Vic Report Winter 2015

winter 2015

Beyond Boundaries: President’s Annual Report p. 8

Mary Scourboutakos vic 1t1 p. 15 vic report winter 2015

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president ’s page

Boundaries: Transcending the Necessary by paul w. gooch

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vic report winter 2015

Winter 2015 Volume XLIII No. 2 Published under the authority of the Board of Regents of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

Publisher: Larry Davies, Executive Director, Alumni Affairs and Advancement Executive Editor: Alison (Massie) Broadworth Vic 9T7, Director, Alumni Affairs and Advancement Editor: Jennifer Little Vic 9T5, Manager, Marketing and Communications Managing Editor: Liz Taylor, Communications Officer Copy Editor: Frank Collins Design: Randall Van Gerwen Cover: (left to right) Moustafa Abdalla Vic 1T5, Susan McDonald and Randall Oliphant Vic 8T4 in the E.J. Pratt Library. Photograph

by Babak.

Vic Report is sent to all alumni, faculty, associates and friends of Victoria University.

Published three times a year; circulation 24,000; ISSN 0315-5072.

Publications Mail Agreement No. 40741521 Send letters and undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Vic Report c/o The Victoria Alumni Office 150 Charles Street West Toronto ON M5S 1K9 Tel: 416-585-4500 Toll-free: 1-888-262-9775 Fax: 416-585-4594 E-mail: vic.report@utoronto.ca Website: www.vicu.utoronto.ca Do we have your correct address?

Please send your updated address, phone number and e-mail address to the Victoria Alumni Office.

Please notify us if the graduate named in the address is deceased (enclose obituary or equivalent) and we will remove his/her name from the mailing list.

Victoria University respects your privacy and does not rent, trade or sell its mailing lists.

Photographs: (Opposite page) Peg McCarthy; Horst Herget, Victoria Alumni Office

Boundaries are necessary. We can’t do without them and still know who we are. Having an identity requires that there be some people or places not just the same as we are, with our distinctive stories, preferences and beliefs. A good education will help us appreciate our own identity—our history, customs, values, disappointments and accomplishments.

A good education will also take us beyond boundaries to appreciate the differences in societies and cultures inhabiting the shared space we call the Earth. How should a Vic education push our students beyond the horizons in their view when they first arrive each September?

In five ways, I’d suggest.

Universities quite properly value disciplines, for expertise resides with those who focus their studies within time-tested methods and bodies of knowledge. Our students need the remarkable expertise of U of T departments for their specialist studies. But the world itself is messy. It presents complex problems requiring the assistance of many minds to unravel and resolve. An important contribution to education on the part of a college (as distinct from a department) is the ability to mount courses and programs beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Vic is a leader in this endeavour. Indeed, our Vic One streams and our Vic One Hundred courses are deliberately constructed so as not to fit within any disciplinary structure. From the outset, our students need to understand the crucial importance of insights from many directions. Beyond first year, Vic programs are intentionally interdisciplinary, requiring students to think in more than one way about issues.

Education is more than accumulating credits for a degree.

This is a truism Vic takes out of the dusty cupboard of the tritely obvious. The biochemistry student should know something about architecture in the city; the student of literature should understand the issues that scientific discovery poses for society. But students cannot fit everything they would like to learn into the formal curriculum. Hence the Ideas for the World program, unique to Vic, which goes beyond the graded curriculum to create weekly discussions with faculty and professionals, each section exploring an issue that belongs to no one discipline. It’s the Vic way, to push learning past the boundaries of credit accumulation.

Another way to move past boundaries is to take learning beyond the physical borders of the campus. We support Vic’s undergraduate life-science students to intern in labs, made possible by the Milne Fund established through a bequest from Margaret and Lorus Milne Vic 3T3.

We also encourage students to study abroad; in fact, about 15 per cent of our second- and thirdyear students go abroad, either in summer, or on exchange for a year or a term. With special opportunities, such as the education internships with Beijing Foreign Studies University’s primary school, or the Cross-Cultural College with Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, our students have opportunities to experience a unique international dimension to their undergraduate degree.

While about 85 per cent of Vic students pay domestic fees, the student body is now as diverse as the Toronto area itself. This presents an unusual opportunity for students to move beyond the particularities of the culture in which they were raised. Although this crossing of cultures occurs informally, there is more we can do to reap benefits from such remarkable diversity.

Within and outside the curriculum, off campus and on, horizons expand as boundaries are transcended. And now a fifth path will open in the near future. This path crosses Canada itself.

The distinctive and diverse communities of our own country deserve attention. Maritime and prairie, aboriginal and immigrant, urban and rural: these differences should be appreciated in experience, not just in textbooks. Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017 presents an opportunity for student exchanges across Canadian universities, and we are discussing ways to create, promote and support 150 Canada Exchange Awards that year.

Boundaries are indeed necessary, but it is also necessary to transcend them, and a Vic education offers opportunities for that transcendence. 

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Equity, Equality and Excellence Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin P.C. and Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Honoured The accomplishments of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella were celebrated at Victoria University’s Charter Day Convocation on October 8. Each woman was named a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, in recognition of commitment to justice and equality in Canada’s courts. McLachlin delivered the keynote address and noted that while “great strides” have been made to obtain more equal gender representation in governance, there is still work to be done. She cited education as one of the most important factors in terms of achieving equality as it “lift[s] people over barriers . . . to better, more equal lives.” Visit uoft.me/2Eo to read McLachlin’s remarks.

McLachlin was presented with the honorary degree by Sophia Reibetanz Moreau Vic 9T4 (professor of law and philosophy, U of T). Moreau, who served as clerk to the chief justice in 2002–2003, spoke about McLachlin’s commitment to human rights.

McLachlin was called to the Bar of Alberta in 1969 and to the Bar of British Columbia in 1971. In 1981 she was appointed to the County Court of Vancouver, and later that year, to British Columbia’s Supreme Court. She was appointed to the Court of Appeal of British Columbia in 1985 and became chief justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1988. In 1989 she joined the Supreme Court of Canada, where she was named, on January 7, 2000, the 17th chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the first woman to hold this position and the longest serving chief justice in Canadian history.

The Honourable Rosalie Silberman Abella was presented with her honorary degree by Kent Roach Vic 8T4 (Prichard-

Wilson Chair of Law and Public Policy, U of T).

Abella graduated from U of T’s Faculty of Law in 1970. In 1976, at the age of 29, she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court. While still in her 20s she was appointed a member of the Human Rights Commission of Rosalie Silberman Abella, Paul Gooch and Ontario, the Premier’s Beverley McLachlin Advisory Committee on Confederation, the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal, and of the University of Toronto Academic Discipline Tribunal. She also wrote a ground-breaking study on access to legal services by the disabled. She was the sole commissioner and author of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on equality in employment, in which she created the term and concept of ‘employment equity,’ a new and unique strategy for reducing barriers in employment faced by minorities.

Abella was Canada’s first Jewish woman judge and the country’s youngest ever. She was also the first woman chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and the first woman in the British Commonwealth to become the head of a Law Reform Commission. In August 2004, she was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, becoming the first Jewish woman to sit on the Canadian Supreme Court bench. 

New Executive Officers for Board of Regents

Photographs: (Opposite page) Peg McCarthy; Horst Herget, Victoria Alumni Office

Alumni Bring Experience and Engagement to Governing Body Victoria’s Board of Regents welcomed three new executive officers to its Executive Committee: John Field Vic 7T8, chair; John Grant Vic 8T3, vice-chair (chair of the Pension Committee); and Lenna Bradburn Vic 8T2, treasurer (chair of the Finance John Grant, John Field and Lenna Bradburn Committee).

