Turning the question around is the solution in a new book by Dr. Doug Larson, emeritus professor in the Department of Integrative Biology in the University of Guelph’s College of Biological Science. “Hope is achieved by allowing science to destroy dogma,” says Larson in the cover blurb to The Dogma Ate My Homework.  

Co-authored by his son Nick, the new book is published by Volumes Publishing in Kitchener, Ont.  

The father-and-son writing team urges readers to harness science to confront unquestioned beliefs that prevent people and societies from realizing their potential. That idea is embodied in their volume’s subtitle, framed – suitably, for an ecologist and his engineer son – as a home-made equation: (Science) – (Dogma) = Hope.  

Dogma wielded by authorities is a corruptive and paralyzing influence, said Larson during an interview this fall on campus. But that’s only part of the problem.  

Perhaps the only thing more destructive than manipulative powers, he said, is a human tendency to accept beliefs without challenge. Why would we do that? 

Call it a case of going along to get along – and an aversion to confrontation. 

Someone says something and no one questions it: That’s dogma 

“We’d rather believe things to be true than for them to be true. It makes things more palatable,” said Larson, who taught and studied at U of G from 1975 until retirement in 2009.  

“It’s dogma if someone says something and no one questions it.”   

For instance, he said, there’s an increasingly widespread and angsty sentiment that humanity is collectively decimating our planet through climate change and other factors.  

Human activities are undoubtedly affecting climate, said Larson.  

He points to his early studies of arctic lichens, which occurred well before his headline-generating discovery in the 1990s that ancient dwarf cedars grow on the Niagara Escarpment.  

For those studies, he used an instrument calibrated to ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 345 parts per million. Today’s global CO2 average is 420 ppm, a nearly 25-per-cent increase in almost half a century.  

But, said Larson, it’s not true that “we are destroying the planet.” That dogmatic notion suggests that we pose a collective existential threat to Earth’s ecosystems.  

Climate change may play havoc with investments or winter weather or coastal homes and livelihoods. But it doesn’t destroy Earth’s living systems that predate humanity and that will likely outlast us.  

“Climate change and other risks destroy all the things we like,” said Larson. “The phrase, ‘We are destroying the planet’ really says that ‘we like the planet just the way it is.’” 

Rather than simply endorse blanket statements that effectively prompt handwringing but little action, he said, we need to plan for and adapt to climate change – human-made and natural. Similarly, he said, dogma and propaganda about biodiversity loss, infectious disease and the threat of nuclear war wrap the issues in a “wall of fear.” 

Or, to use another metaphor, Larson said, “We swim inside a big ocean of misrepresentation.” 

For these and other concerns, he said, the best strategy is to focus on what we can change.  

Looking past ‘dogma’ of taxes and centralization 

In its signal example, The Dogma Ate My Homework proposes that we stop looking to centralized government to solve problems such as climate change or biodiversity loss.  

Centralized government rests on the dogma of taxation as the primary source of public infrastructure, Larson said.  

Yet governments are caught between relying on tax money to fund infrastructure and their own reluctance to alienate voters with tax increases. Coupled with public ownership of everything from roads to bridges to sewers, what results is a kind of “tragedy of the commons” with crumbling or outdated infrastructure that no one wants to pay to repair.  

Instead, Larson calls for more private investment in infrastructure, such as funding by investors in late nineteenth-century Guelph that paid for construction of an urban railroad system in the city.  

“Governments now own our infrastructure,” he said. Far from the dogma of public ownership and reliance on taxation, Larson added, “Infrastructure is a commodity that people can invest in.”  

The book also discusses why and how dogma works, points to hope as an evolutionary process and outlines how the scientific method helps to counter dogma.  

Larson draws on ideas from such public intellectuals as the American biophysicist Harold Morowitz, who studied thermodynamics and living systems; the American astronomer Frank Drake; the Swedish physician and academic Hans Rosling; and Jacob Bronowski, a mathematician and philosopher who explored humanism and science in a 1973 book and television documentary series called The Ascent of Man. 

As a U of G professor, Larson said, he spent decades teaching students not just about ecology but about the power of dogma and its ill effects. A longtime musician, he wrote and recorded ideas on dogma and critical thinking in a 2015 album called Things That Need to Be Said.  

Contact:  
Doug Larson 
dwlarson@uoguelph.ca 

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 Nearly two decades later, Dominika Jamnicky, B.Sc. ’15, is training for the Americas triathlon championships in Uruguay this fall – with her eye on ultimately qualifying for the Paris Olympics in 2024 – while completing the home stretch of chiropractic studies in Toronto.   

 And in a kind of full circle, she’s now coaching young aspiring triathletes in Guelph’s Royal City Development Squad, founded five years ago with her fiancé, Kyle Boorsma, M.Sc. ’13.   

“I decided I wanted to give back to the community and share my passion for triathlon,” said Jamnicky, who was 11 when her family came to Canada from Australia in 2004.     

She spent her teens running, swimming and cycling in Port Hope, Ont., before arriving at U of G in 2010 to study biomedical science and to join the Gryphon team.    

Today, some 20 area youngsters belong to the growing club, whose members train around town in their signature blue and gold. Recalling her youthful start with the sport, she says training and competing in triathlon gives kids “essential skills for sport and everyday life. The most rewarding part is to see their smiling faces and see them enjoying the sport.”     

Ups and downs of a sport triad 

Those are the kinds of benefits she says she’s gained – mixed in with the inevitable heartbreaks and low moments.   

One highlight came in her first year with the U of G varsity team that won both women’s and men’s national cross-country titles. “That was the moment I knew that the University of Guelph was for me. The camaraderie and friendship among the athletes – I knew I was in the right place,” said Jamnicky.   

 Another high point was being selected to compete for Canada at the 2014 worlds. “Training with the cross-country and track and field teams and having the former national training centre at the University – that all led to being able to represent the country at the world championships in Chicago.”   

After graduation in 2015, she trained full-time for four years and was selected for Canada’s team for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia, her birth country. Earlier this year, she made her second Commonwealth Games appearance in Birmingham, England.  

Referring to the Australian Games, Jamnicky, 29, said, “That was special. On the sidelines, I had integral parts of my family cheering me on. It was nice to be able to compete there, but it was mostly like a family reunion.”   

One low point came when she was still a student athlete in 2013.   

In Europe that year, she broke her arm in a cycling accident. She wasn’t even competing at the time. “After a race, I went for a training ride,” she said. “I slipped over train tracks going downhill and got ejected from the bike.”  

Back in Guelph, her rehab from that accident and other injuries pointed Jamnicky toward her current career aspirations.

Adversity breeds career prospects for grad  

She says Marco Lozej, then a practitioner at U of G’s Health and Performance Centre, inspired her to pursue chiropractic studies after her biomedical science degree. That degree program is offered jointly by CBS and the Ontario Veterinary College’s Department of Biomedical Sciences. 

Jamnicky is now completing her final year of study at Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto.   

“I think chiropractors have a lot of tools in their toolbox to help people with functional problems, especially injuries,” she said. “My goal is to help people the best I can.”   

She aims to land clinical work in Guelph after graduation. For that, she’ll carry aspects of her university education as well, especially her studies of human anatomy and physiology.    

“I found that the University of Guelph approach to human sciences was ahead of a lot of other schools I looked at, especially with the human anatomy program,” said Jamnicky.   

Referring to the program run by the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences in the College of Biological Science, she said, “It’s one of the only programs in all of Canada that offers human dissection courses on cadavers. It made a difference in my understanding of the human body.”   

Grad aims to qualify for 2024 Olympics  

Now aiming to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games, she trains 15 to 20 hours a week. Her regimen includes regular workouts in the University pool and distance training with the varsity cross-country team.   

Since the Commonwealth Games, she has competed in European races with what she describes as middling results. Next up in late October were the Americas championships in Uruguay, where she was aiming for a top-five finish.     

