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/