Issue 3, 2020
THE MAGAZINE OF QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY SINCE 1927
Dr. Anita Jack-Davies, MEd’07, PhD’11 Engaging alumni on issureas ocf e HOMEMECOMMIMININING VIRTTUAL•OCAL •OC T OBEOBBEB ER 1717•7 • QUEENQUEEQ E N SU.C. C A/HOMECA/HH OMECC O MINGMING
We’ll’ll alwa ways beb uunitnittedd by thethe experxppperienciennces ththahat shshapeds appeped ouurr livveses. contents Issue 3, 2020, Volume 94, Number 3 Queen’s The magazine of Queen’s University since 1927 queensu.ca/alumnireview ALUMNI REVIEW
2 From the editor 3 Letters to the editor 10 Campus and community 40 Keeping in touch 50 Your global alumni network 52 Ex libris.
ON THE
16 COVER BERNARD CLARK BERNARD COVER STORY Dr. Anita Jack-Davies 8 14 49 was photographed After the fires burn Queen’s From the quaa by Bernard Clark Engaging Queen’s alumni on principal: School of president’s at Llynlea, the issues of race The choices Medicine: message: Kingston home of BY ANITA JACK-DAVIES we make Confronting Belonging at the Davies family. exclusion Queen’s
From feast to famine Paul Sawtell, Artsci’02, on resurrecting his business during a pandemic BY ANDREW STOKES 34
24 This is what
nurses do Three and a half chapters in the life of Kate Kemplin, NSc’01
BY ANDREA GUNN DORJÉ TENZING FROM THE editor Stories that matter Volume 94, No. 3, 2020 ometimes, stories take time to come to fruition, as people’s lives [email protected] take unexpected new directions. Sometimes, life comes at you fast. queensu.ca/alumnireview S @queensureview Our cover story comes to us courtesy of Anita Jack-Davies. Anita is Queen’s Alumni Review a writer, a professor, an alumna, and an elected member of University (circ. 130,000) Council, for which she also works as equity adviser. She is also a The Queen’s Alumni Review is published by the Queen’s Office of Advancement. Black woman who has experienced and witnessed racism and Queen’s is a member of the Council for exclusion to a degree that I, as a Advancement and Support of Education white woman, will never know. I am and the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education. honoured that Anita has shared her Subscriptions are free to alumni, story with us in “After the fires burn.” $25 cdn/year for others. Opinions She writes about some very painful expressed in the Review are not necessarily those of Queen’s University. subjects, and I hope you will read issn #0843-8048 this article with an open heart. Anita Queen’s University also raises the issue of the stories of Principal and Vice-Chancellor Queen’s that we, as a community, Patrick Deane V-P (Advancement) have lost because of systemic racism. Karen Bertrand, Artsci’94 Kate Kemplin and I started Executive Director, Communications, communicating, via Twitter, back in Marketing, Events, and Donor Relations October. We planned a story on her Scott Anderson Director, Strategic Content and
BERNARD CLARK BERNARD work studying traumatic brain injuries Publications in military personnel. There were many Alex Beshara layers to Kate’s personal and professional story. In April, she added Editor another one. I got an email from her then, saying, ‘I’m headed to New Andrea Gunn, mpa’07 Copy Editor York to set up a field hospital for patients with covid-19. I’ll be in Cat London, Artsci’03 touch.” I thought about Kate during that time, hoping she was safe. Graphic Designer Emeritus I was so happy to reconnect with her when she wrapped up her work Larry Harris in New York, which you’ll read about in “This is what nurses do.” Associate Designer (KIT) Wilma van Wyngaarden Paul Sawtell’s story (“From feast to famine”) was slated for our May Writers issue. It was supposed to be a good news story, that of Paul and his Anita Jack-Davies, med’07, PhD’11 wife, Grace, making their dream business a reality. In mid-March, I Andrew Stokes, Artsci’13, ma’14 was awaiting the first draft of the story from writer Andrew Stokes, Photographer Bernard Clark and Paul and I were discussing photo possibilities. And then, of Tenzing Dorjé course, everything changed. Advertise in the Review We shelved the story: Paul and Grace almost had to shelve their [email protected] business, like so many other small business owners whose Canada Post publications mail permit #41089017 livelihoods were threatened by the pandemic. Queen’s Alumni Review And then, in early June, I got an email from Paul. They had, Queen’s University tentatively, turned a corner, reinvented the business, hired back Old Medical Building 50b Arch Street some of their laid-off staff. I’m pleased to share their story with Kingston, on k7l 3n6 you now. Phone: 613.533.6000 ext. 77016 Through phone calls, emails, and Zoom meetings, I have been To update your address or change privileged to work with each of these three alumni to bring their your subscription to either the stories to you. online or app version, email: Recently, the Queen’s Alumni Review was honoured by the [email protected] or call 1.800.267.7837 Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education at its (toll-free in Canada and U.S.) annual awards program. We received a gold award in the category Download the Queen’s Alumni Review “Best feature writing: English” for Wanda Praamsma’s 2019 article on app from the Apple App store for iOS devices and Google Play and Principal Daniel Woolf, “A decade at the helm.” Amazon App store for Android devices.
Andrea Gunn, Editor [email protected] Queen’s University is situated on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory.
2 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview letters TO THE EDITOR
Similarly, one might consider the cumulative hours of coverage dedicated to the alleged sexual assault perpetrated by now-Justice Kavanaugh (unsubstantiated by any other person indicated to have been present at the time of the alleged abuse) against the passive review, where it is mentioned at all by his network, given to allegations of sexual assault against Joseph Biden (other than continued efforts at character assassination of the accuser)? In the latter case, at least nine people have come forward to provide On coronavirus parlance “the coronavirus” is contemporaneous confirmation mortality rates covid-19. of alleged impropriety on the part of Mr. Biden. Yet, this story I very much enjoyed reading John Goodall, Meds’70 is deemed to be not worthy Ali Velshi’s “The pursuit of truth Thank you to Dr. Goodall for this of reporting. in a post-fact world” in Issue 2. clarification. I do appreciate Ali Velshi’s From an “insider” dealing daily efforts to outline the differences with fake news, I learned much On misinformation between misinformation and and took home an approach to and bias in the news disinformation; it would seem assess media, particularly on to me that Mr. Velshi needs to controversial issues. However, I read with interest the article by review how his own network in his essay I found one Ali Velshi concerning journalism handles news reporting. Any specific statement subject to and the pursuit of truth while network that at least attempted misinterpretation, viz. that “the making efforts to identify and to provide unbiased reporting coronavirus” (covid-19) has a report on misinformation and would be a welcome change in higher mortality rate than sars. disinformation. To be clear I am the United States. Mortality rate implies the death a registered independent voter rate in a specific population. in the United States. Geoffrey Clarke, MSc’86 (Geology) The statement “It has already Mr. Velshi may do well to infected many more people than look at the particular biases of Camp Outlook his own network as a starting sars did and it’s got a higher point if he wishes to extend his memories mortality rate” implies that in Since the publication of your those infected, more will die from search for, and correction of, misinformation and article on the 50th anniversary covid-19, whereas the opposite of Camp Outlook, we’ve had is true. It is two to three per cent disinformation. Is it a case of misinformation an outpouring of support from for covid-19 and 10 per cent for Queen’s alumni, for which we sars. Certainly the mortality rate or disinformation to spend literally hundreds of hours of are profoundly grateful. for the general population is We’d like to briefly update much higher for covid-19, due air time discussing the Russian collusion story through its readers on what we’ve been to the much higher infectivity up to since the article was rate of covid-19, which also process while giving virtually no air time (or in the alternative, published. contributed significantly to We’ve had to cancel our 2020 poor initial containment of the derisive reporting) to the currently unfolding story of summer canoe tripping season virus infection. because of covid-19, but we’re I might also point out that fisa abuses perpetrated by the previous government? This looking forward to resuming both infections are caused by a wilderness trips this fall at coronavirus, albeit in today’s disparity smacks of obfuscation.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 3 person. However, with the help of Bob Card, Meds’64, MSc’67, whose wife, Helen, BNSc’62, was a cousin of Ron’s, we connected with Ron’s sister, Kathy Johns. Kathy gave us this information: Ron graduated from Queen’s medical school in 1973 with the distinctions of receiving both the Tricolour award and the Aesculapian award that year. He then began specializing in psychiatry at Queen’s. As well, he went on to study criminology at Cambridge, then was a Commonwealth Scholar studying jurisprudence at Oxford, and then law at University of Western Ontario. He completed his residency in psychiatry at Queen’s in 1980. He was
CAMP OUTLOOK ARCHIVES OUTLOOK CAMP admitted to the Bar at Osgoode Hall, Toronto in 1982 and was a Queen’s with Winter Outlook. “I graduated from Queen’s member of the Law Society of We rescheduled our 50th Medicine in 1971 and love to Upper Canada. His goal was to reunion to Aug. 28–29, 2021 canoe and, more recently, to combine all of this knowledge in Kingston. kayak. One of my children as a forensic psychiatrist. I also wanted to share some suffered from severe mental Ron also loved athletics, of the messages we’ve received, illness and I would have loved competing in track and field which have touched us more him to have the experience,” at Queen’s, ice hockey and than we can express. wrote another doctor. rowing at Cambridge, and “I am forever grateful for the Some of our correspondents rowing at Oxford. experience of Camp Outlook, knew Ron Kimberley and He spent his career in attending quite a few trips from Padre Laverty personally. Kingston as a forensic about 1992 until 1995. I only “Love that you’re treating the psychiatrist with a particular wish I had gone on more. I feel it kids as people and not statistics!” interest in young offenders. changed the direction of my life,” was a comment we loved He always loved the outdoors, wrote one former volunteer. to hear, as it reflects Ron hiking, and canoeing. Ron spent A Queen’s mba’73 graduate Kimberley’s philosophy of as much of his free time as donated the price of a new engaging with youth through possible at his cottage north of Grumman canoe in honor of his the wilderness. Kingston. black Labrador, Buck, who had Greg Gransden, on behalf of the recently passed away. “I think Camp Outlook Board of Directors Buck would have been a wonderful addition to your staff,” I very much enjoyed the article he wrote to us. “He loved the “Out of Kingston and into the outdoors, especially anything to woods.” Please pass along my do with water. More importantly, compliments to author Sara Beck. he was an amazing ‘therapist.’ I was, however, struck by the He had an infallible sense of all-too-brief bio of Ron Kimberley. people and provided emotional Is there any more information on support, mostly by just being where he ended up, and where there when needed.” his career took him? One of the donations we John McDowell, Artsci’82 received was in memory of the late Dr. Hui Lee, md’89, a We didn’t have a lot of information beloved member of the medical on Camp Outlook founder Ron community in Sault Ste. Marie. Kimberley, as he was a very private Ron Kimberley, md’73
4 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview The Artsci 1993 I encourage my classmates and Bursary Fund other Queen’s University alumni to consider supporting our fund In 1997, to mark the fifth to grow its capacity to make an anniversary of our graduation, even greater impact for our my class created an endowed deserving future alumni for bursary fund to be awarded years to come. on the basis of demonstrated financial need to students who Stacy Kelly, Artsci’93 self-identify as Indigenous, Métis, Inuit, or as members Rock around the clock of the African and Caribbean In the last issue, we ran this Student Association in any flashback photo of a 1971 Camp year in the Faculty of Arts and Outlook fundraising dance and Science. Since its inception, asked readers if they could identify the Artsci 1993 Bursary Fund any of the dancers. (givetoqueens.ca/artsci93) has I was flipping through the provided a total of $34,158 in Keeping in Touch section of my financial support to 22 incredible Review. I always start at the back scholars. The letters we have and work my way forward. I received for our recipients have always need to check: am I in David Service, Arts’73, identified spoken to the impact, validation, the death section this month? the woman in the photo as and the powerful ripple effect On page 32, there is a “Do Marie Robb, and we confirmed made by supporting Indigenous, you know any of these people?” this with Marie (Robb) Muir, Métis, and bipoc students. As picture. In the middle, peering Arts’73. Thanks also to our fund’s lead contact and our out of the darkness of a dance Colleen McGuire, Artsci’81, class giving chair, I am very floor is…No…Could that be –? who identified the man dancing proud of the accomplishments No way. Then I read the caption: with Marie as Bob Douglas, of our recipients. All who Arts’73 – my year! who wasn’t a student at Queen’s. have attended Queen’s were Short story shorter, that’s the direct beneficiaries of definitely me in the middle. I philanthropic investments, large Learning from don’t remember any of the and small, from those who came a distance other dancers. I hope they before us. Today, tuition and fees When I studied for a master’s come forward. for a domestic Artsci student at degree in psychology in the That was a long time ago! Queen’s is $6,182 for one year. mid-1960s, I was assigned to Heck, I was still a teenager. Some The “purchasing power” of our be a teaching assistant for a would say that I still am, at heart. fund is diminishing over time. psychology professor who Cheers, taught a correspondence course. IN MEMORIAM Douglas Mann, Arts’73 I do not recall her name at the moment. It was my Bette Torrible, former professor The dancer in the middle and in understanding at the time that (Physiotherapy), died April 16. the background is Doug Mann, Queen’s had been a pioneer Arts’73. We lived in the same John Gordon, MBA’63, Professor in distance learning. Now that Emeritus and former Dean Science ‘44 Co-op on William at all schools and colleges are (Business), died April 27. An obituary Aberdeen. He was a fun guy! closed, and all instruction is for Dr. Gordon is on page 43. Carol Rogers, Arts’73 being provided from a distance, David Symington, Professor I am wondering about the I have great memories of going Queen’s Emeritus (Physical Medicine and history of with regard to that 8 pm to 8 am marathon Rehabilitation), died May 27. to this subject. dance at Grant Hall. It was loads My experience was very Bruce Buchan, Professor Emeritus of fun with two live bands, a interesting as the students (Business), died June 6. “fresh” one coming in at 2 am for enrolled in the correspondence the second shift. You had Obituaries are posted online as we course were in remote places, bathroom breaks and that was receive them. If you have memories in jail, in other countries, and about it! of these professors you would like other unusual circumstances. Back to the dance floor. If I recall correctly, they were to share, please email us: Queen’s [email protected] Amy Falkner, Arts’74 able to obtain a degree
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 5 without ever being on campus. Read more about the We’d love to hear from other Standards were high and the history of remote learning at readers about their experience with work expected of them was Queen’s on the Arts and continuing and distance education demanding. Science website: queensu.ca/ at Queen’s. Email us: Beverley (Roberts) Gounard-Spry, artsci/remote-learning. [email protected] MA’68 (Psychology) The Queen’s Faculty of Arts and Science has done some research on distance education at Queen’s, using, in part, old issues of the Queen’s Alumni Review.
In 1878, Queen’s University began offering extension courses to teachers who sought university training. These extra- mural extension courses were offered by the Faculty of Arts. In 1889, the University Senate passed a new regulation allowing home study by any student who was deterred from attending classes by distance or other obstacles. With the JOHN OLSON JOHN introduction of this regulation, Ian Moricz de Tesco in Havana, 1958 Queen’s earned the distinction of being the first North Winter sculptures and the Cold War American university to offer “distance education.” A number of the Snowball were evacuated by a U.S. Queen’s efforts to “bring sculptures featured in the last government airlift. A picture university to the people” were two issues of the magazine of another Queen’s student criticized at the time by other were political caricatures of [Ian Moricz de Tesco, Sc’62] institutions who held to the Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, I took in front of the Hotel academic functions of the and the like. This brought back Nacional in front of an university, or who feared that memories for John Olson, impromptu 26 July flag made institutions might lose their Arts’61, who writes, the front page of the Queen’s “seclusion and dignity.” By the “The two Castro sculptures Journal after we got back. 1930s, however, nearly all reminded me of when I was at Innocent times. Soon the Soviet those who originally criticized Queen’s and in Havana for connection emerged, as we see Queen’s University’s actions Christmas 1958 when Castro’s in the later Snowball sculptures, had followed suit. forces entered the city. Students and the rest is history. B
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6 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview “I’vIve gotg this..”.
