TIDINGS Published by the UNIVERSITY OF KING’S COLLEGE KING’S Halifax, Nova Scotia Summer 2012 The Salvation Of Owen Parkhouse “He tried to think of the living—of his wife, Elizabeth, whose laugh filled a room; of his daughter Bethany, who was already seven. But he could only think about the people who had died on him. The people he couldn’t save. Now, he wasn’t sure he could even save himself.” (More on page 10) On the Value of the Liberal Arts Degree “True education cannot be about the production of a human being... Great books programmes do not simply represent the world as it is; by showing what the world has been, they allow students to imagine what it may become.” (More on page 26) from NEW LOOK AT KING’S COLLEGE Well, not exactly: the more things change, after all, the more they stay the same. So in this issue, we examine the skeleton that forms the King’s experience through the memories of our alumni, telling the stories of our three social hubs: the Pit, the Wardroom, and the Presi- dent’s Lodge. Indeed, as former King’s president Dr. John Godfrey says: “Those things bring people together, what you wouldn’t find in other university settings, you have to guard those things very carefully. If you become very humdrum and boring, there’s nothing special about you. So what’s that extra dimension which makes your life there memorable, that you think back on fondly?” * * * * INCLUDES THE 2012 DONOR REPORT * * * *
Transcript
tidingsPublished by the UNIVERSITY OF KING’S COLLEGE
king’sHalifax, Nova Scotia Summer 2012
The Salvation Of Owen Parkhouse“He tried to think of the living—of his wife, Elizabeth, whose laugh filled a room; of his daughter Bethany, who was already seven. But he could only think about the people who had died on him. The people he couldn’t save. Now, he wasn’t sure he could even save himself.” (More on page 10)
On the Value of the Liberal Arts Degree“True education cannot be about the production of a human being...Great books programmes do not simply represent the world as it is; by showing what the world has been, they allow students to imagine what it may become.” (More on page 26)
from
NEW LOOK AT KING’S COLLEGEWell, not exactly: the more things change, after all, the more they stay the same. So in this issue, we examine the skeleton that forms the King’s experience through the memories of our alumni, telling the stories of our three social hubs: the Pit, the Wardroom, and the Presi-dent’s Lodge. Indeed, as former King’s president Dr.
John Godfrey says: “Those things bring people together, what you wouldn’t find in other university settings, you have to guard those things very carefully. If you become very humdrum and boring, there’s nothing special about you. So what’s that extra dimension which makes your life there memorable, that you think back on fondly?”
* * * * INCLUDES THE 2012 DONOR REPORT * * * *
T a b l e o f c o n T e n T s
Greetings from the Presidents 1
letter from the editor 2
campus news The semester in brief from the King’s College Watch magazine 3
sports King’s coaches bleed blue; King’s soccer team wins despite turning blue 4
alumni in focus Al Tuck (BA ’88), Mark Dance (BAH ’10), Samantha Robertson (BA ’03), Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada 6
Music Folk singer-songwriter Ben Caplan’s star is on the rise 8
Redemption The salvation of a man who has devoted his life to saving lives 10
Rhodes scholarship A King’s tradition along the road to Oxford 14
Memories Tales of the Pit, the Wardroom, and the President’s Lodge 16
canteen Dreams King’s starts its own student-union-run café 20
Travelling Gwyneth Dunsford teaches in Ghana 22
Photo essay Ian Gibb’s trip to Guatemala 24
Donor Report 2012 25
business school A little-known connection between King’s and Harvard 29
essay Philosophizing on the importance of the liberal arts education 30
2012 Dr. Stephen Snobelen explains the apocalypse 32
Revenge Dr. Thomas Curran on Plato’s Republic and vengeance 33
lives lived Glen Hancock, journalism school trailblazer 34
Stories in this issue were written by students and alumni of the University of
King’s College. Submissions were also provided by faculty members.
Tidings is produced on behalf of the University of King’s College
Alumni Association.
We welcome and encourage your feedback on each issue. Letters to the Editor should
be signed. We reserve the right to edit all submissions.
The views expressed in Tidings are expressly those of the individual
contributors or sources.
Mailed under Publications Mail Sales Agreement # 40062749
on thE covEr
A throwback of the November 1962 issue of Tidings Magazine. Photo courtesy the King’s College Archives.
Copy by Adrian Lee.
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 1
Fellow alumni,AS I WRITE THIS, members of the classes of the ’80s are getting set to reunite for a fun-filled reunion weekend at King’s. Many are travelling from afar to tell old stories, con-
nect with friends, and perhaps try to be 19 or 20 again. The taps of the Wardroom are sure to be flowing as quickly as the tales of our days at King’s. It is events like this reunion that many of you said in the recent alumni survey you would like to get involved in. Thanks to the ‘Moncton Mafia’, sheila cameron (bsc ’86), cathy Krawchuk Donaldson (ba ’86, bJ ’87), Jonna brewer (bJH ’87) and brian cormier (bJH ’86), for organizing the reunion. I had the pleasure of toasting this year’s 243 graduates at the President’s Dinner—one of the largest classes in King’s history. Congrats to all of you! I encourage you to get involved in the Alumni Association. Staying connected to King’s is very rewarding. I am happy to report that part of the Class of 2012 gift to the university was a contribution to the Wardroom Renovation Fund for much needed furniture. Thank you! On May 10, we had one of the largest at-tendances for the Annual Alumni Dinner.
Thanks to Terra bruhm (bJH ’06) and her committee for organizing a wonderful eve-ning that ended with dancing to the Jubilee Swing Orchestra. That evening our current premier, Darrell Dexter (ba ’79, bJ ’83), bestowed former Premier of Nova Scotia Russell Maclellan (ba’62, Dcl ’03) with the Judge J. Elliott Hudson Distinguished Alumnus Award, and three were inducted to the Order of the Ancient Commoner for their service to the King’s community: Mar-garet barnard (ba ’42), librarian, archivist, and former don, Drake Petersen, and sarah stevenson (fYP ’04). This is my last Tidings message to you as alumni president. At September’s AGM bob Mann (ba ’01) takes up the baton. I extend a warm welcome to Dr George cooper (Dcl ’08) as our new president and I hope to see many of you at the Annual Alumni Golf Tour-nament on August 16.
I hope you are having a wonderful summer,Greg Guy (bJH ’87)
LeTTer FrOm THe aLumni PresidenT
LeTTer FrOm king’s PresidenT dr. geOrge cOOPer
IT IS WITH GREAT PLEASURE that I ex-tend greetings to all King’s alumni across the country and beyond. I am the father of two King’s alumni and the uncle of four more, and I know how keenly they follow news of their alma mater and the friends they made here. As you may know, there have been a num-ber of changes at King’s, and my appoint-ment as president on July 9 was one of those. For me, there are exciting days ahead. We
have plans for our college, including greater engagement with our alumni, and I am de-lighted to be part of the wave of change cur-rently taking place. As an alumnus, I hope that you will want to be part of our plans. And, no, I am not asking for money—at least, not yet. During this time of transition, we need your help to carry the flag for King’s, to be its best am-bassadors, and to seize every opportunity to tell future students what an extraordi-
nary college King’s is. As former students, you know what makes King’s special. Your King’s years shaped who you are today, in-tellectually and socially. Our greatest wish is that future King’s students will have that same exceptional, life-changing experience during their time here. And you may be sure that one thing we won’t change is the pursuit of excellence in our academic programmes, our teaching staff, and our students. In the months to come, I will be busy lis-tening to people so that I continue to learn more about King’s. I will also be attending events on campus, across the country, and beyond. I welcome the opportunity to meet with as many of you as possible, to hear your views on the future of King’s, and to share with you some of our plans. Whether you graduated 50 years ago or this past spring, we look to you to stay involved. As a new university year begins here on the Quad, stay tuned about new develop-ments and upcoming events through the King’s website and Facebook page.
Yours sincerely,George cooper, (Dcl ’08)President and Vice Chancellor
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THe MORe THInGS CHAnGe, as the cliché goes, the more they stay the same. It’s a quaint thought, to be sure. It’s neat and it’s simple. It’s even, occasionally, technically true. While researching the design of this issue’s throwback cover with the content already decided, I picked up an old issue of Tidings at random—one of the many whose front-page headline screamed “NEW LOOK AT KING’S”—and was shocked to see the past so sharply reflected in the present. In that particular issue, from November 1962, a news piece trumpets the appointment of the late Glen Hancock as the director of the Maritime School of Journalism (page 34); a short notice hints at some sort of King’s business school (page 29); it celebrates Roland A.G Lines, one of King’s tradition of Rhodes Scholars (page 14); it even announces the honorary doctorate of Dr. Gladys Manning, the mother of Dr. Elizabeth Fountain, who was awarded the same honour this year (page 37). But step on campus today, and there’s a chance you may not recognize some of it. A sundial in the quad has risen, fallen, and
risen again over the course of six years. Fa-vourite professors come and go; some leave their mark on the spines of library books and the forewords of new FYP texts. Platonic pat-ter and library idlers remain constant, but the faces look fresher every year. Even for myself, a very recent graduate of this thrum-ming community, it’s easy to feel on the out-side looking in. The community continues to churn on without you, and it can be hard to see it as exactly the place you remember. In fact, that’s because it’s almost certainly not. The King’s you graduated from was prob-ably smaller—that 1962 issue of Tidings, in fact, celebrated an all-time-high enrolment of 215, a number that is about one-sixth of King’s today (and growing). The King’s you graduated from may have been more or less socially active, or it may have been more or less well-traveled. The King’s you graduated from may have led you into a vast spectrum of careers, from video game writer to modern-day minstrel (page 6). Your King’s may have even been, somehow, less impassioned about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. But while the flesh is different, there is a spirit that is the same. The mischievous spark that made pranks a staple of King’s residence life decades ago is the same crafty esprit that made a first-year student’s just-for-fun radio station into a community beacon (page 3). The some-thing-out-of-nothing resourcefulness that turned a dusty rec room into a studio theatre (page 16) is the same inventive ethos that leapt hurdles to produce one of Canada’s few student-union-operated cafés. The proud heart that soars when one of our military men
finds redemption through tragedy (page 10) is fundamentally the same heart that, today, boils when a community foundation like the King’s chapel comes under fire (page 3). Though the people and places in Tidings’ stories are all in different stages of transition, we understand them better because we un-derstand the transition itself. It doesn’t mat-ter what you’ve gone on to do after King’s, or if you’re even still in it—this spirit lets us understand each other’s stories, and it’s what makes you continue to pick up these pages and read this magazine, no matter how long ago you graduated. In fact, the more that spirit changes, the more we know it’s true. Growth and progress doesn’t have to mean distance and alien-ation. The more things change, the more we somehow stay the same. And in large part, that’s because of where we’ve been.
Your guest editor, adrian lee, (bJH ’11)
LeTTer FrOm THe ediTOr
J o u r n a l i s m s t u d e n ts n o m i n at e d f o r m u lt i p l e
awa r d s
THE KING’S SCHOOL of Journalism 2011 investigative workshop was shortlisted for three awards this spring: a 2012 Atlantic Jour-nalism Award in the ‘Best Multimedia Feature (Special Project) category, a Canadian Asso-ciation of Journalism Award in the category of computer-assisted reporting, and an inter-national Data Journalism Award in the data-driven applications (local/regional) category. Their interactive project, named (902)9-1-1, mapped some 650,000 calls to the Halifax Regional Police by street and type of call. This data revealed that police go to Pinecrest-Highfield Park in Dartmouth more often than anywhere else in the HRM. The workshop students spent six weeks combing through the data and talking to peo-ple before creating a series of articles and a multimedia slideshow. To see the work that was nominated, please visit http://902911.kingsjournalism.com/ “I am tremendously proud of the students who worked on this important project,” says Kelly Toughill, director of the King’s School of Journalism. “They coded, tagged, and mapped huge amounts of data to create something of lasting value to the people of Halifax.” µ
K i n G ’ s B o o K s t o r e r e C e i V e s n at i o n a l r e C o G n i t i o n
THE KING’S BOOKSTORE—which only just celebrated its fifth anniversary, selling books in a little corner in the basement of the New Academic Building—was named a nominee for the 2012 Libris Best Campus Bookstore award. “I’m really quite thrilled. It’s huge for us,” said Carolyn Gillis, who’s managed the store since its 2006 founding. “It means people have actually paid attention to what we do. I didn’t think anyone would nominate us because we’re so small.” The Libris awards are nominated and voted on by members of the Canadian Book-
sellers Association, a national not-for-profit trade association that represents most Cana-dian trade and campus booksellers, as well as authors, agents, sales reps, publishers and distributors. Gillis said that typically, the nominees come from larger schools, and indeed, this year’s nominees included the bookstores of Queen’s University and York University, which ended up winning this year’s award. “I can’t remember the last small bookstore to be nominated in the last five or six years. It’s been one of my dreams to even be nomi-nated. It means people know we exist.” µ
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3
K i n G ’ s C h a p l a i n Cy a s s u r e d
THERE MAY BE THE SENSE that faith is on the decline in Canada, but it took the possible loss of King’s College’s chaplain, the Reverend Dr. Gary Thorne, to bring it home to the college’s community-driven quad. In late 2011, the Anglican Dioceses of Nova Scotia and P.E.I informed the college that they would have to reduce their funding to for the King’s Chaplaincy by half. “The Anglican Dioceses of Nova Scotia and P.E.I. (are) becoming smaller. Its budget is getting smaller,” said Thorne. The resounding opposition to the deci-sion from students, faculty and community members was a testament to the value of chaplaincy at King’s. Students organized an Antiquated Day, created to celebrate King’s traditions and the college’s chaplaincy tradition. A Face-book group protesting the decision quick-ly gained support. Before long, according to King’s Students’ Union then-president Gabe Hoogers, the “overwhelming charity of individuals”—a small number of donors who would pay Thorne’s salary for the next five years—came through. “People stepped up to the plate and pledged funds to support the chaplaincy,” said Hoogers. Thorne considers it his role “to support and encourage students in their endeavours and to help them succeed in whatever way they themselves define success—personally, socially, academically, spiritually.” Thanks to the generosity of those un-named donors, and to the strength of the community, Fr. Thorne will be around to provide guidance and support in the coming years. —David Salenieks
K i n G ’ s s t u d e n t s ta n d s u p, t u r n s B a C K f o r
e n V i r o n m e n t
ON DEC. 7, 2011, James Hutt woke up at 6 a.m. in Durban, South Africa, “full of anxiety” as he put on a T-shirt, followed by a dress shirt. Written on his t-shirt were the words: ‘Turn Your Back on Canada’. The message was a response to Environ-ment Minister Peter Kent’s decision to back out of the Kyoto Accord—Hutt and five other members of the Canadian Youth Delegation
planned to deliver it before the world. Hutt, who graduated in May, was a Canadian Youth Delegation member attending the 17th Con-ference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As Kent opened his address, they took off their dress shirts, stood up and turned their backs. “Time stopped,” said Hutt. “I clasped my hands together in front and felt my heart thundering. What seemed like half an hour standing there was probably 20 seconds.” Then, members of the audience both be-hind them and in front of them began to turn their backs, too. “When it happened, I knew that we had taken power away from Kent and our gov-ernment,” said Hutt. The protest lasted for three or four min-utes. The delegates were led out and ques-tioned, and the act drew national media at-tention. “They kicked us out, which we knew would happen,” Hutt said. “But it was not only worth it, but necessary. We had shown the world that our leaders do not represent our interests and that Canadians want real action on climate change.” —Philippa Wolff
m i d d l e B ay G e ts a r a d i o s tat i o n
OVER THE COURSE of the last few months, Axel Soos rolled out of bed at 7:30 a.m. four days a week, walked two steps across his residence room to his desk, and broadcast a live radio show. His morning show was a staple of 97.3 FM The Bay, a radio station that first-year FYP student Soos created in October from scratch, and broadcasted to every corner of the King’s quad with Sunday-to-Friday programming. “I thought I’d do (the show) every once in a while for a joke. Then, there was so much interest around the school and people getting involved that it turned into that,” he said, pointing to the station’s programming sched-ule on his corkboard, next to taped-down wires connecting microphones, computers, a transmitter and a self-fashioned antenna. The station took form right after frosh week. Soos and a group of friends sent out a call for show hosts and received more than 20 responses from first years in a few days. Outside of music programming, the shows
covered a wide but still uniquely King’s-in-flected spectrum, from Sportacus (a sports report), to Wastelands (featuring spoken word), to FYP Me Gently (a sex advice show). In the last few months, residence staff gave him a room in the basement of Middle Bay to broadcast from. Archived episodes were posted online at thebayradio.blogspot.com.It all happened without funding from the college or the students’ union, with Soos paying for the equipment himself and show hosts pitching in. “The one part I like about this is our autonomy and being able to do everything as we see fit,” he said. When asked how he balanced the Founda-tion Year Programmeme, a social life, and an entire radio station, Soos replied: “That’s an incredibly good question, and when I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” The station helped bring the quad com-munity together for many first-years. “The radio station has made me feel at home at King’s,” said Haydn Watters, a first-year jour-nalism student who helped with the station. “I love our radio show,” added John Cavan, another first-year student who worked with Soos. “I love King’s, and if we can do some-thing to bring more community to this place, I’m very happy to do that.” However, with Soos moving off campus as he begins his second year, the future of The Bay is in doubt. “It’s been in question all year. I mean, it’s a huge time commitment,” he said. If it does continue, he hopes it will involve him in a facilitating role, helping next year’s first-years keep up the Bay spirit. “That we’ve been able to sustain this thing for the entire year is quite the accomplishment.”—natascia Lypny and Ben Harrison
camPus news
The Watch, the King’s College independent student magazine,
has been a voice for campus hap-penings since it was founded in 1989. This past school year has been especially newsworthy, with a new student-run canteen, a new radio station, a new president, and many referenda and votes. As the editors-in-chief, we’ve had our hands full, and we were lucky to have lots of great student reporters help us cover the stories that have most engaged and affected King’s students. Here’s a taste of some of this year’s most important stories, and check out www.watchmagazine.ca for all of our year’s reporting! —Charlotte Harrison and evelyn Hornbeck, editors-in-Chief
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sPOrTs and aTHLeTics
TRUE BLUESThe love of the sport kept these King’s varsity alumni
coming back—as head coachesBy Samantha Chown
t i m f l i n n ( B a ’ 8 4 ) , C o - h e a d C o a C h —m e n ’ s B a s K e t B a l lTim Flinn knows a thing or two about bas-ketball—after all, he’s been coaching for more than 30 years. This is his second stint coach-ing the men’s Blue Devils basketball team; Flinn originally coached at King’s during the mid-’90s before accepting a teaching position abroad. Now a fifth grade teacher at Halifax’s Park West School, Flinn’s interest was renewed when his son, Matthew, applied to King’s and expressed a desire to play for the team. Neil Hooper, King’s athletic director and Flinn’s longtime friend, said the timing of Flynn’s inquiry was perfect because he needed an extra hand. Flinn is now co-head coach with Chad Wadden. Flinn started coaching at the age of 17, when he took a summer job teaching and playing basketball. Since then, the sport has become more than just a hobby, it’s part of his lifestyle. “Basketball has always been very good to me. I’ve travelled and met tre-mendous people,” he says. This past year the team tied for 3rd place in the Atlantic division. They lost to St. Thomas University, which went on to win the ACAA championship.
