MEDIA

Alumna TV host reaches for the stars

York alumna Divya Sharma (BAS ’07), a resident of Mississauga, achieved a milestone within just six years of landing in Canada – a tough task for a new immigrant, wrote Brampton’s South Asian Focus April 24 . The multi-talented 24-year-old is a dancer, choreographer, DJ and dance teacher. She also hosts a new but popular program of Canada's multi-faith and multicultural broadcaster VisionTV.

Sharma presents the entertaining Bollywood Gupshup every Saturday at VisionTV at 6pm. The program showcases action, thrill, fun and much more to entertain the South Asian community. "It's been an exciting journey with VisionTV and I'm enjoying every moment of it," said the rising star, who was born and raised in Chandigarh, India. She joined VisionTV in March this year.

The Focus noted Sharma graduated from York’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies in administrative studies with specialized honours in human resource management.

Indian music festival has roots at York
Hundreds of musicians, including students from Mississauga and the GTA, gathered Saturday for a popular music festival in honour an Indian saint and composer, reported The Mississauga News April 19. The Thyagaraja Music Festival, celebrated in many places over the world, is in honour of Saint Thyagaraja, a composer of carnatic music – a classical style practised in southern parts of India – and was organized by a GTA organization, Bharathi Kala Manram (BKM).

"BKM was started with an intention to preserve and promote the Indian culture and traditions among Indo-Canadians," said Dadu Ramanathan, one of the members of the group. "We were the first organization who, along with York University, began the festival. And now this festival is being celebrated in over 20 cities in North America along the format we developed." The group initiated two scholarships – $750 each to students of Indian music at York University.

Cheaters never prosper
Why do people choose to cheat, especially if it could affect their grades? asked the Barrie Examiner, in Ont., April 19. Melissa Ash knows all about stress at school, and being bogged down with a heavy workload. "It's borderline nervous breakdown sometimes with all the work we have to do," said Ash, a second-year York University nursing student, studying at Barrie's Georgian College campus. "There are essays, term papers, tests and research projects to do, and it does get really stressful." But that doesn't mean she'd risk her grades by cheating to get ahead. "We can't cheat on tests and assignments, because our teachers watch us like hawks," she said. "Besides, I have the fear of being kicked out of my program for cheating. I'd rather risk getting a crappy mark over being pulled from my program."

Fellow nursing student Katie Douglas isn't a cheater, either. But she's entertained the thought once or twice. "The temptation is always there, but then I have to think about the consequences if I did cheat," Douglas said. "Sometimes you have enough stress on you that you don't want to add more by worrying about being caught cheating on a project."

Although they're honest students, Douglas and Ash know full well cheating still happens at their school. "It's not so much about people looking at other people's papers in class anymore," Douglas said. "It's more students telling students what was on a test. You might say, 'Remember to study this area for the test,' just to give someone a hint."

Business helps young entrepreneurs prosper
Karla Smith-Brown and Anique Jordan are the co-founders of KEYS (Knowledge Equals Youth Success), a youth-owned Toronto business that caters to young entrepreneurs, reported The Toronto Sun April 21. "The young people we are working with are the most creative and driven youths we know," says Jordan, who is majoring in psychology and international development at York University. KEYS advises young entrepreneurs about how to network properly and how to promote and advertise their business in a competitive and professional manner. Jordan and Smith-Brown came up with the idea to start KEYS after participating in a youth trade show in Scarborough last year.

Former student helps score the story
Former York student Alexander Doan doesn't watch movies like most people, wrote the Niagara Falls Review April 25. In fact, what's on the screen is rarely important to him. He's more concerned with what he's hearing. When you compose film scores for a living, the guy making the music is a bigger star than George Clooney.

"A lot of times I'll go see a movie because I know who the composer is," says the former Niagara Falls resident. "It doesn't matter how bad the film is or how bad the reviews are, if I know Howard Shore did the score, I will go and only focus on the music."

Meanwhile, his own cinema credentials keep growing. In the past five years, Doan has composed the music for 15 independent Canadian movies, including Vigilante and The Nastiworths.

