Guelph The Portico Magazine, Winter 2010

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porticoU N I V E R S I T Y O F G U E L P H M A G A Z I N E F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S

Look ahead to the future of DNA barcoding

PLUS■ Fighting H1N1■ The play's

the thing■ Paradise lost

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The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company

Underwritten by:

The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company

Underwritten by:

i n and around the un ivers i ty

T he University ofGuelph launches a

new initiative to improveCanada’s criminal justicesystem. The Royal Societyof Canada recognizesinsect ecologist PeterKevan. HistorianCatharine Wilson receivesthree prestigious awardsfor her research on ruralOntario. And a Torontoart gallery invites fine art students to produceexhibitions and art events.

a lumni mat ters

G uelph graduate

Bob Davis preparesfor the VancouverOlympics, while futuregraduates staff the U of Gcall centre and ready thecampus for College Royal. The University ofGuelph Alumni Associa-tion invites nominees forits annual awards programand asks new parents toshare their “baby news.”

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3 — president’s page • grad news — 30 • passages — 37

on the coverDon’t let the false eyes fool you.

DNA barcoding reveals a butterfly

inside this disguise.

PHOTO BY JAY COSSEY

college newsLook for your alumni

newsletter inside The

Portico.

contentst h e p o r t i c o • W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

STOP THE OUTBREAKFor help in preparing for the H1N1 pandemic, Ontario’s public health officials turned to a Guelph math professor.

— 14 —

STUDENT OF THE STAGETheatre scholar Ric Knowles searches — and finds — tales

created by artists from diverse cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds.

— 18 —

PARADISE REGAINEDNutrition grad Brenda Davis shows how a healthy diet

can reverse the symptoms of Type II diabetes.

— 24 —

COACH4FOODInternational coach Tom Hedican taps into Canada’s

hockey obsession to benefit his hometown.

— 8 — cover story

DNA BARCODING EVOLVES U of G’s biodiversity institute outgrows its space

as the barcode database expands and scientists around the world use its resources.

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porticoWinter 2010 • Volume 42 Issue 1

EditorMary Dickieson

DirectorCharles Cunningham

Art DirectionPeter Enneson Design Inc.

ContributorsBarbara Chance, BA ’74Barry GunnLori Bona HuntWendy JespersenRebecca Kendall, BA ’99Teresa PitmanSPARK Program WritersAndrew Vowles, B.Sc. ’84

Advertising InquiriesScott Anderson519-827-9169

Direct all other correspondence to:Communications and Public AffairsUniversity of GuelphGuelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1E-mail [email protected]/theportico/

The Portico magazine is published three timesa year by Communications and PublicAffairs at the University of Guelph. Its mis-sion is to enhance the relationship betweenthe University and its alumni and friendsand promote pride and commitment with-in the University community. All materialis copyright 2010. Ideas and opinionsexpressed in the articles do not necessarilyreflect the ideas or opinions of the Univer-sity or the editors.Publications Mail Agreement # 40064673

Printed in Canada — ISSN 1714-8731

To update your alumni record, contact:Alumni Affairs and DevelopmentPhone 519-824-4120, Ext. 56550Fax 519-822-2670E-mail [email protected]

the

Winter 2010 3

I n the last f i scal year , University ofGuelph researchers were awarded almost $162

million in research grants and contracts. Thisfunding comes from a variety of sources, includ-ing the Canadian Institutes of Health Research(CIHR), a federal agency that funds researchaimed at improving the health of Canadians.

As you would expect, universities withmedical schools receive the lion’s share ofCIHR funding, but Guelph’s $4.3-million allo-cation is the largest among universities thatdon’t train medical doctors. That surprises somepeople, but not those who recognize the depthof U of G expertise in the life sciences and ourability to form connections among disciplinesand major areas of academic research.

The University of Guelph takes an inte-grated approach to health-related issues, fromcultural to scientific, individual to community,theoretical to applied and animal to ecosys-tem. We are well-positioned to make significant contri-butions to the improvement of human health, flowingfrom our strengths in animal and environmental health.This is consistent with the needs of Canadians who areconcerned about the health effects of environmentaldegradation, diseases emerging from animals and theimpact of forgetting that everything on planet Earth isconnected to everything else.

Many public health advocates are seeking a moreintegrated approach to health research. And the Uni-versity of Guelph is delivering.

Health is one of six research themes identified by Uof G’s strategic research plan. The others are environment,agriculture, physical and biological structures, and cultur-al and social change. Guelph research promoting humanhealth is second only to agriculture in the number of cur-rent projects that have received infrastructure funding fromthe Canada Foundation for Innovation, an agency whosemandate is to strengthen the capacity of Canadian researchinstitutions to carry out world-class research.

Among the areas we pursue at U of G are genetics,neuroscience, human metabolism and microbiology,including the study of pathogens, toxins, nutrition andrelated environmental issues. We have well-establishedprograms investigating the fundamental biology of mul-tiple species on molecular, cellular, tissue and whole-animal bases. This multidisciplinary approach has aproven record in improving the health and well-beingof animals, but it can also improve our understandingof the pathogenesis and treatment of human diseases.

U of G expertise in nutrition, epidemiology and population medicine form a base from which Guelphactivity in public health continues to grow. Researchprograms in human nutrition, lifestyle, sexuality, mentalhealth, addiction, child development, gerontology andcommunity-based health services have a major impacton the health and well-being of individuals and families.

The federal government’s Canada Research Chairs(CRC) program also supports health-related research atU of G. CRC funding recognizes Canadian researcherswho are — or have the potential to become — inter-national leaders in their fields. Ten of Guelph’s 36 CRCsare directly positioned to carry out research that pro-motes health and prevents disease.

The University of Guelph’s largest research partner isthe Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and RuralAffairs (OMAFRA) — more than $51 million annually— and here, too, human health plays a prominent role.When the U of G/OMAFRA partnership was renewedin 2008, minister Leona Dombrowsky said: “This renewedpartnership gets to the heart of what the future of ouragri-food sector is all about — research and innovationto better protect our health, economy and environment.”

The minister’s comment suggests what many healthprofessionals espouse: we need to understand how thenatural world affects human health. This is where Guelph’slife science expertise comes to the forefront and why auniversity that doesn’t train doctors has so much to con-tribute to the health of people around the world.

Alastair Summerlee, President

the president’s pageU OF G DELIVERS INTEGRATED APPROACH TO HEALTH RESEARCH

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T he Univers ity of Guelph haslaunched a special justice studies ini-

tiative to commemorate and honour thestruggles of Guelph resident Steven Truscottand his family.

Truscott is known across Canada for hisdecades-long battle to prove his innocenceafter the 1959 murder of his schoolmateLynne Harper. He was wrongly convictedof the crime at age 14 and spent years inprison before he was released on parole in1969. He was acquitted by the Ontario

Court of Appeal in 2007.“The Truscott Initiative is symbolic of

our commitment to programming andresearch that engage with fundamentalquestions in the field of justice studies,” saysProf. Alun Joseph, dean of the College ofSocial and Applied Human Sciences, whichhouses U of G’s criminal justice and pub-lic policy degree program.

The Truscott Initiative will be an ongo-ing fundraising effort to support publiclectures, scholarships and, ultimately, a new

Knowledge Exchange Chair that will beheld by a succession of academic and legalexperts. They will each spend four to sixmonths at the University and will lead aresearch project on a current or emergingissue in justice studies.

“This will transform the learning expe-rience for thousands of students,” says RyanTruscott, Steven Truscott’s son. “It will alsoensure that Guelph’s research initiatives inlaw, justice and public policy make thegreatest possible contribution to commu-nity well-being by focusing on our crim-inal justice system — where it succeeds andwhere it fails — so that new ideas can leadto new improvements.”

The Truscott Initiative was formallylaunched Nov. 6 with a public panel dis-cussion on the ramifications of wrongfulconvictions. Steven and Marlene Truscottand their family participated, along withIrwin Cotler, former minister of justice andattorney general of Canada; Hersh Wolch,a member of the Truscott legal team; andMac Steinberg, a former prison chaplain.The panel was moderated by David Akin,BA ’89, national affairs correspondent forCanwest News. For information on howto support the Truscott Initiative, visitwww.csahs.uoguelph.ca/justice.

G uelph fine art students will gainfirst-hand experience producing con-

temporary art projects and events thanks toan innovative collaboration between theUniversity’s School of Fine Art and Music(SOFAM) and John Goodwin of Toronto’sgoodwater gallery. Called “G: Guelph Good-water,” the new venture involves U of G stu-dents and studio art faculty working withGoodwin and national and internationalartists on exhibitions and other events.

Students will also explore art’s conven-tional relations with education and exhibi-

tion, says SOFAM director Prof. John Kissick. “We envision a dynamic space that will

perform first and foremost as a site forexplorative, cutting-edge contemporary artand function as an incubator for new ideas.”collaboration is “an innovative and impor-tant next step” in the continuing develop-ment of the University’s nationally recog-nized studio art program.

“G” is located at 234 Queen St. E. inToronto and is open Fridays from 6 to 9p.m. and Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m.

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U of G honours Truscott

in around p e o p l e • r e s e a r c h • h i g h l i g h t s

John Kissick

From left: Mac Steinberg, Ryan Truscott,

moderator David Akin, Steven and Marlene Truscott,

Irwin Cotler and Hersh Wolch.

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TORONTO GALLERY TO SHOWCASE GUELPH’S STUDIO ART PROGRAM

Winter 2010 5

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universityPeter Kevan

Catharine Wilson

HISTORIAN DELVES INTO ONTARIO’S FARMING PAST

H istory professor Catharine Wilson has

received three prestigious awards for her

research on economic and social relationships

in 19th-century rural Ontario. Her book Tenants

in Time: Family Strategies, Land and Liberalism

in Upper Canada, 1799-1871 received the

Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Award,

the Ontario Historical Society’s J.J. Talman

Award and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award in

Ontario History from the Champlain Society.

In Tenants in Time, Wilson mines data from

the 1842 census of Cramahe Township,

Northumberland County, near Colborne, and

examines some of our basic assumptions about

life in Upper Canada. In particular, she argues

that because the notion of tenant farming did

not fit with entrenched liberal values about land

and ownership, the reality of land tenancy’s

essential function in Upper Canadian society

was often ignored by contemporaries and later

by historians writing about the period.

Using the census results as her foundation,

Wilson weaves a mix of factual information, legal

records and statistics from a variety of sources

to explore the complexities of landowner-tenant

relationships and provide a more complete pic-

ture of how families adapted and thrived in their

new homeland.

P rof. Peter Kevan, whorecently retired from the School of

Environmental Sciences, was elected aFellow of the Royal Society of Canadain mid-September. Fellowship in theRoyal Society is the highest academicaccolade available to scientists and schol-ars in Canada.

A respected insect ecologist, Kevanwas recognized for his “extensive pio-neering ecological, zoological and botan-ical contributions” and for being a worldleader in pollinator conservation. Hisresearch has resulted in more than 150peer-reviewed articles, confirmed thathuman activities disrupt pollinator pop-ulations and led to changes in public pol-icy and practice.

Previously, he received a lifetimeachievement award from the Entomo-logical Society of Canada and served onthe U.S. National Research Councilexpert panel on the status of pollinators.

Two days after Kevan’s election tothe Royal Society, Gary Goodyear, fed-eral minister of state (science and tech-

nology), announced that the environ-mental scientist will head a new nation-al research network designed to addressthe global pollinator shortage.

The Canadian Pollination Initiative(CANPOLIN) will involve 44researchers from 26 institutions. Theywill examine all aspects of pollination,including pollinator health and conser-vation, plant gene flow, the impact ofclimate change, economics, and futuremanagement needs.

The diversity and abundance ofinsect pollinators are in decline global-ly due to such factors as disease, pesti-cide exposure, malnutrition, habitat lossand climate change. This represents aserious threat to natural ecosystems andcrop production, researchers say. InCanada alone, the value of insect polli-nation to agriculture is estimated to beabout $1 billion.

CANPOLIN will receive federalsupport of some $5 million over fiveyears from the Natural Sciences andEngineering Research Council.

Kevan gets Royal Society honours,heads national research network

O lympic rider Ian Millar, H.D.La. ’05, was one

of 20 equestrians who “changed reins” dur-

ing a unique fundraising event held to benefit the

Ontario Veterinary College’s new Equine Sports

Medicine and Reproduction Centre. Millar com-

peted in barrel racing at the inaugural Equi-Chal-

lenge competition, which was held at the Caledon

farm of Greg and Irene Aziz. Thoroughbred racing

legend Sandy Hawley also competed, as did

Queen’s Plate winner Emma Jayne Wilson, a 2001

graduate of Kemptville Campus’s equine diploma

program.

“What a fantastic event,” said Millar. “It should

become an annual event, and I’d love to be part

of it for a long time.”

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U nivers ity profes sor emeritusBruce Wilkie, Pathobiology, is trying

to develop a preventive treatment forhuman food allergies that could be admin-istered to newborns.

In North America, four per cent ofadults and six per cent of children havefood allergies.

“Allergies are increasing at an epidemicrate that cannot be due to genetic change,”says Wilkie. “It’s probably because today’snewborns and young children are no longerexposed to the bacterial, fungal and viralinfectious diseases needed for the develop-ment of a balanced immune system. Someenvironmental exposure is necessary to allowus to have an immune system that works.”

In a study involving pigs, he and hiscolleagues were able to build resistance tofood allergies by exposing the animals tobacteria when they were just days old.

To determine whether exposure to bac-teria influenced the newborn pig’s immuneresponse to allergens, Wilkie and researchersPrithy Rupa, Julie Schmied, Melissa Cirin-na, Korinne Hamilton and Serene Lai had tofirst develop a way to make pigs allergic tohuman foods. Using injections of ovomu-coid, a major allergen of eggs, they were ableto induce an allergic reaction to egg whites— the second most common food allergyamong young children (the first is milk).

For the study, the researchers injectedpiglets with dead Escherichia coli bacteriaduring the first week of their life. Whenthey were two and three weeks old, theanimals were then injected with the puri-

fied ovomucoid, the protein that inducedhypersensitivity reactions to egg whites.

Once the pigs were just over a monthold, they were fed egg whites and moni-tored to see if they became allergic. With-in an hour, a majority of the piglets thatwere not exposed to the E. coli began toshow signs of an allergic reaction similar

to a human food allergy, including skinrash, vomiting and diarrhea.

This research is the first to show thatexposure to bacteria reduces the likelihoodof allergies in pigs. The next step is to

investigate for similar anti-allergic effectswith probiotic bacteria that can be ingest-ed rather than injected.

“If we can develop a way the bacteriacan be ingested and have the same effect,we will be closer to creating an anti-aller-gic treatment for humans and animals,” saysWilkie.

