown harvest, each journey deepened my understanding of this territory. I came to the North seeking adventure but found purpose. The Arctic has taught me resilience, humility and the strength of community. Inuit have called this place home for millennia – turning sea ice into a highway, finding bounty in the ocean and creating warmth from the glow of the qulliq, the half-moon soapstone lamp whose moss or Arctic cotton wick once sustained families through the long night. Still lit today in ceremonies and gatherings, the qulliq is a reminder of endurance and connection. These are not my traditions, but I hold deep respect for those who live them every day. In 2021, I received a call that would shift the trajectory of my work in Nunavut. P.J. Akeeagok, then president of QIA, asked if I would help him launch his campaign for the legislative assembly in the riding of Iqaluit-Niaqunnguu. I eagerly agreed. The campaign led to a landslide victory, with Akeeagok securing 84 percent of the vote; one of the strongest mandates in the territory’s history.
That triumph propelled him into the leadership forum, where his fellow MLAs elected him premier of Nunavut. Today, as chief of strategic operations for Premier Akeeagok, I no longer just report on events but help shape them. In this role, I’ve witnessed Nunavut sign the historic Devolution Agreement, transferring decision-making over Nunavut’s lands and waters from the Government of Canada to the territory. We also secured a once-in-a-generation $1.5-billion implementation contract to realize the promise of the Nunavut Agreement, the 1993 land claim settlement that created Nunavut and enshrined Inuit rights to lands, waters and selfdetermination. Now, our focus is on the Nunavut Arctic Sovereignty and Security Strategy, a made-in-Nunavut framework that affirms Inuit leadership in shaping the future of the Arctic. Grounded in Inuit societal values, the strategy unites the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated around five pillars: strong resilient communities, sovereignty rooted in Inuit perspectives, circumpolar engagement, economic opportunity and climate resilience – ensuring that Arctic sovereignty and Inuit security advance hand in hand. For Canada, it is more than a regional plan: it is a path toward living up to its identity as an Arctic nation. By grounding sovereignty in Inuit knowledge and leadership, the strategy strengthens national security while advancing Reconciliation, showing how
OPPOSITE PAGE: Welcome sign at the Nunavut community of Cambridge Bay, Victoria Island, where Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok and his senior staff (including Sima Sahar Zerehi ’97), MLAs and board members of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. launched the mandate of the Sixth Legislative Assembly of Nunavut after the election in 2021. The sign is a project of the community’s Red Fish Art Studio, which runs a program for youth at risk of being sent to jail, where they transform scrap metal into art – the studio is famous for its metal fish. ABOVE: The Honourable David Akeeagok, Nunavut’s minister of community services, and human resources, Sima Sahar Zerehi and Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok in Igloolik, an Inuit hamlet on Igloolik Island.
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ABOVE: Inside the igloo in Igloolik, pictured on the previous page, an Elder lit the qulliq to celebrate a spring festival, with Sima Sahar Zerehi, Premier Akeeagok and others.
Canada’s future in the North must be built in full partnership with Inuit. When I first joined the premier’s team, geopolitics wasn’t top of mind. We were focused on housing, affordable childcare and other everyday priorities. Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising global tensions shifted everything. Suddenly, the Arctic wasn’t peripheral,
NUNAVUT 101 A quick primer on Canada’s newest territory – its people, politics and place in the world. • Established: 1999. • Size and Coastline: 2.09 million km² – twice Ontario’s size, and includes Canada’s longest coastline. • Population: ~40,000 people in 25 fly-in communities, no roads between them. • Capital: Iqaluit. • Languages: Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English and French. • Economy: Traditional harvesting, public service, resource development, fisheries, arts and tourism. • Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI): Represents Nunavut Inuit, advancing rights under the Nunavut Agreement with three Regional Inuit Associations – Qikiqtani, Kivalliq and Kitikmeot. • Government: Consensus system with no political parties; members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) elect the premier and Cabinet. • Devolution: In 2024, the Government of Nunavut, NTI and Canada signed an agreement transferring decision-making about lands, resources and fresh waters to Nunavut. • Sovereignty: Inuit land use and stewardship underpin Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims.
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it was at the centre of world affairs. With melting ice, new shipping routes, foreign military interest and growing demand for critical minerals, the role of Nunavut in Canada’s sovereignty is undeniable. For me, this work is not abstract. It’s about building ports, roads and broadband that connect families and strengthen communities. It’s about ensuring that when Canada invests in defense, Nunavummiut also see lasting benefits through jobs, clean energy or stronger emergency response. It’s about developing resources responsibly, guided by Inuit values, so that economic growth also protects culture, food security and the land. The world looks north for climate solutions, renewable energy and even digital innovation. Around the circumpolar world, Arctic regions are becoming engines of research and technology. Nunavut is ready to be part of that story. I felt that reality most vividly in May 2024, when Nunavut hosted the Northern Premiers’ Forum in Pond Inlet. Between sessions, we travelled by snowmobile onto the floe edge, where sea ice meets open water. Looking out at the Northwest Passage, with Bylot Island’s peaks on the horizon and seals surfacing through dark cracks in the ice, it was clear: sovereignty isn’t only about maps and borders. It’s about protecting the people, communities and ecosystems that depend on these waters. Ten years ago, when I first stood on this tundra, I saw only vastness and beauty. Now I see how deeply people, place and politics are woven together here. Sovereignty lives not in a line on a map, but in a child’s laughter inside a safe home, powered by clean energy, with opportunity close at hand. And it is not only my home now, but my children’s homeland. My husband, Jeff, is Inuk, and as Nunavut Inuit, my children’s future is bound to this place in ways that give my work deeper meaning. The Arctic has shaped me, and it will shape them. That knowledge makes my service both personal and political. I feel a responsibility to honour what this land has given me, and to help build a future strong enough for the generations who will carry it forward. It is a homeland whose strength and promise will define Canada’s future. Update at time of publication: P.J. Akeeagok did not seek re-election in the Nunavut elections held October 27 and has completed his term as premier. ■
UTS alumni blaze trails, travel uncharted waters and even unravel the mysteries of time
THE GRAND ADVENTURE By Kimberley Fehr
PHOTO: Paul “Harv” Wright ’70
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D
PREVIOUS PAGE: Nature and adventure sports photographer Paul “Harv” Wright ’70 lives in Whister, B.C. but often escapes into the backcountry – this is his winter camp at B.C.’s Duffey Lake, east of Pemberton, in February 2023. ABOVE RIGHT: Dr. Jessica Ware ’95 became an evolutionary biologist and entomologist because there was room to grow in the field and because it’s important – “In the absence of insects, everyone else dies.” Here, she is pictured with a giant termite mound in Australia. CENTRE: A wandering glider dragonfly scan by Forrest Mitchell.
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r. Jessica Ware ’95 rises before dawn to wade
through jungle rivers in Guyana that can be rife with anacondas and giant black caiman to study dragonflies and damselflies in their natural habitat, and sometimes continues late into the night. In the dead of winter, she can be found north of the Arctic Circle traipsing through deep snow in snowshoes in the Yukon, Finland, Sweden or Norway facing -40 degrees Celsius weather to collect frozen juvenile specimens. In the mountains of Ecuador, while searching for the Megaloprepus caerulatus, the giant blue-winged helicopter damselfly, hypothermia set in and Jessica and her team began to doubt they would ever come home, only to be rescued at the eleventh hour. Answers to big evolutionary questions don’t come without risk, challenging both mind and body, often far off the grid with no electricity or running water. As an entomologist and evolutionary biologist who specializes in dragonflies, damselflies, termites and cockroaches, Jessica seeks to unravel the very mysteries of time itself. Like a time traveller, her research takes in the overarching picture of past and present, and what it means now for the insects – and for all life on earth. And these aren’t the only aspects of her work beyond the beaten path. As a Black woman 2SLGBTQ+ scientist who is worldrenowned in her field – she’s the chair of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City – Jessica’s career often led her into uncharted territory, venturing where few people like her had ever gone before, and blazing the trail for those who would follow in her footsteps. Her life’s work is exemplary of the innate human drive to tackle immense challenges, explore the unknown and pursue answers to the big questions, the theme of a new book by Alex Hutchinson ’93, The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map. In his book, Alex delves into the neuroscience that drives explorers, writing about what psychological literature calls the effort paradox. He explains, “Sometimes we do things, not in spite of the fact that they’re hard, but because they’re hard. If you ask people, ‘What are the things that
are meaningful in your life?’ they tend to identify things that require effort. Exploring off into the bush, or taking on challenges in metaphorical ways, where the outcome is uncertain and requires struggle, are ways of finding meaning in your life because you’re taking on a difficult challenge, and in doing so, you’re tapping into something very deep.” The paradox manifests firsthand in Alex’s own experiences. With a successful career as a physicist – his PhD from the University of Cambridge led to work with the U.S. National Security Agency as a postdoctoral researcher on quantum computing and nanomechanics – he switched gears to study journalism at Columbia University. Now he’s a U.S. National Magazine Awardwinning science journalist, Outside magazine’s longtime Sweat Science columnist, and author of the 2018 New York Times bestseller Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, which drew partially on his experience as a long-distance runner for the Canadian National Team. “The Explorer’s Gene was in some sense an attempt to understand why I wanted to write,” he says. “And the connection to the way I’ve always liked to travel – to try and find paths that feel untrodden – those two tracks of, ‘Why do I want the untravelled path in the physical world and in the conceptual world?’ is what inspired me to write the book.”
When researching a hike for his family of four in Newfoundland, the description of the Long Range Traverse, an unmarked and rugged backcountry hike in Gros Morne National Park, beckoned. “It said, in not so many words, ‘This is a really hard hike. We have to do a lot of rescues from this hike every year. We really strongly encourage you to go somewhere else.’ That sounded like exactly where I wanted to go,” he says. The family went for a four-day backcountry traverse, described in detail in his book, with no actual path, steep scrambles, hordes of blackflies, mud underfoot, dense vegetation, ample rain and two children under 10, that took them the hard way to the most iconic view in Newfoundland – Western Brook Pond – but the challenge became its own reward. “We are, all of us, in some way, wired to seek out the unknown,” he says. We can trace it in the history of our species, ingrained into our genetics. “Evidence demonstrates what scientists call an ‘uncertainty bonus,’ that when we know less about something it attracts us more.” UTS alumnus Dan Rubinstein ’91 became friends with Alex through their shared professional interests when Dan was an editor at Canadian Geographic magazine. Dan set off on a paddleboarding quest in June 2023 to explore the healing potential of “blue space” firsthand while paddling 2,000 kilometres from Ottawa to New York City and back again. Nearing 50, he’d hit what felt like “a low ebb” in his life, worried about climate change, and the disconnect and polarization that were becoming increasingly prevalent in society. Dan’s identity was evolving too – his daughters were growing up and getting ready to leave home. And he needed a “crazy trip” to tie a book on paddleboarding together. The result became, Water Borne: a 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, published this spring. Taking a route where no paddleboarder had ever gone before in its entirety, Dan travelled in four segments – with breaks to keep up with family responsibilities at home – down the Ottawa River through the St. Lawrence River to Montreal, from Montreal primarily via the Hudson River to New York City, and back through the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario via Toronto, culminating with a trip up the Rideau Canal to return to Ottawa. Along the way, he immersed himself in conversations with experts on water and the local areas, citizens and Indigenous peoples to give deeper context to his story.
“Serendipitously, I just met so many kind, generous and engaged people everywhere, and especially in the U.S., which was really reaffirming when I think about challenges like climate change,” says Dan. “I’ve heard it said that, until we can have an honest conversation about climate change, there’s no way we can begin to mitigate some of the technical problems we can’t even agree on, let alone talk about.” With so many barriers between human connection these days – because of technology and how we communicate through screens – Dan observed how “blue spaces” on and near the water created the space for vital face-to-face conversation, even just benign small talk about the weather, forging moments of connection. “Being near water makes us feel good and tends to slow us down, and because water can be dangerous, we tend to watch out for one another. Because of those three factors, the possibility for connection emerges, and that’s where things can grow from.” There were days racing thunderstorms (and losing), late nights where he didn’t know where he was camping and an afternoon on Lake Ontario paddling from St. Catharines to Burlington, when the adventure almost came to a head. “The winds grew stronger, and the waves grew to four or five feet by early afternoon,” Dan says. Fighting the waves, he could only paddle on his left side, and couldn’t stop to eat or drink. Fatigue set in. “I started to fall in. I hadn’t fallen in the entire trip. Now, even when kneeling, I fell off the board. And then the board flipped over with all my dry bags on it.”