s a m s t e wa r t ( B s C h o n s ’ 0 6 ) , h e a d C o a C h — B a d m i n t o nThe combination of the Foundation Year Programme and athletics made King’s Col-lege Sam Stewart’s top pick for his under-graduate degree. When a badminton team was created in 2004, Sam started playing for King’s. Two years after graduating, he returned to coach the team for the 2008-09 season while study-ing for his PhD in mathematics. Though he gets paid a small honorarium for his work, it’s not about the money for Stewart. “I would be coaching without it. It’s not an inducement. I coach because I enjoy it,” he says. This past season marked Stewart’s last with the team. Having recently completed his doctoral degree, he is moving to Saska-
toon where his wife, who just graduated from medical school, is starting her residency. Stewart leaves King’s Badminton on a high note, as his men’s and women’s doubles teams both made it to the finals and Sarah Kraus (BJH ’12) took home the ACAA women singles championship. (Kraus is heading to Edmonton where she will begin working for the CBC.) Next season, two-time defending men’s single champion Ryan MacIntosh, another King’s student, will take over as head coach.
C h r i s t o p h e r J o h n “ C J ” yo u n G ( B s C ’ 0 6 ) , h e a d C o a C h — m e n ’ s s o C C e rCJ Young has been the head coach of the men’s soccer team for the last four years, but he’s been a part of the King’s family for even longer. Young actually started coach-ing the team while he was still completing his Bachelor of Science degree. Mid-stream Young changed degrees which meant that his eligibility as a player (four year maximum) had run out before he graduated. Young was asked if he still wanted to be involved with the team. He was happy to be, and took over as assistant coach in 2004. This two-time King’s champion player went on to coach a two-time King’s champion team. “When you’re involved with a sports pro-gram, you want to keep it going…to take some pride in giving back to the sport.” What began as an extracurricular passion has become a day job for Young, as he now works at the Halifax County United Soccer Club. His most memorable coaching experience at King’s was sending the team to nationals in 2008. In their first game, they beat number-one seed FX Garneau of Quebec, a “pretty big moment” for Young. This year was a lot tougher, he says. The team lost in the semi-finals to Holland Col-lege, which eventually won silver at the na-tionals. This year his team was light on ex-perienced players and plagued with injuries and setbacks. Not surprisingly, Young isn’t giving up. He plans to stick around and make the team better next year.
J e n n B e n n e t t ( B a ’ 0 0 ) , h e a d C o a C h —w o m e n ’ s B a s K e t B a l lJenn Bennett has a lot of experience playing and coaching college ball. For her undergrad, she knew she wanted to live at home and save a little money by attending Dalhou-sie. What she didn’t know was that she had the option of playing basketball for a small college—that is, until her high school coach showed her King’s. Almost immediately after graduating, Bennett started coaching small clubs before moving to Maine to complete her B.Ed. at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. While at Maine she became the assistant coach in 2003 and helped to lead its team to na-tionals. She did it again the next year in Ver-mont while she was completing her student teaching. When she returned to Canada, she started coaching women’s basketball at Hali-fax West High School, where she is a special education teacher. In 2010, when the King’s head coach stepped down because of other demands, Neil Hooper reached out to Bennett. Bennett took the position and raves about her girls, saying they’re committed, enthu-siastic and not only great athletes but smart and academic, too. “The players are the best part of coach-ing,” says Bennett, who adds that she’s been lucky to have teams with good chemistry—a necessity when the basketball season runs almost the entire school year. Bennett es-timates she spends 20 hours a week in the gym, but that could be an understatement, she says. And when she’s not in the gym with her team, she’s checking out the competition or mentally prepping practice plans. Coaches are used to being gym rats, said Bennett, so count on her to be back in the King’s gym next season as head coach. This year Bennett’s team was the young-est on campus, made up primarily of first-year students. They lost in the quarterfinals to Mount Allison University, but Bennett isn’t worried. As athletics director Neil Hooper says, ‘they’ll be all the stronger next year for the experience.” µ
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 5
NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN…
The King’s women’s soccer team triumphs over torrents and temperatures.
By Miles Kenyon
SARAH KRAUS, 21, knows the struggle, hard work and determination required to succeed in varsity sports. An all-around athlete, she most recently played defence on the King’s women’s soccer team. And despite ending this year with great results, the path to vic-tory was anything but easy. “It was the coldest, worst weather I’ve ever played soccer in and I’ve been playing since I was seven, so that’s telling you some-thing,” Kraus said. She’s referring to a game that the King’s team played at this year’s Atlantic champion-ships to secure a spot playing at the national level. Though the players battled through rain, snow and freezing temperatures, referees ruled that the team could only wear gloves and headbands—and only after it became apparent that their health and safety could be at stake. However, the team had only brought weather-appropriate toques—not headbands. But these women were resourceful. “We literally got out a pair of scissors from our equipment bag and cut the tops off all these toques because we were freezing,” said Kraus. “And then the boys team, who just came out to watch, came down and gave
us their gloves.” “The field wasn’t draining so we were playing in about 2 inches of slush. It wasn’t pretty but we pulled out the win,” she said. After the game, team members were treated for frostbite and several players, as well as team coach Stacey Stocco, were hos-
pitalized. In previous years, the King’s women’s soccer team have had great seasons but have dropped the ball in the playoffs, which is why Neil Hooper, athletics director at King’s, is so impressed with the team’s perseverance this year. “Not even mother nature was going to take that championship from them,” he said, laughing. Hooper described the squad as “one of the best teams we’ve had in any gender over the years” while also praising their strength of character. “They’re student leaders, they’re academic leaders,” he said. “Games are won and lost…but I think our goal here, at the end of the day, is that we have good people going out into the world.” Once they got to the nationals in Quebec City, they once again battled fierce weather and worthy competition to win 5th place. While they would have preferred 1st place, Kraus considers this a victory. “We totally shocked people because the Atlantic team at nationals always does really, really poorly,” she said. “It put King’s soccer on the map.” Kraus, who graduated in May and has been on the team since her first year at King’s, said that this year’s victory and their nationals appearance holds special meaning for her. “For me, it was a storybook ending,” she said. µ
sPOrTs and aTHLeTics
The King’s women’s soccer team, at this year’s Athletics Banquet. (Photo: King’s Athletics department)
King’s students Christian Pollard and Sam Legere take the ceremonial face-off as Dr. Anne Leavitt drops the puck before the inaugural King’s Cup hockey game. The Bays skated to victory over Alexandra Hall, by a score 3-2. (Photo: Ian Gibb)
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a l t u C K ( B a ’ 8 8 )By Adrian Lee
EVEN WHEN HE WAS YOUNG, Al Tuck couldn’t help but seem older. He remembers, after graduating from King’s with an English degree and playing music on the Halifax bar circuit, that the newer bands—including Sloan, which was comprised in part of King’s alumni—saw him as a grizzled veteran. “I was only slightly older than them, but they thought I was some old weirdo that had been there forever. I was only like 27,” he says. But caught between the baby boomers and Generation X, Prince Edward Island’s Al Tuck—a modern-day minstrel, a singer-songwriter who has been praised by some of the country’s greats—is thoroughly a man of his own time. Tuck has come a long way since his first days at King’s where, he says, his early sing-ing efforts would have “made it difficult” on his Chapel Bay peers. King’s was where he first started singing and writing songs for the guitar; it was where he met his first serious girlfriend, playing old-school acoustic blues in the Wardroom. He played his first shows at coffee house nights in the campus bar, and says that’s where he grew up musically. “I was very in-tense. I didn’t have any skill with the crowd, but I was very intensely into it, and I would do these nights and everything would be staked on that, how they worked out.” He’s come a long way since then. The folk
troubadour, who pairs starry-eyed lyrics with a tender rasp that sounds like it was hewn by a campfire, has released seven albums over 16 years, including 2011’s Under Your Shadow. He’s been called one of the country’s great-est singer-songwriters by some of Canada’s biggest names—Feist, Jason Collett, Joel Plaskett. His brand of Bob Dylan-inflected blues-folk is a staple of PEI’s music scene. Matching commercial success, however, has eluded him thus far, although for the quixotic Tuck, legacy is more important. “It seems like the goal of art, to have something sur-vive,” he says. “I haven’t had too much con-firmation other than respect from peers, but that’s almost enough—you feel legitimized from the praise.” He acknowledges he’s a “local creature” who doesn’t tour much outside of Eastern Canada. “The musician’s life…it’s supposed to be tough. I made sure it was tough, too,” he says, laughing. “Most artists ‘do the right thing’, they promote their own shows. I’ll just show up in a town on a wing and a prayer with not much to go on.” But that old soul comes with a young man’s hope. “It just seems like the odds are that something will pan out eventually,” he says. “Since King’s, I’ve become the kind of performer I hoped and imagined I would be. I’ve had varying degrees of success, but I don’t care—I’ve been able to do what I want to do and what I admire in performance.” µ
samantha roBertson (Ba ’03)By Laura Hubbard
IF ANYTHING, PHILOSOPHY teaches that there are no firm answers. Likewise, graduating from King’s little fishbowl into the wide world can leave no clear road map. For Samantha Robertson, a King’s degree in English and Comparative Religion led to a job with video game industry titans Nintendo of America. “I may not get to discuss 20th-century dystopian literature or classical poetry,” she writes over email from her home in Seattle. “But what an arts degree teaches you, when you look past the disciplinary specifics, is how to think critically, express yourself clearly, argue convincingly, and juggle heavy work-loads. Those skills are valuable in any job.” Robertson had a plan throughout her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Hali-fax. A part-time job at Strange Adventures Comic Shop led to a lifetime passion and the realization that working in the editorial side of comics was right for her. Robertson’s first job, as an assistant edi-tor at Portland’s Dark Horse Comics, was the fortuitous result of attending a comic book convention in San Diego in her graduating year. But she also did a lot of work while she was studying, earning an M.A. in English from Dalhousie after King’s. “I did a lot of networking, sent out a lot of applications, and buffed up my résumé with as many freelance editorial gigs as I could muster,” she says. “By getting all of
aLumni in FOcus
Al Tuck’s Under Your Shadow is now available on iTunes and in stores. (Photo: Pigeon Row Records)
Samantha Robertson reminds us you have to love what you do—or at least, have shelves for what you do love. (Photo: Samantha Robertson)
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 7
that legwork out of the way while I was still in school, I managed to transition pretty smoothly once I graduated.” Looking for a chance to branch out and explore different forms of storytelling, Rob-ertson took a job with Nintendo focussing on video games created in Japan. “After a Japanese translator creates a basic translation of a game’s text, I rewrite and edit that text so that it fits seamlessly with the final product,” she says. “If I do my job right, a game I’ve worked on will feel completely natural to a North American, English-speaking player.” Robertson says this kind of work requires strong writing, editing and a good eye for cultural nuances. Recently, she’s written the English text for the North American releases of Swapnote, Ketzal’s Corridors, and Pushmo. Though she isn’t able to visit King’s as often as she’d like due to her work in Seattle, she still maintains strong connections with the friends and professors she met during her academic career. “I’m really glad that I’ve been able to maintain those relationships,” she says. “I still feel a very strong connection to King’s and Dal, and to Halifax itself as well.” For Robertson, one of the largest drawing points was the small, close-knit community of King’s. She says both King’s and Dal have helped her in her professional life. “On top of the academic benefits, I got a lot out of my time at King’s from a social perspective as well,” she says. “I was quite a shy, introverted person when I first came to King’s, but finding a community of friendly, welcoming people with similar interests re-ally helped get me out of my shell.” µ
aLumni in FOcus
r o m a n C e w r i t e r s o f at l a n t i C C a n a d aBy Cheryl Bell
FYP AND WRITING are the ties that bind Paula (fox) altenburg (ba ’85) with Pamela callow (ba ’87), Julianne (Doucet) Maclean (ba ‘87), and Michelle (Huett) Helliwell (ba ’91). They may not have crossed paths at King’s, but they were brought together as members of the group Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada. Al-tenburg writes under her own name and under the pseudonym Taylor Keating, and is currently working on a three-book demon
western series. Callow writes the Kate Lange series of thrillers; MacLean is a USA Today bestselling writer of historical romances. Helliwell is a writer of historical romanc-es, but is not yet published. The group of four writers credits FYP with helping to shape their writing careers. “It definitely played a large part in fostering our creativity and broadening our hori-zons—it shows you possibilities,” says Al-tenburg. µ
m a r K d a n C e ( B a h ’ 1 0 )By Cheryl Bell
CONTEMPORARY STUDIES and philoso-phy student Mark Dance (BAH ’10) has been busy since he graduated from King’s as co-valedictorian. As a parliamentary intern in Ottawa, he did a research project on digital democracy that landed him an interview on CBC’s The House. He then travelled to New York City to work as an intern on the fam-ily issue of Lapham’s Quarterly. This past winter he and CSP student Ryan Lum wrote a series of articles for the Chronicle Herald
on outdoor hockey. Mark credits King’s with giving him a passion for learning, the ability to read difficult texts, and the capacity to link old and new. “Any education that teaches you to be a technician will always fall short,” he says. “King’s promotes curiosity and engage-ment.” In September, Dance will head to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he will pursue a MSc in mind, language, and embodied cognition. µ
Mark Dance (left) and current CSP student Ryan Lum plan their outdoor hockey journalism project for the Chronicle Herald.
Paula and writers
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TRAVELLING MANA bearded lion, briefly back in his own den.
By Alexandra estey
FOLK SINGER ben caPlan (ba ’10) is man with a plan. Since the 2011 release of his debut
album, In the Time of Great Remembering, the Halifax-based singer-songwriter hit the road with his first nationwide tour, followed by shows across Europe. Strong performanc-es at the East Coast Music Awards (ECMA) brought Caplan and his band, the Casual Smokers, even more bookings for 2012 that will send him throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. All told, it’s a full 18 months of touring, but Caplan is no weary traveler—and doesn’t go far from a place he now calls “home”. Though he was born and raised in Ontario, you can smell the salt air in Caplan’s music and performances. You can hear it on bluesy stompers like “Conduit” and on gentler, Tom Waits-channelling melodies like “Seed of Love”; Caplan’s songs possess a distinctly
authentic Atlantic sentiment, and he credits Halifax for this maritime manner. “I’ve been on the road five months out of the past six, but the three weeks I had off, I spent in Halifax. This really is my home, and I think it always will be,” he explains over a beer before a March show at the Seahorse Tavern. His gruff speaking voice pairs well with the energetic grin beneath his thick trademark beard. Caplan first came to Halifax as a FYP student in 2005, and credits much of his musical development to the King’s com-munity. From EMSP to the ECMAs, Caplan says his five years at King’s allowed him to work closely with other musicians on cam-pus while developing his musical arrange-ment and songwriting abilities. “My writing has been deeply and irrepeal-ably influenced by reading all those books, and by having to write all the time,” he says.
Ben Caplan. (Photo: Courtney Lee Yip, courtesy Audio Blood)
“My writing has been deeply and
irrepealably influenced by
reading all those books, and by
having to write all the tiMe. i’M
really grateful for My education at king’s for that
reason.”