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reason not subject to challenge except on terms that do not threaten its dominance. That lesson is worth remembering today, as the university finds itself caught up in local as well as global currents of social, political, and cultural dispute – all magnified by the covid-19 pandemic, which has not only made us more aware of social and economic disparity within and between societies, but also reminded us that a thriving economy can come at a cost that, in some circumstances, must be reckoned in human lives. This is a turbulent time for Queen’s, as it is and must be for all institutions that derive their authority and identity from the dominant culture, from tradition and history, and from their alliance with prevailing ideas about the economy and the state. I say this because there can be no true path to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and no satisfying response to students who have experienced racism or homophobia at Queen’s, without the university recognizing its complicity in the broader oppressive and exclusionary structures about which protesters complain. Universities are to varying degrees capable of admitting their mistakes and apologizing for acts of unintentional or even intentional discrimination. They are also increasingly
BERNARD CLARK BERNARD sensitized to the systemic operation of these things. And sometimes they are able to make significant operational changes that prove queen’s university was merely five years old satisfactory to the individuals, or classes of when, in Brussels after being expelled from individuals, affected. At the same time, however, France and of an age not much greater than our calls for real and fundamental change typically activist students today, Karl Marx collaborated persist beyond measures of this sort, to which with Friedrich Engels on a ragtag collection of a common and largely rhetorical university essays that came to be known as The German response is to decry racism and homophobia Ideology. It was a work deeply suffused with an as alien invaders that must be driven out. awareness of far-reaching social and political If these problems are sometimes alien they change, which is partly why its publication, long are always also endemic, implicated in and delayed, eventually came during another period sustained by other aspects of the university of great instability and social ferment, the 1930s. ethos that we treat as natural and universal – In The German Ideology we find an early organizational discrepancies in power, for articulation of some of the mature Marx’s most example, that we ignore in declaring freedom of distinctive insights, not the least of which is that speech an achievable and unquestionable good, in any given epoch the values and ideas of the or an understanding of academic merit that dominant or ruling class appear – or are made presupposes the possibility of entirely objective to appear – natural and universal, and for that assessment, something by definition impossible
8 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview We construct the university through the to achieve when it is a human subject doing choices we make and the assessing. That universities in the Western tradition have been around for nine hundred years certainly therefore have the makes them interesting, but it is evidence neither of their perfection nor of their timelessness. Queen’s today looks nothing like the University potential to remake of Bologna in 1088: like that first Alma Mater Studiorum, it has been shaped by its culture and it according to the by time, has answered the needs of its community, and reflected in its values a cultural and political consensus from which some aspiring members principles of equity, have always felt excluded. Paradoxically, one component of our institutional identity as it has diversity, inclusion, emerged during this process of construction is a tacit belief in our “unconstructedness,” as if many of the things which define us are the natural and and Indigeneity. universal attributes of a university, not the result of human choice at a particular historic moment. When students are strengthened by the Black Lives Matter movement and emboldened to intellectual decorum that are unimaginable except speak out about their experience of racism at as facilitated by social and economic privilege. For Queen’s, they are reminding us that we construct us to make progress as an institution – not just in the university through the choices we make and matters of equity, diversity, and inclusion but in therefore have the potential to remake it our broader mission of teaching and discovery – according to the principles of equity, diversity, we will have to recognize those constraints for inclusion, and Indigeneity. When Indigenous and what they are, and acknowledge the benefits we lgbtq+ students tell us they do not feel safe on derive, as well as the marginalization others suffer, campus, they are demanding that we think from their perpetuation. beyond cctv cameras and heightened security – That recognition will not lead to the important though those things may be – and dismantling of the institution, as some fear, question some of the founding assumptions of because to acknowledge that we made Queen’s our institutional being, interrogate what most of by our choices does not require us to disavow the time we accept as natural and universal. or cancel our past. It does require us to be I implied at the outset that there is a form of accountable for redeeming that past, however, questioning that is envisaged by – and therefore opening us to the realization that we are the unthreatening to – the status quo. Universities agents rather than the victims of history and take that to the level of high art, declaring the therefore capable of making choices for a asking of questions and the pursuit of answers more just, equitable, sustainable, and globally the essence of their mission. At the same time, relevant future. however, the terms within which questions must be asked and the forms of evidence that can be adduced in answering them are circumscribed more tightly than the academy would typically care to admit. In particular, they are constrained by epistemological assumptions derived from mainstream European thought and notions of
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 9 CAMPUS AND community
the of gifIn June,t Queen’s announceda a numberr oft new donations to support the arts.
A revitalized art centre A $40-million (usd) gift from contemporary art, Indigenous central ceremonial and event Bader Philanthropies, Inc., will art, Canadian historical art, and spaces available to the entire enable Queen’s to revitalize and African historical art, as well as Queen’s community, as well expand the Agnes Etherington the Collection of Canadian as dedicated space for use by Art Centre and create a new Dress. The Bader Collection of Indigenous communities. home for The Bader Collection. European Art comprises more The revitalization project The philanthropic investment than 500 works with a focus on is expected to be completed has the potential to create one 17th-century Dutch and Flemish in 2024. The Agnes was last of the largest university art painting, including one portrait expanded in 2000 with museums in Canada. and three character studies by considerable assistance The revitalized Agnes will Rembrandt. from the Bader family. create a vibrant hub for the The expanded Agnes will B Learn more: agnes.queensu.ca presentation, research, and enable the university to create study of visual arts on campus. The facility will include the public gallery as well as new A new chair for Art Conservation homes for the graduate program Thanks to a $3-million (usd) gift from Isabel Bader, lld’07, Queen’s in Art Conservation, and will establish a new research and teaching chair. The Bader Chair in graduate and under graduate Art Conservation will help the Master of Art Conservation program programs in Art History. open up a fifth stream of study – imaging science – which will Expanded galleries and complement painting conservation, paper conservation, object more technical spaces will conservation, and conservation science. enhance Queen’s ability to care “Art conservation is seeing a technological shift,” said Norman and showcase the Agnes’s art Vorano, Head, Art History and Art Conservation, “and imaging science collections, which include allows us to look below the surface of paintings and other works of art in ways that were never previously possible. The new Bader Chair will put our students on the forefront of training in this field.”
10 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview New high-tech tools A $1-million gift to the Department of Art History and Support for inclusive Art Conservation from the Jarislowsky Foundation will programming bring leading-edge technology The mother of the late Jennifer Velva Bernstein, ba’89, has to Queen’s. commemorated her daughter with a gift to support inclusive “The donation will create programming at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. opportunities for Queen’s Marjorie Ernestine Bernstein’s $3.5-million gift will be used to students and researchers to support artistic programming and educational training at the centre, better understand the materials to bring more top performers and emerging artists to Kingston. It and techniques used to create will also help subsidize tickets and events, allowing people to enjoy artworks and other cultural more festivals such as Ka’tarohkwi Festival of Indigenous Arts and objects,” said Patricia Smithen, the Isabel Human Rights Festival and student initiatives. Assistant Professor (Paintings Jennifer Bernstein loved the arts and was passionate about social Conservation).“The equipment causes. She earned film degrees from both Queen’s and Webster will allow us to start new University in St. Louis, as well as a Master of Social Work from research programs, establish Washington University in St. Louis. She died in a bus crash in 1995 partnerships with leading art while on a humanitarian mission to Haiti. In recognition of the gift, museums and collectors, and the Isabel’s main 566-seat performance hall has been renamed the attract top students to study at Jennifer Velva Bernstein Performance Hall. Queen’s.” B Learn more: queensu.ca/theisabel Queen’s is purchasing five pieces of equipment, including a Bruker m6 Jetstream, a large- area spectrometer for on-site analysis of large objects. Queen’s will the only museum or institution in Canada to have this particular spectrometer. The Bruker m6 Jetstream’s X-ray fluorescence technology allows researchers to scan a painting QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY ELECTIONS and create an elemental map of its surface. The instrument Results of 2020 Elections to was recently used to scan Rembrandt’s famous painting The Night Watch at Amsterdam’s University Council by Alumni Rijksmuseum to identify pigments and reveal the Kofi Adow Abdul-Aziz Garuba Precious Nyarko-Antwi artist’s working process. Seattle, WA Toronto, ON Brampton, ON The Jarislowsky Foundation was created by Stephen Richard Baugh Bittu George Sari Ohsada Jarislowsky, lld’88, an Toronto, ON Kingston, ON Canmore, AB entrepreneur, philanthropist, Samantha Cheung Alison Holt Opiyo Oloya and avid art collector. Oakville, ON Toronto, ON Newmarket, ON B We’ll explore some of this Nosa O. Egiebor Kasmet Niyongabo technology in action in a Liverpool, NY Saskatoon, SK later issue.
queensu.ca/secretariat/elections/university-council
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 11 opinion A 2019 Queen’s student production of The Drowsy Chaperone
Returning to
vibrant cultural life FORT TIM post-coronavırus Policy makers and arts sectors together need to These words, evoking togetherness, community, and shared experience, have become even more reimagine how we might organize contracts, powerful in this strange time of self-isolation and leverage networks, and change supports to create solitude. In its ability to draw us together to listen and experience together, live music performance more long-term opportunities for arts workers. is a crucial marker and facilitator of community. BY COLLEEN RENIHAN, JULIA BROOK, AND BEN SCHNITZER $24,300 ANNUAL INCOME If we look at one particular arts field, that of rtists are crucial to the futures we’re imagining classical artists (such as classical musicians, beyond the covid-19 pandemic. conductors, or opera singers), we know that even A The vitality of the societies we wish to before the age of covid-19, these artists were return to are vibrant in large part because they struggling to sustain themselves financially. sound and look vibrant, because they are full of Despite the fact that culture contributed over artists thriving and sharing music in a variety $53 billion to Canada’s economy in 2017, the of settings. median individual income for Canada’s artists Who hasn’t missed the sound of people out was $24,300: 44 per cent less than the median and about, revelling in society, culture, and the for all Canadian workers ($43,500). arts – whether we are talking about the sound of Only those artists with economic privilege a band spilling out onto a nighttime street or the can afford the precarity of the gig economy, sound of friends meeting before a concert? Our and income data suggests that white and male society is vibrant in large part because it is infused privilege also mitigates its harshness. According with the work of artists and musicians. to Canadian census 2016 data, artists who are As musicologist Julian Johnson writes in his women, Indigenous, or from racialized book Who Needs Classical Music?, music facilitates communities report even lower median incomes. “a relation to an order of things larger than This year, many artists won’t even earn this ourselves.” Through music, the self, he writes, much: between February and May, for example, “comes to understand itself more fully as a larger, nearly 200,000 workers in information, culture, trans-subjective identity.” and recreation industries lost their jobs.
12 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview The federal government recently extended the Our society is vibrant in large part because it is term of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit infused with the work of artists and musicians. (cerb) until the end of August. But many are concerned that even with these extended benefits, POLICY CRISIS a return to performing might be months, if not years, away. To begin with, the present crisis has once again A Globe and Mail feature from the height of illuminated the need for contemporary classical covid-19’s first wave tells the heartbreaking stories artists to be multi-skilled. Many recent studies of performers in various fields whose work has reveal that Canadian artists trained in post- been put on hold as the result of the virus, also secondary music programs must build what are highlighting the terrifying scarcity of work and known as “portfolio” careers, which effectively pay for musicians during this period. encompass work from a variety of fields or areas. The fragile, endangered ecosystem of music Since such portfolio careers are often created and musicians has been threatened by covid-19, and arrived upon by happenstance, it is high time reported the New York Times. to ask how they might be more systematically Reticent audiences, even after the pandemic embedded into educational and cultural policies ends, will likely play a role in this: a survey and programs. Artists must be taught to think conducted by the National Arts Centre and Nanos creatively and passionately, as well as Research found that 34 per cent of Canadians are pragmatically and strategically. unsure when they will attend an indoor arts or But the current crisis is also a policy crisis. It cultural performance, even after venues have been illuminates the need to support artists more fully reopened and are adhering to public health guide- and creatively throughout the various stages of lines. This percentage is similar across age groups. their careers. Central to this is imagining ways to limit the precarity of the gig economy which, GIG ECONOMY perhaps surprisingly, characterizes the careers of Many of these artists work in the gig economy even the highest echelon of performers, classical and, as a result, have seen revenues evaporate – or otherwise. precious income they can ill afford to lose. GUARANTEED WORK Although many musicians are frustrated at the crisis created by covid-19, those working in the There are proven ways to do this. Throughout arts were already in crisis. Quickly and starkly, the Europe, for example, many opera singers sing in age of covid-19 has not created, but rather has what are known as Fest contracts, which guarantee magnified, the precarious nature of creative work work at that opera house in a variety of roles over in our country. the course of a given season. This is accompanied Relief funding, both governmental and by a monthly salary, with paid benefits and health organizational, has been key, as are initiatives like insurance included. the SaskMusic covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund, While this may not be feasible in the Canadian the Canada Performs relief fund initiative, and context, examples like this might spur us to think even sector-specific artist support like the Opera creatively about how we might organize contracts, Artist Emergency Relief Fund. The arts should leverage networks, and reimagine supports to figure prominently in the federal government’s create more long-term opportunities for cultural infrastructure stimulus package. workers. We might also rethink the extent to But as we anticipate moving into phases of less which the public may be physical distancing and aim to resume some social underpaying for arts and B Colleen Renihan is an assistant and economic activities (with larger gatherings entertainment. professor and Queen’s National on the far horizon), we must continue to think As we dream about Scholar at the Dan School of about the systems we build with an eye toward reconnecting in person, we Drama and Music. She is a increasing stability for performing artists. The should take advantage of this musicologist and a mezzo-soprano. covid-19 crisis should serve as a wake-up call. opportunity for a collective Julia Brook is an assistant professor Our long-standing characterization of the reconsideration of arts policy. in music education at the Dan struggling, starving artist must change. covid-19 has brought us a School of Drama and Music and This ideal response to this artistic crisis is one unique opportunity to rebuild is also a pianist. Ben Schnitzer is a that includes responses from a variety of sectors: and reimagine a vibrant cultural PhD student in the Department of in post-secondary education and training, in arts sector. We need to collectively Cultural Studies; his research is on policies and structures, and in the financial support artists if we believe in cultural diplomacy. He is also an support we offer our artists. supporting the arts. B opera singer.
This article was originally published in The Conversation Canada (theconversation.com/ca) and is republished with permission.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 13 CAMPUS AND community
Queen’s School of Medicine:
confrontingexclusion
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1917 1917 QUEEN’S QUEEN’S
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n 1918, a motion to ban Black students from the School of Medicine was adopted by Queen’s University Senate. Although Black students were admitted again to the school starting in 1965, the motion was never repealed until its existence was brought to light by PhD candidate Edward Thomas (Cultural Studies). The 1918 motion was I revoked by Senate 100 years after its adoption and Queen’s University offered a public apology for the ban. There had been 15 Black medical students enrolled at Queen’s when the ban was enacted. In its apology, Queen’s acknowledged that the university had derailed the medical careers of at least two Black students who had been forced to leave Queen’s and who were then unable to find placement at any other medical school. One of those students was Ethelbert Bartholomew, a member of the class of 1918. After leaving Queen’s, Mr. Bartholomew worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railways. He died in 1954. In a 2019 convocation ceremony, Queen’s conferred a posthumous Doctor of Medicine degree upon Dr. Bartholomew, which was accepted by members of his family.
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Lost stories School pathway’s 10 seats will be designated for high school graduates who identify as Black or Indigenous. In severing its connections with its Black medical The pathway has participants complete two years of Queen’s students and alumni, not only did thwart the undergraduate studies. Provided they meet pre- careers of promising young doctors, it also lost the determined entrance criteria, in their third year, they opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the enter first-year medicine. By waiving regulatory exams accomplishments of former students, including: like the mcat, the program makes medical school more Dr. Courtney Clement Ligoure, MD 1916 accessible to Canadians who might not have otherwise Dr. Ligoure graduated from Queen’s before the ban pursued medicine as a career. Queen’s and established his practice in Halifax, N.S. Unable to In her first blog post to the community secure hospital privileges, he set up an independent earlier in July, Dr. Philpott addressed the past and surgery at his home in the city’s north end. He became future directions of the faculty, writing, the publisher of the Atlantic Advocate, Nova Scotia’s first As a leader in the education of health professionals in the African-Canadian news magazine. In 1917, when the exceptional year of 2020, my greatest obligation to students Halifax Explosion flattened the city, killing 2,000 people and to society, is to be fair and inclusive. There is no doubt and injuring 9,000 more, Dr. Ligoure provided medical that systemic racism, sexism, and colonialism exist in care for hundreds of injured people in his home. Canadian institutions. Many health-care systems and academic institutions are structured in a way that perpetuates Dr. Hugh Gordon Hylvestra Cummins, MD 1919 these forces. I recognize the unearned privilege that I have Dr. Cummins was one of seven founding members, in received from deep-seated patterns of injustice and I take 1938, of the Barbados Progressive League, which later full responsibility to work with others on changing these became the Barbados Labour Party (blp). The blp structures. brought universal adult suffrage to Barbados, as well The correct response to recognizing privilege is not as universal health care, free secondary education, denial or guilt, it’s self-reflection and informed action. I am and a number of other reforms. Dr. Cummins became determined to move quickly on these matters. One of my first the country’s second premier, a position he held from initiatives will be the formation of the Dean’s Action Table 1958 to 1961. on Equity. This will be more than an academic exercise. Moving forward We will listen well, and we will take action. Queen’s Faculty of Health Sciences can attract a student Following the 2018 repeal of the original ban, Richard population that better reflects the diversity of Canada. Reznick, then Dean of Health Sciences, formed the Specifically, we can seek greater inclusion of Indigenous Commission on Black Medical Students, comprising peoples and Black Canadians. Though fhs has already made faculty, students, and staff from Queen’s, in order to progress in this area through the introduction of Indigenous address the historical injustice. The commission’s admissions processes and the initiatives resulting from the work included personal letters of apology to families acknowledgment of the ban on Black medical students, there is of Black students and alumni affected by the ban, more to be done. This will require attention to our structural changes to the undergraduate medical program biases, so we can intentionally recruit and support more curriculum with respect to inclusivity and diversity, students and faculty from under-represented populations. the establishment of an admissions award for Black We have more work to do on creating mentorships, adapting Canadians, and the creation of a mentorship program admission processes, and improving curricula. Queen’s fhs for Black medical students. could be a leader in teaching about cultural safety, anti-racism, In late July, new Dean of Health Sciences Jane and anti-colonialism in the delivery of care. My vision is for us Philpott announced an additional initiative to reduce to become a centre of excellence on matters of equity, diversity, systemic barriers to medical education. Beginning with inclusion, and accessibility in the health professions. the 2020–2021 undergraduate application cycle, the Queen’s University Accelerated Route to Medical B Read more: healthsci.queensu.ca/blog.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 15 cover STORY After the fires Engaging Queen’s burn alumni BY ANITA JACK-DAVIES on issues of race
16 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview I don’t know where to begin this essay. I do not have the words to speak with you right now. And because I am Canadian-born, I will start with a preamble and measured politeness. After all, this is the Canadian way.