The challenge became its own reward as author and journalist Alex Hutchinson ’93 and his wife took their two children under 10 on Gros Morne National Park’s Long Range Traverse in Newfoundland for four days, facing dense vegetation, steep scrambles, hordes of blackflies and no actual path.
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Dan Rubinstein ’91 made land on the west side of Toronto after a nine-hour, 50-kilometre day from Burlington, capping off the third segment of his paddling journey – from Albany, New York via the Erie Canal and then around the west end of Lake Ontario.
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Thankfully the water was warm and he was able to right his board. But after a couple of more falls, he surfed into Hamilton Beach for a rest. “I clearly wasn’t thinking straight,” he says. “I dragged my board and all the dry bags off the water. Then I realized I couldn’t get back out because the waves are pounding. That was the most challenging day of paddling I ever experienced despite plenty of paddling time on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.” Paddling day after day, Dan became one with the nature he paddled through – on his third day on the Erie Canal, his alter ego “Swamp Thing” emerged. “I smelt bad. I looked bad. My clothes were dirty – I went through a lot of locks, and the locks aren’t clean. You become one with the dirt.” Exploration washes the pretenses of modern life away, becoming more elemental, boring down to the basic essence of what it means to be a human being alive on this planet. Dr. Elizabeth Turner ’83, a professor of earth sciences at Laurentian University, chose geology as her career when she realized what she really wanted in life. “I wanted to be outside, effectively play in the dirt for a living,” she says. “With geology, you get to have all of your physical and mental challenges rolled into one incredibly intoxicating, addictive experience where you get to deploy all of this physical and mental effort in very unusual places that most people never get to see.”
Like Jessica Ware, Elizabeth is a time-traveller, with an overarching view of what is and what was, focusing on what she calls her “sweet spot” – rocks between 500 million and 1.5 billion years old. For 35 years, she spent her summers working from isolated camps and traipsing across spectacular outcrops in the high alpine of the Mackenzie Mountains – where glaciation exposed the underlying carbonate and sedimentary rocks in the Northwest Territories, and other mountains and sea cliffs all over Nunavut. “My true love was the fossil microbes that built Precambrian reefs,” she says. “If you go back through time – 520 million years ago to about two billion years ago – there were reefs as big and as glorious as today’s coral reefs, but they were made by bacteria called stromatolites.” As her career developed, the paleontologist became a carbonate stratigrapher, using minerals such as calcite and aragonite to “solve puzzles” understanding how the passage of time and the changes in Earth’s surface environments are encoded in limestone and dolostone. “Rocks are a time machine where you can visit the past and figure it out,” she says. In 2021, she published findings in the journal Nature about a discovery of what appeared to be sponge fossils from 890 million years ago. They would be the oldest known fossils of animal life on earth, which received media coverage on a global scale. She knew the findings would be controversial but was at the point in her career where she was ready to take the risk. “It was a proposal – not a fact,” she says. “That’s how science progresses. You put out an idea that is well-founded in evidence, and then you let it sink or swim.” Describing herself as the “most dogged person around,” she’s incredibly driven, but most in her element at camp, where they sleep in tents, live on freeze-dried food and often only have one or two other people for companionship. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be fun,” she says. These days, as well as teaching during the school year, Elizabeth works on critical minerals, finding her expertise in high demand in places like Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Home to the Central African copper belt, the rocks are very similar tectonically and age-wise to those she studies in northern Canada. As the changing geopolitical climate brings heightened attention to the Arctic, she hopes people appreciate that Nunavut alone is one-fifth of Canada’s landmass. “Canada does not consist merely of cities and people. It consists of rocks,
trees, water, muskeg, tundra, ice and snow. Those are our resources, which we should be very, very careful with.” At UTS, Elizabeth avoided taking science and had to go back to summer school before her science degree, after completing her bachelor of arts in languages at the University of Toronto. What stayed with her from UTS were the fond memories of the friends she made – this August she met up with the Class of 1983 to celebrate a joint sixtieth birthday party, proving the UTS experience is as much about the people she met as the classes she took. “UTS was a haven,” says Jessica Ware. She always couldn’t wait to attend Dr. Leslie Laing Gibbard’s science class. “You could be a nerd and enthusiastic about science, and it was all really chill. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to go there and experience that. And it set me on the trajectory that I’m on now.” Jessica, who during some of her UTS years was the only Black student at the school, shows her gratitude by giving back, having volunteered as a UTS Alumni Association director for four years and provided extensive support to the UTS Black Equity Committee, as well as mentoring 2SLGBTQ+ people, Black people and other historically underrepresented groups to follow in her footsteps. Jessica became an entomologist because dragonflies and damselflies captured her imagination. With two million known insects on the planet and an estimated 10 million as of yet unknown, there were good opportunities. Her research takes her all over the world to places like Ghana, Colombia, Australia and many other countries and sometimes she hikes for days in extreme heat or cold to find what her team of scientists is looking for – patience is integral to discovery. Her discoveries include extinct species in fossils and new living species, as well as learning that dragonflies migrate around the globe – the wandering glider pantala flies further than the monarch butterfly – and other species circumnavigate the Arctic Circle. Working as part of an international team of 100 researchers, Jessica helped resolve the Insect Tree of Life, which found that insects ruled the land 400 million years ago. Expanding what is known about world biodiversity is paramount – as one of many examples, her research has nearly doubled the number of known dragonfly species in Ghana from 177 to more than 300.
“ Canada does not consist merely of cities and people. It consists of rocks, trees, water, muskeg, tundra, ice and snow.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Turner ’83
Like Jessica Ware, Paul “Harv” Wright ’70, knows patience. At the age of 60, he launched a second career as a nature and adventure sports photographer (wrightmoment.com) and was named the British Columbia 2011 Photographer of the Year. His Northern Gateway series highlighted the spirit bears and whales that would have been most impacted by the oil pipeline’s tanker traffic in a pristine area of British Columbia. Photos he didn’t provide to his Canadian Press contract, he gave pro-bono to governments and environmental groups disputing the project, which later was cancelled. “When we saw the spirit bears, that was about three days of sitting and waiting,” Harv recalls. “A lot of people might think it’s a horrendous thing to be in the middle of the forest with bears all around. But to me, it was a meditative wait – 90 per cent of the time you go to do wildlife photography and you see a chipmunk.” His photographs capture the essence of the wild West Coast – bald eagles, breaching whales and beautiful bears, as well as the adventurers who roam there: stoked surfers, longboarders charging down steep hills, rodeo riders and more. A retired orthopedic surgeon, he’s drawn to athletes – Harv was the 1998 Nagano Olympics Canadian team
Geologist Dr. Elizabeth Turner ’83 aspired to a life outside “playing in the dirt.” For 35 years, she spent her summers working from isolated camps and traipsing across spectacular outcrops in the high alpine of the Mackenzie Mountains – where glaciation exposed the underlying carbonate and sedimentary rocks in the Northwest Territories – and other locations across Canada’s North.
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“ In spite of, or because of, the challenges, the trip became one of the greatest memories of their lives…”
PHOTO: Paul “Harv” Wright ’70
BELOW: In 1971, Paul “Harv” Wright ’70 and Dave Lang ’70, P ’99 cycled 5,000 kilometres from Toronto to the Maritimes and back – here Dave is pictured at Percé Rock on the tip of Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula.
physician. “That’s more of an adventure than a seven-week canoe trip,” he says. “There are more difficulties, moment-by-moment and day-to-day. You become equipped to handle a responsibility like that from so many adventures over your lifetime – activities such as mountain climbing and winter ski touring – with logistics, difficulties, movement and making sure things go well, that all lead you to the adventure of being able to take care of the athletes in Nagano.” During his second career, he worked at the Olympics again, photographing the 2012 London Paralympics. Harv grew up directly across Bloor Street from UTS – one of his earliest adventures was escaping as a toddler for a tricycle ride au natural in front of Bloor Street United Church. He joined UTS in grade nine, and on the first day, came face to face with the lifelong friend who would become his partner in adventure, Dave Lang ’70, P ’99. Everybody had nicknames – Paul became “Harv” and Dave was “Langer” and soon both boys were going to Harv’s family cottage on Algonquin’s Smoke Lake and sharing overnight canoe adventures. They grew up, and their adventures grew bigger. At Western University in 1971, when they were 19, they cycled 5,000 kilometres from Toronto to the Maritimes and back, via the Gaspé Peninsula. They had only rudimentary panniers, wore jeans and used garbage bags as rain gear. Harv recalls,
RIGHT: When the snow melted, lifelong friends, Paul “Harv” Wright and Dave Lang were the first people to ascend the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana’s Glacier National Park in the 2009 summer season, as part of their 5,000-kilometre cycling journey from Vancouver B.C. to Dave’s farm near Mulmur, Ont.
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“We’d come into a little town in Nova Scotia, and we’d be like rock stars, and people would phone ahead that these kids were coming on bicycles – it was quite novel.” They didn’t see another cyclist for the entire trip. “Day after day after day in the Maritimes, it rained like crazy, and that was a little challenging,” says Dave. “We could see the water dripping off our helmets and we’d look at each other, and go, ‘Nice weather for ducks.’” In spite of, or because of, the challenges, the trip became one of the greatest memories of their lives, so much so that nearly 40 years later, they decided to complete their cross-continental cycling journey. At a pivotal time in their lives, they needed a monumental challenge. Dave was recovering from hip replacement surgery and Harv had just retired from his surgical career when they set out again in 2009, dipping their wheels in the Pacific Ocean, not far from Harv’s Vancouver home. En route, they cycled through the Kettle Valley Rail Trail in B.C. and the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana and much more. Fifty days and 5,000 kilometres later, they rode into Dave’s farm near Mulmur, Ont. to the cheering of family and friends. Long-distance cycling was just one of their many adventures together over the years, from ice climbing to backcountry ski touring in the Rockies to canoe camping and sailing. Dave Lang is an avid sailor; he and his wife Sally took their three young children on a two-year family cruise in 1989 and many sailing voyages since. In 2015, they acquired a 50-foot aluminum sloop called Yonder and spent three seasons sailing the entire West Coast of British Columbia, including hosting Harv on a trip from Port Hardy to Sydney, B.C.
In 2018, Dave, along with his son Rob, departed from Vancouver, B.C. to sail around the world in Yonder, picking up Rob’s wife and four-year-old son in Southern California. Over the next three years, they sailed west before leaving the boat in Cape Town, South Africa to return home for a break. In early March 2020, they flew back to complete the final 7,000mile voyage back to North America. When they left Cape Town on March 9, people were still eating out in restaurants, and they managed to set sail as pandemic lockdowns came into effect. Eleven days later, they reached the Atlantic Island of Saint Helena and were told they would need to quarantine for 14 days before they could come ashore. They pushed on, in an ocean devoid of boat and plane traffic. Finally, they were allowed in the U.S. Virgin Islands to reprovision, and ultimately arrived in Chesapeake Bay just as Tropical Storm Arthur began lashing the U.S. coast in mid-May. For Dave, it was another of many adventures in an off-the-beaten-track life. A retired cattle farmer, he has paddled hundreds of kilometres on the Mountain, Wind, Snake and Nahanni rivers in the Northwest Territories, and served on the board of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society for about 20 years. He’s canoed pretty much all of Algonquin Park – over 2,000 kilometres of lakes, rivers and portages. Now he just wants to see as much as he can of the planet in the time he has left. Dave can happily go solo for weeks but still canoes with Harv when both are in Ontario. Since graduation, Dave and Harv have been part of a UTS group called the Voyageurs that convened for outdoor adventure after graduation and continued to the present day: ski touring, sailing, sea kayaking and canoeing together. Members also included brothers Richard ’67, John ’69 and Rob ’72 Wright, Dr. Ken Roberts ’70, Al Broughton ’70, Ray Kinoshita ’70, Ron Gray ’69, Bruce McDougall ’69, Jay Fisher ’69, Stephen Stone ’70, David Sutherland ’70 and likely a few others along the way.