Each has maintained strong ties with Victoria and U of T as engaged alumni. Field, a partner with Hicks Morley since 1990, and Grant, wealth advisor and associate portfolio manager with The Harbour Group at RBC, have each served on the Board since 2008. Bradburn, currently vice-president of resident and community services with Toronto Community

Housing, joined the Board in 2012; she is also president of the University of Toronto Alumni Association.

Field succeeds Paul Huyer Vic 8T1, who served as Board chair from 2010–2014. Huyer will continue in his role as chair of the Presidential Search Committee and chair of the Board’s Nominating, Appointments and Governance Committee. The Board of Regents governs Victoria University and is responsible for appointing the chancellor, president, principals and other senior administrators; as well, it approves appointment and promotion policies for the teaching staff of Emmanuel College. 

BOARD OF REGENTS The Board of Regents is seeking expressions of interest for consideration for the 2016 nomination cycle. Please forward suggestions to vicu.regents@utoronto.ca.

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Music and the Great War Ominous Sounds and Personal Stories For many Victorians, the annual Graduates Christmas Luncheon kicks off the holiday season. Alumni and friends gathered in Alumni Hall at the beginning of December to hear Eric Friesen speak. Friesen is a veteran broadcaster, writer, speaker on music and culture, and current lecturer in Vic One’s Jewison stream. He spoke about the way World War One influenced music in a presentation entitled “En blanc et noir: Music and the Great War.” Referencing composers such as Arnold Schönberg, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss and Ralph Vaughan Williams, Friesen demonstrated how the Great War drew lines between countries over their music; more specifically, between “German music and everyone else.” Furthermore, Friesen illustrated that music—or perhaps musicians’ sensitivities and thus their compositions—changed prior to the outbreak of war.

Gustav Mahler’s “tragic” Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, for instance, which debuted in May 1906, “begins in a cold, marching tread, and ends in a bleak, minor-key feeling of total disaster . . . like an iron curtain clanging down.” Similarly, Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which premiered in May 1913, is often “seen as a harbinger of things to come . . . with its dissonant, violent, addictive, pulsing rhythms . . . a complete break with romanticism.”

There was the effect on composers after the war, too, which led to a “distancing, detachment, an emotional coldness” heard in much of the neo-classical music of the 1920s. Most

Taylor Sullivan (left) with members of the Vic Chorus on December 6.

importantly, Friesen reminded his audience in closing, is that although the effects of the Great War were, in many respects shattering, the “music didn’t stop.”

After Friesen’s talk, guests were treated to a performance by the Vic Chorus followed by a carol sing-along, led by Taylor Sullivan Vic 9T2. Following the event, guests were encouraged to view an exhibit on Victoria University and World War One at the E.J. Pratt Library. The display included photographs, letters, medals and other material from Victoria University Archives and Special Collections relating to war-time activities of students, alumni and faculty, and the University’s recognition of their sacrifices. 

Feminism, Finance and the Federal Government MP Chrystia Freeland Delivers LaMarsh Lecture

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who cares,” LaMarsh was a formidable figure on the Canadian parliamentary scene and is remembered for ushering in some of the most progressive legislation of the 1960s, including Medicare and the Canada Pension Plan. 

New Victoria College Emerging Leader Award The AVC Executive has created the Victoria College Emerging Leader Award. This new award recognizes recent graduates, 35 years of age or under, who have excelled professionally or who have notable accomplishments in their volunteer service such as community work, humanitarianism and philanthropy. It will be presented annually to a maximum of three Victoria College alumni.

Visit www.vic.utoronto.ca/alumni to nominate someone.

The nomination period closes on April 30, 2015.

Photographs: (Opposite page) Victoria Alumni Office; Chris Plowright

Chrystia Freeland, writer, journalist and politician, delivered the inaugural Judy LaMarsh Lecture on January 21. Freeland’s talk paid homage to feminists before her and spoke to gender and economic inequalities. Following her talk, she fielded a spirited discussion and questions from students and guests.

Freeland, a prize-winning author, was elected MP for Toronto Centre in 2013. She is a powerhouse of knowledge when it comes to Canadian economic policy and a fitting choice for the lecture named in honour of Judy LaMarsh, P.C., O.C., Q.C., Canada’s second woman cabinet minister who worked with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson Vic 1T9.

LaMarsh attended Victoria College for three years before her acceptance into Osgoode Hall Law School. Seeing herself less as a politician and more as “an ordinary person Chrystia Freeland

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Conserving and Commemorating Canada’s Treasures

Photographs: (Opposite page) Victoria Alumni Office; Chris Plowright

George F. MacDonald Vic 6T1 Named Distinguished Alumni Award Winner George F. MacDonald O.C. has been named the 2014 Victoria College Distinguished Alumni Award winner for his devotion to preserving and commemorating Canadian history. Well known for his leadership as executive director of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., MacDonald has had an extraordinary career as an archaeologist, anthropologist and professor.

Visual history and the sense of place and identity have always been very important to MacDonald. Re-contextualizing objects within a museum space or exhibit creates meaning and significance and, he explains, “amplifies our understanding of ancient civilizations.” MacDonald has also been fascinated by the interplay between images and objects, and the spaces they inhabit. As a child, whenever he was given the option of a weekend outing in Toronto, he invariably suggested the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). He found the museum, and interacting with its exhibits, to be magical. Years later, when it came time to apply to university, he chose Victoria College, in part because of its proximity to the museum: “As a student living on campus in Nelles House, I would go to the ROM on sketching trips, partly because the drawings were part of my study, and partly because I enjoyed it.” Victoria College’s geographic link to the ROM both reinforced and amplified his education in archaeology. Vic also happened to be where his girlfriend Joanne (Rice) Vic 6T1 chose to study.

While still an undergrad in anthropology, he got his first professional job at the ROM as a field archaeologist on the St. Lawrence Seaway Project. In 1961 George and Joanne graduated from Vic, were married, and George was awarded a scholarship to Yale University. In 1964 he obtained a position at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa and by 1966 he completed his PhD at Yale. His thesis focused on defining the first inhabitants of Eastern Canada 12,000 years ago.

When the museum awarded him a new position as Pacific Coast archaeologist, he devoted the rest of his research career to the oral traditions, cultural rituals and artistic expression of Aboriginal groups of that area. His interest was shaped, in part, by the ideas and insights of Vic and U of T faculty such as Edmund (“Ted”) Carpenter, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye Vic 3T1, Emm 3T3. MacDonald has fond memories of taking the scholar on a tour of the Canadian Museum of History shortly after it opened.

In 1969, MacDonald was named chief of the Archaeology Division at the National Museum of Man, and director of the Canadian Museum of Civilization by 1983 (the first two iterations of today’s Canadian Museum of History).

His decades-long career at the museum was punctuated with sabbaticals abroad where he worked as a visiting scholar across Canada and internationally.

MacDonald’s commitment to preserving Canadian history and, in particular, to protecting and commemorating First Nations’ histories, has led him to take on additional

appointments: From 1972 to 1999 he served as a member of the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada where he chaired the Indigenous Peoples Committee. After his retirement from his Ottawa duties in 1999 he undertook the design, construction and opening of the largest, purpose-built history museum in the southern hemisphere, a $300-million project in Melbourne, Australia. From 2001 to 2004 he directed the Washington State Museum in Seattle. He was founding director of a gallery to honour the Haida artist, Bill Reid, in Vancouver in 2005.

MacDonald held teaching positions at numerous universities, including Trent, Carleton, UBC, Simon Fraser, Melbourne and the University of Washington.

In 2013, he was appointed to the ad hoc Canadian Committee for Memory of the World Register of UNESCO and was part of the design-selection committee for the parliamentary window to commemorate Prime Minister Harper’s apology to First Nations. He has received numerous awards including receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Calgary in 2000. He was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2006 and was awarded a Queen’s Jubilee medal in 2012. He continues to remain involved with both academic and museum life as director of the Bill Reid Centre and adjunct professor, both at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., and as director emeritus at the Canadian Museum of History.