Three months ago, I watched as an African-American man named George Floyd begged for his life as a white police officer rammed his knee into Floyd’s neck and slowly extinguished his breath. Up until that scorching day, I had never witnessed a murder before. Now, the image remains emblazoned in the deepest corners of my mind, seeking haunting relief. BERNARD CLARK BERNARD
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 17 COVER STORY
can see Floyd pleading with the officer, “Hey man... I can’t breathe!” I hear him calling for his mother. I watch as he gasps for air, his life leaving his body as the minutes tick by. Days after the murder, I lie in bed and weep. I take comfort in the warmth of I my husband’s chest.
The next day, we sit at the dinner table and speak to our daughter At night I cannot sleep. about George Floyd. With a mouth full of blue braces, she shares I feel sick. Everywhere I turn, with us that she and her friends talked about it. In her eyes she the media feeds me a consistent registers a sense of confusion about the incident that she fails to diet of the case: panel communicate with words. She glances at me with sympathy as her discussions, interviews, expert father relates George Floyd with my experiences with racism as a commentary, cnn, msnbc, Kingston resident and at Queen’s. The Agenda with Steve Paikin, For weeks, I am engulfed in a smoky haze, a fog. The university cbc National News, Twitter, must be seen as doing something. “We must put an end to all acts LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, of racism!” And so it goes. But we lie to ourselves, because we have the Whig-Standard, and a 24- always known that Black people in Canada have never been invited hour news cycle that provides to partake as equals, as “Canadians.” If we are going to speak with little relief. The emails chime each other, we must begin by telling the truth. We must begin by as they hit my inbox faster than naming racism for what it is and for the ways in which it has I can reply. To make matters crippled the lives of Black Canadians, generations at a time. worse, I am stuck at home And because I own a diversity consulting business, my phone due to covid-19, the global is ringing off the hook: pandemic that has made my life unrecognizable. I am stuck in Canada. “Anita, I cannot travel to see my relatives in Trinidad, Boston, and Brooklyn. I worry about we need some my cousins: Craig, Maurice, diversity training and Dayne, young Black men living in urban American cities. I worry that I will turn on the so that we can have a better news and will learn that their lives have been taken from understanding…of... me. At work, I try to make it through each day without crying or appearing “weak.” you know... I pretend that everything is okay, but inside, I am hurt, devastated, and angry. of... But anger is the one emotion that I can never express as a Black Canadian woman. As a Black woman living in this how Black people feel.” country, to be angry and Black is akin to me committing a crime. You do not know how to deal with my anger, even though I have every right to it.
18 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview And so I suppress it. I stifle it. I snuff it out.
I do to it what was done to George Floyd.
BERNARD CLARK BERNARD
The campus is in a frenzy. Dr. Patrick Deane In actuality, I was never at that meeting. issues a statement denouncing police brutality In actuality, I am mistaken so often for other and makes a commitment to reducing anti-Black Black women that I no longer explain who I am. racism on campus and in the curriculum. And Frustrated after being overlooked for someone when I read his words, I am moved. I am touched. I am not, I now play along. His statement stands in stark contrast to the array of racist micro-aggressions, micro-insults, and micro-invalidations that I have endured as a staff “Yes, member, adjunct faculty member, and graduate I did come in on the 9 am train student at Queen’s. I look back now on the many instances at Queen’s when a white administrator from Montreal this morning,” or professor has mistaken me for another Black person on campus. I remember one instance when I say to the cashier as an acquaintance – someone who has met me personally away from Queen’s – confused me I purchase my breakfast. for someone else. “Anita, so good to see you! I remember that “Yes, I am still at the law school,” I was supposed to follow up with you after last week’s meeting…” I say to a dean.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 19 COVER STORY
As a Queen’s employee, I experienced racism in some work settings, but not all. I have had supportive colleagues who were wonderful to But inside my rage erupts like crimson lava. I work with and have also experienced instances am not Erroline! I am not Juliet! I am not Marian! where my race was definitely a factor in my I am Anita; Anita Jack-Davies. But in order to see mistreatment. I have had supportive bosses. Tom me, you would actually have to look at me. To Hewitt in the Office of Advancement will always look at me, you would have to notice that I wear hold a special place in my heart because he a Tank watch and that I only wear studs in my actually saw me. He treated me with dignity and ears. To look at me means that you would have to respect and the colour of my skin was never a notice the true colour of my skin and the texture barrier to him. I have had bosses whose actions of my hair. To look at me requires that I am the demonstrated to me that they did not have my subject, rather the object of your gaze. It often best interest at heart. And because I work at feels as though I am nothing more than a dark- Queen’s, it is not safe for me to share my skinned figurine that you can count and parade experience without paying a hefty price. I have to the world as evidence of inclusion. experienced racism in the Kingston community In my graduate course, I sit in a group of in banks and shopping malls and on playdates three students after the instructor gives us our when the parents of my daughter’s friends are assignment. My colleagues, a white man and a not expecting me to be Black. Racism, though, is white woman, speak to each other, pretending difficult to prove and when I was the victim of that I am not there. Ignored, the lava that has racial discrimination, I did not feel safe to speak become all too familiar gushes through my about it. Further, there were few opportunities for veins again. In true Canadian fashion, I interject: me to receive support for what I was experiencing, “Excuse me…” and I ask politely whether it is forcing me to suffer in silence. possible for me to be included in the conversation. Racism slowly festers and eats away at the lives They are surprised by my boldness and we of Black people. But no one ever cares to ask us. engage in a dance, a false sense of cooperation No one ever cares to name racism for what it is. and good cheer. Beneath our polite Canuck As Black Canadians, we have always paid a price veneer, I know that they do not want me in their for articulating our pain. And this moment is no group and I am enraged that I have no choice different. When a white person speaks about race, but to be in theirs. that individual is lauded as working for the The irony is that I was made to feel like I had “common good” and for being a social justice nothing to contribute to the converssation. Yet, warrior. We live in a culture where white people I do have something to say. I earned a double who speak about racism become celebrities, major in English and Sociology from Victoria quasi-heroes. I am thinking here about the fact College at the University of Toronto. I can speak that Robin DiAngelo, a well-known anti-racist of Chaucer and Percy, Keats and Shelley, Byron, academic and consultant, was interviewed by Auden, and Mary Wollstonecraft. I can speak of David Letterman recently after her book White Swift, Bunyan and Coleridge, Dylan, Frost and Fragility became a highly recommended resource Langston Hughes. When I attempt to articulate after the Floyd murder. Our culture rewards a white what I know, my words are deemed inaudible, woman for articulating the very pain that I am incomprehensible, and incoherent because of punished for. the colour of my skin. What I am struggling to When I speak about race, I am accused of accept is the distance between what I was told “playing the race card,” even though that card is by my grandparents, Lawrencia and Patrick Jack, always in play, each and every day, in each and and the reality of racism in my life today. My every moment of your life, whether you care to grandparents told me that if I studied hard and admit it or not. To speak about race opens me up “became something,” racism would vanish from to scorn, ridicule, and rejection. To articulate my my life. In reality, the more degrees I earned, the experiences means that someone in a position of more insidious race became. Suddenly, I am being power will become angry. If I am not careful, I called “uppity” and reminded that I do not know stand to lose my job, business clients, friends, “my place.” After the class, I call my husband and and acquaintances at the hands of white-hot rage. rage about yet another example of the racist I worry. I worry that the Heritage Front is alive exclusion that has engulfed my life since arriving and well near where I live in Kingston. I tell you in Kingston in 2004. this so that you might begin to understand the tremendous price I pay for daring to broach this topic. Race in Canada remains taboo, uncomfortable, and polarizing. It remains the thing that we can never say. 20 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview Who are Queen’s alumni and what do they think average grad is white, privileged, and resistant to about race? change. However, this trope represents only part In 2019, I was elected to the University Council at of the Queen’s story. We must now unearth other Queen’s University for a five-year term. In May narratives that have remained hidden from view, 2020, I was appointed as Council’s first edii buried and unarticulated. If we aren’t brave Adviser (2020–2022). edii stands for equity, enough to do this now, there may never be a diversity, inclusion, and Indigeneity. On June 23, time when such stories will carry meaning. I hosted the first edii Open Meeting in order to I do not remember a time when Queen’s start a conversation about the ways in which we, University has actually engaged you in as Queen’s alumni, can engage each other about conversations about race. There is a tremendous a culture of inclusion at Queen’s. In attendance amount of fear surrounding this topic as it relates were Chancellor Jim Leech, Provost and Vice- to you. Over the years, instead of tackling the Principal (Academic) Dr. Mark Green, and several issue head-on, it was easier simply to avoid it, new councillors. The participation at the meeting or worse, to articulate a meaningless response to was outstanding. Many of the councillors racist acts even as we made the national news. appeared on camera to register their ideas. My point is that as a university, we must create Some listened silently. opportunities for you to become invested in a I was eager to start this important conversation conversation on race, racism, and anti-Black with Council; however, I could not help but feel racism as they are experienced by students, staff, the weight of the moment that we are in. It is a and faculty members at Queen’s. We must create moment that I am calling “the reckoning” on race spaces for you to express your thoughts and in Canada. I sensed, in that meeting, that the views, even if you may not say what we expect topic of edii held tremendous meaning for the you to say and even when you share ideas that councillors and the staff and faculty who joined might unsettle us. For instance, Queen’s the session. Prior to the start of my role, Council University and the Faculty of Arts and Science created a Special Purpose Committee on Diversity have committed to creating a Black Studies and Inclusion (spcdi). The spcdi also created a program by 2021, an initiative that was created by report to Council with recommendations aimed at Dr. Katherine McKittrick in the Department of guiding our efforts and I discussed these details at Gender Studies. The program is envisioned as the start of the session. A few of the suggestions fulfilling many of the recommendations of the made by councillors included: Principal’s Implementation Committee on Race, Diversity, The Principal’s Implementation Committee a increased alumni engagement with the topic and Inclusion. on Race, Diversity, and Inclusion (PICRDI) of edii, According to Dr. McKittrick, was established by Principal Daniel Woolf. b developing baseline edii competencies for the program will promote the PICRDI released its final report in 2017. all councillors through education and training, study of “anti-racism, anti- You can read it at: bit.ly/ PICRDI 2017 and oppression, and diversity” and c identifying where gaps in knowledge and best will help with the diversification of curriculum. practices for edii exist for Council. The program also aims to support the hiring of By the end of the hour, we generated a list of Black faculty, including areas such as tenure ideas for how we will work together on Council and promotion. If this program becomes a over the next two years. However, as edii Adviser, reality at Queen’s, we will join the ranks of other I am acutely aware that the difficult work of universities such as Dalhousie and McMaster in engaging you in conversations about race will the creation of similar initiatives. My question is, remain a challenge. I use the term “challenge” how would you support a program such as this deliberately. On campus, we often speak about one? Do you believe that such a program has a “Queen’s alumni” as though we already know who place at Queen’s? you are, what you think, how you feel, and how you might act. “Queen’s alumni” has become so ubiquitous, I am invited to believe that the
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 21 COVER STORY
Reflecting All that we have lost forward,
I remember years ago when I was teaching grade eight in Toronto’s looking back Jane-Finch community, I struck up a conversation with a colleague, a Now where do we go from Queen’s grad. He was older than I was and we chatted about his time here? The next time I write to at Queen’s as an international student from Trinidad in the early you, we will have been given 1980s. I remember the pain in his eyes when he spoke about his the gift of time and of hindsight. time on campus. He shared instances of rejection as he watched his The George Floyd murder will classmates invite each other to weekend stays at cottages in the be an event of the past, but his Muskokas. He spoke of experiencing racism in the classroom, of legacy will remain. This is a gift professors being surprised that he was intelligent or that he could of vision that will provide us make clever contributions in class, so deep was the anti-Black racism. with much-needed clarity as As a Black Canadian of Trinidadian descent, I spent time in Trinidad we reflect forward as members and Tobago as a child and I can attest to the outstanding level of of the Queen’s community. education on the twin islands. Professors expressing surprise that Queen’s is a community that my colleague was intelligent or that he was thoughtful is an insult for a long time now has made that white students rarely have to endure in classrooms. it clear that I do not belong. For Black students, there is this constant pressure to prove our However, I am not a victim. I intelligence. This is not only frustrating, but emotionally draining. am taking my experiences and I dream of a day when Blackness and intelligence will go hand in hand, working to create new spaces rather than being treated as an oddity in classrooms. My colleague for racialized and under- shared that he experienced racism for the first time in his life here at represented students at Queen’s. And after recalling all of this, he vowed that he would never Queen’s. And I hope that you give a penny to the university. feel unsettled, stirred even, by But Queen’s did not simply lose his financial support. Queen’s lost my words. I hope that my words the ability to celebrate his life and his life’s work. Queen’s lost the have caused an eruption of ability to learn of his successes and to connect his talents with a new anger in you, even just for a generation of students. He was a gifted musician. Queen’s lost an moment. My community has opportunity for students to be mentored by an artist who could have lived with this anger, this lava, contributed to the Dan School of Drama and Music or to other for a long time now. This very campus-based initiatives. Queen’s missed out on the likelihood anger can be useful as you think that he would recommend Queen’s as a university of choice for his about what you are being called daughter. The possibilities are endless; however, we will never to do, given what you know know what could have been. now. In the words of the And rather than being an isolated incident, my colleague’s African-American poet Maya experience is shared by many Black Queen’s alumni. As a child Angelou, when we know better, of immigrants, I was counselled against applying to Queen’s for we do better. This anger will be undergraduate study by my grade 13 English teacher. He pulled me useful to provide some clarity aside and looked me straight in the eye. He warned, “Anita, take around what our moral my advice. You will not have a good go of it there.” And I could tell responsibilities are, after the by the urgency of his voice that he knew more than I did. I knew he fires burn. would lose nothing if I did not heed his words. And I did. There are And in the spirit of peace, many Black students with stories similar to mine, students who are I extend my hand to you. I am cautioned that Queen’s will not address their social, academic, and asking whether you are able to cultural needs. I am here today to suggest that there are Black Queen’s listen, to hear what I say, rather alumni who are haunted by their former experiences as students. They than to speak. I am asking do not take part in Homecoming. This is because Queen’s University whether you might begin to never felt like “home” to them. If you are a Queen’s grad who was understand my point of view, fortunate enough to spend four glorious years as a student on campus, rather than defensively proving please remember that this experience was not “normal,” it was simply your innocence. your experience. The time has come for us to correct past wrongs and You will never know what it to engage all alumni, including those that we lost many years ago, in is like to live in my skin. I am difficult conversations about what needs to happen before Black here to say that the time is right students, faculty, and staff will call Queen’s home. for us to put our politeness aside and begin messy conversations
22 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview BERNARD CLARK BERNARD
about race, ability, teaching, campus culture that deemed me Other. My time at the university has learning, and what it means to been one of struggle and toil and far from a soft place to fall. Working be a Queen’s grad. and studying at Queen’s University will forever remain a bittersweet And to the many allies who aspect of my life. Twenty years ago, I devoted my life to social justice have supported me since I began so that my daughter will not have to experience what I have, if she studying at Queen’s University chooses to study at Queen’s in the future. As I reflect on this moment in 2005, I thank you. I am of reckoning on race in Canada, I am thinking about concepts such thinking here of allies at the as “healing” and “reconciliation.” As we have done with First Nations, Four Directions Aboriginal Métis, and Indigenous communities, I wonder whether there is room Student Centre and at Ban for Black Canadians to share our stories and for our stories to be Righ, the centre for mature heard. I wonder what a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for female students on campus. Black Canadians would look like. I wonder if there is room at The Office of Advancement Queen’s for us to speak and to be the authors of our own experiences. was also a place where I felt at After having our voices stifled for so long, speaking and advocating home. I am also reminded of a for systemic change on campus will enable us to begin the healing reading course that I took with process, if not for our sake, then for the sake of future generations. Dr. McKittrick when I was I remain hopeful and I take comfort in knowing that I am not alone. introduced to her work on Black female geographies. The course B Anita Jack Davies, MEd’07, PhD’11 (Education), is the senior research changed how I saw myself as a adviser (research initiatives, diversity, and inclusion) for the Queen’s Black Canadian woman and Faculty of Education. She is also the president and ceo of Mosaic remains a major influence in Cross-Cultural Solutions. Her first book, Lawrencia’s Last Parang: my life today. These spaces, A Memoir of Loss and Belonging as a Black Woman in Canada, both inside and outside the will be published in November. classroom, were a refuge for me when I felt out of place in a