Now in their seventies, the trips are less ambitious – three years ago Harv and Dave canoed to Algonquin’s Biggar Lake with Ken, Al and Ray. (This fall, Ray, Al and Richard were back in Algonquin on the 51st annual trip of the group!) Alex Hutchinson also made his first foray into adventure sports at age 15 in the company of UTS friends Sam Robinson ’93 and Richard Roze ’93. “We plotted out, what was in hindsight, an incredibly ambitious and nonsensically difficult route through Algonquin when UTS got out in June, at the height of blackfly and mosquito season,” he recalls. “We didn’t even know what we didn’t know. We didn’t know how to cook. So we packed bags of onions and potatoes and carrots and stuff so heavy I had to get two people to lift my pack onto my back.” On the very first portage, a grouse charged him, making Alex fall backwards to the ground with his pack on, needing his friends to pull him back to his feet. “That’s probably the hardest trip I’ve ever done,” he recalls. “Sometimes we were finishing in the dark, finding a campsite by flashlight and having trail mix for dinner. And I just loved it. It was life‑changing. One of the things that connected with me was that it was so hard and challenging. Our decisions had consequences. It was just such an amazing adventure.” The irresistible allure of the unknown drew him in, just like the other alumni featured in this article. They were driven to explore and see what’s down that trail, set out on uncharted waters and even seek out the essence of time itself. And in doing so, they travelled beyond the beaten path to step bravely forward into their futures. ■
For more than half a century, a group of UTS alumni loosely labelled the Voyageurs have convened for canoeing and other outdoor adventures. Pictured at Algonquin Park’s Biggar Lake in 2022 are five of its members: Dr. Ken Roberts ’70, Paul “Harv” Wright ’70, Al Broughton ’70, Ray Kinoshita ’70 and Dave Lang ’70, P ’99. CENTRE: Grizzly bear cub in Khutzymateen Inlet, B.C by Paul “Harv” Wright.
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ALUMNI NEWS
Notes on the milestones and achievements in the lives of our alumni. There are plenty of ways to stay in touch! connect.utschools.ca alumni@utschools.ca @utschools @utschools University of Toronto Schools
// When prosecuting difficult and challenging crimes, Assistant Crown Attorney Emile Carrington ’85 lives by his ideals and works to treat all individuals fairly and equitably, with empathy and compassion, giving consideration to those from underprivileged communities. For his efforts in the courtroom and the community, he received the honour of the Ontario Crown Attorneys’ Association (OCAA) 2025 Rupert Ross Award for Excellence in, and Commitment to, the Enhancement of Social Justice. A founding member of the OCAA’s Committee of Diversity and Inclusion, Emile volunteered extensively in the Black community and supported and mentored his up-and-coming peers, with high ethical ideals permeating all aspects of his work. He has also been an advocate for mental health in the legal profession.
Former Toronto Argonaut and UTS staff member, Nick Volpe, was added posthumously to the Canadian Football League club’s All-Time Argos list this summer. Nick played for the Argos from 1949 to 1952, helping them win Grey Cup titles in 1950 and 1952, and kicking two field goals in the epic 1950 Mud Bowl 13-0 win over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. At UTS from 1965 to 1967, Nick was a revered football and track and field coach. Later he became a superintendent with the Peel Board of Education. In 1988, he returned to the Argos in several capacities, including as head of Canadian scouting. Nick was part of seven Grey Cup championships
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with the franchise and held the distinction of never losing a Grey Cup. Graham Yost ’76 is
executive producing Legacy of Spies, a new TV series based on John le Carré’s novels featuring the career intelligence officer George Smiley. The series will star Emmy winner Matthew Macfadyen from Succession. Michaela Donnelly, K.C. ’88 earned the
King’s Counsel designation in 2024 for making exception contributions to the legal profession in British Columbia. A senior trial counsel with the B.C. Prosecution Service, she specializes in major crime prosecutions, such as homicide and dangerous-offender applications. She is a recognized expert on issues related to not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder,
providing training for prosecutors and police. Michaela is deeply committed to legal education, mentorship and community service. She also serves on the Prosecution Service’s Gender Equity and Advancement Committee, focusing on improving equity and opportunities for women in the legal profession. She is pictured with her daughter, Sara. For her extraordinary contributions and outstanding work as a lawyer, Jennifer Suess, OOnt ’94
has been recognized with Ontario’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Ontario. As the first general counsel and corporate secretary in the 30-year history of RioCan, she led transformative initiatives that have helped to reshape the internal workplace culture of a business that has considerable impact on the Ontario and Canadian economies. She also founded the Women’s Initiative Network focused on the advancement of women in commercial real estate. Deeply involved with charitable organizations, including the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), she helped raise over
Alumni News
// The Globe and Mail featured Jason Shron ’93 and his business Rapido Trains this May, describing the impact of Trump administration tariffs on a Canadian small business. With 75 per cent of his model train sales coming from American customers, and his product manufactured in China and exported directly to the U.S., his business faced intense pressure. In response, Jason and Rapido co-founded the Hobby Industry Coalition to lobby against increased U.S. tariffs that threaten the industry. His company bought a warehouse in Buffalo and expanded its American operations, and became a major player in the British model railway market with an office and warehouse in Kent, England. Rapido has also launched new models of Toronto’s original red subways and Canadian Light Rail Vehicle streetcars, and founded the VIA Historical Association, which is working with VIA Rail Canada to restore and operate a heritage train for VIA’s 50th anniversary in 2028. Jason has still found some time for fun – buying and restoring a vintage 1970s GO Bus, because, in his words, “being a nerd means making time for buses as well as trains.”
$20 million and initiated strategies to improve healthcare access. Emma Jenkin ’03, senior
communications officer at UTS, won the Best Story in Canada from Interactive Schools for her social media video storytelling, Spring is in the Air with our Mandarin Class, featuring Teacher Dan Chen’s students with cut-out Chinese calligraphic characters in front of the cherry blossoms on the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus. She also received an Honourable Mention internationally. “There’s nothing better than using creativity to tell stories that truly resonate with our community,” she says. Three years ago Emily Luk ’11 had a vision of building the next generation
of a financial services company – a one-stop shop for everyday families. She launched the online platform Plenty with her partner (in business and life), CTO Channing Allen. Now the company has been acquired by Wealthsimple. She thanks her first backer and board member Chris Arsenault for the invaluable advice: “When in doubt, be generous.” Alexander Grynszpan ’13
was named to York University’s Top 30 Alumni Under 30 for his work dedicated to creating positive change. A corporate lawyer based in New York, he maintains a broad cross-border capital markets practice. Alexander’s academic and early professional career spanned multiple continents, including roles with leading law firms in the U.S. and Canada, an internship with the United Nations in Argentina and a study abroad period in Austria. A dedicated advocate, he combines his legal and business expertise to act for corporate clients and sovereign entities in complex
Jason and his daughter, Dalya, consecrate Rapido’s new Buffalo warehouse by installing a mezuzah on the doorpost.
transactions, while also actively engaging with international non-governmental organizations to assist unaccompanied children and asylum seekers in pursuing legal status in the U.S. Shreya Jha ’16
premiered her new musical, The Last Piece, at the SheNYC arts festival in New York City. The show depicts a separated couple who are brought together again when the ex-husband is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Another of her musicals, Connections, which was choreographed by her sister, Vedika Jha ’20, played at Toronto’s Theatre Centre in September. Trinity Chung ’24
received the Donald Choi Canada Award of Excellence from the Korean Canadian Scholarship Foundation – a $30,000 scholarship that honours academic excellence, leadership and community service. She is currently a student in the honours specialization in politics, philosophy and economics at Western University. THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Alumni News
IN THE MEDIA Nobel laureate and economist Dr. Michael Spence ’62
penned an article in May for Project Syndicate, a global news source featuring prominent leaders in their fields, on the short-term and long-term economic consequences of the Trump administration’s tariffs. “As long as other countries (accounting for three-quarters of the global economy) continue to trade freely with one another – while potentially wielding retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. – the damage can be largely contained,” he wrote. The long-term impacts include a gradual loss of influence for the U.S. as countries update their strategies for resilience and security, and diversify their trade and potentially foreign investment away from the U.S. The defunding of science and technology research may lead to a “brain-drain” in the U.S. He notes the shape of global governance may change as well, as countries engage in a “new, more complex multilateralism” with little input from the U.S. Rhodes Scholar Geza Tatrallyay ’67,
was interviewed by the Rhodes Trust as part of its Oral History Project about his life experiences, including attending Harvard, Oxford
and the London School of Economics, and about his time at UTS. “High school was a bit of a life-changer for me – UTS is a wonderful school, one of the best in Toronto and has produced 21 Rhodes Scholars,” he said. “It allowed me to study other languages. I loved my English literature teachers who were very inspiring… And they offered fencing…” After learning how to fence at UTS, Geza began fencing more seriously, and competed at the 1976 Olympics. He also describes becoming school captain, and how students were increasingly advocating for girls to attend the school. After a career in finance, he is now an author of 19 books, including thrillers, memoirs, poetry and more. Esteemed China historian Professor Timothy Brook ’69,
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Stage Two Interviews – Alumni Volunteers Needed UTS Contact Rebecca.Harrison@utschools.ca
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Leslie Barcza ’73, P ’02 shared an
interview on his Barczablog with former UTS Music Teacher Ron Royer, composer and artistic director at the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra. While Leslie did not have Ron as a teacher, he says, “The closer I looked, the more I admired the work Ron was doing in my community. Yet Ron is so modest about the life he had before arriving here, his amazing experiences.” The interview delves into Ron’s time in Los Angeles as a gigging cellist, working in film, television and much more. In October, Leslie also blogged about violinist Conrad Chow ’99, who appeared in the recent Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra concert Voyages, and was a student of Ron’s.
a professor emeritus in the department of history at the University of British Columbia, is writing book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. His March review of Justin Jacobs’ book, Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures, begins: “How rare it is for an author to upend a common view and retell history in defiance of fashionable ideas – and to do so with ease and flair!” Later this year, his review of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s book entitled Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found will be published – Tim is also the author of the book, Vermeer’s Hat. In 2022, Tim was elected as a corresponding fellow to the
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British Academy, for his distinction in the humanities and social sciences.
TOP:Leslie Barcza ’73, P ’02 and Conrad Chow ’99. BOTTOM: Ron Royer.
Paul Tough ’85
made the cover of the New York Times Magazine with his article: “Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong?” He
Alumni News
reported that a new model looks at Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (A.D.H.D.) differently – not as a disorder children have, but a condition they might sometimes experience, temporarily. He also noted that the positive impact of medications wears off after 36 months and improving a child’s environment can have a major impact on symptoms. Rev. Canon Dr. Alison Falby ’90 led The Way of the Cross on Good Friday, drawing attention to the opioid epidemic in downtown Toronto, with walkers stopping to pray at locations where people died of opioid overdoses. The walk began and finished at All Saints Church-Community Centre, where she was the priest-director, highlighting the epidemic as supervised consumption sites were closed in Toronto. (Her work was featured in the Spring 2024 issue of The Root.) This September, Alison took on a new role as the incumbent at Christ Church Deer Park in Toronto.
stepped forward to donate his liver and Jordan provided care for Fraser’s complex and multi-faceted medical challenges, leading to the transplant that saved Fraser’s life. The experience is captured in Fraser’s new documentary, Thanks for the Liver, giving Jordan his film debut. Ilya Kreynin ’14
provided a young renter’s perspective in support of sixplexes as a mid-point between condo towers and single-family homes at a Toronto City Council Planning and Housing Committee meeting on zoning this summer though the organization More Neighbours Toronto. Then he was featured on CBC’s Metro Morning. “For me and many of my friends my age, it’s most important to live in community and around people I love and care about and be able to live without a car, than it is to have more yardage,” he told CBC. He is also a product manager at Civic Dashboard, which aims to advance democracy in our city.
LITERARY NEWS The Washington Independent Review of Books describes the new translation of Fragments of a Paradise by Paul Eprile ’72
A physician’s advocacy can mean the difference between life or death. Hepatologist
as “superb.” The poetic seafaring tale, written in 1944 by pacifist Jean Giono, a survivor of World
War I, was featured in the Times Literary Supplement this spring. Dr. Sarah Hamilton ’81, professor of
oboe at the State University of New York at Fredonia, co-created a new book, 12 Soonto-be-FamousStudies for Oboe, published by Conway Publishing. The studies, intended for high school and younger college level students, are written by contemporary living composers, including one that she wrote, signifying her public debut as a composer. The project was funded by a Canada Council grant. Andrea Freeman ’86,
who pioneered the term “food oppression,” has won the LA Times Book Prize for History for her book, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch. The book provides the first and definitive history of the use of food in U.S. law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, starting with George Washington’s 1779 order for troops to subjugate Indigenous nations: “ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.” Her book also won the 2025 James Beard Foundation Book Award in the food issues and advocacy category.
