The Magazine of the University of British Columbia | Spring 2001 m is ■EH;-' V- : . ■ ■■■■ ■■ wyy?yyqm W^ymMyy ■ 'yy ..-...■ ■': ■■*'& 1 iv <■ ... ■■■- ■.: 1 '. •■'■'$. '&£?■: C R^^arch Awareness Week, March 3-9, 2001 "/■? ^.V 5 | Research News 12 | The Great Trek They walked, they talked, they had a good time. And they defined a university. By Chris Hives 0000 SUPPER CLUB VANCOUVER CANADA EXtFlint awn LUXURIOUS Z MQUH Italian Revue 21 ' The Striptease Project A revealing look at the history of BC's sex trade workers. By Ellen Schwartz 19 | Interview: David Suzuki The bad boy of genetics talks about his work and his motivations. By Don Wells 27 | Seeing China Again An historian revisits China 60 years later and reports on the change. By John Howes 29 | Escape into Reality Educators are using art to teach the sciences. The kids like it. By Silver Donald Cameron 33 | Battling the Bugs Learning how the microbes kill will lead us to victory. We hope. By Anne Mullins 2 Trek Spring 2001 Trek SPRING 2001 37 Chronicle Alumni news keeps you in touch. 38 The Arts 40 Books 42 | Alumni News 47 | Board of Directors Election 48 | Class Acts 51 I In Memoriam The Magazine ofthe University of British Columbia Editor Christopher Petty, mfa'86 Assistant Editor Shari Ackerman Designer Chris Dahl Advertising Gord Smart /The Keegan Group Board of Directors President Linda Thorstad, bsc'77, msc'84 Senior VP Gregory Clark, bcom'86, llb'89 Past President Haig Farris, ba'60,lld'97 Treasurer Thomas Hasker, ba'86 Members at Large '99 - '01 Peter Ladner, ba'70 Don Wells, ba'89 Members at Large '00 - '02 John Grunau, ba'67 Jane Knott Hungerford, bed'67 Darlene Marzari, msw'68 Executive Director Agnes Papke, bsc(agr)'66 Editorial Committee Don Wells, Chair Shari Ackerman Janet Ansell Barbara Drysdale Sid Katz Christopher Petty Herbert Rosengarten Trek (formerly the UBC Alumni Chronicle) is published three times a year by the UBC Alumni Association and distributed free of charge to UBC alumni and friends. Opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of the Alumni Association or the university. Letters to the editor are welcome. Address correspondence to: Christopher Petty, Editor UBC Alumni Association, 6251 Cecil Green Park Road, Vancouver, be, Canada v6t lzl or send e-mail to cpetty©alumni.ubc.ca. Letters will be published at the editor's discretion and may be edited for space. For advertising rates and information, contact the editor at 604-822-8914. Contact Numbers at UBC Address Changes 822-8921 Alumni Association 822-3313 toll free 800-883-3088 Trek Editor 822-8914 ubc Info Line 822-4636 Alma Mater Society 822-9098 Campus Tours 822-8687 Continuing Studies 822-1444 Development Office 822-8900 Library 822-6375 Registrar 822-3014 Belkin Gallery 822-2759 Chan Centre 822-2697 Freddie Wood Theatre 822-2678 Museum of Anthropology 822-5087 Cover photograph: Photonics Volume 55, Number 1 Printed in Canada by Mitchell Press issn 0824-1279 ian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 1463357 Spring 2001 Trek 3 [ creativity Why does a human being look up to the night sky and wonder what makes the stars bright and the earth spin? What causes someone to watch another at work, then go off and build a tool to make the task easier? What moves someone else to gather together pigments and sit outside at dusk to capture images of the fading light? Where do ideas come from? The thing that separates us from other creatures on earth is our ability to invent. Some creatures use sticks as tools, and some build amazingly complex structures to store food or defend their homes. Many seem to have societies altogether as complex as our own, and others display subtleties within relationships that we humans can only envy. But we are the only creatures who seem capable of spontaneous invention, of making something from nothing, of thinking something up and making it so. It's our glory as a species; it may, as well, lead to our destruction. Such is the power contributors of creativity. During the last millennium of human society the university emerged as the great bastion of creative energy, at least in the western world. Even now, in an era when industry produces newer, brighter and more amazing gadgets daily, the university is still the place that finds great value in allowing someone to look up at the night sky and wonder. Our university has become one of the best places in the country to conduct for-the-sake-of-it research. It has also become one of the best in Canada at the kind of research that aims to build better mousetraps. As a result, some of the finest students, researchers and teachers from Canada and abroad have gravitated to this university. UBC, according to President Martha Piper, is destined to become the top university in the country. So, we've taken up the challenge to present you with the best university it this issue magazine in Canada. Trek is the result. Our job is to show UBC as Canada's premier research and teaching university. That means we will take an in-depth look at some of the projects, researchers, teachers and students that define UBC. Trek will also continue to provide information about the university's most valuable assets, its grads, your classmates. Trek will be a fuller read. We've built the magazine around the idea that you, as an educated reader, will be interested in finding out a little more about some topics than you would have in the old magazine. We hope to produce articles that challenge you, push you to ask questions, and make you proud of your alma mater. Welcome to the first edition of Trek, the magazine of the University of British Columbia. Your comments are welcome. Chris Petty, Editor Silver Donald Cameron, BA'60, MA, PhD is the award-winning author of 15 books, many TV and radio scripts, and countless magazine articles. He currently writes a weekly column for the Halifax Sunday Herald. Dr. Cameron was also the first dean of the School of Community Studies at the University College of Cape Breton, and has served as writer-in-residence at three universities. Anne Mullens is a Victoria-based journalist and author. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including a National Magazine Award, two Canadian Science Writers'Awards and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. In her own personal battles with bacteria over the years, she has remained victorious. Ellen Schwartz, MFA'88, is the author of Born a Woman, a book about Canadian women singers; the Starshine series of books for children; Mr. Belinski's Bagles; and, most recently, Jesse's Star. She and her husband, Bill, live in Burnaby. Christopher Hives has been University Archivist at UBC since 1988. Prior to that appointment, he completed masters degrees in Canadian History at Western and Archival Studies at UBC. He is interested in using the Internet to enhance access to archival holdings and participating in the management ofthe university's recorded information in all formats. John Howes is one of the founding members of the Asian Studies department where he taught for twenty- nine years. His interest in Asia began with family involvement that went back three generations. World War II turned his interest to Japan, and experience in the occupation of Japan under General Douglas MacArthur led to graduate work in Japanese history. Following a failed career as a ski racer and sporadic brilliance as a professional drummer, Don Wells completed a BA at UBC. He later became manager, Marketing and Communications in the athletic department. Now, as principal of Archer Strategies, he is a communications strategist and freelance writer, and a member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors. He has an altogether unhealthy obsession with golf. 4 Trek Spring 2001 RESEARCH NEWS i Asthma Triggers Start at Home What do breast-feeding, dust mites and second-hand smoke have in common? They all play a part in infant asthma, according to a study lead by Prof. Moira Chan-Yeung. "The prevalence of asthma has increased in developed countries in the last 20 years, but methods to prevent it have not been well studied," says Chan-Yeung, a professor of Respiratory Medicine who specializes in asthma. She assessed study participants' homes for a variety of asthma triggers, such as water damage, leaks and dampness, type of heating and air-conditioning, pets and tobacco smokers. "The results of the study suggest that asthma can be prevented, not just managed," she says. The research team studied 545 babies closely related to people with asthma or similar allergic disease from birth to age one. They found that fewer babies developed asthma in homes where appropriate environmental change had been made. Researchers asked the test group to make such changes as protecting mattresses and box springs in bedrooms with special covers, washing all bedding in hot water weekly, and keeping pets outdoors. Mothers were encouraged to breast feed for at least the first four months. During the last trimester of pregnancy and while nursing, the mothers' diet excluded some nuts, including peanuts, fish and other seafood. The same foods and cows' milk were eliminated from the infant's diet for the first year. Symptoms of possible asthma included at least two episodes of cough each lasting for two or more weeks or at least two episodes of wheeze each lasting one or more weeks. Asthma is the most common chronic SMILES at the ready. Annie Dufour and Rola Khalil-Priatel look for answers. respiratory disease of childhood. It affects about seven to ten per cent of Canadian children, according to the Canadian Lung Association. Approximately 20 children and 500 adults die from asthma each year in Canada. Get Your Drug Answers with a SMILE ■ Now everyone from nursing mothers to old folks with ailing memories can find out more about their prescription drugs. Those pills, patches, capsules, sprays, herbs, ointments, syrups and vitamins your doctor prescribes — just what do they do, how effective are they and what can you expect from side effects? Rola Khalil-Priatel BSc(Pharm)'94 says the answer is often just a phone call away. She co-ordinates BC SMILE, the Service for Medication Information Learning and Education in BC, operated from Pharmaceutical Sciences. The program researches and answers people's questions, something that community pharmacists may not have time to do. "Most want unbiased information about the latest therapies for the most common chronic illnesses," says Khalil- Priatel. "We also get many calls about new natural products." Questions focus on herbal medicines, hormone replacement therapy and medications for osteoporosis. The centre handles 4,000 enquiries annually. "Our callers are looking for best evidence data, even for herbal treatments," says Khalil-Priatel. The staff keeps up with the volume of drug information by taking 20 credits of Continuing Pharmacy education every year, maintaining their own clinical practices and reading weekly updates in pharmaceutical journals. For more info on BC SMILE, visit: www.ubcpharmacy.org/SMILE, or call (604) 822-1330, toll-free in BC: (800) 668-6233. Holocaust Survivor Combats Racism in Schools ■ A Holocaust survivor is fighting back with an unbeatable weapon: education. Ruth Sigal, a psychologist and program director of the UBC Women's Resources Centre, experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand. While in a Jewish ghetto in Lithuania, Sigal, then seven years old, and her younger sister were put on a truck bound for Auschwitz, one of the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps. Sigal was saved, however, through the efforts of a distant relative. A German commandant who owed the relative a favour, released her because she was old enough to work. Her parents smuggled her out of the ghetto to a Christian Lithuanian family. Her sister perished in Auschwitz. After the war, Sigal Spring 2001 Trek 5 RESEARCH DRIVES UBC RESEARCH NEWS THE UNIVERSITY is one of the most dynamic institutions in our society. It champions change, rewards ingenuity, fosters questions, demands answers. No other institution encourages the search for knowledge for its own sake; no other disseminates that knowledge so freely, so eagerly. And, perhaps most importantly, no other institution is geared so completely to preparing new generations of leaders to sustain and enrich our society. UBC's reputation as a first-class research institution has grown steadily over the past few years. We attract more funding, both public and private, than any other university in Western Canada, and we are competitive with larger, older eastern universities such as the University of Toronto and McGill. Last year, for instance, UBC was awarded $68 million in research infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the largest amount awarded to any university in the country. We have been awarded 163 Canada Research Chairs funded by the federal government, second only in number to the University ofToronto. And, our social scientists and humanists lead the country in terms of the funding we receive from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. All of these indicators demonstrate the excellence of our faculty and the depth and scope of our research capacity. Research is the keystone of UBC's effectiveness in all areas. Because we can boast some of the best people and research facilities in the country, we can continue to attract some of the best researchers and the best teachers. Teaching and research are inextricably linked at UBC: researchers are expected to use their research as tools in their teaching, and teachers transfer the learning that occurs in the classroom to their research laboratories. As a result, we are able to provide an outstanding learning environment, thereby attracting some of the best students here and abroad, to our campus. The synergy created produces a dynamic, evolving university geared for change and growth. Trek Magazine promises to focus on the best in research and teaching at UBC. I welcome this addition to our university, and hope you enjoy the premier issue. Martha Piper, President, University of British Columbia was reunited with her parents and moved to Canada. In BC's schools, Sigal alerts young people to the price of discrimination and intolerance by describing the fearful events of her early life. She, along with 54 other Holocaust survivors, were recently honoured in Ottawa for contributions to Canadian society by the federal government and Zachor, an umbrella group which includes such organizations as B'nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress. She was nominated for her work at the Women's Resources Centre, a downtown community-based service of UBC Continuing Studies that offers personal and career planning and development. New Guns for Arthritis Arthritis sufferers will soon get some new weapons in their pain-fighting arsenal thanks to two major discoveries by UBC researchers. The first may pave the way for new treatments of chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, gingivitis, and lung disease. A research team uncovered the workings of the protein MCP-3, one of the natural signals the human body uses to turn off inflammation. "MCP-3 is like a traffic signal with a green and red light. It tells the white blood cells that rid the body of damaged tissue when and where to go," says professor of Dentistry Chris Overall, leader of the UBC team. In chronic diseases such as gingivitis or arthritis something goes wrong with the signals, he says, and the flow of white blood cells continues, leading to chronic inflammation and long-term tissue damage. Biochemistry doctoral student, Angus McQuibban, who works in Overall's lab, discovered a new form of MCP-3 that stops the flow of the white blood cells. Gelatinase, an enzyme made during inflammation, trimmed the end of MCP-3 molecules and led to the new form of the protein. "There is now no more signal," he says. "But we had a bigger surprise: not only was the green light removed, but the red light came on. Now the movement of these cells was stopped." Tests revealed a 40 per cent reduction in inflammation when the new form of MCP-3 is administered. Another helping hand for arthritis sufferers is the discovery of a gene that can predict the severity of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). "This gene controls the degree of joint inflammation. It is the most powerful indicator currently recognized for predicting the severity of RA," says Abbas Khani-Hanjani of the Immunology Laboratory at Vancouver General Hospital. Paul Keown, a professor of Nephrology and director of the VGH Immunology Laboratory, supervised the research, which started in 1995. The study analysed blood samples of 137 BC patients: 48 with very severe RA, 39 with mild symptoms; and 50 random samples. Diane Lacaille, an assistant professor of 6 Trek Spring 2001 Inflammation investigators Chris Overall and Angus McQuibban look for natural switches to turn off inflamation. Rheumatology, and associate professor of Rheumatology Andrew Chalmers, reviewed patients to see if they had mild or severe disease. Khani-Hanjani then analysed the blood's genetic makeup. Research focused on the interferon gamma gene, which plays a role in the immune system. Results showed that differences within the gene appear to predict the progression and the severity of RA. "This means we can choose treatment according to the risk of each patient and can select appropriate treatment before joint damage has occurred," says Lacaille. RA is a disorder which causes the immune system to attack the lining of the joints. The damage results in destruction of cartilage, bone, tendons and ligaments and can lead to permanent deformity and disability. Professor Helps Veterans Tell Their Stories ■ Soldiers on combat or peacekeeping missions often undergo horrifying experiences. They see friends blown apart by landmines, children injured in cross-fire and other acts of enormous violence. When they return home, they have no way to deal with the shocking memories. UBC Education professor Marvin Westwood is helping Canada's soldiers regain their lives by sharing their stories. After working with veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War, he is turning his attention to Canada's current military reality. Peacekeepers are actually peacemakers, Westwood points out. Not really at war, they can only return fire under direct threat. They get killed, are held hostage at gunpoint, witness atrocities or have their lives threatened. When they return home, some are unable to work or maintain relationships with their families. Westwood estimates that 30 to 40 per cent of soldiers in war suffer from posttraumatic stress symptoms. "Often it is worse than losing a limb," he says. "It's as if their souls have been damaged. They follow the unwritten code of silence and Michael Smith, Science-phobic teachers and a beer under the stairs One of the earliest memories I have of Michael Smith occurred shortly after I arrived at UBC. I had started a science and health column on the CBC early morning show and was nervous about what my colleagues thought of my attempts to bring science to the public. For the most part, the response was a deafening silence. I bumped into Mike one day, a few months after I had met him socially. He said he'd been listening to my columns and thought what I was doing was very important and to 'keep up the good work.' I was impressed that a scientist of his stature would feel that my attempts had a positive function and go out of his way to tell me so. His encouragement kept me going. I would occasionally join him on Friday nights at the old Faculty Club, sitting under the stairs, drinking beer with his mates. One week he caught me out on a mistake that I had made on air, and told me so in no uncertain terms! Years, later, when I'd heard that he won the Nobel Prize, I called him from out of town to congratulate him. It was a Friday, so I knew exactly where he would be, under the stairs of the old Faculty Club drinking beer with his mates. It was an enjoyable tradition he was loathe to break in spite of how his world had been turned upside down. After we spoke for a while, he told me that he had something important to discuss when I got home. A few days later he arrived in my office. He felt that the science education work I was doing was key to a better public understanding of science. He wanted to donate part of his Nobel Prize to science education activities. Through his efforts, the Society of Canadian Women in Science established an important presence in BC and Science World still runs a summer program for science-phobic elementary school teachers. I have a lot to thank Michael Smith for. He made a young scientist feel good about the work he was doing and put his influence and support behind many efforts to improve science education in Canada. I miss his spirit, his love of life and ,of course, those Friday night beers under the stairs of the old Faculty Club. - By Sid Katz, associate vice president, Research at UBC. Spring 2001 Trek 7 Thank you.. < ,..&r stwi^g u&C as ftiw^ as t do; wd navifts t*« fattfc in rarnwi students ft iflmSt in ear futurt, Tfc* sctvelwsnips Bflqt torsarks you Nip prov!&< mew rtKjrtthaft ywj CBH tvrr inEgintr* -Angela Hs^icttL S&riEtf 3rd v*wp S*Mof of Ms xxSx1 :■::::::■: Ang*$ahs ih&jito-and ^nst of many utfctr studerrts-gp n^ to tN 73,232 dlumni ond fr^^ds- whc *oa#c a gift to UBC issr. yc3?r ¥4u? {ftftsfcicHs r^fcft 4 d^ffdtincE ki tJm tms of our stu^nta i For iflfttmsiiWi Ofl tN rfiftOrftiCtf gifts fcfivfr **i&&Or i LJBC^ ^vrav*to«rrtJnMftvc«fSfp?!