Research goal is to prevent food allergies

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in around university

Riders change reins

Bruce Wilkie

NOTEWORTHY• Lincoln Alexander, U of G’s chan-

cellor emeritus, was honoured at

the inaugural Canadian Black Film

Festival in September. More than

30 films were shown at the festival,

including A Linc in Time, which was

featured at the closing-night gala.

The documentary, directed by

Nicole Brooks, has aired on OMNI

TV. It details how Alexander’s defin-

ing early years led him to his

groundbreaking career in Canadi-

an politics and beyond.

• English professor Dionne Brand is

serving as Toronto’s third poet lau-

reate. The three-year position hon-

ours a Toronto poet whose work

displays excellence and addresses

themes relevant to Torontonians. A

Governor General’s Award winner,

Brand has published nine volumes

of poetry.

• The University’s Multi-Faith

Resource Team was honoured by

the Guelph YMCA-YWCA with its

2009 Peace Medal. With represen-

tatives from many faiths and reli-

gions, including various Christian

denominations, Islam, Judaism and

Hinduism, the team serves the U of

G community in developing the spir-

itual dimensions of people’s lives

and through programs that focus

on peace and social justice issues.

• In annual university rankings, U of

G was named Canada’s top com-

prehensive research institution in

the annual “Top 50 Research Uni-

versities” list published by Research

Infosource in the Globe and Mail.

When compared with all universi-

ties in Canada, U of G is 14th —

the highest ranking for a university

without a medical school. Maclean’s

magazine ranked Guelph fourth for

overall quality among comprehen-

sive universities, and the University

received straight As from students

interviewed for the Globe and Mail’s

annual University Report Card.

Winter 2010 7

Prof Flexes Intellectual Muscle

G uelph h i stor ian MatthewHayday is featured in a series of

lectures by prominent and up-and-coming Canadian intellectuals speak-ing on topics related to the Vancouver2010 Winter Games.

He discusses Canada’s evolvingnational identity in “They Like Us,They Really Like Us! Defining Cana-da Through International Accomplish-ments. Taped on campus Nov. 24, the podcast is part of the IntellectualMuscle program developed by the Vancouver Olympic Committee andthe University of British Columbia.

The online program provides anopportunity for Canadians to partici-pate in a series of national dialogues ontopics ranging from the Games’ contri-bution to society and gender stereotypesin sport. Podcasts will be available untilthe end of the Games in March 2010.

Fretting about who we are is akinto a national sport in Canada, said Hay-day. His talk explores Canada’s strugglesince the Second World War to defineitself as something other than “notAmerican.” He explains how govern-ments have increasingly attempted toshift the discussion from navel-gazingto rallying around excellence, linking

nationalism to the internationally-recognized accomplishments of Cana-dian citizens. In particular, the accom-plishments of Olympic athletes areplaying a key role in this reconfigurednational identity, he said.

Can a tomato beany healthier?

S teven Loewen, a researcher at U ofG’s Ridgetown Campus, is work-

ing to boost the amount of lycopenein new tomato varieties. He saysenhanced levels of this antioxidant willmake tomato products such as ketchupand sauce even healthier.

“Dietary lycopene availability isincreased by processing tomatoes intopaste or sauce, so processed is actuallymore nutritious than fresh,” he says.“Boosting the nutritional value is thefocus now for the tomato-processingindustry, and consumers will be reap-ing the benefits.”

Loewen has been working with thetomato’s crimson and high-pigmentgenes, which are capable of increasing atomato’s lycopene levels. He’s also tryingto increase durability, so the tomatoes willbe able to weather the many processingstages. And he’s looking for ways to devel-op earlier maturity and increase rot resis-tance, which will mean a longer harvest-ing season and improved yields.

Others involved in this research areRichard Wright and Jennifer Newportof Ridgetown Campus and Rong Caoof Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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dna barcod

Scientists at U of G’s biodiversity institute are buildinga library of life, but they’re also applying its resources tobenefit the environment, human health, agriculture, commerce and more.DNA SEQUENCES AND SECONDARY PHOTOS COURTESY BIODIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF ONTARIO

Read an organism’s DNA and save alife? Ask Bronwyn Dalziel. For this gradu-ate of Toronto’s Northern Secondary School,ensuring correct labelling of seafood sold instores and restaurants is no trifling matter.

“My father is allergic to all types ofseafood except Atlantic shellfish,” saysDalziel, now a first-year biology student atthe University of Toronto and a wannabeornithologist. “But after the time he wasserved Pacific rock lobster standing in forAtlantic lobster and had to go to the hospi-tal, he simply avoids all seafood.”

Small wonder she was keen to take partin a new DNA barcoding outreach projectinvolving U of G last year. High school stu-dents at Northern Secondary and otherCanadian schools became food sleuths, col-lecting seafood samples at markets and

restaurants for genetic testing at Guelph’sBiodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO).

That’s the home of DNA barcoding, amethod developed at U of G to distinguishbetween species of living things using a tell-tale bit of their genetic material. Dedicatedequipment housed in the BIO labs canprocess those genetic segments, readingDNA from tissue specimens — an insect leg,a wing, a bit of leaf, a lump of amorphoustissue — to capture each species’ signaturelike supermarket scanners telling one itemfrom the next at the checkout counter. Since2003, when integrative biology professorPaul Hebert was lead author on a paperabout the technique, the idea has grown intoa global enterprise with researchers world-wide using barcoding to build an electron-ic database of species around the planet.

In November, more than 400 experts from50 countries, including 30 Guelph researchers,met in Mexico for the third International Bar-code of Life Conference. This year — desig-nated by the United Nations as the Interna-tional Year of Biodiversity — will mark thelaunch of the International Barcode of Life(iBOL) Project, intended to catalogue five mil-lion specimens representing half a millionspecies of living things within five years. Thateffort will bring together numerous centresfrom around the world — led by U of G’sBIO with its own ambitious expansion plansfor campus — in a project affecting not justbiodiversity but also human health, food

Winter 2010 9

ing evolves

There are more than 18,000 species

in the Lepidoptera order of insects, but

DNA barcoding easily identifies the

spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus)

— pictured here and on the cover — in

each of the four stages of its life cycle.

By Andrew VowlesPhotography by Jay Cossey

safety, trade and commerce, and environmentalhealth. Those are the kinds of benefits bar-coding proponents have held out for years.But now, they say, it’s time to begin reapingsome of those rewards.

Take that fish market study, involving highschools and classes at three post-secondaryinstitutions, including Guelph. Organized byToronto-based Bioscience Education Cana-da, the project saw teens collect fish samplesfor barcoding analysis at the BIO.

Referring to the signature genetic seg-ment used to tell one species from another,

Dalziel says: “All the fish have the sameregion in their genome, but different specieshave different DNA patterns in thoseregions, and a computer can use that to tellthe species apart. DNA doesn’t lie. You can’tuse field markings to identify what’s in yourfish sticks, but the DNA will still be there.”

She was so intrigued that she ended upprocessing results for the entire class andwriting a report on the project.

“Forty per cent of the processed sampleswere mislabelled,” she says. “My dad’s told mestories about mislabelled fish for years, so the

results were nothing new to us, although I didappreciate the fact that I could finally see justhow bad the fish market was.”

Indeed. That student project drew on a2008 barcoding study that found 25 per centof fish sold in markets and restaurants wasmislabelled, usually as higher-value species.Public health and consumer fraud are bothat issue here, says Prof. Robert Hanner, Inte-grative Biology, who looked at about 100fish samples collected from restaurants andmarkets in Guelph, Toronto and New YorkCity for that research study.

“It’s exciting,” says Hanner, associatedirector of the Canadian Barcode of LifeNetwork. “A technology we’ve developedhere for species-level identification is a prac-tical teaching tool that illustrates the patternsof descent with modification — or evolu-tion — encoded in the genes, and it hassocially relevant applications.”

Besides those health concerns, the fishstudy raises conservation questions, says Han-ner. If you’re buying Pacific halibut, you maybe buying it partly because you know thisspecies is harvested using sustainable man-agement practices. But you might be seeingred rather than green if you discovered that“Pacific” fillet was actually a mislabelledpiece of Atlantic halibut, a species whosestock has collapsed. That’s only one of var-ious environmental applications for barcod-ing that are now just around the corner.

Integrative biology professor MehrdadHajibabaei calls environmental barcoding the“next frontier” for this technology. He’s askeen as his colleagues on building that DNAlibrary — one painstaking species at a time— to catalogue and learn about the Earth’sbiodiversity. But beyond that basic scientificpursuit, he says, environmental barcoding willgive biologists a new view of ecosystems.Using the BIO’s powerful “454” gene-sequencing machine, researchers can nowplow through the genetic material of variedorganisms teeming in a water or soil sample.

In tests last year, the technique accurate-ly sorted and identified nine out of 10 inver-tebrates scooped up from the bottom of theSpeed River in Guelph and the Grand Riv-er in Elora. Hajibabaei says traditional tax-onomic IDs based on physical appearancemight mislabel up to 40 per cent of theorganisms in a given sample, especially forcryptic larval stages. Those bottom-dwelling

10 The Portico

DNA barcoding uses a short

stretch of DNA from the genomes of

mitochondria — the cell’s energy fac-

tory — to identify species. That seg-

ment comes from the CO1 gene and

contains only 648 base pairs of nucle-

ic acids (cytosine, adenine, thymine

and guanine). Its size makes it easy to

read in the lab, but the segment differs

enough to tell most species apart. Vari-

ation within species requires experts

to analyze at least 10 individuals per

species for the barcoding database.

Writing in a 2008 Scientific American

article, Prof. Paul Hebert, Integrative

Biology, explained that barcodes dis-

tinguish about 98 per cent of species

identified by conventional taxonomy.

Other scientists, notably Carl

Woese at the University of Illinois, pro-

posed using DNA sequences to dis-

tinguish among living things more than

30 years ago. But it was a paper pub-

lished in 2003 by Hebert and col-

leagues in Proceedings of the Royal

Society B that called for using a sin-

gle gene segment to identify species

of organisms. The paper is available

at http://journals.royalsociety.org.

Hebert’s plan to systematically

record DNA sequences — which he

called barcodes — included the

establishment of an identification sys-

tem for all animal and plant life. In

2005, 150 institutions in 45 countries

formed a consortium to support the

development of DNA barcoding as a

global standard for the identification

of species. The task of assembling

those records has been undertaken

by the International Barcode of Life

iBOL Project.

iBOL by the numbers ■ 100 million — the estimated

number of species of living

things on Earth

■ 1.7 million — the number of

species classified by Linnaean-

style taxonomic description

■ 500,000 — the number of

species to be catalogued by the

iBOL Project by 2015

■ 65,000 — the number of species

(700,000 specimens) stored to

date in the iBOL database

■ 25 — the number of countries

involved with iBOL.

Above: Prof. Paul Hebert and part

of the DNA sequence for Homo

sapiens.

Bar

cod

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101

creatures — mayflies, caddis flies — can tellscientists about the health of a lake or river.

He is working with federal scientists tointegrate barcoding into the CanadianAquatic Biomonitoring Network, a programrun by Environment Canada to assess fresh-water bodies across the country. “I think thisis going to revolutionize ecological studies,”says Hajibabaei. The same idea applies to soilsamples typically containing a menagerie ofinvertebrates, fungi and other organisms.Besides government agencies, likely clientsfor environmental barcoding include con-sulting firms and pulp and paper or miningcompanies assessing environmental impacts.

These studies also connect researchers inthe College of Biological Science withcounterparts in the College of Physical andEngineering Science.

“Analyzing the data and making sense ofthe sequences are the next challenge,” saysHajibabaei, who holds a doctorate in mo -lecular evolution and bioinformatics.

This past fall, Guelph introduced newgraduate bioinformatics studies, includingtwo master’s programs. These will address agrowing need for experts in computing,math and statistics to analyze reams of datafrom scientists studying genetics, proteinsand other information-dense topics.

“So much is changing the way biologyis being done,” says Prof. Stefan Kremer,Computing and Information Science. “Therate at which data can be captured and ana-lyzed is phenomenal.”

Kremer should know. He’s worked withSujeevan Ratnasingham, director of the BIOinformatics group, on a machine-learningproject, basically helping to devise softwareto proofread DNA, one chemical base at atime. Having a computer program to checksequence data automatically and predictably“would free up a considerable amount oftechnicians’ time and allow them to focus onreal research questions,” says Ratnasingham.

That information is pouring in mostlyfrom zoologists, here and further afield. Var-ied campaigns since 2003 have involvedscientists in Canada and other countries incataloguing species, including a number ofprojects whose progress is regularly updat-ed in a permanent glassed-in display on theground floor of the BIO building.

Fish-BOL, for instance, aims to ID theestimated 30,000 species of marine and

freshwater fish in the world. The All-BirdsBarcoding Initiative hopes to track down allof the roughly 10,000 known species. Par-ticularly close to Hebert’s collecting heart isAll Leps, a campaign to barcode some180,000 known species of moths and but-terflies (lepidopterans are the second mostdiverse group of insects in the world afterbeetles). Other campaigns include marinelife (Mar-BOL), Arctic and Antarctic life(Polar-BOL), Barcoding Canadian Animals

— even Ants of the World.Involved in various campaigns are two

faculty members who, along withHajibabaei, were appointed to the Depart-ment of Integrative Biology last year. Prof.Sarah Adamowicz completed her master’sdegree with Hebert and returned to U ofG as a post-doc in 2009; she’s co-leader ofthe polar barcode working group. Prof. AlexSmith also worked here as a post-doc beforehis faculty appointment. He and colleagues

Winter 2010 11

What would you do if you met

a black widow spider? If you’re U of

G’s Jay Cossey, you catch it. That’s

what he did last spring during a two-

month collecting trip to the Midwest

and southern states aboard the

BIObus. Moths, wasps, earthworms,

spiders: any bug-sized creeping, crawl-

ing or flying thing was fair game for the

field photographer with U of G’s Bio-

diversity Institute of Ontario (BIO).

Cossey, an award-winning pho-

tographer and nature lover who joined

the BIO in 2008, was doing more than

snapping wildlife shots. He and his

team members aboard the BIObus

— a 30-foot RV acquired by the BIO

in 2008 — were collecting creatures

for the growing DNA barcode data-

base of living things being amassed

back at Guelph. With plenty of sam-

ples already sealed into ethanol-filled

vials and packed into collecting box-

es on board, they’d arrived at Mis-

sissippi State University to photograph

and “borrow” tissue from its extensive

insect collection for genetic analysis

at U of G. But it was outdoors that

Cossey spotted the spider with its sig-

nature red flash. How do you catch a

black widow? Safely back in the BIO

building on the west side of campus,

he grins. “You grab it with forceps and

put it into ethanol as fast as you can.”