Dr. Jordan Feld ’91
treated Fraser Allan Best, son of UTS alumnus David Allan ’78, for glycogen storage disease type 1b, which prevents the liver from producing essential sugars the body needs to function between meals. At 27, Fraser needed a new liver or he would die. A friend from U of T THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Alumni News
ALUMNI APPEARANCES
Dan Rubinstein ’91
released his latest book, Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, this spring, exploring the healing potential of “blue space” while travelling 2,000-kilometres on his standup paddleboard from Ottawa to Montreal to New York City and back via Toronto and Lake Ontario. Read more in the feature article on page 13. He is also the author of Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act. Dr. Adam Chapnick ’94, a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, appeared last spring on TVO’s The Agenda, discussing the question: “Will Foreign Policy Shape Canada’s 2025 Election?” He is the co-author of a new book, Canada First,
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Not Canada Alone, released in 2024 by Oxford University Press. Memory becomes a form of capitalism in the new novel by Yiming Ma ’07, These Memories Do Not Belong To Us, set in a future where China is the sole global superpower, called Qin. The unnamed narrator inherits a collection of dangerous memories from his mother’s mindbank and becomes determined to release them to the world, before they are destroyed forever. The novel masterfully explores how governments and media manipulate history to control the collective imagination. Publishers Weekly said, “Ma bravely and lucidly portrays how an authoritarian regime seeks to control people’s minds and how people’s lives can be commodified by technology.”
Using the poetic words of Yeats, Salvator Cusimano ’08 , gave the opening keynote at the 52nd Southern Ontario Model United Nations Assembly (SOMA) in April at UTS. Salvator, who has worked for the United Nations since 2015, spoke about how the role of the UN and delegates at SOMA is to “hold the centre” – create space at the centre of conflicts to bring people to a place where they can talk and work out their differences. Dr. Morgan Ring ’07, director of Cabinet Affairs and Corporate Governance at Natural Resources Canada (and longtime proofreader of The Root), delivered the closing keynote. “In coming here and being part of a delegation, you’ve been asked to imagine that you are somebody else and to approach the world from a different perspective. That’s a skill, and it’s an important one… It’s about empathy and openness and curiosity, and for people who want to work on world issues, I don’t believe that there are any more important qualities.”
Alumni News
// At this year’s Global Ideas Institute, 141 students from 21 schools grappled in their teams with the challenge: “How can we bridge the digital divide and ensure equitable access to digital technologies, particularly in underserved communities and developing nations?” Director Samaa Kazerouni Shah ’14 told students that the ideas they’ve developed here are more than just academic exercises – they have the potential to shape real-world solutions. “The digital divide is a hard problem. Like many global challenges, it’s easy to ignore, especially if we’re not directly affected by it. The harder and more courageous thing is to step up and to try to do something, and that’s exactly what you’ve done, and I hope that that’s a habit that stays with you for a long time after today,” she said. The Institute, which is a program of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, runs in partnership with UTS and with support from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Avanti Ramachandran ’09, president of the UTS Alumni Association (UTSAA), shared her words of wisdom with the Class of 2025 at their Graduation lunch, held at University of Toronto’s Hart House Great Hall, and welcomed the newest members to the UTSAA during the Graduation ceremony.
ALUMNI EVENTS This spring, 21 players hit the ice for some friendly rivalry (with a few gentle chirps!) at the UTSAA Alumni Hockey Match. After the game, the fun continued at the Duke of York with some off-ice banter for those inclined to keep it beer‑league play. In June, a group of 28 alumni hit the links for the UTSAA Golf Tournament
at Richmond Hill Golf Club. The players were joined on the course by Vice Principal of Student Life Garry Kollins, UTS Biology and AP Research Teacher Alan Kraguljac and M3 (grade 9) students Stella and Jessica. The team of John Collins ’68, Alan Kraguljac, Tom MacMillan ’67 and Bruce McKelvey ’67 came out on top in the scramble-format tournament.
WHAT’S NEW WITH YOU? The Root would love to hear from you at alumni@utschools.ca
(Moving? Please share your new address and contact info with us so we can keep in touch!) ABOVE: UTSAA Alumni Hockey Match. BELOW: UTSAA Golf Tournament.
THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Alumni News
An opening reception for the evocative Keys Gallery exhibit Facial Expressions, featuring portrait works by retired UTS art teacher Don Boutros and Kim-Lee Kho ’81 , took place in May. Several former students of Don Boutros and classmates of Kim-Lee attended.
The Forge restaurant in Gastown, for a night of conversation, connection and community.
REUNIONS Retired UTS staff members gathered for the annual Retired Staff Luncheon in
May, reminiscing and sharing their fond memories of our school. The Class of 1955 is going strong: 19 members convened at the Donalda Club on September 11 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their graduation!
Over 50 alumni gathered virtually to prove their trivia prowess at the UTSAA Virtual Trivia Night in September, hosted by UTS Teacher Jon Bitidis ’99 and supported by student volunteers. After a competitive contest, The Brockheads, consisting of John Bertram ’73, Jeffrey Clayton ’73, Jim McGarva ’03, Rick Spence ’73, Dan Taranu ’03 and Bill Wilkins ’73, emerged victorious.
ABOVE: Vancouver UTS Alumni Branch Event. BELOW: Retired Staff Luncheon.
A Gift for All the Ages! Vancouver may be on the other side of the country, but UTS alumni there maintain a strong interest in the current happenings of our school. At the
UTS baby
• UTS students and alumni
Vancouver UTS Alumni Branch Event in April, Principal Dr. Leanne Foster
and Executive Director, Advancement, Martha Drake fielded questions from
alumni, delighted by their sheer curiosity about our students and school today. Alumni ranging from the classes of 1970 to 2024 gathered together at 26
THE ROOT | FALL 2025
shop.utschools.ca
Alumni News
// Then and now... The Class of 1973 Road Hockey meet up. Ever since graduation, a cadre of members from the Class of 1973 have met up in the fall for an annual road hockey game. This spring, the group met for their 50th anniversary game (they missed a couple of years due to the Covid-19 pandemic). Eight Class of 1973 grads appear in both pictures! One who has passed away, John Chidley-Hill (with the big moustache), is represented in 2025 by his son, John Chidley-Hill (baseball cap, front row) and Rick Spence’s son Harrison is pictured on the left. Great game, everyone!
“Remember those days? The class photo meant that we all had to line up by the east doors for the classic photo each year. Can you tell that the folks are just a wee bit older now?” wrote Bob Killey ’62 . At their June gathering, 19 members of the Class of 1962 recreated the class photo experience, at an event hosted by Andrew Clarke ’62 . Thirty members of the Class of 1965 toured UTS and attended a reception at
the Faculty Club in June to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their graduation. UTS Principal Dr. Leanne Foster; Executive Director, Advancement, Martha Drake; and Alumni Advancement Officer Rebecca Harrison welcomed them at the school, and two students led them on a tour of our renewed facilities. SOCs reunite! Aria Nath ’24 reports that the student outreach coordinators from 2022–23 met up at Robert Street Field
before heading out for summer jobs and work terms across the country. Below left to right: Fiona Wells ’23, who studies English literature and political science at McGill University, had a summer role at the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (she is now their ombudsperson); Aria was going to work in marketing for Lerners Lawyers in London, Ont. and now works there part-time while attending Western University; Curtis Yeung ’23 was off to the second half of his second year studying biomedical engineering at Waterloo University; and Maya Spence ’23, now in the third year of UBC’s integrated engineering program, had a work term at Vancouver startup Xergy Technology, where she worked on product design and management for wearable robotics (exoskeletons).
TOP: Class of 1955. BOTTOM: Class of 1962. BOTTOM RIGHT: Student outreach coordinators reunite.
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Alumni News
IN MEMORIAM
J. DRUMMOND GRIEVE ’38 1920–2025 He is the end of an era. J. Drummond Grieve, our school’s oldest alumnus, passed away at the age of 105, a month after celebrating his birthday with a large party, where he delivered a rousing speech. Drummond was also the last surviving Second World War officer of the British Parachute Regiment, and as such, a cross in his name was laid at Westminster Abbey in November at the Field of Remembrance. His family remembers him as a raconteur with a wonderful sense of humour, his public speaking skills honed by a 60-year-plus membership in the Tuesday Night Club, a group founded by fellow students in the Class of 1938.
DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT
This year, for a limited time, you can unlock matching funds (1:1 match with total $1.5 million funds available), providing a life-changing experience for UTS students.
Make your gift now at utschools.ca/donate or scan the QR code!
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THE ROOT | FALL 2025
For his career, he became a chartered accountant and a partner with KPMG in Toronto, after earning his bachelor of commerce at the University of Toronto. Upon his retirement, he became a Director of two Schedule II Banks and finally stopped working at the age of 75. Drummond joined the Canadian Army in 1942, serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, and in October 1944 volunteered for the British Parachute Regiment, 6th Airborne Division as a signals officer. He took part in the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Varsity, the largest one-day airborne operation in history, parachuting into Germany near the Rhine River. He marched across Germany as the Germans retreated at the end of the war. Immediately upon his return home from the army in February 1946, he
married Irene Macneil and they enjoyed 74 happy years together before she passed away in 2020. They leave behind three children, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A man of many enthusiasms, Drummond was an avid golfer, playing at the Oakville Golf Club until age 101. During retirement winters in Palm Springs, California, he took up tennis. He was also a snooker and squash player, fisherman, skier, amateur carpenter, ice boater and gardener, and spent many happy weekends skiing and golfing together with his children. In 2005, he returned to UTS to attend our annual Remembrance Day Ceremony. He also kept the memories of the war and what it meant alive by sharing his story with the Juno Beach Centre.