*rtH pN&sc wnfcrt us at: r Phwtfj (804822^8300 of tfllMrtt: I ,' E-mail: ubc.ftiRd^iibcca RESEARCH NEWS suffer the pain of living in a society that doesn't seem to care." The Royal Canadian Legion and Veterans Affairs, which funds Westwood's program, has provided more funding for a pilot project. There are 12 three-hour sessions once a week, where people talk about their experiences and how they impact their lives today. Participants explore ways of coping and resolving the trauma, so they can make a more successful return to family life and work. "We have a moral and social obligation to provide programs in which peacekeepers can make a complete transition and re-entry to inactive duty or civilian life and society," he says. Computers Challenge BC's Weather ■ Size matters. At least it does when it comes to computers and predicting weather, according to a group of research- 8.125"Wx4.375"H Trek Spring 2001 ers at the department of Earth and Ocean Sciences. While meteorologists depend on ships, buoys, aircraft, balloons, surface weather stations, weather radars and satellites in their task, they can only give the current weather. Forecasts are made through numerical weather prediction which uses computers to solve equations for atmospheric flow. The greater the computing power, the more accurate the weather forecast, says Atmospheric Science Prof. Roland Stull. BC's weather is more difficult to forecast than that of any other province in Canada, according to Stull. Complex mountainous terrain and few weather observations over the northeast Pacific are to blame, he says. Stull leads a team of 15 UBC researchers who received a $1.3-mil- lion Canada Foundation for Innovation grant last year to purchase computers. One they are considering is a Beowulf cluster with 288 processors - ample computing power to churn through the complex calculations. Larger computers can also better measure clouds and turbulence, and predict multiple forecasts, says Stull. Resulting forecasts can help predict avalanches, forest fire propagation, precipitation and flooding, wind storms, cyclones, blizzards and other weather- related disasters. Research into natural disasters such as these is also easier with the aid of a powerful computer. Geers Go Up Mike Georgallis' passion isn't just helicopters, but human-powered helicopters. For a couple of years now, the MechEng graduate research assistant has devoted himself to designing and building a helicopter that can fly by humanpower alone. "The Thunderbird Project" should be ready to enter the Igor I. Sikorsky Human- Powered Helicopter Competition this summer. A US$20,000 prize goes to the team that can design, build and fly a rotary ^lortfce. Celebrate ™H Research Research Awareness Week, March 3 - 9, 2001 Research is one of this university's core activities. Our goal is to become a world leader in discovery-driven research, scholarly and creative research work, applied and targeted research. Our success in those areas serves two functions: it fosters the intellectual growth ofthe research leaders and scholars of tomorrow, and contributes to the development of our world. Research Awareness Week, held March 3-9 this year, will become an annual event held to expose the length and breadth of the knowledge-generation activities done at UBC. It includes Faculty Research Days, interdisciplinary research forums and keynote presentations. It all culminates with an evening of celebration held at the Chan Centre on March 8. This, the premier issue of TREK magazine, is dedicated to the research and researchers of UBC. Some research facts: • UBC received $166 in research funding during the 1999 - 2000 fiscal year. • UBC conducts more than 4,000 research projects every year. • UBC ranked first among Canadian universities in federal research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 1999. • UBC and its affiliated teaching hospitals ranked first in Canada for the amount of research funding received from the Canada Foundation for Innovation. • UBC ranks second in Canada with 142 fellows in the Royal Society of Canada. • UBC ranks second in Canada for the number of Steacie Fellowships, Canada's top award for outstanding scientists and engineers. • UBC ranks first in Canada for the number of faculty who received Fulbright fellowships from 1991 to 1999. • UBC ranks among the top ten North American universities in spin-off companies created from research projects. Research aircraft able to achieve a momentary height of three metres during a one-minute hover. The UBC Human-Powered Helicopter group (UBC-HPH) was established two years ago, and since then nearly 100 UBC students have worked on the project. Georgallis' baby is a 32-metre diameter, 40-kilogram machine with twin rotor wings. Although human-powered, fixed- wing aircrafts have successfully flown, this has not been the case for rotary- driven aircrafts, which have routinely failed. Since the competition began in 1980, only two out of 18 machines have flown successfully. The world record is a 19-second, six-inch hover by a Japanese team at Nihon University in March 1994. The team is searching for potential pilots. For more information about UBC- HPH or to try out as a pilot, contact galli@mech.ubc.ca. Geers Go Down ■ From building submarines to flying helicopters, UBC engineers have been busy the past year. Last summer, a group of UBC engineering students bested the field in an international submarine design competition. UBC's entry in the annual Human Powered Submarine Design Contest in San Diego, Calif, won with the fastest speed in the two-person, propeller-driven class with a winning time of 3.066 knots (5.7 kilometres per hour). The contest, sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, encourages students to apply engineering theory to practice. Nine teams from across the US and Canada took part. The design and manufacturing took a total of nine months, about 50 hours a month for each member. "We supervise them, but everything is their brainchild. They go from step zero to step 100, they organize the travel, the budget, everything. They do all the work and they deserve all the credit," says Mechanical Spring 2001 Trek 9 RESEARCH NEWS Engineering Prof. Sander Calisal, the team's faculty adviser. The team's winning design is a 3.6- metre fibreglass and resin hull enclosing an aluminum space frame. An operator pedals in the rear of the submarine while another steers the boat, all while submerged in water and wearing scuba gear. Completely computer-designed, the sub was manufactured by the students with $1,500 from the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, the Mechanical Engineering Dept. and the Engineering Undergraduate Society. More MDs Head North ■ Increased government funding means that the faculty of Medicine can now train more doctors in BC's north. Many hospitals around the province are affiliated with UBC to train physicians on site, but the number of doctors needed far outstrips the number graduated. The funding means 14 new residency positions in rural hospitals will be created immediately, while 17 more will open up in July. Eight new undergrad positions have also been created. British Columbia needs about 300 new physicians every year to replace those who retire or leave. UBC's faculty of Medicine, the third largest in Canada, currently graduates 120 new physicians annually. A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread ... ■ With a wine collection crowned by a $450 bottle of Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou Saint Julien Medoc, the faculty of Agriculture may well be fielding applications from students whose motives are less than, well, academic. The 30,000-bottle collection has been donated by private donors and by BC winemakers to help create the BC Wine Research Centre at UBC. Like similar centres in California, Europe and other wine-producing areas worldwide, the centre will analyze vintages from various regions to discover what makes an excellent wine, and help develop those characteristics in the local product. The wine industry is financing the centre, which is being built in the basement of the Food and Nutritional Sciences building on East Mall. It should open this summer. While the centre has no interest in recruiting volunteer tasters, it does provide tax receipts for wines donated by oeno- philes for the betterment of BC wines. For more information, e-mail the director, Hennie van Vuuren, at hjjv@interchange. ubc.ca. Cosmos Book Tops Amazon ■ The Book of the Cosmos, edited by English professor Dennis Danielson, has been selected as one of Amazon.corn's top 10 science books of 2000. The book contains excerpts from the writings of philosophers, scientists, philosophers and poets from Heraclitus to Hawking, along with commentary by the professor. Danielson put together the anthology to capture humankind's evolving vision of the universe and to showcase some of history's most exceptional thinkers in their own words. Scientists from around the world are responding to his unique and penetrating glimpses of scientific subject matter funneled, as Danielson says, through the brain of a non-scientist. "I wanted to combine serious scholarship with wide popular appeal among a curious, literate general readership," he says. "Mainly, it's a celebration of beauty and inspiration as well as science." The book is available in most book stores. Japan Prize for UBC Oceanographer ■ Timothy Parsons, oceanography professor emeritus, has been named laureate of the 2001 Japan Prize. Dr. Parsons is the first Canadian to be so recognized. The prize is Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize and is worth more than half a million dollars to the winner. APPOINTMENTS AXWORTHY JOINS THE LUI CENTRE Former Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy has been named director and chief executive officer of the Lui Centre for the Study of Global Issues. Axworthy will develop research, policies and partnerships to address such global issues as environmental change, sustain ability and human security. Projects include work on the issues of arms control and human security. During his time as Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Axworthy observed that the notions of national security and diplomatic relations went through a radical change. "Now, foreign ministers deal with human security, terrorism, drug trafficking and public health, among others. I am particularly interested in disarmament, threats of violence to societies, humanitarian intervention in conflict situations and protection of children. I am also involved in broader issues of nuclear security in North America and Asia, and I hope to pull together a team from inside and outside the university to look at this." The Liu Centre has established a 15- member, senior-level International Advisory Council. The centre focuses on the expertise of its members: everything from global environmental change to international relations, sustainable development, human rights, health issues, soil and water pollution and international regulatory regimes. It is based within the faculty of Graduate Studies. 10 Trek Spring 2001 Dr. Parsons has spent his career examining the relationships between marine life and their physical, chemical and biological environments. His work, which shows how accurate measurements of environmental factors leads to a better understanding of ecosystem structure and, therefore, a more productive fishery, has influenced a new school of holistic ocean scientists. UBC Goes Downtown ■ It's a strange reversal, one that would doubtless leave the Great Trekkers of 1922 scratching their collective heads. UBC, or at least a branch of it, is moving back downtown. Establishing a downtown location for UBC has been a key element of Martha Piper's plan for the expansion of the university. Says Dr. Piper, "It will enhance access to UBC for those who live or work downtown, and will position us closer to many organizations we serve. We will bring new programs, knowledge and innovation right to their doorsteps." The downtown campus, to be located at Robson Square, will feature high-tech training, management development seminars and lectures in the arts and public affairs. The facility, called UBC at Robson Square, will occupy a 7,200 square metre space and open in September, 2001. Medicare is Healthier Than We Think ■ Contrary to public perception, Medicare in Canada is not on its deathbed. According to a recent report written for the Tommy Douglas Research Institute, it has become popular sport to take pot shots at the Medicare system in Canada because of the political or personal gain that would result from its demise. Much of the alarmist rhetoric, it claims, comes from the same element that fought public healthcare in the first place: those who see healthcare as a business opportunity. The report agrees that our healthcare system, along with most other systems in the west, is in trouble because of reduced funding and increasing demand. But the fixes needed are much easier for us to make because we have a public system. Improving a system like that in the US would be impossible because of the competing business interests involved. One of the report's authors, UBC professor of Economics, Robert Evans says, "Fifty years ago . . . Canada and the United States spent about the same proportions of their national income on healthcare and had similar health status. Now the US spends 50% more, has 42 million uninsured, and in poorer health. Americans are deeply dissatisfied with their healthcare system, yet can see no way out. We made the better choice." The report was prepared by Evans, Morris Barer, director of the Centre for Health Services and Policy Analysis at UBC, Patrick Lewis, social policy consultant, and Michael Rachlis, professor of health administration at the University of Toronto. White Coat Blood Pressure ■ Some patients with high blood pressure appear to have normal blood pressure during a medical examination, a phenomenon that can be a huge risk to patients, says psychology Prof. Wolfgang Linden. To avoid this type of misdiagnosis, patients should arrive early for a medical appointment and be hooked up to an automatic blood pressure-taking device, or start taking their own blood pressure at home. \~ Archie, Veronica and the Meaning of Life ■ The machinations of the Riverdale gang have fascinated young readers for generations. Why doesn't Jughead weigh more than 100 k from eating all those burgers and sundaes? Why does Midge hang around with that dough-head Moose all the time? And, more importantly, why hasn't Betty told Archie to take a hike? Bonny Norton, an associate professor in the department of Language and Literacy Education, works with the Archie comics and groups of grade 5, 6 and 7 students in a Vancouver elementary school. She's found out that Archie comics still ring a bell with today's kids. "Kids are passionate about comics," says Norton. "They read them for fun, for the humour and safety of Archie's world, and out of curiosity for their own future." Many parents, Norton says, feel ambivalent about their kids reading comics, but the kids quickly differentiate between good and less worthy ones. The Archie comics create a diverse response that crosses gender lines. Girls and boys both applaud strong female characters, but both also have an overriding sense that female strength can compromise the pursuit of romance and happiness. For Norton, "Archie comics open a window on contemporary pre-teen identity, gender, literacy practices and popular culture." The Archie Web site has 13 million hits a month, and the comics sell 1 million a month. Betty remains the most popular with girls, who see her as a positive role model, while Jughead is still tops with the boys. They identify with the fact that "he eats too much, doesn't get fat and does weird stuff." Spring 2001 Trek 11 tive/beginnings September 22, 2000 marked a significant anniversary for UBC. On that day in 1925 the university held its first classes at the new Point Grey campus. The move from the site of what is now the Vancouver General Hospital to Point Grey was an important part of UBC's history, but that was not in and of itself the story. The real story was the massive student-conceived and executed publicity campaign that convinced the government to provide funds to build the university and move it from its overcrowded facilities at the Fairview site. The campaign culminated in the Pilgrimage, or what we now call the Great Trek. THE GREATTREK The student pilgrimage that came to define a university Serious discussions about establishing a provincial university for British Columbia began in the 1890s. But political squabbles stalled those talks and discussions turned to establishing a college in BC to be administered by another Canadian university. In 1899, Vancouver College, in affiliation with McGill University, offered first year Arts courses. The program expanded to include second year Arts courses in 1902, but BC students had to travel to McGill to complete their degrees. In 1906 a new McGill University College of British Columbia (mucbc) opened and operated between 1906 and 1915. Mucbc allowed students to complete their undergraduate degrees in BC, it did little to diminish interest in developing a provincial university. In 1908, the provincial government introduced legislation to establish a University of British Columbia. Two years later, after considering several cities and rural areas, a special commission selected Point Grey as the most suitable location. The government agreed and granted a 175-acre site at Point Grey to the university. Dhotographs courtesy of the UBC Photo Archives 12 Trek Spring 2001 ■^^^k!*_tJ ^H ^V^^ .,19 C2r fir Marchers stream along the path of the future University Boulevard at the end of their pilgrimage. The Barn and poultry pens can be seen in the distance. Spring 2001 Trek 13 >THE GREATTREK Frank Wesbrook became the university's first president in 1913 following a distinguished medical and administrative career at the University of Minnesota. He developed a grand vision of what UBC might become beyond the scope of a provincial university. Wesbrook began organizing the new university and was determined to see it opened in the fall of 1913 as originally scheduled. The immensity of the task, however, prompted Wesbrook to ask McGill to continue operations in BC for two more years. In 1913, the Legislature approved funds to clear the Point Grey campus and work began on the Science Building the following summer. However, World War I began soon after the concrete and steel framework began to take shape, and with the diversion of resources to the war effort, the government stopped construction. The bare girders of the Science Building would serve as a monument to the unrealized vision of the Point Grey campus for almost a decade. The provincial government did provide funds to open UBC on the Fairview site in 1915. Many of the faculty, staff and students, as well as the assets of McGill University College were transferred to the new provincial university. Everyone viewed the use of the shacks at Fairview as an exigency measure and hoped that work would soon resume at Point Grey. But with a depleted treasury, the provincial government did not consider the university a high priority. UBC spent its first decade at Fairview. Unfortunately, President Wesbrook died shortly before the armistice in 1918. He was replaced by Dean of Agriculture Leonard Klinck. The inadequacy of the Fairview facilities became increasingly apparent with each passing year. Between 1916 and 1922 UBC enrolment expanded by 211% (378-1,178) while the capacity of the buildings grew by only 25%. The wards of a small three-floor former hospital building made reasonably good classrooms while the rest of the facilities, including the auditorium, offices and lecture rooms, were housed in old army shacks. Additional space had to be found as the number of students grew. Professors held agriculture classes in a private residence, French classes in the basement of a church unused by its congregation during the week, and chemistry classes in the famous chemistry tent erected on the site. Professors often had to repeat their lectures several times because not enough adequate classroom space existed and neither students nor faculty members had proper laboratory facilities. The Auditorium, used for general assemblies, held only 650 people. But the close quarters and relatively small student numbers produced a cohesive and united student body, and a strong sense of community between The President's Office President Leonard Klinck outside the dynamite shack, his makeshift office (left). Above: marchers parade along Granville at Georgia. Right: students form 'UBC in front of the Science Building. 14 Trek Spring 2001 '^"^ft*!^ Hto^ students and faculty. This spirit set the stage for the events of 1922. By the spring of 1922, students began organizing a campaign to generate support for the resumption of construction at Point Grey. Returned war veteran and ams president-elect Albert "Ab" Richards (Class of '23) became leader of the "Build the University" campaign. As a first step in what would become a massive and well- organized undertaking, students were asked to take petitions back to their hometowns in the summer and collect at least 25 signatures. The petition read, in part: "... we the undersigned humbly petition the Government of the Province of British Columbia to institute a definite and progressive policy toward the University of British Columbia, and to take immediate action toward the erection of permanent buildings on the chosen University site at Point Grey." While students collected signatures at home, the Publicity Campaign Committee consisting of Richards, Marjorie Agnew, Percy Barr, J.V. Clyne, Allan H. Finlay, Jack Grant, and Aubrey Roberts co-ordinated activities in Vancouver and organized meetings with service clubs and business leaders to promote their cause. Students returned in the fall with 17,000 signatures on their petitions. Leaders felt that the numbers, though impressive, were not enough to convince the government to take action. As part of Varsity Week (October 22nd-28th), the students conducted a door-to-door canvas in Vancouver to increase the number of signatures. They divided the city with each class responsible for canvassing in specific sections. Just prior to the Vancouver canvas, a special edition of the Ubyssey provided students with facts and figures they could use in promoting the cause. The instructions also made clear that the success of this exercise depended on every student doing his or her part, and Spring 2001 Trek 15 >THE GREATTREK reminded them that as representatives of the university their behaviour would have an effect on public opinion. At the end of the organized petition blitz, students had collected 56,000 signatures. Students also solicited support from service agencies and other organizations. During Varsity Week many store windows included displays and posters supporting the campaign. Newspapers, too, carried stories about the campaign as the students established their own news service to send regular campaign updates throughout the province. President Klinck observed: No effort on the part of the authorities has ever attracted the attention of the public as has the campaign now being carried on by the students for removal of the University to Point Grey. Their enthusiasm is contagious. Everywhere one goes questions are asked as to the progress of the campaign and the best wishes are expressed for the success of the movement. The initiative, resource and energy with which the canvas is being prosecuted has caught and fired the imagination of men and women in all parts of the province." (Ubyssey, 17 October 1922) As the student campaign neared its end, only one critical event remained. The Pilgrimage (the term Great Trek would be coined some 25 years later) was set to end Varsity Week on Saturday October 28th. Nearly 1,200 students showed up, along with banners and placards, floats and a marching band. The procession began at the east end of the Georgia viaduct and made its way through downtown Vancouver along Main, Hastings and Granville. At Granville and Davie the students boarded trolley buses provided by BC Electric Railway and rode to the end of the line at 10th Avenue and Sasamat. They continued on foot along what was little more than a wagon trail to the Point Grey campus. Along the way students continued to sing and chant. Lyrics for one of the official marching songs composed for the event conveyed their sentiments. We're through with tents and hovels, We're done with shingle stain, That's why we want you to join us And carry our Campaign. The Government can't refuse us, No matter what they say, For we'll get the people voting For our new home at Point Grey. The students gathered on the west side of the skeleton of the Science Building and then climbed the concrete stairs to take their place. That symbolic occupation and the familiar formation of the letters "UBC" with student bodies were staged so they could be recorded for posterity by newsreel cameramen conveniently attending the event. The Pilgrimage ended with the dedication of the cairn that still stands on Main Mall in front of the Chemistry Building. Students threw stones in the hollow centre of the structure that had been designed by the university architects and built from rocks gathered on the campus site. It was fitting that the students completed the first structure at Point Grey. Richards expressed the hope that "very soon around our Cairn of rock buildings will rise and a university will be established which will bring honour and glory Fairview Labs were set up wherever space was available. Here, students work on physics projects in the basement of a Baptist church. 