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“I’m really grateful for my education at King’s for that reason.” Caplan recalls that, as a dreadlocked first-year student, he once snuck out onto the roof of the Cochran Bay residence to blare a Hendrix style national anthem with his amp set to ten, just as students were gathering for lunch. “Just showboating, just for the sake of doing it,” he remembers, laughing. But it’s been bigger and better things for Caplan ever since—quite literally. The stops on his tour have included a stop in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest festival, where he played alongside fellow King’s alumnus Rich aucoin (baH ’06). From Austin, they headed to Ottawa for Juno Fest, followed by the ECMAs, two months touring Europe, and Canadian summer festivals in Toronto and Montreal. And nestled in that packed schedule was an end-of-March show atop the CN Tower, playing with Dartmouth
indie rocker Joel Plaskett for Canadian Mu-sic Week in Toronto. “It’s still hard to get my head around,” he says. “Needless to say, it’s an insanely busy time for us. We’ve been working incredibly hard,” he says. But the group’s efforts have certainly been rewarded, as his group con-sistently brings in new interest. “My big news that I’m announcing tonight on stage is that I just signed a European re-cord deal, a label called Cool Buzz Records, and they will be releasing In the Time of Great Remembering in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg,” says Caplan, grinning. “It makes the summer shows in Europe all the more exciting.” Caplan will return to Halifax this Novem-ber, for a performance with Symphony Nova Scotia at the Rebecca Cohn Theatre. He says he’s already looking forward to coming home. “When I was in FYP I thought I wanted
to be a philosophy guy with a music hobby, and now I’m a music guy with a philosophy hobby,” he says. “But this is where every-thing started for me, and it’s always good to be back.” µ
The Alumni Association has made a group purchase of tickets for Caplan’s Symphony nova Scotia performance on november 16. If you are interested in buying a ticket through the Association (10 per cent discount, while quantities last), please contact Christina Mac-donald ([email protected]) in the Advancement Office.
Ben’s backing band, the Casual Smokers, is currently made up of Ricky Gibone, Signe Bone, and Kathryn Palumbo, but its membership is vast and ever-chang-ing. Many of them have been affiliated with King’s, either as students, alumni, and in one case, even a professor.
Marc Blouin: clarinet, tenor sax, cello, keys, vocals (current student)
Caplan performing at Halifax’s Seahorse Tavern in March. “This really is my home, and I think it always will be.” (Photo: Alexandra Estey)
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A navy man finds redemption in a telephone.By Heather Jordan Ross
A PrAyer for owen PArkhouse
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owen Parkhouse (baH ’90) could hear the rapids from the parking lot of Ottawa’s Hog’s Back Falls. He knew ex-actly where those rapids were. They were part of his plan.
It was 2007. Owen was a young-looking 43, and his eyes were still schoolboy-bright blue. Sitting in his car, those eyes filled with tears. He tried to think of the living—of his wife, Elizabeth, whose laugh filled a room; of his daughter Bethany, who was already seven. But he could only think about the people who had died on him. The people he couldn’t save. Now, he didn’t think he could even save himself. He took out his cell phone. He began to dial the numbers. Either the person at the other end was going to pick up, or he was going to commit suicide. One... six... one... three...
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“I know that guy!” Trevor Greene (bJH ’88, Dcl ’09) exclaimed, dragging elizabeth MacDonald
(ba ’90) across the King’s College quad. One minute, Elizabeth and Trevor were chatting calmly; the next, she was standing beneath the flagpole, face-to-face with a total stranger that Trevor once went to school with. It was 1987, but Owen still remembers Elizabeth had a sincere laugh and a bright face. It was love at first sight. At King’s, Owen had the time of his life. He was encouraged to do everything, and he accepted the challenge: he rowed, played rugby and volleyball, worked with the Hal-liburton Society, served in the chapel, and was even known for serving tea in his room, earning him the nickname “Sir Hot Steam-ing Tea Bag”. It was there where he first fell in love with the sea. His British grandfather had raised Owen to be an army man; his favou-rite toys growing up were plastic soldiers. But at King’s, a naval training ground dur-ing wartime in the 1940s, he felt the same kind of soldierly camaraderie and closeness with his classmates. The navy seemed more gentlemanly: no sitting in a trench with wa-ter up to your waist. The navy seemed more intellectual: it wasn’t just a matter of repeat-ing back orders. You had to survive on your
own natural ability. If you didn’t have it, you weren’t going to make it. Owen loved the challenge. By the time he finished his degree in 1989, he was hooked on ships and the sea. Six months after Elizabeth graduated—she was a year younger—they were married. Not long after, Owen joined the navy.
nINE YEARS INTO HIS NAVY ca-reer, Swissair Flight 111 plummeted into the Atlantic, just off Peggy’s
Cove. Owen had worked hard and found suc-cess, and he was put in charge of briefing the families who had gathered at the Lord Nelson Hotel, armed first with few answers, then answers that no one wanted to hear: none of the 229 passengers had survived. He remembers an American man whose daughter was missing. He remembers the man packing all of his emotions into one punch. Owen took the blow in the shoul-der, but didn’t budge. He didn’t react. He didn’t anything. He took on all the families’ pain, mentally and physically. People cried, screamed, howled. A year later, he found himself on a peace-keeping mission in East Timor, which was fighting for its independence from Indonesia. While gathering intelligence, he and three of his soldiers found a smoldering dump truck
30 feet down a hill. There were 50 people packed in the back. They managed to save seven lives, but Owen could only remember the woman he told his men to leave behind. Frothy blood was pouring from her mouth—his training told him it was internal bleed-ing—and she was never going to make it. Still, he couldn’t help but feel like he had played God. Then, in 2000, Owen was driving in Bagotville, Quebec, back in Canada from East Timor. In the backseat was his newborn daughter Bethany. She was precious new life to a father who had been surrounded by death for so many years. no. not here. Just in front of him, two cars crashed, head-on. He rescued two people from one car easily enough, but one man was so badly mangled he couldn’t pull him out. By the time the police arrived, he was already dead. He died on me. Why do people keep dying on me? Why has God put me on the scene of all of the horrible events? By 2007, Owen had slipped into a private darkness. A year before, while working at the national defence headquarters, he learned that his old friend Trevor Greene—now an officer serving in Afghanistan—had been meeting with Afghan elders when an axe-
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wielding sixteen-year-old almost split his brain in two. Despite serious physical trauma, Greene was going to survive, but Owen was angry. He had already gone to Afghanistan, but he wanted to go back. He wanted to do terrible things. He couldn’t have someone else die on him. He wouldn’t want to see anyone or do anything. He would wake up to find he had made a military post out of his blankets. He was put on sick leave and sent home, but that was the worst thing they could have done for him. He tried to sleep as much as possible, but couldn’t; his night sweats were back.
oWEN SAT IN THE PARKING lot of Hog’s Back Falls. He could hear the rapids crashing.
He finished dialing the numbers. The number was for Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS), a peer sup-port group. His military doctor once called them a bunch of drunks and bleeding hearts, but Owen was going to give them a chance. I’m going to call this OSISS thing. If they don’t help me, I’m ending it right now. Someone picked up. “I need help,” Owen panted. “I need some-one to talk to.” “Where are you now?” the voice said at
the other end of the line. “I’m going to get to you as soon as I can and we’re going to talk about this.” There were no questions. It was just someone who wanted to help him. “Why don’t we meet for coffee?”
HE CALLS THEM “HIS GUYS”—guys who have been diagnosed with an operational stress injury.
That term minimizes the stigma associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and en-compasses everything from anxiety to severe depression. That day in 2007, when an OSISS worker met with him at a Tim Horton’s, was the first time he felt like someone understood what he had gone through. These days, Owen does a lot of talking in coffee shops of his own. He started to go to group sessions, started to feel better, wanted others to feel better, too. When the coordina-tor went on vacation, Owen took over tempo-rarily. Owen was asked if he would consider becoming the peer support coordinator in Prince Edward Island. In 2008, the position was created for him. Bethany is 12 now. Although she doesn’t remember Owen at his darkest, she under-stands what post-traumatic stress is. She
wrote an essay about her dad for a school competition and won first place. Elizabeth’s laugh fills the room. The three make a joyous household, in the quiet of Prince Edward Island. Owen still has dark days, the days he cries. But when he starts feeling like he’s back there, he now has a “fire team” partner to call, a peer support coordinator in New Brunswick. If Owen has a bad day, he’ll call him up, and vice versa. He’s never been part of an orga-nization that felt so much like a family. They settle each other down. “Sometimes,” he ssys, “I still need it.” µ
Students, faculty and administration are coming together to help fight the stigma that surrounds mental illness. We are pleased to announce that the King’s Mental Health Awareness Collective is expanding. Beginning in September, bi-weekly meet-ings will allow people to share their experi-ences with mental illness and to learn more about an issue that affects one in five of us. A speaker series will address issues such as de-stigmatization, awareness and manage-ment. everyone is welcome. For more infor-mation please contact Stephanie Duchon at [email protected]. The only way to remove stigma is to talk about it.
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FORMER UNITED STATES presi-dent and bluesman Bill Clinton, country singer-songwriter Kris
Kristofferson, and mandolin-playing cho-rister Rosanna nicol (ba ’10) share more than a love of music: each one is also the recipient of the Rhodes scholarship, one of the world’s most prestigious academic awards. Nicol is the latest in an impressive list of King’s “Rhodies”—innovative thinkers, developers, and dreamers—as she finishes up an MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Oxford’s Wolfson College this spring before returning to Canada. Nicol will be the thirtieth King’s alum to graduate at one of the finest and oldest uni-versities in Europe, an experience that King’s prepared her for. “King’s and Oxford are cut from the same cloth,” she says, describing it as a tapestry of knowledge, curiosity, prepa-ration, and action. King’s has fostered the success of many Rhodes scholarship candidates and recipi-ents, beginning shortly after the award’s es-
tablishment in 1902. The first Rhodes scholar from King’s, Ralph S. Freeze, entered Oriel College in 1906. Since then, 28 more students who have walked King’s halls have been hon-oured by the international competition that celebrates the highest scholastic, moral, and social dedication. In a September 1977 article in the Dalhousie Gazette, Dr. John Godfrey—who was then the president of King’s—noted that, at the time, the university had gradu-ated more Rhodes scholars per capita than any other in Canada. The scholarship covers accommodation, course fees, and collegial affiliation for any postgraduate degree. It’s a great award to receive, but it’s a challenging reward to achieve. A supportive foundation, however, can do wonders. Nicol says that King’s and Oxford share many of the same academic values. “As I un-derstand it,” she says, “King’s is modeled on the traditional Oxford/Cambridge college education.” Socially, Nicol has enjoyed many of the same kinds of activities, too: “I had the pleasure of singing in the King’s Col-
lege Choir, (and singing) is also a big part of Oxford life.” And the Foundation Year Pro-gramme (FYP), especially the FYP essays, made her feel “very prepared” for Interna-tional Development, an interest cultivated at King’s.
RHODES TO SUCCESSKing’s latest Rhodes Scholar comes home.
By Adria Young (BAH ’10)
“oxford is a busy, intense place,
and i have been caught up in a
whirlwind. king’s, as i reMeMber it,
doesn’t take itself too seriously,
which is a blessing.”
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Originally from Ottawa, Nicol completed FYP in 2005. At that point, she decided to take the year to volunteer, teaching literacy in Ghana with the Osu Children’s Library Fund. While she was there, she developed many community-based initiatives, includ-ing co-founding the Nimobi Women’s Soc-cer team. Upon her return, she committed her time to the World University Service of Canada (WUSC), a network of individuals and institutions dedicated to improving the world through education and training. With a strong belief in accessible education and the power of effecting international change on a local level, Nicol helped organize the Student Refugee Program campaign through the King’s WUSC branch, which supports study in Canada for those fleeing war or per-secution in underdeveloped countries. With her help, King’s WUSC branch successfully campaigned to increase students’ tuition fees to sponsor a refugee student to come to King’s, and in September, King’s welcomed Sixbert Himbraza from Malawi. Her Rhodes path started at the same time. While completing her degree in History and Economics at King’s, Nicol approached then-president Dr. William Barker about the Rhodes scholarship application “It is com-mon amongst Rhodes scholars that people self-select themselves to apply, and many only apply after receiving a push,” Nicol says. “Dr. Barker provided that push.” Typical of the encouraging environment at King’s, Nicol remembers that the President was “supremely helpful” throughout the entire process. The candidate does, after all, have to be put forward by his or her professors and home university. Recognizing her potential, Barker gladly helped Nicol prepare for the interview, and put her in contact with King’s alumni here and abroad. For Barker, Nicol’s candidacy was obvi-ous. “Rosanna is smart, hardworking, intel-lectually engaged, sociable, and oriented to-wards social justice issues—qualities that are found in many students at King’s,” he says. “But I think her success came from having all of these qualities at once and in abun-dance.” Being selected also has a lot to do with being ready. “But Rosanna was ready,” says Barker, “even if she didn’t quite know it herself.” That’s the thing about King’s, says Barker—students are often unaware of the breadth of their abilities, even though they have the confidence to recognize the right
opportunities. “When she called after the interview to tell me that the award had been offered to her, I was deeply moved. I felt I had won as well,” says Barker. “But that tells you about Rosanna. She seemed capable of sharing the prize.” At the 2010 Convocation, she shared the honour with her graduating class, as well. Nicol’s interests and hobbies from King’s carried on across the Atlantic. “I have had a blast playing hockey and volunteering with the Rhodes Scholars South African Forum, which fundraises through stipend contribu-tion.” Funds that are raised at events like the Rhodes Recital and the Rhodes Ball “are used for a bi-annual micro-grant process to support community-led projects in South Af-rica,” she says. With her singing background, she formed a folk band, the Trebelles, which will be going on a world tour in the coming months. While she remains interested in inter-national development, Nicol plans to take the strategies she has learned for commu-nity development back to Ottawa. Like all Rhodes scholars, Nicol has big plans. “I will be doing urban farming, I’m going to start and run a food-producing venture…a city farm project that grows and sells local pro-duce year-round [which will] link a couple of Ottawa communities that don’t cross paths very often. It certainly relates to my time at Oxford. This is where the idea was born, and it is directly inspired by a project in London.” While King’s helped prepare Nicol for her life as a Rhodes scholar, she did notice a significant difference between the institu-tions. “Oxford is a busy, intense place, and I have been caught up in a whirlwind,” she says. “King’s, as I remember it, doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is a blessing.” µ
K i n G ’ s r h o d e s s C h o l a r s
Whether they graduated from King’s or received their scholarship applying from another institution, we know of 29 alumni who have graced the halls of both King’s College and Oxford Univer-sity. Including Rosanna Nicol, they are:
dr. florenCe yoon (Ba ’02)Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia Com-pleted Doctorate in Classics
at Oxford
dr. Jonathan Bays (BJ ’93) Currently a writer and con-sultant at McKinsey & Com-pany in New York Completed MPhil and DPhil in Interna-
tional Relations at Oxford
Bernard J. hiBBitts (Ba ’80)Currently an Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh After Oxford, attended Dal-
housie University, University of Toronto, and Harvard Law School
S. Helene Deacon (FYP ’96)Christine A. Kennedy (’94)Gregory Y. Glazov – (BAH ’86) John H. Page (BSc ‘69)Peter Hardress L. Puxley (BA ’63)Roland Arnold G. Lines (BSc ’61)L. William Caines (BAH ’55)Charles T. Collis (’53)E. David Morgan (BSc ’50)Ian H. Henderson (BS ’49)Peter Hanington (BA ’48)Nordau Goodman (BSc ’40)John Roderick E. Smith (BSc ’38)Allan C. Findlay (BA ’34)M. Gerald Teed (Unknown)Russell R. Sheldrick (Unknown)Gerald White (BA ’23)John J. Dunlop (Unknown)William G. Ernest (BA ’17)Cuthbert A. Simpson (BA ’15)Douglas M. Wiswell (BA ’14)Arthur L. Collett (BA ’13)Robert H. Tait (BCL ’14)Medley K. Parlee (BA ’08)Ralph S. Freeze (Unknown)
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wa r d r o o mThree times a day, we freshettes were herded downstairs into the Wardroom, the old din-ing hall, for square meals. In a square meal, you use your fork or spoon to trace a square in the air, popping in a mouthful between the third and fourth corners of the square. I became adept at this technique, needing to fuel up to maintain the demanding pace of initiation week in 1962. We usually wore sandwich boards for ini-tiation activities: name, age and hometown on the front and an embarrassing comment on the back. Mine said, “Hankeys are good for more than blowing your nose” (the sopho-mores knew I had been friends with Wayne in high school). We would park our sandwich boards before eating. One day I must have
parked mine too close to the dining tables, as my sandwich board—I still have it—is spat-tered with what I hope is chocolate sauce. I kept a daily log of initiation, which I recently re-read after 50 years. Some of it is disjointed, but two pages are neatly typed. How did I ever find time to sit down at my typewriter? The log chronicles the hectic days—from 2 a.m. muster on the unfinished top floor of Alex Hall to evening inquisi-tions—punctuated by those square meals. We marched, danced and crawled through tunnels, around the quad, over rocks and up and down stairs, often blindfolded. The Wardroom has left generations of students with fond memories of good times shared with friends—and no square meals.