Alumni News
TIM HALDERSON ’66 1947–2024 Tim Halderson
is remembered in Rockland, Ont. and in the Ottawa policing community as an exceptional and ethical man who made a positive contribution in all his life, throughout his policing career and his community service during his retirement. At UTS, Tim was a proud member of Lewis House, serving as junior prefect and in other leadership roles before being elected school captain in September 1965. He was a member of two championship football teams, and team captain in 1965. He also played on the junior and senior basketball teams. After UTS, Tim attended Princeton for two years but returned to complete his degree at York University where I was playing both football and basketball. In our third and fourth years there, he attended some of my games. He went to the Montessori Training Centre in Italy before deciding on policing as a career. Joining the Ontario Provincial Police first, he was posted to Rockland, Ontario in 1973. There he met and married Christine Tencarre, and decided to transfer to local policing, retiring from the Ottawa Police Services as a staff sergeant after a 35-year career. Christine passed away in November 2019 and they are survived by their son Curtis and grandson Adam. On a personal note, Tim was my best friend at UTS, and our friendship lasted a lifetime. We met in 1958 in Grade 6 at Glen Rush Boulevard Public School, and people were impressed that two classmates were among the 35 boys admitted to UTS for the next year. For many years, we rode home together on the same TTC bus after football and basketball practices and games. We were teammates. We both played golf. In fact, Tim brought his golf clubs with him in 1974 when he visited me in my first United Church ministry appointment
serving francophone congregations in the St. Maurice Valley. We both enjoyed being fluently bilingual thanks to our excellent UTS education; and we enjoyed playing Jean Chretien’s Grand-Mère Golf Club. My clergy and university teaching careers also kept me in the Ottawa area, so we were able to stay connected through the ages and stages of life. We drove together to and from the 2006 alumni event marking our 40th anniversary of graduation, enjoying hours of conversation about our parents and siblings, spouses and children; but we were never able to organize such an extended conversation again. Catching up over lunch had to suffice. Covid-19, health issues, family life, volunteer activities and life got in the way. But we were friends for more than 65 years. Even though Tim had been living with a chronic condition in the few years before his passing, he was active in his retirement, volunteering with his church and Canadian Blood Services. He attended local Ottawa UTS alumni gettogethers when he could. The end came quickly and far too soon but he lives on in our memories. – Rev. Tom Sherwood ’66
JOHN JAMES LYON HUNTER, K.C. ’67 1949–2025 John Hunter’s UTS years were formative. He referred to them often and fondly, and contributed financially to the school. A first-class student, he attended Yale University after UTS. He was also a multi-talented athlete at UTS, taking part in basketball, football and track and field. In his graduating year, John was prefect of Althouse. John excelled at just about everything he put his mind to (except golf), from his UTS high school days to the end of a long and distinguished career in law. He was a first-class lawyer and a wonderful family man with his wife Rebecca, whom he met at University of Toronto Law
School, and his three children, Claire, Gillian and Rob. A collector of wine and Indigenous art, he was also a reader of many books, especially about the law. He enjoyed boating, classical music, travel and following the fortunes of the Seattle Seahawks. After graduating from law school in 1977, he and Rebecca lived in Vancouver where John became one of B.C.’s most respected lawyers, designated to the Queen’s Counsel in 1994. After practising with a large firm, he established a smaller firm with several colleagues called Hunter Litigation Chambers. He was much in demand by private clients and governments and appeared many times before the highest courts in B.C. and the Supreme Court of Canada. John frequently insisted he never wanted to be a judge because he was having too much fun practising law but changed his mind and became a member of the BC Court of Appeal in 2017. His legal work was widely hailed, witness to which was his presidency of the Law Society of British Columbia and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. He received the Law Society Award for lifetime contributions to the legal profession. Perhaps this is a cliché, but he was a lawyer’s lawyer. – Jeffrey Simpson, O.C. ’67
What will you do? To designate UTS in your will or as a designation for memorial gifts, please contact Martha Drake, Executive Director, Advancement. • 416-946-0097 • mdrake@utschools.ca
THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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ANNUAL DONOR REPORT In this report we acknowledge donors who made their gifts from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. We make every effort to ensure the accuracy of information. If you find an error or wish to have your name recognized differently, please contact the Office of Advancement: call 416‑978-3919 or email advancement@utschools.ca. ★ Donors who have given for ten or more consecutive years Donors who have given between five and nine consecutive years ♥ Monthly Donors
Almost every day something magical happens at this school and I become awestruck by the sheer ingenuity and intellectual daring of our students – it’s always inspiring and all made possible thanks to your enduring generosity. Your contributions bring the UTS mission of igniting the brightest minds to make a difference in the world to life in a magnitude of ways. Thank you to the 833 alumni, parents, staff, students and friends who collectively donated over $2.1 million dollars this year to benefit UTS students. Of that, $1.1 million went to support the UTS Bursary Fund. Because of your kindness, more bursaries were awarded to more students than ever before, significantly increasing access to a UTS education, which is vital to our mission. A special thank you to the UTS Arbor Society members, who demonstrate their deep care for our school by committing legacy gifts that will go on to support UTS beyond their lifetimes. Thank you to all our generous donors for your unwavering support of our school. Because of you, we continue to advance our longstanding tradition of academic excellence and grow as a global leader in education – empowering our students to reach their full potential and shape a better future. – UTS Principal Dr. Leanne Foster
THE DOUBLE BLUE & WHITE CIRCLE Our thanks to the members of the UTS community who contributed $5,000 or more. This recognition circle honours and celebrates the school’s colours and spirit and these generous donors.
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Steven ’77 & Gita Alizadeh, P ’15, ’17, ’20, ’22
Sheldon Szeto & Flora Chen P ’21, ’23, ’26
Ian Ferguson ’73
Xiang Han Max Bai ’16
Priscilla Chong P’ 98
Gordon ’42
Zain Bhamjee & Iram Bhatti P ’20
James S. Coatsworth ’69
Peter L. Buzzi ’77
Margaret Graham ’89 & Andre D’Elia, P ’27, ’31
Kwong Chan & Tina Louie P ’28
Estate of H. Donald Gutteridge
Estate of Robert Geoffrey P. Diane Hamilton ’85 B & B Hamilton Fund at Toronto Foundation Robert W. Hoke ’66
Annual Donor Report
Robert P. Jacob ’60, P ’88, ’90 Robert Janson & Charlie Janson P ’29
Susan McCloy J.A. (Sandy) McIntyre ’71 Robert McMurtry, C.M. ’59
Patrick Kaifosh ’06
Kit Moore ’58
C. Stuart Kent ’79
Mark & Peri Peters P ’16, ’19
Yonghyun Kim & Jiah Kim P ’30
Bob Reeves & Carolyn Blaine P ’27
W. L. Mackenzie King ’59
Mark Shuper ’88
Bowen Lew & Susan Song P ’27
Andrew G. Spence ’88
Robert Lord ’58 and Patricia Lord
Allan G. Toguri ’62
William Stinson ’51
Dr. Grant Lum ’85
John Wilkinson ’78
Robert Martin ’74 Sam Mathi P ’18, ’20, ’22
Pamela Y. W. Wong ’98 & Gabriel Woo, P ’28, ’31
Dena McCallum ’82
Anonymous (3)
THE 1910 CLUB Our thanks to the members of the UTS community who contributed between $1,910 and $4,999. This recognition honours and celebrates the year the school was founded and these generous donors.
Philip Arrowsmith ’48
Ajay Garg and Tian Zhou P ’23
Nathaniel Baum-Snow & Elnaz Alipour P ’28
Barry Graham ’59, P ’89, ’92, GP ’27, ’31
Marcel Behr ’81
David S. Grant ’72
J. Nicholas Boland ’79
Vanessa Grant ’80 & Philip Street
Dr. Jan Ahuja ’68
John Bowden ’48 & Lois Bowden, P ’79
Elizabeth Herz-MacInnis ’82
Suzanne Martin ’84 & Michael Martin ’84, P ’11, ’15 Sean Mason & Christine Wong P ’25 Bernie McGarva ’72, P ’03 Lily McGregor Donald McMaster ’62
Andrew Brack ’90
Andre ’77 & Jocelyn Hidi
Michael Broadhurst ’88 & Victoria Shen ’93
Richard Moen & Martha Moen P ’28
Yong Hu & Xiao Dan Jia P ’28
Daniel Omoto & Janice Wong P ’29
The Jha Family
O’Neil Léger Family Foundation
Dezhong Chen & Xuping Zhang P ’27 Felicia Y. Chiu ’96
Xiaoyi Ji & Chen Qu P ’27
William Chow & Anita Lo P ’26
Xiangren Jiang & Dan Peng P ’30
David Colbert ’81
Navin Joneja & Gemma Joneja P ’24, ’29
John ’61 & Margaret Coleman
Harrison F. Keenan ’94
William J. Corcoran ’51
Susan Kitchell P ’01
Jim Cornell ’64
Gordon E. Legge ’67
Ronald Davies ’70
Danielle LiChong P ’16, ’18, ’20
Douglas Davis ’58 & Janet Davis, P ’87 Kevin Davis ’87 Martha Drake Leanne Foster & Dan Hill
Michael Ling & Karen Chan ’91, P’ 22, ’24 Salim Maherali & Shabin Nanji P ’29
Elizabeth Straszynski & Chris Wilson Earl Stuart ’83 Bing Chen & Yehua Su P ’27 Donny Surtani & Nilima Gulrajani P ’29, ’31 The CIRCLE lab Susan Tough ’82 Robert Waddell ’57 David Walker ’84 Bing Wang & Zheng Yao P ’26 Jannis Mei ’13
Jeremy Opolsky ’03
Gang Wei & Kui Ren P ’28
Simon Palmer & Hua Lin P ’25
David & Alla Weintraub P ’18, ’24
Robert Pampe, M.D. ’63
Robert S. Weiss ’62
Kim R. Persky ’80
Chunlei Wu & Yaling Yin
Preeti Raman P ’25
Song Yin and Wen Yan P ’29
David Rounthwaite ’65 & Leith Hunter, P ’01 Hon. William J. Saunderson FCA ’52 & Meredith Saunderson Hedy & Tim ’78 Sellers
Mark Yarranton & Patricia Foran P ’13 Jianghong Wen & Jing Zhang P ’27
Nicholas Smith ’63
Yanfeng Zhang & Hong Liu P ’25
David G. Stinson ’70
Anonymous (5) THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Annual Donor Report
ALUMNI 1942–1949
Gordon R. Sellery ★ Gabriel Warren ★
John & Madelyn Sloane P ’86
Gregor McGregor
$90,125.24 Estate of Robert Geoffrey Gordon ’42
Donald Wood
Jim Stronach ★
Robert Pampe, M.D. ★
Tibor A. Szandtner
George Trusler ’44
1955–1957
Michael M. Parmenter
Bruce Bone ’46 ★
$7,520.00 Harold Atwood ’55 ★
Ian M. Thompson
Nicholas Smith ★
David H. Wishart ’46 Douglas Kent ’47, P ’73, ’79, ’81 ★
John Gardner ’55, P ’83 ★
Tracy H Lloyd ’47 ★
Anthony Morrison ’55 ★
Philip Arrowsmith ’48
H. Thomas Sanderson ’55 ★ ♥
John A. Bowden ’48, P ’79 ★ John W. Thomson ’48 Richard D. Tafel ’49 ★
1950–1953 $15,746.00 Gilbert “Bud” Alexander ’50 ★
William Hunter ’55 ★
David H. Morgan
Anonymous ★ ♥
1960–1961 $15,102.26 John R.D. Fowell ’60 ★
1964
Robert P. Jacob ’60, P ’88, ’90
$4,804.20 J. David Beattie P ’00, ’02 ♥
Bruce Moyle ’60
Jim Cornell ★
John L. Duerdoth ’56 ★
Peter C. Nicoll ’60 ★
Collin M. Craig ★
Stephens B. Lowden ’56
Malcolm Nourse ’60 ★
Paul T. Fisher
Charles F. T. Snelling ’56
Douglas Rutherford ’60
William R. Jones ★ ♥
Peter F. Stanley ’56 ★
R. Dale Taylor ’60
Jeffrey R. Rose P ’03 ★
Robert Darling ’57 ★ ♥
John ’61 & Margaret Coleman ★
Michael Ross
Michael Locke ’57 Donald Van Every ’57
David J. Holdsworth ’61 ★ Jon R. Johnson ’61
George Swift ★ Joe Vaughan ★ Anonymous
J. Michael Gee, Q.C. ’50
Robert Waddell ’57 ★
John Shaw ’50 ★
1958
Katherine & Paul Manley ’61 ★ ♥
J. Alexander Lowden ’51 ★
$62,612.05 Douglas Davis P ’87 ★
Michael Schwartz ’61 ★ James E. Shaw ’61 ★
$28,357.70 Robert A. Cumming ’65 ★
William W. Stinson ’51 ★
Arthur D. Elliott ★
Michael Tinkler ’61
Leland J. Davies ’65
John Hurlburt ’52
Richard Farr ★
Hon. William J. Saunderson, FCA ’52 & Meredith Saunderson ★
Brian Hayes ★
William J. Corcoran ’51 ★
Estate of John Hugh Westren ’52 William P. Lett ’53 ★ James C. Mainprize ’53 Alan E. Morson ’53, P ’79 ★ William E. Rogan ’53 ★ Robert E. Saunders ’53 ★
Terence Keenleyside William G. Leggett Robert Lord ’58 & Patricia Lord ★ Kit Moore David Ouchterlony ★ ♥ James M. Spence P ’88 Barry N. Wilson ★
David Hetherington ’65
1962 $16,943.28 John Fauquier ♥ John Hetherington Kirby Keyser Donald A. Laing Donald McMaster
Bryce Taylor, C.M.
Ian Gentles, PhD
William A. MacKay ’66 ★
Dave Sanderson ’66
1954
John M. Goodings ★
Robert W. Hoke ’66
Michael A. Peterman A. Michael Spence
H. Don Borthwick ★
David Rounthwaite ’65, P ’01 ★
John S. Rogers ’66 & Sherrill M. Rogers ★
$111,441.78 David Ashley Alexander Furness
Anthony J. Reid ’65
David S. Milne ★
1959
Donald G. Bell ★ ♥
Karl E. Lyon ’65
Jeffrey R. Stutz ’65 ★
Robert Kidd
Douglas R. Wilson ’53 ★
$4,138.00 W. G. Black, C.A.