16 Trek Spring 2001 J7^St -H c-.:r i to our Alma Mater and renown to our Province and Dominion." In the week following the Pilgrimage, a student delegation of Richards, Grant, Clyne and Barr packed the 56,000- name petition in seven suitcases and on November 1st met with the cabinet and the Legislature in Victoria. Captain Ian Mackenzie, a Vancouver mla and an active supporter of the campaign introduced the delegation, and six page boys hauled the petition roles into the House. Then Richards addressed the Legislature. This persuasive presentation and obvious public support helped convince the provincial government to resume work on the Point Grey campus and within a week the premier announced that the government would secure a $1,500,00 loan to proceed. These funds completed the Science Building and built the Library and powerhouse according to the original plans. Science Building occupied. Students pose on the girders of the building. Newsreel cameras were onhand to record the moment. Completed in 1923 and 1925 respectively, the Science Building and Library stood as impressive but isolated structures on the stark campus. In the spring of 1924, work began on six new frame and stucco "semi-permanent" buildings (which are still in use in 2001) to house agriculture, applied science, arts, the auditorium, and the administration. On September 22, 1925, 1,400 students crowded into the auditorium and stood for the university's first inaugural general assembly. The campus to which the students travelled on that day was significantly less grandiose than that envisaged in the original 1914 plans. Only a few modest buildings dotted the landscape, there were no trees or grass and roads and sidewalks were still under construction. Students had no playing fields or gymnasium, piles of construction debris littered the campus and mud and dust were everywhere. Despite these shortcomings this was the university campus that the students had, with single-minded determination, worked so hard to achieve. Student involvement in the Great Trek and the entire publicity campaign represents a remarkable, but not isolated, chapter in UBC's history. The events of 1922 should be viewed as the beginning of a trend. Subsequent student initiatives led to the construction of several campus buildings including the Gymnasium (1929), Brock Hall (1940), Armoury (1941), War Memorial Gymnasium (1951) and the Student Union Building (1968). Although perhaps not on the scale of the Great Trek, these initiatives too, helped define the university -> Spring 2001 Trek 17 profile James Dungate James Dungate's ba'90 great passion is skiing. During his last winter as a student, he finished exams early, took a ski instructors' and taught all levels in the UBC Ski Club. After he graduted, he decided to carry on with his ski instruction, but in a more exotic locale. As an international relations major, it only made sense to him to go to Europe, so he chose Switzerland. Eleven years later, James is regional sales manager for Spectrum United Mutual Funds in Vancouver. He deals with financial planners and investors. His European adventure adds a little spice to his relationship with clients. "I've had clients call me up on their way to Europe and ask me where the best ski hills are," he says. "It adds a personal touch." James grew up in Vancouver, and developed a love of the outdoors. While a member of the FIJI fraternity at UBC, took up bike road racing. "I made a lot of good friends there," he says. "We still get together once in a while for lattes." After Switzerland, he headed for Toronto, where he immersed himself in a youth program called Generation 2000. He and 40 others traveled across Canada to talk to people and get them more involved in youth issues. He also joined the Evergreen Foundation, whose aim was to bring nature back to the cities by planting trees and gardens. James drummed up some funds and opened an office in Vancouver. His career took another turn when he moved to Ottawa with his wife Heather, who he met in a history course on 20th Century international relations. "I wanted a change, to integrate myself more into the business world," he says. He made a documentary on Canada's financial crisis from the perspective of young people. Called "Days of Reckoning," the project explored public spending and policy issues. "It scared me into taking charge of my own financial future." So he took the Canadian Securities course, and pursued financial planning as a career. After working for an investor relations company in New York, James came back to the West Coast as an investment advisor for Nesbitt Burns. "Nesbitt Burns was very enjoyable," he says, "I went from from non-profit to completely for profit," he laughs. It was there where James became part of the Young Alumni Club and began the YA Investment Club, a group of mostly UBC grads who educate people on their finances. He is past president of the Young Alumni Club. He also dabbled in a bit of group mentoring. "People would come by Cecil Green and chat about careers, investing, even about skiing in Europe," he says. Although James works full time, he continues to be active in the community, most recently as director for the Dragon Boat Festival, and on the executive of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, which hosts international journalists, business people and diplomats. He also devotes much of his time to raising his two wonderful kids, Carter, and Alexander. It sounds like more of the same for the time to come. "There is so much change in the business I'm in," he says. "I do not sleep, but I know Curious George and Green Eggs and Ham by heart." - By Shari Ackerman On the occasion of being named a co-recipient of the UBC Alumni Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000, David Suzuki reveals some surprising details about his motivation and reflects on his career and his future aspirations in an exclusive interview with Trek COntriDUtOr [ If ever there was an event to illustrate time's relentless march, the news of David Suzuki's imminent retirement will provide a startling reality check. Even the youngest of the Baby Boomers may find it hard to believe: the geneticist who emerged in the '60s appearing to have more affinity for the Grateful Dead than the diversity of life, and who is now widely credited for having done more than anyone to popularize science, is on final approach to mandatory retirement. THE DAVID SUZUKI INTERVIEW Probably best known as the host of CBC Television's The Nature of Things, David Suzuki also served as a professor of zoology from the time he arrived at UBC in 1963 until his official retirement on March 24. He has received 13 honorary degrees in Canada, the United States and Australia, as well as countless awards, including the Order of Canada. And throughout bis simultaneous 38 year career as a compelling communicator, he has endured criticism and opposition from various circles, including colleagues from the scientific community and this university. His only regret is that much of it - too much - occurred behind his back. At the same time, there can be no discounting his lifetime contribution to awareness of environmental issues. For this, he has garnered worldwide respect and popularity. We can love him, or we can hate him. But one thing is clear: we can't ignore him. leave taking Spring 2001 Trek 19 THE DAVID SUZUKI INTERVIEW C Everyone knows what you do, but they don't know why you do it. What is behind it all? S I'm embarrassed to say that what lies behind my drive is deeply rooted in the Japanese-Canadian evacuation. I'm a third generation Canadian. My parents were both born in Vancouver, I was born in Vancouver, and Canada was the only home that we knew. To be called an enemy alien, a danger to Canada, and shipped out to camps for three years and then expelled from BC at the end of the war was a profound experience for me. I hated myself, and the way I looked in the mirror, and I've spent all of my life trying to do whatever I do as best as I can to get approval. And when you're 64 years old it's a sickness! It's a sickness that says, 'for God's sake, why at this age do you still feel compelled to do things?' It's not about fame, it's not about money, but it's about a need to show people that I'm a worthwhile human being and that I can make a contribution to Canada. C Why did you chose the subject area you did? What led you to be an environmentalist? j The year I did my first television program was 1962, the same year Rachel Carson published Silent Spring and I think anyone who read that book couldn't have looked at the world in the same way. And so I changed my focus from wanting to popularize science to get more (financial) support, to realizing that here was a profound message that said we, as human beings, are still embedded in the natural world, and if we go out and spray pesticides, it's a mistake to think we can kill insects and not feel the impact on ourselves. So I give Rachel Carson all the credit, or the blame depending on how you want to look at it, for having got me focused more upon the broader issues of how we interact with our environment. C When you consider current attitudes and responses toward global environmental issues, are you pessimistic or optimistic? S I'm neither. Optimists believe good things will happen; pessimists believe bad things will happen. I operate on the assumption of hope. I have hope that things will change, I'm empowered to feel that way because twenty years ago, if I had said to you, "I think that soon apartheid will disappear, and Nelson Mandela will become the president of South Africa." "I think the Cold War is going to end, the Berlin Wall will come down, Germany will be one, the Soviet Union will disappear," you would have said "lock this guy up. He's nuts!" And yet all of that and more have come to pass, so I don't think that anyone has the right to say that it's too late. However, in the time that I've been heavily involved in delivering an environmental message, we've been going right down the chute. The indications are that we are on a very, very destructive path and I haven't seen the signs that we're trying to slow down or deviate. C What does the future hold for you.'' I've wanted to leave television for many years but I keep being blackmailed because they say that if I leave, the Nature of Things will be dropped and I think the series is too important to for that. I don't believe that any one person is indispensable to any movement or any activity. I'm insignificant. I'm just one person, and I hope there are millions of other people doing their best. When I leave, it's no big deal. I want time for myself. I want to think, and I'll still share those ideas with people, but I'm an old man! I want to be an elder, I want to be able to sit and talk with young people and share my experiences and ideas ... do it the way native people do. C What do you hope your legacy will be? S I hope in the end that if people remember me - and they won't: after two or three generations, like everybody else, I'll disappear - but I want them to think first and foremost that as a parent, I did the best I could. The proudest achievement of my life is that each of my children is a very worthwhile human being that I'm very proud to have on the planet. I hope that my wife will be able to look at my life and say "I respect him for what he did". I hope that if my parents are anywhere around that they will continue to be proud of what I did in my life as a human being. C How big a chapter has UBC been in your life? 5 UBC is a very big chapter in my life. UBC was what attracted me back to Vancouver after we'd been kicked out of the province. I remember when I called my father and said "Dad, I've taken a job at UBC!" This was twenty years after we had left the province, and he had never talked about that episode of incarceration during the war. The first thing he said was, "why are you doing that? They kicked us out of there!" So it was still there for my father. But people at UBC were very protective of me. The department of Zoology tolerated my antics all through the sixties and seventies when I was perceived by many to be this hippy scientist. And certainly my teaching of students at UBC was one of the great memories of my life. I have friends that I'm still proud to maintain who were once my students. In spite of all the problems of the lack of financial support for scientists, UBC allowed me to do what I did in science and I'm very proud of that chapter as well. C What is your reaction to being named a recipient of the UBC Alumni Association's Lifetime Achievement Award? I never won the Master Teacher's Award; I was a runner-up for it and I've always had a tinge of regret about that, because I felt that I was a very good teacher. So getting this from the UBC Alumni - it tickles me pink! It's not that I think that I'm some super guy; I'm just delighted to have that acknowledgement from that group of people -> 20 Trek Spring 2001 THE STRIPTEASE PROJECT BY ELLEN SCHWARTZ Uncovering the Bare Truth about Vancouver's Past Spring 2001 Trek 21 THE STRIPTEASE PROJECT Tuesday night, the Cecil Hotel on Vancouver's Granville strip. At the back door, a puzzled-looking doorman stops me. "You know this is a strip club?" "Yes." "You want to see the show?" "Yes." "Male or female strippers?" "Female." A perplexed shrug. "All right." As I pass, with a grin: "Enjoy the show." Inside, loud, pulsing music. A semicircular stage behind which blinking white lights trace a pattern of continuous raindrops. The place is two-thirds full, all men - except me. Young to middle-aged, all races, working class guys and professionals, a few T-shirts, a few suits. Some friendly way with the men. She wiggles, pumping her hips from side to side. The whole time she's smiling. Not leering. Smiling, as if she's having fun, as if she knows she's sexy and likes it, as if it's all a good romp on the playful side of lust. I have a confession to make. Until last Tuesday night, I had never seen a strip show. Never set foot in a strip club. Never seen a woman - or a man - disrobe in public, for money. Never particularly wanted to. But when you are assigned to write a piece on UBC Professor Becki Ross, who is doing a study on erotic entertainment, it makes sense that you do field research. Just for background, of course. What did I expect? More sleaze, more platinum-dyed hair frames an intelligent, attentive face. The apartment, too, is stylish, with bold lines, expanses of black and white, contemporary, quirky artwork. We settle at an aluminum kitchen table adorned with woven placemats and fresh flowers, a panorama of rain-washed lights and Stanley Park at Ross's back. She sips coffee from an oversized mug decorated in bright red, blue and yellow zigzags. I was expecting feminist frump. I get Nuvo Magazine chic. Back on stage, the dancer is still smiling, strutting, performing gymnastic feats on the poles, kibitzing with the audience. She removes her vest, flings it to the rear of the stage. Cheers and whistles. More strutting, / realized that women in the sex trade were workers, and that others, feminists included, had no right to chat companionably, waiting for the show to begin. Some sit in silent anticipation, eyes on the stage. Drumroll. Flashing blue, red and green lights. Applause, cheers, whistles. A young woman, mid-twenties, strides onto the stage. Tall, slim, blonde, pretty, impossibly long-legged in vinyl, canary- yellow short-shorts, matching push-up bra, vest with long white fringe that swishes at her waist, seven-inch, spike-heeled platform shoes. She struts back and forth, back and forth, in time with the pounding beat. Wrapping herself around one of four poles that dot the stage, she extends a long graceful leg. She pushes up her breasts so they threaten to spill out of the bra cups, squeezes them playfully. She climbs a pole, hangs upside-down in a gymnastic tangle. Every so often she stops and banters in a tawdriness. Dimmer lights. More tease. More pathos: poor, misguided women, reduced to enacting men's sexist fantasies. But, just as with every other aspect of this assignment, my expectations were confounded. Starting with Becki Ross herself. Before we meet, I have read some of her work. I have viewed striptease through the lens of her feminist, lesbian, Marxist analysis, and I am aware of her focus on issues of gender, race, class and sexuality. I am prepared for, well, someone a little more formidable. The Becki Ross who greets me at the door of her West End high-rise apartment is young, stylish and hip. She is tall and slim - sleek is a better word. Fine-boned. Fashionably dressed in a long black parachute-style jumper over a boldly striped turtleneck. Ultra-short, sashaying. She unhooks the bra, lets it fall off, then wiggles out of the shorts, revealing a yellow thong. Stroking her breasts, she raises each in turn and tongues the nipple. Grinning, she shakes her finger, as if to say, "Naughty boys, you can't touch." One spectator, obviously wise in the ways of strip-club tipping, folds a bill and holds it in his teeth. The dancer sits in front of him, legs dangling over the stage. He thrusts his face between her breasts and she removes the bill by squeezing them together, then flourishes the tip to cheers and applause. Becki Ross is an associate professor in the faculty of Arts, cross-appointed in the departments of Anthropology / Sociology and Women's Studies. Calling herself a historical sociologist, she teaches such 22 Trek Spring 2001 courses as Historical Methods in Sociology, Researching Bodies, Identities and Nation-making, and the Sociology of Sexualities, a course she originated and that is part of the new Critical Studies in Sexuality program. Ross was educated at Western, where she earned her ba in Physical and Health Education and Sport and Culture; at Queen's, where she completed an MA in Physical and Health Education and the Sociology of Sport and Gender Relations; and at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the U ofT, where she received her doctorate in Sociology and Feminist Theory and Methodology. She expound truths about their lives and the effects of their work came to UBC in 1995, following teaching stints at Lakehead, Ryerson, OISE, New College at the U of T and the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops. What has recently pushed her into the spotlight is her three-year research project, funded by a $51,000 grant from the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), into the history of burlesque and stripping in postwar Vancouver. With the help of research assistants Michelle Swann and Kim Greenwell, Ross is interviewing dozens of former strippers, as well as club owners, musicians, booking agents and patrons. Tempest Storm struts her stuff at lsy"s Supper Club. In the 1950s, Vancouver was home to the hottest nightclubs north of San Francisco. Her goal is to write a hitherto unrecorded and unrecognized chapter of British Columbia's history, a chapter that has been shrouded in shame and secrecy. "The history of burlesque and striptease is as important and rich and valid as that of any other human endeavour," she says with quiet passion. What a history it is. Ross's study focuses on the years 1945 to 1980, a time when, according to local historian Chuck Davis, Vancouver was home to the hottest nightclubs north of San Francisco. World- renowned performers such as Lili St. Cyr, Gypsy Rose Lee, Sally Rand, Josephine Baker and Tempest Storm entertained at a host of venues including The Cave, Isy's Supper Club, the Kobenhavn, the Zanzibar and the still-extant Penthouse Cabaret. In those glory years, shows were elaborately choreographed and performed to live music. Costumes incorporated ostrich feathers, long gloves, sequined gowns, and jewelled pasties and G-strings. Gimmicks abounded: Yvette Dare had a trained parrot that stripped away her costume, garment by garment; Jane Jones used a tiger in her act; Mitzi Dupre sprayed ping pong balls and played the flute with her vagina; and Bonnie Scott, after removing her beaded gown, climbed into a plexiglass champagne flute and struck sexy poses amid the bubbles. Such goings-on shocked community standards and catalyzed moral crusaders such as a Reverend Cook, who complained about "immoral conduct highly suggestive of Sodom and Gomorrah." Police delegations of religious and temperance eaders toured the city's night spots, ooking for liquor and vice. The Penthouse Spring 2001 Trek 23 THE STRIPTEASE PROJECT took to posting a lookout on the roof, who buzzed a waiter downstairs when he spotted the "dry squad." Clothes flew back on and bottles were quickly stashed in built-in ledges under the tables. Becki Ross hopes to uncover more of these fascinating tales in the course of her research. She speaks of the "courageous unconventionality" of the women who performed in everything from fancy cabarets and glamorous nightclubs to PNE tent shows and Hogan's Alley "chicken clubs." Her study, she says, has three main areas of focus. "The first is the working conditions the women faced: their pay, benefits and hours of work; what kinds of stages they performed on; what their travel the floor, keeping up the same easy-going banter with the audience, wearing the same open smile. There is the occasional burst of applause, the odd cheer, but for the most part the men now watch quietly, mesmerized, it seems, by the full nudity they have paid to see. My first question is obvious: how did you get interested in the subject? What drew you to it? Why this story? Why this slice of history? Becki Ross doesn't answer directly. She meanders, telling me about her childhood, about formative moments that shaped her perceptions and beliefs as a woman and an academic. tion, even though it was perfectly legal," she says. With the help of an underground women's collective, she arranged for a private abortion in Buffalo, New York. The experience, Ross says, politicized her. "I saw it as a simple issue of my right to have access to a health service. But because that service was denied me, it made me think about the conditions under which women get pregnant and decide if they want to stay pregnant. After that, I never looked at the world the same way again." Thus began Ross's involvement in a wide range of women's issues - pornography and sexual assault, feminist publishing and abortion rights, AIDS and Erotic dancers have been worshipped and stigmatized, desired and condemned, envied and criminalized. They was like; their attempts to form labour unions. The second is moral regulation: the practices of clergy, civic politicians, police, women's groups and moral reformers in patrolling the business. And third is the production and consumption of spectacle: what musical, aesthetic and cultural influences affected the shows, how the women saw themselves as performers, how the patrons saw themselves and the strippers, what role the club owners, musicians and others played in the enterprise." The dancer unfolds a plush, leopard- printed blanket and spreads it on the stage. She sinks to her hands and knees and stretches provocatively. She slips off the yellow thong, revealing a bare pink pubis, which she strokes briefly, with only the faintest suggestion of naughty pleasure. Cat-like, she