Concordia faculty, staff and alumni/æ pop up in the media more often than you might think!

Jason Camlot (English) was a guest on CBC Radio’s All in a Weekend recently, telling host and alumnus Shelley Pomerance about his interest in early spoken-word recordings. He played some of them, including a call on the very bugle that sounded the “Charge of the Light Brigade” at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 and a brief speech by critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

Mick Carney (Aviation MBA) continues to be a popular expert as the media track the woes of Canada’s airlines. He told CBC’s Daybreak that Air Canada’s $1.25-billion deficit for 2001 was not unexpected, but admitted in a Canadian Press article published in many newspapers that Air Canada’s expansion of Tango to Atlantic Canada is “a shot across the bow” of would-be competitors like Canada 3000.

Daniel Salée (SCPA) told a reporter that he thinks the Parti Québécois will wait to call a Quebec election. The Canadian Press article, published, among other places, in Owen Sound, Ont., said, “If this were a typical party that didn’t have sovereignty in mind, I think they’d hold an election in 2002. . . With the PQ, every election is about sovereignty — and the time isn’t right now. The issue is practically dead.”

Stylianos Perrakis (Economics/Finance) wrote a letter to the Ottawa Citizen in which he favours upgrading requirements for immigrants. “Let in the uneducated and the illiterates of the whole world, and all we’ll achieve is adding them to our welfare rolls,” he wrote, adding that if educated immigrants don’t find jobs immediately, they tend to go to back school. “It is already happening, and I have had several of them as my students over the years. The system works, and [then Immigration Minister Elinor] Caplan’s new requirements will only make it work better.”

Kevin Austin (Music) was interviewed for CBC’s Home Run on the eve of the annual electroacoustic music festival that started at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall on Feb. 13. He said that Montreal is the centre for electroacoustic music in Canada, and thousands of Montrealers have attended at least one concert in this somewhat rarefied medium.

Three nurses at Concordia’s Health Services, Louise Carline, Donna Cooper and Mindy Selinger, and administrative assistant Carolle Poirier, were the subject of an article in The Gazette last week — not for their work, but for their regard for their own health and well-being. The four women have been active walkers for several years from their office on Guy St., progressing from a flat route west to a brisk walk up to Mount Royal, and they do it several times a week. They eat better, feel better and look better. Think about it!

Lillian Robinson (Simone de Beauvoir) was on CBC Newswatch recently, in an informal studio debate in which she defended feminism against the female author of a book that said men suffer from stereotyping.

Stephen Snow (Creative Arts Therapies) was a guest of Ann Lagacé-Dowson on CBC’s Home Run, talking about the release of a compact disc of songs by participants in the lively musicals produced over the past several years by the Centre for the Arts in Human Development. Those interested in buying the disc can contact the Centre at 848-8619.

Askmen.com, a Web site for guys on business, relationships and health, was the subject of a column in the Edmonton Journal by David Staples. It was started in 1999 by a group Concordia business students, and now has 3.7 million readers a month. Staples quotes one of the founders, Ash Karbasforoushan (BCom 99), as saying that the most popular feature is Doc Love, who writes a weekly column on dating.

A show of large portraits by Janet Werner (Studio Art) has opened at the Ottawa Art Gallery and continues until March. Paul Gessell, reviewing it in The Citizen, says, “You just know these Beautiful People are dumb, shallow, selfish, insensitive and . . . post-modern.” He went on to call the portraits “both seductive and seducing.”

His hometown of Fort Erie, Ont., celebrated the fact that Daniel Cross (Cinema) has been nominated for a Gemini (Canada’s TV awards) for his documentary Too Colourful for the League: A History of Blacks in Hockey with a feature in the local paper, The Times. Cross’s latest film is S.P.I.T. – Squeegee Punks in Traffic.

Joseph Baron is a student in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, but he’s already something of a star. Before coming to Concordia last fall, he was at York University, where he made an eerie short film called Four. It won top prize in the Canadian Student Festival, including a $5,000 grant from Kodak. He was the subject of the cover article in In Camera On Campus, the newsletter of the Kodak Student Filmmaker Program.