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 23 feature STORY This is what nurses Three and a half chapters in the life of d oKate Rocklein Kemplin, NSc’01 BY ANDREA GUNN
24 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview t’s the end of May. Kate Kemplin is sitting in a hotel room near Windsor, Ontario. She’s I self-isolating for 14 days after spending two months on the covid-19 health-care frontline in New York City. Two months of brutally long days, setting up protocols, developing practice guidelines, and caring for patients in a giant enclosed “bubble” on a soccer field at Columbia University’s campus. All so that she and other former military health-care personnel could take some of the strain off New York’s overwhelmed hospital system, which saw more than 72,000 patients with covid-19 by the first week of April. Kate can’t see her kids yet: they don’t even know she’s back home in Canada. “It would be mayhem!” she says, if her son, age 4, and daughters, 10 and 13, knew their mom was so close but still unavailable. But she’ll be home soon. And besides, these are resilient kids: they’re Army kids. They’ve always known a world with one parent being deployed away from home for extended periods of time. And on top of that, their mom is a nurse. And they know that nurses are badasses who get things done. Here are three and a half chapters in the life of Kate Kemplin: trauma specialist, researcher, professor, and badass nurse.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 25 chapter one But Kate was still struggling. “Theoretical courses were painfully nebulous t’s 1997. Kate, born in Canada and raised in the for me,” she says. “But in third year, my statistics States, arrives in Kingston to begin nursing professor astutely referred me for a full Ischool. She is 17 years old. “My childhood was… neurocognitive testing battery because I was complex,” she says. “I was – and still am – bombing her course. I was so conditioned to being awkward socially and was lacking a lot of life skills. ashamed of my flaws that being diagnosed with Before coming to Queen’s, I was able to skate disabilities was devastating. I tried to speak of academically. Not here. I wasn’t the best student in them once to an immediate family member and Nursing, which, as I recall, then had 66 per cent the mockery was both unsurprising and attrition rate from the first year to graduation. unimaginable. So I hid them for years, even “First year was a gauntlet – core courses in though logically, I knew they were neurological biochem, anatomy, philosophy, physiology – and not behavioural in origin. most were taken with pre-med and other health “Queen’s was a great equalizer for me because sci students. They all kicked me in the teeth. None everybody was the smartest kid in the room. I of our courses were watered down for nursing. think I learned there how to struggle with being This profoundly shaped my view of my profession average in comparison, and how to persevere. as a serious and important one. Never have I felt That said: I’m white. I didn’t have structural or that I am ‘just a nurse’ or academically unequal to historical obstacles stacked against me, nor did physicians. I had to fight for every point in every I have to swim against the ostracizing tide of grade in almost every course. Clinically, I was Queen’s lack of diversity. I grew up in the sound – I felt at home in hospital and taking care American south and distinctly recall how eerily of patients. Professor Cheryl Pulling supervised white Queen’s was – and still is. So ‘struggle’ and my first dressing change. Unbeknownst to us, ‘persevere’ are relative terms when evoked by the patient’s wound was actually open-chest – to someone with my racial privilege.” their sternum – and very complicated. She said Kate graduated from Queen’s Nursing in 2001 that I turned every shade of grey changing the and returned to the States. She wasn’t sure where dressing, but I nailed it.” she was going next, either in life or in her nascent With the help of classmates and housemates, career. But that September, she figured out her Kate started to build new skills. “Julie Lorenzin next move. (Artsci’98, nsc’01) and I didn’t cross paths initially,” “When the World Trade Center was attacked, says Kate. “She was a front-row keener and I was people were dropping what they were doing and the kid in the back row wearing pajama pants.” heading to New York. A friend of a friend was But they clicked: “Julie taught me to be a scholar working for fema. He was in our hometown visiting and I think I coaxed out her inner rebel,” says and was heading back to New York.” Kate decided Kate, who is still close with Julie, now a nurse to go with him. She was a nurse and nurses would practitioner in London, Ont. be needed. Somehow, she could help. All planes were grounded, so they drove 20 hours to get to Manhattan. “We crossed the Bayonne Bridge on September 12th and could see the financial district from that height. It was so dark. We could see the lower tip of Manhattan, and it was a void: a black pit, with smoke coming out of it. There were lights in other parts of the city, but none there – except for spotlights. “My hub was Moran’s Bar and Grill at the North Cove marina, a short walk west of the site through the Winter Garden Atrium. On my third day there, an fdny chief seconded me to be medical support to their special operations/dive team living on the Firefighter, a massive fireboat pumping water from the Hudson River into the Trade Center fire. For a few weeks I worked and lived with them.” At first, she stayed on the Firefighter, ready to provide medical treatment to the crew if needed. Kate and Julie Lorenzin in 2001 Kate was easily 20 years younger than any of the
26 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview guys on the crew. She reminded some of them of chapter two their daughter, others of their niece or kid sister. One of them gave her a hard time, saying, “What “ irefighters I had gelled with in New York lived are you here for, just to sit on the boat and make it about an hour from the city and a couple of smell nice?” Kate pushed back. “Listen,” she F them cajoled me into moving to that area.” remembers saying. “I’m not just here to look pretty. Kate began working as a nurse again, this time I play rugby. I can take a hit.” Unspoken were the in a large emergency department in a busy rural words: “I’m a nurse. I’m not scared.” hospital. There, she met a handsome young Kate earned their respect. This feisty kid, right soldier home between Army assignments. out of university, had showed up. She didn’t know “With more emotion than reason, I married what she would be facing, where her skills would him and started to build my career at whatever be needed, what would be asked of her. But like duty station we were assigned to.” Balancing her any one of the first responders, Kate went straight work as a civilian nurse for the U.S. Army, Kate to the hotspot, ready to face the unimaginable also started a master’s degree in nursing at Loyola disaster that was 9/11. University in New Orleans. Just after she had Kate accompanied firefighters to the pit, the been accepted in the program, her husband deep smouldering emptiness that was what Michael was transferred to a base in Germany. remained of the Twin Towers. At first, she stood at The years went by. Kate and Michael the edge of the pit, masked and suited up, and welcomed their first daughter, and then their watched her crew disappear underground. Later, second. As a trauma and emergency nurse she went with them, wearing a safety harness and specialist, Kate had treated a wide variety of ppe as they did. She remembers climbing twisted medical issues and injuries, most of which were girders that once held up skyscrapers. She doesn’t familiar. But there was something new emerging go into detail about what she saw there. She says in her patients, something she hadn’t come simply, “I returned home just after my 22nd across before. birthday that October.” Looking back now, she says, “I sometimes think about my 21-year-old hubris: who thinks that they can just go to New York and do something meaningful there? Who really has that kind of arrogance?” She pauses. “But I don’t even know if it’s arrogance. I think it was just faith that I had the background and the training…and the backbone.” But when Kate left New York, she found herself unable to fit comfortably back into normal life. She started working at a hospital, but once again, she found herself at odds with her surroundings. Working on a safe, clean hospital floor so soon after being at the pit seemed surreal to her. “I found it extremely hard to relate to co- workers – and even patients – who hadn’t been affected personally by terrorism. For the life of me, I could not understand their perspectives – how could anyone complain about anything during that time? They weren’t burned alive or forced to jump from a skyscraper. They didn’t wake up one morning as usual and were violently widowed by lunchtime. “I was really an island unto myself,” she says ruefully, “intolerant and out-of-place. I was going to change careers…and then I rotated to the emergency department and found my people. It’s still the only professional environment in which I feel completely at home.” Once again, someone in Kate’s network reached
out to her, and she seized the opportunity to make KEMPLIN KATE a change in her life, to make a difference. Michael and daughter Gretchen in 2011
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 27 “Around 2006, I noticed soldiers who’d neurological rest or treatment. Based on what we deployed to the Middle East were presenting are seeing now, that practice could prove fatal to clinically with non-specific issues: disordered many soldiers down the line.” sleep, inexplicable anger, headaches, memory Michael finished his deployment and came loss, relationship dysfunction. Every single one home. But he wasn’t Michael anymore. of them had blast exposure – often repetitively – “It was like watching my graduate studies of while deployed, but no previous history of head tbi unfold before my eyes: every trope about tbi injury or significant psychological abnormalities.” affecting personality, function, and relationships Intrigued by this new phenomenon, Kate was happening inside my own home. It was shifted the focus of her graduate studies at Loyola exacerbating my shortcomings and exposing my to combat-related traumatic brain injury. worst qualities as well. Everything was disrupted.” Traumatic brain injury – tbi – occurs after a Kate tried to get professional help for her sudden trauma or blow to the head disrupts the husband. She knew what was happening to him: function of the brain. Most of us are aware of the she knew the science and, as a nurse, she had the potential for concussion from a fall or sports inside connections. But she also knew what she injury. A concussion is medically classified as a was up against. tbi. But it is not necessary to have been physically “Many soldiers will neither seek nor accept hit to experience a traumatic brain injury. Blast help for neurological injuries, because those exposure – close proximity of a person to an usually manifest in aberrant behaviour. So getting explosion – can damage the brain significantly help for what soldiers perceive as personal from crushing air pressures. Blast waves can shortcomings is often professional hara-kiri,” she create microscopic tears in the tissue and blood says soberly, “despite all the platitudes of support vessels in the brain, with serious consequences. from military public relations outlets. To this day, The phenomenon of “shell shock” documented in speaking out can be career-ending. There was a soldiers in the First World War, once classified as general who spoke publicly about his struggles a a neurosis or psychological shock from the year or so ago. He was immediately ostracized by horrors of war, is now considered to be traumatic his peers and the military. A general. Now imagine brain injury caused by proximity to artillery fire enlisted soldiers trying to fight against that and explosives. pervasive stigma. Kate threw herself into her graduate work, “That said,” she continues, “retired generals like focusing her research on “mild” tbi – “mild” Gen. Peter Chiarelli put their money where their being a clinical term she loathes – and injuries mouths were and moved the needle on tbi. When sustained from blast exposure. She developed I was contracted to develop tbi data capture for data sets and extrapolated projected clinical the Department of Defense, I was asked by my findings. boss to draft policy and ‘pretend it’s going to the And then her work came close to home. White House.’” Michael was deployed to Iraq. “In December “Sir…is it going to the White House?” Kate 2007, an explosive-formed penetrator – a bomb asked him. She didn’t get a direct answer, just a designed specifically to penetrate armor – deadline from her boss before he hung up the detonated under the seat of my husband’s phone. But shortly thereafter, on Aug. 31, 2012, vehicle when they drove over and triggered President Barack Obama issued an Executive buried sensors.” Michael walked away from the Order titled “Improving Access to Mental Health explosion without a scratch. Services for Veterans, Service Members, and “Michael was physically intact,” says Kate, “but Military Families.” soldiers in the same vehicle had detached retinas “About three bullet points and five sentences and were bleeding from their ears and noses.” in that Executive Order may have originated from Her husband returned to duty within 12 hours. me,” says Kate. “Nursing science possibly “I knew his regiment’s physician influencing national policy, even within one professionally,” says Kate, “and I remember paragraph? I’ll take it.” sending him an email saying, ‘I know just enough At home, Kate was fighting hard for – and with about tbi to be a real pain in your ass about this.’ – Michael, who was still being deployed even as “But back then the attitude – which, honestly, his mental health deteriorated. “I barked up trees still persists now – was very dismissive. Unless and called in favours from command psychiatrists you were physically injured enough to warrant and other medical colleagues who agreed to see evacuation to Landstuhl [a U.S.-run military and treat Michael off the record. But he had top- medical centre], soldiers maybe got a night’s level security clearances to protect, and he sleep and then went back to the mission without refused to go to appointments for fear of future
28 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview polygraphs and mission-specific vetting of his It’s June 2019. Kate wakes up on a beautiful medical history.” Sunday morning. She is on faculty at the Michael went on six more deployments with University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. Three the U.S. Army. weeks earlier, she published her initial findings “I pushed unsuccessfully for years,” says Kate about resilience and suicide in Special Operations now, “and ultimately decided I was the only one I Forces: the first nurse to tackle those topics in that could treat or change. I accepted defeat and filed population. She checks her email automatically, for divorce three weeks after my doctoral defence as tenure-track junior faculty are compelled to do. in 2013. I had two young girls and the prospect There is, unexpectedly, an email from Michael, of repeating history by raising them amidst her ex-husband. Since their divorce, their dysfunction and conflict hit too close to home; communications had become fraught. Six it was unthinkable, no matter how much love years later, they have both moved on. Kate and dedication remained in the relationship.” has a new husband, Ben; another child; a new academic career. Cautiously, she opens the ccording to the National Institutes of Health, email from Michael. the U.S. Defense and Veterans Brain Injury She reads the first sentences, and falls to her Center has reported nearly 350,000 knees, gasping. You’re experiencing tachycardia, incident diagnoses of tbi in the U.S. military her brain tells her. Move, says her brain. Think. since 2000. Among those deployed, estimated “I knew where he lived, and years spent in rates of probable tbi range from 11 to 23 per cent. emergency medicine enabled me to deduce to In Special Operations Forces (sof) like the Green which trauma centre he would have been flown. Berets, Navy seals, and clandestine units, the I called the charge nurse line at R. Adams Cowley incidence is likely much higher: they sustain Shock Trauma in Baltimore, after speaking with 83 per cent of combat fatalities and deploy more Michael’s mother and brother.” often and repetitively than conventional forces. Things moved quickly. Kate moved quickly. And sof members die by suicide at much higher “Emergency nurses are Mafia-esque in taking rates than other military populations. care of their own,” says Kate wryly, “and this was “I think there’s some mechanism to over- no exception, even though they didn’t know me achieve,” Kate says now. She’s speaking of both personally. They put the phone next to Michael’s Special Operations Forces and nurses like ear before transferring him to intensive care, herself. “Especially those of us with thorny and I was able to tell him to hang on, that I was pasts: we need to prove we can reach the on my way. Gone was the bullshit we’d put each mountaintop.” She had just finished a clinically other through – everything superfluous falls focused doctorate at Loyola University studying away when a one-sided conversation occurs sof medics’ care of combat casualties, but “I was with the hum of a ventilator and squawks of annoyed by its limitations. I was told I’d never monitors in the background. I got off the phone, independently add to the body of knowledge. grabbed my go bag, and assured Ben I’d be home I wasn’t prepared at that point to independently soon and safely. lead research endeavours, so I started a research “The drive from Chattanooga to Baltimore science PhD at Rush University in Chicago, should take ten hours at minimum. Living in intending to study clinical cognition in military Germany among autobahns trained me well; members. I arrived in under eight. Members of our Army “As my friendships and collaborations with family spoke to me through Bluetooth as I pushed sof service members grew and deepened, I my turbodiesel to its limits through Appalachia. started to lose them to suicide. First, the hockey ‘Michael never came back from Iraq,’ said one player who taught my eldest daughter to skate friend to me. ‘He never landed.’ at Fort Bragg, Army Green Beret Michael “When I walked into the neurotrauma icu, Mantenuto [who starred in the Disney hockey monitor readings were grim. Intuitively, I noted movie Miracle] died by suicide in April 2017. about a dozen vasoactive and sedative drips and Within a day of his death, a Navy seal friend’s their infusion rates, vital signs, and ventilator junior medic, Ryan Larkin, died by suicide. settings – and Michael himself. Three years into my PhD, with a year off to have “Patients’ families have told me – and millions a baby, I reversed course and decided to study of other nurses, I’m sure – that their loved one resilience and suicide in Special Operations, waited for them to arrive before dying, that they who are assumed to have the highest resilience sensed a change when they walked in the room, but are dying by suicide at three times the rate that the patient ‘knew’ they were there. And of conventional military populations.” most of the time, when I heard this, I would nod