He was back from that trip for only

10 days before boarding the BIObus

for another foray. This time, the team

spent two months collecting in nation-

al parks in three Atlantic provinces.

No black widows, but he nabbed his

first-ever short-tailed swallowtail but-

terfly in Newfoundland.

“They’re not found anywhere but

on the east coast, and I hadn’t seen

one before,” says Cossey, who rou-

tinely went bug hunting with his dad

as a youngster in London, Ont. (he

eventually inherited his father’s col-

lection of 1,000-plus specimens).

New Brunswick’s highlight was

also its low point. “The mosquitoes

are awful,” he says. In Nova Scotia,

he found botflies, which are mam-

malian parasites. “Only an entomolo-

gist would find that really exciting.”

Back in Guelph’s BIO imaging lab

this fall, he photographed those crea-

tures under the microscope to be

entered with their barcode informa-

tion into that growing genetic data-

base of life. They’ll join a mounting

online collection of organisms, includ-

ing ones that Cossey amassed dur-

ing a 2008 BIObus road trip to seven

of Canada’s national parks.

See Cossey’s work at www.

photographsfromnature.com.

The no

t-so-itsy-b

itsy spid

er

used barcoding to show that three parasiticfly species are actually 15 species, each rely-ing on a few insect hosts.

A new Guelph-based project with impli-cations for human health is Health-BOL.Begun last year, this campaign will barcodepathogens, parasites and creatures that trans-mit disease-causing organisms. Here,researchers will go beyond identification —although building the species database ofinsect vectors and their pathogens is critical— to apply DNA barcoding to health andagricultural pest problems, says Prof. RyanGregory, Integrative Biology.

Knowing which of six species of mos-quito is spreading malaria, for example, willhelp doctors and public health officials fightdisease spread. Closer to home, such a databank might help officials addressing the nextoutbreak of vector-borne pathogens such asWest Nile virus. Gregory calls Health-BOLan example of applied barcoding — one thatmay offer science outreach possibilities sim-ilar to Hanner’s fish market survey.

Another application points a path forwildlife managers hoping to help save threat-ened or endangered creatures in hard-to-untangle food webs. Take bats and their preyspecies. Last year, Elizabeth Clare, a PhD stu-dent in integrative biology, led the first-everstudy using DNA barcoding to probe theremains of prey insects found in guano col-lected from eastern red bats.

“If they excrete it, we can sequence it,”says Clare. Matching up prey and predatorlike this is a boon for scientists and conser-vation managers. For anyone contemplatinghow to protect a particular organism, sheadds: “If you’re trying to manage somethingand don’t know what its food is, it’s a use-less plan.”

What about plants? DNA barcoding ismore challenging in green things than in ver-tebrates or insects, for which scientists can dis-tinguish species using a common snippet ofmitochondrial DNA (part of a gene found inthe cell’s energy factories that is inherited onlyfrom the mother). In plants, that particulargene does not vary enough to allow reliablespecies identification. But after years of siftingthrough candidate genes, an international teamof researchers that included Guelph scientistssettled last year on distinguishing portions oftwo marker genes from chloroplasts, or partsinvolved in photosynthesis. Among the

12 The Portico

A lobster leg, a feather, a bone

or some other bit of tissue may be all

that arrives at the Biodiversity Insti-

tute of Ontario (BIO), but that’s

enough to provide the DNA needed

to add each creature to the growing

online collection of living things in the

Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD).

Specimens arrive from all over the

world in the BIO’s ground-floor receiv-

ing room, where they are placed in

finger joint-sized vials in clear plastic

plates that hold up to 96 vials at a

time. Guelph taxonomists identify the

species of each specimen based on

conventional methods. BIO lab man-

ager Constantine Christopoulos says

most specimens arriving here are

already known but need to be officially

barcoded for formal entry into that

growing database.

In the receiving room, the plastic

plates also receive a barcode — not

a genetic one but a conventional

machine-read label like a supermar-

ket tag — to enable BIO staff to track

the numerous plates and specimens

moving through the system.

There are the occasional surpris-

es, of course, such as three species

of parasitic flies collected by a Guelph

biologist that turned out to be 15 dis-

tinct species. And, as with a recent fish

market survey, “mystery” tissue sam-

ples may arrive here to be ID’d against

the database. Christopoulos says more

of those kinds of samples will arrive in

future, particularly as scientists further

develop barcoding as an environmen-

tal and quality-assurance tool.

Specimens more or less intact in

their vials or pinned in a collection box

head down the hall to the BIO imag-

ing lab. Here they’re photographed

and entered into the reference data-

base. That database will eventually

contain details about each creature,

including its species name and full tax-

onomy — phylum, class, order and so

on — its photo, its barcode sequence,

its collection location and other infor-

mation allowing anyone, anywhere, to

match future specimens with the

records in that public online library.

Upstairs in the DNA extraction lab,

harsh chemicals are used to break

open the tissue cells and isolate the

genetic material from each specimen.

Technicians make numerous copies

of the CO1 gene fragment in prepa-

ration for sequencing, or reading of

the segment. Much of the grunt work

to prepare the samples is done by

specialized robots, whimsically nick-

named Darwin, Lamarck, Linnaeus

and Aristotle. Sequencing involves

more chemicals and alternate heat-

ing and cooling.

In the final step, the plates under-

go automated capillary electrophore-

sis, in which a machine separates the

four nucleic acids that make up the

rungs of the DNA ladder. Fluorescent

tags attached to each of those nucle-

ic acids are read by a laser. Seen on

a computer screen, each DNA frag-

ment shows up as a multicoloured

necklace whose “beads” correspond

to all 648 bases in the original DNA

strand. That sequence is then added

to the BOLD database.

View a tutorial on the Barcode of

Life Data Systems online at www.

biodiversity.uoguelph.ca.

Above: The Pacific rock lobster —

also called a spiny lobster (Pan-

ulirus interruptus) — doesn’t have

the Atlantic lobster’s large claws,

but they look the same when

cooked and served out of the shell.

Insi

de

the

BIO

lab

Guelph researchers were Profs. Steve New-master and Brian Husband, botanists in theDepartment of Integrative Biology.

Among other things, the new barcodingmethod will be used in global projects suchas Tree-BOL, which is building a databasefor the world’s 100,000 tree species, includ-ing many of economic and ecologicalimportance. Experts endorsed an agreementon plant DNA barcodes during that Mexi-co City gathering in the fall.

It’s those kinds of applications that arenow driving barcoding plans at Guelph andworldwide, says Hebert. Whether it’s help-ing to counter environmental threats posedby invasive species or aiding farmers in bat-tling pests, “this is a big science project thatwill have real returns,” he says.

Hebert is busy seeking funding andstrengthening connections with other insti-tutions for parallel ventures. One projectalone will require $150 million worth ofoperating funds. That’s the ambitious iBOLnetwork, in which scientists from 25 countrieswill work to build that barcode referencelibrary of five million specimens represent-ing 500,000 species by 2015. It’s a criticalproject, he says, particularly because someexperts predict that perhaps one-third of theplanet’s species — including many stillunknown — face the threat of extinctionby the end of this century.

Hebert says the situation calls for a newbiodiversity change panel akin to the UN’sIntergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange. (Canada is one of almost 200 sig-natories to the Convention on BiologicalDiversity, a UN agreement signed in 1992to stem and reverse the loss of biodiversity.)

Closer to home, he and others are plan-ning big changes to the BIO itself. The two-storey, 20,000-square-foot building openedin 2006 and houses administrative offices andlabs in what is the largest barcoding factoryin the world. But the fast-growing project isalready running out of room, even beforethat five million/500K effort. Now plans callfor a biodiversity genomics centre twice aslarge as the BIO to be built adjacent to theexisting building, starting this year.

Staff and researchers have been boostinglab production while finding ways to makecollection and cataloguing faster and moreefficient. Typically, the BIO has producedabout 100,000 barcode records a year; this

year, it will produce 250,000 to 300,000records (every species barcoded has multi-ple specimens). In 2009, the database passeda milestone of 700,000 records in total.

“Logistically, we have to start thinkingalmost like a factory,” says Greg Singer, abioinformatics expert who joined the BIOin early 2009 as iBOL project manager.Seems it’s almost as much about operationsmanagement inside the building as it is aboutbiodiversity in the wider world outside.

But it’s a factory with field connections,perhaps ultimately for anyone, anywhere.

Hebert yearns for the day when a handheldbarcoding machine allows backyard biolo-gists to ID creatures cheaply and easily froma bit of tissue. Maybe one day Dalziel willpull out such a device to verify a bird’s iden-tity using nothing more than its feather. Orshe’ll be able to check that suspect seafoodright there on the restaurant plate.

“If the technology gets good enough, theidentity of what you’re eating could be a clickaway,” she says. “If we all had portable DNAanalyzers like tricorders in Star Trek, peoplelike my dad wouldn’t have to worry.” ■

Winter 2010 13

Scientists using DNA barcod-

ing to ID organisms rely on a telltale

stretch of genetic material only 648

base pairs long. Compare that with

the human genome containing a total

of three billion base pairs (paired

nucleic acids called adenine, cytosine,

guanine and thymine).

Six years ago, scientists working

on the Human Genome Project

sequenced that entire genome. Call

it Vol. 1 of a potential library contain-

ing all the books of life. Since then,

we’ve read the genetic books of

domestic species — cow, dog, cat,

pig — and various organisms com-

mon in research labs.

Just over a year ago, an interna-

tional team of researchers that

includes U of G integrative biology

professors Robert Hanner and Paul

Hebert proposed an ambitious multi-

million-dollar plan to add thousands

of volumes to that growing library,

including genome sequences for

species already being identified with

DNA barcoding technology at

Guelph’s Biodiversity Institute of

Ontario. The proposal, published in

the Journal of Heredity, involves 68

scientists around the world.

The Genome 10K researchers

hope to ultimately use ever-cheaper

sequencing technology to record

whole genomes for 10,000 species

of vertebrate animals.

Hanner says this comparative

genomics project may help scientists

track threats to certain species and

predict animals’ responses to climate

change, pollution, emerging diseases

and invasive competitors.

Proponents also expect to learn

more about evolution of the roughly

60,000 living species of mammals,

fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians.

Many of those vertebrates are repre-

sented in U of G’s wildlife teaching

collection, which includes skulls,

bones and stuffed specimens used

by generations of students in under-

graduate lab courses.

One of those former students is

Leslie Rye, a three-time biology grad-

uate who is now lab co-ordinator and

curator of the collection. Referring to

the possibility that the G10K project

might help scientists tease out con-

nections between genes and, say, a

horse’s grazing teeth and a giraffe’s

leaf-browsing tools, she says: “I would

love to see where the genetic differ-

ences are.”

Build

ing the lib

rary of life

14 The Portico

On every corner of every neigh-bourhood, there are stories to be told.The storytellers may be young or old,Canadian-born or immigrant, and theymay be white, Hispanic, black, Asian ornative. Regardless of their exteriors,each has a unique story to tell, and eachis part of an ecological web that bindshuman experience.

When you take these storytellersfrom the street to the stage, their valuebecomes exponential, says Prof. RicKnowles, Theatre and English Studies.His own story is that of an aspiringyoung hockey player from Torontowho made a breakaway from Canada’snational sport to become a leadingscorer in a much different theatricalarena. For him, theatre is not just anartistic pursuit — it’s also a science.

“You identify a healthy ecosystem

not by individual successes but by thediversity of its species,” says Knowles,who chaired Guelph’s drama depart-ment from 1989 to 1998 and contin-ues to teach in the theatre studies pro-gram. “Any change in one part of theecosystem changes the rest of theecosystem, so it’s important to under-stand the interdependence within it.”

That’s just as true for Canadian the-atre as it is for the Carolinian forest thatcradles his hometown.

Walking through Toronto’s theatre dis-trict, Knowles thirsts for tales created byartists from diverse cultural, ethnic andracial backgrounds. In this bustling city,he doesn’t have to look far. Companiessuch as fuGEN, Carlos Bulosan, ModernTimes Stage Company, the Red SnowCollective and the Chocolate WomanCollective bring intercultural richness toa landscape that has historically been pro-duced and enjoyed by whites.

Knowles knows each of these com-

panies well. For the past 30 years, hehas been involved in script develop-ment and has worked with writers,directors and companies to bring thosescripts to the stage.

“In terms of fostering interculturaltheatre, Toronto’s theatre industry isahead of most cities,” he says. “Realprogress is being made.”

Progress is being noted at U of G, too,with an increase in minority studentsenrolling in theatre at both the under-graduate and graduate levels. In recentyears, Knowles has also worked to bringdiversity to Guelph’s theatre offerings.

In 2003, he directed Angelique byLorena Gale, believed to be the firstplay performed at U of G that waswritten by a Canadian of Africandescent. Two years later, he directedLeanna Brodie’s The Vic, a play thatexamines race. He scored a hat trick ofsorts in 2007 when he directed TheIndian Medicine Shows by Daniel David

student of the stage

facu

lty p

rofil

e

Theatre scholar Ric Knowles says what’s happeningon Canadian stages is healthy for the ecosystem thatinspires and improves his life.

PH

OTO

BY

DE

AN

PA

LME

R

By Rebecca Kendall

16 The Portico

Moses. This show marked two firsts forGuelph. It was the first time a First Nationsplay was performed on campus, and it fea-tured Nick Nahwegahbow, the first nativestudent to star in a show at the George Lus-combe Theatre.

Theatre companies that are advancingmulticulturalism in the performing arts aregiving audiences an opportunity to learnabout the experiences of those around themand to think critically about issues of race,says Knowles. It’s also vital for artists to takeownership of how their stories are told andtheir works performed, he says.

“Learning about and promoting inter-cultural theatre is important for social justice.It’s also important that people within a cul-ture — and citizens within a country — seethemselves on stage and in the arts, and thatthey can control their own representation.”

For years, the only time a native Cana-dian was cast in a play was when it was writ-ten by a white person, says Knowles, remem-bering a time in the mid-1980s when NativeEarth Performing Arts and Tomson High-way broke through that ceiling.

“Native people took control of their ownrepresentation and started writing and direct-ing their own plays and having their owntheatre companies. That was and is crucial.”

Despite advances on stage, the absenceof diversity is still the norm in academic cir-cles, he says.

“The reality is that most theatre profes-sors and lecturers in this country are whitemales. That’s the irony of the kind of workI do. I’m essentially working to get rid ofmyself.”

Knowles’s interest and expertise in theecology of theatre have opened up a numberof opportunities for him to travel and speak.