“I do consider myself very fortunate,” says MacDonald, “to have participated in commemorating the history of so many peoples across Canada and the Pacific Rim.” 

George MacDonald with his painting by Ojibwa artist John Lafond.

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Architectural Accolades for Goldring Student Centre Building Recognized Twice in 2014 for Excellence Congratulations to Vic and to Moriyama and Teshima Architects for their recognition by Heritage Toronto and the Pug Awards in 2014.

Heritage Toronto recognized the Goldring Student Centre as both a careful restoration and expansion. The agency presented an award of merit for the project’s accomplishment of enriching the “quality of life of all residents of Toronto” “through an appreciation and awareness of [its] heritage.”

The building received honourable mention for outstanding achievement in the commercial and institutional category of the Pug Awards. These awards are touted as the “people’s choice award for architecture.” The renovation and expansion project was cited as “inspiring civic beauty, upholding urban aesthetic and enhancing Toronto’s reputation for creating and maintaining high standards of architectural integrity.” 

Joining the Royal Ranks Eisenbichler, Magnusson and Terpstra Recognized for Scholarship

Lynne Magnusson

Nicholas Terpstra

Where There’s a Will…

2015 VIC BOOK SALE

Victoria University can be designated as a beneficiary in your will. Here’s an example of a suggested wording:

Need a great read? Don’t miss the Vic Book Sale and help support Friends of the Library. The sale is in Old Vic, 91 Charles Street West. Proceeds go to Victoria University Library.

I give and bequeath to the Board of Regents of Victoria University, Toronto, Ontario, the sum of $ or % of my estate.

If you wish to designate a specific bequest (a scholarship, the library, etc.), please contact: Sharon Gregory Telephone: 416-813-4050 Toll-free: 1-888-262-9775 E-mail: sharon.gregory@utoronto.ca

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Thursday, Sept. 24 – Only day with admission fee: $3, students free with ID

4 p.m.–9 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 25

10 a.m.– 8 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 26

11 a.m.– 6 p.m.

Sunday, Sept. 27

11 a.m.– 6 p.m.

Monday, Sept. 28 – All books half price 10 a.m.– 8 p.m.

Blog: library.vicu.utoronto.ca/friends/blog E-mail: vic.booksale@utoronto.ca Want to volunteer? 416-585-4585 or 416-585-4471

Photographs: The Royal Society of Canada; (Opposite page) Horst Herget, Victoria Alumni Office

Konrad Eisenbichler

On November 22, Victoria College Fellows Konrad Eisenbichler (Italian Studies), Lynne Magnusson (English) and Nicholas Terpstra (History), were made Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. The society is made up of the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada and being elected is the highest honour a scholar can achieve in Canada.

SPRING REUNION 2015: MAY 29–31 Curious about what everyone’s been up to since graduation?

Spring Reunion is your chance to get together with fellow alumni to remember and relive your experiences, accomplishments and friendships at Vic. Reunite with former classmates, catch up with friends and make some new connections.

Celebrating the Honoured Years Vic 4T0, 4T5, 5T0, 5T5, 6T0, 6T5, 7T0, 7T5, 8T0, 8T5 and 9T0. Come back to Vic for the weekend!

Visit www.vicu.utoronto.ca/alumni/springreunion for more details, as they become available.

There are many great Spring Reunion events posted online. The list below is just a sample of some of the events being planned!

FRIDAY, MAY 29 Principal’s Reception and Dinner with Presentation of Chancellor’s Medals Hosted by Victoria College Principal Angela Esterhammer Vic 8T3 5:30 p.m. reception, 6:30 p.m. dinner Alumni Hall, Old Vic

SATURDAY, MAY 30 Special Class Events Throughout the Day

SUNDAY, MAY 31 Sunday Music Recital and President’s Afternoon Tea Hosted by President Paul W. Gooch 2 p.m.

Vic Chapel, Old Vic, followed by afternoon tea in Alumni Hall, Old Vic

STAY IN RESIDENCE AGAIN! Both Margaret Addison Hall and Burwash residences are accepting reservations for alumni during Spring Reunion.

YOU ARE INVITED! VIC CELEBRATES PRESIDENT GOOCH All alumni and friends are welcome to join the celebration in appreciation of Victoria University President Paul W. Gooch.

Thursday, May 28 – 6 p.m.

Isabel Bader Theatre A reception will follow in the Goldring Student Centre.

Visit www.vicu.utoronto.ca/ alumni for more information and to register.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

president’s annual report 2013–2014

TRANSFORMING LIVES WITH KNOWLEDGE, IMAGINATION AND EXPERIENCES

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f we don’t have boundaries, we don’t know who we are,” says Professor Paul Gooch, president of Victoria University, “but university is a place where we can imagine different sets of boundaries or think about moving those boundaries.”

Gooch is aiming to make a variety of boundaries more permeable as a way of broadening and enriching the student experience. One boundary that he is eager to see students cross is the line—both physical and experiential—between Canada and other nations.

“We want to move beyond the boundary of country for students to 8

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have international experiences,” Gooch says. “It is so important, because we live in a global world, and it’s valuable to have experience of another country.

We want students to have intercultural fluency—to be fluent in the language of another culture and to know how to comport themselves there.”

Knowledge is another place where boundaries are permeable and can be crossed with effort and imagination.

“It means rethinking what has been handed to you,” Gooch says.

Moustafa Abdalla exemplifies the student who plans to push the boundaries of knowledge while moving easily between cultures. He immigrated

with his family to Canada from Egypt during his public school years and has already mastered one new culture and language. Now, as one of the University of Toronto’s two 2015 Rhodes Scholars, he is preparing to work toward a doctorate of philosophy in computational biology at the University of Oxford, once he graduates from Vic in June.

“I’m excited about this, but it’s still surreal,” says Abdalla during a chat at Ned’s Café in the Goldring Student Centre. “I still feel like I’ve been punked and wonder where the hidden camera is. Once I finally get to Oxford, I’ll realize I made it.”

Photograph: Babak

BEYOND

ND BOUNDARIES Photograph: Babak

Susan McDonald, Moustafa Abdalla Vic 1T5 and Randall Oliphant Vic 8T4

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as examples of the way Vic staff and faculty furthered his cause.

“He started the ball rolling for the Rhodes and sent me on to the registrar, Susan McDonald,” Abdalla says. “To me, he embodies what Vic stands for.

He is an amazing mentor who offered great academic advice.”

Various members of the Vic community also helped to ensure that Abdalla made the best possible showing in his interview with the Rhodes Scholarship committee. The

Moustafa Abdalla

Vic’s Newest Rhodes Scholar

THINKING

registrar’s office arranged a simulated Rhodes Scholarship interview for him in advance of his official interview, with President Gooch; Angela Esterhammer, principal; Susan McDonald, registrar, and Kelley Castle, dean of students, acting as his interview panel.

Although he will be graduating, Vic serves as the blueprint for the ideal learning environment.

“I want to find another Vic at Oxford; I hope there is one there,” Abdalla says.

Moustafa Abdalla Vic 1T5 is eagerly anticipating his Rhodes Scholarship experience at Oxford, but he is also looking beyond his school years. “Teaching has to be a part of my future,” he says. “I love the classroom setting.”

Abdalla has experience upon which to draw: he serves as one of the select chemistry tutors at Vic, assisting students in first- and second-year chemistry courses. As a Princeton Review employee, he has taught biology and organic chemistry to students preparing for their Medical College Aptitude Tests.

He has also worked for the City of Toronto, teaching courses in Web development and Photoshop and takes his teaching outdoors as a volunteer children’s house league cricket and soccer coach for the Flemingdon Park Parent Association.