“My recent European trip was not quite what I had prepared for, but that’s racing – there are ups and downs,” said Jamnicky, whose specialty in her sport triad is cycling.   

She said she relies upon a strong support system, including Boorsma. A former decorated Gryphon runner, Boorsma completed graduate studies in nutrition, exercise and metabolism, and is now an assistant coach with the varsity track team.  

“A good team makes a world of difference,” said Jamnicky. “No athlete’s trajectory is a smooth trajectory. It depends on how you’re able to work through the downs. Having a support system is huge, it helps you put things into perspective and work through challenges.”   

In turn, that’s partly her goal for the kids training with her development squad – and for adult runners now training with Boorsma in a new offshoot of the club.   

“With the national training centre shut down, we’re trying to fill that void and bring high-performance training in triathlon back to Guelph,” she said. 

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Dozens of threatened, endangered and at-risk plants and animals are found across Canada, and two University of Guelph grads are playing a small but important role in ensuring they have a future.  

Ian Adams and Robyn Rumney work for the Wildlife Conservation Society of Canada as Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) coordinators. From their respective bases in Cranbrook, B.C., and Midland, Ont., they identify potential areas for future protection. 

A global initiative spearheaded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and BirdLife International, KBAs contain important wildlife and biodiversity. Potential protected areas must go through several stages of local, national and international review before being designated.  

“A KBA in Canada is a KBA in Ghana is a KBA in New Zealand,” said Adams. “It’s part of a global set of criteria so that it’s reliable and that regardless of where you are in the world, you know that it has reached certain levels in terms of global or national significance.”   

But that doesn’t mean the area is necessarily protected. Rather, KBAs are “strictly an information layer,” Adams explains.  

He, Rumney and other KBA coordinators across Canada gather and prepare data for groups to indicate an area’s ecological value. What those groups do next is up to them, says Adams, but they may choose to protect the space, via an Indigenous protected area or a provincial or a national park, or to simply manage it in a way that conserves its integrity.   

That work hinges on data they access from various sources including various levels of government and apps like eBird and iNaturalist. With that information, Adams and Rumney can approach local naturalists, biologists, Indigenous communities and other stakeholders with their own knowledge of an area.   

For instance, the Ojibway Prairie Complex and Greater Park Ecosystem, near Windsor, Ont., is well on its way to being nominated for designation as a KBA. The proposal is being co-developed with the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, which has biologists working on-site. They hope it could one day become a future national urban park, which could help protect the many rare and at-risk species at the site. 

It’s an effort, Rumney says, “to maximize the impact of KBAs on protecting species and ecosystems,” ultimately tying it back to one of the greater goals of her and her colleagues’ project. 

A celebration of past and future accomplishments  

While their project maps potential KBAs, it “also celebrates areas that already have successful protection,” says Rumney, pointing to Long Point, Ont., or Trial Islands in B.C., which was Canada’s first KBA.  

Both those sites and future KBAs highlight and advocate for at-risk species listed on COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada), NatureServe, the IUCN Red List and more. 

Take Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it, also known as Tobacco Plains, in B.C., where you might find Spalding’s campion, one of the rarest plants in Canada. Designating the area as a KBA, with the help of the Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it of the Ktunaxa Nation, can help raise awareness of the plant’s open forest ecosystem and rarity, says Adams.  

“We know there’s a whole bunch of KBAs out there, and we haven’t scratched the surface yet,” he adds. “They’re ongoing, living documents that are a launching pad for ecology and conservation education.”  

He and Rumney are well-versed in the process thanks to their studies at U of G.  

U of G leads in ecology, conservation  

Despite now being at different points in their careers, Adams and Rumney chose to study at U of G for similar reasons. One was the beauty of the campus, and the other was the University’s reputation in environmental sciences – something both say helped set them up for where they are now.  

For Rumney, that came through the blend of theory and application in her bachelor of science in environmental sciences (at the Ontario Agricultural College) from 2012 to 2016. For Adams, it came during classes with Dr. Vernon Thomas, now professor emeritus, during wildlife biology studies (at the College of Biological Science) from 1985 to 1989.   

“He really pushed a lot of people to consider the political side of things,” says Adams, who later completed a master’s degree in wildlife ecology in 1995. 

Their current work connects them to U of G, too.  

“A lot of the names that come up on the research papers as experts to consult are University of Guelph faculty or lab managers,” says Rumney, adding that she recently spoke with an expert who is using U of G’s DNA barcoding technology for their own project.  

Adams remembers people thinking “you’re really going to do that?” when Dr. Paul Hebert, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and director of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, pitched the idea for this species identification technology. But, he adds, “it’s been wonderfully successful.”  

“I’ve done eDNA projects in B.C., including one of the first where we identified streams and watersheds where the Rocky Mountain tailed frog occurs,” he said. “The ability to just extract DNA from water, from soil, from air… it’s just remarkable.”  

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Ever since he was a child, David Borish wanted to tell stories about ecosystem and community health, and now thanks to his studies at the University of Guelph, he is doing just that.

A documentary film he directed and produced for his PhD is debuting this fall at festivals and screenings – including one hosted by U of G’s Guelph Institute of Development Studies (GIDS).  

HERD: Inuit Voices on Caribou documents Inuit communities in the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador as they grapple with changes brought on by a total hunting ban, implemented in 2013, on caribou – an animal with which they hold social, emotional and cultural connections.  

But the film is more than just a platform for Inuit to tell their stories. It’s also the raw data of Borish’s PhD dissertation, completed in 2021.   

“Usually, people use documentary film to communicate research, not do the research themselves,” he says. “But you can actually use the film as the data.” 

With that in mind, Borish set out to create a new technique called video-based qualitative analysis to promote knowledge mobilization. He repurposed two video editing programs, Final Cut Pro and Lumberjack Builder, to look for common themes in not just what people said but also their tone, body language and location. 

Collaborative process connects Inuit communities  

“I wasn’t extracting the words from the participants, I was keeping it connected,” he said. 

Throughout his undergrad degree at U of G in international development studies, Borish did photography on the side. During his third year, he combined his hobby and his studies to create a documentary film on tiger conservation, sustainable development and Indigenous communities in Malaysia. 

By his fourth year, he felt supported by U of G’s strength in socio-environmental studies, and reached out to Dr. Ashlee Cunsolo, now at Memorial University in Newfoundland, after she spoke during a class. 

Cunsolo was then working with Labrador communities on research in health and well-being, including Inuit communities who were exploring the idea of creating a documentary to illustrate the effects of the then four-year-old hunting ban on caribou.  

“Yes, it was my PhD work, but it was something that was led by Inuit, and I happened to be at the right place to help,” said Borish, now a post-doctoral researcher at Memorial University while also working with the Torngat Secretariat. 

The film has been public only since August, but is already available to audiences on CBC Gem, and communities across Labrador have watched it through screenings. After more than five years of community collaboration, Borish and the Caribou Project Steering Committee are excited to share their work.  

And for broader audiences, Borish hopes the film “provides them a glimpse into what life is like in Labrador, and how important these connections between people and caribou are,” and offers a chance “to think about the continued changes to people’s mental health, culture, identity and food security. All these things are so interconnected as biodiversity loss occurs.” 

To learn more or to host a screening, visit the HERD website, or check out their social media @inuitvoicesherd.  

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STORY BY ANDREW VOWLES

Orbiting Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery 30 years ago, Dr. Roberta Bondar heard the voices of her six crewmates, mechanical sounds from equipment, taped music. But as she peered through a window while photographing the planet as a member of NASA’s Earth Observation Team, it was what she couldn’t hear that struck her: no chuckling of running water, no windsighing through tree branches, no birdsong. “When I was looking at the Earth in space, I didn’t see any people,” says Bondar, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’68, whose eight-day mission in 1992 made her Canada’s first woman astronaut. “I didn’t hear any natural sounds. It left me with a sense of foreboding. I’m getting a ringside seat as if the natural world had disappeared. I didn’t like that.”