rolls, arches, poses. Clad only in her stilt-like shoes, she gyrates on She grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, the eldest of five children in a middle-class family. As a child, she excelled in athletics and competed in ten different sports, from basketball and golf to cross-country skiing and curling: "Curling was what one did to stay out of trouble in the North," she says dryly. Named her high school's female athlete of the year in grade 12, Ross says athletics helped her develop a strong sense of herself. "I got immense joy, satisfaction and confidence from my athletic experiences, from travelling, competing and performing in front of people." Politics would soon impinge on what she could or could not do with her body, however. At 17, Ross became pregnant. Certain that she did not want to have the child, she found herself at the mercy of a health system that required the consent of two physicians for a publicly-funded abortion. "There was no one in Sudbury who would have performed the opera- safe sex - which she pursued through her undergraduate and graduate years, both on campus and off. One of her interests was sex trade workers and the way they were viewed and treated. Ross was aware that strippers, pornography models and actors, and prostitutes had traditionally been seen as immoral, hypersexual sinners. In the women's movement, she saw a different kind of hostility on the part of radical feminists, who viewed sex trade workers as objectified victims of patriarchy and sexism, women who had been coerced, pimped, demeaned and dehumanized. Initially, Ross accepted this view. Then she met Gwendolyn, a sex trade worker, erotic dancer and safe sex organizer, with whom she developed a close friendship. A strong, independent, talented woman, Gwendolyn fit none of the prevailing descriptions of victimhood. In fact, seeing Gwendolyn perform as a stripteaser kindled Ross's interest in the subject - she'd 24 Trek Spring 2001 been fascinated by exotic performances she'd seen at the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergere in Paris as a teenager - and planted a seed: "I knew someday I'd come back and investigate this." Then there was Ross's attitude towards pornography. She'd come to believe, as a feminist, that pornography was "the most heinous expression of men's hatred of women," that women who participated in pornography and the sex trade put nifr<i all women at risk of men's violence and were themselves participating in misogynist exploitation. But in 1984 Ross came out as a lesbian. She soon became involved in an anti-censorship crusade, battling Canada Customs' efforts to seize gay, so-called pornographic material, which, she asserts, "has been and is vital to the sexual life of our community." Suddenly she found herself questioning the received wisdom about pornography and women's involvement in the sex trade. "I had an about-face," she says. "I realized that women in the sex trade were workers, and that others, feminists included, had no right to expound truths about their lives and the effects of their work. I wanted to bust the myths and stereotypes about sex trade workers in general and stripteasers in particular as lewd have been blamed for every social ill, and yet their allure has never waned. Gypsy Rose Lee and Vancouver choreographer Jack Card, Isy's Supper Club circa 1 950s. temptresses, on the one hand, or as abused victims of patriarchal control, on the other. I wanted to explore these women's lives as workers engaged in sex-related enterprise, and to get the story from their own point of view." Getting the story has led her back to the erotic dancers who graced Vancouver's stages in the past, and has led her into the clubs themselves, to see what has become of the art of striptease today. Becki Ross, the aesthete, the lover of beauty and spectacle, expresses both delight and dismay. "One of the reasons I cut off the study at 1980 is that a number of changes started coming in at that time, including full nudity, table dancing and lap dancing, live Internet shows, and so on, which have resulted in a decline in artistry. Gone are the elaborate costumes and props, the lavishly choreographed routines, the live music - the elements that gave the shows such glamour and mystery." Still, Ross admits she enjoys watching striptease acts, even if they lack the dazzle of the post-war era. "Striptease culture taps into my continuing interest in fashion, music, dance, design and performance." And, too, watching the shows provides a dose of sexual liberation. "I have never done striptease - for pay," she says with a sly smile. "I don't feel turned on by the women on stage, but I identify with their sexual courage and confidence, their humour and savvy. I feel apprenticed in terms of sexual moves and skills. The dancers have something to teach about the possibilities of inhabiting a body in a liberated way, without shame." It is, perhaps, Becki Ross's role as a sociologist and historian that impels her most strongly. "I want to contribute to the history of Vancouver's cultural past," she says. "We know the history of Vancouver's cannery workers, miners, mill workers, loggers, business owners, retail workers, but almost nothing of the contribution that erotic dancers made to our economy Spring 2001 Trek 25 THE STRIPTEASE PROJECT and culture." That they made a significant economic contribution cannot be denied. Headlined strippers in the 1950s and 60s earned up to $4,000 a weekend, more than women in any other job category. As well, they enjoyed more freedom, worked fewer hours and had greater control over their work than many nurses, teachers and secretaries. Ross recounts a recent radio interview she gave, during which several callers complained that she should investigate the history of BC's loggers or miners, not its strippers. "The history of resource extraction in this province is the history of the sex trade," she says. "Wherever men gathered to work, women also worked, selling sexual favours and arousal." Yet it is precisely this confluence of labour and sexuality that has been overlooked by scholars in both the women's studies and labour studies fields. "Because sex-related work has been ignored as valid work, as a labour relation, it has not been much studied by historians, economists, cultural scholars and others," Ross says. That is beginning to change. Some sex trade workers are telling their own stories. Scholarship is beginning to acknowledge new areas of inquiry. And research like Ross's will fill in a chunk of Vancouver's past. Fifteen minutes and four songs after making her appearance, the dancer, entirely naked except for her heels, finishes to a flourish of applause, cheers and whistles. Wrapping the blanket around herself with an affecting modesty, she gathers up her discarded garments - the vest, the bra, the shorts and thong - and departs the stage, casting one last delighted smile over her tanned shoulder. One final question, though I hesitate to ask: What good is your research? Why should it be funded? Why is it important? Ross is not the least bit offended; she's been through this before. Her project, she admits, has provoked outrage, sshrc received 35 letters of protest for funding the study, and it was attacked in the House of Commons by the Reform Party, now the Canadian Alliance. "People have demanded that I justify spending taxpayers' dollars on studying strippers; others have been incensed that the government would 'waste their money' on such a 'useless, disgusting project.'" She smiles. "But let's face it - erotic entertainment has always played a key role in people's lives. Despite vigorous efforts to stamp it out or suppress it, it has been a consistent feature of human sexual behaviour. So we should try to understand the role of erotic entertainment in society, not dismiss it. In doing so, we may come to understand ourselves better as sexual and social beings." Ross also argues that the economic impact of erotic entertainment makes it worthy of consideration. For one thing, she says, burlesque has provided employment to hundreds of women in Vancouver, and this type of work is as deserving of study as any other. For another, this area of popular culture has made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to the economy. Eric Schlosser, writing in the U.S. News and World Report, says Canadians and Americans spend more money in strip clubs than on theatre, opera, jazz, ballet and classical music combined. "And in the United States," says Ross, "the number of strip clubs has doubled in the past decade." Notwithstanding attacks and dismissals from critics, the women at the centre have been extremely supportive, Ross says. Miss Lovie, a former Vancouver dancer, has invited Ross to view her collection of costumes, dating back to the 1960s. All of the stripteasers are eager to show her their scrapbooks and photo albums. Some are exhilarated after telling their stories. In some cases, they have never told anyone about their past lives, not even their children. "Their lives as strippers meant something to them and they don't want to feel ashamed," Ross says. "They want the truth to get out there." That is exactly what Ross intends to do. Once the research is complete, she plans to produce a book, and she hopes a documentary will result as well. She has been approached by half a dozen filmmakers. In the end, it is the paradox that fascinates Becki Ross. "Erotic dancers have been worshipped and stigmatized, desired and condemned, envied and criminalized. They have been blamed for every social ill, and yet their allure has never waned. That is what makes this project so compelling." After the show, I see the dancer, now fully dressed, make her way through the crowded room. Dressed in worn jeans, turtleneck, padded vest and hiking boots, makeup scrubbed off, she could be a college student, a young mother, the girl next door, someone simply paying the bills. r Former dancers, club staff, vice officers and others involved in the trade from the L945-L980 era can contact the Striptease Project. Phone: (604) 822- 4389. E-mail: becki@interchange.ubc.ca 26 Trek Spring 2001 The unexpected phone call in 1998 enlivened a dreary February afternoon. I had won a round trip for two to any place served by Canadian Airlines International in a lottery from among those who had contributed to the United Way through UBC. Me, who never wins anything. We chose to see China. I had visited it only once, a half century earlier, almost to the month. Recollections of this trip had informed my classroom discussions in Asia 105 for a third of a century. Now, I would test my memories. My wife, her sister and I formed a party SEEING CHINA AGAIN After 50 years, an historian retraces his steps to a new China. BY JOHN F. HOWES to revisit my earlier route through Beijing, Shanghai, the gorges of the Yangtze, Chongqing, and Chengtu. We followed the route of international tourism. In Beijing, we took the superhighway to the Great Wall and stumbled up its steep steps and walked along it. We climbed more steps to the Temple of Heaven and visited its park with family picnics and practicing amateur musical groups. Everywhere crowds of happy Chinese jostled us to enjoy the fall sunshine. And everywhere this prosperity contrasted with what I had seen earlier. Like Rip Van Winkle, I returned to a familiar countryside peopled by strang- My brother Harry and I had visited these sites late in 1948. Harry was off to teach in Western China, and I accompanied him to learn about the country. No buses filled with sleek tourists impeded traffic. No well-fed and well- dressed Chinese drove their family cars on the road. No one visited the Great Wall, for Communists controlled it. On another glorious fall day Harry and I, along with a foreign-affairs officer, admired the Temple of Heaven alone. Despair dogged everyone. A huge flood had drowned out ripening crops in China's heartland. Skinny men wrapped in rags fought to haul our rickshaws. "Do you have any ginseng?" was all the customs officer asked when Harry and I arrived in Shanghai. From there a converted American destroyer escort bore us to Tianjin where we enjoyed moonlit dining on the rooftop restaurant of the Astor Hotel. We took the train the next day to Beijing. Communists controlled the countryside we viewed in luxury. Long-time residents had warned us not to take the first train of the day: no one could tell when it might arrive. This first train did two things beside carry passengers. It took out the Kuomintang troops who would guard the bridges during the day and return on the last train to protect the city at night. At the same time, this first train discovered whether Old China mixes with the new. Outside the tomb of the founder of the Han Dynasty in Xian, 1998. This group of older woman all have bound feet. Bound feet were outlawed early in the 20th century, but the practice prevailed in the countryside for some time after. Dhotograph by John Howes Spring 2001 Trek 27 SEEING CHINA AGAIN Communist guerillas had removed a section of track during the night. If they had, everyone waited until a new section filled the void. Communists surrounded cities and strangled them. The railroad frustrated their attempt to isolate Tianjin and Beijing. That railroad was one of the best in China, but it was the only Chinese railroad we saw. For several days we lived in the home built by the Beijing branch of the colonial Bank of Hanoi for its manager. We enjoyed its swimming pool and service. Westerners fleeing the city rented their homes cheaply, and we stayed with a cousin, a junior foreign service officer who lived in luxury. We had other cousins who lived in Jinan, the capital of Shantung, and the foreign service officer urged us to get them out. Jinan was surrounded by Communists, he said, and would soon fall. We flew to Jinan on a battered dc3, its door held partly shut by thick twine. We observed the farmers at work below who didn't even look up at us. Once in Jinan, we boated with our cousins on a beautiful lake in a park, within the high city walls. We failed to persuade them to leave. Harry and I left on the last flight to return to Shanghai. The commanding general, his wife and their parrot joined us on the plane but no one else got out. One month to the day later, Jinan became the first major city to fall to the Communists. It took three years for our cousins to get out. After a few days in Shanghai we left, traveling through the gorges to Chongqing on a boat that had been built in Victoria, BC. In the gorges, we passed swarms of men dragging large junks upstream to load coal. The raging current and sails would then deliver the coal to eastern markets. The boat we traveled in was new, on its maiden voyage, and the captain feared that the Kuomintang army would requisition it to take troops inland. We passed the Kuomintang capital, Nanjing, just at dusk when the captain could still navigate, so we escaped notice. The steep mountains on either side of the gorges had frustrated Japanese attempts to get to Chonqing. Once there, trucks provided the only modern land transport, and they ran on roads built after Pearl Harbor to deliver supplies from Allied bases in India to help the Chinese fight the Japanese. A friend bargained with the driver of a truck carrying cigarettes to take us to Chengtu, where Harry was going to teach, but we were soon stopped by a river in flood. Whereas the little ferry usually made many round trips in an hour, under these conditions it could make only four, with two trucks on each trip. Military trucks got preference, for fighting raged ahead. We slept under the truck for two nights, surveying surrounding kaoliang fields. Nearby stood massive bridge piers, obviously built to support a railroad, but no railroad existed. In Chengtu, we enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a missionary teacher at West China Union University. The Canadian university housed the second- best medical school in China. Everything, including dental chairs and grand pianos, had arrived at the campus borne by porters with carrying poles. The missionary's house would have looked at home in Toronto, yet, save for two planes a week, he lived in peril like our cousins in Jinan. I left Harry to his teaching in Chengtu and took another battered old dc3 back to Chongqing. My missionary host informed me that the bridge piers I'd seen had indeed been built for a railroad. I hunted up the American-trained engineers, who oversaw construction. They said the whole roadbed was prepared, but they did not lay the bridge girders or the rails because the Communists would steal them. How low could morale get? I wanted to go on to Kunming, so I arranged transport with a truck belonging to English Quakers carrying medical supplies to missionary clinics. The English driver could not leave until he got new tires and gasoline for the trip. The local warlord helped him find those items on the black market, but it took 11 days to get them. I rode on a bedboard, a pallet attached above the cab of a truck. The driver slept on it to protect his vehicle and cargo from thieves. The bedboard afforded a fine view of the road winding through the steep mountains. On the way we saw a feebleminded young man dressed in a dirty loincloth with his legs shackled so he could walk only a few inches each step. His short stride kept him out of danger, but he could not get to a hospital for help. One evening we were able to listen to the international bbc news broadcast on the driver's battery-operated short wave radio. He could only run it a few minutes a day, for he never knew when he might get more batteries. Another day we observed a pitiful handful of Kuomintang troops retiring their colors at sunset. The enveloping mountains swallowed up their plaintive rendition of the national anthem. Finally after ten days, we reached Kunming. From there I got a China Airlines plane on the last leg of its flight from San Francisco to Shanghai, Kunming and Yangon, then called Rangoon. These memories were very present as our party of three retraced my 1948 route. On my first visit to the mountainous West, I had observed a countryside hardly changed in centuries. Yet when the three of us toured Kunming in 1998, our guide spoke excellent English and told us she planned a visit to North America. I am an historian. Historians study the past in terms of their present. We often find ourselves wishing we could devise research projects like those in the sciences. I occasionally imagine one I might have planned in 1948. I would study change in a nation with no apparent future to discover what happened in five decades. Lots of assistants would help test the hypothesis. But, of course, history has no control groups, no double-blind procedures, no test-tube experiments. We can't throw out a batch that didn't quite jell. History doesn't work that way -> Trek Spring 2001 n / constructing knowledge ESCAPE into REALITY Does Art provide children with a passion for understanding? BY SILVER DONALD CAMERON In the Halfmoon Bay Community School, on BC's Sunshine Coast, the grade 6 and 7 students are making a map. It is not an ordinary paper map, but a huge painted ceramic mural of their community, seven feet wide and five feet high, composed of four-inch tiles. Each of the thirty children is creating six tiles: researching their contents, sculpting them, painting, glazing and mounting them on plywood. The finished mural will hang in the building's foyer, a permanent adornment to the school. The map shows whatever features the students think important. To find those features, the students have gone out on research trips with biologists, local historians, teachers, artists, officials from the BC Ministry of Forests and from Environment Canada. The football field, which is very important, is marked on the map by a huge soccer ball and a boot. Stores, homes and symbols of native culture are on the map. So are the "daddy boats," the long-vanished steamships which once carried commuting fathers to Vancouver for the work-week. Sea life, family dogs, bald eagles, bear paw-prints and bike trails are on the map. "What's important to them is their environment," says Kez Sherwood, the young ceramic artist who conceived the project, guided the students through workshops on research and design, and fired the tiles in seven mammoth ten-hour sessions. "The bike trails, the animals, the woods, the school. I find it really amazing what they've done. I'm so proud of them." All of which raises the question of the nature of maps. One could define a map as a representation of the important features in a given stretch of terrain. The question is, what features are important, and who decides? Maps differ according to their purposes and the perspective of the cartographer. A geological map is different from a highway map, or a tax assessor's map, or a map designed for aerial navigation. A school curriculum is also a map, says Ken Robinson, professor of art education at the University of Warwick and chairman of the British National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education. The curriculum is a map of knowledge which says to young people, "This is how knowledge is organized." In most Western industrial nations, says Robinson, the curriculum is dominated by three messages which stand like mountains on the map. One: there are ten subjects in the world. Two: language, mathematics and science are the really important subjects. The other seven are secondary. Three: the arts and sciences are completely different things. I would add a fourth: knowledge comes in tidy, hermetically-sealed containers. All these messages are, at best, obsolete. The curriculum which rests on them is reminiscent of the map which confused the great economist E.F. Schumacher in Soviet Leningrad. He saw four large churches nearby, but only one appeared on the official map in his hand. Ah, said his guide, "we don't show churches on our maps." Schumacher pointed at the one church which was prominently displayed on the map. "That is a museum, not what we call Spring 2001 Trek 29 ESCAPE into REALITY a living church," said the guide. "It is only the living churches that we don't show." This Orwellian moment led Schumacher to a great insight, namely that "all through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life." Among the most prominent omissions was art, which appeared "only as self-expression or as escape from reality." But the ceramic map in Halfmoon Bay seems more like an escape into reality: an knowledge and intelligence. Not long ago, teachers, schools, publications and libraries were the acknowledged gate keepers of information. But the gates have burst. The world has become an ocean of information, and when we try to hold the processes of learning inside the schools, we restrict the prospects of education. What we require from the educational system now is not information, but tools for navigation: methods of analysis, standards of judgement, instruments for critical thinking. We need help in sifting through the torrent of information, assessing it, organizing it, applying it. A project like the student map provides an organizing principle for knowledge. We learn what we need to ics. To determine its contents, they had to accumulate masses of data from history, geography, ecology, economics, biology, sociology. To complete it, they had to learn about the physical and chemical properties of paints, clays and glazes. Much of what they learned was thoroughly conventional knowledge. But the way they learned it was exploratory, grounded