“I’m afraid to tell people that I like to teach for fun, because it’s not your usual hobby,” Abdalla says.

Research is equally fun for Abdalla. He is taking a thesis course this year, and continues working with the research team from his previous thesis course. The latter project, in bioinformatics, is based at Princess Margaret Hospital and aims to draft both a spatial and temporal map of the changes that occur in breast cells, preceding and following tumour development. Through his current thesis course, he heads a team at St. Michael’s Hospital that is exploring how researchers can couple ‘big data’ and protein–protein interaction databases to discover network similarities between mouse and human models for diabetes and other chronic complications. This, in effect, will allow researchers to predict which drugs will translate to the patients from mouse data alone. “I’ve worked with cancer and diabetes already,” Abdalla says. “That’s the beauty of research: you can pick any area you want. I don’t think I’ll be able to limit myself. I like the flexibility and the ability to apply what I’ve learned to other disease states. My ultimate goal, whatever I do, is to have a positive impact in life. Given my skill set in biology and medicine, it is the best means of making an impact in the most positive way.”

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Photograph: (Opposite page) Babak; Victoria Alumni Office, Babak

Abdalla, a fourth-year honours biochemistry and physiology student, credits his scholarship as much to the support he received at Vic as to his own credentials.

“I don’t think I won the Rhodes, Vic won the Rhodes,” Abdalla says. “I owe Vic and want to express my gratitude.”

He cites the efforts made by Jillian Yee-Chang, student awards and ceremonies officer, his “‘go-to person’ for the entire application process,” and Emanuel Melo, the associate registrar,

Collapsing borders also means increasing international opportunities for as many Vic students as possible, in addition to Rhodes Scholarship winners.

“We want our students to go out into the world, and we want international students to study here,” says Gooch.

He notes that about 15 per cent of Vic students study abroad through summer, half-year and two-term programs, compared to a national average of about one to three per cent, but he’d like to increase that percentage.

“Exposure to students from other cultures broadens the mind,” agrees Susan McDonald, Vic’s registrar, who oversees scholarships and bursaries.

In fact, Vic has 16 bursaries and awards created by alumni donors that are in very high demand to students seeking to study abroad. “Getting away and making observations about another culture helps students understand themselves,” she says.

The University also aims to add more international students to its mix.

The Vic student body in 2014 included 382 international students from as many as 42 countries. The Lawrence and Sharon Ho International Scholarships, for example, now bring 10 new international students to Vic annually.

Scholarships and bursaries can also be tools that broaden the student experience in other ways: through graduate study, through extracurricular

Photograph: (Opposite page) Babak; Victoria Alumni Office, Babak

D

BEYOND BORDERS

Registrar Susan McDonald

Police Chief Bill Blair joins Vic students at a session of Ideas for the World.

activities or through laboratory research opportunities. The Milne Research Awards, for example, funded 15 Vic life-sciences students doing non-credit, summer research projects in 2014.

Larry Davies, Vic’s executive director of alumni affairs and advancement, says Vic alumni leave the boundaries of the campus to go out into the wider world, but many of them return to reconnect with a place they once called home; many remember Vic through their donations. This past year $730,000 was donated to create new, named scholarships which were matched by the Hodgkinson Fund, bringing the total value of these new awards to $1.46 million.

“Even when people move away, they feel strongly connected with Vic and want to support it,” Davies says. “We’re gratified to learn they regularly read Vic Report, and they also come quite a distance to attend Vic reunions. Each year, spring reunion attracts alumni from around the world.”

Davies says Vic is always pleasantly surprised to receive bequests, many from alumni who live far away. “We are on their minds throughout their lives and they want to give back,” he says. “There is something very compelling that binds them to this place, and their bequests make an enormous difference, particularly in terms of student experience and programs for financial assistance.

TOWN AND GOWN The Ideas for the World program, Vic’s signature non-credit program, offers Vic students another opportunity for an unusual, edifying experience outside the classroom that “blends social interaction with academic reflection and community awareness,” says its creator, Kelley Castle, Vic’s dean of students.

The diverse lecture series that focuses on particular topics expanded its scope this past year, adding a Law, Justice, Crime and Culture program that featured such notable speakers as Bill Blair, chief of the Toronto Police Service; Kirsten Mercer, a senior policy advisor to the Ontario premier, Kathleen Wynne; and Wayne Sumner Vic 6T2, a U of T professor emeritus of philosophy and law, who is an expert on the ethics of assisted suicide. During the winter semester, President Gooch is leading a series entitled Purpose, Power and Politics of University.

Approximately 50 per cent of the participants in evening streams of Ideas for the World are community members who would otherwise not get exposure to university experts. They help blur the divisions between Victoria University and its neighbourhoods; participants are invited from community centres and local shelters. “Initially, we pounded the pavement to recruit people,” says Castle. “Today, through the network of centres and shelters that are aware of the program, registration is always full.” vic report winter 2015

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Castle enjoys bringing together disparate groups so they can learn from each other. She and her staff also mount an annual conference called Minding Our Minds, a one-day event that brings students, staff and faculty together to learn more about mental health. The 2014 session included a comparison of mental health strategies at various Ontario universities and an acclaimed panel discussion about the pursuit of happiness featuring a trio of professors: philosopher, Mark Kingwell; psychologist, Jordan Peterson; and social worker, Charmaine Williams.

Mental health is an important issue for Castle because students often require assistance and support in adjusting to the demands of university or to living away from home for the first time. In 2014, she hired an “embedded counsellor,” a professional who is based at Vic and connected with U of T’s Counselling and Psychological Services.

“We do better serving the students locally in a place they consider home,” Castle says. “This way, they also have expedited access. Students are whole people and these approaches only work if Vic is their home, not just a place for residences and classes.”

In the same vein, she has arranged for a career counsellor and a learning strategist to be available at Vic one day each week so that students can obtain assistance on site. “It’s an interesting paradox,” Castle says. “In order to work without boundaries, you have to be cognizant of them.”

TAKING ACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY Ray deSouza, Victoria University’s bursar, is always aware of boundaries and how technology is pushing at them.

As the person responsible for Vic’s infrastructure, he looks beyond drains, lighting and walkways to the demands of the virtual world. “For Vic students, the boundary of the College is no longer Vic; it’s the Greater Toronto Area and beyond,” deSouza says. “With social media, the students want to access the campus using their own devices, using software of their choosing 12

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and having access to help desks at times that they choose. They now can transfer information across a variety of platforms, and we’re using commercial suppliers and services to ensure that it can happen.”

Given the ubiquity of technology today, deSouza has ensured that technology support services are available online for longer hours. He has also made sure that an increasing variety of Vic’s online systems have support: “We have to anticipate the devices and technologies students may want to access. They set the stage and we must act,” says deSouza. “With each entrance intake we need to review what support services the students will need and be prepared to respond very quickly.”

Technology continues to change the face of the E.J. Pratt Library at Vic. Each year, says the chief librarian, Lisa Sherlock, more of the library’s collection is digitized. We’re getting into digitization in a big way and we’re refining our methods,” she says. Digitization will always be high maintenance and costly, since items must be scanned manually and an infrastructure created, with identification that will allow users to locate the information they want.

In 2014, the library added 10,000 new items to its digital archive, 2.5 per cent more than the previous year.

Even more impressive, it was done without dedicated funding, thanks to the assistance of work-study students.

Sherlock and her staff are focusing their initial efforts on portions of the collection that they have identified as being of interest to researchers. Last year, they added to the collection Acta Victoriana, and field notebooks of the geologist, A.P. Coleman Vic 1876, who was a Vic professor during the College’s early years, to the collection. His notebooks include 38,000 images, many of them from around the Scarborough Bluffs. “Each year, we see a decrease in the number of books circulated, but an increase in Web traffic from all over the world,” Sherlock says.