1965–1966
Wayne D. Thornbrough Allan G. Toguri Robert S. Weiss ★ Anonymous ★
1967 $10,055.00 David Amos Donald Ball Peter Best George B. Boddington ★
James Lowden
Barry Graham P ’89, ’92, GP ’27, ’31
James MacDougall
W. L. Mackenzie King
D. Keith Millar ★
Terence S. W. Lee
$5,995.00 Terry Bates
John D. Murray ★
Robert McMurtry, C.M.
James Fowell ★
Patrick Flynn
William Redrupp ★
Ian A. Shaw
Peter H. Frost ★
Gordon E. Legge
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Richard J. G. Boxer ★
1963
Michael R. Curtis ★ ♥
Richard N. Donaldson ★ ♥
Annual Donor Report
Tom MacMillan GP ’29, ’31 Bruce McKelvey Bruce Miller W. Scott Morgan ★ ♥ Peter C. Ortved ★ Jeffrey Simpson, O.C.
Because of you, UTS students ascend to new heights…
1968–1969 $13,319.63 Dr. Jan Ahuja ’68 Paul Burke ’68 John Collins ’68 John Bohnen ’69 ★ William J. Bowden ’69 James S. Coatsworth ’69 ★ John B. Deacon ’69 Michael Disney ’69 Stephen C. Farris ’69 ★ David Gibson ’69 Frederick R. E. Heath ’69 ★ Robert J. Herman ’69 ★ Nicholas Le Pan ’69 ★ ♥ David Gordon White ’69 Anonymous ’69
1970 $6,898.25
…and take leaps of faith.
Ronald Davies Doug Donald ★ Ray Kinoshita Brian D. Koffman David G. Stinson ★
1971 $153,310.00 Paul Brace P ’12 ★ Fraser Deacon Alan S. Fisher Shane Harrison Richard Hill ★ ♥ Thomas M. Hurka ★ J.A. (Sandy) McIntyre ★ Glen Morris ★ Timothy Owen Warren G. Ralph ★ Adrian Shubert ★ ♥ Tony Storey ★ ♥ THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Annual Donor Report
Your gifts resonate through every day of their lives…
Penelope A. Harbin ★ Kenneth Kirsh ★ Susan (Black) Lawson ★ Allison MacDuffee Donald Redelmeier P ’12, ’15 John A. Rose Timothy Sellers ★ John Wilkinson ★
1979 $10,795.80 J. Nicholas Boland Brian Eden ★ ♥ Lisa Gordon ★ ♥ Anthony Hollenberg Jean C. Iu ★ ♥ C. Stuart Kent ★ K. Laundy Susan E. Opler P ’14 Joshua S. Phillips ★
1980 $10,637.50 Andrew P. Alberti ★
1972
1974
Vincent Santamaura ’76 ★
$5,030.00 B. Timothy Craine
$10,916.25 Lucian Brenner
Jeff Singer ’76 & Maureen Whitley
David S. Grant ★
Donald Bunt
Robert G. Hull
Andrey V. Cybulsky ★
Gary S. A. Solway ’76, P ’26
Richard Kennedy
Terence Davison
D. Grant Vingoe ’76
Christine Dowson
Bernie McGarva P ’03 ★
James H. Grout ★
Daniel Wright ’76 ★
David Evans
Howard Scrimgeour ★
Thomas Klein
Graham J. Yost ’76 ★
Christopher D. Woodbury ★
Robert Martin ★
Anonymous ’76
Vanessa Grant & Philip Street ★
Robert Wright
1973 $16,060.00 John Bate Donald Clarke Geoffrey Clayton David Dick David R. Dodds (5Y) ★ David Fallis P ’02 ★ Ian Ferguson
Jack Sloggett
Peter Bowen & Alison Bowen ★ Kevin G. Crowston
Dr. Sheldon Green ★
1977
Bernie Gropper ★ Eric Kert
Lawrence M. Woods
$34,815.00 Steven Alizadeh P ’15, ’17, ’20, ’22 ★
Anonymous ★
Peter Allemang
Andrew Munn ★
Peter L. Buzzi ★
Kim R. Persky
Nicholas Stark John Tompkins
1975–1976 $12,068.23 I. Ross Bartlett ’75 ★ ♥
Andre & Jocelyn Hidi ★
Graeme C. Bate, P.Eng. ’75
David McCarthy, Jr.
Alvin Iu ★ ♥
Martin A. Chepesiuk ’75, P ’10 ★
John G. Kivlichan ★
Alec Clute ’76 ★
Jaak Reichmann
Stephen O. Marshall Anonymous ★
Rick Marin ★ Nomi Morris ★
1981 $14,477.87 Marcel Behr
♥
David Colbert
1978
Paul Eisen Edward E. Etchells P ’12
David G. Crookston ’76
$12,810.00 David Allan ★ ♥
Walter Vogl ★
Myron Cybulsky ’76 ★
Deborah Berlyne
Bruce Grant ★ ♥
William Wilkins ★ ♥
Donald Gordon ’76 ★ ♥
Sherry A. Glied ★
Robert Keedwell ’81
Robert Zimmerman ★
John Gould ’76
Daniel Gordon ★
Laura Money P ’22
34
THE ROOT | FALL 2025
Tom Friedland ★
Annual Donor Report
Jeffrey J. Nankivell
1986
Thomas Wilk
1990
Sudha Rajagopal
Anonymous
William Robertso
$5,058.84 Tracy A. Betel
Andre Schmid
Wendy Drukier
1988
$6,063.45 Asheesh Advani & Helen Rosenfeld
Martin Schreiber P ’15
Paul Fieguth & Betty Pries
Andrew Brack
Sandra Flow
$29,300.00 Jennifer Andersen Koppe ★ ♥
Eugene Siklos
♥
Hilary Davidson Sara Gray P ’24
Eleanor Latta
Kristina Bates P ’22 ★
Lennox Huang
$9,626.16 Ben Chan ★
Arpita Maiti
Michael Broadhurst & Victoria Shen ’93
Elizabeth Herz-MacInnis ’82
Jacquelyn Sloane Siklos
Michol Hoffman
Henry J.P. White
Lisa Jeffrey ★ ♥
David S. Weiss P ’21
Harold La, CFA
Jon & Robin Martin ★
1991
Julie Williams
Mark Shuper
$5,090.00 Karen Chan P’ 22, ’24 ★
1982
Mark D. Phillips P ’24
Dena McCallum
Andrew G. Spence
Susan Tough
1987
1983
$5,800.00 Julia Cochrane ★ ♥
$3,250.00 Robin Bloomfield John A. Hass ★
Kevin Davis ★ Katherine Hammond P ’20 ★
1989 $6,599.77 R. Brendan Bissell P ’22, ’24 Lesleigh Cushing
Heather Kirkby
♥
Sandra Chong ★ ♥ Aaron Dantowitz ★ ♥ Christopher Federico Jennie E. Jung Michael Leckie
Stephen Kilburn
Ian Lee P ’27
Karen M. Mandel ★
Elissa A. McBride
Margaret Graham P ’27, ’31 ★
Earl Stuart
Shane Miskin
Jennifer Gruden
$4,600.00 Sayeed Karim Abdulla ★
Elizabeth Turner ★
Richard Nathanson P ’20 ★
Kenneth Handelman ★
Anthony Berger
Cari Whyne P ’24 ★
Molly E. McCarron
Oliver Jerschow ★
1984
1992
$9,801.00 Donald C. Ainslie ★ ♥ Scott Anderson Meredith Hawkins Catherine E. Ivkoff Michael Martin P ’11, ’15 ★ ♥ Suzanne Martin P ’11, ’15 ★ ♥ Cameron A. Matthew ★ Kosta Michalopoulos ★ Rebecca E. Nagel Meg Proctor Chandragupta Sooran Augusto Villanueva David Walker, CFA
1985 $148,429.78 Sarah Cannell
♥
Isi Caulder ★ ♥ P. Diane Hamilton ★ Carrie (Fung) Ku ★ Grant Lum ★ Paul Tough
…and create space for experimentation that opens the door to discovery.
Adrian M. Yip THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
35
Annual Donor Report
1995
Anonymous ’04 ★ ♥
$2,573.53 Rashaad Bhyat
Hana Dhanji ’05 Mitchell Wong ’05
♥
Daniel Horner Raphaela Neihausen Robin Rix ★ Jason Tam P ’29
$16,761.00 Katherine Joyce ’06 Patrick Kaifosh ’06
Jessica Ware ♥
Ljiljana Stanic ’06
Anonymous
Morgan Ring ’07
1996
Andrew Chan ’08
$6,300.00 Derek Chiang
Vivien Ku ’08 Jeremy Zung ’08 ♥
Felicia Chiu ★ Paul Karanicolas ’96, P ’24, ’28, ’31 Amanda Ross-White ★ ♥ Warren Shih
2006–2010
♥
Melanie Dorval ’09 Lauren Friedman ’09 Jenny Gu ’09 Avanti Ramachandran ’09 Samir Kulkarni ’10
1997
♥
Lisa Hui ’10 ★
$3,805.58 Emma Frow
Jennifer Nguyen Seo ’10
Jeffrey Hall-Martin
2011–2013
Michael Morgan ★ ♥
Your support opens
Veena Mosur
$3,790.00 Winnie Cheng ’11
Michael Shenkman ★
Adam Martin ’11 ★ ♥
their eyes to new
Anonymous
Alexander Fung ’12 Adarsh Gupta ’12
1998–1999
experiences far beyond
$8,505.00 Clarence Cheng ’98 ★
the walls of our school…
Pamela Y. W. Wong ’98, P ’28, ’31 ♥ Anonymous
Julia Pomerantz ’12 Isabella Chiu ’13 ★ ♥ Jannis Mei ’13
Anna Lim
Jason E. Shron ★ ♥
Andrea Lee ’99
GOLD DONORS: GR ADS OF THE LAST DECADE AND FUTURE ALUMNI
Graham Mayeda ★ ♥
Cindy Wan ★ ♥
Anand Srinivasan ’99
$8,389.00
Anonymous
David Wolf
Albert K. Tang ’99 ★
Andrew Longwell ’15
Veronica C. Yeung ★
2001–2005
Anonymous
$7,042.27 Alexander Gorka ’01
Jonathan Bitidis ’99 & Daron Earthy ’99 ★ ♥ Brenton Huffman ’99
1993 $7,156.15 Geoffrey Hung ★ ♥ Alex Hutchinson ★
1994
Jeffrey Jaskolka P ’24
$4,085.00 Aaron Chan ★
Jocelyn Kinnear
Adam Chapnick ★
T. Justin Lou
Catherine Cheung
Rapido Trains ★ ♥
Jennifer Couzin
Samuel Robinson
Raymond C. Fung
Victoria Shen
Harrison F. Keenan ★
36
THE ROOT | FALL 2025
Xiang Han Max Bai ’16 Richard Bai ’23 Hugo Ip ’24
Emily Stover ’01 Lea Epstein ’02
Andrew Cheng ’22
♥
Liang Hong ’02 ★ ♥
Ashwin Krishan ’24
C. Luke Stark ’02 ★ ♥
Kaveen Sivakumaran ’24
Jeremy Opolsky ’03 ★
Daniel Moges ’27
Jordan Katz ’04
Ruilin Zhu ’27
Diana Chisholm Skrzydlo ’04
Justin Chen ’28
Annual Donor Report
PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS OF CURRENT STUDENTS Farzad Alvi & Connie Hui P ’28
Richard Derham & Qing Li P ’22, ’26
Shengxi Gou & Fengqin Wang P ’30
Mojtaba Asgarian & Angelayalda Rezaei P ’31
Asgar Rishu & Gousia Dhhar P ’28
Zhijun Gu & Pengli Chen P ’26
Dylan Aster & Laura Pripstein P ’27
Ben Liang & Min Dong P ’28
Margaret Graham ’89 & Andre D’Elia, P ’27 ★
Femi Ayeni & Funke Ayeni P ’28, ’30 Azza Azza & Nkiru Azza P ’28 Lixian Bao & Liang Liang P ’29 ♥ Eban Bari & Labiba Kabir P ’30 ♥ Nathaniel Baum-Snow & Elnaz Alipour P ’28 Mark Bui & Melody Nguyen P ’28, ’29, ’30 Ajay Agrawal & Gina Buonaguro P ’23, 28 Kwong Chan & Tina Louie P ’28 Dezhong Chen & Xuping Zhang P’27 Sheldon Szeto & Flora Chen P ’21, ’23, ’26 ★ James Chen & Tina Huang P ’30
Shen Du & Jie Li P ’29 Yashar Ganjali & Hamideh Emrani P ’27 Qing Fan & Min Qian P ’22, ’25 Ning Fang & Jin Meng P ’30 ♥ Daniel Firka & Susan Doniz P ’28 Neil & Arlene Fitzgerald P ’23, ’26 David Fletcher & Rebecca Rose P ’28, ’31 Thomas Foucault & Jeanne Foucault P ’28, ’30 Xin Gao & Shuling Zhao P ’28 Moges Yalew & Misrak Gizaw P ’27 Amit Goel & Sumita Goel P ’27, ’29 Seth Goren P ’28
Mingfeng Wang & Angela Guo P ’29 Xin Guo & Jiangping Luo P ’26, ’31 Jian He & Jinghua Shen Bernd Henseler & Shaliza Ali-Henseler P ’30 Stephen Herskovits & Marni Herskovits P ’28 Jeremy & Huong Hew P ’21, ’28 Qinli Hu P ’29 Yong Hu & Xiao Dan Jia P ’28 Lennox Huang ’90 & Krishna Anchala, P ’27 Tao Huang & Yanzhen Li P ’29 ♥ Zhigang Huang & I Hsuan Chen P ’22, ’27 Robert Janson & Charlie Janson P ’29
Xiaoyi Ji & Chen Qu P ’27 Mingyan Yang & Minghao Jiang P ’29 Bin Huang & Yeping Jiang P ’29 Navin Joneja & Gemma Joneja P ’24, ’29 Hyuk Jung & Jeong Eun Kim P ’30 Paul Karanicolas ’96 & Emelyn Bartlett, P ’24, ’28, ’31 Karim Khawaja & Farzana Karim Khawaja P ’27 Phillip Lipscy & Rie Kijima P ’27, ’31 Yonghyun Kim & Jiah Kim P ’30 Michael Kim & Esther Kim P ’29 Robert Korunovski & Ooi Chee Chooi P ’26 Shashank Parkhi & Supriya Kulkarni P ’27 Kelvin Chan & Lisa Kwok P ’28 Andy Gao & Hui Lai P ’30
Zhang Meng Yang & Lizhen Chen P ’30 Heng Xu & Mei Chen P ’26 ♥ Qin Chen & Yi Feng P ’30
…bringing them closer together.