—Lois Miller (BAH ’65)
We would have formal meal in the Wardroom every night, at 6 pm and on Saturday after-noons. There was a small TV, and Get Smart was mandatory viewing…People would com-plain about how often formal meals hap-pened. We even had to wear a jacket to lunch. So we would have a competition to see who had the most outrageous outfit. I remember a guy from Radical Bay won it by wearing a wetsuit, footies, mittens, a jacket and an aca-demic gown. We had a waiter named Wayne MacKinnon who would always enforce the rules, and he said his outfit wasn’t according to the rules. Well, the guy said, “I am wearing a jacket.” He was accepted in.
—Severn Blades (’72)
The King’s Students’ Union office was in a separate walled-in area in what would
YOU MAY BeLIeve THAT THe WARDROOM, the Pit, and the President’s Lodge—three pillars of King’s social life—have been there since time immemorial. King’s has a habit of making
things appear that way: here, traditions are so named as soon as they happen more than once. But the three august spaces—the Pit and the Wardroom formally opened in the 1960s, with the Lodge built earlier, in 1930—have evolved in the last decades. That said, memories are imbued in the very walls of these central King’s spaces, representing home and heart both, and
defining the space just as much as any black paint, wooden slats, pint-dank carpet, or tippled glasses of dry sherry. Here, a few alumni share some thoughts and memories of the spaces themselves, painting a stronger map than any architect could draw. And we encourage you, if you are so inspired, to continue to tell us what these spaces meant and continue to mean to you, by emailing Cheryl Bell at [email protected]. After all, just like the buildings themselves—venerable and beloved—perhaps sharing your memories is just the refurbishment they need.
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be now the non-bar half of the Wardroom. There was no bar in the room at that time, although there were beers there among sheafs of paper. I think it was also used by the King’s student newsletter of the time called The Ancient Commoner. I remember using the Gestetner at various times. Execu-tive meetings were usually held upstairs in the Haliburton Room.
—Ian Johnson (BAH ’72)
It’s amazing that, through the years, the Wardroom even still exists. And yet, like King’s, it perseveres. I don’t know how. I remember on one Thanksgiving long weekend I had far too much to drink and was asked to leave. But of course, as many a King’s man has before, I rallied, climbed back in the window, stepped up to the bar and ordered another drink, before having to be removed a second time. Suffice to say, I was banned, rightfully, for quite some time. Now, I’m the bar’s manager. Why? Be-cause the Wardroom let me grow up. In its own way, it teaches us how.
—John Adams (BAH ’10)
The clack of the pool balls in perpetual mo-tion; the lively hum of students “studying”; the familiar smell of the basement-borne dampness: Zona Roberts, matronly and wise in her canteen corner, serving me what was actually my first-ever grilled cheese, and all the grilled cheeses after that; these were the sights and sounds and smells that defined my undergrad, and they became a reliable comfort. But Mondays were when the Ward-
rom really shone; through a confluence of academic scheduling, most of King’s was free on Tuesday mornings, and Mondays were the nights you didn’t have to bother asking your friends where they would be. And by the time I entered my third year, I realized that they had lulled me so deeply that I became aware that I was on something of a streak: I had never missed a Monday night in the Wardroom. There is a small, proud sect of committed King’s folk who commit to the Wardroom’s early happy hour, and who, if they succeed in achieving perfect attendance on Fridays for an entire academic year, notch a mark in their King’s belt. But no one, to my knowl-edge, has ever achieved perfect Mondays—much less for four years—and I decided I wanted this vaunted prize. I arranged trips around Mondays. Next-day essay deadlines and thick readings were hardly a priority in comparison. Once, in the throes of a deep sickness, I came to a Wardroom Monday and drank a ginger ale huddled with friends and a blanket: love in the time of swine flu. Then, as a journalism student entering the final months of my fourth year, I was thrilled to find out I would do my month-long curricular internship in Toronto with the Globe and Mail. But then I did the math: the first day of the internship would be the last Monday the Wardroom was open for the year—the last Monday I needed to attend to complete the streak. I scrambled for a way to attend. I casually checked to see how expensive same-night
flights would be. I asked friends if they’d help me Skype in, but I realized that would only cheapen it. I was the bar’s booking manager at the time, and in a fit of desperation, asked my co-managers to shut the bar earlier in the week as a personal favour, a proposal they wisely rejected. So that last Monday night came and went. Being at home on that Monday night felt like heresy, like withdrawal, like infidelity. But then I returned for grad week. And there it all was again: the hum of the patrons, the clack of the pool balls, the familiar smell. I’ve been back far more times, since then. A day is just a day. The Wardroom feels like forever.
—Adrian Lee (BJH ’11)
t h e p i tI have a lot of fond memories of the Pit, or the “studio theatre” as it was called then, or the ‘cultural complex’ to others. I guess I have to say—because my wife will beat me up if I don’t—I was waiting to go on stage for the Duchess of Malfi, in that corridor to
froM left to right: The Wardroom as it appeared in 1979. (Photo: the King’s Archives)
A selection of the beer stocked for the Wardroom’s birthday in 2000. (Photo: the King’s Archives)
A photo of formal meal in what is now the Ward-room, from the ’60s. (Photo: Don Stephenson)
The Wardroom officially opens. (Photo: the King’s Archives)
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Cochran Bay, which was the waiting area before going on stage. I was waiting to go on, and I was having a conversation with a lady who was playing one of the pilgrims. It was the first time I had a conversation with her, and I enjoyed the conversation very much. Then, she went to Quebec to finish her degree, and ten years later, we got married. It was a kind of rough-and-ready peri-od in those early days, and we didn’t really know what we were doing. At the time, King’s didn’t really have a cultural space at all. The gym was new. The Haliburton Room was a place where plays were sometimes put on, and when the gym was built, it had a stage in one end—there are bleachers there now. There used to be a room in the basement of Alex Hall that was called the Passion Pit and boys and girls would go there and neck. It was right in the Alex Hall end of the Pit. It had sofas turned towards the wall, for privacy. And somehow, I think the name of the space,
“the Pit”, got transferred to the acting space under the Chapel. After they took the blue curtains down and painted the wood flats, which had been stained brown, they made them black—that was the trendy thing to do with studio theatres at the time. And of course, it looked grottier, because the cur-tains had covered the pipes and concrete and so on. It didn’t look like a pit in its early days; it was really quite pretty. But pretty isn’t what you want if you’re doing serious theatre. The contribution it has made to King’s life is tremendous. We had grand ideas of it being a cultural complex, but we didn’t think it would enable the kind of theatre going on
at King’s. It has really caused a renaissance in theatre at King’s.
—Mark DeWolf (BA ’68), former president of the King’s Dramatic Society
For generations of King’s students with a passion for performance, the Pit has been both a laboratory and a home. Many first-time viewers of this large black space lurk-ing below the Chapel, with its exposed and clanking pipes, may not recognize it as an obvious candidate for either role. But the very bareness and rawness of the Pit invites young artists to experiment, to embrace risk, and to feel that they—rather than any pre-established artistic structure or ‘rules’—are in creative control. My own fond memories of my student time in the Pit reflect its extreme openness to transformation…(and) the Pit embraced all these different forms and formats. It em-braced us—all-night rehearsals, tearful melt-downs, artistic breakthroughs, and more—with equal equanimity. Out of the nurturing atmosphere of the Pit and the KTS have come some of the lead-ing figures in Canadian theatre; from my own generation, playwright Michael Melski (ba ’91) and the members of Zuppa Theatre spring immediately to mind. But even more important, perhaps, is the encouragement the Pit has provided to decade after decade of young people—whether they go on to create performance in their later lives or not—not only to think creatively but to think of them-selves as creators. In an age when Canada and the world sorely need more creators and
fewer destroyers, this is a pretty noble calling for a basement that, in another institution, might have been used to store broken desks. May Dionysius, the God of Theatre, continue to bless this mother of artists. Long may she reign.
—Roberta Barker, (BAH ’96)
I was very rarely associated with the KTS in an official capacity, but I got roped into helping out on multiple occasions because I spent too much time lounging about in the Wardroom and am far too agreeable. One afternoon, I remember, they were getting the set ready for whatever musical they were doing that year and Tessa Pekeles (baH ’11) enlisted me to help because she knew that I was good at knots. We were hanging these massive black curtains from the ceiling and I was trying to use fishing line as much as possible so it couldn’t be seen, but we ended up using real ropes a bunch because they were sturdier, and way easier to tie. The problem was I had to tie these knots at the top of a ladder, and frankly, I don’t like heights. Why did you agree to do this in the first place, you ask? That’s a good question. But there I was near the ceiling in the Pit standing on the top of a very tall ladder and wishing that I was able to tie these knots one-handed. And naturally the cast was mill-ing about and doing something actor-like. And naturally David Etherington chose that mo-ment while I was precariously perched atop the ladder to yell something random suddenly at the top of his lungs. I still don’t know how I managed to stay on top of the ladder and didn’t drop anything. I think I nearly had a
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 1 9
heart attack. Anyway, I managed to get him to not yell things suddenly while I finished tying up the curtains and then I got back on solid ground. Thankfully, they didn’t need me to help them take down the curtains later.
—Martha Sellens (BA ’09)
I used to think that theatre was limited in that it was a ‘one-off’ sort of art, leaving nothing of permanence, but that’s not true. When an actor has a beauty and a pleasure and enters our imagination, they leave behind a ghost in our heads, a ghost that gives us a dream to be so beautiful to say to ourselves, “Ah, human-ity, what an incredible thing it is”. Don’t laugh, it’s true. To this day, most of my ghosts are from the Pit. eric benson (ba ’02), Chris Cowper-Smith, and ashley Menzies (’03) in Copenhagen…lewis Wynne-Jones (’05) and chloe cushman (baH ’08) in Jumpers…Joanna caplan (baH ’09) and ned Zim-merman (’04) in Who’s Afraid of virginia Woolf…simon bloom’s (baH ’10) staging of The Illusion… I still don’t think I’ve seen someone have more tenderness and sympa-thy for their character than blake Prender-gast (baH ’10) at the end of that show…Zach Russell’s (’06) staging of Camino Real was phenomenal, and his cast (of like a hundred people) were all superb. Never before or since then have I seen a bl ack box theatre space come to life like that. These were the best moments of my time at King’s, and the ones that I will hold on to long after I’ve forgotten the names of the four causes and the meaning of justice.
—Michael Keene (BAH ’09)
p r e s i d e n t ’ s l o d G eThere is no one memory. It is more a rush of memories, an overwhelming series of variations. Crazy parties with 200 students dancing away, an hour after the bar had shut down; a quiet coffee in the living room with a parent or visiting academic; meeting with faculty or administrators in the kitchen; lunch with board members; Christmas parties with the children of staff and faculty; a guest (the Chancellor or visiting faculty) on their way to bed…Or, sometimes alone, I might be looking out the window into the Quad, a moonlit night, two in the morning, wondering what strange new noise was emanating from Middle Bay. Because the President is a symbol of the College, putting him or her in an attractive residence in a central position on campus says that the College treats residential life as a central theme of its work. Everyone, we are saying, accepts residential life as central to our small and rather strange institution. Indeed, the Lodge really makes no sense in the current environment. But, given the rise of electronic communities, decline of religion, the end of books, the end of newspapers, and the rise of business education, neither does Residence, Chapel, a Library, a Journalism degree, or an Arts degree. Foundation Year is equally backwards looking. Yet the school is a marvellous success. To quote this year’s vale-dictorian, alexander Desiré-Tesar (baH
’12), who in turn quoted Hunter S. Thompson: “Too weird to live, too rare to die.” Just about everything in the College makes little sense from a strict accounting point of
view. The Lodge is evidence of the illogic of King’s and if used well is part of King’s suc-cess, our continuing experiment in education within an engaged living community…We attract students who choose their university for the magic, not for the degree.
—William Barker, President, 2003 to 2011
I viewed it as very much the living room of the college, for social events. For example, after the chapel service on Thursday nights, the people who were getting ready for the procession would use the dining room be-cause it’s connected to the chapel. And when people came back afterwards, we would have a glass of sherry, and then we would go have formal meal. And it was all part of the ritual. Very much from my point of view, it was an integral social space for the college, sort of the dressed-up front parlor, if you like. I lived there, sure, but that was how I saw it—it was very much a public space, a bit like Buckingham Palace. I’ve always thought that King’s was a very upscale, classy kind of place, and it needs to emphasize that. It needs to have some sort of elegance to it. That’s why you have the ceremonial aspect of the King’s graduation, or why you have the chapel, or why you’ve got various traditions. And I was all for em-phasizing that because I think those were our unique values: that we were not like any old boring place, but we’re the oldest university of the country, and that requires a certain amount of class and style, and that’s why I tried to make it a nice experience. Those things bring people together—what you wouldn’t find in other university set-tings—you have to guard those things very carefully, because if you become very hum-drum and boring, there’s nothing special about you. So what’s that extra dimension which makes your life there memorable, that you think back on fondly?
—John Godfrey, President, 1977 to 1987 µ
far left: One of the earliest photos of the studio theatre, later the Pit, from the 1968 Record. L-to-R: Robin Calder, Mark DeWolf, Bruce Archibald. (Photo courtesy King’s Archives)
Middle: The Pit playing host to the 2000 Frosh Week play. Note the creative use of the too-short curtain as offstage door. (Photo courtesy King’s Archives)
left: A performance of the British Cabaret, from the late ‘60s, in the Studio Theatre. Note the blue cur-tains that used to ring the space, and were removed in the 70s. L-to-R: Robin Calder, John Close, Andy Lewis, John Dickinson. Photo courtesy Mark DeWolf.
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SHIPSHAPEA dream canteen becomes reality.
By Philippa Wolff
In THe SUMMeR OF 2011, Sodexo Ltd.’s lease on the canteen in the Wardroom expired, leaving the space without the
food services that made it a hub for King’s day students. For months, the Wardroom in the daytime was without its trademark buzz. So the King’s Students’ Union decided to make a pitch to own the space, and formed a com-mittee to submit a business plan for a student-run canteen with a focus on locally produced foods. In six months, thanks to the force of student will and with alumni contribution, the King’s Galley—one of the few students’ union-operated canteens in the country—is now open for business. Here, the principals in the process recon-struct how it all happened, in their own words. Anna Dubinski, former KSU student life vice-president and chair of the Food Ad-vocacy Committee: “We all sat down that first day and I think we were all nervously chatting amongst ourselves and I called the meeting to order and I said, ‘Okay. Let’s make a canteen.’ I don’t think any of us had an idea of what that would mean on those first couple of days.”
John Adams, KSU internal coordinator and manager of the Galley: “It was a frustrat-ing process at times, because we would make great progress and then hit a roadblock and be two steps backward … some people were skeptical, as they should be.” Noah White, former Day Students’ So-ciety president and Food Advocacy Commit-tee member: “The most difficult part with moving things forward was not really having anybody who’s been involved with a business seriously before … I remember going to one of my friends at a business school and I said,
‘we have this, this, this and he said, ‘wait, have you guys considered this or this?’ … That was kind of nerve-wracking.”
After months spent studying the lease contract, the committee submitted its plan to admin-istration on nov. 1. It involved dissolving a union GIC worth around $83,000—culled from many years’ worth of union budget sur-pluses and making this, effectively, a donation from past alumni—to contribute to renova-tions and annual rent. Other alumni also gen-erously contributed individually to the cause.
Dubinski: “On the first or second day of exam week, the week that we really clinched a deal with the administration, I came into
the office for about half an hour … I was going to go to the library to study for two days. And then I got a call about something to do with the contract and we had this new deadline, and I didn’t leave that office for 36 hours. I
The King’s Galley, in the space that formerly housed the Watch office. (Photo: Christina MacDonald)
“we all sat down that first day and … i said, ‘okay. let’s Make a canteen.’ i
don’t think any of us had an idea of what that would
Mean on those first couple of
days.”
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 1
slept there and I had people bring me food there and I didn’t change my clothes and I just worked on that contract forever.”
In early January, King’s students had to vote to add an annual $14 levy that students would pay through their tuition over the next three years. However, a typo in the referendum ques-tion nullified those initial results—the referen-dum question included the already-underway 2011-12 year, which could not be retroactively levied—forcing a fatigued student community back to the ballot boxes.
Adams: “Having to do the referendum again, and because of a typo, was incredibly frus-trating. I definitely thought about throwing in the towel at that point. It was just very emotionally draining—that much of your time invested in something and it coming down to a vote, twice.” Gabe Hoogers, former KSU president and Food Advocacy Committee mem-ber: “We weren’t sure if the fact that we were doing it again would make people feel not so interested. There was that anticipation. We had all put a lot of work into it, so to see that
crushed by a single typo would have been very hard.”
A second referendum happened Jan. 19. The vote passed, 282-87.