While attending York University five years ago, Doan met with director Tim Moran, who was making a short film based on the Charles Dickens story, "The Tale of Gabriel Grub." "We clicked,” said Doan. "I went and looked at some of the rough footage of the film and it just took off from there." He recorded the soundtrack with an eager York Symphony Orchestra. Moran was thrilled with the finished music and Doan's soundtrack days had begun.

China mission brings tangible results, says York prof
David Lumsden, an anthropologist in York’s Faculty of Arts who is finishing up a sabbatical in Chongqing, dismissed skeptics who question the value of trade missions and sister-city relationships, reported the Toronto Star April 20, as Toronto Mayor David Miller wound up his seven-day trade mission to China. "It's not about junkets and never has been about junkets," Lumsden said. "It's about talking to each other, learning from each other and bringing home tangible results. Do you value international understanding? Do you believe that China is important to the future of the world? If you do, then of course these missions are worth it."

• In a related Star portrait of Chongqing, Toronto’s sister city on the Yangtze and the fastest growing city in the world, Lumsden said the government has committed itself to closing the growing gap between urban rich and rural poor. And it has launched experimental reforms right here in Chongqing to close it. If they work, Chongqing would be known for more than just its booming economy. "Chongqing could be a beacon for the rest of the country," says Lumsden.

Proposed York medical school to revolutionize doctor training
York University wants to build a medical school like no other, according to the new special adviser hired to spearhead the campaign for the facility, wrote InsideToronto.com April 24.

"We believe we're breaking new ground," said Dr. Peter Walker, who was named to his new post April 15. "I think this is an extraordinary opportunity here for the population in this region that would materially benefit by having a medical school at York and York is in the ideal situation to meet that expectation.

"York is in the heart of the GTA…so York is now at the heart of a new medical challenge," said Walker.

Walker said York's aim would be on training physicians in community settings such as doctors' offices, smaller hospitals and clinics. "What we're thinking of building is a medical school that is deeply embedded in the community," he said. "There is now a refreshing change in attitude that we have gone too far and that we have to knock down some of those bricks. York may well be in the vanguard of that change."

Although the University's best-case scenario would see students admitted to the school in 2012, Walker admitted the facility is at the initial stages.

While the medical school will most likely include a building somewhere on York's campus, Walker said many teaching sites will be in the community. Meanwhile, advanced technology, allowing students to study from anywhere in the world, reduces the need for bricks and mortar. He said wants to have a proposal into the provincial government for approval before the end of the year.

TTC's resistance to private money stalls Spadina subway project
The Toronto Transit Commission calls private money a bad idea, wrote columnist Peter Kuitenbrouwer in the National Post April 24. So bad, in fact, that it’s willing to reject public money in order to stop the private sector. I speak of the long-awaited extension of the Spadina subway to York University and on into Vaughan. Ottawa and Queen’s Park have both doled out the money, in trust, for the new line.

The project is stalled, Adam Giambrone, the chair of the TTC, told me after a TTC meeting, because Ottawa wants the TTC to let private contractors bid on designing and building the extension, whereas the TTC insists that its engineers must design the new tunnel in-house. “We said we’re not comfortable with the private sector building a line that has to last for hundreds of years,” Giambrone said.

This kind of protective, stick-in-the-mud attitude, so pervasive at the TTC, may explain why we still have tokens, long after other transit networks developed "smart cards", wrote Kuitenbrouwer.

• On Wednesday, Giambrone said the project can't go ahead because the TTC wants to do the work in-house, whereas Ottawa wants it to tender to the private sector, wrote Kuitenbrower in a follow-up colum. Catherine Loubier, spokeswoman for Lawrence Cannon, the federal transport minister, said yesterday that this is not a holdup.

  "Should Toronto wish to use in-house staff for design and project management, they are free to do it, and the federal government will redirect its contribution to other parts of the project," she said. She said the feds have their chequebooks open to reimburse any subway costs up to $697-milion when they receive an invoice for any work that's properly tendered. "They haven't sent any invoices because they haven't started the project," she said.

A chance encounter that might rewrite the rules of evidence
Following a six-minute discussion in 2003 with police officers who were suspicious of his behaviour, 18-year-old Donnohue Grant blurted: "I have a firearm," wrote The Globe and Mail April 21 in a story about an upcoming decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. Whether acting out of fear, intimidation or simple honesty, Grant emptied his pockets. That chance encounter may be about to turn the world of criminal law on its head.