On the upside, the same vantage point fostered conviction and hope about the future of the planet – traits that would ultimately lead her to a successful post-NASA career as an acclaimed nature photographer and champion of environmental activism. Besides affording many “emotional moments” while the shuttle orbited the planet 129 times, the view of Earth suspended against the endless blackness of space brought home her U of G studies of ecology and ecosystems from decades earlier. “The idea to be able to look at Earth as a planet was one of the big values of the flight,” says Bondar, who marked the thirtieth anniversary of her Discovery mission in late January. “I got a more holistic and compassionate view of Earth as a planet and what we need to maintain our existence as a life form.”

Back on firm ground, she initially devoted herself to extending her research done aboard STS-42. As the first neurologist in space, Bondar conducted experiments in the shuttle’s International Microgravity Laboratory. For more than a decade after the flight, she headed an international research team studying connections between astronauts recovering from the microgravity of space and neurological illnesses here on Earth such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease. She had hoped to follow up on that work with a return mission to space, but that didn’t happen. Later, Bondar even considered returning to medical practice, going so far as to undertake hospital rounds. All the time, that tug of emotional gravity she’d felt aboard the shuttle had been exerting its influence. She returned to school once more, this time for training as a professional nature photographer. Today Bondar’s varied experience and expertise finds expression in her fine art photography and in her role as the public face and name of a foundation dedicated to raising awareness of the natural world. It’s been decades and several academic degrees since her undergrad days. But in several ways, her active work with the Roberta Bondar Foundation draws upon experiences and ideas that she encountered beginning in 1964 as a member of the first undergrad cohort on the campus of the newly established U of G. “The University of Guelph was the firm foothold,” says Bondar.

Raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., she enrolled at the University to pursue interests in entomology sparked by her summer work experience at a forestry insect lab. Aiming to become a science and physical education teacher, she pursued a slate of science courses alongside extracurricular basketball and archery. She planned to obtain her agriculture degree and then complete a one-year physical education program at McMaster. But in her third year here, two key things happened to alter those plans.

“I got a more holistic and compassionate view of Earth as a planet and what we need to maintain our existence as a life form.”

In that year, McMaster cancelled its PE program. Perhaps more important, Bondar contracted mumps and wound up locked in a campus infirmary. The affliction caused temporary neurological damage to her right shoulder that would end her campus athletics. She recalls a nurse’s words: “You might as well resign your year because you’re not going to pass.”

One day from her isolation window, she spotted her marine biology professor passing in front of Creelman Hall. “I think I put a sign up that said: Help.” Whatever she did, she managed to attract Dr. Susan Corey’s attention. The then biology professor found work for Bondar in her lab, where she made up her missed coursework and ultimately added a zoology major to her program. As well, she pursued communications courses through the new arts college, partly so that she could explain her science studies to her family.

Years later, that mixed curriculum— and subsequent graduate studies at Western University and the University of Toronto, followed by completion of a medical degree at McMaster University—made her an ideal candidate for the space shuttle program and the Discovery flight. Her interest in space had been sparked in childhood, all the
way back to her first Brownie Hawkeye camera and the cardboard “space helmets” that arrived one day in the mail for her and her sister, Barbara. Later, as a grad student back home in the summer of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, she stood with her dad in the backyard, gazing up at the moon, and said, “That’s really what I’d like to do.”

Through the 1970s, that prospect appeared unlikely. Then in 1982, partly on the strength of the Canadarm, the Canadian astronaut program began, and Bondar applied to join the inaugural cohort. Lacking engineering and extensive flight experience (although she had gained a pilot’s licence), she might not have seemed the most promising candidate. But it turned out that NASA liked her mixed background, going all the way back to her U of G studies ranging from plants to embryology. In late 1983, she was among the first six Canadian astronauts chosen. “I knew my stuff. That’s why I became the ‘right stuff,’” says Bondar, who ended up running dozens of microgravity experiments aboard Discovery. “Other contenders had other skill sets, but they weren’t necessarily what NASA needed.”

That comprehensive grounding resonates with Dr. Charlotte Yates, whose official installation earlier this year as U of G president and vicechancellor included video greetings on behalf of alumni from Bondar. “As a scientist who studied biology, zoology and agriculture before becoming a medical doctor, Dr. Bondar now uses the power of her photography to advance

environmental advocacy,” says Yates. “She is the perfect example of an interdisciplinary thinker, nurtured and supported at this very institution, who went on to impact the world with her work.” As an award-winning nature photographer, Bondar has taken her cameras across much of Canada and the United States as well as Kenya. In the field, she mixes ground-level, close-up work with photographing from aircraft, sometimes half-hanging out an open helicopter doorway to get the shot. Her photos are held in various private and public collections in Canada, the United States and Europe, and have appeared in several bestselling books, including Passionate Vision, published in 2008 and containing shots from all 41 Canadian national parks.

Among numerous awards and distinctions, Roberta Bondar is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Ontario, and an inductee of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Forum’s Hall of Fame. Formerly chancellor of Trent University, she has received honorary doctorates from almost 30 Canadian and American universities, including U of G in 1990. She is a specially elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an honorary Fellow and honorary vice-president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame

“I love the body of work she did in our national parks,” says Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose own large-scale depictions of humanity’s environmental impacts include the earlier well-subscribed exhibitions “Anthropocene” and “Manufactured Landscapes.” Both photographers have spoken and exhibited together at various events; recent samples of their work will be paired this year in Canada’s Senate building under a project led by Senator and art historian Patricia Bovey. Burtynsky says he and his colleague are part of a “sea change” involving various contemporary artists—writers, photographers, painters, filmmakers—whose works are increasingly drawing attention to environmental issues and concerns. In Bondar’s case, he says, her former vantage point from the space shuttle lends her extra conviction. “I think her seeing the Earth from space, that moment when a lot of astronauts come to see the Earth in powerful ways—you don’t see boundaries, countries, you see the nature, the green, the brown. She speaks about and makes photographs of that landscape under threat. It’s important for us to have respect and reverence and to understand its important role in our own survival.”

Several of Bondar’s works were part of a 2017 exhibition called “Light in the Land: The Nature of Canada” held at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Interviewed during that event, she said, “Something that I’m trying to bring to people’s attention in terms of the diversity of the country is that we have different types of biological systems. We have places that some people will never get to, and I feel that it is important for me, after my space flight, to talk to people about the very valuable piece of real estate that Canada has.”

“Our survival depends on how we treat the world around us.”

The same desire to share her vision now drives the work of the Roberta Bondar Foundation, based in Toronto. Established in 2009, the foundation aims to promote environmental conservation, respect and curiosity through science and art. Explaining the impetus for its creation, she says, “I firmly believe if you love something, you want to protect it. I see the natural world in peril because of what we do. I feel the role of my foundation, and my views since my space flight, is really to present the beauty of the world as it exists in the moment. We need to take some responsibility in trying to lessen the impact that we have as a life form on these wonderful natural systems.” For Bondar, it’s an ethical responsibility that finds expression in living more economically, including repurposing material and belongings like, say, used camera equipment. Staff at an observatory in Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park, for instance, are using donated equipment marked with her name. “I can’t remember the last time I sold a camera. I don’t like dumping things,” she says. “I think our survival depends on how we treat each other and how we treat the world around us. It’s the ethical nature of human beings that will dictate the survival not just of human beings but the survival of the natural world.”

Today the foundation’s programs include everything from travelling biodiversity exhibitions taken to galleries, schools and museums, to a nature photography challenge for students run in partnership with EcoSchools Canada, to a national innovation and creativity award launched early this year as part of the Discovery flight anniversary. Under a relatively new endeavour called Space for Birds, Bondar aims to draw attention to human impacts—notably hunting and habitat loss—on endangered species of migratory birds. She’s chosen seven threatened species whose migration paths between breeding

and wintering grounds collectively span much of the globe.