Dubinski: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being on the KSU and working with so many people, it’s that to get a consensus is extremely difficult. To have 75 per cent of students who voted be in support of this endeavour, I felt a very strong sense of…
‘hoorah’.”
next came the tricky logistics. Suppliers for lo-cally sourced coffee and meals were confirmed. Licenses were gathered. Staff was hired. The canteen corner, empty for the first months of the school year, came to life with the whirr of coffee grinders, the sizzling of skillets topped with grilled cheese sandwiches, the scrape of chalk on the blackboard menu. And then—one hectic month later—the King’s Galley opened its doors in late February.
Adams: “I had trouble sleeping the night before. I was going through the checklist of
everything the next day, making sure we had everything we needed … I think we were sup-posed to meet up here at 7 a.m., and I ended up getting here early, so I just sat in the car for half an hour.” Kai Miller, former Food Advocacy Com-mittee member: “I was there at like 8:30 in the morning … I got one of the free coffees and posed for photos with all my friends in front of it. It was great.” Dubinski: “They saw the brand new space with our wonderful blackboard with the food and all of the hilarious hats that all of the workers were wearing. Just hearing their gasps and their reactions was one of the best days I’ve had all year. And then I had my first bite of a grilled cheese sandwich and a tear trickled down my face. I could not have been more proud of that sandwich.”
Praise for the student initiative came from all over.
Kim Kierans, King’s vice-president: “This has just enlivened that community space. You see professors down there now and it reminds you of what it was like before in the sense that this is a place where we all can gather and meet.” Megan Leslie, Member of Parliament for Halifax: “While municipal politics disap-point, students at KSU are painting a bright-er picture of the future…Congratulations on your excellent work so far, and best of luck with the future of this project!” Adams: “It was all worth it. We weren’t sure if anyone was going to come. … It felt like we had made the right decision in the end.” µ
Galley employee Claris Figueira opens up shop. (Photo:Christina MacDonald)
An early draft of the Galley’s new logo de-signed by current student Annie Kierans and digitized by King’s alumna Davis Carr (BAH ’12)
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RESTLESS SPIRITA journalism grad reflects on her travels in Ghana.
By Gwyneth Dunsford (BJ ’11)
WHOEVER SAID THE WORLD is a classroom had a lot of foresight. I think over this parable as I
sit with a pupil under the awning of a mo-torcycle repair shop in Tamale, the district capital of Ghana’s northern region. It’s dusty here, agrarian and far less developed than the more populous south. And while the recent discovery of oil reserves off Ghana’s coast promises wealth for the entire country, little of this money has trickled down to the people in Tamale. Lack of access to education and health care, a tradition of misogyny and the ineptitude of the police make Tamale rife with human rights abuses. So I have my work cut out for me. A scant nine months after graduating from King’s (BJ ’11), I’m stationed in Tamale for the next six months as a media trainer with Journalists for Human Rights. I’m a long way from Halifax. As I adjust to this new job in this new country, I puz-
zle over how I arrived in this frontier city. Since high school, I have moved around the world in search of a good story. My love of stories persuaded me to study comparative literature at the University of Alberta, but I quickly realized that stories in novels are dry and insentient. I started to look for stories in other places. I moved to Oslo, Norway to study the plays of Henrik Ibsen. I soon learned that the only English-language radio show in town needed a new host and producer. I went for an interview and got the job. In 2009, I moved to Washington D.C. in time for President Obama’s first summer in office. By day, I worked in a marketing department, editing videos. By night, I took ethics classes at the Associated Press. My itchy feet keep me moving from place to place. Thankfully for me, as I learned last year, journalism is a profession of transitions and change. As I become comfortable in a
new place, I feel a familiar anxiety—one of complacency. But I’ve had no time to become comfort-able in Ghana.
“My itchy feet keep Me Moving froM place to place.
thankfully for Me, as i learned last year, journalisM is a profession of transitions and
change.”
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IT’S MY FIRST WEEK ON THE JOB as a journalism trainer and I have been thrown in, head first.
My orientation to the city was brief. It in-cluded introductions to the chief administra-tor of the local hospital—lest I get sick—and to the chief of police—lest I get robbed. On my first day of work, a colleague sug-gests we do a story about the barriers keeping youth from farming. We set about finding a youth farmer to in-terview. The news intern, Lucy Na-er, comes from a nearby village, so we enlist her help. This is how I find myself sitting next to Lucy on a feverishly hot Thursday afternoon. This 22-year-old’s first lesson covers a critical skill for Ghanaian journalists: wait-ing. “African time” is probably the greatest cultural difference between a Ghanaian and Canadian newsroom. Time here is fluid and cyclical, not fixed and marked by the stress of looming deadlines. So we sit and wait—for my colleague to return from lunch and for the interviews to begin. We sit in a thin slice of shade, shielded from the unrelenting heat. My pupil drinks a fermented barley water while I sip a Fanta. I remember an exercise I did during jour-nalism boot camp at King’s, and give Lucy five minutes to practice interviewing me. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” Lucy asks pointedly. “One sister,” I respond, tight-lipped. I want her to draw me out with better ques-tions. “Huh!” she says in surprise. “Why so few? I have five brothers and sisters. Didn’t your mother want more?” Lucy tells me about her family and I de-fend my nuclear Canadian family as the five minutes tick away. She’s in her second year of journalism school, but she’s never held a radio recorder. Journalism school here is more theoretical than practical, so graduates leave college with little more than a diploma and a vague notion about news. I’m so grateful that my journalism educa-tion was not only thorough, but galvanizing. As Lucy and I review the basic of radio interviewing, I channel Doug Kirkaldy, the gregarious King’s professor who stirred my love of storytelling. I envision my course
notes, in succinct bullet points. “Leave big pauses!,” he might say, with his characteristic gesticulation. “Only ask one question at a time!” My recollections from the basement of the New Academic Building grow dim as I remember where I am, in the unforgiving Sahel sun.
I’LL ADMIT, EMBRACING nomadism has had its drawbacks. Over the last four years, I’ll have lived in four different
cities—on three different continents—and sometimes, I get weary of living out of a suit-case, of hot-weather necessities like ankle-length skirts and shapeless cotton shirts. Along with my restlessness comes a de-gree of recklessness. I am not Ghanaian and
I have no qualms about tackling stories that my colleagues dare not cover. My radio docu-mentary about midwives disciplining women during labour touches on social taboos. A blog post about the police’s inaction on a child abuse case points at corruption. I like to think I enjoy a degree of impu-nity, but in volatile northern Ghana, this is a dangerous assumption. My stories give me thrills, but when I’m awake at night listening to rabid dogs and my overactive imagination, I dream of a copy-editing gig and a studio apartment near the Northwest Arm. But I know it wouldn’t take long for me to start planning my next story-gathering expedition. After all, I hear Sri Lanka is lovely this time of year. µ
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p h o t o e s s ay
GUATEMALA
LAST FALL, I TRAVELLED to Gua-temala, with King’s grad Ailish Mor-gan-Welden (BA ’11), to explore my
photography in an entirely new context. We spent two weeks with a delegation from Breaking the Silence, a Maritimes-based human rights group that has been involved with solidarity work in Guatemala since 1988. For three more weeks after working with the delegation we travelled independently, re-connecting with BTS interns and exploring the country. The following images were part of a collection of 20 that was displayed at the Nova Scotia Public Archives this March.
— by Ian Gibb
1pa m p o J i l aI took this image in the Western Highlands near Lake Atitlán, after steaming hot home-made tamales and playing dodgeball with neighbourhood kids. We stayed on this street in Pampojila (a tiny mountain town), with an intern from Breaking the Silence, and watched the clouds form around volcanoes that filled up the horizon, before the fog rolled in to signify dusk. The Coca-Cola sign could be mistaken for a lighthouse beacon.
2r i o n e G r oThis is a memorial site to the 177 women and children of Rio Negro killed during a massacre in 1982. Sebastian was 16 when he escaped the village before members of the army and civil patrol rounded up those who remained and forcibly marched them up this hill, Pacoxom, to a mass grave. These actions were part of the genocide that took place across Guatemala during the civil war. Sebastian takes visiting groups on that same hike up the mountain, reliving the atrocities that took place 30 years ago.
3a n t i G u a G u at e m a l a Large, vacant compositions always catch my eye when I look at the work of other photog-raphers. Guatemalan streets are often busy, filled with people and activity, so I found it satisfying when the opportunity presented itself to dwell on the slower pace things can take. The muted tones of this image do no justice to the amount of colour there, from the bright patterned dresses, to the vibrantly painted mausoleums.
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DONOR REPORTApril 1, 2011 – March 31, 2012
IN A YEAR THAT SAW a resurgence of sup-port for the Chapel and the emergence of a Master in Journalism program with an entrepreneurial focus, it may be said that King’s draws strength from its traditions and energy from change. Providing an environment in which to drive excellence in this dual state of flux and foundation, particularly in a small institu-tion requires funding. Financial contribu-tions from alumni, parents, and friends are essential to sustaining our place at the fore-front of liberal arts education in Canada. Every gift of every size has a role to play in transforming the lives of students who will, in turn, have a transformative impact on the welfare of their communities and our collective future. This fiscal year, your giving to King’s to-talled $784,502 (yes, every dollar counts). Your gifts helped to support everything from plays, props, books, scholarships, choirs and
Chapel retreats, to a garden, Wardroom fur-niture, and an ice machine that is never used for drinks. Many of you took up Ian and Jo-hanna (Zwicker) McKee’s challenge to match gifts made to the Student Initiative Fund, which sent two students to Paris to recognize the School of Journalism’s nomination for a global Data Journalism Award for its inves-tigative journalism project. The rewards of their networking will appear in a future is-sue. And special thanks to those who made ‘unrestricted’ gifts. These are deeply trea-sured and annually very necessary. There are many causes worthy of your support. On behalf of our current students, we thank you for selecting ‘a King’s educa-tion’ as one of them.
Adriane Abbott Advancement Director
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total funds raised 2011-2012
Bequests $125,007 Annual Fund $156,976 Gifts $478,448 In-Kind $24,071
Student Life $55,269 Wardroom $6,054 Campus Renewal $102,566 Other $34,299
TOTAL $784,502
t h a n K yo u
To those whose names appear on the following pages, we acknowledge your support with gratitude.
G O V E R N O R ’ S C I R C L E ( $ 1 0 , 0 0 0 + )2 anonymous donors BMO Financial GroupThe Rev. Debra BurlesonEvanov Radio GroupHarrison McCain FoundationIan & Johanne (Zwicker) McKeeAnn (Crooks) PituleyPower Corporation of CanadaReader’s Digest Foundation of
CanadaRogers Communications Inc.Donald StevensonUKC Alumni AssociationWilson Fuel Company Limited
I N G L I S C I R C L E ( $ 5 , 0 0 0 + )The Co-operatorsGeorge & Tia CooperWayne J. HankeyHomburg Charitable FoundationPeter JelleyMichael & Kelly MeighenPepsi Bottling GroupDavid K. Wilson
P R E S I D E N T ’ S C I R C L E ( $ 2 , 0 0 0 + )Anglican Foundation of CanadaDavid & Robin Archibald
William Barker & Elizabeth Church
Norman BellJohn Bontje and Nancy WrenGregor & Beth CaldwellKim CameronHope ClementThomas & *Jane CurranRoger & Lynn EdmondsElizabeth EdwardsJack Gibbons & Mary LovettKevin & Carolyn GibsonSusan HunterJeanne & Ian LeslieJohn MacLeodNova Scotia Power Inc.Neil & Patricia RobertsonSarah E. StevensonNicholas TwymanUniversity of King’s College Day
Students’ SocietyUniversity of King’s College
Young Alexandra SocietyGregory VideticKaren Woolhouse & David Lewis
S C H O L A R S C I R C L E ( $ 1 , 0 0 0 + )1 anonymous donorAdriane AbbottScott Beard
Alberta BoswallStephen BowmanPatricia ChalmersPaul CharleboisJack & Joan CraigRichard & Marilyn CreganJonathan & G. Beth (Tuck) EayrsEdmonds Landscape and
Construction Services Ltd.Christopher ElsonDale GodsoeNita H. GrahamSheryl GrantMichael HartWilliam & Anne HepburnLarry HolmanKim KieransRoland & Marian (Huggard)
LinesMark MacKenzieGeorge Martell & Elaine
MacIntoshGillian McCainElizabeth MilesNewspapers AtlanticProvince of Nova ScotiaHenry Drake PetersenBeverly (Zannotti) PostlMasayoshi Senba & Kazue SembaRonald StevensonClint Wilson
B E N E F A C T O R S ( $ 5 0 0 + )3 anonymous donorsBob AllisonNathalie AtkinsonAtlantic Publishers Marketing
AssociationRoberta BarkerPeggy BethuneJesse BlackwoodRobert & Catherine BlackwoodPeter & Patricia BrysonJoan ClaytonDonnie & Laurie EarlesKelly & Jim EdwardsonJ. Roderick FraserGraduating Class of 2011Roselle GreenGregory GuyCatherine & David HamiltonVivien HannonJim Harbell & Pat McQuaid*John HibbittsThe Hornbeck FamilySimon JacksonAlison JohnsonAngus Johnston & Sandra
HaycockDanford & Mary (Burchill) KelleyStephen KimberAndrew LaingAnne Leavitt
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DONOR REPORT 2012John & Nancy LeefeLaurelle LeVertMary MartinMcInnes CooperKaitlin MerwinJan Nicholls & Paul SobanskiPeter O’BrienSandra OxnerCharlotte (MacLean) PeachJennifer PublicoverRaymond James FoundationCharles ReaghSuzanne RomeoD. Lionel TeedKelly ToughillFernald WentzellWilliam WilliamsSteven Wilson
S U P P O R T E R S ( $ 2 5 0 + )1 anonymous donorMary AhernEric AldousTerri Lynn AlmedaPhilip AnismanJennifer BalfourKatrina BeachKaren & Stephen BezansonDaniel BrandesEvelyn BurnettBryan BurnsGeorge & Sandra (Jones) CainesJames CarfraJohn CarrSheila CaseVivi ChediacClay CoveyduckHugh CreightonRosemarie CurranPaul DalySally Danto & Michael ClancyDaniel de Munnik & Tasya
TymczyszynJ. Mark & Rachel (Swetnam)
DeWolfLillianne DubéMichelle EllingtonC. Russell ElliottJim & Marilyn FeirIan FolkinsLinda Gee & Andrew JonesJonathan & Cindy GoossenPeter & Sheila GormanJohn GorrillJohn GreenJoanna GrossmanMuriel HalleyJohn & Genesta HammMary-Anne Hannas & Aleksander
PatrzykatSusan Hayden & Stephen
WorkmanAnnette Hayward*Peggy Heller
Barbara HodkinIan & Catherine HugillAnthony JacksonKathleen JaegerLeslie JaegerEmmitt KellyW. J. Tory & Margaret (von
F R I E N D S ( G I F TS U P TO $ 2 5 0 )7 anonymous donorsSarah AbmanPaula AdamskiJoan AitkenSheena & Sean AlbaneseDonna (Richardson) AllenJohn AlwardEsther (Wainwright) AmiroRita AndersonDennis AndrewsPhyllis & Aldo AnzilCurtis ArchibaldDavid, Robin, Lindsay & Gillian
Carmen Buhler & Bill WilsonJ. Douglas BurgessEdward BurnBrian BurnellSteven Burns & Janet RossChristopher ByrneRobin CalderPamela CallowAnne CameronDriffield CameronJudith CampbellCanadian Red Cross SocietyDavid CarterRoberta Carter & William MiltonCatherine CervinAngela ChangMr. Rick Charney & Dr. Sara
s C i e n C e r o C K s : a n e w B u r s a r y f o r f e m a l e s t u d e n ts
WHEN ANN (CROOKS) PITULEY gradu-ated from King’s in 1957 with a BSc in geol-ogy, she was part of a “rare breed.” Female geologists were not abundant in the 1950s. Degree in hand, she went to work for a mining company in northern Quebec. “I was very fortunate—indeed blessed,” she says, “to find a job which entailed actual work ‘in the field’ as opposed to being confined to an office, as other young women geologists of the time were,” she says. “I have been very encouraged to see more women venture into this formerly male-dominated field of science.”
Ann married an engineer, Lawrence Pitu-ley, who also worked for the mining company, and they had three children. Even when she opted to leave work when her children were small, she maintained her great interest in mining and geology. It is this enthusiasm—and an abiding fondness for her alma mater—that led Ann, now retired in Abbotsford, BC, to create an endowed annual award. The Ann M. Crooks Bursary is for a third-year female student who is enrolled at King’s and majoring in a ‘hard’ science (chemistry, physics, biology, geology, or computer science) at Dalhou-sie University. The first award from the en-dowment income, valued at approximately $1300, will be awarded in 2013. The award is getting a jump start this year, thanks to an additional gift. “Ann and Larry are a remarkable couple,” says director of Advancement Adriane Ab-bott . “Ann is a role model and an inspiration. King’s is grateful for her vision and her gift, which will help to encourage another gen-eration of female trail-blazers in science.”