and active. Their map project was structured by the dynamic, associative logic of creativity. This is the way that creativity works, in pre-schoolers and painters, in physicists and financiers. And it is creativity which is fuelling the most powerful and protracted economic boom we have ever seen, transforming every aspect of our lives. Our economy is driven by creative people: The traditional curriculum seems stale and archaic because it was designed to produce the work force needed for a vanished industrial economy: 80% manual labourers, 20% managers and professionals escape from the airless abstractions of the traditional schoolroom into the green, fluid reality of natural and social life. An escape from passive absorption to active exploration. An escape from a stale, archaic curriculum into a joyful, impassioned quest for understanding. From time to time, said the novelist Margaret Laurence, "the world, like a snake, sheds its skin." It is a shock for older people to realize that the world which formed them has passed into history, and that they are now, in Laurence's phrase, "inhabiting the cast-off skin of the world." The traditional curriculum seems stale and archaic because it was designed to produce the work force needed for a vanished industrial economy: 80% manual labourers, 20% managers and professionals. It assumes that intelligence is shown primarily by verbal and mathematical reasoning. It is a map which portrays the cast-off skin of the world. The sweeping shift to an information society has changed our perceptions, our economy and our understanding of know in order to complete the project. Oddly enough, this approach echoes the structure of the phd program I enjoyed at the University of London 35 years ago. The London phd had no course requirements, no language competency tests, no meaningless hurdles to leap. My tutor expected that I would learn what was necessary to complete the major research project I had set for myself. If the project required an understanding of Old Norse, I should learn Old Norse. If not, not. The university assumed that doctoral students were bright enough to execute their own projects. The program was based on respect for the learner. The evolving post-industrial curriculum is also based on respect for the learner. The news from Halfmoon Bay is not that the familiar disciplines are irrelevant, but that they are best absorbed and most valued when they are integrated and given a context. To lay out their map, the students in Halfmoon Bay needed to understand concepts of ratio, scale, and geometry, otherwise known as mathemat- entrepreneurs, Web designers, entertainers, educators and trainers, industrial researchers, artists, self-employed professionals, imaginative managers. Of all school subjects, however, only the arts are focussed on the development of creativity. And that makes the arts central to post- industrial education, whose objective has to be the development of human resources and natural creativity. Just at the moment that the arts have become crucial to the educational enterprise, governments everywhere have been fighting deficits by slashing education budgets. And when school budgets are cut, the first subjects to suffer are the arts, which are still widely seen not as core subjects but as self-expression or escapism. But the educational system evidently doesn't understand any of this. The arts are returning to the schools not because the system has suddenly seen their value, but because artists, parents and a corps of visionary educators are insisting on their importance, and working together in vigorous, unexpected coalitions to embed 30 Trek Spring 2001 the arts in the classrooms of the future. "We're interested in integrating the arts across the curriculum with artists and teachers, both of whom have been quite isolated," says Wendy Newman, Executive Director of ArtStarts in Schools, a four-year-old non-profit organization headquartered on East Pender Street in Vancouver's Chinatown. ArtStarts' staff of five includes a recent ubc graduate in opera, Hussein Janmohamed, and a part-time UBC student, My Anh Duong. Its function is to "provide services and programs to educators and artists, for the benefit of young people." ArtStarts runs projects all over BC, from Atlin and Haida Gwaii to Fernie and Saanich. It books artists into schools, provides professional development for artist-educators, produces a range of publications and co-ordinates school and community events for BC Arts and Culture Week. It rents float planes to fly musicians into nearly- inaccessible schools. In partnership with the Royal Conservatory of Music, ArtStarts produces "Learning Through the Arts," which annually presents hundreds of arts events to elementary school children. One ArtStarts program, "Art as a Catalyst for Change," currently focusses on anti-racism projects. In a project in Burnaby called "The Chemistry of Discrimination," Japanese-Canadian artist Haruko Okano led students in creating sculptures using a fungus called kombucha The fungus grows in a stinky vinegar solution and dries to resemble skin. Hmm. So what is skin? Why do we react to it (and to smells) as we do? What is its function? Is it a boundary, a container, a membrane, a symbol? In addition to generating its own programs, ArtStarts administers three granting programs funded by other organizations. "Artists in Education," which is funded by the BC Arts Council and the Vancouver Foundation, provides matching grants to school districts which bring artists into their schools. Cherniavsky's "Mr. Music" Fund, founded by the late, renowned Vancouver pianist Jan Cherniavsky, pays for students to attend music, opera and dance performances. The third granting program is ArtsSmarts, a national initiative sponsored by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, which supports innovative classroom-based integrated arts activities in partnership with local artists, arts groups and community organizations. The ArtStarts organization administers the ArtsSmarts program in BC. Since the names are maddeningly confusing, I will refer to the McConnell Foundation program hereafter by its French name, Genie Arts. Through ArtStarts, GenieArts funded the Halfmoon Bay project, along with 16 others in BC, touching more than 175 schools in 18 school districts thus far. In a school in the Kootenays, students created a puppet theatre based on stories of aboriginal people. In Gabriola Island, students apprenticed in the local ateliers of working artists. In North Vancouver, students produced an industrial-quality short video. In Smithers, the local high school responded to an outbreak of racist graffiti by bringing master carvers and students together to create a full-sized totem pole expressing the unity of the people of the Bulkley Valley, and erecting it at the entrance to the school. GenieArts "is designed to bring the arts into the curriculum as a vehicle through which all subjects can be taught," says Stephanie Miller, the McConnell Foundation program officer who oversees the national initiative. Working with local partners like provincial arts councils, community foundations and school boards, the Foundation hoped to reach right into individual classrooms in order "to introduce the arts to students in new ways, and also to build lasting partnerships between local artists and local schools. There's lots of evidence that when the arts are integrated into the curriculum in that way, learning outcomes are enhanced." Dr. Kit Grauer, who teaches in UBC's Curriculum Studies department, is currently researching the effects of such innovative art education programs. She also believes that their impact on students is profound, though difficult to quantify. "Frankly, I'd be surprised if we saw the effects in standardized tests in subject fields like, say, mathematics," she says, "but that may just mean we're looking in the wrong place. There probably are substantial cognitive gains, but we're more likely to see them by noticing that kids who've been through those programs make connections differently, or look at life differently. It's very difficult to measure their understanding of multiculturalism or the environment, for example, but there are major attitudinal changes happening there - really deep, thoughtful things. As one of my own teachers liked to say, "Just because it can't be counted doesn't mean it doesn't count." In short, there is a danger of getting the facts and missing the truth. But the Spring 2001 Trek 31 ESCAPE into REALITY projects associated with ArtStarts in BC, or funded by GenieArts across the country, do seem to draw students and teachers towards large themes derived from the character of global society. As futurist John Naisbitt has pointed out, globalization and technology also breed their opposites. High-tech fosters high-touch, as people surrounded by cold technology seek out warm human experience. The global stimulates the local, as people discern global trends in their own communities. Rising global concern about the environment is reflected in Pius X School in St. John's, Newfoundland, where GenieArts projects have helped the students to participate in the rehabilitation of the Rennie's Mill River, a once-polluted urban stream which runs along the edge of their schoolyard. The revival of the river is the theme of student poetry, dance, puppetry, sculpture, song-writing and cartoons. A dozen artists have already worked in the school, where painter Don Short is currently helping students to depict river ecology in murals which will eventually cover the hallways and stairwells of the entire school. Again, in a fluid, interconnected world, cross-cultural understanding and respect is essential. The alternative is Palestine, Ulster, Kashmir, Rwanda. Multiculturalism is also a pressing matter in Canadian classrooms, which often contain students from 10 or 15 different countries. As a result, many school art projects have targetted racism, bigotry and fear by exposing students to a variety of cultures. Some draw on the cultural background of immigrants, while others explore aboriginal culture and values. "These themes aren't prominent just in Canada," says Kit Grauer. "I was in Thailand last year, and they were asking questions like, Who are we, and how do we fit in among all the other cultures of the world? And I was in New Zealand and Australia, where the things that are going on with aboriginal culture are exactly parallel to what's happening here - a growing awareness of what the aboriginal peoples have given us, and how those cultures are evolving. "Here in BC the educational system has articulated three fundamental principles of learning. First, learning is an active process. Second, learning happens both individually and in groups. Third, there are many different ways of learning and many different kinds of competence." Ultimately, Dr. Grauer notes, these ideas rest on a new philosophy of knowledge. Since the days of Isaac Newton, knowledge has been viewed as objective and autonomous; it was out there, independent of the knower, and it was the same for everyone. Science developed by reducing objective phenomena into ever-smaller component parts which could conveniently be examined and measured. Modern physics blew that notion apart. The ideas of science, wrote Einstein, do not describe the physical world, but rather our experience of that world, which means that scientific findings are essentially "free creations of the human mind." That perspective changes the whole way we look at learning and knowing. "There's a really strong constructiv- ist philosophy right across Canada now," says Dr. Grauer, "the idea that knowledge and meaning don't occur in some objective and abstract form. You construct knowledge, you construct meaning. So of course it's really important to deal with who you are, and where you are in the world. Constructivism is creating a sense that kids are real individual human beings with their own understandings, and that it's in building on those understandings that learning occurs. It's very different from the way we looked at things when you and I went to school." These changes imply a radically new map of knowledge, just as the transformation of the economy implies a radically new economic function for the schools. In the post-industrial economy, says Professor Robinson, the great adventures - new media, telemedicine, biotechnology, entertainment, software, dozens more - are "built on a fusion of art, science and technology." The people who undertake these adventures are "people who can adapt to change, who can innovate, who can communicate, who can work in teams and roll with the changes." The use of the arts as an organizing principle in the curriculum trains students to work that way, and brings the intellectual disciplines together in ingenious and startling conjunctions. It shows how different streams of knowledge interact with one another, and how permeable are the boundaries between them. It rewards not only the traditional intellectual proficiencies of verbal and mathematical reasoning, but also the more elusive skills of imagination, intuition, judgement and originality. The most intense educational experiences integrate learning into the fabric of life itself. The learner is transformed forever; s/he cannot help constructing linkages and meanings and ideas, and finding vehicles to express them. This creative fusion is an artist's way of being, and it generates sparkling pedagogy. Organizations like ArtStarts and programs like GenieArts strive to inject that energy and engagement and imagination into classrooms in every discipline. They are not fundamentally about the arts. They are about the improvement of education in every field. Ultimately they are about the formation of new people, equipped to build and benefit from a new world. Two generations ago, a map of a BC coastal community might have shown paper mills, fish canneries, trap-lines and power dams. But not today. The kids in Halfmoon Bay are mapping their world as it appears now. They are truly seeing it for the first time. And, in a profound sense, they are the first people ever to have seen it -> 32 Trek Spring 2001 health science BATTLING THE BUGS our war against the universe of deadly bacteria was won. It was a bright and shining moment lasting about 40 years when, for once, humans had the upper hand. We were so confident in our victory that no one flinched in 1969 when the u.s. Surgeon General proclaimed: "It is time to close the book on infectious diseases." But the empire has struck back. In the last few decades we've seen growing evidence that we have underestimated our wily opponents. Now, drug-resistant bacteria are showing up in force, and previously tamed foes like tuberculosis are turning ugly once more. Formerly harmless bugs like e.coli are evolving in new deadly strains to sicken and kill. "The confidence we felt about the defeat of infectious disease was totally inappropriate," says Dr. Robert Brunham, director of UBC's Centre for Disease Control and medical director of the BC Centre for Disease Control. "Now we know that infectious organisms are going to be with us always. We need to understand the mechanisms of how they work and how they cause disease . . . and how they continue to evolve and evade our control strategies." Fortunately, at the University of British Columbia, world-class research is doing just that: tackling the problem of pathogenic bacteria from a multitude of angles. And as a string of discoveries and publications in the pre-eminent journals Nature and Cell attest, considerable progress is being made, particularly through work by members of the Centre for Disease and Host Defense Research (CMDR). Three of those UBC professors are Brett Finlay, a cellular microbiologist who is a professor in the Biotechnology Laboratory, and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Scholar; Natalie Strynadka, assistant professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Scholar; and Robert Hancock, a professor in the department of Microbiology and Immunology, the director of the cmdr, and a recent Canada Research chair recipient. Their work is extremely important, notes Sid Katz, associate vice president, Research, and head of Research Awareness at ubc. "The bugs are getting ahead of the drugs, but these researchers are going E.coli at work Adhering firmly to the human cell, the bacterium conscripts the human protein, actin, and uses it to build a tall throne-like pedestal, upon which the e.coli bacterium sits, excreting a potent toxin and avoiding capture or defeat by the human immune system. Researchers are finding out how the killers kill Spring 2001 Trek 33 > BATTLING THE BUGS to help turn the tide. Through their work they are showing that we have to look at this problem in a much more organized and pragmatic way so that we can move ahead." In short, in the ongoing war against deadly bugs, it's a good thing we have some ringers on our side. On the color screen of Brett Finlay's laptop computer, an animated alien invasion is unfolding to the strains of Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra. It's as dramatic and thrilling as anything produced in Hollywood. The story line is familiar: an evil and deadly foe invades and overcomes the forces of good, then commandeers the victim's resources and machinery to work towards its own wicked ends. Only this drama is not fiction. It is an animated representation of how the potentially deadly bacteria e.coli 0157:h7 infects us and makes us sick. This deadly strain of e.coli, which lives harmlessly in the gut of cattle, emerged as a new pathogen a mere 20 years ago and has since spread around the world, tainting at various times radish sprouts, undercooked hamburger, unpasteurized apple juice and, of course, the water supply in Walkerton, Ontario. "It is an extremely serious disease that seems to affect only humans," says Finlay, who also studies the minute processes of how salmonella and Campylobacter make us sick, joking that "diarrhea is our lab's bread and butter." It was Finlay and his lab of some 20 graduate students and post-docs who delineated the step-by-step process of how e.coli 0157:h7 works. The lab has had a string of discoveries. In one of its most important, the group discovered and named a new bacterial protein that 0157:h7 shoots into the host cell like a harpoon. The protein is called Tir, and its discovery shook the world of microbial pathology in 1997. "It forced us to rethink how these creatures really work," Finlay says. "It was the first time that any bacteria had been proven to manufacture and then inject its own protein to create its own receptor site." Finlay is a born communicator, a fact that was acknowledged in 1999 when he was honored as the first non-American to deliver the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Holiday Lectures (which can be viewed at www.holidaylectures.org). He talked about "Confronting the Microbe Menace" to thousands of high school students across the us. Since 1990 Finlay has been an international scholar with hhmi, which has a good record for spotting talent. To date, seven hhmi scientists have won Nobel Prizes. The dramatic animation of e.coli infecting a cell was produced by hhmi for the holiday lectures (and can be viewed at www.biotech.ubc.ca/faculty/finlay/). Finlay narrates as we watch a purple, Zeppelinlike 0157:h7 bacterium attach itself to the human intestinal wall with what looks like a grappling hook. Then a syringe-like appendage protrudes from the bacterium and shoots its own protein, Tir, into the human cell. Maneuvering through the human cell, Tir pops through the surface of the cell like tiny velcro hooks that latch back on to receptors on the bacterium. Now adhering firmly to the human cell, the bacterium conscripts the human protein, actin, and uses it to build a tall throne-like pedestal, upon which the e.coli bacterium sits, excreting a potent toxin and avoiding capture or defeat by the human immune system. In essence, it builds its own highly secure landing pad. The pedestal formation seems to be important for preventing the bacteria being devoured by macrophages from the human immune system. "Isn't that a thing of beauty?" says Finlay, with infectious enthusiasm as we watch the drama unfold. "If that doesn't make you want to be a microbiologist . . ." It is, indeed, astounding to watch. The discovery of Tir has opened a number of promising avenues researchers can follow to obstruct or neutralize the bacteria, and sparked ideas for other ways to muck up the bacterial processes in 0157:h7 and other bacteria with similar syringe injection systems. One of the most encouraging projects is using Tir, and other pieces of the bacterium, as the basis for a vaccine, both in children and in cattle. Developing a vaccine that can be used in humans is a slow process. "You don't want to give anything to a child that could have any potentially serious consequences," says Finlay. But the progress on the cow vaccine is racing along. Early results show that it prevents cows from carrying the organism, eliminating the nasty e.coli strain from the cow's guts, but leaving other flora untouched. "There are huge advantages to getting a vaccine for cattle. It is faster, cheaper, and if you happen to kill a cow from an adverse reaction it is not that big a deal," Finlay says. Working in collaboration with Andy Potter at the University of Saskatchewan, who makes agricultural vaccines, as well as the Alberta Research Council and the Ontario biotech company Vetrapharm, Finlay says some 75,000 cattle (including some cattle in Walkerton) are now being tested in a medium-scale trial. Then it will move to a larger study involving three million cattle. No downsides or adverse reactions have so far been seen. "Surprisingly, when you vaccinate cows, they need just a tiny dose - about as much protein as you would give to vaccinate a mouse. We just tickle the immune system and it seems to completely block the carriage of 0157." Finlay's lab is also pursuing the idea of interfering with the syringe process in bacteria. Most antibiotics kill bacteria by attacking the bug's cell wall or by interfering with the bacteria's protein synthesis. But the discovery by Finlay's lab of the proteins that make up the bacteria's syringe system gives a new potential target 34 Trek Spring 2001 to attack. Called "Type iii secretion systems," the syringe system is found in a number of pathogenic bacteria including salmonella, pseudomonas, yersinia (the cause of Bubonic plague) and chlamydia and in a number of bacteria that cause plant disease. While the syringe system is similar in each of those organisms, what is different is the substance they inject into the cell. "We have been trying to come up with a broad spectrum anti-infective that will stop the syringe action. The great thing about this avenue is that since humans don't have any system like it, we won't have to worry about drug toxicity." he says. Working with Ray Andersen, a professor of chemistry and earth and ocean sciences at UBC, they have been using extracts from Mediterranean sponges and starfish to block the syringe process. "It is a really neat angle that could have a lot of applications," Finlay says. And coming up with more ways to battle bacteria won't come a moment too soon, considering how fast new resistant strains of bacteria are emerging. "We want to find new therapeutic options against these diseases and impose new barriers for these bacteria to overcome." The walls of Natalie Strynadka's small office in the