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Names in the News
Compiled by Barbara Black
Concordia faculty, staff and alumni/æ pop up in the media more often than you might think!
The May 6 issue of The Mirror featured a list of the "best of Montreal." Congratulations to the Concordia Computer Store, which finished in the top five computer stores. Bookstores Director Lina Lipscombe gave the credit to "the professionalism of our staff and the quality of products we carry."
Olympic track star and MA in Art History student Rosey Edeh modelled a beach outfit on the cover of The Gazette’s Trends magazine, and there was a nice profile of her inside. The Canadian record-setter in the 400-metre hurdles announced her retirement from competitive athletics on CBC Radio’s Daybreak late last month.
With all the recent political turmoil in Russia and the war in the Balkans, expert Marika Pruska-Carroll (Political Science) was kept busy with interviews, notably on CBC Newsworld and CJAD.
As we noted last month, Andrew Homzy (Music) was widely interviewed for his expertise in the music of Duke Ellington, whose centenary was celebrated April 29. Le Soleil also interviewed him for a well-illustrated feature on the great jazz composer.
Anna Woodrow (Sociology and Anthropology) is writing a doctoral thesis about regional differences in stand-up comedy across Canada. A lively digest of her findings so far appeared recently in the National Post. She found that the jokes are bluer out West, Toronto and Edmonton have the toughest crowds, and Canadian comics work hard – really hard.
More reviews of Political Science Professor Brooke Jeffrey’s recent book, Hard Right Turn: The Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada (Harper Collins) have been published. Columnist Doug Collins found it "long" and "dreary," but Barbara Yaffe, whose column appears in several major papers, hailed her "clear-headed analysis" of the growth of the movement. The Globe and Mail called Jeffrey a "professional Maude Barlow."
Mike Gasher (Journalism) wrote a review of the "non-fiction thriller" Last Stop, Paris for Books in Canada. The book by Michael McLoughlin claims, among other things, that FLQ terrorist Mario Bachand was assassinated in 1971 by the RCMP. Gasher says the sensational claim is unsubstantiated, but difficult to ignore.
Poet Henry Beissel (English, retired) expressed himself freely to the Ottawa Citizen on why the first production of Inuk, an operatic version of his much-translated 1975 play, Inook and the Sun, has not yet been given a helping hand by government; he speculated darkly about issues of cultural appropriation. However, Wolfgang Bottenberg (Music), who wrote the music for the opera, was optimistic that funding for a European-Canadian co-production will materialize. A concert version was performed at the Concordia Concert Hall recently, and at the National Arts Centre on June 2.
Maurice Charland (Communication Studies) took the National Post to task in a letter to the editor, saying that simply comparing U.S. and Canadian tax rates is misleading. It fails to take into account the high private health insurance premiums in the U.S., lower basic tax deductions, a higher dollar, and in many places, higher property taxes. The result? Virtually the same standard of living, except for the very rich, who admittedly do better in the U.S.
Wagdi Habashi (Mechanical Engineering) and his work in computational fluid dynamics were given a whole page in the magazine Québec Science in February.