John MableyJeremy MacArthurChristina MacdonaldLesa MacDonaldMeagan MacDonaldRonald A. MacDonaldKevin MacDonellDavid MacDougallSara MacfarlaneJohn & Clair MacInnisKen & Mary MacInnisDavid MacKayEric MacKayKathleen MacKeiganHarvey & Helen MacKenzieHeather MacKenzieIan & Helen (Grant) MacKenzieJohn MacKenzieNorman MacKenzie
Mary MacLachlanGeorge MacLeanNeil & Jean (Bird) MacLeanOriel MacLennanJennifer (Bassett) MacLeodSusan J. MacLeodMarli MacNeilHeather MacQuarrieAlistair Macrae & Louise WrazenJill MaderNancy MaklanAdrienne MalloyDavid, Mary, Laura & Jack
MaloneyJames MannRonald MarksRowland MarshallRene & Carmen MartinKeith Mason
KING’S ATHLETICS HAD a tremendous boost this year when it received $30,000 from an anonymous donor with an illustri-ous athletic past. “This gift has made it the most significant year in the history of ath-letics at King’s,” says director of athletics Neil Hooper. “There has certainly not been anything like this before in my 21 years here.”The gift was used to buy a basketball shoot-
ing machine, a rugby scrum machine, and an ice machine. These important additions have transformed athletics by helping play-ers to get more from their practice time and as tools to help recruit new players. The basketball shooting machine enables groups of players to work out and hone their skills, even when a coach is not there, while the rugby scrum machine has made it pos-sible for both the men’s and women’s teams to work on specific tactics and manoeuvres. But it is the ice machine that has revolu-tionized sports on campus. “Every single one of our students has benefited from the ice machine,” says Hooper. “It’s used for injuries and sore muscles and it has really raised the level of service we provide. Before we had the ice machine, we were dragging bags of ice from the cafeteria or local gas stations.” The new equipment has placed King’s on equal footing with other university athletic departments, says Hooper.
C o n n e C t i n G w i t h C a l l e r sELIZABETH MONTGOMERY was a stu-dent caller in 2011 and a supervisor in 2012. This February and March, she and a team of 26 student callers and two other supervisors made over 5000 calls to King’s alumni all over the world. “It’s not just about the dona-tions,” says Elizabeth, “it’s about connecting. We love it when alumni tell us what King’s was like in their day, and to be able to tell them about King’s now.” Thank you to everyone who took the time to talk to a student caller and to make a gift to the Annual Fund.
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DONOR REPORT 2012Catherine (Rhymes) MisenerJanet MitchellRonald & Susan MittonMelinda MontgomeryJennifer MooreKathryn MorrisAndrew Morrison & Jennifer
G I F T S W E R E M A D E I N M E M O R Y O FMargaret Amelia Campbell &
Ernest Bishop SpurrInnis ChristieJane CurranGraham DennisPeggy HellerKathleen KieransMary (Hunt) LaneRosemary LloydPetronella “Nellie” NeishRev. Andrew B. PitcairnKen SimpsonJoy H. SmithRev. B.C. StropleCatharine TiltonLeslie Ann (Cutler) WalshSusan Williams Dexter
A N D I N H O N O U R O F(The) Advancement OfficeBill BarkerThe Blackwood FamilyJustis Danto-ClancyKevin GibsonSarah Lilleyman
L E G A C Y G I F T SF.C. Manning Charitable TrustEstate of Robert Morris
G I V E R S I N K I N D1 anonymous donorMichael BishopDavid DibbleeBill & Cynthia HydeGeorge Martell & Elaine
MacIntosh
E V E N T S P O N S O R SBudget Car Inc.CBCCentral Equipment Inc.Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. Custom Lock & Security Ltd.Duffus Romans Kundzins
Rounsefell Ltd.EastLinkFoyston, Gordon & Payne Inc.Grant ThorntonGreco Pizza and Capt. SubGryphonHalifax Glass & Mirror Ltd.Hopgood Dean Group at
t h e C h a p e l : a B e a C o n f o r s t u d e n ts a n d f o r G i V i n GMANY PARENTS WERE MOVED to give to the chapel this year, in part because they had heard about the vandalism and the reduc-tion in the funding for the chaplaincy. But their decision was also prompted by their children’s experiences at King’s. For Ian and Jeanne Leslie, the parents of two daughters at King’s, the chapel was a wel-coming and reassuring presence. “Our girls would hear the daily church bells remind-ing them of the chapel on their campus. On evenings walking from classes at Dalhousie they would see the ‘beacon of light’ from the chapel guiding King’s students home.” For Maria Roberts, the parent of son who
returned home after his first year “full of great tales and new ideas from FYP”, the news of the cut in funding to the chapel was, for her as an Anglican, “sad”. But it was hear-ing her “atheist son” say “we all love the cha-pel, even if we don’t attend many services” that inspired her gift to the chapel. Both the services and retreats the chapel offers are open to everyone, of any faith or none, and the chapel choir has a loyal follow-ing. “Not every student attending a univer-sity in Canada is so fortunate to have both a church as well as chaplain services available to them on their campus,” say the Leslies. “It
is one more thing that makes King’s such a unique and close-knit university campus.”
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 9
TAkING CARE Of BUSINESSCome to King’s—and go to Harvard Business School
by Cheryl Bell
LONG BEFORE THE DAYS of busi-ness schools and executive education, up-and-coming young businessmen
from across North America came to King’s in the summers between 1953 and the 1970s to take advantage of a type of business admin-istration education that was not available in Atlantic Canada at the time. Professors from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and other Canadian universities migrated to King’s to spend five weeks teaching the new arts of marketing, finance, human resources, and production to budding business leaders like David Wilson, David Sobey, and Allan Shaw in the classrooms of the A & A Building. Students of the Atlantic School of Ad-vanced Management Administration had to be already working in the world of business, needed recommendations from the company for which they were working, and had to pay $1,500 to cover tuition, books, and room and board for five weeks in Alexandra Hall. The Atlantic School was sponsored by Acadia, Dalhousie, King’s, Memorial Uni-versity, Mount Allison, NS Technical College, Prince of Wales College, Saint Dunstan’s College, Saint Francis Xavier, St Mary’s, and the University of New Brunswick, and King’s was its home. The lynchpin of the connection between Harvard and King’s appears to have been the Reverend Harry Dysart, who was the dean of men at King’s in the 1950s. Allan O’Brien, who studied political science and economics at King’s before going to law school at Dal-housie, worked as executive assistant to the Reverend Dysart in 1954 and 1955 while still an undergrad at King’s. “I was the gofer guy,” he says, “My main job was driving faculty wives down to Mahone Bay on outings.” During O’Brien’s two summers with the Atlantic School, three of the four professors involved were from Harvard and one was from the School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario. While he didn’t take the courses, he remembers it as a good program, with about 40 partici-pants each summer. “It attracted a full house every year and everyone lived in the dorms. The professors were very capable business people and consultants, as well as profes-sors. They were highly skilled in using the business case learning model. Many of them
brought their wives and families. I think they enjoyed their summers in Nova Scotia.” “(Dysart) was clearly the champion for the whole project,” says Bud Bird of Bird Holdings Limited in Fredericton, who at-tended the Atlantic School in the summer of 1957. For Bird, his summer at King’s was “the only university education I have ever had.” At that time, he was in sales management at Domtar, a company that had sent em-ployees to the Atlantic School before. “The professors were all very good teachers and we used the case study method, which had been pioneered by Harvard,” he says. David Wilson (’47), co-chair of Wilsons Fuels and chairman of Kerr Controls, came to King’s in the late 40s from King’s-Edgehill Collegiate, now King’s-Edgehill School. Four or five years after graduating from Dalhousie with a degree in commerce, the Reverend Dysart invited him to attend the Atlantic School. He enjoyed two or three summers participating in the daylong classes at the Atlantic School, but his fondest memories are of day passes to the Waegwoltic Club, cocktail parties in North Pole Bay, and recep-tions hosted by the banks in town. “When I was a student at King’s, it was strictly no liquor, so this was a big change.” he says.
Students for the Atlantic School came from all over Canada and the U.S., many with Harvard connections. Wilson believes that it was the “first executive business school in Canada.” Although he feels that the Atlantic School was aimed at larger corporations, such as General Motors, rather than com-panies the size of Wilsons, Wilson made a valuable connection with one of his Atlantic School classmates, Jake Golding of Dead River Oil in Portland, Maine. “At the time when Wilsons was in the middle of convert-ing customers from coal to oil, the oil cri-sis happened and Nova Scotia exceeded its quota. We had no access to product. I called Jake and he was able to truck fuel up to us. He kept us in business.” Students who successfully completed the program received a certificate, issued jointly by the Harvard Business School and the University of King’s College.
If you have any memories or records from the Atlantic School of Advanced Management Administration that you are willing to share, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Cheryl Bell in the Advancement Office, [email protected] or call 902.422.1271 ext 136.
kING’S
HARVARD
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ON THE LIBRARY STEPSThe German Bildung and the meaning of the liberal arts degree.
By natasha Hay and Magdalena Jennings
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3 1
THE LIBRARY STEPS AT King’s College, which attracts loafers and lovers alike, fundamentally defines
the spirit of our school. Students blow smoke rings, play guitar, throw frisbees, and make friends on the steps, but the architecture is more than just a source of nostalgic memo-ries and beguiling distractions. They are also a centre for political action and intellectual culture for King’s as a whole. On February 2nd, 2011, as part of a larger provincial rally protesting rising tuition fee hikes, students gathered there; earlier in the year, in defense of King’s its traditions, Professor Wayne Hankey delivered a speech from the steps. A stroll up the steps and into the library at any time of the year reveals countless students all reading the same texts at the same time. These are Foundation Year students, many of whose existence is shaped and challenged collectively by engaging with great books over the course of eight months, challenging us not only intellectually but also morally, politically, and personally. The history of Western thought presented in our studies was a history we experienced directly, and we noticed that our own think-ing developed in a trajectory matching that of the tradition we were inheriting. From this, we know that the great books are not simply dead texts, since they move our per-ceptions of the world and change the lives of our minds. Responding to recent demands by provincial governments that the liberal arts justify themselves, we will attempt to explain that the essential place of great books programmes in the modern university is demonstrated by their relation to the Ger-man tradition of Bildung. Rather than providing skills training and factual information, the German educational ideal of Bildung develops the spirit of a person as a whole in relation to the image of man in his time. Throughout the German tradition, to philosophize is to experience the high-est form of human freedom in giving a law to oneself. In great books programmes, the student engages with the spirit of the book rather than its letter, which means that each person becomes unique in forming a project of essential questioning throughout his stud-ies. In a manner which is essentially different from the voluntary and individualistic choice of a career, the member of the university who pursues this higher vocation has responded to a call to become himself and to assume a genuine relation to the world.
True education cannot be about the pro-duction of a human being. It is dangerous to use the language of production in speak-ing of education. Each person is born into and educated in a world that has been de-veloped historically, is shared with others, and is continually being altered. Great books programmes do not simply represent the world as it is: by showing what the world has been, they allow students to imagine what it may become. Rather than restricting the function of postsecondary education to spe-cialized training for a career, the very idea of Bildung demonstrates that it is impos-sible to distinguish between the formation of the individual student and the condition of late modern culture as a whole. Because liberal arts students have developed their interpretative abilities and historical con-
sciousness, they can reflect critically upon and participate actively in public life. Such a sense of responsibility towards the world means that great books programmes are not a refuge from or a refusal of contemporary life: they are an exemplary site for the re-newal of our world. Students carry an experience such as FYP, which provides almost a collective Bildung for a certain year’s class, with them for the rest of their lives. During their time at King’s, each student’s unique way of thinking is ex-pressed in the course of their sustained and earnest engagement with great books in the body of their written work. Just as the stu-dents change over the course of their time
at King’s, so too does the school. Last year, King’s grieved the loss of Peggy Heller, a wonderful teacher and director of FYP, yet her reflections on her first year as FYP direc-tor in the 2008-2009 yearbook gives us an enduring memory of her wisdom: “In a kind of absolute way, I’m struck by how amazing it is that our students can [be assigned] quotes such as, “Heidegger says that Dasein is being held open to the nothing,” and then write wonderful papers about this quote. This is miraculous to me. I’m just amazed that first year students are even reading this stuff, let alone being able to talk about it. How many people in North America or in the world can do that at age 18?” Professor Heller’s comments indicate the importance of the pedagogical community that has allowed King’s to become a place for
memory and hope in the modern world. The relation between teacher and student allows the tradition of the liberal arts and of each educational institution to be preserved and renewed. The interdependence of generations in the pedagogical relation between student and teacher reflects the structure of tradition itself: the fragmentary remnants of the past and the fragility of the present moment are bound together in order to mutually sustain a world. The task of the university is to trans-mit the foundations of the human artifice and to permit the formation of the human soul, and since each person is an end in himself or herself, each student has an infinite claim to be educated for his or her own sake. µ
in a kind of absolute way, i’M struck by how aMazing it is that our students
can [be assigned] quotes such as, “heidegger says that dasein is being held open to the nothing,” and then write wonderful papers about this
quote. this is Miraculous to Me. i’M just aMazed that first year students are
even reading this stuff, let alone being able to talk about it. how Many people in north aMerica or in the world can
do that at age 18?
3 2 T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2
f y p t e x ts
ON JUSTICE AND REVENGEThe importance of Plato, as the Foundation Year Programme turns 40.
By Thomas Curran, Assistant Professor in the Foundation Year Programme
PLATO’S RePUBLIC IS ONE of the defining treatises of the 40 years of the King’s College Foundation Year
Programme. We continue to mourn the un-timely departure of our colleague Dr. Peggy Heller, and are reminded of her first stint as FYP Director, where Peggy summarized the course of FYP as one long, sustained argu-ment with Plato’s great Republic. The main thing one learns in the first pages of this sem-inal treatise is that justice can never harm anyone: for a just man, “it is never right to harm anyone at any time” (335e). This profound doctrine is not to be con-fused with some cherished and determined estimation of the nobility of mankind, so that no one should ever be punished. Jus-tice can never harm anyone, that is to say that justice can never be a source of evil for anyone—but justice may nevertheless re-quire, even demand, punishment. The rea-sons for punishment are various, but the most straightforward is as the necessary condition and framework for rehabilita-tion. This is obviously topical, since Nor-
way’s system of justice is supremely focused on both rehabilitation and reintegration of life into community and society. Apparently, the maximum sentence under Norwegian criminal justice for murder, without regard for multiple murders—even of 77 souls, and mostly young ones to boot—cannot extend beyond 21 years, apart from the narrow regu-lations governing “protective custody”. This remarkable restriction on criminal sentenc-ing emphasizes how rehabilitation is always the condition for the desired reintegration. A profoundly contrasting view is pre-sented in the pit of Dante’s Inferno, where some crimes are judged as so heinous, that the souls involved become corrupted beyond all hope of redemption. Dante’s picture here is of crimes so unspeakable that the criminal soul actually flees the body, leaving the for-mer sinner in the condition of the vampiric “undead”—those miserable “human” entiti-ties, formerly known by names like Jack and Jill—now only surviving in Hollywood films in the unhappy condition of “zombies”. Obviously, an alumni magazine is not the place to settle the pros and cons of Norwe-gian criminal justice, but punishment need
not be apprehended simply as the opposite of justice. Not only may incarceration be de-manded for rehabilitation with its attendant principles of self-control, self-discipline and self-reform; it may also be understood as a
deterrent. The deterrent quality of punish-ment serves as a reminder to the criminally inclined, but it also helps the rest of us to remember to keep to the straight and narrow. The criminal justice system of any coun-try has a profound obligation to its citizens. One condition of our precious democratic freedoms is that ordinary citizens, especial-ly as we age, need not cower in fear behind closed doors, lest we fall victims to crime. One of the great privileges of living in Canada is that we cherish and exercise our freedom to walk the streets of our cities and go about our ordinary business without fear. There are profound reasons for “protective custody”: not only to protect the guilty from further harm, especially from acts of revenge, but also to secure the necessary conditions of a “free” society. Seen in this light, it is not bi-zarre to maintain that there is no equivalence in the statements that justice can never harm anyone and no one should ever be punished. These Socratic doctrines are profound. But what changes the lives of all of Plato’s students is the recognition that revenge, therefore, has no place whatsoever in any consideration of the nature of justice—even with respect to the recent horrors in Norway, a fact which the Norwegian criminal justice obviously seeks to emphasize. Revenge is precisely not justice, since it actively desires the acute wounding of the opposite number. As I learned—just from listening to a discus-sion on CBC Radio—the best summary for all motives of revenge runs as follows: “I’m hurting, I want somebody else to hurt as well.” With that simple and precise synop-sis of revenge, we recognize that a just life is one that must eschew revenge forever. Feelings of revenge eat up the soul of the one who feeds this monster, and cannot of-fer the majesty of divine justice to any of its intended victims. This is what students in FYP learn within the first fortnight of their arrival at the Uni-versity of King’s College, viz. that justice can never harm anyone, and that consequently revenge cannot have any part in any system of justice or any desire for justice. For this FYP tutor, the world has never been the same after reading Plato. My experience of FYP suggests this may well be true for others! µ
feelings of revenge eat up the soul of the one who feeds
this Monster, and cannot offer the Majesty of divine
justice to any of its intended
victiMs.