“I’ve been invited all over the place in thelast few years because people outside ofCanada who are in cities where multiculturalpopulations are very significant think ofToronto as someplace they can learn from.”

Although other cosmopolitan cities aregaining momentum by offering shows pro-

duced by people from a variety of cultures,Toronto is gaining a reputation for blend-ing those cultures to create extraordinarycross-cultural theatre, he says.

“Other cities have mono-racial compa-nies that don’t blend, but Toronto is excellingby connecting a whole host of people whoare telling unique stories in unique ways.”

Knowles, a third-generation Canadian ofScottish and English descent, notes that “someof the most exciting work going on is com-ing from native communities, immigrantcommunities and explicitly intercultural com-panies. The hegemony of whiteness on thestage has been frustrating. There are othergroups doing really exciting work, and they’reoften kept off the big stages.”

Theatre in Canada has traditionally beenproduced by and for middle- to upper-mid-dle-class people of European descent, he says.This has been changing “from below” inrecent years as a growing number of artists ofcolour have entered the theatre profession.

“The first generation of immigrantscoming to Canada in the wake of multicul-turalism policy weren’t much interested intheatre. They were trying to get theirgrounding in other ways. They were inter-ested in bringing their kids up in money-making occupations, and theatre has neverbeen that.”

This second generation is the first tocome up as theatre artists and practitioners,he says.

“It’s a younger audience and a differentdemographic. Toronto is now 50-per-centnon-white, and people are starting to ask:‘Where are those audiences we should beseeing in theatres.’”

It’s an exciting time for Canadian the-atre, says Knowles, who sees no end in sightfor people to promote and engage audiencesin the work of Toronto’s storytellers.

Growing up in Toronto in the ’60s, hehad absolutely no interest in theatre. Instead,he followed the same path many young boyshis age followed.

“I wanted to play pro hockey.”

By high school, he was thinking aboutpursuing a hockey scholarship available inthe United States, but he opted to stay inOntario after being drafted by the OshawaGenerals.

But hockey wasn’t his only passion.Knowles was also interested in engineering,architecture and English, a subject he stud-ied at the University of Toronto, where heearned a BA, MA and PhD.

Theatre didn’t surface until late in thegame. “I was midway through my doctoratewhen I realized it was pretty silly to beworking so heavily with the works of Shake-speare when I knew nothing about theatre.”

So he took to the stage and, in his firstshow, began to experience the highs andlows of the industry.

“I had a terrible time working on Mac-beth and went home saying: ‘I’m never goingto do this again.’ The day after the produc-tion wrapped, I was asked to be in anothershow, and I said yes. And it was a wonderfulexperience.”

Knowles continued acting and eventu-ally started directing theatre at Mount Alli-son University, where he spent a decade asa theatre professor. During this time, he alsoapprenticed with Robin Phillips at the Strat-ford Shakespeare Festival and slowly startedmaking connections with theatre profes-sionals in Toronto. In addition, he workedfor the Mulgrave Road Co-op Theatre inNova Scotia as a director and playwright.

It was also during his time at Mount Alli-son that Knowles paid a visit to the Uni-versity of Guelph Library to explore its the-atre archives. While on campus, he began toexplore his career options as well.

Invited to lunch by then drama chairLeonard Conolly (Guelph’s theatre archivesare named in his honour), he learned thatConolly was being promoted to associatevice-president (academic). Conolly askedKnowles to apply for the chair position.

“I let my name stand,” says Knowles. “Iwanted to be at Guelph because it had thebest theatre program in the country from my

“It’s important that people within a culture — and citizenswithin a country — see themselves on stage, and that theycan control their own representation.”

Winter 2010 17

perspective and for my interests. At the time,Guelph was starting up the only graduate pro-gram that specialized in Canadian theatre. Italso had outstanding Canadian theatre archives.The department embodied a curricular phi-losophy that I still believe in — a crossbetween the theoretical and the practical. Ireally believe that if you become an actor,you’re going to become a better actor becauseyou’ve studied theatre history and hung lights,and that if you become a theatre historian ortheoretician, you’ll be a better one for havingstudied acting, directing and design.”

One of Knowles’s accomplishments as chairwas to recruit well-known Canadian play-wright Judith Thompson as a faculty member.

“She is a fabulous writer and line by linethe best ear in the country,” he says. “Shepushes the boundaries in all kinds of pro-ductive ways. She’s one of a handful of play-wrights in Canada who are internationallyknown and who have been producing workfor nearly 30 years.”

His enthusiasm for Thompson’s work ledhim to edit a series of books about her andother producers of Canadian theatre. CalledCritical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in Eng-lish, it aims to make the best critical andscholarly work in the field readily available.He also edited the books Judith Thompsonand The Masks of Judith Thompson.

Since Thompson’s arrival at Guelph, anumber of talented actors, playwrights andset designers have joined the theatre studies

program, advancing its ecology, says Knowles.Among them are Profs. Sky Gilbert, JerrardSmith and Pat Flood.

Gilbert, who joined U of G in 1997, isco-founder and former artistic director ofBuddies in Bad Times Theatre and founderof Hammertheatre, a theatre company inHamilton. He holds a University ResearchChair in Drama and Creative Writing and haspublished numerous plays, two collections ofpoetry, five novels and a theatre memoir.

Smith is an award-winning designer whohas represented Canada at the prestigiousPrague Quadrennial. Since 1981, he has beena designer for Patria, a cycle of environmentalmusic dramas created by celebrated com-poser R. Murray Shafer.

Flood joined U of G in 2005. Beforethat, she was set designer on Jim Henson’sFraggle Rock series, art director for the lastseason of La Femme Nikita and art directorfor the last two seasons of Kids in the Hall.In addition, she designed many of the setsfor the films Ararat and Where the Truth Lies,both directed by Atom Egoyan.

The department also includes Prof. AnnWilson, who specializes in contemporaryAmerican, British and Canadian theatre; Prof.Alan Filewod, an expert in political and post-colonial theatre; and Prof. Paul Mulholland,whose specialty is Elizabethan and Jacobeantheatre. The newest faculty arrival is Prof.Dongshin Chang, who joined U of G in2007. His work explores the fusion of Asian

performance and western-style theatre. Addingto the team are undergraduate co-ordinatorand film instructor Prof. Paul Salmon, cos-tume designer Denis Huneault-Joffre andtechnical director Paul Ord. Michael Boter-man is the department secretary.

“Each has contributed greatly to the suc-cess of the Guelph program and in buildingits strong reputation,” says Knowles.

His own reputation has also grown over theyears. Last fall, he was elected to the RoyalSociety of Canada as “the foremost scholarof Canadian theatre of his generation.” Lastsummer, he was honoured by the AmericanAlliance for Theatre and Education (AATE),which gave him the Award for Excellence inEditing: Sustained Achievement.

Knowles is editor of Canadian TheatreReview, vice-president of the American Soci-ety for Theatre Research, past editor ofModern Drama and former AATE vice-pres-ident for research and publications. He hasedited or co-edited 15 books and authoredor co-authored several others, includingReading the Material Theatre and Theatre &Interculturalism. ■

PH

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EA

RTH

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RFO

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TS

Left: Marie Hale, BA ’09, and Guelph student

Nick Nahwegahbow in the 2007 production

The Indian Medicine Shows.

Above: Monique Mojica, a veteran actress with

Native Earth Performing Arts, during a 2006

U of G workshop performance of Shakespeare’s

Julius Caesar.

18 The Portico

Acountry made up oftropical islands in the middleof the Pacific Ocean soundslike paradise, but for manypeople native to the Marshall

Islands, life is far from idyllic. Yes, there arepalm trees and sunlit sandy beaches, but inthe streets of the inhabited islands, the dev-astating effects of poor nutrition are obvious.

Middle-aged men use makeshift wheel-chairs because they’ve had a leg amputatedbelow the knee. A pilot is told he must retireat age 38 because diabetes is affecting his eye-sight. A woman is bedridden for a year aftera diabetes-related stroke. Young children areoften malnourished, but they are picking uppoor eating habits that will eventually leadthem down the same path as their parents.

The epidemic of obesity and Type II dia-betes is often thought of as something affect-ing primarily North Americans. But it’s hithard in this rather obscure group of Pacific

islands and atolls, roughly halfway betweenNew Zealand and Hawaii, where more thanhalf of those over age 35 have Type II dia-betes. Most adults are obese, and the mostcommon surgeries performed are amputa-tions due to complications of diabetes.

Obesity and related diseases are, it seems,unexpectedly contagious. Until World WarII, the Islanders lived primarily on the foodsthey could grow and the fish they caughtfrom the ocean, but during the war theislands became a strategic location for theU.S. Navy. The once fit and healthy peoplegradually came to depend on imported,processed foods — with tragic results.

When Brenda Davis was asked to helpreverse this trend, she found that the mostpopular breakfasts for Marshall Islands kidswere popsicles and soft drinks, or packagedramen noodles sprinkled with sugary Kool-Aid powder.

Davis is a dietitian, a diabetes expert and

a 1982 Guelph graduate in applied humannutrition. She started her career working inpublic health in her home province ofOntario, but turned to teaching and nutri-tion consulting when she moved to BritishColumbia with her husband, Paul, a 1981B.Sc. graduate in biological science. He worksfor the Worker’s Compensation Board inoccupational health; they have two children.

Davis found that the Marshall Islandershad little education about nutrition, so theyfocused on simply filling their stomachs withthe foods most readily available to them. Thatmeant the main sources of calories in theirdiets were white rice, white bread, donutsand other baked goods, Spam and othercanned meat, chicken, ramen noodles, softdrinks and salty snacks like potato chips. AsDavis says: “It would be difficult to design adiet that would more efficiently induce dia-betes than the diet that has been adopted bythe Marshallese people.”

PARADISE LOST,Nutritionist fights poor eating habits in the Marshall Islands.

by Teresa Pitman

Brenda Davis

Winter 2010 19

For many in the Marshall Islands, the sit-uation seemed hopeless. Then CanvasbackMissions — a non-profit organization serv-ing remote Pacific islands — in partnershipwith the Marshall Islands Ministry of Healthand Loma Linda University in southern Cal-ifornia, was given a grant by the U.S. Depart-ment of Defense to attempt to change theseentrenched eating patterns and reverse thetrend towards illness and disability. The med-ical director hired for the project had, at thetime, just attended a conference where themain speaker was the author of a book calledDefeating Diabetes. The director immediatelyapproached that author — who was, ofcourse, Brenda Davis — and asked her to jointhem on the project.

“I was very excited about the opportu-nity to put my advice into practice with thispopulation because they were facing somany challenges,” says Davis.

The diet she recommends is not the tra-

ditionally prescribed one, which focuses pri-marily on lowering blood sugar levels. ForDavis, that’s not good enough.

“Diabetes is not just about controllingblood sugar,” she says. “If there is a chance ofreversing the disease or dramatically alteringits course, we must reduce insulin resistance.People with Type II diabetes produce plen-ty of insulin, but it isn’t doing its job. Whilethe dietary components in processed foodsand fatty animal products tend to increaseinsulin resistance, the components in plants— and exercise — tend to reduce it.

“When you have a disease like diabetes,it’s like having a house on fire. If you pourgasoline on it, by eating unhealthy foods, itwill get worse. What you need to do isremove the gasoline and pour water on it.Every calorie you eat should be healing.”

That’s the message Davis took to the Mar-shall Islands when she traveled there with Can-vasback Missions in 2006. She and the others

on her team began an intensive diabetes well-ness program with a group of Islanders thatinvolved meeting four times a week at first,then less often as the months went by. Theyheld educational sessions, cooking classes, gar-dening lessons and exercise classes. The par-ticipants were taught to eat a completely plant-based diet, with minimal refined carbohydrates,minimal ground grains (for example, oat groatsrather than oatmeal), plenty of vegetables andfruit, high fibre (40 to 50 grams and up perday), high viscous fibre (from flax, oats, barley,beans, guar gum and psyllium), moderate fatlevels from healthful sources, low saturated fat,zero trans-fat, sufficient omega-3 fatty acidsand moderate sodium (salt).

Exercise was an essential component ofthe program. Marshall Island women tradi-tionally wear dresses — never pants — soactivities had to be planned where they’dfeel comfortable participating. Twice-dailywalks were a basic requirement.

OR REGAINED?Plant-based diet

reverses symptoms of Type II diabetes.

20 The Portico

Brenda Davis took this message to the Marshall Islands in 2006: “Whenyou have a disease like diabetes, it’s like having a house on fire. If youpour gasoline on it, by eating unhealthy foods, it will get worse. What

you need to do is remove the gaso-line and pour water on it. Everycalorie you eat should be healing.”

“Many program participants were not justable to control their blood sugar, they wereable to restore their health,” says Davis. Thosewho stayed with the program over the twoyears of follow-up saw their weight, bloodsugars, cholesterol levels and blood pressuresdrop, and reported reduced pain and higherenergy levels. Davis will be back in the Mar-shall Islands early in 2010 to run anotherintervention, and work on the public schoolhealth curriculum and hospital food services.

Seeing the results these changes made inthe health of the Marshall Islanders gives herhope for North Americans, who are also fac-ing a diabetes epidemic. As she points out,the Marshall Islands have few gyms and nohiking trails, and fresh produce is expensiveand hard to get. Yet the people were able tolearn to make low-cost, healthy meals andfind ways to increase their exercise levels.

“If they can overcome those challengeswith the barriers they face, we can certainly

do this here. Many doctors don’t believe thattheir patients would be willing to make thesekinds of dramatic diet and lifestyle changes,”says Davis. “I ask: ‘How do you know? Haveyou asked them? Tell them about the rangeof treatment options, and let them decidewhat they will or will not do.’ You might besurprised by how many people wouldchoose to exercise and eat a healthy plant-based diet rather than taking insulin for therest of their lives, or having open heartsurgery.”

Defeating Diabetes is Davis’s fourth of sev-en books. She’s also written Becoming Vege-tarian, Becoming Vegan and the about-to-be-published Becoming Raw. Passionate aboutthe ways vegan eating can help people heal,Davis says she’s also excited about the waysit can heal the Earth.

“People are interested in ‘eating local’ asa way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,”she says, “but a 2007 study by two professors

at Carnegie Mellon University found thatwhile sticking to a completely local diet washelpful, becoming vegan was more than sev-en times better. Eating vegan even just oneor two days a week put less strain on the envi-ronment than eating local all the time.”