Nature photographer Roberta Bondar documents migratory bird species

The black-tailed godwit, for instance, wings between the Netherlands and sub-Saharan Africa, a journey of about 3,000 km, one way. Other species cover up to 15,000 km in a flight, as with the curlew sandpiper that travels from the Siberian Arctic to sub-Saharan Africa and the red knot whose journey takes it from the Canadian Arctic to southern South America. For each species, the foundation has developed online “story maps” detailing life cycles as well as hazards posed by human habitat encroachment and ideas for site visitors to help preserve the birds. The story maps feature Bondar’s ground- and aircraft-based photos along with NASA images of Earth—a range of vantage points reflected in the project’s formal name: AMASS, or Avian Migration Aerial Surface Space.

Earlier this year, Bondar spent a week at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf coast of Texas. There, she photographed whooping cranes in their wintering grounds for the project— they fly 4,000 kilometres northward each year to breeding grounds at the border of Alberta and the Northwest Territories—and spoke at the Whooping Crane Festival held in Port Aransas in late February. With her were members of the foundation, including board chair Dr. Bonnie Patterson, who served as president of Trent University during Bondar’s six-year tenure as chancellor.

In her board role, Patterson might equally be speaking to visitors to the foundation booth at a trade show or slinging camera equipment on an African savannah field trip or across the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. “There’s never been a time when I have been in the field when I haven’t learned something,” says Patterson, adding that her colleague brings to her work a mix of focus, creativity, determination and patience. Humility and humanity are also important ingredients: “She can take photos and put them together for a United Nations Environment Program conference in Egypt and inspire people there about what has to happen. Then she can take those photographs to a small community, and she will be the same, helping people learn, inspiring them.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met a greater humanitarian,” says Bovey, the first art historian to be appointed to Canada’s Senate in 2016. Referring to Bondar, she says, “Her warmth just exudes.” Bovey, formerly the director of the Buhler Gallery at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, recalls the photographer’s visit there during an exhibition of her work in 2014. Among the visitors were a woman and her young son, both recent Spanish-speaking immigrants to Canada. “The boy came in with a children’s book about space in Spanish. Roberta sat down on the gallery floor with him. They went through the book page by page, and she gave English words for his favourite images,” says Bovey. “Here is one of Canada’s astronauts sitting on the floor in a gallery in a hospital in St. Boniface, Manitoba, taking time to talk to this little boy.”

Bondar says for any audience, it’s important to encourage people to take small steps. It’s like learning the alphabet, one letter at a time. In your neighbourhood, environmental consciousness might show up when kids start picking up litter or teach their parents to do the same. “It’s not just about taking photos but about teaching people to look at the world around them,” she says. “We know we have to do things in a manageable way. We want to get people to move along the continuum. We have to give them a place to start, we have to give them an emotional reason to do it.”

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STORY BY ANDREW VOWLES

“I was eight years old, and I wanted to be a monkey.” When that plan fell through, Travis Steffens decided to do the next best thing. He studied primates for his B.Sc., followed by grad studies in anthropology. During his first trip to Madagascar, he wanted to learn more about the impacts of habitat loss on endangered lemurs, those ring-tailed creatures perhaps best known to many viewers through the animated film series named after the African island nation. Steffens quickly realized that focusing on the animals and their environs left out a key third element: people. Today his research at the University of Guelph—and a nonprofit he founded in 2015 called Planet Madagascar—aims to understand the wider health interactions among humans, animals and environment to help conserve all three components.

That trifecta is a classic One Health problem – although Steffens wasn’t calling it that initially: “I saw myself as a primate conservation ecologist.” No, no, said a colleague, you’re a One Health researcher. It was the colleague who pointed him to a pertinent faculty opening in social sciences at U of G. Now a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Steffens finds himself among numerous experts from across campus who bring a holistic One Health approach to teaching, research and outreach in a variety of fields. As pathobiology professor Dr. Scott Weese, chief of infection control in the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) Health Sciences Centre, says, “One Health is the intersection between human and animal and environmental health. The approach shows how we are all interrelated.”

And it’s vital for addressing what OVC dean Dr. Jeff Wichtel calls “complex, wicked problems” that defy straightforward solutions involving human or animal medicine alone. Think of the COVID-19 pandemic, believed to have been sparked after a coronavirus long harboured in wild animals leapt to people. Think of antimicrobial resistance that develops after “super-bugs” eluding livestock antibiotics enter farm fields and streams.

Think of the potential in an increasingly crowded world— one marked by urban expansion, increased travel and mobility, habitat destruction, encroachment of farming on natural spaces—for various diseases from Ebola to avian influenza to jump to humans.

“These are problems that can only be solved if we bring people from many disciplines together,” says Wichtel.
We still need doctors and veterinarians and ecologists, he allows. But we also need “natural scientists, social scientists, people from all backgrounds including animal and human health who can think across systems. It’s a systems-thinking approach.”

Tackling those complex problems and equipping grads with pertinent skills are the goals of a campus-wide initiative that now links all seven U of G colleges in One Health research and teaching in what is arguably the most comprehensive such undertaking for a Canadian institution. The University has put together undergraduate and graduate programs—including a first-in-Canada bachelor’s program being launched this year—as well as diverse research projects, a cross-campus institute

New Bachelor of One Health program first ever for Canada

comprising some 150 researchers and scholars, and dedicated One Health faculty positions in several colleges. “The University of Guelph, I believe, is the only institution in Canada that has taken One Health as a strategic direction for the entire campus,” says Wichtel, adding that a similar interdisciplinary impetus drives U of G’s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses, established in 2006 and now directed by Weese.

Adds Dr. Charlotte Yates, U of G president and vice-chancellor, “Our One Health Institute and One Health degree are the first of their kind in North America. By leveraging the very best parts of what may appear to be very different fields, we’ve been able to think across boundaries and develop more creative and innovative ideas. Today One Health is successfully developing graduates with the unique skills needed to address complex health issues affecting the world.”

This fall, U of G will launch its new Bachelor of One Health (BOH) program intended to train students in topics ranging from transmission of zoonotic disease (infections that jump between animals and humans), antimicrobial resistance and rural community health to agricultural sustainability, food security and species at risk.

“This is the first four-year undergraduate degree devoted to One Health in Canada,” says Dr. Brian Husband, associate dean, academic, in the College of Biological Science (CBS). Available with or without co-op options or as a minor, the new collaboration involves some 125 faculty members in 23 departments across CBS, OVC, the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) and the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences (CSAHS). Earlier this year, U of G received about 300 applications for nearly 40 spots in the inaugural class; ultimately, about 75 students will be admitted each year.

That interest partly reflects events of the past two years, Husband says. “The pandemic and COVID-19 have been like a poster child for the value of One Health. The public is learning that to manage something as global as this takes more than understanding diagnosis and treatment of disease.” Wider societal factors affect the spread and impact of infections, he says. He points to Lyme disease as another example, one that involves researchers in his college within the G. Magnotta Lyme Disease Research Lab. Climate change has enabled ticks to move northward into Canada, where they infect humans as well as wild

animal vectors with the disease-causing bacteria. One Health also touches his own research studies of apple production that involves not just orchard management but also wider ecosystem impacts involving pollinators, native biodiversity and landowners.

Husband says there’s growing demand among employers ranging from medicine and public health to agriculture and ecosystem management for broad-minded grads who “speak the language of human, animal and environmental health and understand the connections and applications in various areas. We know there’s a need for these kinds of thinkers.” Similar sentiments underlie existing U of G graduate programs based in the veterinary college, where researchers have long focused on ecosystem health and zoonotic diseases. “We’re already predisposed to look at every problem through a systems approach,” says Wichtel. “This is in our DNA.”

In 2021, OVC introduced a combined degree program accepting up to five students a year to earn both a doctor of veterinary medicine (DVM) and a master of public health. In each year of the program, students complete One Health modules that stress not just health and disease but also such topics as complexity, systems thinking and equity (the modules are also part of the curriculum for conventional DVM studies).