One particular artifact, both in digital form and in its original, gained significant attention this past fall.

An etching by William Blake from the

E.J. Pratt Library’s collection was featured in a comprehensive exhibition of Blake’s works at the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. The etching was created for a contraband pamphlet published during the French Revolution and is one of only two existing versions.

Sherlock carried it by hand to Heathrow Airport, where she personally transferred the valuable etching to a representative from the exhibition. A digital image of the etching was chosen as the end papers for the exhibition catalogue. “To see it there was very gratifying,” she says.

As a way of extending its boundaries, the library regularly lends rare items from its collection for exhibitions, including those closer to home. In January 2015, a poster of the 1968 Paris student protests from the library’s collection was featured at the University of Toronto Art Centre. Last fall, a 1926 edition of the autobiography of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, was part of a First World War exhibition at U of T’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

CREATING UNDERSTANDING THROUGH OUTREACH Outreach is nothing new to the faculty and staff of Emmanuel College. They regularly invite visiting scholars to conduct research and participate in the life of the College.

“In co-operation with the United Church, we bring a scholar from the developing world to be the Anne Duncan Gray Visiting Scholar,” says Phyllis Airhart, who served as acting principal for six months in 2014. “We just had Aruna Gnanadason, a scholar from India, who was researching and writing a book about feminism in developing countries. It’s a good external partnership. We provide the hospitality, and they get involved in events and visiting classrooms.”

Swee Hong Lim, the director of the Master of Sacred Music program, is well aware that outreach can blur boundaries. He has taken the program in new directions by seeking students from countries in the global south, including Africa and Asia, and by

Photograph: Babak

MENTAL HEALTH

A GOLDEN LIFE Randall Oliphant Explores the World

Photograph: Babak

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

It’s a question that Randall Oliphant Vic 8T4, executive chairman of New Gold and chairman of the World Gold Council, has asked himself and others throughout a long, successful career in the gold mining industry.

Oliphant may have been unfamiliar with the workings of natural resources industries when he first graduated from Victoria College, but he was no stranger to the entrepreneurial spirit or to leadership. As a child growing up in Toronto, he had a newspaper delivery route, sold greeting cards door-todoor, and shovelled driveways and sidewalks in the winter to earn spending money.

Oliphant is living proof that extracurricular activities can change the course of a student’s life in unexpected ways.

Working as an orientation leader for three years introduced him to a “variety of people connected with Vic and gave [him] a good EQ.” It’s also how he met his future wife, Laurel (Curry) Vic 8T5, a music student. She was late for her orientation tour and was added to Oliphant’s group. “My youngest daughter’s middle name is Victoria,” Oliphant says, “and there is a plaque in the Vic quad on the tree where I met my wife.”

While still a student, he took advantage of leadership opportunities as an officer of the Commerce Students’ Association, where he and his friends inaugurated an annual U of T business conference that brought industry executives to the business school to discuss their careers. “We were passionate about business, not just training to get jobs,” Oliphant says.

After graduation, Oliphant had the opportunity to indulge this passion as a chartered accountant, learning more about the various industries whose finances he reviewed. Mining was one of those industries, and the more he learned,

focusing not only on organ music and choral conducting, but composition, voice and jazz improvisation as well.

“The program trains people for vocational work within a church or Christian setting,” Lim says. “We have had mostly domestic students in the past, so we’ve been intentional in trying to recruit overseas. We want to be global in terms of recruiting, training and outlook. We have a very good rapport with the Faculty of Music, so our

Randall Oliphant

the more interested he became. “I found that the price of metals was influenced by all sorts of world events,” he says.

“Geopolitical events and central bank policies had a great impact and were very interesting to me.”

Oliphant began his career in the mining industry as the assistant treasurer for Barrick Gold Corporation “when it was an upstart firm with about 20 people in the office,” and worked his way up the ladder to chief executive officer. “It was fun to be part of what became the most significant gold company in the world,” Oliphant says.

Today, as executive chairman of New Gold, another young mining company, Oliphant has already helped the company grow from a $30-million venture to a $2.5-billion organization, with no end in sight.

“My Bachelor of Commerce degree gave me the foundation to get exposure to different industries and to continue to learn,” Oliphant says. “Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to be around a lot of entrepreneurs in the mining industry.

I’ve seen many things and had good mentorship.

“As a result, you think about doing creative things. You think, ‘Why not me?’”

Oliphant’s career, which has taken him to Asia, Africa, South America and back, has become the answer to that favourite question of his: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

students can also take classes there. It’s quite cutting edge.”

“Another outreach effort involves the newly established Committee on Chinese Christianity at Emmanuel,” says Mark Toulouse, principal of the College. The committee is in the preliminary stages of planning a fall conference, in conjunction with the local Chinese community, about Christianity in China, with invitations for presenting papers being extended to international

scholars, many from China, who work on the topic.

Emmanuel College is also looking beyond the boundaries of Christianity to establish new programs and relationships. Building on the success of the Muslim Studies stream of its master’s degree in Pastoral Studies, the College is offering a diploma program in Buddhist mindfulness that may also eventually expand into a master’s stream. “It’s a way of going beyond vic report winter 2015

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the boundaries of how chaplaincy is traditionally understood,” says Airhart.

“It’s a way of relating to more multifaith communities.”

Gooch is pleased with the success of the growth and integration of the Muslim Studies stream. “The programs at Emmanuel knock down barriers between religions and create understanding,” he says.

Toulouse further explains the significance of Emmanuel’s programs.

“It is extremely important today that the various religions of the world learn to work together cooperatively, through dialogue, active and practical engagement, and mutual understanding, to make the world a better place,” he says.

“Our students, whether self-identified as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or any other religious understanding, build relationships with one another in our halls that will embody and help to define the hopes of the next generation.”

By blurring such a variety of boundaries, openness is created, a principle that is vital to Vic’s identity, Gooch notes. “Openness is significant in the life of Vic,” he says. “It was founded by Egerton Ryerson on Christian principles, but there was no test of religious beliefs for faculty or students. It is part of our tradition to be welcoming. Eradicating boundaries is a natural evolution of the Vic identity.” 

“ Think about how you want to live day-to-day, and be honest; the lifestyle you want matters as much as the career you choose,” Vicki Samaras Vic 9T8 (centre) told Vic students at an event in February.

DREAM IN PROGRESS Sparkling is the term that describes the type of wine produced at Hinterland Wine Company in Ontario’s Prince Edward County, but it’s also an apt word to describe Vicki Samaras Vic 9T8, the winery president and partner.

Samaras is a lively presence who enjoys the sales aspect of her business as much as she loves the agricultural challenge of matching different varieties of grapes to the local soil. In the winery’s tasting room, as well as during sales calls, she is in her element.

“I love building relationships with people,” says Samaras, her enthusiasm for her work flowing through her conversation. “I love the range of people we meet. Running a winery also allows me to balance my love of plants with running a business. I love the entire operation and its seasonality. In January, it’s all about business planning. In spring, the vineyard comes alive and tourists begin stopping by. During the summer, the vines are growing and we’re selling wine, and in the fall, it’s all about the harvest.”

While a Vic undergraduate studying botany and earth sciences, Samaras realized she wanted to be involved in agriculture. A cancer scare during her second year of university made her realize that it was important to pursue her dreams.

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Upon graduation, Samaras began to put plans in place.

She took jobs at the Ministry of Natural Resources and in the pharmaceutical industry in order to save money toward her goal. In 2003, she bought her first property in Prince Edward County and a year later, she and her husband began planting their first vines. By 2007, they had the first harvest they could bottle.