basement of the D.H. Copp building are covered with pictures and posters. Some depict famous paintings by Van Gogh and Vermeer. Others are pictures of famous scientists, like Marie Curie, Dorothy Hodgkin who won the Nobel for determining the structure of vitamin bl2 and insulin, and Rosalind Franklin who helped Watson and Crick discover the structure of dna but died before being recognized with the Nobel. Still other pictures are graphic depictions of how nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and other atoms link together to make certain protein molecules. In a sense, Strynadka's walls reflect beautifully the combination of art and science that encompasses what she does. Strynadka is a crystallographer. She determines the structure of proteins and compounds by analyzing the diffraction patterns their crystals throw off when bombarded with x-rays. It is like determining how carbon atoms line up by analyzing the pattern of light and dark when an x-ray is fired at a diamond. But the crystals Strynadka analyzes are usually those of bacterial proteins and enzymes coaxed to grow into crystal lattices in the lab. Crystallography is a fusion of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, with the art of growing the crystals tying it all together. Its closest analogy is trying to solve an enormous three-dimensional jig-saw puzzle by the shadow it casts. It took Dorothy Hodgkin many years to solve one of the first protein structures, insulin, and these days, even with molecular biology and high tech computers to help things along, it can still take three or four years to determine the molecular structure of more challenging protein complexes, especially if they happen to be membrane proteins, says Strynadka. "I just love it. It is such a visual medium and I love art," she says nodding to her walls. "While it is a really challenging field, it provides so much information." She moved to BC from Alberta in 1997, in a large part because of the high calibre of research going on at UBC and the individuals here, like Finlay and Hancock, with whom she could work. In collaboration with Finlay's lab, Strynadka's lab recently solved the atomic structure of the e.coli protein Tir and how it binds with the protein intimin to link e.coli to the human cell. It was published to acclaim in June, 2000 in the prestigious journal Nature. In the last eight years since her phd thesis at the University of Alberta, Strynadka has had a string of publications in Nature as she delineates the structure of various bacterial proteins and enzymes. Some of her work has been in the area of understanding the structure and function of a family of destructive enzymes, called beta-lactamases. These enzymes are produced by bacteria that are resistant to penicillin and other drugs like the cephalosporins in the penicillin family of antibiotics. These destructive enzymes have evolved in the last 30 years and work by breaking up a molecular ring, called a beta-lactam ring, found in this family of drugs. It's as if the enzymes take a pair of scissors to an essential part of the antibiotic, rendering it useless. By understanding this mechanisms of antibiotic resistance at a molecular level, Strynadka and her lab can use that information to design novel new drugs or therapeutic agents that can t V j^*;>* & ,► W The invasion begins. E-coli bacteria collect on the intestinal wall. Investigation into the mechanics of the bacteria will help researchers develop the means to defeat it. inhibit or block the enzymes. "It could revive this whole family of cheap, but once very effective antibiotics," she says. Strynadka's lab is also analysing the molecular structures of other key bacterial components to find other potential targets for new drugs or inhibitors. "When you know what a piece of the bacteria looks like, then you can design new structures that interfere with it." One such target would be a bacterial enzyme that helps build a strong protective cell wall around a whole class of pathogenic bacteria, in a sense working to clad Spring 2001 Trek 35 [ > BATTLING THE BUGS the bacteria in a suit of armor. By designing compounds that interfere with the enzyme, the bacteria would lose this armor and go into battle naked, becoming easier to wound by the body's immune system. "The goal is to find critical molecules for the bacteria that don't have a counterpart in the human host, and then design specific therapeutic agents that block them," she says. Once, when Bob Hancock went to a local elementary school to talk about what it's like to be a scientist, a little boy looked up at him and asked, "Are you Einstein?" Perhaps it was the slightly wild hair, or the kindly face with expressive eyes. Hancock responded, unfortunately no, but the boy was not disappointed. In fact when he grows up he may tell his kids that he once met a scientists who developed a whole new class of antibiotics. Hancock, director of the Centre for Microbial Disease and Host Defense Research, is a highly regarded scientist, the sort of person who draws other talented scientists around him. He has a reputation for being an all-around great guy and a consummate collaborator. He's not bad as a science communicator either, able to turn on even elementary school students to the joys and wonders of scientific discovery. "I think we have a duty as scientists to be able to communicate what we are doing. Society is providing the money, and they have a right to know. I have always had the attitude that if you can't explain something, then you don't really understand it." he says. Like Strynadka and Finlay, one of Hancock's research interests is to understand the basic mechanisms of how antibiotic resistance works and to find novel ways to combat it. While delving into this line of inquiry, he started using a line of naturally occurring substances called cationic peptides. Peptides are groups of amino acids linked together, usually ranging in size from two to 100 amino acids. And "cationic" simply means these molecules carry a positive electrical charge. "They are found throughout nature - in insects, crustaceans, amphibians, fish, birds, mammals, humans, even other bacteria. They are Nature's antibiotics." At one time scientists thought they worked by punching holes in the bacterial membranes, allowing the bacteria's guts to leak out. But now Hancock believes instead that the positive charge of the peptide perturbs the bacterial membrane and crosses it to foul up interior processes. The bacterium acts almost like a magnet that sucks up the peptides, then binds negatively charged molecules inside the bacterium, such as dna, rna and other pro of both gram negative and gram positive pathogenic bacteria. Hancock is also very excited about the role of genomics - the study of the entire gene sequence of an organism - to reveal new ways to combat pathogenic bacteria. "It's moving away from what was done in the past, which was looking at one single gene at a time and how it works, to looking at all the genes at once and how they work together," he says. "Now if we know every single gene in a bacteria, we can follow which genes are expressed at which time and find out what they do and how they function." In this way, scientists can find out which genes are absolutely essential to the bacteria. This will provide a whole host of potential new targets for antibacterial action. "It is a brave new world of biology The genomic approach could reveal several hundred Achilles' heels in bacteria. teins, and neutralizes the bacteria's functioning like an on-off switch. The only problem with these cationic peptides is that they exist in such minute quantities in nature, a real obstacle when vast amounts are needed to make drugs or therapeutics that can fight bacterial disease in humans. Hancock's lab, however, developed a way to mass-produce various peptides through recombinant dna technology. Hancock has eight patents issued and several pending for different types of cationic peptides, based on templates from the horseshoe crab, silk moth, cattle and flounder, among others. The recombinant technology has been licensed to Micrologix Biotechs Inc., a Vancouver-based company, which now has compounds in advanced clinical trials to battle catheter associated infections. Hancock says one of beauties of these peptides is that they are so broad in their action that they don't need to be targeted against specific actions in specific bacteria. They appear to work against a wide range 36 Trek Spring 2001 that involves not just microbiologists and cellular biologists, but computer experts and mathematicians. We have to analyse relationships between as many as 360,000 pieces of information. We have to develop methods for handling all that information." Hancock estimates that rather than just the dozen or so vulnerable bacterial targets that our current arsenal of antibiotics attack, the genomic approach could reveal several hundred Achilles' heels in bacteria. "Then we can use a variety of genetic strategies to start finding compounds from nature, or synthetic compounds we design, that we can use to attack these particular targets. In the end, says Finlay, we won't ever have as much hubris as we did in the 1960s to believe that we have finally vanquished our tiny foes forever. What we will have is enough information about how they work so that we can always counteract their latest maneuverings and evasions. "What we are hoping for is a permanent stalemate," he says The Univers ish Columbia Alumni News Spring 2001 Ch rTrrr MORIA THE ARTS MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY NEW EXHIBITS Panel Exhibit: A Rare Flower: A Century of Cantonese Opera in Canada January 12 through March 31, 2001 Theatre Gallery ■ Based on a much larger exhibition of the same name (shown at moa and across Canada) this exhibit of 15 laminated panels was prepared in 1994 by the moa for Canada Week in Guangzhou, China. The costumes shown are from the Museum's collection, which comprises more than 500 pieces preserved and presented to moa by the Jin Wah Sing Musical Association. Anthropology 432 Student Projects April 3 through December 31, 2001 Throughout the galleries ■ One group is installing mini-exhibitions that address the question "What is Missing?" in the Visible Storage area; the second is rethinking labels, graphics and signage in the ceramics gallery. The third is considering questions raised by images used in the Colors of Benetton posters. Echoes 2001 April 10 through May 13, 2001 Lobby ■ As part of their coursework at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, students in moa curator Dr. Carol Mayer's ceramics class are creating and installing original works inspired by the Museum's collections. Dhotographs courtesy: Museum of Anthropology '1$£§!8$$tt$ffi^h- M:< •" M I \ ^M ^H. ft imim Uul"1" *-» m&tiy m K< i m, W ■ ™i A Rare Flower: A Century of Cantonese Opera in Canada. Cantonese opera costumes in the collection of the Museum of Anthropology. Continuing Traditions April 17 through April 30, 2002 Gallery 3 ■ A new exhibit module featuring Coast Salish baskets. Prepared by UBC Anthropology ma candidate Sharon Fortney, in collaboration with Museum staff and representatives from the Squamish, Klahoose, Stl'atl'imx, and Laka'pamux First Nations, this exhibit focuses on the evolution of Coast Salish basketry over the past 50 years. Early Chinese Ceramics from the Victor Shaw Gift May 9 through October 30, 2001 Gallery 5 ■ More than 70 ceramics are featured 38 Trek Spring 2001 Chronicle cover photograph by Alex Waterhouse-Haywarc in this unique exhibition drawn from a much larger collection of Chinese antiquities recently donated to the Museum by Victor Shaw. Spanning the Neolithic period through the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), the selected pieces illustrate significant moments in the early history of ceramics and place them in context. Conversations: The Teeson Philippine Collection Through September 3, 2001 Gallery 10 ■ As part of their coursework at UBC, students in Anthropology 432, The Anthropology of Public Representation (2000), present an exhibition of Philippine pottery, textiles, and other materials collected and donated to the Museum by Dr. Miguel and Mrs. Julia Teeson. Two Case Studies Through August 31, 2001 Corridor m\v*. IL^* JOT1 Stephen Andrews (detail) First Half ofthe Second Part, 2000 nk on mylar 243.8 x 1 5.2 cm Dhotograph courtesy: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery ■ Two cases, each highlighting a different aspect of Northwest Coast art. One features several turn-of-the-century paddles; another offers selections from a remarkable recent bequest of Northwest materials collected by Tom and Frances Richardson. Attributed to Edenshaw: Identifying the Hand of the Artist Through August 31, 2001 Corridor Case ■ This exhibit features basketry as well as gold, silver, argillite and wood carvings by Haida artists Charles and Isabella Edenshaw. BELKIN ART GALLERY NEW EXHIBITS Stephen Andrews March 23 through May 13, 2001 ■ Guest curated by Annette Hurtig. UBC SCHOOL OF MUSIC THE CHAN CENTRE Mar 23-12:30 pm, Recital Hall UBC Korean Ensemble* Mar 23 & 24-8 pm, The Chan Centre Operatic Excerpts* UBC Opera Ensemble & UBC Choral Union Mar 25-27 25: 2 pm,The Chan Centre 26: 8 pm, Recital Hall 27: 8 pm,The Chan Centre CBC Young Composers Celebration Laureates Concert Mar 29 - 12:30 pm,The Gessler Hall UBC Contemporary Players* 12:30 pm, Recital Hall Collegium Musicum Ensembles* Mar 30 - 12:30 pm,The Gessler Hall Collegium Musicum Ensembles* 8 pm, The Chan Centre University Singers* Mar 31-8 pm,The Chan Centre University Singers* Apr 1 - 2 pm, Recital Hall Pacific Spirit Concerts The Future is Now Apr 4-12:30 pm, Recital Hall Gamelan Ensemble Apr 5 - 12:30 pm, The Chan Centre UBC Symphony Orchestra* Apr 6-8 pm, The Chan Centre UBC Symphony Orchestra* Apr 12 - 12-2 pm, The Chan Centre Masterclass with Dawn Upshaw : free admission See UBC School of Music for some listings. Mar 25-8 pmAndras Schiff, piano Apr 5 - 8 pm Renee Fleming, Soprano, & Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano Apr 6-8 pm UBC Symphony Orchestra Apr 7 - 8 pm Pacific Baroque Orchestra Apr 8-2 pm Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra Performance Apr 11 - 8 pm Dawn Upshaw, Soprano & Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano Apr 22-8 pm Braziliana Apr 27 & 28 - 8 pm Focus on the Flute Apr 29 - Pacific Spotlight Concert May 6 - 3 pm Jon Kimura Parker, Piano May 12 - 8 pm Pandora's Vox May 13 - 8 pm Classic Concerts International May 18 & 19 - 8 pm Vancouver Symphony Orchestra May 21-8 pm Glenn Miller Orchestra Spring 2001 Trek 39 [ BOOKS CURRICULUM T' I " THE PUMBING DOWN Or AMERICA'S KIDS IM TH NAME OF SELF-ESTEEM The Great Years Gold Mining In the; BrIJge River VaIIcj T.enis (Tram WBiJjjjW A Whole Little City By Itself, Tranquille and Tuberculosis by Wayne Norton, ma'88. Plateau Press $21.95 ■ This book reveals the struggles of the British Columbia Anti-Tuberculosis Society to establish and operate BC's first sanatorium. Financial problems and a difficult relationship with the community of Kamloops made the task more challenging. Against the background of politics and changing medical theory, under both private and public ownership, the institution treated thousands of patients before its closure in 1958. Bridge River Valley by Lewis Green basc'49 Tricouni Press Ltd. ■ From 1933 to 1941, the Bridge River Valley was an economic bright spot, sharply contrasting with the gloom pervading much of Canada. Job seekers flocked to the mines. For many men, finding that job meant living in the bush and standing in line each morning as the shifts started, in the hope that the mine superintendent would give them the nod. This book tells of the towns and the people in the mines who, through their labours, made it all come to pass. by Kate Braid, mfa'97 xyz Publishing $15.95 ■ Emily Carr gave the world a precious legacy of paintings and books, yet she lived at a time when, to be considered a serious artist, one had to be a man. She rebelled against conventional attitudes and devoted her life to her art. In this book, Kate Braid shows how important encounters with the First Nations figure of D'Sonoqua (the wild woman of the woods) and later with the Group of Seven artists led Emily Carr to explore the spiritual aspects of the landscape she loved. Listening to her own inner voice, Carr created an art unique to Western Canada. The Feel-Good Curriculum by Maureen Stout, ba'85 Perseus Books $39.50 ■ The so-called self-esteem movement, which is a radically child-centered, therapeutic model of schooling, has transformed schools into clinics and teachers into counselors, creating a generation of self-righteous, self-absorbed, underachieving children. This book provides devastating evidence that our belief in the power and importance of self-esteem in education is misplaced and unfounded. The Great Years: Gold Mining in the 40 Trek Spring 2001 Bialystok to Birkenau, The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki by John Munro ba'62, ma'65. Ronsdale Press $19.95 ■ The testimony of survivors is the ultimate refutation of claims that the Holocaust did not occur. In this profoundly honest memoir, Michel Mielnicki takes us from the pleasures and charms of pre-war Polish Jewry (now entirely lost) into some of the darkest places of the twentieth century. One of the few survivors of Birkenau - not a concentration camp, but an actual death camp - Mielnicki tells his story with great courage and attention to detail. Emily Carr, Rebel Artist The Duet by Brenda Silsbe, bed'77 Illustrated by Galan Akin. Hodgepog Books $5.95 ■ Maggie has been having nightmares about the music competition. Everyone is expecting too much, especially Sister Bernadette. Maggie wishes she had the courage to say no. But now Sister Bernadette has paired her up with a new girl, Kathleen, who seems even morener- vous than Maggie. As the day of the music festival draws closer, the tension grows. A heart-warming story of competition and friendship. Litany in Time of Plague by K.D. Miller mfa'78 The Duet ;A^:-A Litany in Time of Plague KI>. MILLER «> An Introduction to WORLD CINEMA The Porcupine's Quill $12.95 ■ The 'plague' is a reference not only to aids but also to its ironic companion, loneliness. Each of the characters in the ten linked stories comes to the end of his or her spiritual rope. One attends a Requiem Mass where she adds her and her ex-husband's names to a list of the dead. Another pursues a dangerous fantasy down one dark alley after another. Still another learns that his inability to love is exactly matched by his need to do just that. An Introduction to World Cinema by Aristides Gazetas ma'92, phd'97 McFarland & Company, Inc., $29.95 ■ It began with a kiss: Images like the Rice-Irwin embrace, filmed in 1896 for Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, captured the popular imagination and gave rise to both an industry and an art form. This book traces the history of film as both an art form and a tool for social and political change. Featuring numerous rare photographs and supplemental critical essays, the book serves as an invaluable interpreter to the cinematic language as it is spoken around the world. The Cutting Edge, Reminiscences of Surgery at VGH and UBC 1915-1985 by Frank Porter Patterson dsc'90 Hatzic Publishing $44 ■ In this memoir Patterson describes his medical training, the evolution of surgery in Vancouver before 1950, and its development at the UBC faculty of Medicine until his retirement in 1985. This book will captivate and entertain anyone involved in the surgical scene in Vancouver, and will be a valuable source for historians wishing to record the evolution of surgery in this community CHANCES AND CHOICES Chances and Choices by John B. Macdonald Gordon Soules, Publishers ■ The time was the tumultuous '60s, made exciting by student activism, faculty struggles for democratic reform, and crises in government relations, government funding and university governance. UBC's president John Macdonald (1962-1967) faced these crises and led the battle to elevate academic standards in British Columbia. These memoirs cover Macdonald's life from his origins in Toronto, to his academic career at the University of Toronto and Harvard, his years at UBC, and his subsequent career in Ontario. Students at the time were involved in the "Back Mac" campaign in which Macdonald confronted the government of W.A.C. Bennett to secure the necessary funds for UBC's development. In his earliest months at ubc, Macdonald spearheaded a report that charted the future of post secondary education in be, resulting in the creation of Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria and a system of two-year colleges. This book will provide the thousands of graduates who lurched through UBC during this time a clear understanding of what really happened. It is an articulate, personal and fascinating account of the events which shaped their education and their university. Call the Alumni Association offices, 822-3313 (toll free 800-883-3088) for purchase information or visit www.gordon- soules.com for direct ordering. Spring 2001 Trek 41 JBC ^P ALUMNI NEWS Alumni Reunion Weekend, 2001 The weekend of September 28 and 29 has been declared Reunion Weekend. Classes celebrating their 10, 25 & 50th Anniversaries will be gathering on campus to visit old haunts, trade tales with old classmates, and see the university again for the first time. If you would like to be part of your class's reunion organizing committee, please contact Jane Merling by e-mail, merling@alumni.ubc.ca, or call 822-8918. 