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3 3
ANxIETY NOWNot the end of the world as Snobelen knows it
By Kate Howell
AS WE SCRAMBLE CLOSER to Dec. 21—the ambiguous predicted date of the conclusion of the Mayan calen-
dar cycle—it’s hard to know if we’re facing an apocalypse, or something else entirely. But according to Dr. Stephen Snobelen, associate professor in the History of Science and Technology Programme at King’s, we do know that fears of the apocalypse stem from an emotional state that has haunted humanity for millennia—anxiety. “That kind of apocalyptic thinking comes out of anxieties about our place on the planet, or indeed, about the planet itself and its long-term viability,” Snobelen says, an expert on early modern prophetic interpreters. “Hu-man society, human life in general is going to change in significant ways, and for many, that’s alarming.” Apocalyptic thought is centuries old and has many faces. Phrases like apocalypse, Ar-mageddon, rapture, doomsday and melt-down are exploited and misused from their biblical and scientific origins, which then spawn dramatic theories. For example, the
Bible speaks of an unveiling in the Book of Revelations, with great battles, plagues, and divine intervention. Still, the same root can sprout various interpretations. Science has added only more anxiety, pitching even more theories throughout history: cosmological theories like the Big Rip and the Big Crunch, the bubonic plague, the world being struck by comets, and heat death, a 19th century theory based on the sun’s eventual death. “Since that moment in the Victorian pe-riod, humanity has had a reason from science to be concerned about the future of human-ity,” Snobelen says. So where does 2012 fit? The prophecy isn’t associated with religion or science, and doesn’t explicitly predict the end of the world. It is an entirely manufactured fear; the real issue is not the original prediction, but what humanity has done with it, says Snobelen. “When you have some suggestion that this exotic culture has made predictions about 2012, you triangulate the evidence. All
these things are happening: the ice is melt-ing, hurricanes are more common, “ says Snobelen. “It adds to the plausibility. This [theory] is one more thing that seems to point in the same direction.” The date is often connected with nature, a hot-button issue in today’s society, fed by media reporting and blockbusters like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow. “It tells us the environment is one of the big issues today. It tells us a lot of people see the environment as something important and something that could eventually do us in.” In the meantime, the world waits un-til Dec 22. After all, dates have been set throughout history, from Harold Camp-ing’s prediction of a May apocalypse (and then again of a recalculated October one) to Newton’s own doomsday calculations sur-rounding the year 2060. Remember Y2K? We thought technology couldn’t manage the date turning over into a new century. In the end, there wasn’t so much a bang as there was a whimper. “A lot of these things tend to fizzle out,” Snobelen says. Still, we can’t know anything
until the day arrives. Besides, the 2012 prophecy could also mean the turning of a new calendar and a new beginning, which Snobelen says should give us hope or, at least, some optimism. µ
Professor Stephen Snobelen in his office. (Photo: Calum Agnew)
“that kind of apocalyptic
thinking coMes out of anxieties about our place on the planet, or indeed, about the planet
itself and its long-terM viability.”
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l i V e s l i V e d
GLEN HANCOCk: 1919-2011King’s Journalism School followed his lede
GLEN HANCOCK’S DAUGHTER, Beau, says her father was always trim, fit and energetic. But it was
only when she moved back home to Wolfville four years ago did she realize just how busy his life was. “I remember one morning when I first moved here, we had gone to coffee and when we came back, there were a bunch of people sitting in his living room,” she says, laughing.
“He went, ‘Oh, I forgot. It’s the first Tues-
day of the month.’” Every month, Randall House museum volunteers—her father was one—would meet at his house. And though he wasn’t at home when they got there, the volunteers just expected he’d show up later.
“They were so used to coming for the meeting that they knew he’d turn up.” Glen Hancock, who was the first dean of the King’s Journalism School when it first evolved from the Maritime School of Journalism in 1962, died on Dec. 27, 2011
at the age of 91. His study, in a little white house in Wolfville, N.S., overlooked a pond, not far from the dykes where he walked with his dog Rusty in the mornings. He kept a garden full of flowers in the backyard and, most impor-tantly, lots of friends nearby. “If he was out somewhere and someone said, ‘Let’s have a party,’ he’d say, ‘Come to my house’.” He had plenty of parties, including his annual Garden Party, which he hosted for 32 years. Everyone from dignitaries to his cous-ins’ friends would come. “It really showed you who he was, that range of people we would have,” she says. That love of people translated into his love of storytelling, Beau says. A long-time newspaperman and columnist, he was the dean and the driving force behind the Mari-time School of Journalism in 1962, a forerun-ner to the school of journalism that opened in 1978. “The average person sees a doctor about once a year. He requires an engineer hardly ever in his lifetime, seldom an accountant, and he sees a lawyer professionally as little as he can. Yet we have had schools for these professionals for some time, and well we should,” he said in a 1962 speech to the Hali-fax Rotary Club as the head of the school.
“Almost everyone, though, reads a newspaper every day, and a magazine in the evening. Yet until now, there has not been a school in these Atlantic provinces to train people to work in these fields.” Before he took over, King’s was only a partner in a joint program with Mount Saint Vincent and Saint Mary’s University, but the program did not grant degrees. The King’s journalism school he helped found was the first professional school of its kind, granting the first journalism certificates in the region. For years after his retirement, he would teach creative writing classes out of his living room and drive into Halifax to teach evening journalism classes at King’s. The university later awarded Hancock an honorary doctor-ate of civil law for his contributions to the Maritimes. John Nowlan, who is now a travel writ-er after 35 years with the CBC, took these evening classes in the early ’70s. “The
Glen Hancock, dean of the journalism school, from the 1965 Record yearbook. (Photo: the King’s Archives)
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assignments were tough, he marked hard but fairly…it certainly was not the equivalent of a BJ, but it’s something that has stayed with me and followed me all my life.” From Hancock, Nowlan learned the ins and outs of hard news reporting, lessons he couldn’t get from his alma mater, Acadia University. “In those days, the thought of going back to school was not uppermost in my mind,” he says, laughing. “But the classes were so interesting and fascinating, and Glen brought so much passion to it, that it was something I do remember, even 40 years later, that I looked forward to with great relish.” “If not for Glen, there probably wouldn’t be a King’s journalism school, or at least not at the strength that the King’s journalism school has. Glen’s course, I think, made a lot of people sit up and take notice that this is something King’s has been doing well…all the students that precede and follow (this year’s journalism class) are grateful to Glen.” Beau remembers her father’s passion for teaching those classes. “Dad had some exer-cises he did with his journalism students on general knowledge and oftentimes, we’d sit around the dining room table and he’d field out these questions,” says Beau. “I will never be able to forget that Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Chan-nel.” He had “an undying curiosity about the world and about people,” says Andrew Steeves, who published two of Hancock’s books, Charley Goes to War and My Real Name is Charley: Memoirs of a Grocer’s Clerk, at Gasperau Press. “When you were standing and talking to Glen, he’d pay full attention to you. He was engaged and inter-ested in that moment in time. He was able to slow the world down a bit and just be in the room with you...He loved to tell a good story and with a drink in his hand or standing up in the office.” Every morning for fifteen years before he passed away, Glen would talk shop and trade trivia with his friends at the local coffee shop at 8:30 a.m. sharp—what he called the Old Boys’ Club. “At one point, Dad had a whole load of reference books at the restaurant,” said Beau. “They’d gotten a question about who did what when, and he had the books
right there in the restaurant.” She also recalls her father taking his friends to visit a local recycling plant, as well as to a farmer to learn how to harvest carrots, simply out of his own curiosity. He traveled extensively during his career in public rela-tions with Imperial Oil, and saw many coun-tries, including China, where he traveled to study prisons with the John Howard Society. After retirement, he led tours around the
world with his Globe Trotters group, trips that Beau said were “life-changing” for many people in the Annapolis Valley. Ever curious and energetic, Beau remem-bers him saying shortly before he passed away, “‘I still have so much I want to do’.” Buds are starting to show on the flowers at Glen’s house, reminding Beau of her dad’s love for his friends and his garden parties.
“He loved life so much.” µ
Glen Hancock with his dog. (photo contributed by family)
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“WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I wanted to be a fire truck. I quickly dismissed this ridiculous dream after my parents told me human children couldn’t grow up to
be trucks of any kind, and I decided that I would become a doctor, instead. A doctor who was also a dinosaur. Dr. Dino. Now, I may have compromised on my dreams of medicine—that’s just part of becoming an adult—but I’ve never really stopped want-ing to be a dinosaur. And you know what? There is no part of this degree that says I can’t! …They say that a B.A. isn’t worth anything—personally, I think that’s something to celebrate. …The modern axiom that a degree in the liberal arts does not provide an obvious foundation for today’s careers is absolutely true, but it is a consolation, not a curse. Who are more likely to change things than those who do not have an investment in the way things currently are? In a world that can no longer exist in its current formulation, its best chance for future is not a collection of rapacious business majors struggling to learn Mandarin, but people who think, reflect, and dream, whose palettes possess colours we have yet to see.”
—Alexander Desiré-Tesar, valedictorian of the Class of 2012. Read the full speech at www.ukings.ca/encaenia-2012.
encaenia
top: Valedictorian Alexander Desiré-Tesar. Middle left: Bagpiper and King’s student Will Barton prepares to lead the procession from King’s College as honor-ary class president and former King’s president Dr. William Barker looks on. Middle right: Katherine Connolly and Dana Mestechkin. bottoM left: Dr. Elizabeth Fountain speaks at the President’s Dinner. To read or watch the speech, go to www.ukings.ca/encaenia-2012. bottoM right: Dr. Neil Robertson and Fred Vallance-Jones lead the class of 2012 into All Saints Cathedral.
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encaenia
top left: Andrei Mihailiuk and Jaya Bremer. top right: A journalism grad embraces a friend. Middle: The class of 2012. bottoM left: Jacqueline Vincent and the class of 2012 processes from King’s to Sacred Heart High School. bottoM right: Dr. Anne Leavitt, with honorary doctorate recipients: the Right Reverend Ron Cutler, Elizabeth Fountain, and Lewis Lapham.
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“WHEREVER YOU LOOK, and I am speaking literally, you can see Drake’s influence on the
College. If you visit the Chapel, the beautiful silver candlesticks were his donation. If you look at the paintings of our earliest presidents hanging in Prince Hall…it was Drake who had them restored, thus preserving them for future generations. When you look around the library, at the comfortable chairs, the tasteful carpets, the plants, the portraits on the walls, and absorb the welcoming atmosphere that is so important to College life, you realize immediately that this is a place where the librarian cares about mak-ing students and others feel at home…In what other library has the librarian served tea and cake once a week during term at 3 o’clock on Tuesdays to anyone who happens to be in the building? In giving so much to the institution that he took to his heart over 40 years ago, Drake has exemplified the spirit of King’s, a spirit of service to which, according to the College motto, Deo, Regi, Legi, Gregi, we are all called as King’s men and women.” —Dr. Henry Roper (DCnL ’09)
top: kiki wood (bah ’12) and dan de Munnik (bsch ’02) amid a lively mingling crowd at the HMCS Ward-room. left: Drake Petersen receives the Order of the Ancient Commoner from Dr. Henry Roper.
aLumni dinner
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aLumni dinner
This year’s Alumni Dinner took place on May 10th, 2012. The Judge J. Elliott Hudson Distinguished Alumnus/a Award—presented yearly to a King’s alumnus/a who has made significant contributions to their profession and community—was awarded to former Nova Scotia premier russell Maclellan (ba ’62, dcl ’03). Of the last four Nova Scotia premiers, three have earned his undergradu-ate education at the University of King’s College: MacLel-lan, john hamm (bsc ’58) and darrell dexter (ba ’79, bj ’83), who were all in attendance. The Order of the Ancient Commoner, which honours alumni or friends of the College who has demonstrated selfless service to the university, inducted Margaret barnard (ba ’42), King’s librarian and archivist drake petersen, and sarah stevenson (fyp ’94).
top left: Past winner and premier Darrell Dexter gives Russell MacLellan the Judge J. Elliott Hudson Distin-guished Alumnus/a Award. top Middle: Margaret barnard (ba ’42) accepts her Order of the Ancient Commoner from greg guy (bjh ’87). top right: Dr. Elizabeth Edwards inducts sarah stevenson (fyp ’94, right) her Order of the Ancient Commoner. Middle left: Three King’s premiers: John Hamm, Darrell Dexter, Russell Ma-cLellan. Middle right: Cheryl Bell, Dr. Anne Leavitt, terra bruhm (bjh ’06). left: elizabeth ryan (ba ’69) and Dr. Ian Stewart dance to the sounds of the Jubilee Swing Orchestra.
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5 0 sG. norman Kyle (’57) is retired and living in Arizona. He enjoys spending time with his two children and six grandchildren.
6 0 sThe Most Reverend arthur Peters (ba ’60, bsT ’63, bDiv ’73, DD ’82) will cel-ebrate 50 years of ordained ministry in March 2013.
John leefe (ba ’66) was appointed Hon-orary Colonel of the West Nova Scotia Regi-ment. He is also on the board of governors at King’s.
stephen Hart (ba ’68) and Janet (fulton) Hart (ba ’73) were delighted to welcome a grandson into the family.
David Jones (ba ’68), president of the Alumni Association between 2008 and 2010, has written a book, The School of Sun Tzu, which was published in April 2012. He is the principal at Shibumi Management, which specializes in organizational gover-nance, strategic planning, and knowledge management.
cynthia (smith) Pilichos’s (ba ’68) year was sadly marked by the death of her mother Joy smith (ba ’42). Cynthia’s father, Harry D. smith (Dcl ’91) was president of King’s between 1963 and 1969. Four generations
of her family have gone to King’s, including two daughters, alexis Pacey (ba ’88) and andrea Pilichos (ba ’93).
7 0 sIan Johnson (baH ’72) received the Out-standing Male Trade Unionist award for 2011 from the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour in October 2011. Ian is a servicing coordinator/policy analyst with the Nova Scotia Govern-ment and General Employees Union. He is also vice-chair of the Nova Scotia Citizens’ Health Care Network and he helped to es-tablish the Nova Scotia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
charles o’neil (ba ’72) is director of gift planning at the QE II Health Sciences Centre Foundation.
Jane (fulton) Hart (ba ’73) and her hus-band stephen Hart (ba ’68) have a new grandson.
Deborah Ramey (bsc ’76) retired in 2011 after 30 years as a speech pathologist with the Department of Education.
catherine (sutherland) emmerson (’76) retired from her position as regional man-ager of Intact Insurance in June 2012.
cynthia fry (’79) and her family moved to the UK in May 2012. Her husband, Donald McIntosh, has accepted a job with Lotus Formula One Racing.
8 0 sJames eaton (’82-’85) is teaching as a ses-sional lecturer at Algonquin College in Ot-tawa in the Electro-Mechanical Engineering program. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Tim flinn (ba ’84) enjoys coaching basket-ball at King’s and is still “chasing the small college title.” He was delighted to be inducted into the Order of the Ancient Commoner in 2011.
lynda MacGibbon (bJH ’84) has relocated from Atlantic Canada to Toronto, where she is the national communications director for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Cana-da. She continues to write a weekly column, ‘People, Places and Things’, for the Moncton Times & Transcript.
Robert Mills (baH ’84) had a first novel
published by Orca in September 2011, called Charlie’s Key. He is married to Dr Kelly lau-rence (bsc ’84).
cynthia andrews (bscH ’87) earned a Master of Education degree from Acadia University in October 2011. She is a full-time faculty member at Dalhousie Dentistry, a cross appointment at Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine.
Henry Howard (ba ’89) and Kimberley (Veinot) Howard (baH ’91) recently spent a month driving across Siberia. Henry is an architect and Kimberley is project manager at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton.
Katherine (brooks) oland (ba ’89) lives in Cape Breton where she is a mother of three, writer, farmer, and community ac-tivist. To find out more about her life, visit oldmanfarm.blogspot.com.
Dr laurelle leVert (baH ’89) has accepted the position of associate vice-president at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John). She begins her new role on August 1. Since 2007, Laurelle has been the registrar and director of Student Services at NSCAD.
9 0 sDr. bernard Wills (baH ’90) has a three-year appointment in the Department of Hu-manities at the Grenfell Campus of Memo-rial University. He is married to Jean Wills (ba ’90).
Jane barter Moulaison (ba ’91) is associ-ate professor of theology and church history at the University of Winnipeg. Her latest book, Thinking Christ: Christology and Crit-ics, was published this spring with Fortress Press.
Roger Thompson (baH ’91) is an assistant professor at Kyung Hee University in Ko-rea. He has written two books, Brown Shoes, Black Shoes, and Felt Slippers: Parochialism and the evolution of the Post-War U.S. navy and Lessons not Learned: The U.S. navy’s Status Quo Culture. He is also a commander in the Royal Hutt River Navy, a ceremonial military organization that serves the Prin-cipality of Hutt River.
Julie (Hasen) forbes (ba ’92) has re-turned to Nova Scotia after six years in Eng-land and Australia. She is married to Jim Forbes and has two children, daughter Shay, who is eight, and son Rowan, who is five.
aLumnOTes
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aLumnOTes
Gillian McGillivray (baH ’94) is a profes-sor at York University. In 2009, Duke Uni-versity Press published her book, Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959.