“It takes vines three years to bear fruit and five years to obtain a decent yield per plant,” Samaras says.

Today, Hinterland Wine Company is flourishing and continuing to grow, supporting Samaras, her husband and their two young sons. In addition to the knowledge base she gained during her undergraduate career, Samaras credits much of her success to the skills she acquired as a Vic student.

“The skill set you get to complement your degree has a lot to do with success: self-discipline, tenacity and following through are really important,” Samaras says.

Samaras enjoys sharing her passion with Vic students and alumni, whether during a formal lecture or at her winery’s tasting room counter.

“I benefitted from major life advice during my Vic years, so I want to pay it forward,” she says.

Photograph: (Opposite page) Victoria Alumni Office; Victoria Alumni Office

Vicki Samaras’ Vineyard Keeps on Growing

young alumni profile

“Knowledge is the Food of the Soul”

Photograph: (Opposite page) Victoria Alumni Office; Victoria Alumni Office

Mary Scourboutakos Vic 1T1 If, as Plato stated, knowledge is the food of the soul, then Mary Scourboutakos is on a journey of satiating both her own thirst for knowledge and improving health outcomes for Canadians.

Currently a PhD student at U of T’s Department of Nutritional Sciences, Scourboutakos initially planned to major in music. After her first year studying life sciences at Vic, she realized she had been ignoring a passion. She had always been fascinated by food—from television shows, to her family’s kitchen in which her parents cooked well and held conversations about the importance of good nutrition.

After making the switch to pursue music and nutritional sciences, she changed her diet. “The changes were drastic.

Seeing the effect a healthier diet had on my life and energy level fuelled my passion for nutritional sciences. I saw the cause and effect of healthy eating and my whole life changed,” says Scourboutakos. “Pursuing nutritional sciences was the best thing that happened to me.”

Scourboutakos needs as much energy as she can muster.

She has already been the lead author on a number of important papers addressing calorie, fat and sodium levels in Canadian fast-food restaurants and has helped her thesis supervisor, Mary L’Abbé, fulfill research contracts for Toronto Public Health and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. “We became expert consultants to Toronto Public Health regarding menu labelling for calories and sodium levels. We had previously done a survey of Canadians and their use of menu labels and attitudes towards them. We were able to analyze Torontonians in that sample. These results helped inform Toronto’s report to Ontario Public Health about the need for labelling. It is very satisfying to help contribute to this policy debate.”

In December 2014, Scourboutakos published a study on sodium in fast-food chains in the journal CMAJ Open. This study had legs. Notably, Health Minister Rona Ambrose went on record, after the study’s release, stating that “fast food is not healthy” and encouraged Canadians to be cautious. “Eat real food and you won’t have to worry about sugar or sodium amounts,” says Scourboutakos.

Why then, are Canadians seemingly unable to shake this salt habit? “There was a misconception that the food industry was doing well at voluntarily lowering salt levels,” says Scourboutakos. “We saw the need to scientifically and systematically prove whether this was true.”

Using data from her 2010 survey on sodium levels in restaurants, Scourboutakos measured again in 2013. Some foods saw a decrease in levels, but a shocking 70 per cent remained at the same level or worse than before. “Salt is the cheapest way to add flavour,” she notes. “This is not a question of consumer want but rather an indicator of industry influence.

Three years ago the industry said it was getting better. Now, they say they are simply responding to consumers’ tastes.”

The ideal Canadian diet contains only three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt, per day. The less sodium you consume, the more sensitive your tongue becomes to the taste of salt. In

Mary Scourboutakos in Burwash Hall

other words, if sodium levels were reduced industry-wide, all Canadians would re-adjust.

This study is just one of the elements contributing towards her thesis entitled, “Eating Out: A study of the nutritional quality of Canadian chain restaurant foods and interventions to promote healthy eating.” She is also studying menu label practices and is happy to see this becoming a hot topic at Queen’s Park. “I want calories and sodium content to be listed on menus. People have the right to know.” She is also in the midst of a study at Vic’s Burwash Dining Hall where she will analyze whether the availability of nutritional information influences student eating patterns.

Despite her busy academic schedule, she founded the Slow Food Youth Network Toronto in 2014 and enjoys making presentations to high schools. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge about nutrition and has an entertaining food blog at www.thatnutritiongirl.com. Scourboutakos boasts an array of academic scholarships, awards and fellowships, including Vic’s Milne Award and a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

But one of Scourboutakos’ most surprising rewards has come from being a Junior Fellow at Massey College. “Being part of Massey has added an incredible dimension to my graduate school experience,” she says. “As researchers we get so focused on our own issue. Thanks to Senior Fellows, such as President Paul Gooch, I have learned the importance of interdisciplinary thinking. It is amazing how a seemingly unrelated area of study can influence you. President Gooch teaches a course on virtue and vice. Discussing food from a philosophical viewpoint opens up new ways of thinking for me.

Are we morally obligated to eat virtuously? And from a religious studies perspective, is it our social responsibility to eat well because otherwise harm will come to us and the planet? The rules of healthy eating have been the same for centuries, across disparate areas of study, but from my position, it’s all about empowering people with knowledge and addressing the issues of our unhealthy food environment. Nutrition is simple; only the food industry would like us to think otherwise.”  vic report winter 2015

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milestones

CAREERS, AUTHORS, HONOURS Ken Bartlett Vic 7T1 has published a new book, The Renaissance and Reformation in Northern Europe (University of Toronto Press, 2014), co-edited with Margaret McGlynn.

Thoroughly revised to meet the needs of the undergraduate classroom, the book includes over 60 documents exploring humanist and Renaissance ideals, the zeal of religion and the wealth of the new world. Together, the sources illuminate the chaos and brilliance of this historical period—as well as its failures and inconsistencies.

Jan (Barnett) Beveridge Vic 6T7 has written Children into Swans: Fairy Tales and the Pagan Imagination (McGillQueen’s University Press, 2014). The book explores nineteenth-century European fairy tales and the lore of ancient stories embedded in them.

John Peter Bodner Vic 7T6 and wife Dorothy Hazel (Crellin) have marked 25 years of marriage, and John celebrated 30 years as an ordained minister of the gospel among Calvinistic Baptists.

John has served small pastorates in Britain and Canada, particularly the Hope Assembly of Bible Christians in Mississauga, Ont. He has also sustained an active, itinerant preaching ministry in churches of several orthodox, evangelical denominations as well as working for the Canadian Protestant League and the Trinitarian Bible Society (Canada). He has published The House of God: A Book of Meditations on the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy for Students of the Gospel Ministry (Wipf and Stock, 2013). Contact John at pastor@hopeabc.org.

The Toronto Public Library Board appointed Vickery (Cook) Bowles Vic 8T0 as Toronto’s city librarian this past January. Bowles is a board member for the Centre for Equitable Library Access, a member of the Canadian Urban

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send us your news: vic.report@utoronto.ca

Libraries Council Ebook Task Group and most recently became the chair of the Canadian Library Association Public Library Task Group on Ebooks.

J. Alexander (Sandy) Burnett Vic 6T4 has written A Duty Toward the Living (Tantramar Heritage Trust), a history of healthcare in southeast New Brunswick.

A freelance writer and communications consultant for the past 30 years, Burnett has also written On the Brink: Endangered Wildlife in Canada (Western Producer Prairie Books) and A Passion for Wildlife: The History of the Canadian Wildlife Service (UBC Press).

Wendy M. Cecil Vic 7T1, chancellor of Victoria University, was named a member of the Order of Canada for her accomplishments as a business leader and for her extensive community engagement.

Social Focus Consulting, founded and led by John Paul de Silva Vic 0T1, was named by The Globe and Mail as one of Canada’s 10 most remarkable small businesses, selected from more than 120 nominations. Directed by de Silva and run by undergraduate business students, Social Focus Consulting provides marketing strategies to charities.