55th VOC Oldtimers Reunion On Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000, 94 members of the Varsity Outdoor Club from the 1920's to the 50's met for a luncheon at Cecil Green Park. The next day, more than 60 members gathered together and headed up to Cypress Bowl Black Mountain Lodge in the rain. The ones that ventured out to hike returned rather soaked. Our next hike is scheduled for Wednesday, September 5, 2001, Cypress Bowl downhill parking lot, at 10 am. Bring a lunch. After the hike, we will gather together at the home of Scippio & Margaret Merler to swap stories over coffee. For further information, call Ingrid Blomfield, 926-1156, Iola Knight, 922-7358, or Margaret Merler, 922-8973. Young Alumni The crowd gathers to interview suspects at the annual Young Alumni Murder Mystery night. The fun, mayhem and murder (staged, of course) happened on Friday, October 13, 2000 at Cecil Green Park. Special thanks again to Roger Haskett, ba'86, bfa'91, ma'92, and his detectives at Murder Unlimited for staging and sponsoring the murder mystery for the past six years.To host one of your own contact Murder Unlimited at 649-guns. Make the connection and get involved! For Alumni Day, 2000. Visitors relax behind the Museum of Anthropology just before the raising ofthe Spirit Pole by Bill Reid. Reunion Weekend, 2001, will be held September 28 and 29th, 2001. more information on the Young Alumni group, contact Tanya Walker at 822-8643 or e-mail twalker@alumni.ubc.ca. Medicine Class of 1960 Thirty of the surviving 51 members of the class met to celebrate their 40th anniversary at Harrison Hot Springs this past September. Standing: Paul Shatzko, Jack Clark, Bruce Taylor, Jerry Pearl, Clayt Davis, Mary Alice Sutter, Maynard Shapiro, Bert Puskas, John Booth, Bev Tamboline, Pat Johnston, Jack Lederman, Aki Horii, Ewart Woolley, Ernie Ledgerwood, Keith MacDonald, Bob McGraw, Bob Miyagishima, Bill Martin. Front Row: Bill Irvine, Al Grant, Ken McGill, June Whaun, Joy Longley, Granny daCosta. Missing from picture: Stan Sunshine, Kurt Gottschling, Phil Ney, Leigh Cornelius, Glen Carlson. Fort Camp Reunion Did you live in Fort Camp? If so, we are planning a reunion for Saturday September 28, 2001. Please contact Jane Merling for more details BRANCHES What IS a branch, anyway? Branches are UBC's extended family. They are made up of graduates and friends of UBC who live outside the Lower Mainland, whether in Sydney, BC or Singapore. We currently have 40 UBC alumni branches, located around the world. Join fellow UBC grads in your city for networking, mentoring and, of course, fun. For more information on branch activities in your area, contact Janis Connolly, branches manager, janisc@alumni.ubc. ca. Look at the branch segment of the Alumni Association's website at www.alumni.ubc.ca for a list of our worldwide branch contacts. Upcoming Events: Hong Kong - Monthly happy hours and business lunches. See the UBC Hong Kong alumni website at www.ubcalumni.com.hk. Toronto - Brunches at various places on the last Sunday of every month. Watch for announce- 42 Trek Spring 2001 UPCOMING REUNIONS 2001 Law '90 March 31, Vancouver Law Courts Restaurant. Pharm '52 April 28-29, Tigh-Na-Mara Resort Home Ec. '70 May 1, brunch at Capilano Golf Club Pharmacy '53 Mini Reunion May 3-4, Penticton, BC. For more info, contact RB Alexander at (250)479-1977. CMHL'66 May 18-20, Cecil Green Park dinner on the 19th, brunch at University Golf Club on the 20th. Rehab Medicine May 25-27, UBC Campus Law '71 June 1-2 Medicine '56 June 7, 8 & 9, Harrison Hot Springs Hotel Contact Jack McGregor, 596-3434 or Peter Prasloski 526-8434. Rehab Medicine '81 June 2 Forestry '91 June 30-July 2, Silverlake Forestry Educational Society Camp Elec Eng '70-'90 July 26, Museum of Anthropology Barbeque and social Elec Eng '91-'00 August 11, University Golf Club for lunch Forestry '71 August 17-19, Coast Whistler Hotel BASc '51 September 28 & 29, Lunch on the 28th, Reunion Weekend Reception on the 29th. Civil Eng '61 September 29, Dinner at Cecil Green Park. Medicine '81 September, Manteo Resort BASc'61 October 1, Cecil Green Park reception BASc'71 October 5, reception at Cecil Green Park. Nursing '71 November 1. Club Med. Class of 1941 November For up-to-date information on all our reunions, call Jane Merling at (604) 822-8918 or, toll free, 800 883-3088, or check our website for reunions still in the works, www.alumni.ubc.ca MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT THE LAUNCH of our new magazine signals a step forward in our efforts to enhance communication with you, our alumni, and to keep you better informed about your university. UBC is now ranked number two overall in Canadian universities by Maclean's Magazine and is a leading research institute. Our alumni are now influencing the social, economic and environmental framework in almost every part of the globe. The launch of this magazine coincides with the launch of Research Awareness Week (March 3-9) at UBC. Intended to be an annual, campus-wide event, the week will include Faculty Research Days, interdisciplinary research forums and keynote presentations from researchers. Our association was formed in 1917 with the intent of creating an independent body to further the interests of the university and its alumni. In 1946, the Association was incorporated under the Societies Act as a non-profit society with a volunteer board of directors, a constitution and an operating budget. This budget was, in part, supported by a university grant in exchange for maintaining the graduate database and conducting annual fund raising. Today, the university grant covers 45% of our annual budget with the university managing the alumni database and fundraising while the Association provides the majority of alumni services. While this independent, yet linked structure has served us well over the years, certain limitations are becoming increasingly apparent. In particular, it is difficult to design and deliver programs without a direct line to faculties, schools and administrators. Because our service-providing arm is not an integrated part of the university structure, many faculties are developing their own alumni offices resulting in duplication in many service areas. The Association is also challenged with raising funds to maintain its own balanced budget. Over the past year, we have worked with university representatives to explore a closer administrative relationship with the university while maintaining an independent board that has a more strategic role to play in alumni and university matters. We have made progress, but with many concerns expressed, require more discussion in order to satisfy our members that this is the appropriate approach. We look forward to keeping you informed of progress in this area and hope that you enjoy our new magazine. Linda Thorstad, President, UBC Alumni Association Spring 2001 Trek 43 ALUMNI NEWS ments about alumni outings to Mama Mia, Open Mike and the Royal Canadian Air Farce on the TO website at www.geocities.com/ubctoralum. One of our largest branches is in Toronto. Executive members take on responsibilities like website design, newsletter drafting and social coordination. The executives are pictured below. Clockwise from top left are Michelle Fischer ba'91, Yvonne Yuan bsc'87 msc'90, phd'95 (president), Gillian Smith ba'87, Ed Ng bcom'94 (past president), Elaine Chong bsc'00 and Patrick Lim bcom'87. Southern California - At an organizational meeting held in Santa Monica on December 8th, alumni expressed interest in a Getty Museum visit and a Canucks-Kings game in April. Contact Michael Chang at mcachang® yahoo.com or (949) 651-8729. Or visit the Southern California Branch website at www.ecircles.com/magic/d. cgi?k=7ViTMGxuBcC. San Jose - Digital Moose Lounge events are monthly gatherings of techie Canadians living in the Silicon Valley and are proving popular with UBC alumni in the region. Visit the DML's informational website at www.digi- talmooselounge.com. Singapore - Watch for a networking event in late March. Visit the Singapore website, www.UBCAlumniSg.com. Calling all Aggie Grads Get in the "Who's Who" Dr. Bob Blair, Professor Emeritus of Animal Science, is writing a History of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at UBC. One section will contain an Alumni Who's Who. He needs biographies of UBC Aggie grads, and stories of student life at UBC during your time here. Send Dr. Blair your information, including date and place of birth, IS THIS YOU? Volunteer into your drfcarn job! Morethan95UBC graduates have entered th ei r rel ated job fields this way, LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS? Tot: 435-1937 www.gradvate2work. com name of spouse / children, address and contact info, career highlights, and any honours/awards. Please include a photograph. Send it to: Dr. Blair, Faculty of Ag Sciences, MacMillan Bldg, 2357 Main Mall, UBC, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4. Or e-mail: blair@interchange.ubc.ca, fax: 822-2184. Korea Alumni Reunion The Westin Seoul hotel fashioned a spectacular ice harp for the UBC alumni and friends reception in Korea in October. On the left is Oliver Ormrod, a UBC exchange student at Korea University. Centre is Dr. Kwang Soon Moon masc'76, founding governor of the UBC Alumni Association in Korea. Left of him is Mrs. Peron, wife of the Canadian Ambassador to Korea. Larry Sproul, director of UBC's International Liaison Office, has his back to the camera. Wine With Martha Last September, UBC alumnus Anthony von Mandl ba'72 opened the doors to his Mission Hill Winery in Kelowna for a reception hosted by president Martha Piper. The vintages were wonderful and the reserve Chardonnay served to more than 100 local alumni jumped off the winery shop shelves. Pictured at right are Agricultural Sciences Dean Moura Quayle (r), Don King basc'75 (c) and Isabel Chen ba'79 barc'84. Young Alumni ad Graduate Diploma \t\ Business Administratton I cwu frusimss. sit j Ms in f Enante, attourtttng, etwiomrcs, marketing, management InforrnatEort systems* and organizational behaviour I one-year program i cowrie* you take online, where you are, when you can I starting May, September or January f-.-f- SIMHN FRASER UNIVERSITY ""7y} #*CHFtjfof Bu*J(HtCTAd^irthrtntttfl*l mf ¥63 WM) l*1^iSt - F«x (4MJ iSl^lS3 ^>-'---'-^- Email gdbeSifu.ea la ca t a. anapeinenRecrinolog MBA &e part of Simon Fras Univerafty*s Chooso the BcceterstBtfnin*-month forf-timaprogram or combm* work ftxCHW 241-5153 E-ffHJjJ tttaitr\ktx9ifi*iA Welt ivww/lTa^HMjT.tft).«^rn*rtf usinrBJtirrY VACULTf AO (Wtt«S4T!ltATKON Spring 2001 Trek 45 A special thanks to our sponsors 6th Annual Alumni Recognition and Sports Hall of Fame Dinner More than 600 friends of UBC came out to cheer the accomplishments of alumni and athletes and helped fill the coffers of our student scholarship funds. The UBC Alumni Association and the UBC Department of Athletics would like to express special thanks to our corporate sponsors who donated to this worthy cause. Clark, Wilson Alcan BC Hydro Manulife Financial MBNA Canada Bank Wesbild Holdings, Ltd. Citizens Bank of Canada Ericsson Canada Inc. IBM KPMG Selectica Inc. Sierra Systems Significant Impact Slide Farm Thorsteinssons Vancouver Grizzlies Allied Holdings Business in Vancouver HSBC Bank Canada " and a special thanks to TELUS for supporting this and other Alumni Association programs Proudly Supports The UBC Alumni Association www.futureshop.ca testech* ▼rr IN FORMATION SYSTEM ' LAUNCH YOUR CAREER IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BY JOINING OUR INNOVATIVE TEAM OF DEDICATED SPECIALISTS. Visit us at our Web site if you are interested in working in any of the following areas; Geospatial Information • Enterprise Resource Systems (GIS) Management Package E-Business Implementation Client/Server Development ' Systems Analysis, Development & Data Warehouse & Management Data Management To apply, visit our Web site and click on ''careers.' www.westeehjnfosys.coin I7.v two most beautiful words in ike English language: I ean. At Alcan, we believe in sharing our success with our community. As a champion of worthy education programs, scholarships and bursaries throughout the province, we're an element of B.C.'s learning-one that proudly supports people ALCAN seeking to realize their potential. An Element Of B.C. ^Jllll!, *A1 rAM BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2001 Returning Board Members, 2001-2002 President: Gregory Clark BCom'86, LLB'89 Senior VP, 1999-2001 Member-at-Large, 1996-1999 Past President, UBC Commerce/MBA Alumni Member, Academic Plan Advisory Committee, 1998-present Occupation: General Counsel, Academic Systems, Inc. and Academic Systems (USA), Inc. Members-at-Large: John Grunau BA'67 Occupation: Principal of ENEC Associates, Director at EmW Productions. Darlene Marzari MSW'68 Volunteer with Fraser Basin Council and the Katherine Sanford Housing Society. Board of Directors, 2001-2002 Honorary President Martha C. Piper Chancellor William Sauder, BCom'48, LLD'90 President Greg Clark Senior VP Jane Knott Hungerford, BEd'67 Treasurer Tammie Mark, BCom'88 Members-at-Large, '00-'02 John Grunau, Darlene Marzari Members-at-Large, '01-'03 Martin Ertl, BSc'93, Billy Wan, BCom'82, Paul Rosenau, MA'87, BLA'87 Executive Director (ex-officio) Agnes Papke, BSc(Agr)'66 Board Appointments, 2000-2001 Administration Rep Byron Hender, BCom'68 AMS President Maryann Adamec Awards Haig Farris, BA'60, LLD'97 Branches Greg Clark Communications/Marketing Don Wells, BA'89 Convocation Senator Gerry Podersky-Cannon, BA'70, MA'79 Alumni Day Darlene Marzari Faculty Rep Heather Keate, BSc'66, BLS'67 Nominating, Recruitment & Membership Greg Clark HUNGERFORD Elected Board Members Senior Vice President Jane Knott Hungerford, BEd'67 Community Service BC Cancer Foundation Millennium Campaign 1997-pres- ent; board member of the BC Cancer Foundation Board of Directors since 1993, chair since 1997; member of the Board of Trustees for the BC Cancer Agency since 1994; part of the Research Management Committee of the BC Cancer Research Centre 1996-present; member, Crofton House School Foundation Board of Directors; involved in the establishment of Science World, sat on the Board of Directors for seven years, named Patron for Science World in 1995 in recognition of significant contributions. Treasurer Tammie Mark, BCom'88 Alumni Activities Executive, UBC Commerce Alumni, 1989-present; Volunteer for Alumni Day, Homecoming, Graduation. University Activities Member, AMS Student Administrative Commission; Co- Editor, 1988 Commerce Undergraduate Society Employment Brochure/Yearbook; Member at Large, Commerce Undergraduate Society General Council; Volunteer, UBC Open House. Community Service Director, Acting Community Services Co-ordinator and Member-at-Large, Trident Enrichment Society; Volunteer, various charitable organizations and sports events. Occupation Senior Consultant with Westech Information Systems, a subsidiary of BC Hydro. Member, Certified Management Accountants of BC. Members-at-Large 2001-2003 Martin Ertl, BSc'93 Alumni Activities Member of Alumni Scholarships and Bursaries Committee since 1998. University Activities Director of Administration, AMS, 1991-92; President, AMS, 1992-93; Chair, UBC Aquatic Centre Management Committee, 1991 -92. Professional Activities Volunteer, McGill Legal Information Clinic, 1994-96; Special Advisor, NAFTA Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Disputes. Occupation Managing Director and General Counsel, Navarik Corp, 2000-present. Billy Wan, BCom'82 Professional Activities Actively involved in the establishment of a major private school for more than 600 students. Has assisted in the formation of private schools in British Columbia. Community Service Volunteered with the Canadian Red Cross, West Point Grey Independent School Society, and Junior Achievement of British Columbia. Occupation Vice President of Venturex Global Corporation, a company specializing in project financing for schools and other education related projects. Paul Rosenau, MA'87, BLA'87 Alumni Activities Received the UBC Alumni Association's Outstanding Young Alumnus Award Professional Activities Received the Business in Vancouver's "40 Under 40" award to BC's top young entrepreneurs, 2000; received the Alberta Association of Landscape Architects Awards to UBC School of Landscape Architecture, 1985; won the Dean's Cup in Landscape Architecture for Academic Achievement, First Year Landscape Architecture, UBC. Occupation Founder and Principal of EKISTICS Town Planning Inc. Spring 2001 Trek 47 [ CLASS ACTS Find out who's doing what and where they're doing it 20: Sylvia Ablowitz ba'21 was just a little girl when her dad built a hotel on the seashore in Vancouver's West End and named it after her. Her dad lost the hotel during the Depression, but the name stuck. Mrs. Ablowitz turns 101 in March. 40: Cleveland Hickman Jr. phd'58 (Fish Physiology) taught zoology at the University of Alberta and Washington and Lee University in Virginia. He has also produced two field guides on the invertebrates of the Galapagos, and is working on a third one, in collaboration with the Darwin Research Center in the Galapagos. He discovered a rare porcelain crab there that bears his name: Clastotoechus hickmanii. 50: After practicing law in Vancouver for more than 41 years, Merrill Leckie bcom'57, llb'58 has retired to Maple Bay on Vancouver Island, where he is a trade-mark agent and a chartered accountant . . . Dr. Howard R. Nixon bpe'51, was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for service to Canadian youth through education and sport. He is also a founder of Katimavik. 60: Philip Victor Allingham ba(hon english)'68, phd'88 and his wife Andrea ba'83 recently moved to Thunder Bay, where Philip is assistant professor of English Language Arts in the faculty of Education. Philip taught in be for thirty years at high school, college, and university levels . . . Robert Amedee Cantin, ba'61, retired from Hughes Aircraft Company in Culver City, California after 38 years in the aerospace industry. He has accepted a systems engineering position working on usaf satellite tracking systems with Lockheed Martin located in El Segundo, California . . . Raphael Girard ba'63 joined the Foreign Service of the Dept. of Citizenship and Immigration Operations in 1963. He has been appointed assistant deputy minister, After graduating from UBC, John Brockington ba(hon)'53 taught in BC high schools for a few years and then went on to Yale to get his doctorate in Fine Arts. In 1961 he came back to UBC to join the Theatre department where he taught Theatre History, Dramatic Literature, directing and acting. When Dorothy Sommerset retired in 1965, he became head of the department, a position he held for 22 years. He continued as associate professor until he retired in 1994. John was a highly regarded director for the Vancouver International Festival, at the early Arts Club, the Playhouse, as well as at UBC in the old and new Freddie Wood Theatres. Notable among the more than 100 productions he directed were Henry IV, Part One, Misalliance, The Three Sisters, Waiting for Godot (Canadian Premiere), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Twelfth Night. Immigrant Operations, and named Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Most recently, he was appointed Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs, Kosovo Crisis, and Special Coordinator for Reconstruction in the Balkans . . . Jeffrey Ernest Henton phd(chem eng)'67 was lead environmental consultant with Eutech. For the last ten years he has worked in Canada, usa, Mexico, Japan, China, Russia, Poland and western Europe on environmental issues . . . Gail Mclntyre ba'67 has been appointed to the Board of Ontario Heritage Foundation. She has a background in environmental concerns and, as a municipal politician, she brought in legislation on natural heritage. . . Erland M. Schulson base (hons)'64, phd'68 was recently appointed the first George Austin Colligan Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College . . . Dr. PC Simon msc'60 published a book, The Missing Piece to Paradise, in May of this year . . . Lorrie R. Williams ba'66 was given the Avon "Women of Inspiration" Award for 2000 for founding the Canadian Harambee Education Society, which sponsors high school girls in East Africa. She was featured in the September issue of Canadian Living . . . Kathy E. Zimon ba'66, bls'69, ma'70 took early retirement from her position as Fine Arts librarian at the University of Calgary in 1997 in order to concentrate on research interests. Her book, Alberta Society of Artists: the First Seventy Years, was published last September by the University of Calgary Press. 70: Victoria (Brandlmayr) Acheson ba'78, ma'99 presented her masters thesis at the Harvard School of Public Health International Fishing Industry Safety and Health Conference, held at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts . . . Brian Coldwells bcom'72 is in audit and computer specialization at ccra. He spent nine years as director on the board of the George Derby Long Term Care Society. He is a founding member of the Lions Gate Anglers Club and is in his fifth year as president. He is also a member of the be Wildlife Federation. Any interested fishers in the Lower Mainland can drop him an e-mail at: bcinbc@mybc.com .-.-. A.M. Lorraine Fader ba'78 is principal horn, 48 Trek Spring 2001 education director and librarian at Owensboro Symphony in Kentucky, and instructor of Horn at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. She regularly plays in several orchestras and festivals in Indiana, Virginia, and Alabama, and plays trumpet in a German Bass Band in her spare time . . . Cameron Louis ba'70 is professor and head of the department of English at the University of Regina. He has published Records of Early English Drama: Sussex, a 500-page book documenting the performance of drama and music in the county of Sussex in the Middle Ages and Renaissance . . . Juan Merkt bsc'78, msc'85, his wife Lanette, and daughter Rachel have moved to Athens, oh. Juan has accepted a position as assistant professor in the Dept. of Aviation at Ohio University, where he will continue to pursue his three professional passions: teaching, flying and flight safety-related research . . . Cecelia (Corriveau) Lee Temple bed'79, dip (deaf)'83 was awarded the Master of Special Education (Sensory Disability) with Distinction from the University of Newcastle in Sydney, Australia in June 2000 . . . Thora van Male ba'70 headed off to France as soon as she graduated, and has never looked back. She teaches at the university in Grenoble, where she set up a student exchange program between the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies and ubc . . . David W. Vogt bsc'78, meng'85, founder of online educational publishing company Branium.com, was named to the new David F. Robitaille Professorship in Mathematics and Science Education at UBC . . . A psalm setting Murray C. Walker bmus'75 composed was sung by a mass choir of 125 high school students at the National Assoc, of Episcopal (Anglican) Schools biennial conference at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in November. He continues as director of Music at York School in Monterey, ca . . . Edward Witzke ba'72, barch'76 has been president of the Canadian Institute of Professional Home Inspectors, Inc. since 1992. He was instrumental in starting the certificate in housing inspection program at BCIT. Edward has been featured on radio, tv, and in numerous publications on building inspection issues since the 1980s. 80: In January 2000, Deborah deBruijn mls'85 joined the Canadian National Site Licensing Project as executive director. She is now living in Ottawa with husband Gerard and children Andrea and Vanessa . . . Ian Forster bsc (zoology)'80, msc (animal sci)'87 is a research scientist at the Oceanic Institute in Kailua, Hawaii, studying nutrition and feed ing of aquatic animals . . . John Forster-Coull bsc (pharm)'88; phd (pharm)'95 and Jayne Forster-Coull, bsn'95 are pleased to announce the birth of their second child, Caitlin Meridith on August 5th 2000. The whole family (including the cats) are doing fine . . . Donald Haldane mba'81 has been named senor director of the Student Service Center of Point Park College in Pittsburgh, pa. Previously, Donald was principal of the Red Deer campus of Cambridge College in Alberta .-.-. Kathryn Hatashita-Lee ba' 82 was the winning author of the Asian Canadian Writer's Workshop Emerging Writer Award for Children's Literature. Her short story, "Remember Crysanthemum" appears in Winds Through Time (Beach Holme Publishing) and Crossroads 7 (Gage Educational Publishing) . . . Grant Hill bsc'86, msc'88 is a support astronomer for Keck Observatory in Kamuela, Hawaii. It has two 10 meter optical/infrared telescopes on Mauna Kea ... P. Bradley Kitchen base'8 5 has been appointed vice president, Corporate Finance at Pacific Opportunity Company Ltd. In Vancouver . . . North Vancouver physiotherapist Paige (Macdonald) Larson bpe'84 was chosen as a member of the Canadian Medical Team for the Paralympics in Sydney, Australia. She served as physiotherapist for the women's wheelchair basketball team. She was also selected as the head therapist for the 2001 World Figure Skating Championships in Vancouver . . . Graham Lee bcom'87, dule'90 is president and founder of RG properties Ltd., a diversified real estate company with long-term holdings in shopping centers, a hotel and major industrial buildings. It is one of the fastest-growing companies in be, with annual revenues of about $24 million . . . Scot Macdonald ba'88 recently published Rolling the Iron Dice: Historical Analogies and Decisions to Use Military Force in Regional Contingencies, with Greenwood Press . . . Warren Newcomen base'8 5 recently moved to Kamloops with wife Nancy Stevens to work for Highland Valley Copper as their senior geotechnical engineer. They are enjoying the sunny Cariboo and the career challenges in a city with a slightly slower pace . . . Helene (Boutin) Rodriguez ba'89 bought a small business, CSI , which she operates from home while bringing up son Angel, born Sept. 16, 1999. Her husband, Lusero, is still in the Air Force and is traveling all over the world-.