William beckett (bJH ’96) is studying marketing at Holland College in PEI and working on short documentaries on the PEI arts scene.
andrew Killawee (bJH ’98) and fellow mu-sician David Christensen hosted a concert marking the 100th anniversary of Halifax’s Titanic Memorial Service, held at St Paul’s Church, 21 April 1912. The concert featured original music and readings from the 1912 memorial service.
Molly (bennett) MacKenzie (fYP ’98) has two little boys, Robbie, who is one, and Freddie, who is three.
Mark Mullane (bJH ’98) became father to Tommy Fox-Mullane on November 15, 2011. He has also been working as a producer at ‘This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ and this sum-mer will be working on a documentary, called Donair-cumentary with Joe Cobden, the son of Michael Cobden, the former director of the King’s School of Journalism.
Meghan Hapgood (fYP ’99) received her MBA from Dalhousie in 2011.
Jaime little (bJH ’99) welcomed Sam Cu-baynes into the family on 25 July 2011, a little brother for Ella.
Mark Richardson (baH ’99) and sarah-lee Richardson (bJH ’97) welcomed Jack Parker Richardson into the family at Thanks-giving 2010, a younger brother for Cameron, who was born in 2009.
Greg Harnish (fYP ’92, Wardroom ’91-’95) and Alisse Houweling are delighted to announce the arrival of their daughter Soleil on December 29, 2011. When not changing diapers, Greg is in-house legal counsel at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. He can be reached at [email protected]
0 0 sMatt Robinson (baH ’00) is currently finishing a PhD in mediaeval philosophy at Boston University. He has been offered a tenure track post in mediaeval philosophy at St Thomas University in Fredericton. Matt is a former FYP teaching fellow.
sarah Thornton (baH ’01) has a three-year-old son, Alastair, and is expecting a second child in June.
Zaikra fullerton (fYP ’02) met her best friend while they were posing for their ma-triculation photo in the autumn of 2001. She didn’t see the photo until December 2011, when the Advancement Office sent her a copy of the Record for that year.
David Puxley (baH ’02) was ordained as an Anglican Deacon on 11 June 2012, 7:00 PM, at the Cathedral Church of All Saints, Halifax.
Dr. Desmond Writer (bJ ’02) is now fully retired from his work in the department of anesthesia at Dalhousie University and his clinical practice. He is enjoying classes in bridge, Italian and cooking, and writes a weekly newsletter for his Italian class. He sends his good wishes to all fellow graduates of the 2002 BJ graduating class on the occa-sion of their 10th year anniversary.
Glenn Davidson (Dcl ’07) succeeded Wil-liam Crosbie as Canada’s ambassador to Af-ghanistan on June 2, 2012. He was previously ambassador of Canada to the Syrian Arab Republic (2008-2012) and a career naval officer, retiring in 2008 as a vice-admiral.
Tim carlson’s (bJ ’87), Vancouver-based company, Theatre Conspiracy, won the 2013 Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award. The $60,000 prize will go toward the creation of a new work. extraction, a documentary theatre work in Mandarin and English, based on the biographies of Chinese workers in Fort Mc-Murray and expats drawn to Beijing by the economic boom, will premiere in Vancouver in March 2013.
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Mitch cochran (bJH ’05) has recently re-turned to Toronto after two years of working with Nine Network Australia.
Moya Dumville (ba ’05) is finishing her master’s degree in art conservation at Queen’s. She will be doing an internship in Boston this summer.
susan Mohammad (bJH ’05) was a silver medalist for a 2011 Kenneth R. Wilson Award in the Best Feature category. She was also nominated in the Best Professional Article category. She was a 2010-11 Ontario Arts Council writing grant recipient.
ariel nasr’s (baH ’05) film The Boxing Girls of Kabul was shown at the 2012 View-finders International Film Festival for Youth. He is currently working on another Kabul-based film, Buzkashi Boys. To see a trailer, go to www.kickstarter.com/projects/ 455421787/buzkashi-boys.
Rebecca sutin (baH ’05) is starring in a Bravo TV reality show called Way Off Broad-way, which is about 21 people who are putting on a Broadway production of The Wizard of Oz.
andrew choptiany (fYP ’06) is working on his Master of Architecture degree at the University of Toronto.
Johanna Kalkreuth (bsc Hons ’06) was awarded a MA Counselling from Gonzaga University, Washington, in May 2012.
Heather Keachie (baH ’06) is currently a visiting lecturer at the University of the Gambia.
HOST/Classics graduate Deirdre Moore (baH ’06) is studying at Harvard. She won a Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies 2011 grant last year.
lisa crystal (baH ’07) is currently study-ing at Harvard and has been busy giving pa-pers and publishing.
stephanie Dick (baH ’07), who is study-ing for a PhD at Harvard, has had a paper published in Isis, the leading international journal for the history of science.
George cooper (Dcl ’08) has been ap-pointed Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his longstanding contribu-tion to the promotion of Sweden in Atlantic Canada. This is the highest decoration that the King of Sweden bestows and it was given to George upon his retirement as Honorary Consul of Sweden.
Jonathan Grady (bJ ’08) now has a son, Jackson, who was born on October 26, 2011. Jonathan has been teaching in South Korea and Japan.
andrea Jerrett (bJH ’08) was married to John Munro on May 19, 2012.
sonya Katrycz (baH ’07) is completing a law degree at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
Dana Kayes (baH ’08) is currently in her second year of an undergraduate degree in theoretical physics at Durham University in the UK.
andrea Klassen (bJH ’08) is now a city hall and provincial politics reporter for Kamloops This Week, after two years of reporting and editing in the Kootenays.
alex Mifflin (ba ’08) and his brother Tyler created the six-episode The Water Brothers series for TV Ontario. Aired in March, the series is still available to watch on www.the-waterbrothers.ca.
Graham north (bJ ’08) will head to Har-vard’s Graduate School of Education this au-tumn to study for a master’s in international education policy. He won a scholarship called the Harvard Impact Award and the focus of his studies will be on creativity in education.
faye bontje (fYP ’09) spent 10 days in New York City on a League of American Orches-tras essentials of Orchestra Management course where she was the only Canadian. Faye is currently the executive director of The King’s Orchestra.
chris Gibson (baH ’09) and Kate MacK-eigan (ba ’09) are excitedly anticipating their move to Ottawa at the end of summer 2012. Chris, who received a master’s degree in classics from Dalhousie University in 2011, will begin a doctorate programme in the philosophy department at the University of Ottawa. Kate, who graduated from the Masters of Library and Information Studies programme at Dalhousie this year, is cur-rently working in the King’s Registrar’s Of-fice but is seeking employment in informa-
aLumnOTes
Former president Bill Barker caught up with Stephanie Dick, Lisa Crystal, and Deirdre Moore at Harvard.
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tion management for September.
alison Hugill (baH ’09) recently com-pleted a Master of Art Theory degree in Lon-don, England, and is hoping to move back to Berlin soon.
nicholas logan (bJ ’09) is working as an online producer for Global News in Halifax.
John Packman (bJH ’09) is working as a photographer in Toronto.
clare Waque (baH ’09), owner and opera-tor of the Bus Stop Theatre, played host to Soloicious in May, a multidisciplinary festi-val for solo work. It featured the talents of sébastien Heins (’07-08), current King’s student Lewis Wynne-Jones, former FYP student Kyle McCracken, and former FYP tutor El Jones.
lisa Weighton (bJH ’09) has been ac-cepted at the University of Ottawa to do a master’s degree in globalization and inter-national development.
florence Yoon (baH ’02) returned to Canada in August 2011 and is now a visit-ing assistant professor at UBC. Florence did her graduate studies at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Her DPhil, funded by a SSHRC doc-toral award, was on the use of anonymous characters in Greek tragedy. She held a ju-nior research fellowship at Somerville Col-lege, Oxford in 2008-09 while also working as a classics teacher at Magdalene College School. She subsequently taught as a col-lege lecturer at Trinity College and then at Worcester College, Oxford. Florence’s dis-sertation has been turned into a book, which will be published by Brill this summer.
David Hugill (baH ’04) received a 2011-12 Fulbright scholarship to allow him to spend a year in Minneapolis, Minnesota, conduct-ing research that compares Canadian and US cities. David is a PhD student in geography at the University of York.
Mike Whitehouse (bJ ’04) brought togeth-er his interests in teaching and journalism in a project in Beijing in which he led 22 Eng-lish teachers and 300 grade 12 students on a project to produce magazines that compare and contrast Canadian and Chinese culture.
1 0 ssydney black (baH ’10) has just graduated with a MA in history from McGill University.
Geoffrey Davies (bJH ’10) invites everyone to follow him on Twitter @geoffdav.
Jason MacGregor (’06-’10) ran for public office on PEI in the September provincial election. Some of his recommendations ended up in Premier Robert Ghiz’s Rural Action Plan.
clare Marshall (baH ’10) has her own business designing e-books. She self-pub-lished a young adult novel in June 2011 called Within (www.faeryinkpress.com).
Jennifer Pawluk (bJ ’10) has accepted a position as a sessional proofreader with the Hansard Branch of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. She says that she was a member of Youth Parliament of Manitoba Inc for more than seven years during her teens and early 20s, and served on the model parliament’s board of directors for three of those years. “My time at King’s spanned parts of my sec-ond and third terms with the board. So my interest in the parliamentary process dates back quite awhile, as those who knew me at King’s would attest.”
Marie barnett (baH ’10) has been accept-ed into the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania, beginning in September. Marie recently completed her MA in Phi-losophy at the University of Western Ontario.
English and Contemporary Studies grad, Melinda Robb (baH ’10), has been accept-
ed to the prestigious comparative literature department at Emory University in Georgia for a PhD.
Gregory slack (baH ’10) will be pursuing a master’s degree in philosophy next year, probably at Dalhousie University.
lucy scholey (bJH ’10), a reporter with The Low Down to Hull and Back new weekly paper in Wakefield, Quebec, won two first-place writing awards at the Quebec Com-munity Newspapers Association awards in May. She won Best Feature Story and Best Education Story, and was also nominated for Best Municipal Affairs story and Best News Story.
simon Thibault (bJ ’10) works part-time at CBC Radio and freelances for Xtra, a gay and lesbian newspaper in Toronto.
emma Whitney (baH ’10) married Martin curran (baH ’09) in the King’s Chapel on 2 July 2011. Father Gary Thorne officiated and Dean Hatt delivered the sermon.
Mitchell cohen (baH ’11) and Thomas Dodge (baH ’12) have started a new sci-ence fiction magazine called Big Fat Future.
Justis Danto-clancy (baH ’11) has been a familiar face in the King’s Registrar’s Office for the past two years. He is now moving on to many new opportunities, including work-ing with a film crew in Halifax for the early part of the summer, guiding canoe trips at
aLumnOTes
Duncan, Gordon McOuat’s border collie, died in March after 14 years of faithful service. Twice awarded the KSU silver ‘K’ for his contribution to campus life, Duncan’s friendly face and clicking toenails will be missed in the halls of the Arts & Administration Building.
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Camp Temagami in northern Ontario, and then moving to either Toronto or New York in the autumn. He will be directing a play in Toronto next year.
Heather Gillis (bJ ’11) has been working at NTV News since December 2005.
adrian lee (bJH ’11), having spent the last year freelancing for CBC News Nova Scotia, OpenFile Halifax, Metro news Halifax, and The Coast—as well as serving as editor-in-chief of this very issue of Tidings—will be moving back to Toronto to join the Globe and Mail for a three-month contract as an arts writer, copy editor, and page designer. Follow him on Twitter at @AdrianKLee, and watch the short documentaries he directed
and produced with Michael fraiman (bJ ’11) at feefifofilms.wordpress.com.
Marie-claire Klassen (baH ’11) and Katie Merwin (baH ’11) were the two Canadians to receive Erasmus Mundus scholarships, which awards only two per nationality. They are currently flat-mates in Vienna where they are both studying at the University of Vienna. In the autumn, Katie will move to London to start the second year of the Eras-mus Mundus program at the London School of Economics, and Marie-Claire will head to Copenhagen to study at Roskilde University.
Hannah Rittner (baH ’11) has been an in-tern at Canadian Stage, working at Summer-Works, and helping Alon Nashman produce
a play for the upcoming season at Stratford. Her feminist reimagining of The Cherry Or-chard was performed at the Neptune Studio Theatre in April.
Two summers ago, Griffin McInnes (baH ’11) and elizabeth Johnston (baH ’11) co-founded Wit’s End Theatre, a Halifax-based theatre group dedicated to producing come-dic theatre for the last two years. After put-ting on plays by Christopher Durang, David Ives, and others, they will be workshopping an original play by McInnes named Science Inaction in Halifax and Toronto this summer. For more information, please visit witsend-theatre.ca, or read their blog at thecoast.ca/blogs/WitsEndTheatre/. µ
aLumnOTes
i n m e m o r i a m
Constance M. (DeMille) Corkum (BA ’47) March 2, 2011Dr. Graham W. Dennis, C.M. (DCL ’03)
December 1, 2011Daniel Dematteis (BA ’03) July 4, 2012 Fred Dickson, Q.C. (Friend of College)
February 9, 2012Dr. Marie Elwood, O.N.S. (DCnL ’87)
March 25, 2012Cynthia Floyd (Friend of College) July 13,
2011The Rev. Canon Timothy Alexander Grew
(BA ’64, LTh ’66) January 15, 2012Dr. Glen Hancock (DCL ’98) December 4,
2011Amber Jean Harkins (BJH ’93) February
26, 2012The Rt. Rev. G. Russell Hatton (BA ’56, DD
’86) January 18, 2012
The Rev. Dr. John Bernard Hibbitts (BSL ’48, DD ’83) March 24, 2012
The Rev. Gilbert Bruce Hotchkis (’37) July 2, 2011
The Rev. Canon Philip C. Jefferson (BA ’51, BLS ’52) April 11, 2012
Bernard Wayne ‘Queenie’ MacQueen (BA ’73) March 18, 2012
Alan H. Marshall (BA ’51) January 21, 2012Petronella ‘Nellie’ Neish (Friend of Col-
lege) December 1, 2011Dr. John Philips (Friend of College) June
29, 2012 The Rev. Canon Eric Vernon Porrior (LTh
’52) March 2, 2012Joy (Morrison) Smith (BA ’42) November
26, 2011Ronald H. Thornburn (’55) October 15,
2011
s ta f f
Sylvia Hamilton wins WIFT award
King’s professor and documentary film pro-ducer Sylvia Hamilton was an award-winner at the annual Women in Film and Televi-sion Women Making Waves awards brunch in March.
There are no categories for the WAVE awards. The goal is to salute women in the industry for their contributions, emerging talent, vision, leadership, dedication and outstanding behind-the-scenes support. µ
r e C e n t a l u m n i p u B l i C at i o n s
Susan Dodd’s book, The Ocean Ranger: Re-making the Promise of Oil, was published by Fernwood Publishing in January to mark the 30th anniversary of the sinking of the oil rig Ocean Ranger.
Mélanie Frappier is co-editor with Derek H. Brown and Robert DiSalle of Analysis and Interpretation in the exact Sciences: essays in Honour of William Demopoulos. The book is published by Springer as part of the Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. µ
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'n February 15, 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland taking the entire crew of eighty-four men—including the author’s brother—down with it. It was the worst sea disaster in Canada since the Second World War, but the memory of this event gradually faded
into a sad story about a bad storm. Resurrecting this disaster from the realm of “history,” Susan Dodd argues that power, money and collective hopes for the future revised the story of corporate indifference and betrayal of public trust into a “lesson learned” by an heroic industry advancing technology in the face of a brutal environment. This book is a navigational resource for other disaster after-maths, including that of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, and a call for vigilant government regulation of industry in all its forms.
This is an extraordinary book. Much more than a personal narrative, Dodd explores memory of industrial disasters as a complex and multi-layered project. Her read-ings illuminate the different ways the past is commemorated and reconstructed and the implications for moving forward.
— Eric Tucker, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Dodd’s compelling analysis penetrates deeply into the layers of intimate grief and collective trauma, as they became caught up in the web of corporate greed and political ambition. A fearless advocate for social justice and change, Dodd chal-lenges our understanding of the power dynamics that shape the historical memory of traumatic past, insisting on their lasting political consequences.
— Dorota Glowacka, Director, Contemporary Studies Programme, University of King’s College, and author of Disappearing Traces:
Holocaust Testimonials, Ethics, and Aesthetics
Susan Dodd is an assistant professor in the Foundation Year Programme at the University of King’s College.
3*,$5''&%2"641!)1$-critical books for critical thinkerswww.fernwoodpublishing.ca
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King’s professor Sylvia Hamilton (middle) receives her award.
T i d i n g s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 4 5
n o w B o a r d i n G , f r o m p l at f o r m 9 3 / 4 …All aboard the King’s Express! Twenty-four students, decked out in King’s colours in a scene reminiscent of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, took a VIA Rail train car together from Halifax to Montreal on Apr. 16 at the end of the school year. A joint initiative between VIA Rail and Sustainability King’s, and led by Dan Brown, Juliana Lufkin, and Emma Norton, the King’s Express will make its return journey from Montreal on Aug. 27 and will arrive back at our little college the following day for the start of term. King’s students who miss out may find themselves running into some issues with a Whomping Willow.
ParTing sHOT
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Projet : Annonce MMI 2012
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Publication : Tidings
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