Betting is strong in legal circles that the Court will use Grant's appeal of his subsequent marijuana and weapons convictions to rewrite the rules for tossing out evidence obtained through self-incrimination, wrote The Globe. Specifically, the Court will be faced with the prospect of rolling back a revolutionary 1997 ruling in the case of R v. Stillman. The Court ruled in Stillman that virtually any evidence obtained by police as a result of "conscripting" an individual to incriminate himself cannot be used against him at trial.

James Stribopoulos, a professor at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, predicted that, should Grant lose the appeal, police will feel free to stop citizens at whim. More often than not, he added, those who are stopped will belong to minority groups. Stribopoulos said that overturning Stillman would also cause people to question the permanency of all Supreme Court rulings, since it would serve as a signal to lower court judges "that the due process revolution occasioned by the Charter has now come to an end – and that our concern for civil liberties must be increasingly tempered by more pressing and less idealistic concerns about combatting gun violence.

“This would be a real tragedy, especially given that such a shift would not be based in fact," Stribopoulos added. "In reality, violent crime is actually down. The perception that we are in a crisis has very much been fuelled by sensationalistic media reporting and opportunism by our politicians. It is exactly at times like these that the court serves us best by staying true to important and established constitutional principles."

BCE deal could mean a bonus for charities
The largest corporate takeover in Canadian history could prove a jackpot for charities, which are beginning to spread the word – give them your Bell Canada shares and cut your capital gains tax, reported the National Post April 19. More than 800 million BCE Inc. shares worth about $34 billion are set to expire before the end of June, when the telecommunications giant is bought by an Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan-led group.

Susan Mullin, vice-president of development at the York University Foundation, says the foundation has received twice as many gifts of securities since capital gains tax was eliminated in 2006, even though recent volatility in the stock market has impaired capital gains. "Donation size increased dramatically after the complete elimination of capital gains. In fact, we had a couple of gifts of securities in excess of $1 million and one of $2 million the year that it came in," says Mullin, who oversees the development of the University's $303-million endowment fund, which has grown 450 per cent since 1997.

Owen Charters (MBA ’01), executive director of online donations portal CanadaHelps, says some smaller charities were shying away from gifts of securities. As a result, CanadaHelps began to process securities donations on behalf of charities through its Web site in October, making it an easier process for both charities and donors. The Web site is a one-stop charity that facilitates more than $10 million in donations a year to about 80,000 organizations across Canada. Charters, who started the charity in 2000, obtained an MBA from York University to increase the effectiveness of his work as the sector became more competitive and professionalized.

What does it mean to be poor in Ontario today?
As the province grapples with that question, the Toronto Star asked dozens of local experts, including Dennis Raphael, health policy professor in York’s Faculty of Health, and published their answers April 19. Raphael said:

Poverty is the inability – due to lack of financial resources – to participate in the kinds of activities expected of an average Canadian in an advanced industrial society. The currently available measures of low income, the Statistics Canada pre-tax LICOS and Low Income Measure (less than half of the median income), and the Market Basket Measure developed by Human Resources and Development Canada all provide similar estimates of the incidence of poverty. Also, people's response to the question, "Are you unable to carry out everyday activities that you think you should be able to do due to lack of money?" a variant of what is used in the UK, also gives comparable estimates of the incidence of poverty. This work has all been done – it should not take one year to figure this out.

Church group stages York prof’s musical
The Company of Saints has been rocking the set to put on That's Life, a medieval morality play set as a rock musical, which tells the story of the passage from life to death, reported Ontario's Flamborough Review April 19. Written in 2003 by Peter McKinnon, a theatre professor in York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, That's Life was first discovered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. When speaking with McKinnon about putting together the musical, director Rev. Susan Kerr noted that it was McKinnon who suggested the cast and crew donate the funds to local and international organizations. "The theme of the play is doing good things and making a difference and it seemed to go with the message of the play," she explained.