-.-.-Tony Ryan basc'86 moved back to Kamloops where he is a Senior Process Engineer with Weyerhaeuser Canada Ltd . . . Mark Sandercock bsc(chem)'87 and his family moved to Sydney, Australia, where Mark is studying for a doctorate in Forensic Chemistry at the University of Technology . . . TedToriumi bsc'87, bed'92 and Kam Toriumi welcomed their son, Brenden Connor Eizo on August 23, 1999. Brenden's siblings, Jaspreet and Johnny were very happy with his arrival as well. Ted is currently a Radiation Therapist at the Fraser Valley Clinic in Surrey, be . . . Rick Turner bcom'80 is president and ceo of International Aviation Terminals Spring 2001 Trek 49 CLASS ACTS Management Group of Companies. The biotech company funds a research laboratory at ubc. Turner is also chair and director of the BC Aviation Council . . .John van Deursen bmus'85 and Viktorie (Zaskodna) were married on September 9, 2000 at the District Court of Shin Dien City in Taiwan. They met while John was performing jazz at a night club, and Viktorie, a student from the Czech Republic completing her masters degree in Chinese languages, was enjoying a drink in her first week in Taipei City. Two years later - marriage! . . . Tony Varga bpe'82 has been teaching overseas since 1992 in Libya, Oman, and currently the Philippines. He is married to Susana, has a son, Rigel, and is enjoying expat life . . . Heidi Walsh ba'89 moved to Germany eight years ago. After working in print and radio, she now teaches radio skills to journalists from developing countries. In 1997 she married her German yodeler, Matt, following a 17 year trial period. Wunderbar . . . Jeneen Margaret Weekes bsc '81 has taken two honours diplomas in the digital graphic arts in Toronto, Digital Media and Computer Graphics, through the International Academy of Design in Toronto. She was second programmer for the Molson Virtual Brewery Tour ed while a student at the academy, and a brochure cover that she designed was selected as an example of outstanding student work in 1999. She is the in-house graphic designer/artist for an electrical lighting manufacturer/importer in the Greater Toronto Area . . . Colin C. Yip bcom'85 and his wife Cynthia Yip bcom'89 celebrated the birth of their second daughter, Madison Nicole, on July 9, 1998. Colin and Cynthia have their own public practice accounting business in Vancouver. 90: James Andre bsc'96 is in his third year working for the Institute for Aboriginal Health at UBC. He is currently working with be colleges and universities to establish a consortium to improve Aboriginal health . . . Richard Bruskiewich bsc'92, phd'99 has three children: a seven-and- a-half year-old son and two daughters, five years and seven months old . . . Keane Carson French was born Sept. 9, 2000 to Leslie Jean Carson ba'90 and husband Ewen French. Leslie was awarded the Master of Publication from SFU last October . . . Grace C. Cheng bcom'97 married Ken Ho on June 10, 2000. She is currently pursuing her bachelor of education at UBC . . . Andrea Childerhose bhk'94 recently returned from Africa to give birth to her first child, Sara Elizabeth Klatt, on December 13, 2000. They plan to move to Germany in the spring . . . Andrew Del Riccio mmus'98 is head of Brass and Percussion at the Trinity Grammar School in Sydney, Australia. He was appointed music director of the Mosman Orchestra after graduating. This year he was made artistic director of the Kings Cross Chamber Orchestra and principal trumpet of the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra . . . Sharon Eblaghie bsc'98, bed'99 was hired as a full-time secondary school teacher at Grady High School in Atlanta, ga, immediately after graduation. After only one year of teaching, she was flown to a conference in North Carolina, where she was awarded Teacher of the Year for the State of Georgia . . . John C. Fiddick llb'92 was admitted as a partner to the law firm of Clark, Wilson, Barristers and Solicitors, last August. He joined the firm as an associate lawyer in May, 1997 . . . Meygan Charlotte was born to Shawn Gordon-Crane ba'90 and Andrew Crane on February 27, 2000 . . . Kevin Hamilton ba'98 received his ma in International Affairs from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, last November . . . Colleen Hannah bpe'92, bed'97, mhk'99 is the First Nations Curriculum Resource Teacher with School District 69 (Qualicum). She is living in Nanaimo with her new family, Kevin Parkinson and son Taylor Joseph, born December 8, 1999-.-.-.-Michelle Hartley bed'97 is currently living in Kyiv, Ukraine. She taught at an international school last year, and briefly returned to the Fraser Valley to marry Brian Cormick on August 11, 2000 . . . Andrew Horner ma'97 and wife Chris were married on July 29, 2000 at St. Michael's Church, Flixton in Manchester, uk. The wedding was conducted by another graduate of UBC (and VST), Scott Gould bmus'86 who is now curate at All Saints, Vernon. Scott was given special permission by the Archbishop of York to conduct the service . . . After finishing up his contract with the PRC, Jason S. Hunnisett ba'96 moved to The Netherlands in Dec, 2000. He invites any UBC grads in the neighborhood to get in touch: jasonshl@usa. net. . . Michael Kozdron bsc'98 married the love of his life, Jessica Burns, on August 5, 2000, in Maple Ridge, BC. They are currently living in Durham, ne . . . Simon James Lees bhk'98 has earned a master of science degree in muscle physiology and biochemistry from Virginia Tech. He is now a phd student there, continuing his studies and working as a research assistant 50 Trek Spring 2001 . . . Willem Maas, ba'95, double honours Political Science and Geography, is completing his phd at Yale and spending the year on exchange at Nuffield College, Oxford. He would love to hear from former classmates: willem.maas@aya.yale.edu .-.-.-Aarti Moudgill bsc'99 has entered the Pennsylvania College of Optometry's Doctor of Optometry program this fall . . . David J. Musto ba'94, md'99 and Lisa Musto are thrilled to announce the arrival of their baby girl Emma Sarah, born July 24th. She is expected to cheer for the T-birds during Shrum time despite her mother's SFU ties . . . Kevin Oldknow basc(eng phys)'96, masc(mech eng)'00 and Angela Dobson basc(mech eng)'00 were married on Sept. 2, 2000, at Spanish Banks, Vancouver . . . Christina Pao ba'93 married Elan Cohen on 20th August 2000. They met in Hong Kong five years ago and now live in Singapore. Christina is the Asia Sales and marketing manager for Warner Bros. Publications . . . Ben Prins basc'93 and Michelle (Ternes) Prins bcom'90 are pleased to announce the arrival of their first child, Dante Michael, on October 13, 2000. Ben and Michelle have lived in Calgary since 1997, where Ben works for Fluor Daniel Canada, and Michelle runs her own consulting business . . . Kevin Purkiss mba'97 is celebrating the birth of Margaret Alexandra Purkiss, born July 2, 2000, weighing 91bs lOoz . . . Andrew Roger phd'96 came back to Canada after working in the us. He accepted a position with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research as Scotiabank scholar, and is assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Dalhousie University . . . Mario Sertic bsc'90, bsc(Pharm)'95, dmd'99 and Renate Simmons dmd'99 were married on August 19, 2000. They are both practicing dentistry in the Lower Mainland . . . Audrey Sloan dip(art hist)'90 is an architect in Edinburgh, Scotland . . . Manjeet Uppal bsc'99 has entered the Pennsylvania College of Optometry's Doctor of Optometry program this fall . . . Manuela Vieira-Ribeiro ba(hon)'95, ma'97, bed'98 and Jeremy Thomas Lovell ba(hon)'97 were married on July 22, 2000. They met at UBC five years ago. Manuela is a teacher and Jeremy is an articled student at a downtown law firm . . . Arthur Wolak ba'90, dip(art hist)'94 received an ma in humanities, with honours, from California State University on May 26, 2000 . . . Christy Wright bsc(agr)'96 is looking for friends from 1995, '96, and '97. You can contact her at: cwright@city.abby.bc.ca. Dr. Ludwig von Hahn ba'85 has been appointed director of Crotched Mountain's Outpatient Medical Services. Von Hahn is a developmental pediatrician with additional two-years' training in child and adolescent psychiatry. His responsibilities include leadership of the School Partnership Program, the Developmental Pediatrics Clinic, and other outpatient clinics involving physician services. He is particularly interested in the development of effective and responsive outreach programs for public schools centered on the needs of children with disabilities. Von Hahn also earned his md from McGill where he also completed his pediatric residency. In 1995, von Hahn undertook fellowships in developmental and behavioural pediatrics at Children's Hospital in Boston. He has conducted research on how medical assessments of children with learning problems are received by school personnel and other consumers. He would like to create reports and systems of care that are more responsive to the needs of children in community settings. IN MEMORIAM Stephen Borden bcom'50 ofVictoria, May 18, 1993 . . . Arnold Gordon Carter basc'47 of Peterborough, on, November 30, 2000 . . . John O. Dueckman basc'50 of Surrey, be . . . Arthur Middleton Eastham ba'37, ma'39, phd'42 of Ottawa, July 26, 2000 . . . Edmund George Edgar ba'34, ma'39, bed'53 of Sechelt, be, May 27, 2000 . . . Ingrid Yvonne Einarson basc'98, July 9, 2000 . . . Marjorie Gertrude Evans bhe'49, bsw'59, msw'61 of Chilliwack, January 3, 2001 . . . Louise Fletcher ba'53, med'67 of Vancouver, November 29, 2000 . . . Donald S. Gailbraith ba'55, msc'58 of Quebec City, December 9, 2000 . . . Marjorie Halpin phd'73, Assoc. Prof., Anthropology, Curator, Ethnology, Museum of Anthropology, August 30, 2000 . . . Victor E. Hansen basc'51 of Jacksonville, fl, January 6,2000 . . . Marie (Sutherland) Hardy bsc(agr)'56, February 21, 1993 . . . Audrey Hawthorn lid'86 , founding curator of the Museum of Anthropology, Assoc. Prof., Anthropology & Sociology, November 18, 2000 . . . Arthur Hubscher ba'55, msc'59 of Rexburg, Idaho, October 11, 2000 . . . Randle Iredale barch'55 ofVancouver . . . Hilary (Helliwell) James ba'30, October 5, 2000 . . . Heinz Lange bed'73 of Merritt, be, June 11, 2000 . . . Agnes Yvonne Mack mis'86 of Regina, September 17, 2000 . . . Geraldine (McDonnell) McAtee ba'49 of Burnaby, August 4, 2000 . . . Robert Law McDougall ba'39 of Ottawa, August 4, 2000 . . . Peter C. Mcintosh, UBC physical education teacher, founding member of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education in 1958, of England, July 22, 2000 . . .Vaughan L. Mosher basc'44, of Creston, be, May 7, 2000 . . . CD. "Bill" Osborn bsc(agr)'33 of Vernon, May 11, 2000 . . . Guy Rene Ouellette msc'91 of Rimouski, pq, September 7, 2000 . . . Donald Phillips, secondary student in the Career Preparation program in Education, November 11, 2000 . . . Leila Rezvani, second-year Education student, December 1, 2000. Correction: Homer Armstrong Thompson ba'25, ma'27, lid'49 was born in 1906, not 1905 . . . Ralph Tortorelli ba'54, med'67 of White Rock, July 9, 2000 . . . Margaret (Muirhead) Turner ba'31 of England, October 10, 2000 . . . Gerry Ward ba'36 of Lethbridge, October 20, 2000 . . . Harold A. Wright bcom'62 of Denver, co, June 3,2000. In Memoriam information should be directed to: In Memoriam Editor, Trek Magazine, University of British Columbia, 6251 Cecil Green Park Road, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z1, or to sharim@alumni.ubc.ca. Submissions may be edited for length. Spring 2001 Trek 51 IN MEMORIAM Janet Susan (Fleck) Ladner (1919-2000) ba'40, basc'44, ma'77 was a lifelong student with a passion for learning. After graduation, she started a nursing career with the Victorian Order of Nurses. An inveterate traveler, Janet was a frequent speaker at international conferences on heraldry, Napoleonic Studies and Portuguese history, where she demonstrated her mastery of written and spoken Portuguese, which she learned in her 50s. She will be remembered by her friends at Pasley Island and Whistler, her fellow lifelong blood donors at the Red Cross, her fellow students at the UBC library and lecture halls, and many acquaintances at her Granville Island haunts. Editors at various newspapers will know her for her unsolicited grammatical corrections. Her love of exercise started with tennis and badminton championships in her teens, followed by years of swimming at the Vancouver Lawn Tennis and Badminton Club, where she was a member since 1936. Daily early morning False Creek seawall training walks culminated in top-five finishes in her age group in the Sun Run for the last five years, most recently last April in the 80+ category. Joseph Kania (1901-2000) ba/bsc'26, masc'28 was born in Vienna. His family moved to Trail, BC in the early 20th century. He started working in the smelter at the age of fourteen and played musical accompaniment for one of the local silent movie theatres. He saved his money to go to UBC, and as a student, he helped stage Gilbert and Sullivan musicals with MusSoc. After graduation, Joseph moved to Anyox, BC to work as a mine surveyor and geologist, and met his first wife, Nan, there. He then returned to ubc for his master's, and then went on to obtain his phd from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He settled back in Vancouver at Pemberton Securities, where he was made head of the research department. He quickly became top salesman and stayed with the firm for 44 years. In 1942, Joe started to teach engineering economics to graduating engineering students at UBC, a position he held for 13 years. As a member of the UBC Senate for 17 years, Joe was the chair of the Alumni Higher Education Committee, whose findings were the basis for the establishment of BCIT. Joe traveled all over the world on trade missions as a member of the Vancouver Board of Trade. He was also a founding director of the BC Chamber of Commerce. Nan died in 1987, and in 1990, he married Florence Taylor. William (Bill) Charles Brown (1907-2000) bsc'28 was a devoted family man, an enterprising florist and flower grower, active in his community and part of a pioneer Haney-Hammond family. After university, Bill went to work in the family florist business in Vancouver. He married Muriel in 1937 and in 1944 he returned to Maple Ridge to succeed his father as manager of Brown Brothers' Greenhouses Ltd. with four acres of greenhouses. As well as belonging to the Knights of Columbus, Bill joined the Maple Ridge Lions Club one year after it opened in 1944 and became its president in 1947. He served as treasurer for the Maple Ridge Volunteer Fire Department, and chairman of the Centennial Swimming Pool project for the Parks Board. Bill sat on Maple Ridge Municipal Council for 14 years, was a founding member of the Maple Ridge Hospital Society and chaired the committee that built the Ridge Meadows Hospital. He was a director on the hospital board for 16 years. Muriel passed away only a few months before Bill. They were married for 63 years. 52 Trek Spring 2001 Vincent Stogan lld'95, also known as Tsimilano, of the Musqueam First Nation, was an elder for the First Nations House of Learning (FHNL). He was a cherished friend, teacher, and mentor to many at UBC. In addition to his honorary degree from UBC, Vincent also received an honorary degree from the native Indian Teacher Program in 1991. He made a significant contribution during the building of the First Nations Longhouse and of to the academic and student services of the FNHL. Vincent served in various committees for First Nations academic initiatives, opened numerous events with prayers in the Hun'q'umin'un language, and conducted many ceremonies. Vincent was chosen by the elders of his family and community to carry on traditional healing and cultural work. He could never say no when he was asked to help others, whether it involved spiritual assistance or teaching cultural knowledge. He traveled extensively through BC and the United States, helping and teaching others through spiritual ceremonies and guiding the work of community leaders. He also served on the board of directors for many aboriginal organizations in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Heather Kilpatrick (1908-2000) ba'28, basc'31 passed away in her 92nd year in Vancouver. Born in Revelstoke, Heather was the youngest daughter of a BC pioneer family of Thomas Kilpatrick, then superintendent of the CNR. After she graduated in Nursing in 1931, she received the BC Government Award in Public Health Nursing for that year. Heather worked in the Cowichan Health Centre in Duncan as a staff nurse and then as a supervisor. As a Rockefeller Scholar, she obtained her masters degree Public Health Nursing from the University of Toronto in 1939. In 1940 she was appointed the first director of Public Health Nursing in BC. In 1944, Heather was one of the four senior Canadian nurses to be appointed to United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Heather's position was in Greece, which was in the middle of a civil war. On return she became nurse in charge of the large Outpatient department at Shaughnessy Hospital. She held that position until her retirement. Heather was a very generous, sensitive, compassionate and loving family member. She had great empathy for those less fortunate and gave generously to many charities all her life. She was a proud member of and generous donor to the UBC Alumni Association. She loved her province and her country, but always maintained SIMON FRASER UN I VERS ITT AT HARROJR CENTRE /AAfi^R OF ARES if) UB*R*L SZVh*& fffciammunftpaflaambif *« Itadlicow tha world of rdui, Etudydui1cta^uwJilavalapriawparip*dhw0ri nntwnponry Ibub. Earn an whanad difm trimifh an liUllactuaJly challan0n£ litiirdlfdplrnuy program. ThfCnjjugaUbml.Bttidln piwhiwh imlupvi Ikridulti win wfrii M aqund IrhBdaAnl hirtafiiutili \t olflnd dwlng Mfiltif *nd HHjbnd houi at 51 mm Ruw Ukibvfhy it Hubtu-Curti*, \n dMVfltaMi Uncown lUbml! Email fJffVfbc* UH1T1BSITT Spring 2001 Trek 53 IN MEMORIAM G.E.Ted Baynes (1907-2000) basc'32 served as Alumni Association president from 1944-45. He donated scholarships to both ubc and the University of Victoria. With Baynes Manning and G.E. Baynes contractors, he built projects throughout BC and Alberta. He also played an active role in the family-owned Grosvenor Hotel and Haney Brick and Tile Company. Ted was a strong advocate of parks and planning, and contributed much time and effort to the attractive layout of West Vancouver. In his own neighbourhood he worked with a group of friends to purchase land and build the Altamont public tennis courts. His wife, Jean Cameron Baynes ba'32, died two-and-a-half weeks after Ted. She was a gifted teacher and public speaker. She and Ted were married for 66 years. t7m . ■ym&y < ■ Cheung-Kok Choi An industrialist, businessman and philanthropist in China, Hong Kong and Canada, Cheung-Kok Choi dedicated himself to building bridges for the international exchange of information and ideas. The C.K. Choi Building for the Institute of Asian Research at UBC was made possible through his vision, dedication and generous support. The institute is a cornerstone of UBC's international activities and is made up of five research centres which focus on China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and India and South Asia. Three principles guided his life: that the traditional virtues of Confucianism provide a prescription for human behaviour; that educational institutions help to achieve greater academic excellence through the exchange of the cultures of the East and West; and that education plays an important role in increasing knowledge and understanding. At UBC, he established numerous fellowships and prizes, including the C.K. Choi Fellowship in Business Administration and the C.K. Choi Scholarship in Engineering. He is survived by his wife, seven children - five of whom graduated from UBC - and eight grandchildren. William (Bill) David McLaren (1936-2000) bsc'58, msc'63 grew up in Dollarton, North Vancouver. He worked for the federal department of Fish and Wildlife, then went to Monash University in Australia on a research scholarship from 1963-1966. On his return to Canada, he became assistant professor at McGill from 1966-1969, and associate master at bcit from 1969-1979. Subsequently, he worked for the District of Maple Ridge in Parks and Leisure Services. Bill had a wonderful sense of humour and a keen intellect. He was passionate about his community and the environment. He dedicated his time and knowledge to various organizations such as the Alouette River Management Society, gvrd Parks Forum, Fraser River Coalition, Trans Canada Trail, and Grasslands Conservation Council. Maritime history was a particular interest and he was a dedicated volunteer for the Vancouver Maritime Museum and the s.s. Master Society which supports the last steam tugboat in North America. He was an avid and talented photographer and the Maritime Museum has benefited from thousands of his photographs of ships. Bill's life was celebrated in a gathering at Allco Park in Maple Ridge, August 21. His ashes were taken to sea on the S.S. Master on September 23. His spirit lives on in the natural world he so treasured. He is survived by his wife Babs, daughter Dorothy, brothers James and John and their families. 54 Trek Spring 2001
UBC Publications
Featured Collection
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Trek Mar 31, 2001
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Item Metadata
Title | Trek |
Publisher | [Vancouver] : University of British Columbia Alumni Association |
Date Issued | [2001-03] |
Subject |
University of British Columbia. Alumni Association |
Geographic Location | Vancouver (B.C.) |
Genre |
Periodicals |
Type |
Text |
File Format | application/pdf |
Language | English |
Notes | Titled "[The] Graduate Chronicle" from April 1931 - October 1948; "[The] UBC Alumni Chronicle" from December 1948 - December 1982 and September 1989 - September 2000; "[The] Alumni UBC Chronicle" from March 1983 - March 1989; and "Trek" from March 2001 onwards. |
Identifier | LH3.B7 A6 LH3_B7_A6_2001-001 |
Collection |
University Publications |
Source | Original Format: University of British Columbia. Archives. |
Date Available | 2015-07-15 |
Provider | Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library |
Rights | Images provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the University of British Columbia Alumni Association. |
Catalogue Record | http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=2432419 |
DOI | 10.14288/1.0224215 |
Aggregated Source Repository | CONTENTdm |
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