To most people of our generation, the word “Nicaragua” conjures up an idea of a distant country somewhere in the Third World—one of my university-educated friends asked me where it was in Africa.
We’ve all either seen the show or had to endure friends’ polemics on who deserves to win. Love it or hate it, Canadian Idol has become a pop culture phenomenon.
Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, the son of a Canadian Forces soldier, was born in 1946 in Denekamp, Holland and raised in Montreal. In 1964, he enrolled as a cadet at the Collège militaire royale de St-Jean. He served in a variety of Canadian Forces posts before being deployed as Forces Commander of the UN mission to Rwanda in 1993. There, the following year, he witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans, without sufficient resources to prevent it.
On Saturday, more than 400 Queen’s students, staff and community filled Grant Hall to hear retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire speak on war and peace in the post-9/11 world.
Think back to the Saturday evening of your Frosh Week. You’re standing in your double room, wearing a smelly yellow t-shirt and a grimy pair of coveralls, watching your new roommate’s belongings begin to ebb closer to your floor space. You haven’t slept for more than five hours all week or showered in the past 48, and your 400-person bio lecture—for which you don’t have a textbook yet—is at 8:30 Monday morning. And it’s dinnertime. What are you going to eat?
Easing into her chair in her office on Parliament Hill, the Honourable Sharon Carstairs expresses her vision for palliative care in Canada. “I hope that, one day, every single Canadian who requires palliative will have it,” she said. The seasoned senator from Manitoba, and former Leader of the Government in the Senate, dedicated herself to fighting for palliative care issues across the country.
As editor of Harper’s magazine and the winner of a National Magazine Award for his “Notebook” essays, Lewis Lapham has been credited with bringing out an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity. He has written for more than 20 North American newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent lecturer and talk show guest. His most recent book, Gag Rule: On the Stifling of Dissent and the Suppression of Democracy, was published by Penguin Press this month.
Noted biomedical engineer Morris “Mickey” Milner earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. As a faculty member there, he initiated a biomedical engineering research program and first visited Canada in 1967 on a sabbatical leave at the National Research Council. Since then, he has held numerous academic posts in South Africa, the United States and Canada.
He is the former Prime Minister of Canada, and the former Minister of almost everything else. “This is the first election since 1953 that I have not been involved in,” Jean Chrétien told a Queen’s convocation audience on May 27. He also said his wife, Aline, has told him, “retirement doesn’t mean you have to come home for lunch every day.”
Marc Emery, president of the British Columbia Marijuana Party, is probably not exaggerating when he calls himself Canada’s “Prince of Pot.” Emery spoke on campus earlier this month at a talk organized by the Queen’s NDP Association. In addition to founding and leading the B.C. Marijuana Party, Emery is also the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, the producer of Pot-TV and a distributor of marijuana seeds through his company, Marc Emery Direct.
If the $22,000 raised during last week’s Cuts for Cancer is any indication, Queen’s students are ready to part with their hard-earned money to cancer research. Three first-year students plan to add thousands of dollars more after this summer’s “Tour for the Cure.” Starting May 12, Mike Maggrah, Erik Zufelt and Ryan Zufelt, all ArtSci ’07, will be cycling across Canada in a fundraising and awareness campaign to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society.
Nearing the end of the event, a drunk friend of mine leaned over my shoulder and jokingly told me that he was going to be very disappointed if this story didn’t begin with the line, “It was one of the stupidest nights I have ever spent in my entire life.”
“A lot of people wanted to know why I accepted Islam,” said Jaffer Syed, a man who was raised as a Roman Catholic but converted to Islam in his early 20s. His original name is Jeff. The University of Toronto graduate spoke on campus last week during the final night of Islamic Awareness Week, which was organized by the Queen’s University Muslim Student Association.
Last Wednesday evening, the Interfaith Council at Queen’s hosted a of four speakers to discuss various religious perspectives on the United Nations’ Earth Charter.
Savannah, Ga. evokes images local eccentrics, Gothic Revival architecture and Spanish moss. But for retired U.S. Air Force Col. Derek Duke, residents of coastal Georgia have something else hanging over their heads.
Last winter, the federal government put into legislation the world’s toughest and most graphic cigarette warning labels. Smokers have since responded with labels of their own. In this issue, Features discusses the impact of warning labels and hits the ghetto to find out just how scared smokers are.
If you watched television or listened to the radio in April, you probably heard about the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement and the Quebec City Summit of the Americas protest.
In a cluttered AMS office, John Zerucelli dives for the phone. He’s the assistant manager for the AMS’ Student Constables—and he also happens to be the president of the Queen’s University Young Liberal Association.