HyeRan Kim-Cragg Emm 0T6 and co-author EunYoung Choi have had their book The Encounters: Retelling the Bible from Migration and Intercultural Perspectives (Daejanggan, 2014) published in English. Originally published in Korean, the book invites readers to encounter the biblical figures whose lives were marked by migration and crossing boundaries.

Alvin A. Lee Vic 5T3, Emm 5T7 received the City of Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, for his dedicated university and public championship of the creative and performing arts and for his personal

JANUARY 2015 VIC-MASSEY REUNION Tina Binesh Marvasti Vic 1T3, Alexander Mosa Vic 1T4, Illya Nokhrin Vic 1T1, Roseen Giles, Catherine Brown Vic 1T0, Daniel Anstett Vic 1T1, Mufei Jiang Vic 1T3, John Mayberry Vic 7T6, Mary Scourbourakos Vic 1T1 and Andrew Binkley attended a Vic-Massey Reunion with President Paul Gooch and Professor Andrew Baines. achievements as a teacher, scholar of Old English poetry, literary critic and general editor of the 30-volume Collected Works of Northrop Frye (University of Toronto Press).

J. Clark Leith Vic 5T9 was awarded Botswana’s Presidential Order of Meritorious Service on September 30, 2014. The award was given out during the country’s Independence Day celebrations and recognizes Leith’s years of service with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and the Bank of Botswana. After serving as provost for the University of Western Ontario from 1980 to 1986, Leith took up a full-time position as an economic consultant in Botswana’s Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.

Since then he has held a variety of positions including director of research and senior policy advisor at the bank, and since his retirement in 2003, as economic consultant at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.

James Miller Vic 6T6 was named an officer of the Order of Canada for his even-handed and definitive scholarship on the history of relations between Canada’s Aboriginal peoples and its settlers.

send us your news: vic.report@utoronto.ca This past September, Kathryn (Hall) Newton Vic 8T7 received a Doctorate of Business Administration degree at Henley Business School, U.K., in partnership with the Rotman School of Management, U of T. She is the first candidate of the new Rotman/Henley DBA initiative to complete this degree.

Her research focused on branding strategy and the types of bonds that consumers form with brands. Contact Kathryn at k_newton@sympatico.ca.

lieutenant governor between 2002 and 2008. He was honorary colonel of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment from 2003 to 2008, thus re-establishing the link between that office and that of the lieutenant governor, the Queen’s personal representative in Newfoundland and Labrador. He has long been passionately interested in the history of Newfoundland and its people.

His first book, as editor, Peter Cashin: My Fight for Newfoundland (2012), was a Globe and Mail bestseller.

Edward Roberts Vic 6T0 has released another book with Flanker Press.

Roberts is the editor and annotator of A Blue Puttee at War: The Memoir of Captain Sydney Frost, MC. Frost was one of the First Five Hundred, volunteers also known as the Blue Puttees, to join the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in 1914.

He served with the regiment throughout the entire war, rising from the rank of private to that of captain, and returned to St. John’s with the regiment on June 1, 1919. Frost’s account is frank, detailed and authoritative. It is the most complete account of World War One by any member of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

Roberts has been involved in public life in Newfoundland and Labrador for 55 years, as a journalist, lawyer and politician. He was a member of the House of Assembly for 23 years and served as Newfoundland and Labrador’s

Daniel Storisteanu Vic 1T1 has cofounded a start-up called SimPrints that aims to improve healthcare delivery in the developing world. SimPrints has raised over $500 million in grant money including an innovation award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Grand Challenges Canada.

S. Peter Tsatsanis Vic 6T9 edited and wrote the preface to René Thom’s Parables, Parabolas and Catastrophes (Thombooks Press, 2014), translated

by Roy Lisker. Thom was a worldrenowned mathematician, philosopher and semiotician. He won the Fields Medal (named for U of T mathematician John Fields) in 1958. Thom visited U of T and was an active participant in Victoria College’s Semiotic Circle in the 1980s. Available at the U of T Bookstore and at Amazon.

Lois M. Wilson Emm 7T8 has published I Want to Be in That Number: Cool Saints I Have Known, 40 reflections on remarkable “saints” she encountered

milestones

Grad Year: Vic

Alumni are invited to send information for inclusion in Milestones. For marriages please indicate, if applicable, whether you prefer to be known by your married or birth name.

An obituary must accompany notices of death.

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milestones

over her years as minister, United Church moderator, senator and international ecumenical leader.

Each story is anchored in the scriptural texts chosen for their funerals, and offers hope to a deathdenying culture. For further inquiries contact 6canoe@gmail.com.

James T. Watt Vic 6T2 has written his second book, Orillia’s Fallen: World War II, The Boys Who Didn’t Make it Home.

The book is a chronicle of young men from the Orillia area of Ontario who gave up their lives for their country in the war.

The stories recounted are the end result of more than four years of research into primary and secondary sources such as military archives, The Orillia Packet and Times, and interviews with the surviving families. A combination of biography, military and social history, Orillia’s Fallen maintains the greatness of humankind should not be measured by our ability to go to war, but by our capacity to recognize and remember the human costs of war.

This not-for-profit book was sponsored by the City of Orillia, Jane and Garfield Dunlop, the Simcoe County Historical Association, and supported by a number of other donors and contributors.

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vic report winter 2015

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milestones

send us your news: vic.report@utoronto.ca

MARRIAGES

James G. Dagg Vic 5T3, in Kelowna, B.C., September 24, 2014.

Ronald L. MacFeeters Vic 3T6, in Toronto, December 7, 2014.

Sarah Bingham Vic 0T8 married William Blair Vic 0T9 on October 17th, 2014 in Vancouver, B.C.

Lorene S. Elvidge Vic 8T1, in Markham, Ont., October 23, 2014.

F. Isabel (Farrand) McDonald Vic 5T0, in Toronto, October 14, 2002.

Eleanor R. (Feely) Fenton Vic 6T1, in Toronto, September 28, 2014.

William R. “Bill” McDonald Vic 4T9, in Toronto, November 6, 2013.

Kent D.J. Garrett Emm 9T9, in Woodstock, Ont., January 3, 2015, past member of the ECAA Executive and U of T Arbor Award recipient.

T. Duggan Melhuish Vic 5T3, in Toronto, September 16, 2014.

Veronica Gershenzon Vic 0T8 married Yuri Vitovsky-Remi on September 13, 2014.

IN MEMORIAM Sandor G.G.A. Adorjan Vic 6T7, in Toronto, May 2014.

M. Noreen (Moorhouse) Clark Angus Vic 4T2, in Toronto, January 8, 2015.

Valerie (Husband) Brook Vic 6T1, in Toronto, October 29, 2014, U of T Arbor Award recipient.

Thomas F.S. Brown Vic 5T0, in Toronto, June 30, 2014.

Gary B. Curtin Vic 6T5, in Toronto, July 26, 2014.

Donald H. Harron Vic 4T8, in Toronto, January 17, 2015, U of T Arbor Award recipient, Victoria College Distinguished Alumni Award winner (2000).

Mary M. (Pearson) Horney Vic 4T9, in Toronto, October 30, 2014, U of T Arbor Award recipient.

Shirley Anne Darrach-Pearse Vic 4T5, in Huntsville, Ont., December 19, 2013.

Donald C. Ross Vic 5T0, in Mississauga, Ont., November 2014.

Jean M. (Sinclair) Schade Vic 3T4, in Albuquerque, NM, December 10, 2011.

Mary I.P. Jolliffe Vic 4T7, in Toronto, October 29, 2014.

Richard M. Stingle Vic 4T8, in London, Ont., November 22, 2014.