Margo Boyd – policing pioneer, new Edmontonian
When the Edmonton police commission hired Mike Boyd (a former deputy chief in Toronto), few knew there were in fact two dedicated cops in the family, reported the Edmonton Journal April 20. Margo Boyd (BA ’74), 55 this month, and Mike had parallel, high-powered careers for 30 years in Toronto and both played key roles in capturing Scarborough rapist Paul Bernardo. Both ended up working right at the top in the chief's office. Margo retired from police work the day before the Boyds arrived in Edmonton on Jan. 1, 2006. She was the highest ranking woman in the Toronto police service. Her new job these days is "police chief's wife, the best job ever," she says with a gracious, friendly smile.

MASH workshop adds up for parents
A Math at School and Home (MASH) workshop was held at Twin Lakes Secondary School to show parents how math is being taught to their kids in elementary school, reported Ontario's Orillia Packet and Times April 21. Each of the 35 parents who took part went home with a math kit that included a calculator, as well as blocks and shapes that are used to help with fractions, geometry, multiplication and other math problems.

"It's beyond paper and pencil," said guest speaker Trevor Brown, course director of mathematics education at York University. "It's getting the kids to see where the mathematics come from. What we want the kids to be able to do today is think mathematically." Brown's goal was to show parents how teaching math has changed and to provide them with the modern tools used in the subject. "Not one of them had a problem," he said of the parents. "In fact, one of them was almost in tears because she realized how easy it is. That's why they want more."

Classical acts for the sax-starved
Daniel Rubinoff and Pope Pius X have a major beef between them, wrote the Edmonton Journal April 25. For Rubinoff, acclaimed saxophonist and teacher at York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts as well as Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, his instrument of choice is an underutilized and underappreciated part of the classical world.

To Pope Pius X, who reigned at the Vatican between 1903 and 1914, it was "the devil's horn", a repository of all that is unholy in music, a seducer of innocents with no place in the masses where some deviously clever composers had inserted them.

Turns out that Pius was right. Jazz and rock musicians quickly picked up on the carnal sound of the saxophone, changing Adolphe Sax's more highbrow hopes for his hybrid woodwind and brass invention. In classical music, however, the saxophone has been sent to the kids table – looking up hopefully while the oboe steals all the best lines.

The dead end has been tough for players. As Rubinoff notes, unlike in jazz or rock 'n' roll, there isn't a canon of performers in classical saxophone to draw on for classical musicians. In many ways, he feels as though he's become a disciple of sax, trying to bring the instrument back to square one so it can progress in a better manner.

Applications surge at York's Faculty of Environmental Studies
York University has had a Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) since 1968, created during the first modern wave of environmental concern, wrote the National Post April 22 in a special report. With undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs, it has 1,000 students and offers 150 different courses in such subjects as resource management, urban sustainability and even animal and human relations. This year’s applications for its undergraduate program have surged by 30 per cent, wrote the Post.

Despite York’s longer history in the field, environmental studies is still a relatively young area “and changing all the time” says Barbara Rahder, FES dean at York. “I don’t think we even had a class in climate change five years ago,” says Rahder, a specialist in urban planning who has taught full time in the Faculty since 1993. “Now, we have three faculty members and three Environmental Canada people seconded to us to do research and teach here” on the topic.

Roughly speaking, university-level environmental training can be divided between the hard sciences, such as engineering or biology, and the soft sciences, literature and philosophy. Programs such as York’s are on the rise and try to span both types.

Nuclear power not viable in northern Alberta, says prof
Duncan Hawthorne wants to build Alberta's first nuclear power plant 30 kilometres west of the town of Peace River, reported the Edmonton Journal April 20. At an open house in Peace River last Monday, Hawthorne, CEO of Bruce Power, managed to win over most of the crowd with humour. It's doubtful that he finds the growing resistance to nuclear power in Alberta humourous, though. Anti-nuclear organizations like Nuclear Free Alberta and Citizens Against Nuclear Development are coalescing and stepping up their campaigns.

Mark Winfield, a York professor of environmental studies, says the nuclear plant is simply not viable in Alberta. "It takes a long time, it absorbs a lot of capital and basically private capital isn't interested in tying up that kind of money for that long unless it's guaranteed a return on investment, and a market and a price, which you can't do in Alberta's system." Winfield says cost overruns and delays are endemic in the nuclear industry.

