ER Staff

Here's a recent photo of your External Relations Department, with a few new faces, taken at Hammond Lounge on June 27, 2008.

Front row:

• Sue Seaborn, Sports Information Director
  
• Gloria Jollymore, Vice-President, External Relations
  
• Joy Wilbur, Alumni Services Coordinator
  
• Carolle de Ste-Croix, Director of Alumni & Development
  
• Anna Acton, Administrative Assistant
  
• Sheila Blagrave, Director of Marketing & Communications
  
• Marlene Hopkins, Campaign Volunteer Coordinator
  
• Laura Dillman, Media Relations Coordinator
  
• Lisa Arsenault, Researcher
  

Back row:

• Tracy Bell, Communications Officer
  
• Lesley Johnson, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
  
• Michael Cantwell, Executive Director of Campaign & University Advancement
• Joyce Terrio, Gift Processing Officer
  
• Susan Smith, Stewardship, Annual Fund and Community Relations Officer
• Mona Estabrooks, Assistant Director of Alumni Events
  
• Carol Heaslip, Senior Development Officer
  
• Nadine LeBlanc, e-Communications Coordinator
  

50 years of achievements

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia is marking 50 years of Tom Forrestall’s (’58) achievements with a special exhibition. Tom Forrestall: Paintings, Drawings, Writings is running from June 14 – September 1, 2008.

This retrospective exhibition and the book that accompanies it chronicle Tom’s art works in oil, watercolour and egg tempera over the course of several decades.

In 1954, Tom was awarded a scholarship to the Fine Arts department at Mount A (where he studied with Alex Colville). He received one of the first Canada Council grants for independent study which enabled him to travel throughout Europe. Tom was assistant curator at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton (1959), but shortly thereafter, began to devote himself full time to painting.

• Read more about the exhibition.
• Read more about purchasing a Tom Forrestall print in support of the Natalie Forrestall Fine Arts Bursary.

A couple of new faces coming to Mount A

Patricia McGorlick ('58) presented Mount Allison Scholarship Awards to Shea Lee DeGroot and Hyla LaPointe of Dalhousie Regional High School on Wednesday, June 18 during their graduation ceremony.

Let's welcome Shea and Hyla to the Mount A family!

Interim Head Coach for the Mounties

Kelly Jeffrey has been named Interim Head Coach of the Mount Allison Football Mounties for the upcoming season.

Kelly has been part of the Football Mounties for the last two seasons, as quarterback coach, special teams co-ordinator, and co-offensive co-ordinator.

He served as Head Coach at Mayville State University in the US before coming to Mount A.

Kelly is familiar with the Mount Allison program and has been influential in its success over the last two seasons.

His appointment for this season will allow the team and coaching staff to continue to build on this success and growth in a supportive and continuous manner.

The position of Head Coach will be advertised in the fall and a national search will take place at that time.

We hope that you will support our Football Mounties this fall.

1st Annual Ian McConnell Golf Tournament

Friends and former classmates of the late Ian McConnell (’95) are hosting the first annual Ian McConnell "Handy Best Ball" invitational golf tournament June 21 at the Amherst Golf and Country Club, in support of the Ian McConnell Memorial Bursary.

Ian graduated with a bachelor of commerce in 1995. Following his sudden passing in 2002, a few of his good friends started the Ian McConnell Bursary Fund as a way for Ian's legacy to remain in the hearts and minds of his friends, family and the students who would attend Mount A after him.

Providing financial aid to students at need, the bursary has already helped several Mount Allison students since its inception, and tournament organizers see the fund raiser as an opportunity to ensure it continues to make a difference in McConnell's name.

Tournament registration is $52.50 per player and includes 18 holes, a golf cart, as well as the dinner and awards reception to be held at the Olive Branch in Sackville.

Contests will be held for the longest drive, closest to the pin, as well as a hole-in-one shootout to win a dream golf vacation in Scotland (retail value of $6,800.) Registration begins at noon with tee-off at 1 p.m.

The tournament is open to all Mount Allison University alumni and friends of Ian McConnell.

Click here for more information, to register, or to make a donation.