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 29 compassionately and evoke some semblance of chapter three therapeutic communication while I kept their loved one clinically stable. Yes, unconscious t’s March 2020. Kate has moved back to Canada patients can hear you, even when heavily with Ben and their children. She has accepted a sedated. But I usually put more stock in Iposition at the University of Windsor. She’ll be quantitative data and clinical assessment than teaching research methods and quantitative feelings. Michael’s injuries were incompatible statistics, to both undergrads and PhD students. with life and he was maxed out on every drip and She’s looking forward to it: she loved teaching vent setting. There was no clinical explanation research in Tennessee. As a professor, she upholds for him still being alive. the rigorous standards embodied by her Queen’s “As I approached the father of my two girls and nursing profs. She also infuses her teaching practice my first real young love, I kept one eye on the with self-effacing encouragement, remembering her monitor mounted above his head. The energy own academic battles as an undergrad. “Students in the room told me all was forgiven between us: often – and incorrectly – think professors have the fights, the emotional fractures, me leaving done everything right the first time. When I have him. As I spoke into his ear, his heart rate students who are struggling, I offer to show them approached the low end of ‘way too high.’ my transcript from Queen’s, because how you start His cardiac rhythm started to show detectable out doesn’t dictate how you end up.” P-waves. His arterial blood pressure, too low School starts again in September. Kate is for decent organ perfusion, rose. It was looking forward to the summer to hang out with nighttime and we only had until morning, the kids and settle into their new neighbourhood. when surgeons would take him to the o.r. And then covid-19 hits. It hits New York City and harvest his organs. particularly hard. “I did what Queen’s taught me to do in the “When New York started to deteriorate under start of second-year clinicals. While exercising the strain of this virus, I knew I’d be going back incredible mastery of delivering the complicated there in some capacity. It was just a gut feeling. calculus that is patient care, nurses restore I started prepping the kids at the end of March, patients, starting with attending to their dignity. saying, ‘You know, I’m probably going to have It was Michael’s last night on Earth and as to go help there. I’m probably going to have to powerless as I was to fix anything else, as a go help people. I’m a nurse, and this is what Queen’s nurse I’d be damned if he wasn’t pristine nurses do.’” in death. I loaded Michael’s favourites on my Once again, someone in Kate’s network reached iPhone and turned the music up. Two nurses – out to her, and Kate was ready to show up. “Missy two, in a busy major urban trauma icu – Givens and I had worked together in emergency stopped what they were doing when I asked medicine at Madigan Army Medical Centre about for a wash basin and supplies. Without moving 15 years ago. I later learned that I was her charge him and jeopardizing his intracranial pressure, nurse on her first night shift as an attending.” we washed him head to toe. And then we hugged Colonel Melissa Givens, md, mph (“Missy”, to each other and cried.” Kate) had recently retired as an emergency room On the way home to Tennessee the next day, physician with the U.S. military. She and Kate saw Kate got a phone call from Michael’s psychiatrist. what was unfolding in New York: its health-care He described to Kate a symptom constellation he system was buckling under the weight of covid-19, had seen in Michael; that set of symptoms and they were compelled to act. Missy and Kate triggered a memory for Kate. “Dr. Dan Perl of put together a team of six and started video - Walter Reed/Uniformed Services University had conferencing daily about developing larger teams found astroglial scarring in Ryan Larkin’s brain of highly trained former sof medics to head to post-suicide and in other post-mortem brains New York to alleviate pressures on individual from soldiers with chronic tbi who died by critical care units’ staff. Through colleagues, Missy suicide. My apologies to the laboratory intern learned that New York-Presbyterian (nyp) Hospital who answered the phone and heard me blurt out, had a field hospital ready to handle patients with ‘My ex-husband had tbi from combat and died covid-19, but no one to run or staff it. by suicide yesterday and you have to go get his “Missy called me and said, “I told [nyp] I could brain and analyze it.’ But by golly, Stacey Gentile be medical director but would need a chief nursing of the Center for Neuroregenerative Medicine officer. How do you feel about running a 220-bed activated an incredibly compassionate organ field hospital?’ I tried to think of a nurse who’d harvesting team who made it happen.” worked with sof medics, studied their practices and philosophy, knew their clinical capabilities,
30 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview who would be willing to drop everything to work and live in a pandemic epicentre…It dawned on me that I was that nurse. So I grabbed one of the kids’ hockey bags, packed it with clothes, tossed it in the car, and started driving.” Working in the bubble Close to Columbia/New York-Presbyterian’s Allen Hospital is “the bubble,” a tented soccer field belonging to Columbia University Athletics. Kate and her advance team were responsible for turning it into a functional hospital for patients with covid-19. “I ultimately had responsibility for about 130 people, both civilian nurses and Special Operations medics functioning as nurse equivalents in their assigned roles,” she says. “All the medics assigned to specific clinical roles – who were already the best-trained in the military – had undergone additional training in prolonged field care, which had prepared them to provide nursing-equivalent critical care in circumstances
where you can’t evacuate casualties. Ironically, KEMPLIN KATE I was part of the initial efforts that developed Prior to accepting patients, medics at the Ryan Larkin prolonged field care during its inception, and I Field Hospital honed their procedures. Here, they run was now seeing it applied to a pandemic. a mock code with Missy Givens acting as the patient. “These medics are also used to deploying out of the back of a truck or in a really remote village. treating traumatic stress. One of my first actions So when they walked into the bubble, it’s bright, was hiring her to be the mental health lead for it’s shiny, there’s linoleum, there’s electricity, the staff. She was absolutely crucial because we there’s oxygen, so they were like, ‘Wow, this is anticipated what the stress and the strain could be, like the Ritz.’” going in. I don’t see how we could have pulled this Prior-service military personnel were also off without her. Just being able to have a quick well-trained in suiting up in protective equipment, hallway consult if you had a challenging meeting essential for treating patients with covid-19. or needed to talk to someone about something “In developing ppe procedures, we assumed sensitive…It was amazing to have a dedicated airborne transmission, based on reports from person there to ground you and help you talk overseas and so we implemented really strict through things, even if you were just having a protocols for being in the bubble. At all times, you rough day.” had to cover your hair, you had to wear eye protection, you had to wear a surgical mask over The bubble gets a name your n95 and don what we called the bunny suit “When Missy broached naming the hospital, I and shoe covers and two pairs of gloves and all thought, why don’t we name it after Ryan Larkin? these other layers. Head-to-toe ppe. And the Because in our academic community for Special medics were just like, ‘Okay, no problem.’ To my Operations medicine, most people knew who Ryan knowledge, none of our staff contracted covid-19 was, and how he died. Because he was a medic, from working at the field hospital. his death hit very close to home. He was such a “The days were really long. In the beginning caregiver and a really compassionate guy. weeks, I’m pretty sure we did sixteen 16-hour days I reached out to Ryan’s parents whom I knew straight. It was just very, very intense. Opening a because we are part of this club that nobody wants hospital typically takes years; we did it in six days, to belong to: people with military family members with personnel from all over the country with who’ve died by suicide. His parents are very vastly different backgrounds. Prior to putting our private, but were enthusiastic to name the hospital leadership team together, I contacted Amanda after Ryan. Inadvertently, that sent out a bat signal – Brandon – a really fantastic mental health when you name a field hospital after a fallen practitioner and colleague familiar with the Special Operations medic, everybody in that Special Operations community and expert in community intuits your mission.”
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 31 The Ryan Larkin Field Hospital treated patients positive or negative and had to take precautions of from every borough in New York City. Special Ops distance. Whereas we knew we were walking into training came in handy here, too. a positive-pressure and completely covid-positive “Special Operations soldiers all have to learn, patient care environment: all of our patients had with a fair degree of fluency, a foreign language. covid-19. So we were able to just get right up in Some learn French, some learn Spanish, some there with our patients like normal, except that we learn Russian or Korean. So we would be treating were wearing all this protective gear.” a patient from Eastern Europe and we had a medic fluent in Russian: he could speak a lot of different Sending patients home dialects. Others spoke Mandarin or Tagalog. I “Because we were in a bubble, if you played music mean, it was kind of uncanny. When we really in one corner, every patient could hear it. We needed that kind of language service, these ordered a nautical bell, as an homage to Ryan, who medics just came through. was a Navy seal. In the Navy, when you’re done “That’s at the heart of being a holistic caregiver,” your tour on ship, you ring the bell three times. says Kate. “The first thing is you have to speak to We had it engraved and hung on a platform. And patients in their own language. Medics who’ve whenever patients left, they got to ring the bell. been to war, very tough and battle-hardened “And then when we closed the hospital, we rang clinicians, were shaving patients’ faces and the bell for the last time.” bathing them while providing top-notch care. You can’t teach that kind of patient-centred the beginning of compassion. But it’s not surprising: these patients chapter four were separated from their family – like soldiers and military families often are – and military- It’s mid-July. Kate is out of quarantine and back at adjacent people tend to treat others in the same home with her family. She’s also hard at work on boat as our de facto family, regardless of dna. her latest research. She and fellow Queen’s grad “Patients were actually surprised that we David Barbic (Artsci’02, MSc’04, Meds’08) are interacted so closely with them, or when we spent exploring moral injury and quality of life in prolonged amounts of time in proximity to them. emergency clinicians in the age of covid-19. Before transferring them to us, hospital staff didn’t David is a professor of emergency medicine at ubc. initially know if our patients were covid-19 “Emergency and critical care clinicians are viewed as typically very tough and unflappable regardless of traumas we witness and treat. That hyper- resilient and impermeable stereotype, similar to how people perceive Special Operations Forces, can invoke stigma in clinicians who are mentally struggling while caring for incredibly ill patients during a resource-devoid pandemic. “The predicate for moral injury,” says Kate, “is a shock to your psyche or to your mores. It happens when you see things – or do things – within a certain context that chip away at your institutional trust, your belief system, your ability to make appropriate clinical and moral decisions. Physicians and nurses in the er already see the worst and the best in humanity. If you ever want to see which community is having an overdose crisis or a violent crime problem, stop in at your local emergency room. We’re the first people to see it.” The same goes for patients with covid-19. The additional strain – the moral injury – dealt to clinicians practising during the pandemic can occur from stressors at home, rationing care, practising without enough ppe, and witnessing leadership failures during the pandemic. Clinicians
KATE KEMPLIN KATE are often unable to do what they are meant to and Ryan Larkin’s dad, Frank Larkin, tries out the bell at trained to do during this pandemic. And it’s taking the field hospital. a toll on health-care workers.
32 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview “Moral injury has roots in the military, with regard to traumatic stress and negative health outcomes – including suicide. Dr. Lorna Breen, the er director at the Allen Hospital supporting Ryan Larkin Field Hospital, died by suicide while we were in New York. Not only did she contract covid-19 and likely suffered from its neuro - vascular after-effects, she reportedly felt powerless to save so many sick patients. Even without knowing her personally, that hit very close to home for all of us working at a field hospital named for a Navy seal who’d died by suicide, and for those of us otherwise affected by suicide. “In March before leaving for New York, I was matched with three amazing medical students from Western studying at the UWindsor campus who were interested in trauma research: Hailey Guertin, Kylie Suwary, and Matthew Bentley (Artsci’18). We launched an international study of emergency clinicians’ moral injury during the pandemic, which was only possible because of Kate and her husband Ben in 2019 their incredible scholarship and dedication, and because David took the reins from Vancouver ridiculous. Even during this pandemic, clinicians while I was in New York.” Currently, Kate and are still reluctant to seek professional care for their David are working on defence grant applications mental health, despite knowing that the mind to further study moral injury with nurse scientist needs as much attention as the rest of the body. And Audrey Steenbeek from Dalhousie. in my experience, patients prefer clinicians who are Reflecting back on the first chapters of her life, proficient professionally, but also human. It takes Kate says, “You know, when I first went to New stability and opportunity to secure an education in York, and I was 21, I helped in a very small way. health care. Many clinicians and academics may Now, almost 20 years later, with some education have limited experience with dysfunction, have and practice under my belt, I was able to go back not faced discrimination, been single parents, to New York and help stand up a facility where or been housing- or food-insecure. Those lived hundreds of people could be part of the fight experiences may therefore be somewhat against covid-19. theoretical to current leaders in health care, absent “Queen’s does, in essence, teach its students more women, immigrants, and bipoc in leadership positive entitlement. By virtue of rigour, prestige, roles. Regardless of our own experiences, we have and tradition, Queen’s grads either have a place at to insulate and rally around colleagues, instead of the table or we’ll bring our own chair. So, whether isolating them, during times of struggle.” I was 21 or 40, I knew I could contribute in So Kate Kemplin has a message for all those situations of duress, while under stress, and I can badass nurses-to-be, especially those students enable other people to contribute, too.” who think, Dr. Kate Kemplin is many things. She has one “I don’t get this course…I don’t fit in…Maybe I’m not hard-earned BNSc from Queen’s University. She good enough.” also has an MSc in Nursing and what she calls “an She says, “I never believed successful people overabundance of doctoral education.” She’s been who said ‘I’ve failed as much as I’ve succeeded’ until in the pit at the World Trade Center days after 9/11. I had some spectacular face-plants myself. When She’s practised with military and civilian patients you push the envelope and take risks – whether by on two continents. taking a new professional role, researching sensitive She is a professor. She is a researcher. She is a topics, or by challenging how things have always mother. She loves Led Zeppelin. She has bad days. been done – some failure is likely. She has neurocognitive disabilities. She has an “Spit the dirt out, dust yourself off, and ignore innate need to rock the boat, to challenge the the haters who will judge or discourage you. Keep system. She is complex and flawed. going, because you usually have to take the leap “We have to be flawless in providing patient care. before you can see the net below you. I still don’t Yet many people think you can’t be a nurse or a know what I want to do when I grow up, but I physician unless you’re personally flawless, which is know it’ll be quite the ride getting there.” B
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 33 From feast
34 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview feature STORY
to famiAftern 12 years,e Paul Sawtell’s wholesale food distribution business was on course to disrupt the Ontario food supply system. And then covid-19 hit.
BY ANDREW STOKES TENZING DORJÉ TENZING
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 35 his past February, Paul Sawtell (Artsci’02) in a gradual way, it happened overnight.” He offered me a tour of the low-slung pauses, remembering the days and hours after warehouse in North York that holds his covid-19 hit Ontario and his business came to a business, 100km Foods. As we walked, he grinding halt. His voice is weary; he’s been taking talked about the pride he felt moving into on night shifts due to staffing constraints. “Those T the space. How when he started the enterprise first few days were terrible. Truly brutal.” with his wife, Grace Mandarano, he couldn’t have It’s now late June and the Toronto region is dreamed of being big enough to need its more tentatively heading into Phase 2 of the provincial than 8,000 square feet. reopening plan. Rates of infection from covid Back in 2008, they’d started 100km Foods to have declined steadily and the last few days have link the farms of the Ontario Greenbelt to the proffered a modest half per cent increase in the restaurants and stores that wanted local seasonal number of new cases. For now, thanks to an food. Now, after 12 years of growth in fits and unprecedented disruption of millions of lives, starts, they were on strong footing. They had Ontario seems to have flattened the curve. hundreds of clients, a staff of over two dozen, While we’ve managed to prevent sickness on and had just been awarded a “Best for the World” the level that many epidemiologists feared, there designation by B Corp. have been a cascade of other consequences. As he moved through the Across Canada, nearly two million people lost warehouse, Paul pointed to their jobs. Use of food banks has soared. And B Corp is a certification for walk-in fridges filled with local countless businesses buckled under the pressure, companies that meet high social cheeses, milk, and eggs. He 100km Foods among them. sustainability and environmental appraised pallets stacked with Paul and Grace had come to the food sector performance standards. The non- potatoes, beets, and onions. by an indirect route. After years working in the profit organization B Lab has And he gestured to the empty pharmaceutical industry, both were looking for certified more than 3,300 B Corp space where in just a few something that rewarded them with more than a businesses across 71 countries. months there would be stacks paycheque. Their entrepreneurial bent sent them scraping the ceiling as asparagus, looking for a problem to solve. broccoli, strawberries, cabbage, It wasn’t long before they learned there was a cauliflower, and cherries were ready for harvest. fissure in the Greater Toronto Area’s food supply Trucks pulled up to the docking bay. They chain. At the grocery store or the food terminal, a loaded up stacks of food and fanned out like farm from the fertile Greenbelt that girdles the gta pollinating bees for destinations like Momofuku, is competing against agribusiness giants from Sassafraz, and the Royal York. California, Chile, and Argentina. Because of global Thinking about the long road that brought supply chains and monoculture farms operating them to where they were, Paul was contemplative. on a nearly unimaginable scale, a head of broccoli “One of the less talked-about attributes of business that budded with a view of the Pacific Ocean sells is perseverance,” he said, reflecting on the years he for less than one grown in Ontario. drove trucks, made sales, and hauled potatoes It’s a major struggle for Ontario farmers, who while Grace handled the finances. have to take every step possible to “Overnight successes are rare. More “Southern Ontario drive down the cost of production. often it’s blood, sweat, and tears with But for chefs who care about the small increases that last.” is one of the best quality of the food they serve, it’s Eventually, with staff handling growing regions infuriating. If the environmental the sales, marketing, packing, and toll of a 4,000 km freight journey delivery, Paul had more time for long- on the planet.” wasn’t bad enough, the taste speaks term strategic thinking. He was for itself. While affordable and building connections with other food hubs across available year-round, there’s a good chance that North America and thinking about how more a strawberry from the Golden State will have the communities could be fed with the produce of same flavour as a block of wood. their own soil. He felt like it was a luxury to be “I want the best ingredients, and I want to do able to think that far ahead, especially after so as little to them as I can,” says Chef Brad Long, many years just trying to deliver on yesterday’s the restaurateur behind Belong Café. Equal parts commitments. industrial heritage and chic farmhouse, it’s a Paul, like billions of others, didn’t realize that restaurant that prides itself on a menu that all of his plans were going to change. changes with the season. “Buying local means I “When the closure order came, literally 90 per get crops in season, when they’re at their best and cent of our revenue evaporated,” Paul says. “Not their cheapest. It’s just smart business,” he says.