Beyond graduation, veterinarians are increasingly tapped for leadership in wider health and well-being, says Dr. Jane Parmley, combined DVM/ MPH graduate program coordinator, whose own career path illustrates the trend. Following DVM studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD from U of G, she spent 12 years working with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative on topics including antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and surveillance for West Nile virus and avian influenza. Today, a large animal veterinarian might equally need to understand not just traditional livestock medicine but also AMR and climate change impacts of agriculture. “We’re training veterinarians not just to treat disease but also to improve the health and well-being of wild and domestic animals and learn how the health and well-being of animals fits into broader issues of today,” says Parmley.

Teaching in that program also involves Dr. Katie Clow, a professor in population medicine who studies ticks and Lyme disease as part of the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network (other U of G members of that national body are Weese and pathobiology professor Dr. Claire Jardine). “A lot of my work is in tick-borne or vector-borne disease,” says Clow. Noting the human-animal-environment intersection inherent in that research, she adds, “It’s a fascinating, messy ecological problem associated with climate change and land use change and impacts on the ecosystem, wildlife populations, habitat.”

Clow is also the graduate program coordinator for U of G’s Collaborative Specialization in One Health, which she describes as a minor in the discipline available to grad students in other programs from across campus. Launched in 2020, the specialization took in 14 students this year; Clow hopes for a steady-state intake of up to 25 students a year. Currently students are looking at everything from wastewater surveillance for food-borne diseases, to AMR, to lemur conservation, to disease surveillance data governance.

Those students include Grace Nichol, a PhD candidate in population medicine and co-president of the One Health Student Committee on campus. Along with Clow, she studies ticks that carry various pathogens affecting humans animals. “The problems we face are not confined to one discipline,” says Nichol, who studied biomedical science and mathematical science for her undergrad at U of G. “If we look at only one pillar, we don’t get a full picture. By taking a One Health approach, we get a better understanding.”

By the time he completed his undergrad in international development (ID) in 2016, David Borish had already done documentary film work ranging from tiger conservation in Malaysia to food security in Kenya. When Inuit in the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador shared an opportunity to document the community impacts of a 2013 caribou hunting ban, he made the film project the basis of his doctorate in public health and ID. Factors contributing to caribou population declines are complex and not well understood, and the hunting ban has yet to be lifted.

Being released later this year, his film, called HERD, looks at the interconnections between caribou and Inuit health and well-being. “It’s important to recognize that there are health connections that might not be obvious when it comes to conservation issues,” says Borish, who finished his PhD in 2021 and is now investigating polar bears as a post-doc with the Torngat Secretariat and other co-management groups in the eastern Arctic. Recalling his U of G studies, he says, “The University of Guelph is a great place for One Health because it brings together so many disciplines and experts. There’s the veterinary college and animal health, but also the social sciences are helpful in understanding the social and health dimensions of environmental change. One Health is a natural thing for Guelph to navigate to.”

Indeed, some 150 faculty members belong to U of G’s One Health Institute (OHI), launched in 2019 as a collective of researchers whose work involves some aspect of the One Health approach. All seven colleges are represented in the institute, whose research, teaching and outreach activities are intended to cement U of G’s leading global position in One Health scholarship. Besides serving as an information hub for numerous One Health projects, the group runs a seminar series and an annual symposium (partnered with the Guelph Institute of Development Studies) and provides funding awards for student research projects.

One project this summer run by Dr. Andreas Heyland, Department of Integrative Biology, will employ a student to model algal blooms in lakes and use U of G-developed DNA barcoding to learn about the diversity of pertinent microbes. Wastewater discharge and farm runoff can promote these blooms, which threaten animal and human health, says Heyland, who has also worked with researchers in OAC’s School of Environmental Sciences: “The One Health Institute is a vehicle to bring these kinds of expertise together.”

One Health training offers solid career prospects for grads.

Experiential learning is critical for students who will ultimately become One Health practitioners beyond graduation, says Dr. Cate Dewey, the University’s associate vice-president (academic) and director of the institute. Her One Health credentials include years’ worth of research and outreach with smallholder pig farmers in Kenya that, among other things, improved livelihoods for women, provided schooling for orphaned children, and enlisted farmers, butchers and nutritionists to improve food safety from farms to markets. Among her benchmarks for One Health teaching, research and outreach at U of G: solid career prospects for grads. “A key measure of success will be that anyone who wants One Health graduates to build capacity in government organizations, private industry or non-governmental organizations will know that Guelph is the place to get those people,” says Dewey.

That’s already happening. Among external groups that have approached U of G to discuss One Health is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Dr. Andrea Ellis, DVM ’89, M.Sc. ’93, is the senior veterinary science adviser in the CFIA’s Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer who has worked on health issues including food-borne diseases, SARS, H1N1, avian influenza and sheep Q fever.

As a student, Ellis learned about ecosystem health—considered the forerunner of today’s One Health—from U of G emeritus professor and epidemiologist Dr. David WaltnerToews. This year, she contacted Dewey to talk about joint One Health interests ranging from possible micro-credential programs to co-op placements for students. Referring to U of G strengths including cultural studies, animal health and environmental sciences, she says, “There’s always been a very strong research and teaching background in these areas that all come together when we think about One Health.” Among many other U of G grads working in One Health is Dr. Dominique Charron, DVM ’90, PhD ’01, who serves as vice-president, programs and partnerships, with the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa. In 2021, she was appointed as rapporteur to a new international One Health expert panel providing advice on emerging health crises and on reducing the risk of zoonotic pandemics. On campus, three colleges—OVC, CSAHS and CBS—have recently designated One Health faculty positions. Dr. Heather Murphy, a 2010 PhD graduate in environmental engineering, joined OVC’s Department of Pathobiology in 2020 as a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in One Health. Earlier she worked with UNICEF as a water, sanitation and hygiene specialist abroad, and studied water-borne diseases with the PHAC.

U of G colleges have designated One Health faculty positions.

At U of G, Murphy continues to investigate water-borne diseases, including running a project on use of UV light devices for treating private wells to prevent gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases in children. The team includes epidemiologists, pediatricians, microbiologists and statisticians. Describing the One Health connections among them, she says, “The pathogens are zoonotic, which means they come from a human or animal host, move through the environment into water and reinfect humans or animals.” In another project, she’s looking at impacts of rotational grazing of beef cattle on environmental, animal and human health. Moving from engineering studies into the veterinary college may have been an unlikely career arc, Murphy allows. “OVC picked me for my track record in international development research and looking at broad problems. I like to look at problems in a holistic manner.” Eyeing ecosystem health issues through an Indigenous lens is the goal of Dr. Diana Lewis, who early this year took up a dedicated One Health faculty position in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences. A member of the Sipekne’katik Mi’kmaw First Nation in Nova Scotia, she worked earlier on health impacts of pulp mill emissions and effluent on an Indigenous community in that province. That work revealed gaps in research methodology that provided a less than complete picture of environmental health risks and effects on Indigenous people.

Now in U of G’s Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, she plans to replicate that community health study with four other Indigenous communities. Lewis also belongs to a collaborative project (A Shared Future) funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners across Canada to consider how renewable energy can contribute to healing and reconciliation. “One Health is focused on how to address really complex environmental health issues,” she says. “That’s very much aligned with how the Indigenous peoples and their world views think about human health and the health of all our relations, both animate and inanimate. It is all connected.” A third One Health expert will be installed this year in the College of Biological Science, following a recruitment process this past spring. Based in the Department of Integrative Biology, the candidate will teach in the new BOH undergraduate program and contribute to University-wide graduate and research programs in One Health.

“One thing this pandemic has shown us is that how we interact with animals and the environment can impact our health.”