Going to Yemen!

Laura Turnbull (’08) will be studying cross-culture anthropology with eight other students from across the world at the Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies starting in the fall.

She graduated from Mount A with a major in anthropology and sociology. Her thesis focused on how Muslim immigrants experience New Brunswick's culture through their senses.

Laura was looking for a Canadian university with a master's program when a professor told her about the college in Yemen, and so decided to postpone her master's studies for a year to study overseas.

Read full story:
Student to get up-close look at Mideast culture in Yemen (Fredericton Daily Gleaner)
Understanding Culture (Mount Allison University)

Mount A Buildings for Sale!

Two Mount A buildings — Baxter and Sprague Houses on Salem Street — are for sale to the general public. These Craftsmen style houses no longer fill a function in the University’s facilities master plan.

The buildings had been home to a student health centre and fine arts studio, and those facilities are now being relocated in new areas on campus including the new Student Centre, which will include health facilities, and a new Fine and Performing Arts Centre.

Buyers are expected to move the houses to new locations, and the university will keep the lots as green space to reduce its carbon footprint.

There is an open house for interested buyers on today, Monday, June 16 (15 and 17 Salem Street). Viewing time will be 9 to 11 a.m.

The deadline for Offers to Purchase will be Monday, June 23 at 4 p.m. and must be submitted to Administrative Services (Facilities Management Building). Houses must be removed in July or August.

For further information please contact Michelle Strain, director of administrative services, Mount Allison University, tel: (506) 364-2249 (mstrain@mta.ca).

Alum honoured by Owens

The Friends of the Owens Art Gallery and the students of Marshview Middle School are inviting the public to a special reception at the Owens Art Gallery on Tuesday, June 17 at 6:30 p.m.

The reception has been planned to celebrate the Gallery’s program of Education and Community Outreach and to publicly thank The Honourable Robert V. Barritt ('50) of Bermuda who has provided generous funding to support this important program at the Gallery.

Robert V. Barritt is a gradate of Mount A whose generosity has enabled the Owens to offer intensive programs to local schoolchildren through tours, workshops and special collaborative projects, and to forge relationships with the wider community through a series of Family Sundays and other events, all made available free of charge.

The Gallery’s membership of Friends of the Owens are now building on Mr. Barritt’s generosity, by directing all fund raising efforts towards building an Endowment Fund to sustain this dynamic program, which reaches out to families, youth, schools, and community members.

Read more: Bermudian artist honoured in Canada (Bermuda Royal Gazette)

Mounties Football Update

UPDATE: Interim Head Coach for the Mounties

On behalf of Jack Drover, Director of Physical Recreation and Athletics, I am writing to inform you that Steve LaLonde, head coach of the Football Mounties, has resigned from his position at Mount Allison.

Steve, who is originally from the United States, has decided to return there for personal and professional reasons.

Steve’s contributions to the Mount Allison Football program have been remarkably positive over the last three seasons and have positioned us for even greater success in the future.

We wish him all the best in his future endeavours and thank him for his hard work in developing both our Football and overall Athletics programs.

We will be working to fill this position as soon as possible to prepare for the upcoming season. We have a great team and look forward to seeing you out at Mountie games.

Sincerely,
Ron

Ron Byrne
Vice-President (Student Affairs)
Mount Allison University


Related: Leaving was personal, not professional, says LaLonde (Halifax Chronicle Herald)

Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame

Congratulations to Stanley Berneche (’70), who will be inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame at the Joe Shuster Awards ceremony on Saturday, June 14th in Toronto.

Following his studies at Mount A, Stanley became the leading artist associated with the counterculture humour magazine Fuddle Duddle, which was published in Ottawa from 1971 to 1972.

Stanley's main collaborator at the magazine was writer Peter Evans (’68), a friend from his university days.

Their satirical character Captain Canada, the first national superhero to appear following the Canadian Golden Age of Comics, made his debut in Fuddle Duddle #3.

Stanley was also drawing the strip True Tales of the RCMP for the Canadian Boy Scout magazine Trailblazers.