Xing Hua Liu & Yanping Chen P ’25, ’27 Hua Cheng & Ying Zhang P ’22, ’29 Ryan White & Cheesan Chew P ’28 Paul Satura & Carol Chiu P ’27, ’30 Eric Chong & Yingyi Cui P ’29 William Chow & Anita Lo P ’26 Rupert Duchesne, O.C. & Holly Duchesne P ’25, ’30 Vincent de Grandpré & Sandra Nishikawa P ’26 Zhen Yu Deng & Mable Shi, P ’26 ♥ THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
37
Annual Donor Report
Thanks to you, our community and creativity coalesce into inspiring moments…
Darren Prangley & Linda Prangley P ’30 Michael & Connie Pun P ’23, ’26, ’28 Hongbo Wang & Yanli Qiao P ’29 Kezi Qiu & Hong Lu P ’30 Zhongren Qiu & Lianying Xu P ’26 Preeti Raman P ’25 Abhay Raman P ’25 Ali Raza & Shafaq Ali Raza P ’30 Bob Reeves & Carolyn Blaine P ’27 Junyan Ren & Kaixia Ma P ’28 Seyed Hadi Sadat Toussi & Mercedeh Arbab P ’26 ♥ Narges Samadi & Naderafshar Fereydonyan P ’27 Olga Sergieieva P ’29
Andy Gao & Hui Lai P ’30 Rick Yeung & Serena Lai P ’23, ’25 Colin Lee & Tara Cheng P ’29 Ian Lee ’87, P ’27 Jun Sun Lee & Yu Liu P ’29 James Macgillivray & Vivian Lee P ’30 Bowen Lew & Susan Song P ’27 Bruce Li & Doris Huang P ’30 Kevin Li & Yan Liu P ’29
Wenhai Cheng & Yun Li P ’28
Richard Moen & Martha Moen P ’28
Rajneesh & Alicia Sharma P ’29
Mark Lomaga & Mala JoshiLomaga P ’30
Alphonse Barikage & Zahra Mohamed P ’25
Le Shi & Yue Yang P ’30
Jinsong Lu & Mei Zhao P ’26
Chuannan Mu & Fan Zhang P ’29
Hao Luo & Ling Luo P ’28, ’30
Prashanth Mulukutla & Anu Kashyap P ’29, ’31
Miller Luo & Maggie Lan P ’26 ♥
Norman Ng & Queenie Lo P ’30
Vincent Lynch & Valerie Waters P ’27
Michael Ni & Becky Li P ’27
Wenhao Ma & Mengyun Wang P ’31
Wei Li & Mei Zhou P ’27
Jon MacCall & Grace Sanchez MacCall P ’25
Feng Zhao & Chen Liang P ’28
Tom MacMillan ’67, GP ’29, ’31
Zhaongzang Lin & Yan Yan Lai P ’29
Salim Maherali & Shabin Nanji P ’29
Louis Litsas & Donna Liu P ’28
Gary Margolis & Shirley Margolis P ’26
Qian Zhang & Ting Liu P ’27
Sean Mason & Christine Wong P ’25
Victor Li P ’29
Weidong Liu & Michelle Yu P ’27 Xiao Liu & Zheng Yu Zhang P ’29
Andrew McElheran & Kristina McElheran P ’29 ♥
Tao Zhang & Xin Liu P ’25
Avnish Mehta & Nisha D’Mello P ’25, ’26, ’28
Zhen Lin & Yi Liu P ’25
Jian Meng & Fei Jia P ’29
38
THE ROOT | FALL 2025
Daniel Omoto & Janice Wong P ’29 Nelson Ong & Joy Sun P ’28, ’31 Domenic Pagniello & Jessica Wang P ’28 Simon Palmer & Hua Lin P ’25 Xin Pan & Hao Qing P ’30 Randy Pang & Jun Li P ’25 Jai Parkash & Mamta Dhankhar P ’20, ’26 Manish Patel & Maya Patel P ’26
Gary S. A. Solway ’76 & Jeilah Chan, P ’26 Victor Song & Vicky Chen P ’20, ’28 Bing Chen & Yehua Su P ’27 Alexander Sukhonos & Ping Guo P ’25 Hui Sun & Ying Jiang P ’29 Krishan Suntharalingam & Ananthi Kalvalairajan P ’24, ’27 Donny Surtani & Nilima Gulrajani P ’29, ’31 ♥ Ian Suttie & Julie Brough P ’27 Seymour Schinke & Eva Svoboda P ’30 Kulbhushan Talwar & Rajni Talwar P ’28 Jason Tam ’95 & Amelia Tam, P ’29 Esther Tang P ’26
Xiangren Jiang & Dan Peng P ’30
Besufekad Tesfaye & Adey Worku P ’23, ’25
Chris Phillips & Sarah Notton P ’29 ♥
Alan Vu & Zeynep Uraz P ’30 ♥
Annual Donor Report
Bing Wang & Zheng Yao P ’26 Hong Wang P ’25 Jin Hu Wang & Tian Hui Shi P ’28
Zhan Wu & Guoli Li P ’25
Robert & Amy Yeung P ’29
Bin Luan & Shelley Xie P ’29
Yongle Li & Yuewen Yi P ’27
Kun Gu & Wenge Zhang, P ’25
Penggao Wu & Wendy Xiong P ’26
Paul Yip & Ellen QuejadaYip P ’31
Yanfeng Zhang & Hong Liu P ’25 Hong Li Zheng & Bai Ju Long P ’28
Yawen Xu P ’29
Jiqin Wang & Guangming Huang P ’26
Tao Yong & Tina Xu P ’27 ♥
Moges Yalew & Misrak Gizaw Melkie P ’27
Jian Yu & Yuefang Ni P ’27
Yinshi Cao & Qiong Wang P ’30
Shintaro Yamabe & June Wang P ’27
Xun Wang & Hongxia Zhang P ’18, ’26
Song Yin & Wen Yan P ’29
Gang Wei & Kui Ren P ’28
Chao Yang & He Cao P ’22, ’25
Ivan Yuen & Camilla Wong P ’27
Frank Yang & Jenny Zheng P ’28
Pamela Y. W. Wong ’98 & Gabriel Woo, P ’28, ’31 ★ ♥
Jiang Ming Yang & Ping Zhang P ’26, ’28
Chunlei Wu & Yaling Yin P ’25
Song Yang & Xin Liu P ’25
John Wu & Yin Mei Wong P ’28
Yi Yang & Feihong Nan P ’30
Bill Wu & Julie Wu P ’26
♥
Minlei Ye P ’29
Nathan Yuan & Cathy Zhang P ’30 Dennis Zander & Talar Zander P ’30 Howard Xian & Frances Zhang P ’23, ’26 Jianghong Wen & Jing Zhang P ’27 Fahui Guo & Khristina Zhang P ’30 Huaxia Xu & Ling Zhang P ’25
Jiang Cui & Le Zheng P ’27 Ge Zhong & Haitian Zhao P ’29 Tim Zhang & Kathy Zhou P ’27 Qiang Zhu & Susan Yin P ’25 Alan Zhuang & Tracy Cui P ’27 Johnny Zuo & Rita Zhang P ’28 Anonymous (15)
Jessica Zhang P ’26
Anonymous
♥ (2)
Pu Zhang P ’29
Anonymous
(2)
PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS OF ALUMNI Peter & Elizabeth Alberti P ’80, ’82, ’86 ★
Kristina Bates ’88 & Harris Davidson, P ’22 ★
Steven & Gita Alizadeh P ’15, ’17, ’20, ’22 ★
Ellen Drevnig P ’07
Marianne Anderson P ’17 ★ Kailash Bahadur & Maria Miller P ’02
Anne Ellis P ’10, ’14 Edward E. Etchells ’81, P ’12
David Fallis ’73 & Alison Mackay, P ’02 ★ Alexander & Lucy Forcina, P ’15 ♥ Jennie Frow P ’97, ’01
Ajay Garg and Tian Zhou P ’23 Stephen Gittins & Linda Gittins P ’93, ’97 David Gladish & Eva Gladish P ’22
Margaret Bawden P ’20 ★ Dmytro Berbeka & Lesya Berbeka P ’21 Zain Bhamjee & Iram Bhatti P ’20 Ian & Susan Binnie P ’93, GP ’24 Robert G. Boeckner GP ’18 Paul Brace ’71, P ’12 ★ Paul & Loretta Chan P ’98 ★ Samuel Cheng and Bi Ni P ’24 Martin A. Chepesiuk ’75 P ’10 ★ Kurt Chiu & Rosa Chiu P ’13 ★ Priscilla Chong P’ 98 Stewart & Carmel Crampton P ’96, ’98
…and artful ingenuity. THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Annual Donor Report
Thanks to your generosity, we understand…
Murray Gold & Helen Kersley P ’14
Regine & Alex Kuperman P ’07, ’08
Kayambu & Ramalakshmi Muthuramu P ’08
Michael Tang & Cindy Fong P ’24 ♥
Barry Graham ’59, P ’89, ’92, GP ’27, ’31
Marnie Landon P ’12
Lianne Tile & Andrew Howard P ’15, ’17
Revenna Sudheendra Guluru & Suchetha Sudheendra Hosaholalu Ranganath P ’21
BaoWei Lian & Jennifer (Ruihong) Chen P ’23
Katherine Hammond ’87 & Richard Nathanson ’87, P ’20 ★
Tong Hahn & D. Smith P ’16 ★ ♥ Tiger Hu & Michelle Liu P ’20 ★ George & Anne Hume P ’89 Brian Hwang & Janie Shin, P ’14
Simon & Audrey Li P ’09
Danielle LiChong P ’16, ’18, ’20 Zhu Liu & Karen Chen P ’19 Ben Lu and Bo Jin P ’18, ’22 ★ ♥ Suzanne Martin ’84 & Michael Martin ’84, P ’11, ’15 ★ ♥
Q. Nguyen P ’93
Steven & Xiao Ping Tso P ’94
Steve O’Neil & Colette Léger P ’15, ’18 ★
Julian Ivanov & Michaela Tudor P ’17 ♥
Susan E. Opler ’79 & Paul F. Monahan P ’14
Garry & Nancy Watson P ’92, GP ’16, ’19
Opolsky Family
David & Alla Weintraub, P ’18, ’24
Gladys Page P ’79 Rick & Sarah Parsons P ’16, ’19 Mark & Peri Peters P ’16, ’19 ★
Robert P. Jacob ’60, P ’88, ’90
Nikolay Martynov & Aleksandra Prusova P ’24 ♥
Jeffrey Jaskolka ’93 & Sara Gray ’90, P ’24
Volker & Vandra Masemann P ’89, ’90, ’95 & ’02
The Jha Family ★
Donald Redelmeier ’78 & Miriam Shuchman, P ’12, ’15
Sam Mathi P ’18, ’20, ’22 ♥
Douglas Kent ’47, P ’73, ’79, ’81 ★
James McKellar & Clelia Iori P ’21
Donald and Nita Reed P ’92 ★ Martin Schreiber ’81, P ’15
Susan Kitchell P ’01 ★
Laura Money ’81 & Marcus Macrae, P ’22
Geoff & Carol ShirtliffHinds P ’16, ’17, ’20
Jimmy Mui & Amelia Ng P ’22 ♥
Matt Syme & Liz Thorpe P ’24 ♥
Nestor & Catharine Kostyniuk P ’02 David & Jane Kruse P ’22 40
THE ROOT | FALL 2025
Mark D. Phillips ’86 & Esther Benzie, P ’24
Cari Whyne ’87 & James Pringle, P ’24 ★ Jane Withey P ’11, ’14 K.S. & P.N. Wong P ’06 Mark Yarranton & Patricia Foran P ’13 Chiu & Elaine Yip P ’18, ’23 Wei Yu & Hao Jiang P ’27 Quan-Gen Zhou & Hui Song P ’09, ’16 Consuelo Castillo P ’92 Anonymous (2) ★ Anonymous (3) Anonymous (5)
Annual Donor Report
CURRENT AND FORMER STAFF Sarah Behl ♥
Rosemary Evans ★
Raymond Lee ★ ♥
Jonathan Bitidis ’99 ★ ♥
Kris Ewing ★ ♥
Rebecca Levere ★ ♥
Elizabeth Smyth
Elliott Brodkin
Christopher Federico ’91
Kara Lysne-Paris
H. Don Borthwick ★
Leanne Foster & Dan Hill ♥
Julie Martin
Elizabeth Straszynski & Chris Wilson ♥
Mary McBride
C. Ann Unger ★
Lily McGregor ★ ♥
David S. Weiss ’86, P ’21
Chris J. Carswell ★ ♥ Garth Chalmers ★ Jean Collins Dorothy Davis Michael Didier ★ ♥ Rose Dotten ★ ♥