As well, U of G plans to recruit three Canada Research Chairs as a “cluster” hire in One Health. Approved this past spring, the chairs will be Tier 2 CRCs based in three colleges: epidemiology and spatial disease modelling in OVC; antimicrobial resistance in CBS; and mathematics and statistics for One Health in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. “This investment from the CRC program further strengthens U of G’s status as a One Health leader,” says Dr. Malcolm Campbell, vice-president (research). “University of Guelph researchers and scholars are involved in cutting-edge initiatives at the intersection of human, animal and environmental health. This new CRC support will enable us to continue putting research into action and improving life.” From faculty positions to research projects to teaching programs, U of G’s One Health impetus reflects a growing understanding of the importance of this interdisciplinary approach in addressing complex health problems. That understanding is also growing in circles beyond campus, says OVC’s Scott Weese, who brings a One Health perspective to his membership on both the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and Ontario’s COVID-19 science advisory table. Speaking of the latter, he says, “I’m there as the One Health guy. My being on the science table is an indication that there’s more understanding of One Health than there might have been 10 years ago.”

That idea resonates for U of G grad Andrea Ellis at the CFIA, especially as the world emerges from COVID-19. “One thing this pandemic has shown us is that how we interact with animals and the environment can impact our health,” she says. Referring to animal reservoirs for infectious diseases, she says, “A problem in one part of the world is a problem in all parts of the world. The solution doesn’t lie just in vaccinating the public. We have to look at the root causes, how did we get here, what happened to enable this pathogen to infect us?”

Answering such questions now occupies Travis Steffens in his studies of lemurs in Madagascar, home to about 25 million people. Over the past 70 years, about half of the island’s forest has been lost to encroaching agriculture, squeezing lemurs into smaller and smaller habitat. On top of that, the primates are further endangered by various zoonotic diseases that jump from people. Through Planet Madagascar, launched in 2015, he now works with local communities to both improve people’s lives and conserve the animals and their habitat. “To conserve lemurs, we need to focus on how people live in communities,” says Steffens, who has enlisted experts in various fields from public health and epidemiology to restoration ecology and economics. “The anthropologist in me recognizes that there’s a massive amount of cultural issues. It’s not a simple problem.”

U of G research and scholarship in One Health span all seven colleges across campus. Here’s a sampling:

Security for vulnerable pets, people

Bridging social sciences and veterinary practice is an example of how the One Health approach straddles varied disciplines. That’s Dr. Lauren Van Patter’s goal as the recently appointed Kim and Stu Lang Professor in Community and Shelter Medicine within the Ontario Veterinary College’s (OVC) Department of Clinical Studies.

Trained as a geographer, she studies ways to ensure health and well-being of pets and their owners living in economically vulnerable situations, including low income and insecure housing. “A One Health frame helps explain how human well-being is intimately interconnected with animal health,” says Van Patter. She’s working along with other members of OVC’s Kim and Stu Lang Community Healthcare Partnership Program, a first-of-its-kind initiative to ensure veterinary care for underserved populations.
A 2018 study in the United States found that one out of four households with pets faced a barrier to veterinary services, mainly financial. “Any avenue that brings people to the table from different experiences and expertise will help in tackling these large, complex problems,” says Van Patter. “That may be the most valuable element of One Health.”

The social side of vaccine hesitancy

“If science is supposed to be a positive force for human, animal and environmental betterment, it is imperative that the public sees science this way, too.” That’s how philosophy professor Dr. Maya Goldenberg concluded a talk this year about vaccine hesitancy as part of the One Health Institute’s seminar series involving researchers from across campus. A member of the OHI, Goldenberg studies vaccine hesitancy, a topic that has made her a frequent expert media commentator during the COVID-19 pandemic. In her 2021 book, Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise and the War on Science, she argued that reluctance about vaccination reflects public mistrust rather than public misunderstanding of science. “It’s not a science problem, or a knowledge deficit problem, but more of a social problem,” says Goldenberg, who aims to promote more productive health care outreach and communication efforts.

COVID-19 wastewater testing connects cross-campus researchers

Testing wastewater for the COVID-19-causing virus has occupied food science professor Dr. Lawrence Goodridge and U of G collaborators in engineering, pathobiology and environmental sciences for much of the pandemic. This past spring, the team learned that the province planned to extend funding to enable 13 Ontario universities to continue wastewater surveillance until March 2023. At U of G, that testing continues both on campus and in Guelph and other communities. What’s the One Health link?
Follow the connections, says Goodridge, who is the Leung Family Professor in Food Safety and director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety. “We know for sure that COVID can infect domestic and wild animals, and we know that humans who are infected can transfer the virus to animals and vice versa. That’s two of the three links.”
Add in likely environmental reservoirs like wastewater, and you’ve got the One Health trifecta. Along with pathobiology professor Dr. Scott Weese and a microbiologist at Western University, Goodridge received OHI funding for a studentship this year to look at the potential for COVID-19 to spread from humans to animals.

Big data for healthier livestock, consumers

Healthier livestock means healthier food. It also means a healthier environment if veterinarians are prescribing fewer antibiotics, thus lessening the risk of antimicrobial resistance. That’s an example of the One Health connection to a “big data” project being led by U of G informatics experts as part of the Global Burden of Animal Diseases program. This international program based at the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris and led by the University of Liverpool aims to gauge the impact of animal disease and health problems in livestock and aquaculture. It’s a “big data” problem involving data collection and analysis as well as sharing of that information to enable researchers and policy makers to make better decisions, says Dr. Deborah Stacey, School of Computer Science (above). She and Dr. Theresa Bernardo, an informatics expert in the Department of Population Medicine (below), co-lead the program’s informatics theme.

They’re heading efforts to provide an analytics platform to share disease cost estimates with animal and human health decision-makers. As well, their group is developing guidelines, standard practices and procedures for data governance for GBADs, which may serve as a model for the OIE as well as its One Health partners: the United Nations Environment Program, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Health Organization.

Partnership aims to help grain farmers

Fusarium head blight is a fungus that causes millions of dollars’ worth of losses every year for grain farmers in Ontario. Farmers apply fungicides to control the problem, but that strategy risks promoting the development of fungicide- resistant pathogens that can then threaten human health. In the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Dr. Jennifer Geddes-McAlister is seeking new biocontrol agents to better combat fungal disease in the field. For that, she works with researchers in her department as well as crop science experts. Intriguingly, the team also includes Dr. Ryan Prosser, a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences looking at soft-shelled mollusks that produce a chemical that may inhibit the fungal pathogen. The group met through joint membership in U of G’s One Health Institute. “The One Health Institute is a perfect bridge between our distinct research programs,” says Geddes-McAlister.

Healthy seafood— and healthy seas

Shellfish food safety and health starts with harvesting practices in the ocean and runs through processing and retail to the consumer. Dr. Simon Somogyi is a professor in the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics, where he holds the Arrell Chair in the Business of Food. He has looked at health and safety aspects of Canadian exports of crab, lobster and scallops to the lucrative Chinese market. Ensuring food safety involves human health, of course, as well as the health of marine creatures. Addressing the environmental leg of the One Health tripod, he says the industry may consider the benefits of farmed scallops. “Farmed scallops could be more environmentally sustainable than sea dredged,” he says, pointing to the potential for reducing seafloor degradation associated with dredging practices.

Improving family well-being, including four-footed members

“Relations with dogs can enhance human well-being,” says Dr. Andrea Breen. Exploring the benefits and challenges of the human-dog relationship—for both people and dogs—is her goal as co-director of the FIDO (Families Interacting with Dogs) research group. A faculty member in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, Breen is interested in expanding notions of the family to include non-human animals. Part of her inspiration comes from her experiences learning about the roles of animals within Indigenous knowledge systems. A self-described “white settler,” she is a co-editor of the 2019 book Research and Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing Through Indigenous Relationships. “Indigenous peoples have been doing what we think of as One Health since time immemorial,” says Breen.

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From retracing the footsteps of the Franklin expedition in Canada’s Arctic to taking part in cocaine drug busts in the Caribbean, Lisa Tubb had her share of memorable moments during her first-ever deployment with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in fall 2021.

It was a voyage of firsts for Tubb, who grew up in landlocked Mitchell, Ont., before studying history at the equally landlocked U of G beginning in 2012.