36 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview “Most people don’t know that southern Ontario is food to people in need. But even The Stop, which one of the best growing regions on the planet!” directly feeds hundreds of people every day and One of the places making the most of that had a surging demand, was being overwhelmed exceptional growing region is the New Farm, by donations. The rest of 100km Food’s stock of just south of Georgian Bay. They were one of beets, greens, and eggs went, at greatly reduced the first farms that Paul and Grace partnered prices, to the few of their restaurant clients still with when they started 100km Foods. Their story open for business. was surprisingly similar: a couple working 100km Foods was designed to sell to unhappily in urban jobs who decided to take a restaurants. But when that wasn’t an option leap of faith. Their ambition was the same: anymore, they changed their approach. “It took change our food system. us 12 years to build our wholesale business,” “When we connected with 100km Foods, it was Paul says with a tired smile. “And then 12 days love at first sight,” says Gillian Flies, who founded to build our retail business.” the New Farm with her husband. “A lot of farmers In the first days after the provincial closure try to farm and distribute to make their model order, grocery stores struggled to fend off the work. They tack delivery on to what they’re mounting chaos. Rumours of lockdowns and already doing and it just doesn’t work. shortages had panicked consumers Working with 100km Foods lets us do “We had two buying stockpiles of flour, yeast, our job and they do their job.” toilet paper, and disinfecting wipes. The New Farm owners are farmer- reactions to Grocery delivery companies soon advocates, trying to resuscitate now-lost choose from: had serious backlogs. 100km Foods techniques to combat the rising tides of wanted to help fill the gap. climate change. Through a suite of pull the Convincing customers their practices called regenerative farming, blankets over boxes were a better alternative than which include cover-cropping, natural the dread-inducing grocery store fertilizers, and minimizing tilling, their our heads and was a relatively easy sell. The real fields soak up co2 from the atmosphere wait for it to challenge was getting them the and swallow water during heavy rains food they’d ordered. that make other farms flood. pass, or fight “I know it sounds simple: “Our farming depends on 100km like hell to save packing food into boxes.” Paul says. Foods,” Gillian says with conviction. “But we were set up to pack up covid intervened in their something.” skids of food for a truck, not this relationship. small scale. We needed to retool When restaurants closed, 100km Foods had our warehouse. We needed a team with a new more than $750,000 in their accounts receivable. skill set and we needed to package and handle With tears welling in his eyes, Paul tells how they everything differently.” Years of fine-tuning had had to call their farm partners to tell them they made their warehouse a model of efficiency. couldn’t pay their bills. This after he and Grace Now they were doing a full redesign. had to lay off nearly a dozen staff. “We want to do things as right as possible as “These are our family, we spend so much time early as possible,” Paul says. “So we put our heads with them and they work so hard for our shared down trying to get it right, because if you go too purpose,” Paul says. “We have a bond, and to let fast you can implode. You can do yourself a half of them go was devastating. That week was disservice by putting out a flawed product early.” very dark. We were in a full existential crisis. We They began hiring back their workers, many to spent the days asking ourselves, ‘How do we get jobs that had totally changed. Selling to families out of this?’” as well as restaurants had been a plan for a long Paul takes a deep breath, remembering how time, but covid forced their hand ahead of they responded. “We were forced into survival schedule. They reworked their website and mode. We had two reactions to choose from: pull started selling curated boxes filled with farm- the blankets over our heads and wait for it to pass, fresh foods. Orders trickled in and they picked or fight like hell to try to save something.” hotspots around the city to park their trucks and And so they fought. distribute boxes. An old friend they’d worked They donated everything they could to The with back in year one offered them a parking lot Stop Community Food Centre, one of their long- in the west end to make the exchanges. Then time non-profit partners. For nearly as long as it they found another lot downtown. Then one in has been running, 100km Foods has made it a North York. Soon they were distributing across priority to allocate a portion of their high-quality the city again.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 37 “The flip side of perseverance is refocusing and the federal government’s 75 per cent wage your energy quickly,” Paul says. “That meant being subsidy program has played a major role. supportive to our team members who were now “Delivering food for families instead of restaurants wearing different hats. People had to pick up the doesn’t require more produce,” Paul says. “But the pieces and recreate themselves and labour involved is significant. It’s a their jobs while we pivoted the gift to have this kind of runway with business.” “Access to the wage subsidy. If we tried to do 100km Foods gathered enough good food has this under normal circumstances, it weekly orders that they were able to wouldn’t be possible. We want to make the next step for the business’s always been build enough so that when the wage new arm: home delivery. Over the a stress, but subsidy ends, we’re sustainable.” weeks that followed, they put the Sustainability is a concept that enterprise back together in a new the pandemic Paul brings up often. And it’s one he shape. Growth has been slow but amplifies it means in more ways than just carbon steady, and they’re now back up to footprint. The work of 100km Foods generating 50 per cent of their previous exponentially.” is predicated not just on reducing revenue. Paul is circumspect about the those international freight trips, it’s experience. Though he and Grace have put in about the health and resilience of the region: our a tremendous amount of labour to make it ability to survive during times of acute shock and happen, he’s keenly aware of the help they had prolonged stress. along the way. “The fact that if the border closes, Toronto only They have hired back nearly all their staff, has enough food for three days scares me,” Paul
TENZING DORJÉ TENZING Staff at 100km Foods prepare produce orders for pick-up by customers.
38 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview says. But he understands that right now, it’s a niche question given the economics of the system. Local food is expensive. “It’s a subset of the population that has the power to make it an easy decision.” They balance this tension with a regular commitment to food justice organizations. 100km Foods makes free deliveries for non-profit partners. They donate produce. And during this pandemic, they’ve been helping people who have become food-insecure. “Access to good food has always been a stress, but this amplifies it exponentially,” he says, informed from the regular conversations he has with staff at places such as FoodShare, The Stop, and North York Harvest Food Bank. “The demand for community food services is through the roof. People’s circumstances are fragile. If you live paycheque to paycheque, this presents an immediate problem.” Once the new arm of the business was up and running, 100km Foods was approached by Meal Exchange, a student-focused food security organization. They wanted to help get food to students who were now without meal plans, struggling to get enough to eat. Paul was happy to help and offered them produce at steep discount. But, with the newness of the business’s second arm, he wasn’t able to provide the home delivery they needed. “In good times we’re happy to have relationships that are more socially positive if they have a fiscal cost,” Paul says. “But we just couldn’t swing it.” Unexpected help stepped in. Local moving companies Atlas Van Lines and AMJ Campbell
offered to deliver. Now, along with trucks headed DORJÉ TENZING out for deliveries to their customers and the Paul Sawtell restaurants slowly coming back into action, brightly emblazoned moving trucks dock at the even this goal may be a stretch. “Everything 100km Foods warehouse too. pre-covid is out the window.” “I never would have thought a partnership like Paul is hesitant to talk about silver linings. that would exist,” Paul says. “But that program Instead, he’s informed by the experience of seeing helped feed 1,200 students. I’m grateful we could more than a decade of effort almost disappear. be part of that unlikely collaboration.” In addition “Being in a dire situation completely realigns to doing tangible good for the community, the your goals,” he says. “Over the 12 years we’ve success of the Meal Exchange project signalled been running, there have been dark days.” Days something more for the business. Contributing to where trucks broke down, where food spoiled, people in need meant they were back on their where a small hiccup snowballed into a major feet. Four months into a crisis that nearly wiped problem. “Sometimes I wanted to quit or Grace them out, they had stepped back from the brink. wanted to quit. Thankfully, those days didn’t The impacts of covid-19 are still unfolding. overlap for long.” There are still thousands sick and communities For now, they’re all right. There will be more seem to be struck by resurgences of the virus just orders tomorrow, and more deliveries, and more as they think they’re in the clear. It’s changed the unexpected problems. context for everything, and Paul is simply glad his “The story of the bootstrapping entrepreneur business has survived. “I would be hugely proud is a fallacy, to say the least,” he says. “You need and consider it a major success if we get out of people, partners, luck, and perseverance. A strong this year and break even,” he says, adding that stomach helps too.” B
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 39 KEEPING News from classmates and friends Send notes to [email protected] ın touch Phone: 613.533.6000 ext. 77016 Online edition: queensu.ca/alumnireview Queen’s Alumni Review, Queen’s University Old Medical Building, Kingston, Ont., K7L 3N6 To update your address or change your subscription from print to either the online or app version, email [email protected]. Please include your faculty, year of graduation, and mailing address with your request. The online subscription includes a quarterly email reminder when each issue is published. The Queen’s Alumni Review app is available in the Apple app store, on Google Play, and in the Amazon app store.
This bird’s-eye QUBS celebrates 75 years The Queen’s University Biological Station (QUBS) was view of qubs established on Lake Opinicon in 1945. Since its inception, QUBS has had a dual was captured mandate of teaching and research in biology and related sciences while also by drone in 2019. engaging in active land stewardship to conserve local terrestrial and aquatic environments and biodiversity. When established, the field station consisted of 34 hectares on a parcel of land known as Queen’s Point. Today, thanks to grants and donations from neighbours and alumni, QUBS has expanded to comprise more than 3,400 hectares of land. It has supported students and researchers who have produced more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications. Explore QUBS research at research.qubs.ca. The QUBS community celebrated its anniversary virtually this summer, due to COVID-19. Explore anniversary videos and photos at qubs.ca. Follow QUBS on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: @QUBioStation.
40 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview KEEPING IN TOUCH t0 1959 Unless otherwise indicated, dates in these notes refer to 2020.
Up to 1959. MEDS’54 REUNION Deaths “It was the summer of 1948 when Dr. Orr’s chosen Flying Cross for his service to the Allied few hit the Queen’s campus. Some were fresh Forces during the Second World War. B John Gray Anderson, BSc’53, died from high school while others could look back on June 15, 2019, in Houston, Texas. Jack several years of war. Each of us had a keen desire is survived by his wife, Peg (Pinder), to be a doctor.” [1954 Tricolor yearbook] Arts’51, and children Martha, Chris- Returning to Queen’s for their 65th anniver- tine, and John, and extended family. sary were these distinguished members of Jack was predeceased by his daugh- Meds’54: (front row) M. Ruth (Bell) Tatham (G.P. ter Janet. Jack served for four years in and Rehab), William Novick (Otolaryngology), the Royal Canadian Air Force, prior to Kenneth Appleby (G.P.), and Wallace Troup attending Queen’s to study electrical (Cardiology); (back row) Ovas Wagg (Ob.Gyn) engineering. After graduating, he and Gordon Bird (Pediatrics). went on to a stellar career in the pulp At their reunion dinner, Wally Troup gave a trib- and paper Industry. He was very ac- ute to Bill Novick, discussing Bill’s Distinguished tive with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. After retiring to the beautiful Hill Country of Texas, the design team for the Avro Arrow, Bertram Oliver Jack was instrumental in setting up an one of the most advanced fighter Fraser-Reid, English as a Second Language pro- aircrafts of its era and the pride of BSc’59, MSc’61, gram for workers on area ranches. A Canadian technology. After the died May 25. Bert is proud Queen’s graduate, he appreci- unexpected cancelling of the Avro survived by his ated receiving a certificate recogniz- Arrow project by the Canadian wife, Lillian ing his 65th anniversary. government in 1959, Richard was (Lawrynuik), recruited by AiResearch in Phoenix, NSc’61, children Ariz. In 1963, he was hired by Hamil- Andrea, Artsci’88, ton Standard in Connecticut, where and Terry, Artsci’90, and extended he continued his career as an aero- family. Born and raised in Christiana, nautical engineer. Raising his family Jamaica, Bert moved to Canada in in the Town of West Hartford, 1956 to attend Queen’s. After com- Richard continued to be an avid pleting his MSc at Queen’s with sailor and skier for much of his life, noted carbohydrate chemist J.K.N. including working as a ski instructor Jones, Bert went on to earn a PhD at until the age of 85. the University of Alberta under the Richard Laidley Brown, BSc’52, of tutelage of Ray Lemieux, arguably West Hartford, Conn., died May 22 Marilyn (King) the grandfather of carbohydrate after celebrating his 91st birthday Burns, BA’51, chemistry. Bert then moved to Lon- earlier that day. Predeceased by his died in April from don for a post-doc with Sir Derek parents, Edna (Laidley), BA 1925, and COVID-19. Pre- Barton at Imperial College. He held Wilfred Brown, BSc 1925, Richard is deceased by her faculty positions first at the Univer- survived by Margaret, his beloved husband, Robert sity of Waterloo, then the University wife of 62 years; children Geoffrey Burns, BA’52. Mari- of Maryland, and finally Duke Univer- Brown and Angela Bennett, Artsci’83; lyn is survived by sity, where he was awarded the and granddaughter Danielle Ben- children Wayne, James B. Duke Professor of Chem- nett. Born in Trail, B.C., Richard was Kathy, Paul, and Dave, and extended istry distinction in 1985. Bert retired raised in Owen Sound, Ont., with family. At Queen’s, Marilyn was ac- from Duke in 1996. He then estab- some of his fondest memories being tive in sports, serving on the Levana lished the non-profit Natural Prod- those of the summers spent in the Athletic Board of Control. She was a ucts and Glycotechnology (NPG) idyllic town of Leith, a place he member of the intercollegiate tennis Research Institute, Inc., dedicated to would return to annually throughout team and in 1950, she and her Arts’51 the development of carbohydrate- his life. After attending Queen’s to classmates were the intramural bas- based therapeutics and vaccines for study engineering physics, Richard ketball champions. After graduation, tropical diseases. Bert’s research ca- went on to attend Cranfield Univer- she and Bob made Niagara Falls their reer was replete with innovative dis- sity in Cranfield, U.K., receiving his home. There, Marilyn worked for the coveries in carbohydrate organic and master’s degree in aeronautical Red Cross. She also volunteered with physical organic chemistry. Some of engineering. He then worked as an the YWCA, the Ladies Hospital Auxil- his more notable achievements were aerospace engineer at Orenda iary at the Greater Niagara General the use of carbohydrates as chiral Engines in Malton, Ont. In one of the Hospital, the United Way, and the synthons to prepare non-carbohy- defining chapters of his life and ca- Canadian Federation of University drate-type natural products, such as reer, it was here that he was part of Women. insect pheromones and antibiotics;
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 41 KEEPING IN TOUCH t0 1959
development of the “armed-dis- structure of coral reefs through the children. On graduation, Mitch armed” concept in glycosylation use of a submersible diver-operated worked for Canadian General Electric chemistry; the development of hydraulic drill. His many publications for a period in Peterborough before O-pentenyl glycosides as versatile and work off Belize, Panama, Costa returning to Osgoode Hall where he glycosyl donors, which contributed Rica, and the east coast of the United obtained his LLB. He worked as a to the concept of reactivity tuning in States sparked similar studies of reef patent agent for a few years and oligosaccharide synthesis, and the growth worldwide. Ian became the then joined Dominion Stores. He be- use of free radical methodologies to third recipient of the Charles Darwin came active in the Toronto Lawyers form carbocycles from carbohydrate- Medal presented to a member of the Club and in 1982–1983 was the club’s based templates. His many research International Society for Reef Studies president. He was recruited by the breakthroughs earned him world- (now the International Coral Reef Polysar Corporation in Sarnia where wide distinction and numerous Society) in recognition of highly sig- he was involved in many European awards. He was passionately com- nificant contributions to reef studies transactions. On a subsequent down- mitted to the cause of advancing the and the dissemination of scientific sizing, he returned to Toronto, where representation of persons of colour knowledge to secure coral reefs for he worked with Mitel and several in the physical sciences. His profes- future generations. He also served clients on the early aspects of the sional legacy includes more than as president of the society and was internet. Mitch was from Hamilton, 330 papers and reviews and more geological editor of the society’s where he had played water polo, but than 130 graduate students and journal, Coral Reefs. Within the at Queen’s he became a member of post-doctoral fellows, many of whom museum, Ian helped found a marine the 1955 and 1956 Golden Gaels are now leaders in their fields and station in Belize, helped revamp football teams, which won back-to- remained dear friends long after several exhibition halls, and served back Intercollegiate Championships their professional collaborations as chairman of the Department of and the Yates Cup. Mitch was well ended. A true renaissance man, Bert Paleobiology. Ian is survived by his regarded by his Queen’s associates had a passion for music that rivalled wife of 61 years, Vicky, Arts’57, three and for several years hosted a his dedication to chemistry. He was children, and seven grandchildren. fundraising barbeque by the 1959 an accomplished jazz and classical Frederick Hamilton Sexsmith, Engineering graduates at his cottage. pianist and pipe organist, having BA’53, MA’54 (Chemistry), (PhD, While somewhat incapacitated in played recitals at some of the world’s Princeton), died April 18 in Erie, Pa. later years, he enjoyed meeting and most renowned cathedrals. He had a distinguished career as a communicating with old friends. Major General research chemist, receiving numer- John W. Wilkinson, Denys William ous accolades for his work. He BA’50, MA’52, died Goss, BSc’49 published several papers on various May 14. Predeceased (MSE[Aero], chemical adhesion, absorption, in October by his MSE[Inst], Univer- and emulsion reactions. He once wife, Jean, BA’52, sity of Michigan), described his love of his work and John is survived died April 11. Bill passion for physical chemistry by by their children studied mechani- saying “Chemical formulations are David and Beth, cal engineering at inherently fascinating because their and extended fam- Queen’s and played football with the performance can be astonishingly ily. After studying mathematics and Queen’s Comets and Tammies different from what is expected. And statistics at Queen’s, John went on to teams. He served for 36 years in the that is often the pathway of innova- earn his PhD from the University of RCAF and Canadian Forces, retiring tion.” Frederick is survived by his North Carolina’s Department of in 1976 to become a successful busi- wife, Joan, children Malcolm and Statistics and Operations Research nessman, from which he retired in Kate, and extended family. in 1956. The family returned to 2002 at age 80. Kingston, and John taught math at Ian G. Macintyre, Queen’s for two years. In 1965, John BSc’57 (PhD, accepted a teaching position at McGill), died at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in home on May 14, Troy, N.Y. He remained there until his two weeks short of retirement in 1994. In 1971, he was his 85th birthday. honoured as an Outstanding Educa- A dedicated coral- tor of America for contributions to reef researcher at the advancement of higher educa- the Smithsonian Mitchell Louis Wasik, BSc’59, died tion and community service. He was Institution’s National Museum of June 18 in St. Catharines, Ont. Mitch a member of the American Statistical Natural History in Washington, D.C., is survived by his wife, Barbara, Association (ASA) for more than 50 for 40 years, Ian pioneered a new children Matthew (Fiona) and years and was honoured as a Fellow approach to revealing the internal Timothy (Sheri), and five grand - of the ASA in 1972. John served as editor of Technometrics, the ASA’s
42 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview KEEPING IN TOUCH 1960s