For Davis, her work in the MarshallIslands and her books and talks are immense-ly satisfying. “I went into this field becauseI thought it was where I could make a dif-ference,” she says. The difference she makesis captured by this quote from MarshallIslands resident Fred Heine:

“I suffered a stroke because of my diabetesand was in a wheelchair. I could not walk. Afterjoining the diabetes wellness program for sixmonths, I got rid of my wheelchair and amwalking on my own again. I am healthier thanI have been in many years. This program hasgiven me more than I ever thought possible.It provides the people of the Marshall Islandswith the greatest hope we have had.” ■

Winter 2010 21

University of Guelph pro-fessor Chris Bauch has becomea go-to person for all thingsrelated to pandemic prepared-

ness and H1N1 — a bit of an unusual rolefor a mathematician.

But then again, Bauch isn’t your run-of-the-mill math professor. He studies things suchas infectious diseases, ecology, mathematicalbiology, health economics and vaccinationpolicy.

“My research is centred on applyingmathematics to real-world problems, espe-cially infectious disease dynamics,” he says.

Bauch regularly collaborates with epi-demiologists and public health researchers tobetter understand the patterns people tend

to fall into during disease outbreaks. This wayhe can incorporate human behaviour intoepidemic mathematical models, somethinghe calls “challenging but ultimately necessary.Changing human behaviour patterns can havea big influence on transmission dynamics.”

He is also big into game theory and usesthis branch of mathematics to develop mod-els that can analyze — even predict — humanbehaviour. Game theory helps us to mathe-matically describe strategic reasoning — howindividuals make decisions in groups whenthe impact of their decision depends on thedecisions reached by others in the group.

Developed in the 1940s as a tool foreconomists, game theory is now widely usedin fields as varied as international relations,

philosophy and computer games, as well asa growing number of biological applications.Take public health, for example. The med-ical profession has long advocated childhoodimmunization, but parents are faced withthe ultimate decision of whether or not tovaccinate their child against a disease. Theirchoice is indirectly influenced by the deci-sions of all other parents because the risk ofinfection depends on the proportion of thepopulation that is vaccinated.

“But they’ll also be influenced by theperception of risk, whether accurate orinflated,” says Bauch. So in this scenario,game theory can be used to show whetherthe perceived risk of vaccines influences vac-cination rates and disease outbreaks.

By Lori Bona Hunt

22 The Portico

Unconventional as his field specialtiesare, he never imagined becoming the go-toperson for friends, colleagues and even gov-ernment officials on how to deal with a flupandemic. But a lot of things have changedfor a lot of people since a mutated virus thatbecame known as H1N1 found its way intothe world, and Bauch is one of them.

He was among a handful of experts thatthe Ontario government turned to for helpin planning for the fall H1N1 outbreak. Fac-ing endless unknowns, the province waslooking for answers to the multitude of“what ifs” that could be encountered in aflu pandemic.

What would happen if the provincechose to vaccinate the entire population ver-sus just high-risk individuals?

What if it opted for more drastic mea-sures such as closing schools and day-carecentres from the get-go?

What if it chose to vaccinate everyone butkept schools open? What if it closed schoolsand skipped vaccinations altogether?

Sorting out the seemingly limitless com-binations of options would probably be anoverwhelming task for mere mortals, but notfor Bauch and some mathematicians/statisti-cians at the University of Toronto and theResearch Institute of the Hospital for SickChildren. For them, it was simply a matter ofdeveloping the right mathematical model andthen plugging in numerical representationsof various possible flu-related scenarios.

Bauch and his colleagues were alreadyworking with the Ontario Agency forHealth Protection and Promotion whenH1N1 hit the world stage.

“During the aftermath of SARS, theyapproached us about doing some models thatcould help them with pandemic prepared-ness,” he says. “It turned out to be fortuitousbecause a few months later H1N1 emerged.”

The group members then changed thedirection of their collaborative effort. Insteadof focusing on generic pandemic planning,they were to create a model to predict theH1N1 attack rate and guide public healthstrategies — and do it fast.

“We’ve seen in the past that a relativelymild wave of infection can emerge in thespring, then in the fall we get hammeredwith a more virulent strain of the disease,”says Bauch. “We wanted to be prepared incase this scenario played out in fall 2009.”

So during the spring, summer and fall of2009, he spent much of his days, eveningsand weekends immersed in a model worldruled by H1N1. It proved to be a near all-consuming task for the busy professor,husband and father of two young children.He says he even pulled some “all-nighters”to get the work prepared before the antici-pated fall 2009 wave.

“There were times I found myself won-dering if we’d bitten off more than we couldchew,” Bauch says with a slight smile. “Butit was very exciting, too.”

The model they created simulates a pan-demic outbreak in London, Ont., and pro-jects how many people will be infectedunder different disease-control strategies andvarious circumstances. London was chosenbecause it’s a mid-sized city with readily

available demographic and epidemiologicinfluenza pandemic data.

A broad range of scenarios — 630 differ-ent combinations in all — were introducedinto the model. They involved vaccinationtiming, school closures and antiviral drugtreatment strategies, as well as the effect ofpre-existing immunity. The model thenprovided mathematical predictions for howand when things would happen.

What did they discover? Well, no matterthe scenario, acting early and aggressively wasthe fastest, most efficient way to reduce theinfection rate. For example, the model deter-mined that vaccinating 60 per cent of thepopulation before the “fall wave” of H1N1would virtually prevent an epidemic.

If people were vaccinated in the first 30days of the outbreak, it would reduce the

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Winter 2010 23

“peak” of infection by as much as 50 percent and help the health-care system copewith the situation.

But delaying vaccination by 30 days ormore from the start of an outbreak signifi-cantly eroded its effectiveness.

The researchers also found that a pan-demic could be halted almost entirely ifschools were closed in the early days of anoutbreak in combination with at least somevaccination. But Bauch adds that there areimportant social costs of school closures thatthe researchers did not quantify.

It’s also important to note that the modelincluded only assumptions involving vacci-nation of the general population, he says.There was no attempt to predict influenza-related deaths or assess vaccination strategiestargeted at high-risk groups or specific age

groups such as schoolchildren.The model predicted that the pandem-

ic would peak sometime in November. Asit turned out, surveillance data indicate thatthe pandemic peak in Canada was indeedpassed sometime in mid-November. “So themodel got it right,” says Bauch.

After the researchers handed their find-ings over to the province, they submittedtheir study to the Canadian Medical Associa-tion Journal, which published the results in apaper in mid-October.

After that, the team could do little morethan watch as decisions were made both inCanada and the United States about how todeal with the ever-changing H1N1 situa-tion — decisions that sometimes ran counterto what the model suggested.

In Canada, the outbreak was already wellunderway by the time the researchers’ paperwas published. At the time, Bauch said itwould still be beneficial to start vaccinations.He planned to get the shot himself and forthree-year-old Jaya and one-year-old Kiran,his children with spouse Madhur Anand, anenvironmental sciences professor at U of G.

As it turned out, there were only a fewopportunities for the general population toget the vaccine in October. When the firstpublic clinics opened, people rushed to themin droves, resulting in long lines and lots offrustration. Soon afterwards, the province’schief medical officer of health declared apotential vaccine shortage, and clinics werelimited to “high-risk” people.

In the United States, most people didn’tstart to receive the vaccine until December.“I think the effectiveness of their programwill be quite compromised,” Bauch said atthe time.

He adds that it’s not uncommon for deci-sions to be made that don’t mirror a model’ssuggestions. Models are based on a “snapshot”of things at the point in time when the mod-el is created. “But in an outbreak, knowledgeis constantly changing,” he says. As time pass-es, “it may become obvious that certain thingsare not even remotely possible.”

Still, he says, models play an importantrole in deciding which mitigation strategiesto adopt and which ones not to. And hav-ing a pre-existing H1N1 model will help infuture pandemics by saving months of pre-liminary work and preparation.

“You won’t have to start from scratch.

The hope is that next time around, the mod-el can be taken off the shelf, and you justplug in new data. It will really reduce thetime required to get useful projections outof the model.”

Bauch has long been studying vaccina-tion policies as part of his work on infectiousdisease dynamics, an interest he developedwhile studying mathematics first at the Uni-versity of Cambridge’s Trinity College andlater at the University of Warwick, where heearned a PhD. He also has a diploma in the-ology and religious studies from Trinity anda bachelor of science degree in physics fromthe University of Texas at Austin.

But his interest in game theory didn’tbegin until he was a post-doctoral researcherat McMaster University.

“I was asked to teach a course in gametheory. I didn’t know anything about itbefore then, although I was curious aboutit. I had to teach myself game theory to beable to teach the course.”

Bauch quickly realized the theory couldbe applied to human behaviour under vol-untary vaccination policies.

“What I found so appealing about it wasthe way it could describe some of the typesof behaviours we see in real populations. Itprovided a means of linking the way peoplesometimes avoid vaccination to behaviouralphenomena in other (apparently unrelated)areas.”

In previous research, he has used gametheory to predict whether voluntary vacci-nation policies will contain the spread ofinfectious diseases such as smallpox and toexplain why preventable diseases such asmeasles and whooping cough seem to bemaking a highly contagious comeback.

In the latter study, Bauch showed howvaccine scares influence the perceived risk ofvaccines, which in turn affects vaccinationrates and disease outbreaks. During a “vac-cine scare,” people are influenced by numer-ous factors such as media coverage and theactivities of anti-vaccination groups, he says

There was no “scare” with the H1N1vaccine. In fact, media reports of the diseaseitself created just the opposite reaction, saysBauch.

“I think people saw a few instances ofdeaths being reported and they panicked,afraid it might happen to them or their lovedones.” ■

Vaccinating60 per cent ofpeople early

can prevent anepidemic

Reducingattack rateof H1N1uires quick,ggressiveaction

Closingschools at thefirst sign of anoutbreak canstop a pan-

demic

Relying on drugs and

treatment can overtax

hospitals

The modelpredicted

H1N1 wouldpeak in

November

24 The Portico

Tom Hedican, BA ’82, says coachinghockey brings excitement into his life,whether he’s working with professional ath-letes like Chicago Blackhawks goalie Cristo-bel Huet or the North Bay TCM ProducePeewees. Hedican recently put the boysthrough a series of NHL and European pro-fessional skill drills in return for cans of beansand soup and jars of peanut butter — alldonated to the North Bay Food Bank.

Move your feet

European hockey coach inspires young players both on and off the ice

BY REBECCA KENDALL

Winter 2010 25

It was the fifth year for his Coach4Foodfundraising drive — his way of encourag-ing minor hockey players and helping thosewho are facing hard times in his hometown.He’s run the program since 2005, each yearcoaching about 20 local hockey teams dur-ing two weeks in December.

“I offer coaching sessions for kids basedon some of the pro drills we use in Europe,”says Hedican, a professional goaltending con-

sultant. “They’re high-skills technical drillsthat the players and coaches have never seen.The kids are excited because they’re prac-tising like pros for the day.”

It’s been nearly 30 years since Hedicanplayed between the pipes as a goaltenderwith the Guelph Gryphons. He was used totaking frequent road trips to games, but hisinvolvement in hockey today has him stick-handling what is probably the longest reg-ular commute to work of any U of G grad— North Bay to Hamburg, Germany.

Appropriately, Hedican earned his 1982degree in geography. After graduating fromGuelph, he spent a year playing in theNational Hockey League minor league forBuffalo and Philadelphia before returningto school to study journalism at CanadoreCollege. That led to a 10-year stint as areporter and editor at the London Free Pressin London, Ont.

A notable hockey town, London gave Hed-ican more than headlines. It offered him anopportunity to get his head back in the game.

“I got involved with coaching part-timeat the University of Western Ontario, thenwith the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) asan assistant coach with the London Knightsand later an associate coach with the NorthBay Centennials.”

He was also doing some work as a con-sultant for pro goalies in Switzerland andGermany.

“It was at some point during that timethat I realized my passion was hockey andnot journalism.”

Hedican left the OHL in 2000 and hasbeen working in Europe ever since. FromOctober to April, he flies back and forthfrom Canada to Germany and Switzerland.

“It’s a pretty demanding schedule, but Ilove what I do,” he says. “I’m lucky. I workwith good teams and big budgets, so theymake the travelling easier.”

Over the past decade, he’s worked withteams in Lugano, Zug and Bern. The S.C.Bern Bears are the highest-drawing team inEurope, attracting some 17,000 fans pergame. Huet is one of his former players fromLugano and the first goalie from France toplay in the NHL. Hedican coached him forfour years before Huet joined the Black-hawks in 2008. Hedican also coachedOttawa Senators goaltender Alex Auld, whohas played for NHL teams in Vancouver,

Florida, Phoenix and Boston.“It’s fun being in pro hockey,” says Hed-

ican. “You’re working in a game where thereare lots of highs and lows, but it’s not a mun-dane job. It changes every day, so there’s thatelement of excitement.”

He brings that excitement with him toCoach4Food. What started out with 1,000pounds of food in 2005 has become a phe-nomenon in his hometown.

“North Bay isn’t a wealthy city, but it’s acaring city,” he says, “and helping now is prob-ably more crucial than it has been in decades.”

The 2009 event was still underway whenthis issue of The Portico went to press, butHedican said it was on track to match the2008 total of 60,482 pounds of food. Thatwas a memorable year for Hedican, who ded-icated his effort to the memory of his latemother, Shirley, a strong supporter of the localfood bank. The 2008 event also benefitedfrom an unexpected meeting with rockerBruce Springsteen, a New Jersey native whoalso does charitable work for food banks.

Hedican was asked by New Jersey Dev-ils owner Jeff Vanderbeek to start the programin the United States. The NHL team part-nered with the New Jersey Rockets and theNew Jersey Titans to run their firstCoach4Food event in November 2008. It wasthe biggest sports-related fundraiser in thehistory of the Community Food Bank ofNew Jersey and raised 17,000 pounds of food.

“While I was in New Jersey,” says Hed-ican, “I got a call from Bruce Springsteen’sassistant asking my wife, Nancy Ann, and meto come to his opening-night concert inNewark.”

With 30 minutes to showtime, the cou-ple were invited backstage to meet Spring-steen, who said he appreciated all the greatwork Hedican was doing.

Coach4Food has also spread to hockeyrinks in the Maritimes, and Hedican hasbeen approached by people wanting to runsimilar programs with other sports.

“The truth is, you can do it with anysport,” he says. “You just have to have a hookfor the kids and someone to teach themsomething. I always tell the kids that youdon’t have to change the world — you justhave to change where your feet are. Whetherit’s in your classroom, your home or yourcity, you can make a difference. You just haveto start moving.” ■

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uof guelph

W hen Canada last hostedthe Olympic and ParalympicGames, Bob Davis, B.Sc. ’88,

was watching the events on televisionand finishing the last semester of hisbiology program at Guelph.

This time around, he’s right in themiddle of the action.