Last year, besides marking her first-time crossing of the Arctic Circle en route to sailing through the Northwest Passage during the maiden voyage of the HMCS Harry DeWolf, she notched her inaugural circumnavigation of North America. This was the second RCN ship to sail around the continent.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime deployment,” said Tubb. Now 27 and beginning her fourth year with the Navy as a public affairs officer, she is back in Ottawa on the issues management and operation desk.

But she hopes to get out on the water again soon. “I like to think the best is yet to come.”

What she calls her inaugural “adventure” started in early August when she travelled to Iqualuit in Nunavut. There she met the vessel with its crew of about 80 people.

“We were introducing a new class of arctic and offshore patrol ship to Canada’s Northern regions,” said Tubb, whose job was to publicize the voyage with Canadians through social media, video and photos.

She had been on the ship for just over a week when she was charged with helping a CBC television crew headed by Peter Mansbridge to film a documentary of the Arctic. Tubb also led production of the Navy’s own documentary about the voyage called Into the North.

As part of Operation NANOOK, Canada’s signature Arctic exercise that included Canadian and American Coast Guard vessels, the ship visited Indigenous communities, including Pond Inlet and Cambridge Bay. Tubb helped run ship tours for community members.

Retracing the Franklin expedition’s footsteps

“We’re there to serve Canadians, to conduct presence patrols in the Arctic, and to fortify our close partnerships with federal, territorial and local communities.”

Each of the new class of ships is affiliated with various Inuit communities. For HMCS Harry DeWolf, that was the Qikiqtani region of Nunavut.

One moment during the ship’s passage through the Arctic archipelago resonated with her U of G history studies.

Referring to Sir John Franklin’s mid-1800s attempt to find the Northwest Passage, she said, “We traced Franklin’s footsteps.”

She and others visited barren, wind-swept Beechey Island, where three members of the Franklin expedition were buried. Recalling the bleak surroundings and a hike over difficult terrain, she said, “You start to appreciate what those men went through. You can’t help feeling helpless for their situation, after struggling up that mountain, feeling the brittle rocks crack beneath your feet – their wintering place could not sustain them.”

After negotiating the Arctic, the ship continued down the western flank of North America to the Caribbean. There, the crew worked again with U.S. Coast Guard partners on Operation CARIBBE to counter illicit drug trafficking.

Conducting drug busts in Caribbean

The team apprehended two small vessels transporting a total of more than 2,500 kilograms of contraband cocaine. Observing the activity from the deck of the patrol vessel, Tubb kept busy recording everything she could to tell the story later – and even donned gloves to help remove the narcotics from the boats.

“As the public affairs officer, I’m there on the bridge, taking notes, using my GoPro camera, hearing the voices of my friends crackling over the radio – and in the second event, seeing it unravel quite close by. I was up there with the guys the entire time.

“My operations officer had to tell me to take care of myself, to go to bed. I didn’t want to miss a minute.” 

Once through the Panama Canal, the ship headed up the Eastern Seaboard and docked in Halifax in early December.

“I joined the military because I wanted a challenge,” said Tubb, whose basic training as well as French-language lessons and public affairs training occurred between 2018 and 2020. “The idea of service was already in the background.”

Her dad is the fire station chief back in Mitchell. Several relatives in her grandparents’ generation served during the Second World War; one great-uncle was in the Navy during the Korean War.

“Giving back to the community was something that really called me.”

Attending U of G sharpened her focus.

“The whole idea to join the Forces started at Guelph,” said Tubb. One summer she worked with history professor Dr. Catharine Wilson on her Rural Diary Archive project, which helped develop her interest in personal accounts of history and led her to explore Canadian military stories especially.

Self-discovery at U of G

Her U of G days also helped her learn about herself.

“I found out more about who I was as a person, my interests and values,” said Tubb. “Stories of the military and heroes motivated me to push myself. I wanted to continue my study and storytelling of Canadian heroes.”

She ended up pursuing a personal project to investigate all the names inscribed on the cenotaph in her hometown, and she published a Historical Guelph article about her research on HMCS Guelph, a Second World War vessel.

On campus, she served as an orientation volunteer, worked for Hospitality Services and played on the University quidditch team that competed in nationals in Victoria. “Whenever I see Johnston Hall, Johnston Green and the Portico, I always picture it with quidditch in the background.”

After graduating in 2016, she completed a master’s degree at the University of Waterloo, studying the lives of workers at a wartime munitions factory in Ajax, Ont.

For last year’s deployment, she took along a Guelph Gryphons flag that found good use after one American naval officer flashed his own varsity colours. “I couldn’t let that go unanswered, I had to show the Gryphon off,” Tubb laughed.

“Our coxswain had said we could consider bringing something from home. The first thing I thought of was my U of G flag. It’s come with me to Victoria, to basic training – it’s my good luck charm.” 

She lives in Ottawa with her partner, Christine McPhail, who studied nutrition at U of G for her undergraduate and master’s degrees.

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Providing safe and inclusive workplaces for women in skilled trades is the goal of a project led by a U of G grad and launched this past year by a national coalition.

We Are Trades, a guide for employers to improve their workplace environment and culture for women, may also help address a projected labour shortage in male-dominated skilled trades, said Bonnie (Speed) Douglas, B.Eng. ’02.

She led the three-year initiative as a project manager with the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology (CCWESTT) based in Renfrew, Ont.

Established in 1992, the non-profit coalition of individual members and groups advocates for diversity and inclusion in the science, engineering, trades and technology workforce.

“Women are grossly underrepresented in skilled trades,” said Douglas, speaking from her home office in London, Ont. Over the past two decades, the proportion of women in Canadian skilled trades has remained at around six per cent, even as women make up about half of the overall workforce.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic has increased unemployment for women, even as skilled trades need more workers including carpenters, plumbers, welders, machinists, millwrights, heavy equipment operators and electricians.

“There is a projected labour shortage in skilled trades in the next decade,” said Douglas. “One solution would be to recruit from underrepresented groups. Women make up the largest available talent pool.

“We hope to move the needle forward for women.”

We Are Trades guide aims to improve workplaces for women

Following two years of consultations with tradeswomen, employers and other groups, CCWESTT introduced its We Are Trades guide in fall 2021.

“We wanted to understand what employers need to make meaningful change,” said Douglas.

“Employers have a general awareness that this is a valuable thing to do. They known they should do something, but they don’t know where to start.”

Three areas in the guide discuss how to develop a strategy for hiring and retaining more women; how to institute equipment, practices and behaviours to improve inclusion; and how to measure progress. Besides sharing the resources with employers, CCWESTT members have discussed its findings at workshops and conferences.

Douglas points to employers that address common concerns, including provision of PPE and workwear; appropriate washrooms and changing facilities; action on harassment and bullying; and accommodating parental and maternal leave.

She has heard that the guide has encouraged plant managers, for example, to check inappropriate language. Elsewhere, companies have installed unisex washrooms or facilities to support breastfeeding in the workplace. “Some organizations do great work.”

She said CCWESTT is also promoting its guide with educational institutions. “We’re talking with schools and other organizations that help find jobs for women and directing employers to the We Are Trades guide. We’re asking them to look at it and see what changes they can make.” 

Next, Douglas plans to widen the project to include other kinds of workplaces in science, engineering, trades and technology. “Trades have the greatest disparity, so we started there, but there are a lot of similarities with other areas.”

At U of G, she studied biological engineering and minored in food engineering.

During her almost 20-year career in food manufacturing, she honed skills in project management, change management and continuous improvement. She joined CCWESTT three years ago to lead the We Are Trades project.

She aimed for sciences in Grade 9 after attending a Girls in Engineering event. Arriving at U of G’s engineering school in 1997, she encountered a nearly even mix of women and men students.

That parity was unusual for engineering schools, she said. “Others I work with now had a different experience.”