He is currently working on a variety of multimedia, web-related products and services, including website design, the design of next-generation, public-access, graphical user-interfaces, and the development of web-delivered, limited-series illustrations.

Canada's first national award recognizing outstanding achievements by Canadian creators in the creation and publication of comic books and graphic novels returns in 2008 for it’s fourth year: the JOE SHUSTER CANADIAN COMIC BOOK CREATOR AWARDS, named after pioneering Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster who, along with writer Jerry Siegel, created the iconic super-powered hero, Superman.

Read more about the Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards.

Sisters make a difference

Mount A third-year fine arts student Clare Halpine (’09) was one of five students in North America to be awarded a $10,000 scholarship recently for an essay she wrote on poverty.

She was the only Canadian amongst the winners.

The essay was written for the Boston-based Social Equity Venture Fund (S.E.VEN), a virtual non-profit entity that is run by two entrepreneurs and its strategy is to "increase the rate of diffusion of enterprise-based solutions to poverty."

Clare's scholarship-winning essay addressed the statement, "Poverty can be regarded as a matter of exclusion from networks of productivity, and not simply as having an unequal portion of what is imagined to be a fixed number of economic goods. In that sense, ending worldwide poverty is serious business. Describe enterprise-based solutions to poverty in this context."

But, perhaps Clare's winning shouldn't come as a surprise.

As it turns out, Clare is surrounded by family members who have more than just a passing interest in world issues, whether it's poverty, AIDS or hunger.


Clare's older sister Anna Halpine (’99) was only 21 when she founded the World Youth Alliance (WYA) shortly after she graduated from university.

Read more: Sisters make a difference (Times and Transcript)

Visit the World Youth Alliance web site: http://www.wya.net/

Mount A takes flight

Mount Allison University and the Moncton Flight College will be offering a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Aviation starting this September.

The multi-disciplinary degree will offer students the chance to obtain their Commercial Pilot’s Licence while completing an undergraduate degree.

The new Bachelor of Science in Aviation will welcome its first students this September. The interdisciplinary major will cover basic geography and environmental science, math and computer science, chemistry, physics, as well as upper-level aviation courses.

Students will also have the opportunity to engage in Mount A’s liberal arts curriculum, while receiving hands-on pilot training at the Flight College — graduating with a Bachelor of Science as well as their commercial pilot licence with multi-engine and instrument flight rules ratings.

Read more:
Top Canadian schools join forces (MTA News Release)
Mount A, Moncton Flight College join forces (Times and Transcript)

Commerce trip to Toronto

To give students in the Investment and Portfolio Management course a better feel for the investment industry, their professor, Dr. Nauman Farooqi, took them to Toronto to speak with the people who actually work in the financial sector.

While in Toronto this past March, thirteen students met with Mount Allison alumni:

• Dan Nowlan (’90), Managing Director at CIBC World Markets
• Michael Gibbens (’93), Managing Director at TD Securities
• Purdy Crawford (’52), renowned business leader who is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has been inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame.

In the evening there was an informal get-together with recent MTA grads at Osler’s Law Firm organized by alumnus Matt Stanley (’04).

This trip would not have been possible without the generous financial support of alumnus Michael Gibbens and all those who gave so freely of their valuable time.

Most outstanding geography student in Canada

Sarah Blake-Dickson (’08) of Waterloo has just received the 2008 Canadian Association of Geographers Undergraduate Award. This award is presented to the most outstanding student in Geography at universities across Canada.

The head of the department, Dr. Mike Fox calls Sarah a model department citizen. She was the student representative on the hiring committee for two new professors in the department during her time at Mount Allison.

Last summer, she worked for the Rural and Small Towns Programme, a university-based research group that works on rural issues, where, on one of her projects, she worked on a housing study for the town of Sackville.

It is amazing that Sarah found the time, but outside the classroom she volunteered in the Best Buddies program, which works with the special population and she played intramural sports including softball, soccer, and volleyball.

This summer Sarah is working for Industry Canada as a Community Economic Development Assistant at the Stratford Community Futures/FedNor Office in Ontario.

