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Compiled by Barbara Black
Concordia faculty, staff and alumni/æ pop up
in the media more often than you might think!
John McKay (Mathematics) was mentioned in the current issue of Scientific American. The article is about the work of Richard Borcherds of Cambridge University and UC Berkeley, who recently won the Fields Medal, mathematics' biggest award. Borcherds' work includes solving the Moonshine Conjecture, a devilishly difficult problem devised by McKay. (The two mathematicians are old friends.)
The research of Christopher Ross (Marketing) and Linda Dyer (Management) was featured in The Globe and Mail's Report on Business on November 19. They conducted interviews with 33 black entrepreneurs in the Montreal area, and found that they preferred the personal touch to more formal marketing techniques like advertising and public relations. Ross and Dyer also found that their subjects preferred getting business advice from other entrepreneurs or their own family and friends to getting it from bankers, accountants or academics.
Graeme Decarie (History) has a characteristically pithy take on the Jackie Robinson legend. The OttawaCitizen reports that A Season of Change, an hour-long TV documentary, is frank about Montreal's role in breaking the colour barrier in professional baseball. In the film, Decarie said, "One of the treasured myths [is] that Robinson came here because Montreal was such an open and tolerant city. That's an absolute crock. Montreal was open and tolerant to [blacks] as long as you were wearing a baseball uniform and you weren't staying."
Election season loves the pundits. Daniel Salée, principal of the School of Community and Public Affairs, explained the appeal of Lucien Bouchard in Halifax's Daily News: "There's a certain authenticity about the man. He comes from the people." He added, "I think in Quebec we're suckers for a good orator. We like his fiery brand of public speaking." Salée also was a guest on CBC Radio's national program As it Happens, and had a commentary on CBC Radio One about the election results the day after the vote. Guy Lachapelle (Political Science) was interviewed by a Southam reporter, among others.
During the Quebec election campaign, Mike Gasher (Journalism) appeared regularly on alumna Shelley Pomerance's early-morning CBC Radio One show, All in a Weekend. He felt that while the party leaders had been well covered by the media, the other candidates and many of the issues touching voters had not.
TheGazette's Show Biz Chez Nous column included an entertaining feature on a group of low-low-budget filmmakers with a Concordia background. Watch for Sweethearts of the World, by Sylvia Wilson, Steven Clark and Matt Bissonnette. Some of the independent feature was filmed in the Henry F. Hall Building.
A recent exhibition of photographic work at the Grenfell Gallery by Tom Gibson was mentioned in the Newfoundland Herald. A friend of Toronto artist Michael Snow, Gibson was credited in the article with being one of the founders of the Photography program here at Concordia.
Enn Raudsepp (Journalism) was asked for his opinion on the Terry Milewski affair, which saw the senior CBC journalist suspended for an apparently biased e-mail exchange with APEC protesters. "It's the kind of thing that gives journalism a bad name," Raudsepp told the National Post's Elena Cherney. "You use your sources in a professional way. You don't abuse them; you don't cozy up to them."
Remember Bruce Smart, former Registrar? He's happily training sheep dogs (Border collies) out in Hudson Heights, and the Hudson Gazette did an illustrated feature about this competitive and absorbing sport, which has taken him all over the eastern seaboard and the U.K.
Pierre Brunet (Management) appeared on CBC Newswatch's business panel on November 2, talking about the shakeup in the retail food industry. The next day, Lawrence Kryzanowski (Finance) was on CFCF's Montreal Today and CJAD's The World Today on a different aspect of the same subject.
In the light of an unsubstantiated scare over attackers with AIDS-infected needles in Montreal nightclubs, Anna Woodrow (Sociology and Anthropology) and Graeme Decarie (History) were interviewed about urban legends on CFCF's Montreal Today by Leslie Roberts.
Iain Cook (Communication Studies) was interviewed on Montreal Today about fear of the millennium bug.