Mommy and daddy bloggers worry about exploitation
It's a dilemma many parent bloggers have begun to confront: Is it ethical to blog about my children, wrote The Globe and Mail April 22. For some, giving up blogging is a more knotty problem than just giving up a forum to vent or protecting a child’s privacy. One of the top parenting blogs, Dooce, written by Salt Lake City mom Heather Armstrong, has been the target of criticism for both its frankness and its evolution into big business. "Dooce" is trademarked and filled with big-money ads – some observers have pegged her earnings to as much as US$40,000 a month, wrote the Globe.

Such income is hard to abandon, says May Friedman, a PhD student at York University who is writing a book on the parenting blogosphere. It can be especially complicated for someone such as Armstrong: Her audience has come to expect her irreverent, potty-mouthed writing, with occasional moments of disdain for her child, Leta. "She doesn't really have the option of pulling the plug the way other people do," Friedman says.

York centre helps organize German film festival
KinoFest 2008, a five-day celebration of new German-language film work, opens April 30, at the Princess in Waterloo, wrote the Waterloo Region Record, April 22. KinoFest has been planned in conjunction with "Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria," a major conference that will bring together scholars from all over North America and Europe. The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies at the University of Waterloo both played a role in making this happen.

Finding body wouldn't ID killer
If Elizabeth Bain's skeletal remains were found today, almost 18 years after her murder, it's unlikely they'd point a definitive forensic finger at her killer, wrote the Toronto Star April 24 in an article quoting several experts. Even if finding Bain's remains gave the Crown a renewed belief that Baltovich was the killer, it could not re-prosecute him once the appeal period, normally 30 days, is past, said Alan Young, director of the Innocence Project at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School.

Last September, the Crown offered a manslaughter plea and only one more day in jail added to the nine years Baltovich has already served in return for revealing where the body was, said James Lockyer, Baltovich's lawyer. Young said that the Crown's deal was a good one – for a guilty man to take. The fact that Baltovich turned it down only underscores his innocence, Young said.

Corporations are voluntarily adopting 'self-correcting' practices
The relative advantages of recognizing and encouraging "self-correcting" aspects of our corporate and securities law system are many, wrote Professor Ed Waitzer, Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, in the National Post April 24.

Voluntarily embraced governance practices tend to avoid the complexity and arbitrary thresholds and requirements that imposed rules entail (and, in turn, the disputes that such rules and thresholds generate or the fact that their inherent arbitrariness detracts from their credibility). Consensus standards, such as majority voting, also promote constructive engagement between managerial and shareholder constituencies and allow for easy adjustment over time. There is no need for regulatory, legislative or judicial action and the rigidities inherent in each. Perhaps most importantly, relying on principles of legitimacy and moral suasion is ultimately far more powerful than any law.

Former Vaughan mayor facing audit
Vaughan council has voted to order a comprehensive compliance audit into the campaign contributions and expenses of former Vaughan mayor Michael Di Biase during the hotly fought 2006 mayoral race he narrowly lost to challenger Linda Jackson, wrote the Toronto Star April 24.

The audit – demanded on similar grounds to the one Jackson faces – was announced at a special council session. A negative outcome for the two bitter rivals could conceivably see both of them barred from running in the next election.

A 2006 study by Robert MacDermid, political science professor in York’s Faculty of Arts, found that Vaughan councillors led the GTA in the proportion of corporate contributions.

Strange stories from a sailor’s life
Peter Chance, the first executive officer of York's Osgoode Hall Law School, believes that everybody should write a memoir, if only for their children, wrote the Vancouver Island, BC’s, Peninsula News Review April 23. “I felt it was a worthwhile exercise,” he says of the 10 years it took him to put together Before It’s Too Late: A Sailor’s Life, a look back at 80 years of his life. “Certainly, my family has appreciated it.” Chance’s work has been appreciated by those outside his family, too, and with the wide-ranging adventures and stories he tells in the book, it’s easy to see the interest.

After the Second World War Chance climbed the ranks through a series of appointments but left the navy eventually to be the first executive officer for Osgoode at York, in 1969. He remembers the students during those years as extremely bright, and one specific incident with amusement: “They asked me, would I put in a bank of telephones outside the common room?” he remembered. Chance asked them why they needed the phones. “During lunch, they liked to get in a call to their brokers,” he said with a smile.