journal, from 1978 to 1980. John and Penty, Sc’69). Wayne served his owner of Needlework Nook in Jean were both very active in their community as a family physician, Saskatoon. Helen will be sorely community. In 2009, Planned Parent- anesthetist, and coroner for 45 years. missed and will leave many memo- hood Mohawk Hudson presented He spent many nights working as an ries of her smile, laugh, wisdom, John and Jean with the Giraffe emergency physician at Orillia Sol- and attention to detail. Award for “sticking their necks out diers’ Memorial Hospital and he de- John Robert Meehan Gordon, for reproductive rights.” In 2010, the livered many local babies. He was MBA’63, Professor Emeritus (Busi- couple were recipients of the YWCA’s greatly beloved by the patients ness), died April 27 in Kingston. Katherine S. Rozendaal Award, under his care. Wayne had a passion It was during his undergrad years, honouring people whose volunteer for hockey, fishing, boating, golfing, studying mechanical engineering at leadership and activities have had a gardening, wildlife conservation, and UBC, that John discovered his talent positive impact on the Schenectady, education. He had a unique sense of for teaching: he coached many of his N.Y., community. John was a lifelong humour and took great delight in classmates through their studies. student and enjoyed classes at the telling a joke or pulling a prank. Virginia came into his life then and Union College Academy for Lifelong Wayne was an animal lover and after graduation they were married. Learning. rarely without a canine companion John decided to pursue a career in at home. In his spare time, he en- education, which led him and his 1960s. joyed collecting stamps with the young family to many interesting Barrie District Stamp Club and was places around the world. He taught Honours an avid member of the Orillia Fish & at RMC in Kingston while completing Game Conservation Club. Romeo Levasseur, Sc’63, received his MBA at Queen’s, then moved to the 2020 Governor General Sover- Boston, where he earned his PhD at eign’s Medal for Volunteers in July. MIT, then to London, Ont., where he The Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers taught at Western, and then on to recognizes living Canadians who Switzerland, where he taught at have made a significant, sustained, IMEDE in Lausanne. The family finally and unpaid contribution to their settled back in Kingston where John community. Romeo’s citation reads, taught at Queen’s School of Business, “For more than 15 years, Romeo Lev- becoming dean in 1978. He taught asseur has worked for the well-being as a visiting scholar at universities all of the youth in his community within Helen (Perkin) Card, BNSc’62, died over the world and started the MBA the Family and Children’s Services of May 5 in Saskatoon. Helen is survived for Science & Technology program at Renfrew County. He has also been by her husband, Bob, Meds’64, MSc Queen’s. John retired from Queen’s contributing to the well-being of ’67, daughter Sharon, Artsci’85, in 2005, although he continued to veterans through his involvement as MSc’88, Meds’90 (Scott Irwin, OT’87), teach for a number of years there- a 45-year member of the Royal Cana- sons Michael and Geoffrey (Chris- after. He played a leadership role in dian Legion, where he participates in tine), and large extended family in- retirement, joining a group of busi- and organizes various fundraisers, cluding sister-in-law Mary Card, ness friends to start an organization including providing leadership for Arts’69. Helen was predeceased by called RELIKS (Retired Executives the annual Poppy Campaign in the her nephew, Ron Kimberley, MD’73, Living In Kingston), championing past several years.” Romeo was part BA’74. Helen received her RN from and mentoring emerging entrepre- of the organizing committee for Toronto Western Hospital (1960), neurs in the area. He also conceived Sc’63’s 55th reunion and is presently then came to Queen’s. Shortly there- the Kingston Ventures Study Tour to on the organizing committee for the after she met Bob, a medical student, expose students to business oppor- upcoming 60th reunion in 2023. at Macdonnell House. They married tunities in Kingston. John was an in June 1962. Helen began her nurs- ardent Queen’s Golden Gaels sup- Deaths ing career as an instructor at porter in both good times and bad, J. Wayne Bates, Kingston General Hospital. Helen being a season ticket holder for MD’69, died Dec. and Bob moved to Saskatoon in many years. He continued attending 10 in Orillia, Ont. 1973. Saskatoon had been her home football practices and games until Wayne is survived ever since, with temporary periods last year. His three children, Jane, by his parents, living across Canada and the U.S. She Artsci’82, Charles, Artsci’86, and Ian, Doreen and James always looked forward to her visits Artsci’90, followed in his footsteps Bates, Sc’49; wife back to Kingston. Helen cherished at Queen’s as did two of his seven Peggy; children her family including three grandsons grandchildren, KD, Artsci’16, and Lori, Megan, (Nicholas, Niklos, and Joshua). Helen Jason Dale, Com’16. In memory of Michael, and Bradley; and extended was extremely creative – knitting, John Gordon, donations can be family, including siblings David, bobbin lace, crochet, model building, made to the Dean’s Innovation Fund Com’80, and Sharon, Arts’68 (David etc. – and for many years was joint at Smith School of Business.
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Thomas Moore- the Peterborough Civic Hospital, Hank Hofmann, Arts’69, MSc’73. After head, BSc’67, died where she was known for her kind- obtaining her PhD in human bio- April 3. Tom is sur- ness, respect, and empathy. Diane chemical genetics, Frances did a post- vived by his wife, had an adventurous spirit (she held a doctoral fellowship at the University Kathy, children private pilot’s licence and power of Pennsylvania. She moved back to Stewart and Jason, squadron certificate), enjoyed bird- England and did another post-doc- and extended fam- watching and gardening, and loved toral fellowship at the Imperial ily. After studying to dance. She was a whiz at Trivial Cancer Research Fund. From 1984 to electrical engineer- Pursuit, a reasonable bridge player, 1990, Frances had a lectureship in ing at Queen’s, Tom had a long ca- and an impassioned political de- Genetics at Guy’s Hospital Medical reer in the telecommunications bater. Always the athlete, Diane re- School. From 1990 to 1995, she was a industry, working in telephone, fibre mained an avid cross-country skier research associate in the Department optics, and satellite communications. for as long as she was able, and she of Human Genetics at the University He thoroughly enjoyed starting new became an enthusiastic curler later College of London, working with businesses, solving problems, and in life. Diane is survived by Ed, her Sue Povey, the renowned geneticist. working with fast-paced R&D teams husband of more than 56 years, Frances took early retirement due to on the cutting edge of technology. children Robert, Artsci’91, Heather, ill health in 1995. Frances worked on Tom enjoyed many hobbies, from Artsci’94 (Trevor Whike, Sc’94) and the forefront of medical genetics and sailing on Georgian Bay to antique Ian, and extended family. Diane part of her work contributed to the telephones and clocks. was predeceased by her brother, human genome project in its early Diane Caroline Duncan MacDougall, BA/BPHE’66. days. She collected art, loved her (MacDougall) garden, and was particularly fond of Wood, BA’61, 1970s. cats. She had a devoted group of BPHE’62, died April friends who supported her and a 28 in Peterbor- Notes wonderful group of caregivers who were with her until the end. ough. Diane’s fa- Christopher Berzins, Artsci’74, ther, Major Robert MA’77, Law’84, (LLM’99, Osgoode) Nancy (Bradford) MacDougall, BA’38, recently retired after 34 years as an Bos, BA’70, died was killed in action Ontario public servant, 19 years with peacefully on May in Italy in 1944, when Diane was only the Ministry of Labour and the last 29, surrounded by four. Diane and her brother Duncan 15 years in the General Counsel’s the love of her were raised by their mother, Helen. Office at the Ontario Securities family. Beloved Diane was naturally athletic and had Commission. Although retired, he wife of Carlo Bos, a love of the outdoors. She grew up hopes to continue his passion for Arts’70, Meds’74; playing any sport she could, becom- writing about issues involving proud mother of Carlo Douglas Bos, ing an accomplished figure skater in access to information, privacy, and Artsci’98 (Ali, Sc’96), Jeffrey Duncan her teens, spending summers swim- administrative law. Bos, Sc’00 (Courtney), and Graham ming, fishing, and hiking at the fam- Bradford Bos, (Stephanie). Queen’s, Janet (Southwell) McCormick, ily cottage. She also excelled Chown Hall, Carlo, Johnson Street, Rehab’71, has made a career change academically. At Queen’s, Diane met lifelong friends. Primary school after a long and rewarding career in many of her lifelong friends, includ- teacher, marriage, mother, physical therapy. Jan recently gradu- ing her future husband, Ed Wood, Peterborough, cottager, community ated from the Atlantic School of Arts’62. After graduation, Diane volunteer, curler, traveller, reader, Theology in Halifax. She completed a began work as a phys. ed. teacher. grandmother. A life well lived, filled Master of Divinity in the Summer By the time she was 25, she was head with love. Distance MDiv Program while serv- of her school’s phys. ed department, ing as student minister at Hillcrest Jeannette (Langis) Bromley, BA’76, taking on more and more adminis- United Church in Halton Hills, Ont. died April 15. Jan is survived by her trative responsibilities on top of her Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Jan's husband Winston, Sc’65, sons Kevin, teaching. Di retired from teaching ordination has been postponed. David, and Trevor, and extended when she decided to have a family. Jan lives in Burlington, Ont., with her family, including seven grandsons. She and Ed settled in Peterborough husband, Andy. Jan can be reached After studying politics at Queen’s, Jan to raise their kids. There, Diane also at [email protected]. went on to earn an MEd from Lesley volunteered for a number of com- University in Cambridge, Mass. In munity organizations. When the kids Deaths 1971, she and Win moved to Langley, were old enough, Diane decided she Frances Benham, BSc’71, MSc’73 B.C., to enter the restaurant business. wanted to return to work, enrolling (Human Genetics), (PhD, University Later in life, Jan was an ESL instructor in nursing at Sir Sanford Fleming College London) died Jan. 22 in at Douglas College. In retirement, College, from which she graduated London, U.K., of cancer. Frances Jan and Win started playing dupli- in 1988. She worked for more than is survived by her sister, Marian cate bridge, and Jan became ranked 10 years as a psychiatric nurse at Hofmann, Arts’69, and brother-in-law as a Life Master in the game.
44 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview KEEPING IN TOUCH 1980s
Virginia (Backus) Kernohan, BA’73, worked for more than 20 years at the volunteering, and was a member of died at home in Bracebridge, Ont., Meaford and Owen Sound hospitals. many service clubs. He loved the on April 8. She is survived by her She later transitioned to home care outdoors, enjoying camping, fishing, husband, Patrick, children Sarah and work for which she truly had a pas- and canoeing. The perfect spot really Maggie, extended family, and many sion. She was well known across the was “just around the next bend.” friends. Ginny filled every one of her Grey-Bruce region as “Crystal the years with her infectious laughter, Physiotherapist.” She was beloved 1980s. her true love for life, and a fierce love and respected by all of her col- for her family. She touched everyone leagues and patients and will be Job news who crossed her path with her big, sorely missed by the profession. David Siderovski, open heart, her beautiful smile, and Crystal had a genuine passion for Artsci’89 (PhD, those twinkling eyes. In her pres- helping those in need. For 10 years, U of T), has joined ence, you always felt heard and safe she answered weekend phone lines the University of and that you mattered. She had the for Safe ’N Sound Owen Sound, North Texas (UNT) best heartfelt hugs and she was helping people find shelter in a Health Science never at a loss to tell you a dirty joke. crisis. She was a passionate, integral Center’s Graduate Ginny will be missed beyond belief. member of the Blue Mountain School of Biomed- Community Church. Above all, Crystal Grove ical Sciences as the Crystal was an incredible mother and Lainey, chair of UNT’s Department of Phar- wife; she gave absolutely everything BA/BPHE’77, macology and Neuroscience. His first to her family and she was the centre MSc(PT)’81, died days on the job were spent answer- of their universe. April 18. She is sur- ing media inquiries about the vived by her hus- Richard R. Moore, BA’70 (MEd, COVID-19 pandemic and his faculty’s band, Peter Lainey, Ottawa) died April 4 in Cochrane, responses. Before joining UNT, David Artsci/PHE’79, Ont. Richard is survived by his wife, spent eight years in West Virginia Ed’80, children Janet, four children, and eight grand- as chair of the WVU Physiology, Andrew and Lucy, and extended children. Richard was very involved Pharmacology, and Neuroscience family. Crystal was a skilled and in his church and his community. He Department. At WVU, he also built compassionate physiotherapist who was a teacher for 35 years, enjoyed an interdisciplinary team of bio -
Bequestq donor, so Queen’s can
continue to be everything he loves. plannning makkkes a diffffere ence queensu.ca/alumni/giftplanninng
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 45 KEEPING IN TOUCH 1980s
medical researchers to address the 2001. During his time at Western, ing was focused in the faculty’s De- opioid epidemic across Appalachia. Robin led a dedicated team in devel- partment of English Language Learn- oping an archival program that be- ing and Acquisition, Kate brought Notes came a model for many other her training in music and theatre to In November, universities. Throughout his career he the college by integrating it into her Robin was also active with several profes- language teaching. Kate also taught Keirstead, sional organizations, most notably in the college’s community music MA’83 (His- serving on the board of the Canadian school as a flute teacher. An active tory), retired Council of Archives, with his contribu- musician since her high school days as university tions recognized with awards from the in Sydenham, Ont., Kate studied with archivist at Archives Association of Ontario and flutists at the University of Regina, Western the Association of Canadian Archivists. the Royal Conservatory of Music in University. He Upon his retirement from Western he Toronto, and Douglas College after arrived in Kingston in 1981 to begin received the designation University graduating from Queen’s. In B.C.’s graduate work in History, fresh from Archivist Emeritus and The Western Lower Mainland area where she now completing undergraduate studies Award of Excellence, presented by lives, Kate performs regularly with at Acadia. After finishing his MA and University President Alan Shepard. local ensembles, including her flute briefly working on his doctorate, he Kate (Kellar) and guitar duo, Silverwood, formed decided to head west to UBC to pur- Yoshitomi, in 2011 with guitarist Michael sue a new area of study, then earning Mus’82, Ed’84 Gillette. Kate and Michael are now a second master’s degree in Archival (MEd, U of T), re- working on their fourth CD. Samples Studies. He started his professional tired in April from from her recordings can be found on career with the B.C. government and Douglas College in her website, acuteflute.ca. subsequently worked for the Legal New Westminster, Archives of B.C., Archives of Ontario, B.C., where she was Region of Waterloo, and City of an instructor in the Kitchener, before being appointed Faculty of Language, Literature, and Western’s first university archivist in Performing Arts. Though her teach-
LIFELONG LEARNING PERSONIFIED Marjorie Gagnon, Marianna Varpalotai, Artsci/PHE’87, and Elizabeth Brugman, PT’10, have opened a physiotherapy and athletic therapy clinic in Niagara Falls, Ont., called Active Life Rehab+ and Niagara Concussion Management. Marianna writes, “It was really excit- ing to connect many years ago with a fellow alumna. At the age of 55 and 33 we are excited to provided therapy services together. Please go to our website to learn all about us.” activeliferehab.ca Gabriella Zillmer, Artsci’81, has started a new chapter in her life. Her almost 40-year career spanned the public and private sectors with tech- nology, change, and leadership common themes throughout. In the first 17 years, Gabriella worked in the Ontario Public Service (OPS) bringing awareness to Geographic Informa- tion Systems technology and build- ing the digital geographic data bases used by digital apps and nav systems today. Her last few years in the OPS B were in leadership positions in Human Resources during a time of
46 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview KEEPING IN TOUCH 2000s
great change and disruption. From there, Gabriella joined BMO Financial ALUMNI MAKING A DIFFERENCE Group where, for the next 23 years, Shannon Orr, Artsci’96 (PhD, Wayne State) Samantha Ruddy, Artsci’09, is a doctor in New she moved into increasingly more launched bgsu-tap (Bowling Green State York City. She has just wrapped up her residency senior roles within HR ultimately be- University – Training Alliance for the Public at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, where she coming the senior V-P, performance, Good) which is training 40 students at bgsu had been looking after patients with covid-19. rewards, and HR operations. In this in grant writing, and then matching them with Samantha’s cousin, Nikola Ruddy, Artsci’13, gives role she was responsible for global non-profits in Northwest Ohio that are strug- us a glimpse of what Samantha and her col- total rewards, employee relations, gling to respond to the public health and leagues have been up against. “Coney Island performance, HR operations, and economic crises created by covid-19. There Hospital is a city-run hospital that was affected governance as well as HR informa- are currently 15 teams writing grants for a dramatically by covid,” Nikola writes, “refriger- tion technology. She was privileged wide array of non-profits – food pantries, ated trucks as temporary morgues, seemingly no to work with a team of professionals anti-racism organizations, domestic violence patients besides covid patients, four patients at who undertook transformational shelters, youth programs, and more. The pro- a time on a single ventilator. Even amongst the change in many employee programs gram will also provide free virtual grant writ- chaos, Samantha’s kindness and professionalism and HRIT platforms. Gabriella is look- ing training for regional non-profits. Shannon with her patients never wavered.” Next up for ing forward to spending more time is a professor and the graduate coordinator in Samantha is a fellowship in infectious diseases with her husband, Bryan, her two the Political Science Department at bgsu. at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. adult children, Erika and Spencer, family, and friends. Gabriella is grate- ful for the fantastic people she has 1990s. aunt Helen Hendry Riediger, Arts’59. worked with over the years and looks Julia had a true passion for archives. forward to staying in touch and also Job news She first served as assistant, special reconnecting with old friends. collections library at the University of Eric Jabal, Artsci’94 (PhD’11, OISE- Illinois at Chicago, where she co-au- UT), has been appointed head of Deaths thored a book, Images of Hull-House, a school at West Island College in Jeffrey history of that storied Chicago settle- Montreal. He is delighted to be back Anderson, ment house. Her professional life cul- home after 25 years in Hong Kong. BCom’81, died minated in her role as head of archives Eric looks forward to introducing Jan. 25 in Hins- and special collections at Wilfrid Lau- King Boo Hoo the 8th to his kids Ben, dale, Ill., at the rier University in Waterloo, where she Ryder, and Willow and to strengthen- young age of demonstrated leadership and vision in ing the family’s tricolour spirit by 61, after a helping to expand the scope of the adding another Queen’s frosh (soon). short battle with cancer. Jeff was a archives collections. In her career and devoted husband and partner to his Deaths life Julia engaged with issues of social wife of 25 years, Alisa; proud father justice, and she was drawn to docu- Julia Anne of Meredith, Ben, and Mac; big menting people and issues under- Hendry, BA’96 brother to Bob, Com’83 (Christina), represented in archives. She was in- (MLIS, Western; and Dave, Com’85 (Diane), and uncle strumental in organizing the “The MA, UIC), died to many nieces, nephews, and grand- Land We Are” initiative that explored April 3 of can- nephews. After completing his de- Indigenous history. Julia was an cer, aged 46. gree, Jeff embarked upon a financial accomplished archivist, librarian, Julia is survived by her husband, Tom career in Toronto and Pittsburgh. He researcher, and teacher. She was also Perrin; sons Benjamin and Elliott; par- then moved to Chicago and eventu- a cherished co-worker who fostered ents Don and Myrna Hendry; brother ally reinvented his career as a senior strong r elationships. Throughout it all, Geoff Hendry (Dr. Colleen Renihan); solutions engineer in the telecom her centre remained her family. sister Lesley Hendry, Artsci’04; and industry. He left with many fond memories and even more valued friendships. Although there were JOB NEWS many retirement plans unrealized with his early passing, Jeff had a full Mike Arsenault, Artsci’07, has a created and produced a number and wonderful life filled with family, new gig as co-host of Global News of series there. Currently, he friends, travel, sport, and a love of Weekend. Watch the show online at produces original content for the outdoors. He was an antique en- globalnews.ca, through the Global Global News Weekend and the thusiast and had a great appreciation TV app, or on Amazon Prime Video. Global News affiliate network. and vision for construction and The show, airing Saturdays and In his spare time, Mike can be architecture. Jeff adored his family, Sundays from 7 am to 10 am, found on the tennis court in the and they will forever miss the love provides a mix of news, weather, spring, summer, and fall and and in-depth features. Mike joined thinking about being on the and laughter he brought to their B lives. He is deeply missed. Global News in 2015, and has since tennis court during the winter.