Douglas’s parents met on campus as students: Grant Speed, Dip. ’73, and Jean Curtis, who studied science at U of G in 1971 before enrolling in teacher’s college. Her grandfather, Donald Rutherford, graduated from the Kemptville Agricultural College in 1948 before completing studies in animal husbandry at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) in 1951.

A recipient of the Order of OAC, Rutherford was the namesake of the D.M. Rutherford Family Conservatory and Gardens on campus.      

Referring to her early interest in food engineering, Douglas said, “I had some encouragement to pursue Guelph. The University had a food specialty and a family connection.”  

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U of G grad Marcie Jacklin received the 2021 Canadian Wildlife Federation’s (CWF) Stan Hodgkiss Outdoorsperson of the Year Award for organizing local bird counts and calling for preservation of natural areas around Fort Erie, Ont.

More generally, she said, the award reflects her decades’ worth of environmental advocacy and citizen science with various organizations in the Niagara Region and beyond.

“It’s hard to describe the feeling,” said Jacklin, B.Sc. ’78, who was nominated for the honour by friends and colleagues. “I couldn’t believe I got nominated. Then to have won a national level award was unbelievable for me.”

Named for the CWF’s founding president, the Outdoorsperson of the Year Award has been presented every year to a Canadian who has demonstrated an enduring commitment to conservation.

As president of Community Voices of Fort Erie, Jacklin leads a residents group opposing development of Waverley Woods. The mix of wetland and woodland, including old-growth forest, is part of the last intact Carolinian forest in the area.

With some trees dating back to the War of 1812, the area is home to various creatures, including the endangered red-headed woodpecker and Fowler’s toad. The community group has appealed a municipal decision to allow development to proceed.

Jacklin was among the first members of the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre at Brock University, where she was a long-time librarian. She retired four years ago.

She has led boards of regional conservation organizations, including the Niagara Falls Nature Club, Peninsular Field Naturalists, Buffalo Ornithological Society and Ontario Field Ornithologists.

Currently, she is the Niagara regional coordinator for the third Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas. Birds have been her special passion for three decades, she said.

“I participate in just about every bird survey there is in Niagara,” including Christmas bird counts and a fall count with the Buffalo group.

For birders, accurate numbers matter.

As of mid-February, Jacklin had spotted a cumulative 328 bird species for the Niagara region. She’s notched 395 species in Ontario and 2,698 worldwide. Her sightings are recorded both in her own boxes of field notes at home and in the eBird public database at Cornell University.

Birding has taken her across Canada and abroad. Among her highlights, she spotted a long-whiskered owlet, a tiny owl found only in a small area of the Andes in northern Peru. In Ghana, she recorded an “ancient-looking” white-necked rockfowl.

Jacklin started birding in Ottawa after-hours from her job in a genetics lab at Carleton University.

After pursuing a master’s degree in library and information sciences, she switched careers. She wound up working at the Brock University library; she and her husband moved to Fort Erie 12 years ago.

She had hoped to study wildlife biology at the University of Guelph but pursued genetics instead. Jacklin said her outdoors award takes her back to that original passion, nurtured partly during childhood summers spent at her grandparents’ lodge in Parry Sound, Ont.

Referring to the Stan Hodgkiss award, she said, “I’ve kind of come full circle with this.”

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Cody Sorensen, 35, competed with his team in the four-man bobsleigh competition on the final weekend of the Olympics. They placed ninth overall with a time of three minutes, 56 seconds and 99 milliseconds. Germany’s team piloted by Francesco Friedrich won gold with a time of three minutes, 54 seconds and 30 milliseconds.

Mirela “Mimi” Rahneva, 33, competed in the women’s skeleton and just missed a medal, placing fifth overall in a career best. She started with the fastest time in the event, but the combined time from her runs totalled four minutes 9.15 seconds. The gold medal went to Hannah Neise of Germany whose times totalled four minutes 07.62 seconds.

Former U of G student Mikkel Aagaard, 26, was a “practice player” for the Danish men’s hockey team. Denmark, Aagaard’s home country, placed seventh, after losing to the Russian Olympic Committee with a score of 3-1 in the quarter finals. 

Dustin McCrank, 37, officiated the men’s hockey tournament as a linesman.  

Sorensen slides into the top ten

While hurdling with the Gryphons men’s track and field team, Sorensen studied management, economics and finance at U of G from 2004 to 2008. The three-time national medallist in the men’s 60 metres played a key role during his final season.   

At an open identification camp hosted by Bobsleigh Canada at York University, Sorensen found four-man bobsleigh to be “a good fit for his natural abilities as a bigger sprinter who was quick out of the blocks.”   

He served as an alternate for the Canadian men’s team at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He says he was fortunate to “officially” become an Olympian in 2014 in Sochi, when he slid with Justin Kripps, Jesse Lumsden and Ben Coakwell.   

“That was a dream come true for me and it’s a surreal feeling to be able to come back to the Olympics after almost eight years off,” Sorensen, from Ottawa, said.    

He joined team pilot Chris Spring (with whom he slid at the 2013 World Cup), Mike Evelyn and Samuel Giguere at the National Sliding Centre from Feb. 19-20.  

“It will all come down to the push for us in four-man,” Sorensen said about the competition prior to the event. “We know Spring can drive and we have the sled to be fast. I’d say that we are an outside threat for a medal, and we expect to be in the mix after Day 1.”  

Rahneva now a two-time Olympian

While studying tourism management at U of G between 2006 and 2010, Mirela Rahneva, from Ottawa, played on the Gryphons women’s rugby team, during which she became a three-time Ontario University Athletics (OUA) champion and a four-time Canadian Interuniversity Sports (now U-Sports) bronze medallist.   

After graduating, she played for the Canadian national sevens rugby team. Inspired by Heather Moyse’s switch from rugby to bobsleigh, Rahneva tried bobsleigh but was too small and was encouraged to try skeleton in 2012.   

She began competing the following year. She has achieved six podium finishes at the World Cup and bronze at games in Germany and Switzerland during the 2021-22 season. Despite finishing 12^th in her Olympic debut at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, she “has become a fixture on the international circuit for skeleton.”   

Women’s skeleton at the Beijing Olympics was held Feb. 11-12 at the National Sliding Centre.   

Aagaard competed as a ‘practice player’  

Before studying accounting at U of G, Mikkel Aagaard, from Frederikshavn, Denmark, played in the International Ice Hockey Federation World Juniors and World Cup tournaments. 

He served as the team captain of the Gryphons men’s hockey team during the 2019-20 season before he was offered the chance to go pro, ending his studies at U of G. Aagaard, then the OUA’s top scorer with 63 points in 42 games, signed a contract with MoDo, a professional Swedish hockey team.  

At his first Olympics, Aagaard was a “practice player” for the Danish men’s hockey team. He and the other practice players ensured optimal training conditions and would compete in lieu of a player who tested positive for COVID before the tournament. 

McCrank one of three Canadian hockey officials  

Recruited to U of G by the men’s hockey team for his rookie year (2006-07), Dustin McCrank competed for the Gryphons track and field team in weight throw throughout his five years of studies.   

He won gold in 2009-10 and silver in both 2008-09 and 2010-11 in weight throw, during which time he also played on the men’s rugby team (2009-11).   

After graduating with an honours degree in anthropology, the three-time All-Canadian champion coached U of G’s weight throw team in 2014 and 2015.  

Originally from Haileybury, Ont., McCrank began officiating in 2006 with the Ontario Hockey Association, where he supervised two Queen’s Cup games. Starting in 2008 with the Ontario Hockey League, he conducted six league finals. In 2015, he began his extensive career with both the American Hockey League and the ECHL (formerly the East Coast Hockey League), for which he officiated many final championship and series games, including the Canadian Hockey League/National Hockey League Top Prospects Game played in Guelph in January 2018.   

From Feb. 9 to 20, McCrank officiated the men’s hockey tournament in Beijing as a linesman, along with two Canadian referees, at the National Indoor Stadium and the Wukesong Sports Centre. 

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