Rebecca Harrison & Stephen Colella
Forough Shafiei ♥
Jeffrey McLeod
Reg Hawes
Rick Parsons P ’16, ’19
Sean Hayto ★ ♥
Margaret Pirk ★
Katherine Joyce ’06
Jennifer Pitt-Lainsbury ★ ♥
Carole (Geddes) Zamroutian ★ Anonymous Anonymous ★ ♥ (2)
Martha Drake ★ ♥
Judith Kay ★ ♥
Lynda S. Duckworth ★
Jennifer Kelly
Estate of H. Donald Gutteridge
Garrett Kollins
Michaele M. Robertson & Barry Wansbrough
Dan & Diane Lang ★
Jackie Sankey
Anonymous ♥
B & B Hamilton Fund at Toronto Foundation ★
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation ★
Vinny Saini
UTS Alumni Association ★
Mary Jean Stephen
Sachna Bobal
Floyd Murphy
Shirley Stoddart
UTS Parents’ Association ★
Jill Carr
Bharat Pandya
Linda & Peter Strysio
Frances Clee
Jason Pereira
Switch Animation
Whitehorse Liquidity
Georgia Coles
Candice Quadros
The CIRCLE lab
Partners Inc
David Craig
Rapido Trains ♥★
Toronto Foundation ★
Sasha Darling
Katherine Reilly
Donna Winston
Sorabh Devgun
Reveal Environmental Inc.
Toronto Area Custom Ford Dealers Inc
Anonymous (5)
E3 Public Speaking
Rogers Communications
Martha Tory
Anonymous ★ (2)
Marie-Claire Recurt ★
Anonymous Anonymous
♥
FRIENDS OF UTS
Xiankai Wang
John Easson Donald & Nancy Gauthier Kent Glowinski Granite Club Hydro One IBM Canada Limited Emilie Jarrett Robert Knight Fred Kouhdani Kuperman Family Foundation Kvantsoft Inc. Loch Tay Foundation Rhodalyn Lapena-Saladino Leading Aces Academy Da Zhi Liao Manulife Financial Susan McCloy
…what it means to truly be there for each other and our school.
Vodrie McOaut THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
41
Annual Donor Report
Thank you for giving UTS the greatest gift – your enduring support!
CELEBRATING OUR GRADUATING CLASS! Since 2007, parents of graduating students have celebrated their children’s graduation from UTS by making a gift in honour of their children. The Grad Class Bursary has grown to nearly $300,000 providing financial aid to current UTS students. We thank our families for giving the gift of a UTS education through donations totaling over $25,000! CLASS OF 2025 Alphonse Barikage & Zahra Mohamed P ’25 in honour of Zacharie Barikage ’25 Besufekad Tesfaye & Adey Worku P ’23, ’25 in honour of Tyen Besufekad Tesfaye ’25 Rupert Duchesne, O.C. & Holly Duchesne P ’25, ’30 in honour of Jack Duchesne ’25
Alexander Sukhonos & Ping Guo P ’25 in honour of Nicholas Guo ’25
Randy Pang & Jun Li P ’25 in honour of Ziqing Pang ’25
Chao Yang & He Cao P ’22, ’25 in honour of David Yang ’25
Zhen Lin & Yi Liu P ’25 in honour of Olivia Lin ’25
Abhay Raman & Preeti Raman P ’25 in honour of Aditya Raman ’25
Song Yang & Xin Liu P ’25 in honour of Nathan Yang ’25
Family of Emily Rong ’25 in honour of Emily Rong ’25
Rick Yeung & Serena Lai P ’23, ’25 in honour of Lucas Yeung ’25
Xing Hua Liu & Yanping Chen P ’25, ’27 in honour of Michelle Liu ’25 Jon MacCall & Grace Sanchez MacCall P ’25 in honour of Dexter MacCall ’25
Hong Wang P ’25 in honour of Jarmin Weng ’25 Chunlei Wu & Yaling Yin P ’25 in honour of Kathleen Wu ’25
Dr. Leanne Foster in honour of the Class of 2025
Sean Mason & Christine Wong P ’25 in honour of Spencer Mason ’25
Qing Fan & Min Qian P ’22, ’25 in honour of Emily Fan ’25
Avnish Mehta & Nisha D’Mello P ’25, ’26, ’28 in honour of Diya Mehta ’25
Zhan Wu & Guoli Li P ’25 in honour of Raymond Wu ’25
Kun Gu & Wenge Zhang P ’25 in honour of Matthew Gu ’25
Simon Palmer & Hua Lin P ’25 in honour of Jack Palmer ’25
Huaxia Xu & Ling Zhang, P ’25 in honour of Lucas Xu ’25
42
THE ROOT | FALL 2025
Yanfeng Zhang & Hong Liu P ’25 in honour of Yining Zhang ’25 Tao Zhang & Xin Liu P ’25 in honour of Bonnie Zhang ’25 Qiang Zhu & Susan Yin P ’25 in honour of Terry Zhu ’25 Anonymous in honour of their children (2)
Annual Donor Report
TRIBUTE GIFTS Thank you to everyone who gave in honour or in memory of dear friends and family. IN HONOUR OF: Steve Alizadeh ’77
Stephen Reed ’92
Robert Darling ’57
Rein Otsason ’12
Arastoo Rezaei
Greg Deacon ’74
Veronika Berbeka ’21
Stanley M. Pearl
Mia Richmond ’20
Garth Chalmers
Don Fawcett ’50
Po Lau Tang P ’99, ’01
Peter Pearson ’57
The Class of 1974
James Grand ’57
Stephen Tang ’24
Rosemary Evans
UTS Teachers & Staff
G. Alan Fleming ’54
Marta Vogl P ’73
Paul Harkison Suzanne E. Hidi P ’77
H. Donald Gutteridge Seymour Hoffman P ’88 John Hunter, K.C. ’67 Thomas Kinnear 1928
John Perrin ’81 Norbert Pirk Peter Pope ’64 Philippa M. Rounthwaite
Alexandra Kruse ’22
IN MEMORY OF: Don Borthwick ’54
Anthony Lee ’86
John Bowden ’48
W. Bruce MacLean
John Snell ’56
Raya Levy
Gary Canlett ’54
Douglas McCutcheon ’61
Nicole Stef ’16
Jennifer Orange ’89
Thomas Cumming ’55
M. Anne Millar
Edgar Ware P ’95
Peter Luhse ’78
Rick Salsberg ’62
THE UTS ARBOR SOCIETY FOR LEGACY GIVING UTS would like to thank the following individuals who have declared their intention to include UTS in their charitable giving plans. We also thank all those who wish to remain anonymous. G. Alan Fleming ’54, Former Principal
David Morgan ’63 J. Timothy Morgan ’87
Michaele M. Robertson, Former Principal
John R.D. Fowell ’60
John D. Murray ’54
Carson Schutze ’85
Paul Brace ’71, P ’12
Stephen Gauer ’70
Mark Opashinov ’88
John N. Shaw ’50
Peter L. Buzzi ’77
Robert W. Hoke ’66
Ben Chan ’82 Class Member ’84
David Lang ’70
Stephen Raymond & Natasha vandenHoven P ’16, ’19
David Sherman ’75
David J. Holdsworth ’61
James S. Coatsworth ’69
Robert E. Lord ’58
Gillian (Davidson) Davies ’87
Antony T.F. Lundy ’79
Matthew Dryer ’68
Dena McCallum ’82
Lynda S. Duckworth, Former Teacher
Bernie McGarva ’72, P ’03
Donald K. Avery ’49 Scott Baker, Former Teacher
James Fleck, C.C. ’49, P ’72
James I. MacDougall ’54
James A. (Sandy) McIntyre ’71
William Redrupp ’54 D. Kenneth Roberts ’70, P ’00, ’04
Murray E. Treloar ’68 Gregory G. Turnbull ’73 Walter Vogl ’73 Anonymous (17)
We extend our heartfelt thanks to members of the UTS community whose testamentary gift was received between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025 creating their legacy at UTS. John A. Bowden ’48, P ’79
Estate of H. Donald Gutteridge
Estate of Robert Geoffrey Gordon ’42
Estate of J. Hugh Westren ’52
If you have made provisions for UTS in your will, or would like to receive information on legacy giving, please contact Martha Drake, Executive Director, Advancement at mdrake@utschools.ca or 416-946-0097.
THE UTS ALUMNI MAGAZINE
43
LOOKING BACK University of Toronto Schools (UTS) had only been open four years when World War I broke out. “It is no exaggeration to say that, so far as age permitted, the successive classes matriculated at once into great flotilla of transports...” Headmaster H. J. Crawford said at our school’s World War I Memorial Service, held October 1920 at University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall (according to The Annals 1918-1920). At the service, two bronze plaques were unveiled: one listing the names of nearly 400 UTS boys, as well as masters, who served in the war, and the other memorializing 63 students who lost their lives. H. J. Crawford praised the boys for their “daring spirit” saying: “We like to think that their spirit was also, in some degree, a reflection of the spirit of their school; that coming from a school which decries bullying they were keen to pull down the greatest bully of history; that coming from a school which teaches consideration of others, they considered not themselves; that coming from a school which inculcates manliness, they verily proved themselves men.” For decades, and in the case of World War I, a century, all those who passed through the UTS Bloor Street entrance were greeted by three plaques – the two mentioned above and a third for World War II memorializing the nearly 80 students who lost their lives. Now, with our new school building, these important reminders of our legacy are on display at UTS once more, having been installed inside the Eureka! Entrance at Huron Street, so that all who pass will remember our students and staff who fought for our country.
TOP: Photo of plaque unveiling from The Annals 1918-1920. BOTTOM: World War plaques installed in our new home.