Davis is one of 80 pre-Games facil-itators who’ve spent more than a yeartraining and preparing the 25,000 vol-unteers who will host 5,500 athletes

and officials, 10,000 media representa-tives and 1.6 million ticket holders dur-ing the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

“This was one of the largest vol-unteer recruitments in Canadian his-tory,” says Davis, a business instructorat the Vancouver campus of Interna-tional Language Schools of Canada.

Volunteers are integral to every facetof the Games and will be found handlingeverything from accommodations, tick-eting, accreditation, community relations

and technology support to translationservices, transportation and, of course,the sporting venues and events, he says.

“The Olympics couldn’t exist if itweren’t for these amazing and selflessindividuals.”

For the past year, Davis’s role hasbeen to introduce the volunteers to themission and mandate of the Games andprepare them for what he says will beone of the most exciting and memo-rable experiences of their lives.

“The mission of the 2010 WinterGames is to touch the soul of thenation and inspire the world,” he says.

Although Davis is an avid hockeyplayer himself, his Olympic dream isn’tabout winning a medal. He’ll be at theUniversity of British Columbia Thun-derbird Arena, the site of women’s hock-ey and ice sledge hockey matches, toensure that spectators and athletes havean extraordinary Olympic experience.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime expe-rience,” he says. “I’m proud to show offour great nation, and I’m proud of allthe firsts Vancouver 2010 is introduc-ing to the Games, including the firsttime Aboriginal Peoples have been rec-ognized as official partners in hostingthe Olympic and Paralympic Games.And I’m proud to be part of an eventthat promotes shared themes such asdeveloping values through sports, pro-moting peace through sports, equalityand fairness, culture and sustainability.”

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Meeting in the east

T he Maritime grads of OVC ’52got together in August at the Halifax

home of Ross Ainslie, DVM ’52. They cel-ebrated the publication of Albert “Bud”

Ing’s autobiography, Mud, Sweat and Tears,and a recent biography of deceased class-mate Earle Kirby of St. Vincent in theCaribbean.

Kirby, who died in 2005, was also anexpert in tropical agriculture and St. Vin-cent archeology. In 1975, he was induct-ed into the Order of the British Empire.

His biography, Pigmented Spectacles, waswritten by David Chesterton and is avail-able from the author at [email protected].

Mud, Sweat and Tears tells the story ofIngs’s adventures as a rural veterinarian inthe 1950s. The book is available fromChapters and Amazon.

26 The Portico

N e t w o r k i n g

T hirty-three years after histeam won the OUAA hockey

championship, Gryphon captain KimMiles, B.Sc.(H.K.) ’76, finally got tohoist the Queen’s Cup. He did it Nov.14 during Guelph’s second annualHockey Day in Gryphonville, whichattracted more than 100 people.

The OUAA trophy wasn’t present-ed to the Gryphons in 1976 becausethe previous winners had neglected tobring it to the championship game.

The Department of Athleticsarranged the surprise presentation tothe 1975/76 Gryphon team by bor-rowing the trophy from the currentOUAA champions at the University ofWestern Ontario.

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Heading west

The impact of giving

E ach day I encounter alumni, donors

and friends of the University of Guelph

who are steadfast in their desire to see this

great institution flourish. Their passion is

fuelled by the impact they have on students

and the University’s ability to fulfil its mis-

sion — to change lives and improve life.

The compelling stories of individual and

corporate donors, alumni, friends and stu-

dents have been gathered in the Impact of

Giving Report, available online at

www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/donor_report. This

new publication is unprecedented in its

powerful message and lasting impact. I

encourage you to visit the site and experi-

ence these inspiring stories first-hand. They

tell about people who believe that Guelph’s

time is now.

With the help of our increasing number

of donors and alumni, the University will

continue to nurture and achieve meaning-

ful advances in world issues related to food,

water, animal and human health, commu-

nities and the environment. Those success

stories are unfolding, even as I write this

message — stories about the University of

Guelph making a difference in the world and

focusing on the issues that matter now. I

look forward to sharing the achievements

of the next chapter with alumni and friends

in the years to come.

Joanne Shoveller

Vice-President

Alumni Affairs and Development

It’s never too late to be a champ

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U of G alumni from the Calgary area gathered for a reception at the Ranchmen’s

Club Oct. 20. Some grads also attended a Calgary Flames game at the Saddle-

dome. A networking event was held the next day in Vancouver, where several

alumni attended a reception at the Coast Plaza Hotel. These regional events are

part of an overall initiative by the University of Guelph to ensure a presence in

areas with many alumni, donors and friends. If you’re interested in attending future

regional events in Canada, send a note to [email protected].

Winter 2010 27

u of g

preceded them to tell the University’s cur-rent story. I hope you as alumni feel agreater degree of engagement as importantmembers of the University family.

The ongoing dedication of students andalumni are among the reasons our almamater is one of Canada’s best universities.We salute Guelph’s student callers and thankthose alumni who answer their calls.

L inda Hruska

B.Sc. (Agr. ) ’85, M.Agr . ’88 President , UGAA

Keeping parents In the know

S tudent s who work in the U ofG call centre make connections not

only with Guelph alumni but also with theparents of other students. It’s an effort to keepparents up-to-date with what’s happeningon campus and to solicit their support forthe Parents’ Fund. Over the past 14 years,student callers have raised more than $3 mil-lion to support the U of G Library andLearning Commons.

The Learning Commons brings togeth-er services that support students in study-ing, writing, research, numeracy skills anduse of technology. Annual contributions fromthe Parents’ Fund have enabled the Learn-ing Commons to offer more supportedlearning groups and to make electronicacquisitions that enhance off-site research.

To keep parents better informed aboutwhat’s happening at U of G and how to helptheir children access student resources, Alum-ni Affairs and Development issues an annu-al newsletter called In the Know.

alumni matters

Please answer the call

“G ood even ing ! My name isAmanda, and I’m calling from the

University of Guelph to touch base with youabout developments at the University and inyour college. Is this a good time for you totalk?”

Amanda Taylor is one of about 40Guelph students who staff the U of G callcentre in Alumni House. Each year, theymake more than 50,000 calls to alumni, par-ents and friends of the University. These stu-dents are a vital link between Guelph andits alumni. Indeed, for many alumni, the callmay be the only “live” contact they havewith their alma mater.

Student callers also make an importantcontribution to the University of GuelphAlumni Association (UGAA). They demon-strate to alumni that we’re interested in themas individuals and care about the excitingdevelopments in their careers and personallives. The calls also provide an opportunityto update alumni contact information and

enhance the alumni connection to U of G.You can be assured that the Guelph stu-

dent who calls you has been carefully trainedand is prepared to talk about recent andplanned developments at the University andin your college. And sharing fond memoriesof your student days on campus is a mean-ingful way to connect with them. One ofthe biggest benefits of the call program,which speaks directly to the UGAA mis-sion, is helping to build bridges between pastand future Guelph graduates.

The student callers are also helping toraise funds for priority projects in your col-lege and at the University as a whole. We’reproud that so many alumni respond posi-tively. Phone calls made in 2008 generatedalmost $500,000 in donations to U of G.

Periodically, Amanda and the other stu-dent callers become part of the University’s“Thank You” campaign. Last summer, theycalled and personally thanked close to10,000 donors for their financial support.

The student call centre is certainly oneof the University’s fundraising success sto-ries. Engaged, enthusiastic and knowledge-able students reach out to those of us who

U of G student callers Christina Helf,

left, and Amanda Taylor.

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28 The Portico

College Royal for Alumni

J ust because you’ve graduated does-n’t mean you can’t participate in Col-

lege Royal. The annual open house runsMarch 20 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and March21 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Check out these“alumni-friendly” College Royal events:Super Thursday — Alumni teams of sixpeople are welcome to participate in thisannual spectacle. Cat show — Enter both your cat and yourcat photography in two competitions opento the whole community.

Print show and sale — Fill your wallswith student prints that are sure to increasein value. Your purchase will support a finearts awards program for emerging artists.Teddy bear surgery — Kids can make atake-home craft in the waiting room, cour-tesy of the U of G and OVC alumni asso-ciations.Square dancing — Get your student setback together and compete in Sunday’sopen competition. Curtain Call — The 2010 production ofReefer Madness is a musical version of a1936 political satire (recommended formature audiences). The show runs March17 to 20 in War Memorial Hall. Lecture series — Free public lectures heldSaturday and Sunday afternoon are light-hearted and entertaining, but they’ll alsomake you think.Much more — Bring your kids for a milk-shake or the chemistry magic show, visitthe campus barn and show off your almamater.

For a complete College Royal sched-ule, visit www.collegeroyal.uoguelph.ca.

COMING EVENTSWinter 2010 • Career nights at

U of G. For information on volun-

teering to talk with students go to

www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.

Feb. 5 • Alumni tour of Echo

Global Farm in North Fort Myers,

Fla. The tour is $5, lunch $9.

To reserve your place, email

[email protected].

March 5 • Alumni reunion at

Maple Leaf Golf and Country

Club, Port Charlotte, Fla., 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m., $20 per person for buf-

fet lunch. Register with Lyle Rea

at [email protected].

March 5 to 7 • 2010 Kin Games.

The Human Kinetics Student Asso-

ciation will host 400 kinesiology stu-

dents from across Canada. Spec-

tators welcome. To volunteer, email

[email protected].

March 9 • Café Philosophique

with history professor Susan

Nance on “Can Rodeo Sports

Survive the 21st Century?” The

lecture is free, 7 p.m. at the Book-

shelf in downtown Guelph.

March 10 • Shenkman Lecture

with Iwona Blazwick of the

Whitechapel Art Gallery in Lon-

don, England, free, 5 p.m., War

Memorial Hall.

March 26 and 27 • Annual OAC

Curling Bonspiel. Register in Feb-

ruary with Katie (Gillespie) Coop-

er at [email protected].

April 13 • Café Philosophique

with literature professor Stephanie

Nutting on “Sleuthing for the

Truth: The Detective Genre and

Quebec Identity.” The lecture is

free, 7 p.m. at the Bookshelf.

May 6 • OAC Alumni Founda-

tion 50th anniversary celebration.

For details, contact Katie (Gillespie)

Cooper at [email protected].

May 15 • Gourmet Reunion for

the Mac-FACS-FRAN Alumni

Association in Stratford, Ont. For

details, go to www.csahs.uo

guelph.ca/alumni/associations.

TAKE NOTEAWARDS OF EXCELLENCE • The University of Guelph Alumni Association’s

(UGAA) annual awards program is undergoing some exciting changes, including a

new venue for the ceremony, an improved nomination form and a new April 30 clos-

ing date for nominations. For more information, visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.

UGAA NOMINATIONS • UGAA is looking for alumni with great ideas, talent and

skills to serve as board directors. If you would like to represent our alumni or know

another graduate who would be a great candidate, visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca

to access a nomination form. The nomination deadline is March 31.

BABY NEWS • Just had a baby? UGAA would like to send you a special gift. Send

your baby news to [email protected].

College Royal • Visit UGAA’s College Royal booth in the University Centre to pick up

your alumni card and share your memories for a chance to win U of G memorabilia.

ALUMNI WEEKEND • Return to campus to celebrate with friends and classmates

June 18 and 19. If your class is planning a reunion, contact Helen McCairley at

[email protected]. For more information about Alumni Weekend events, visit

www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.

Winter 2010 29

30 The Portico

C a r e e r s • F a m i l i e s • L i f e E x p e r i e n c e s •

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Teaching today’s technology

F or many of us , the smell offreshly sharpened pencils and the

sight of chalk dust in the air arereminders of our school days.

For Tracy Muller’s Grade 3 class at SirIsaac Brock Public School in Guelph,memories of their school days — or atleast their third-grade year — will be filledwith images of keyboards, streamingvideo, electronic ink and touch screens.

Muller, BA ’88, is one of only a fewteachers in the Upper Grand DistrictSchool Board — or any Canadianschool board for that matter — whouse Web 2.0 technology in the class-room almost every day.

The eight- and nine-year-olds inher class are already well-versed inusing computers, navigating the Inter-

net, blogging, photo sharing and cre-ating slideshows. They also use an inter-active SMART Board and SKYPE.

There’s no question that her stu-dents are learning in an environmenttheir parents and grandparents couldnever have imagined.

“These tools are exciting and visu-ally engaging and provide a differentavenue for learning,” says Muller. “Theyhelp me to engage students who aresometimes difficult to reach and enrichthose who are waiting and ready.”

As a child, she was a less-than-con-fident student who struggled when itcame to learning. Muller says it wasn’tuntil Grade 6 that she could pick up achapter book, understand the story andenjoy reading.

“If you had asked my grade-schoolteachers what they saw me doing in thefuture, they’d never have said teaching.”

She credits two teachers — an ele-mentary school teacher who encour-aged her to read and a high schoolteacher who chose her to write classnotes on the blackboard — with help-ing her become more self-assured.

Muller, who was born and raised inGuelph, was introduced to the worldof teaching with technology six yearsago after connecting with a NewHampshire teacher in a chat room forkindergarten teachers. “That’s when Irealized the incredible potential forlearning, sharing and connecting withother kids all over the world.”

At Sir Isaac Brock, she is the school’stech coach and is slowly starting to drawothers into the fold. “People tend to bea bit scared by it,” she says. “It may lookdifficult, but it’s really not.”

Muller notes that there are lots ofonline resources available for teachers aswell as a small vibrant community oflike-minded educators. Her class con-nects with a class in a Connecticutschool. Muller and the U.S. teacherbring the kids together through meet-ups using SKYPE and through collab-orative writing projects using blogging,wikis and Google Docs.

She says teaching with technologyhelps bridge the gap between the cur-riculum and children who struggle.

“Some kids would much rather tryto type a sentence on a keyboard thanwrite it with pencil and paper, so itgives them a different motivation.There’s something about technologyand kids. If you can present it in a for-mat they like, they’ll be able to navigateit really well.”

By Rebecca Kendall

Tracy Muller

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1950sAlbert “Bud” Ings, DVM’52, was celebrated in 2009 forboth his autobiography Mud,Sweat and Tears and his electionto the Atlantic Agriculture Hallof Fame. Born and raised inPrince Edward Island, hereturned to practise veterinarymedicine in Souris and Mon-tague. He was elected to theprovincial legislature in 1970and served as a cabinet ministerfrom 1974 to 1980. He thenreturned to veterinary medicineand served on the committeethat brought the Atlantic Vet-erinary College to P.E.I. Ingsand his wife, Connie, raisedthree daughters.