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 47 KEEPING IN TOUCH 2010s
Susan McKelvey, Artsci’07, Law’15,
2000s. and Ashwin Fernandes. The Michelle McKelvey Award in Family Law Births honours Jaclyn’s aunt Michelle Mika (Reeve) McKelvey, LLB’07, who died in 2014. Bathurst, Com’04,
and her husband, Jonathan, wel-
comed their son MARENTETTE KARI Jake William on and forestry. Between whale Jan. 3. Jake joins watching, kayaking, and mountain his delighted big sister Norah. The biking, the three are rarely apart and family lives in Ottawa. are thankful to Queen’s for bringing Kelly (Green- them together and connecting them sides), PT’06, to a community of alumni on the and Mark west coast. Halls, PT’11, 2010s. Births welcomed their second Notes Arash Samimi, child, Emma, in PhD’15 (Physics) Kari Marentette, Artsci’16, Ed’17, and his spouse, February, a sis- teaches French and design at an ter for Owen. Bahar, welcomed independent school on a remote their baby girl, The McKelvey family welcomed a island off the coast of British Hana, on June 13. new member in January 2019: Jaclyn Columbia. Jean-Paul Martin, Sc’13, Hana says “hi” to Michelle. She is seen here with her PhD’19, and Debrah Zemanek, Queen’s alumni and wants to visit grandparents, Merilyn and Michael Artsci’16, MASc’18 (MSFM, UBC), the campus soon. McKelvey, Artsci’74, Law’78, uncle moved to the west coast together Alex McKelvey, Artsci’05, and parents to pursue careers in engineering Notes Jenelle Peterson, AMBA’16, has A LIFETIME PASSION launched The Wild | Life Outdoor Ad- ventures. The company delivers In July, Dalton Kellett, Sc’15, made his debut Formula sae design and race team. He monthly themed kits that contain as a racer at the gmr Grand Prix at the climbed the Canadian and international quality tools and toys, activity cards, Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Dalton has go-karting ranks and competed in the “Road a nature-inspired craft, and a custom had a lifetime passion for racing: he began to Indy” open-wheel development program. merit pin. With a range of age-appro- karting at age 14. While he was studying For the last three years, Dalton was a full- priate activities designed in partner- engineering physics at Queen’s, Dalton was time Indy Lights competitor. Follow him on ship with academic subject-matter the lead designer and a team manager of the Twitter: @Dalton_Kellett. B experts to mirror Canadian curricu- lum, The Wild | Life kits teach real-life skills, challenge kids, and allow them to build confidence and a lifelong re- lationship with nature. Since launch- ing in March, kits have shipped all across seven provinces in Canada and the company continues to grow. Check out jointhewildlife.ca.
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48 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview QUAA PRESIDENT’S message Belonging at Queen’s
very Queen’s grad I’ve E met remembers with great precision what move- in day was like for them. For me – as I’m sure was the case for many of you – the day consisted largely of carrying boxes to my small residence room in Leonard Hall, meeting my Rico Garcia (and roommate Matt for the first fellow Leonard time, and grabbing dinner Hall residents) at the cafeteria with my in 2009 new floormates. There is no way to avoid introductions and The establishment of the Queen’s Black small talk. My introduction often went “Hi! I’m Alumni Chapter and the Indigenous Alumni Rico Garcia, I’m an Artsci’13 from Monterrey, Mexico, Chapter and this year’s reform to our Alumni and I want to major in Economics.” Assembly to ensure it is representative of the More often than not, the reactions I would get diverse Queen’s alumni community are all great would be “But you barely even have an accent!” or starts. However, there is still a lot more to do “Okay, your family is from Mexico but where in the to ensure that all 152,000+ Queen’s alumni gta are you from?” ultimately feel a sense of belonging in our My lack of an accent and lighter skin colour community. often allowed me to blend in at Queen’s, in what a To this end, our board recently struck a friend would later describe to me as white-passing committee to identify a list of short, medium, – when a person classified as a member of one and long-term actions that can help make the racial group is accepted (“passes”) as a member Queen’s University Alumni Association a more of a white majority. Depending on the setting, diverse and inclusive body moving forward. I would play up or down my own culture and While the committee is still in its early days, background to my advantage, ultimately looking I’m encouraged by the fact that we have already for belonging. identified a preliminary list of initiatives that The reality, however, is that not everyone has can be owned and actioned by every director been as privileged as me in finding that sense of on our board in their respective portfolios. belonging at Queen’s. This has especially been The quaa’s mission is to “to reach out and foster the case for many Black, Indigenous, and People a lifelong association with Queen’s, to engage our of Colour (bipoc) – as evidenced by the hundreds members in the life and work of the University, and to of shocking stories of racism and discrimination serve the alumni community in all its diversity”. recently shared by both students and alumni in We still have a lot of work to do to fully live various social media channels. up to our mission, but I’m hoping that these first While the university has made strides in actions, along with additional ongoing efforts, improving the bipoc student experience (for will help us get closer to fulfilling it. instance, through actioning the recommendations of the Principal’s Implementation Committee on Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion (picrdi), or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Task Force), there is still a long road ahead to ultimately ensure bipoc students feel like they belong on campus. B Rico Garcia, Artsci’13 The same is true of us as at the Queen’s Volunteer President University Alumni Association. Queen’s University Alumni Association
Connect with your alumni association board: quaa_board QUAA_board queensualumni
Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 49 YOURg l bal ALUMNI NETWORK Branch news Keep up with Queen’s London, U.K. Conversations confronting covid-19 Welcome to Angela Wright, Artsci’10, the new London, The Discover Research@Queen’s virtual event series U.K. branch president. Our sincere thanks to outgoing continues this fall. These special online events feature president Danielle Thibodeau, Artsci’02, for her the work of researchers, students, and alumni leaders on dedication and leadership. issues of critical importance to global citizens, including the current COVID-19 crisis. Toronto Join us for our next quarterly meeting on Monday, Oct. Calling all Castle alumni! 26, where we will be discussing new branch initiatives Join us this fall for an exciting new virtual BISC lecture and opportunities. Email [email protected] series featuring some of your favourite Castle professors. to register. Christian Lloyd, PhD’00 (English) will kick things off with a session titled Jimi Hendrix from Genius to Scenius: What a master musician can tell us about creativity in the COVID era. Queen’s Day and Homecoming Celebrate the Queen’s spirit around the globe on Oct. 16 with Queen’s Day and reconnect with Queen’s online Oct. 17 for virtual Homecoming. From virtual class events to the School of Graduate Studies online Research Showcase, we’ll recapture the magic of Queen’s Homecoming in a brand-new way. Distinguished Service Awards Congratulations to the 2020 Distinguished Service Award winners, Selim G. Akl, Jan Allen, Artsci’88, BFA’90, MA’92, Jacquie Brown, Jennifer Medves, Richard Reznick, and Daniel R. Woolf, Artsci’80. Their service to Queen’s Scott Megginson Rupel Ruparelia will be celebrated this fall. Visit queensu.ca/secretariat Volunteer spotlight for details. Volunteer with Queen’s Law With the impacts of COVID-19 being felt around the Queen’s Law supports a number of mentorship world, Queen’s alumni have been stepping up to help opportunities for alumni to connect with and support support current Queen’s students through the Arts and current law students. Find out more at Science Student Calling Initiative. This summer, law.queensu.ca/alumni/volunteer. alumni volunteers called upper-year students in the Faculty of Arts and Science to connect them with the Grad Chat resources and information they need from Queen’s in Tune in to CFRC 101.9 FM Tuesdays at 4pm ET for this this challenging time. Scott Megginson, Artsci’89, is one weekly radio interview show in which graduate students of the dedicated volunteers. “As a member of the Dean’s and post-doctoral fellows share their research. You can Council, and father of a Queen’s student, I am interested also listen to podcasts of past episodes online anytime in supporting students in any way I can,” he says. at podcast.cfrc.ca Rupel Ruparelia, Artsci’93, has enjoyed other mentorship opportunities with Queen’s, so he signed up Smith Insight to volunteer immediately. “In a time where we have all Cutting-edge research and commentary from world- had to keep our distance, it was great to have a chance renowned faculty and industry experts. From articles to interact directly with Queen’s students, and make sure on strategy, leadership, and teams to podcasts on they feel supported.” A heartfelt thanks goes out to all entrepreneurial start-ups to webinar content on the the volunteers in this program. latest issues. Visit smith.queensu.ca/insight.
50 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview marketpTo placela your cead, email [email protected]
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Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview 51 EX libris New books by faculty and alumni Many people at Queen’s will remember Artur Don Hutchinson, Artsci’82, has published his second book: Zylinski Arthur, an emeritus professor of psychology Church in Society: First-Century Citizenship Lessons for who died in 1990. But few of his colleagues or Twenty-First-Century Christians. In storyteller style, he shares students would know about his life as a teen in a real how-we-live-life-today narrative, applying lessons Lithuania during the Second World War. Artur was from the teachings of Jesus and life of the apostle Paul to conscripted, against his will, to work for the Nazis. He our understanding of Christian exercise of citizenship. The escaped and was helped by the French Resistance text weaves its way into lessons on generosity, business before fleeing to the U.K. and joining the Polish practices, politics, media engagement and environmental Forces. Artur’s daughter-in-law, Sandra Arthur, has stewardship. Mr. Hutchinson studied history and politics written a historical novel based on Artur’s early life. at Queen’s, law at UBC (JD’88), and theology with the Against My Will: Lithuania to Freedom was written Salvation Army and at Canada Christian College and School using anecdotes from family members as well as of Graduate Theological Studies. Church in Society is historical research. After 15 years of piecing together available from major booksellers and at donhutchinson.ca. Artur’s story, Sandra Arthur used the opportunity of Bruce MacGregor, Ed’70, is the author of Capital being in quarantine to finish her novel. The work was Recollections: A Baby Boomer Growing Up in Ottawa, a a true family project; husband Richard Arthur, Sc’87, humorous, affectionate look at Ottawa in the 1950s and helped edit and proofread the manuscript, and their ’60s. These should ring a bell for Ottawa boomers: Cradle son Alex designed the book cover. League Hockey; Elvis rocking the Auditorium; Squirrels vs. Yohawks; the Ottawa Exhibition; Saturday Date on CJOH television; the Pigskin Parade at Lansdowne Park; and much more. Revisit the birth of television and rock ‘n’ roll, and remember the many Ottawa personalities in the media, music, and sports from that unique period of astonishing growth and change.
Robert Clark, Ed’79, is the author of Down Inside: Thirty years in Canada’s Prison Service. During his career with Corrections Canada, Robert Clark rose through the ranks from student volunteer to deputy warden. He worked with some of Canada’s most notorious prisoners, including Tyrone Conn and Paul Bernardo, and he dealt with escapes, lockdowns, T. J. Radcliffe, Sc’84, PhD’91 (Physics), is the author of murders, suicides, and a riot. But he also arranged Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham: a medieval ice hockey games in a maximum-security institution, miscellany, a modern romance in verse inspired by the sat in a darkened gym watching movies with 300 medieval tale of King Arthur’s famously courteous nephew, inmates, took parolees sightseeing, and consoled Sir Gawain, and his adventures fighting the Green Knight. victims of violent crime. In this book, Mr. Clark A new story, rather than a re-telling, this work is both ribald challenges the popular belief that a “tough on crime” and serious, sober and fun, creating a tale that is accessible approach makes communities and prisons safer, to modern readers while paying homage to one of the arguing instead for humane treatment and great medieval romances. rehabilitation and for an end to the abuse of solitary confinement. Lance Triskle, Law’00, is the author of Guide to Martin’s Annual Criminal Code (third edition). The book assists Allan Hedberg, PhD’69 (Psychology), has completed students and professionals to successfully navigate his 12th book, The Psychology Missive: A Memo to Law Martin’s Annual Criminal Code. Examples from Martin’s are Enforcement Officers in a World of Stress and Violence. reproduced for the reader, including excerpts from the Dr. Hedberg examines the high-stress occupation Criminal Code, the Offence Grid, and the Table of Cases. of law enforcement and offers practical advice for The Guide also includes exercises for readers to practise successful careers in the field. Learn more at skills required for their research. Through learning how to booksbyhedberg.com. review Martin’s more effectively, users learn to read other annotated texts. The Guide is ideal for students studying criminal law and criminal procedure.
52 Issue 3, 2020 | queensu.ca/alumnireview Not all surprises are good ones.
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