W. Ross Kingdon Vic 4T9, in Kingsport, TN, November 16, 2014.

Doris (Brown) Stokes Vic 4T0, in Toronto, May 2, 2014.

Helen H. (Rogers) Knights Vic 3T5, in Thunder Bay, Ont., November 23, 2014.

Linda A.M. Taylor Vic 6T0, in Toronto, December 20, 2014, U of T Arbor Award recipient.

Frederick Ladly Vic 5T1, in Perth, Ont., January 5, 2015.

Catherine E.J. (Wilson) Lawson Vic 5T2, in Toronto, September 20, 2014.

Doreen M. (Campbell) Lewis Vic 4T7, in Nanaimo, B.C., November 30, 2014.

Michele A. (Kaye) Macdonald Vic 6T8, in Cincinnati, OH, May 5, 2014.

Erylene (Bryden) Underwood Vic 4T9, in Ottawa, September 6, 2014.

Shirley K. Wigmore Vic 5T2, in Toronto, November 14, 2014.

Josephine Ann “JoAnn” (Gregory) Woods Vic 4T6, in Windsor, Ont., December 20, 2014.

voluntary subscription appeal

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But it costs money to produce and mail this magazine three times a year. Each issue goes to about 24,000 grads and costs about $30,000.

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John “Jack” D. Pearse Vic 4T7, in Waterloo, Ont., August 21, 2013.

vic report winter 2015

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Stefanie Bowles Vic 0T2 married Matt Lewis on July 26, 2014 in Toronto.

In attendance were grandparents Jessie (Nugent) Bowles Vic 5T1 and Richard Bowles Vic 5T0, Karen Bowles Emm 0T5 (presiding), Bernard von Bieberstein Vic 0T1, Scott Conover Vic 7T9, Caitlin (Humphreys) Schwartz Vic 0T2, Nicole Simms Vic 0T2, Kate (Cassaday) Stewart Vic 0T3 and Kate Sturgess Vic 0T2.

faculty forum

Thirty Years of Dedication

Photograph: Victoria Alumni Office

by ken bartlett vic 7t1 When my latest book, A Short History of the Italian Renaissance, appeared earlier this year a number of colleagues and friends asked why I had dedicated it to my students, as if this was an odd recognition of support or respect. My answer was simple.

It was actually the suggestion of my wife, Gillian (Smiley) Vic 7T0, who remarked that so much of the inspiration for the book resulted from my interactions with my various classes in the Renaissance Studies program at Victoria College. I have taught in this interdisciplinary program from its inception, at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum; and my graduate seminar on Renaissance humanism can even been seen as an extension of what we do in the program. So, it was appropriate to honour those great many young—and some not so young— students whom I had the pleasure and privilege to teach over the past 30 years.

The question, moreover, drove me to think somewhat more deeply about what my Victoria College students had indeed contributed to my research and publications and what I had offered them by way of expanding their experience and cultural horizons beyond certifying another credit on their transcripts. This exercise became a very rewarding and gratifying analysis of not only what it is I have taught for three decades at Vic but also what it means to enjoy the privilege of teaching in a Victoria College program today.

Two things in particular emerged from my somewhat random and often eccentric memories. The first was that teaching at the College allowed me to escape the disciplinary restraints of a traditional department. Although I still, by choice, teach the large, first-year survey in history (HIS109) in the Bader Theatre with an enrolment of 450 students, I also have the great, good fortune to create and teach small classes that have allowed me to investigate particular interests of my own with a group of self-selecting students, all of whom are engaged, bright and aware that they are part of something special. For example, in the second-year course on Renaissance culture, I spend a year creating a dynamic mosaic of the cultural efflorescence of the Renaissance by integrating the political, economic, social, artistic, literary and architectural heritage of the splendid period of human civilization into a coherent picture. The senior seminar of the program is a small class devoted purely to Renaissance Florence, and is sufficiently flexible for students to pursue their own interests in the context of the loose structure of the syllabus. But it is the third-year course I teach on Rome that is my great delight. The luxury of devoting an entire year to one city in the Renaissance, which I place in the ancient and modern histories of the city, is an academic pleasure hard to equal. Devoting illustrated, two-hour classes completely to the Sistine Chapel or the Papal Palace and the rooms of Raphael, or four hours to palaces, churches, villas, fountains and piazzas certainly energizes me—and, if the course evaluations are a reliable indicator, the students as well.

College programs, such as Renaissance Studies, are treasures. It is important that when any of us hears of a talented student not choosing the University of Toronto because of its reputation as impersonal, alienating and overly bureaucratic, we should respond by talking about our college system that gives students in the Faculty of Arts and Science an identity in a smaller pool, a beautiful campus environment in the centre of the city, and a skilled and able support structure in the offices of the registrar and the dean of students. We should point to the college programs and their small, interdisciplinary classes, their experienced instructors and flexible organization. We should ensure that potential students look at the course evaluations, investigate classes with a VIC designator, and even audit some of these to see just how welcoming and original these programs are.

Tell them to visit us in our office hours and talk to students currently in Victoria College courses. I am certain that the myth of alienation will at least subside if not dissolve.

So, this is the reason I dedicated my book to my students.

They, through their choice of Renaissance Studies and enrolment in my classes, have given me the exquisite luxury of teaching what I love and know best. They have provided the evidence that permitted the inclusion of more than 80 colour illustrations in my book, as I could argue that it needed to reflect the visual aspects of my courses. Indeed, it was the reputation of the Victoria College courses that impelled the University of Toronto Press to approach me initially about producing A Short History of the Italian Renaissance. Because my students helped fuel my energy in teaching and research that inspired the book, they have earned the honour of its dedication.  Ken Bartlett is a professor of history and Renaissance Studies. vic report winter 2015

19

off campus

Vic Comes to Town Regional Alumni Events Schedule Photographed in Kingston, Ont., President Gooch addresses alumni. This event featured a tour of the recently opened Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen’s University, affectionately named “The Isabel.” There was also a well-attended event for Ottawa alumni at the Canadian Museum of History on March 12 at which the Distinguished Alumni Award was presented to George MacDonald O.C. Vic 6T1 (see page five for story).

Join Victoria University’s President Paul Gooch in an off-campus alumni event in one of four cities. Whether you live there or are just passing through, meet up with alumni and hear about the latest developments at Vic. For details and to RSVP visit www.vicu.utoronto.ca/alumni.

April 16 London, Ontario April 23 Halifax, Nova Scotia May 6

Calgary, Alberta

May 7

Vancouver, British Columbia

Alumni Calendar of Events

Photograph: Victoria Alumni Office

April 15 VWA Annual Luncheon “My Several Loves: The Challenge of Living with Competing Passions” with President Paul Gooch, Alumni Hall, Old Vic, 11:45 a.m., $30 per person.

Advance registration and payment required

by April 7. The annual general meeting follows. Visit www.vicu.utoronto.ca/ alumni/VWA for details.

May 28 Celebration for President Paul W. Gooch Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West, 6 p.m., call 416-585-4500 or visit www.vicu.utoronto.ca/alumni for more information and to register.

May 29–31 Spring Reunion Celebrating the Honoured Years Vic 4T0, 4T5, 5T0, 5T5, 6T0, 6T5, 7T0, 7T5, 8T0, 8T5 and 9T0. Come back to Vic for the weekend! Visit www.vicu.utoronto.ca/ alumni/springreunion for more details, as they become available.

SAVE THE DATE – JUNE 15 Concert and Reception Hosted by President Gooch and Professor Pauline Thompson Vic 6T3 Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West, 5:15 p.m.

All are welcome.

Visit the Vic website for the most up-to-date event information and news at www.vicu.utoronto.ca.

To subscribe to Vic’s e-newsletter, contact vic.alumni@utoronto.ca.