1960s■ Andrew Fletch, DVM ’65and M.Sc. ’68, and SheilahFletch, DVM ’66 and M.Sc.’70, don’t seem to know whatthe word “retired” means. Sheretired from veterinary clinicalpathology in 1983 to enter theseminary and retired again lastsummer after seven years ofordained rural parish ministry.He recently retired fromMcMaster University, where hewas a specialist in laboratoryresearch animal medicine andanimal regulatory administra-tion. This summer, they spenttime in Oyarifa, Ghana, work-ing with orphans at the AgapeChildren’s Home. ■ Maurice Marwood, BSA’64 and MSA ’66, of Windsor,Ont., has published a book

Winter 2010 31

L i ber ia i sn ’t the same placeMcAnthony Keah, BA ’01 and

M.Sc. ’03, knew as a child. “It was peace-ful and it attracted Africans from all overthe continent and had strong ties withAmerica,” he says.

Since then, the African nation haswitnessed brutality that people in mostcountries will never know. And althoughthe civil conflict has ended, its scars stillrun deep in the minds of some ofLiberia’s most vulnerable inhabitants —those who served as child soldiers in awar that lasted more than a decade.

Their lives are the basis for GrowingUp Naked: The Untold Stories of Childrenat War, a fictional account of their expe-riences written by Keah, who studiedinternational development at Guelph.

“Kids were lured to rebel groups fora sense of community or the offer offood and security,” he says. “Some were

bent on revenge and a need to protectthemselves. Often they were told tofight to honour their loved ones whohad been killed by enemy forces.”

Keah did the research for the bookwhen he was in Liberia working on hismaster’s thesis. Although he hasn’t beenback since then, he says: “There are stilla lot of challenges, but there is change.”

Now living in Toronto, Keah hasworked with the Red Cross as part ofits humanitarian issues program and hasmade a number of presentations on theplight of child soldiers.

He has also worked in South Africaas a legislative researcher with theCanadian Young Professionals Programand volunteered with the UnitedNations in the Marshall Islands, wherehe worked on projects related to thestrengthening of the island’s parlia-mentary process.

Telling the truth through fiction

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called Professional Nomad thattells the story of his life as aninternational business executive.During his 40-year career, heworked in more than 85 coun-tries. The book blends his mem-ories of on-the-job experienceswith recollections of personaladventures and reflections onthe various cultures he visited. ■ Donna Woolcott, B.H.Sc.’69 and PhD ’79, has accepted

a new position as executivedirector of quality assurancewith the Council of OntarioUniversities in Toronto. She wasformerly a family studies pro-fessor at U of G, chair of theDepartment of Family Rela-tions and Applied Nutrition andassistant vice-president (acade-mic). For the last seven years,she has been vice-president(academic) at Mount Saint Vin-

cent University in Halifax.

1970s■ Jim Fraser, B.Comm. ’78,teaches hospitality and tourism atInnisdale Secondary School inBarrie, Ont. He’s been teachingfor 15 years after spending 17years in business. He says he hopesto pay a visit to U of G “and walkaround the buildings that have somany great memories.”■ Harold Gonyou, B.Sc.(Agr.)’74, is research director andresearch scientist in ethology atthe Prairie Swine Centre inSaskatoon. Last summer, hereceived an award from theCanadian Society of Animal Sci-ence for technical innovation inenhancing the production of safeand affordable food, recognizinghis research, teaching and lead-ership roles in the field of ani-mal behaviour. He has workedat the Prairie Swine Centre for17 years and is responsible fordevelopments in pig feeders,group housing and handlingfacilities. ■ Roger Gordon, ADA ’73A,has developed a new technolo-gy to produce green fuel fromanhydrous ammonia. He saysthe system generated wide-spread interest at a recent con-ference on alternative fuels inMissouri. “Many people whohave given up on hydrogen andbiofuels or batteries are happyto see a safe, clean alternative,”he says. To learn more, visitwww.GreenNH3.com.■ Virginia (May) Hair, BA’74, retired in June after 22 yearsof teaching dramatic arts withthe Hastings/Prince EdwardBoard of Education. She hopesto pursue a new career in pro-moting the arts and profession-al storytelling.■ Neal Hedges, M.Sc. ’75,retired in 2008 from the U.S.Bureau of Land Managementafter a 32-year career in wildlife

and range management. He isnow stewardship co-ordinatorwith a non-profit land trust inWenatchee, Wash.■ Vickie and Steve Lawson,both B.Sc. ’79, live in Kauka-pakapa, New Zealand. She’s asecondary school teacher atWaitakere College; he’s businessmanager at Grace Davison Dis-covery Sciences. They also breedHanoverian horses and show indressage. They have three chil-dren — Philip, 24; Charlotte, 21;and Genevieve, 17 — and inviteold friends to get in touch [email protected].■ Rev. Norman Long,B.Sc.(Agr.) ’79, was ordained bythe United Church of Canadain May 2009 and serves anOntario charge in Frank-ford/Batawa. He and his wife,Jane, have two children: Nicole,16, and Jeremy, 13.■ Susan Merrick, BA ’72,writes that she’s finally made itto the job she’s always wanted.After teaching high schoolFrench and drama for 10 years,she is now a full-time librarianat ACS Egham InternationalSchool in Surrey, England. “Myheart always belonged in thelibrary,” she says. “In fact, I start-ed my library career as a ‘page’at the U of G Library.”■ Leslie Newman, B.Sc. ’79and M.Sc. ’82, is a nature pho-tographer specializing in marinelife and scientist in Queensland,Australia. A research associate atSouthern Cross University, shesays: “What goes around comesaround.” After leaving academiato pursue nature photography,she’s back in academic research.She has studied zooplankton,free-living marine flatwormsand now global warming. “Theplankton research I did withzoology professor Susan Corey(now retired) has paid off bigtime. My research animals moreor less prove global warming.”

32 The Portico

H ave you ever dreamed of leaving your nine-to-five job in search

of adventure? That’s exactly what Kristin (McInnes) Cowles,

B.Comm. ’05, did when she left her job in the advertising industry to

start her own business and see the world.

The young entrepreneur merged her love of travel and computers

to create www.thecircumference.org, a website that shares the unique

life experiences of travellers exploring the furthermost regions of the

world. She launched the business with her husband, Paul, in 2008.

“The Circumference pays homage to the many wonders this world

has to offer,” says Kristin Cowles. “We try to highlight the growth and

knowledge that come from immersing yourself in the unfamiliar. By

focusing on the inspirational, gratifying and enriching aspects of expe-

riential travel, we aim to remind readers of the true value that can be

found in exploring the world.”

Cowles employs a roster of 50 freelancers who write travel pieces

that are posted on the website. Revenue comes from affiliate adver-

tising and sponsorship. This winter, she’ll be spending time in India,

the Philippines, Lao, Vietnam and Palau. Some of her overall favourite

destinations include Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, Indonesia’s Gili Islands

and Alberta’s Jasper National Park.

“Meaningful travel doesn’t have to be in another country or even

another province,” says the Alberta-based writer. “We have lots of

great things here in our own backyard, including the celestial Rocky

Mountains and the Columbia Icefield.”

She’s living and loving life

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To learn more about herresearch, search for Leslie New-man on www.pbs.org. ■ David Schmidt, ADA ’77,recently received a PhD inMiddle Eastern history from theUniversity of the Holy Land/Hebrew University in Jerusalem.He is affiliated with Across Bor-ders for World Evangelism —Canada.■ Barry Sharpe, BA ’73 andMA ’75, retired in February2009 after nearly 35 years as ateacher and academic adminis-trator at Niagara College ofApplied Arts and Technology.He started teaching economicsthere in 1974 and retired asassociate vice-president (acade-mic).■ David Truman, B.Sc. ’72,owns and operates BrookswoodTax Services and Nerd2 Con-sulting Inc. in Langley, B.C. Heis also president of the LangleyFederal Liberal Association andpresident-elect of the RotaryClub of Langley.

1980s■ John Anderson, B.Comm.’85, is lodge owner and guide atthe Ottawa River Musky Fac-tory. “Just like Michael Hay-wood told us in the first class Iever attended at Guelph, mostpeople have at least three distinctcareers in hospitality,” saysAnderson. “I did 14 years ofrunning everything in a restau-rant, followed by a second edu-cation and six years in high-techwith IBM and others. Then Ifinally got it figured out. Now Itake Americans fishing, barbe-cue steaks and sample scotch fora living. Life is good.” Check outhis website at www.ottawariver-muskyfactory.com.■ Karen Catt, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’89and DVM ’93, owns two vet-erinary clinics near NewLiskeard, Ont., and shows Ibizanhounds under the Icy Cold

Kennel name. Her dog Sailor —IcyCold Firstmate — has wonmultiple show championshipsand field championships and isthe No. 1 Ibizan hound in lurecoursing in Canada and theUnited States. ■ Vicki Dickson, B.Sc. ’80,operates a consulting companycalled VelocityWorks in Aber-

foyle, Ont., She has more than20 years of management expe-rience, with a particular focuson the pharmaceutical sector, aswell as an advanced degree inhuman resources management.For more information, visitwww.velocityworks.ca. ■ Leslie Drysdale, BA ’85,won an Ontario-wide art com-

petition to design a sculpture forWaterloo Regional Police Ser-vice headquarters that depictsits motto, “People Helping Peo-ple.” Unveiled last summer, hissculpture Child Found depictsthe moment of discovery whenan officer responds to the criesof a child stuck on a ledge ofthe Grand River.

T hree U of G graduates are among the 14 peo-

ple recently recognized by the online travel mag-

azine Verge as “global heroes.” Teresa Mellish, M.Sc.

’98; David Peck, MA ’06; and Victoria Sheppard,

B.Sc. ’02, are the Guelph trio who are “doing their

part to make a difference in the developing world.”

Mellish is a Prince Edward Island farmer who is

also helping farmers in Kenya and Tanzania through

a P.E.I.-based organization called Farmers Helping

Farmers (FHF). She’s been the co-ordinator and

treasurer of FHF since it began in 1979. Its 100 P.E.I.

members helped launch a dairy co-op in Wakulima,

Kenya, that has grown to 6,000 members. FHF pro-

vided cooling tanks for milk and training on how to

keep cows healthy.

“As a result of that dairy, $10,000 a day is com-

ing into that community from milk,” says Mellish.

“We haven’t done it — they’ve done it for them-

selves — but we’ve been able to help them do that.”

www.farmershelpingfarmers.ca

Peck lives in Oakville, Ont., and is a teacher, a

poet and the founder of a social justice organiza-

tion called SoChange. But it’s his 20 years of expe-

rience as a magician that he’s using to help UNICEF

buy and distribute mosquito bed nets in hopes of

making malaria disappear.

The Mosquitoes Suck Tour is a travelling event

that helps high schools raise money for UNICEF.

Each show features performances by a comedian,

a magician and a speaker from SoChange, who edu-

cates the audience about malaria. The show works

sleight-of-hand with the Spread the Net campaign

launched by comedian Rick Mercer and philan-

thropist Belinda Stronach. Peck signed on because

he sees the potential for his shows to instil passion

and plant seeds of change in Canadian students.

www.sochangenow.com

Sheppard is a policy analyst at Fisheries and

Oceans Canada in Ottawa, but her story begins

when she was completing an internship at the Unit-

ed Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya.

She volunteered at a primary school in the nearby

Mathare Valley slum. Before leaving Africa, she com-

mitted to providing scholarships so some of those

students could go on to attend secondary school.

Sheppard established the Canada Mathare Edu-

cation Trust, which is now paying for 37 children

from Mathare to attend secondary schools outside

Nairobi. The scholarships provide tuition, room and

board, transportation, books, school supplies, uni-

forms and the potential for a future outside the Math-

are slum. www.cmetrust.org

U of G grads are global heroes

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34 The Portico

■ Rosemary Fiss, B.A.Sc. ’88,is a dementia education adviserwith the Alzheimer Society ofWindsor and Essex County,Ont. She graduated fromOISE/University of Torontowith a master’s degree in adulteducation in June 2009. ■ Becky (Robertson) Hazel-ton, BA ’89, is a civil aviationsafety officer with TransportCanada in Toronto. In July, sheand her husband welcomedtheir second child, David Con-nor, a brother for two-year-oldLauren Chloe Grace. ■ Zuzia “Susan” Kozera,BLA ’80, moved back to Cana-da in the fall after living andworking in Europe for 28 years.She has opened a small land-scape design office in Graven-hurst, Ont., and can be reachedat [email protected]. ■ Michele (McConney) Lam-berti, BA ’84, wrote to say she

was thrilled to see the articleabout OAC ’49 in the Fall 2009Portico. “The picture you used isthe same one I carry in my wal-let of my father, Allan McConney(he’s resting his foot on the car).I also recognized AndyMcConvey, Bill Dies and WalterPackman. After serving in theNavy during the war, my fatherloved his time at U of G, as didtwo of my uncles, nine cousinsand I. Keep up the good work.”■ Mike Mooz, BA ’81, is acommander in the CanadianNavy and is currently complet-ing the six-month senior courseat the NATO Defence Collegein Rome, Italy. ■ Paul Nodwell, BLA ’86, is aToronto-based landscape archi-tect and owner of PD3 Plan-ning and Design Solutions. Heis also an artist and had an exhi-bition in October at Toronto’sGallery 888. “From Canoe to

Canvas” featured a number oflandscapes and scenes “discov-ered from the back of a canoe.” ■ George Plumley, BA ’86, isa web developer and presenta-tion coach living in Lantzville,B.C. He published a book inNovember that is a how-to forbeginners using the bluffing soft-ware WordPress. He says Brave-NewNiche will teach you how tobuild a website using the open-source program; it includes aDVD with tutorials. For infor-mation, visit www.wrox.com. ■ Cindy (Trimble) and JimRusak, both B.Sc. ’84, recentlymoved to Bracebridge, Ont., afterspending seven years in Wiscon-sin. Both worked at the Univer-sity of Wisconsin-Madison: he asa research scientist and she as abiologist. Back in Canada, Jim,who holds graduate degrees fromLakehead and York universities,works for the Ministry of the

Environment in Dorset. The cou-ple has twin sons, Aaron andMatthew (a first-year student atU of G), and a daughter, Mary.The Rusaks can be reached [email protected].■ Peter Ryan, M.Sc. ’84 andPhD ’89, joined the faculty ofMississippi State University in1999 and is an associate profes-sor in the College of VeterinaryMedicine. He is also associatevice-president intern for acad-emic affairs in the Office of theProvost. ■ Pat Tracey, ADA ’83 and BA’87, is the only Gryphon whogot to celebrate the 25thanniversary of Guelph’s 1984Vanier Cup win by hoisting thecup a second time. The formerGryphon player and coach isnow defensive co-ordinator forthe Queen’s University Gaels,who beat out the University ofCalgary to win the 2009 Des-

jardins Vanier Cup. The photo isfrom the Gaels’s 2009 Yates Cupwin over Western.■ Douglas Woodliffe, BA ’86,spent 17 years in the construc-tion service industry, then wentback to school to earn a certifi-cate in land-use planning fromthe University of Alberta. He isnow manager of developmentfor Brazeau County. He and hiswife live in the country withdogs, chickens, cats and rabbits.He would like to organize a 25-

year reunion for the 1986 geog-raphy class and invites interest-ed classmates to contact him [email protected].