Luckily the East Coast gets her back as Sarah, who has had her choice of university graduate programs, has decided to attend Dalhousie University in the fall to do a master’s of Resource and Environmental Management.

Read full story: A Love of Place

Festival by the Marsh Preview

A night of merrymaking and fund raising with Bill Langstroth ('54) and guests was held on Saturday, June 7 at Cranewood.

Proceeds went towards this year’s Festival by the Marsh.

The event also honoured Friends of the Festival who donated to support last year’s edition, including:

• Don and Leona Campbell
• Robert Campbell and Christl Verduyn
• Dr. John McManaman
• Monika Boehringer
• Sandy and Wendy Burnett
• Joyce and Laing Ferguson
• Odette Gould and Mark Standring
• Virgil Hammock
• Gloria Jollymore
• Ron and Patricia Kelly Spurles
• Honourable Dominic Leblanc
• John and Lesley Read
• Pauline Spatz
• Rob and Susan Summerby-Murray
• Marilyn Trenholme Counsell
• Gary and Nancy Tucker

This year’s lineup included Mike Allison ('00), who continues to gain musical fame around the region and beyond, and who has just recently released a new CD, entitled Tilting at Windmills.

Also included in the program was the debut performance by Laura Turnbull of an original play, A One Person Brief History of Sackville, as well as scenes excerpted from this year’s play, The Tempest, by William Shakespeare.

Visit the Festival’s web site www.festivalbythemarsh.ca
The Festival runs through July 5-27, 2008.

If these walls could talk

A voice from CHMA's radio past is speaking again.

The crew at Mount Allison's campus community station is gearing up for its big move to the University's new Student Centre and has made some interesting discoveries during the process.

When moving a wall of floor-to-ceiling CD shelves, which had been bolted in place for a number of years, CHMA’s summer events co-ordinator Mark Brownlee discovered hidden messages written on the wall behind.

The messages, dated 1999, were from former CHMA station manager Liam Allen and junior engineer James Marcogliese.

A blank old-school music log — one of the forms that on-air hosts have to complete during each show — was also posted on the wall.

“We all chuckled a bit when we discovered the hidden messages,” says Brownlee.

“These Allisonians must have thought their messages would be long hidden or that there would be some great technological strides in the new millennium — it was anticipated that robots would be giving the music library its next coat of paint.”

While robots won’t be painting CHMA’s walls this time, the staff is excited about their move to the new Student Centre.

Station manager Pierre Malloy says the new space will provide some exciting new opportunities.

“We’re going to have a much bigger studio space and recording area. Which means we'll have more room for live interviews and live performances.

We’re also going to be better able to record local bands and performers so we can help them get their music out there. It’s a great jump forward for CHMA.”

Listen to CHMA live and hear move and community updates

Dr. Charles ("Willie") Eliot

Dr. Charles ("Willie") Eliot, former Mount Allison professor and University of Prince Edward Island President Emeritus, died of a stroke in his home on May 20, 2008.

Dr. Eliot was an important member of the Department of Classics at Mount Allison, serving first as Head of the Department and then as the Josiah Wood Chair in Classics. He also served as Vice-President, Academic and as a member of the Board of Regents at Mount Allison. In addition to his important work at Mount Allison, Dr. Eliot was an instructor and professor at the University of British Columbia between 1957 and 1971.

He was an active member in the wider academic community, serving on the Advisory Academic Panel of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and as a member of the Classical Association of Canada.

Born in Pakistan in 1928, Eliot also maintained an international connection through his involvement with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, which included a five-year term as a Professor of Archeology between 1971 and 1976.

In 1985 Eliot became President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Prince Edward Island, a position he held for 10 years.

UPEI President Wade MacLauchlan has informed us that Willie's memorial service will be at 2:00 p.m. on June 22 in the Recital Hall at UPEI.

Bermuda represented in new Student Centre

Pictured above is "Jobson's Cove, Bermuda", one of four giclée prints from Roger Savage's (' 63) original Bermuda watercolours to be displayed in the Bermuda Wing of the new Mount Allison Student Centre.

The Student Centre grand opening will be September 27, 2008 during Homecoming Weekend.