1990s■ Richard Brooks, B.Sc.(Env.)’98, is the forest campaignco-ordinator for GreenpeaceCanada. He directs the nationalforest campaign with staff inVancouver, Toronto and Mon-treal. After graduating fromGuelph, he received a master’sdegree in forest conservationbefore starting to work withenvironmental non-profits.■ Danielle Charbonneau,B.Sc.(H.K.) ’99, is a physicianliving in Burlington, Ont. Sheand Richard Sowery are theproud parents of a daughter,Sophie Irène, born Oct. 22,2008.■ Mary Jill (McClure) Culli-ton, B.A.Sc. ’90, earned a B.Ed.

at Brock University in 1991 andan M.Ed. at the University ofWestern Ontario in 1998. Sheand her husband, Tim, started afundraising drive in the fall tobenefit the children’s hospital atLondon Health Sciences Cen-tre in London, Ont. Theiryoungest son, Crosby, has beentreated there since being diag-nosed with leukemia in 2006.For more information, visitwww.crosbyschallenge.ca.■ William Fehrenbach, BA’93 and MA ’95, met his futurewife, Karin Worth, BA ’92,when he transferred fromundergraduate science to histo-ry. He went on to law school atthe University of Ottawa, andshe earned a diploma in earlychildhood education at Con-estoga College. After Williamwas called to the bar in 2002,they moved to his hometown ofKitchener, Ont., where he set up

a sole practice. Karin accepted aposition as assistant director of achild-care facility in Waterloo.They now have two children:Olivia, born in June 2006; andColman, born in September2008. William says Guelph holdsa special place in their hearts, notjust because of their student daysbut also because he was adopt-ed at birth and has obtainedinformation suggesting that hisbiological parents were U of Gstudents when he was born atthe Guelph General HospitalApril 1, 1969. “Anyone whowishes to catch up or has infor-mation about my adoption isinvited to contact me [email protected] or Karin [email protected].” ■ David Gadzala, B.Comm.’91, reports that he sold the Hill-crest and North American Motelsin Toronto in February 2008 after59 years and three generations of

Winter 2010 35

Pat Tracey

operation. In its later years, the’60s-style Hillcrest Motel wasused in about 100 films, com-mercials and TV programs. ■ Anna Millar, B.Sc. ’97, and her

husband, Marc, relocated from theUnited Kingdom to Hong Konglast year. She is completing anMBA program at the HongKong University of Science andTechnology and gave birth to adaughter, Emilie, in August. Sheplans to return to her businesscareer in the pharmaceuticalindustry later this year. ■ Fiona (Morrison) Mur-doch, BA ’92, has been teachingin Bermuda since 1996 and ishead of art at Saltus GrammarSchool. She is married and hastwo children aged seven and 14,and would love to hear from oldfriends at [email protected].■ Connie Powers, BA ’92,spent five years teaching in theMiddle East but is now back inOntario teaching ESL for theWindsor-Essex Catholic Dis-trict School Board.■ Steven Rowland, B.Sc. ’90,is working at Novartis in theBoston area. Previously, he waswith Merck in Montreal.■ Andrea Stenberg, BA ’92,has a blog called “The BabyBoomer Entrepreneur” that shestarted from her Owen Sound,Ont., home in 2007. It featuresa wide range of marketing strate-gies, expert interviews and pro-files of successful entrepreneurs,as well as a new focus on the useof social networking sites such as

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.To read more, visit www.The-BabyBoomerEntrepreneur.com. ■ Gary Stickles, B.Comm.’93, and Natalie Thomson-Stickles, BA ’93, met in theBrass Taps in 1991 and saythey’ve been happily togetherever since. They live in Fonthill,Ont., and have two children:Matthew, 11, and Gillian, 7.Gary is an accountant for WhiteOaks Conference Resort andSpa in Niagara-on-the-Lake,and Natalie is the art directorand photographer for REVPublishing (Niagara Today Mag-azine) in Niagara Falls. Theyenjoyed “a long-awaited andwell-deserved trip to the SouthPacific” with family in the fall.■ Judy Wearing, B.Sc. ’91,recently published a popular sci-ence book that looks at the his-tory of invention from the pointof view of failure. Edison’s ConcretePiano: Flying Tanks, Six-NippledSheep, Walk-on-Water Shoes and12 Other Flops From Great Inven-tors seeks to understand the per-sonalities and the genius offamous inventors, as well as theforces that drive innovation insociety. To find out more, visitwww.edisonsconcretepiano.co.■ Susan Yates, B.Sc. ’97, M.Sc.’00 and PhD ’05, and her hus-band, Matthew Davidson, wel-comed twin daughters, BeatrixCallie and Mary Josephine, June18. They live in Kingston, Ont.,where Susan is taking a breakfrom her Canadian Institutes ofHealth Research post-doctoralfellowship in the biochemistrydepartment at Queen’s Univer-sity.

2000s■ Craig Buttar, B.Comm. ’03,is a sales associate for agricul-tural and construction equip-ment at Bob Mark New Hol-land in Lindsay, Ont. ■ Jayne Cardno, M.Sc. ’00,

received her PhD last year fromthe University of Brighton inEngland and is a researcher withthe Applied Social Research inHealth Informatics group in theDepartment of Family Medicineat the University of Alberta.■ Stephane Castel, B.Sc. ’09,has been accepted into the PhDprogram at the Cold SpringHarbor Laboratory in NewYork. A student in the WatsonSchool of Biological Sciences,she received a graduate scholar-ship from the Natural Sciencesand Engineering ResearchCouncil of Canada. ■ Amanda Clement, BA ’04,married Paul Ottolino Aug. 22,2009, in Niagara Falls, Ont. Sheis a secondary school teacher inHamilton.■ Joanne Ferguson, B.Sc.(Eng.)’02, lives in Dubai, where sheworks on water and environ-mental projects for engineeringconsultancies in the Gulf region.She says: “There’s been a flurryof activity in Dubai in the lastfew years, and it’s been amazingto be involved.”■ Hainsley Guthrie, BA ’03,and Andrew Oosterhuis,B.Comm. ’06, appeared on theOutdoor Life Network TVshow Mantracker last summer.On the show, teams of two tryto evade professional trackerTerry Grant. Their episode wasshot in the northern Ontariowilderness near Elliot Lake.Both men are former Gryphonfootball players. Oosterhuis wasan Academic All-Canadian andOntario University AthleticsAll-Star and is now a nationalaccount manager for Gatorade.Guthrie, a key account sales rep-resentative with Labatt, alsoplayed basketball and has taughtsnorkelling. To find out if theymanaged to escape the tracker,visit www.mantracker.ca.■ Patrick Hebden, BA ’08,graduated last summer from the

acting program at Old Vic The-atre School in Bristol, England.The course culminated in aproduction of Vanity Fair, inwhich he played the role ofJoseph Sedley. Now he’s back inCanada to pursue his career.■ Janneke Jorgensen, B.Sc. ’04,earned a master’s degree in publichealth nutrition from the LondonSchool of Hygiene and TropicalMedicine in England. She recentlyjoined the World Bank, where shewill work for the next two yearsas a nutrition specialist in Dar esSalaam, Tanzania. She previouslyworked in Zambia and Malawiand is now on sabbatical from herjob as a lecturer in internationalnutrition issues at Metropol Uni-versity College in Copenhagen,Denmark. ■ Alexander Kong, B.Comm.’05, has been resident managerat Coyaba Beach Resort andClub in Jamaica for the past yearand a half. He says he left Cana-da after graduation and has beenliving in sun ever since.■ Irene Laskowski, MBA ’02,is a dietitian with the Departmentof National Defence in Ottawa,returning to Ontario after a two-year posting in Halifax.■ Benjamin Lefebvre, MA’02, is a Leverhulme Visiting Fel-low at the University of Worces-ter in England, where he isstudying cultural industries foryoung people in Canada, theUnited States and Britain. He isalso a visiting scholar at the L.M.Montgomery Institute at theUniversity of Prince EdwardIsland. He completed a PhD inEnglish at McMaster Universi-ty and did post-doctoral researchat the University of Alberta.While researching Montgomeryin the U of G library archives,he discovered the original man-uscript to the last book Mont-gomery wrote, The Blythe’s AreQuoted. It was published in 2009with Lefebvre as editor.

36 The Portico

Anna Millar

Winter 2010 37

■ Matt Minty, BA ’05, wasraised and still lives in Kincar-dine, Ont. He is engaged to bemarried, works in public rela-tions and recently published hisfirst children’s book. A secondbook in what he calls his “ImagiNation series” is currentlyunderway. Find out more atwww.theimagination.ca. ■ Denae Peters, B.Comm.’08, is an event planner at theDrake Hotel Toronto and is anew member of the Networkfor Executive Women in Hos-pitality. She has also obtained

several certifications in the foodand beverage industry. “I am sohappy that I have found anindustry I am truly passionateabout,” she says. ■ Shawn Sosnowski, B.Sc. ’00and BA ’03, and his wife,Amanda “Mandi,” B.Sc. ’00,were married in September2008. “Oddly enough, we didn’tmeet at Guelph,” says Shawn,who teaches vocal music inScarborough, Ont., and has achildren’s book coming outsoon titled Bea Nice to Be Mean.Mandi is a science teacher.

■ Catherine St Amand, BA’04, earned her teaching degreein New Zealand and teachesprimary school there inChristchurch. “I just love thiscountry and education system,”she says. “I became an aunt in2008, so being away from homeis harder now, and I expect tomove back at some point.”■ Matthew Steele, BA ’02,works with Avison Young Com-mercial Real Estate (Ontario)Inc. in Toronto. ■ Kim Wingrove, MA ’08, isthe new CAO of Collingwood,

Ont. She was previously directorof regional economic develop-ment programming for the Min-istry of Economic Developmentand Trade. She has also held seniorpositions with the Ministry ofAgriculture, Food and RuralAffairs and the Ministry ofMunicipal Affairs and Housing,including serving as director ofcommunities in transition anddirector of rural programs. ■ Julia Woodhall, BA ’07 andMA ’09, is enrolled in a PhDprogram in sociology at theUniversity of Waterloo.

George Atkins, BSA ’39 and H.D.La. ’89, Nov. 30, 2009

Susan Best, DVM ’79 and D.V.Sc. ’89,Sept. 18, 2009

James Bodendistel, DVM ’58, Sept. 6, 2009

Robert Boisclair, DVM ’52, Aug. 9, 2009

Noreen (Stone) Broadwell, DHE ’54,Aug. 31, 2009

Walter Brown, BSA ’40, Sept. 2, 2009 John Bryden, BSA ’50, Sept. 16, 2009 Velma (Curtis) Burd, DHE ’35,

Aug. 10, 2009Thomas Carter, BSA ’49,

Aug. 4, 2009H. Kan Chen, DVM ’47,

Sept. 29, 2009 Leonard Cook, DVM ’50,

Sept. 12, 2009 James Crozier, B.Sc. ’67 and M.Sc. ’70,

Aug. 18, 2009 Alan Davenport, H.D.Sc. ’93,

July 19, 2009 Ralph Davison, BSA ’51, May 6, 2009 Murray Dudgeon, DVM ’48,

Oct. 17, 2009 Edith (Sinclair) Duggan, DHE ’36,

May 30, 2009 Robert Durham, BSA ’51,

Aug. 15, 2009 Jackson Gardner, B.Sc. ’76,

March 25, 2009Tanya (DiTommaso) Grah, PhD ’99,

August 2009

Raymond Grindlay, ADA ’67, June 23, 2009

Joseph Habowsky, MSA ’58, July 12, 2009

Charles Hardy, DVM ’51, Jan. 9, 2009 Phyllis (Dunn) Hardy, DVM ’52,

June 25, 2009 Nathan Healey, ADA ’01, Nov. 7, 2009John L. Henry, DVM ’61, Sept. 19, 2009 Elizabeth Hewson, DHE ’39,

March 27, 2008Frederick Hill, K.Dip ’48 and BSA ’50,

Dec. 26, 2008Donald Irvine, BSA ’42, Aug. 17, 2009 Trevor Lloyd Jones, DVM ’34 and

Fell. ’79, Nov. 25, 2009 E.C. “Sam” Lougheed, BSA ’58 and

MSA ’60, Aug. 14, 2009 Elizabeth (Bogardus) Kociuk,

DHE ’38, Aug. 24, 2009 James Lott, DVM ’64, Oct. 13, 2009 Beverly (Shaver) MacKenzie,

DHE ’32, April 1, 2008 Cynthia MacLennan, B.H.Sc. ’56,

Sept. 24, 2009 Thomas Markham, BSA ’51,

March 30, 2009 Winnifred Mason, DHE ’38,

Dec. 20, 2008Phillip McCarthy, B.Sc. ’72 and

DVM ’77, Nov. 29, 2009 Osmond McCorkle, BSA ’60 and

MSA ’62, Dec. 23, 2008 Marjorie (Guest) McKnight,

DHE ’32, Feb. 20, 2009

Keith Mountjoy, DVM ’51, Sept. 10, 2009

Howard Nurse, DVM ’50, Sept. 25, 2009Joanne Patterson, B.H.Sc. ’66,

Sept. 3, 2009 Arnold Paulson, DVM ’49,

Sept. 28, 2009 George Petro, BSA ’60, Sept. 17, 2009 Victor Prest, DVM ’42, Aug. 7, 2009 Robert Smallfield, BSA ’52,

Nov. 12, 2009Robert E. Smith, DVM ’56,

Sept. 13, 2009Stephen Stothers, BSA ’51,

April 29, 2009 Matheson Tatham, B.Sc. ’80,

Sept. 12, 2009 Marion (Holtby) Thomson,

DHE ’41, Oct. 3, 2009 Andreas Rolf von den Baumen,

ADA ’51, Sept. 28, 2009 Carole (Waind) Way, BA ’79,

Oct. 2, 2009 John Whitehead, DVM ’52,

Aug. 26, 2009 Gordon Woodhouse, BSA ’58,

Sept. 23, 2009 James Woodhouse, BSA ’56,

Nov. 22, 2009

FRIENDSHaydain Neale, Associate Alumnus,

Nov. 22, 2009Guenther Zemanek, Soccer Coach,

Dec. 10, 2009

PASSAGES

Thank you to the 16,250 alumni and friends, corporations, associations and foundations who made gifts to the University last year.

Your support continues to make a difference.

The Impact of Giving Report is available online.Please visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.