It’s no secret that at St. Mike’s, people make the difference.
With the 2023 Alumni reunion, which includes honoured years ending in 3 and 8, just around the corner we thought we’d have a little fun and try something different.
There’s been much talk in recent months about various AI computer programs effectively mimicking the human voice, but we know that the St. Mike’s voice is unique. To demonstrate our assertion, we created an AI-generated invitation to reunion alongside one written by Cassandra Lima, who not only works at St. Mike’s but is also an honoured year grad herself. The computer-generated piece runs first, below. The difference, we think, is pretty obvious!
AI invitation
You are cordially invited to attend the University of St. Michael’s College Reunion in Toronto from May 31 to June 4, 2023. Join us for a weekend filled with old friends, exciting activities, and memories to last a lifetime. We will be hosting a variety of activities throughout the weekend, including a campus tour, a cocktail reception, and a gala dinner. You will also have the chance to explore the city and reconnect with old classmates. We can’t wait to see you on campus and celebrate the history of the University of St. Michael’s College. RSVP today and we look forward to seeing you in Toronto!
Cassandra Lima attained an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 2018 and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 2020. Cassandra joined the Office of Advancement at the University of St. Michael’s College in May 2022, and works as an Advancement Officer, Engagement.
When I think back to when I indicated my interest in having the University of St. Michael’s College be my ‘home college’ for the duration of my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, I am reminded of the process I took to come to such decision.
I had spent an afternoon combing through each of the seven colleges’ websites to get a good sense of what each was like, as I anticipated that each had a unique profile, and I wanted to see which would be the best fit for me. Within the first few moments of navigating through the St. Mike’s website, I saw a handful of photos of students socializing and engaging in extracurricular activities. I was unsure whether the photos were candid or staged, but it did not matter to me either way – what mattered was that they were there on the website, front and centre.
Why was this so important? Well, to me, it showed that the college wanted to highlight the fact that student life was at its core, and that it was valued and celebrated. I too valued the notion of student life, and while I was a bit unsure as to whether there was room for it within a university setting, I was delighted to see that the college was promoting the notion that it was. It was at that point that I realized St. Mike’s was a place where I would be able to acquire an academic education and grow as an individual.
Now, as a St. Mike’s alumna, I look back at my time as an undergraduate student and think about how fortunate I am to have chosen St. Mike’s as my ‘home college’ all those years ago. St. Mike’s fostered a sense of community amongst my peers and myself and encouraged subsequent connection and personal growth that exceeded my initial expectation. When I graduated from my undergraduate studies, I left with not only a degree but life-long friendships and core memories, many of which were made through connecting with my peers while hanging out in Brennan Hall after classes, partaking in St. Mike’s-based student groups like the University of Toronto Italian Canadian Association [UTICA] and the Medieval Studies Undergraduate Society [MSUS], and attending club nights and formals.
This sense of community, I have learned, is not unique to just me and my peers. Since I started working in the Office of Advancement about a year ago, I have had the pleasure of connecting with alumni from varying classes, and almost every single alumnus and alumna I have spoken with references the same sense of community. This is the thread that connects alumni of all ages and it is the driving force that my colleagues and I at the Office of Advancement have put behind Alumni Reunion 2023 planning.
In light of Alumni Reunion 2023, I want to take a moment to extend a note of congratulations to all honoured years alumni, including my own class of 1T8. Whether you are celebrating your 5th or 75th class anniversary, this year marks an incredible milestone that deserves to be celebrated, and I strongly encourage you to come to campus from May 31st to June 4th and join us all in the exciting festivities that the Office of Advancement has planned!
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Douglas Moggach studied political science and economics at University of Toronto, and was active in political and social affairs at St. Mike’s. He obtained his PhD from Princeton, and has taught at University of Ottawa since 1976. He has held visiting appointments in Australia, China, Germany, Italy, and the UK, and has published widely in German philosophy. He is a class representative for the St. Michael’s Class of 1970, and will be sharing a St. Mike’s memory at this year’s Honoured Years Cocktail Hour during Alumni Reunion.
Coping and Partly Coping: Living with the Pandemic
The academic year 2020–21 had been shaping up to be an exceptionally good one. I retired from teaching a few years ago, but have remained active in research. So I had been invited to spend the month of October 2020 at the University of Salamanca, and had also been awarded visiting fellowships in the UK from January to May 2021. The intent was to discuss my latest book, which came out in Germany just before the pandemic, and to get feedback on my current projects, and of course to see my friends and favourite places.
Alas! All these and other plans had to be postponed indefinitely. Only now, 14 months later, is it even possible to think about rescheduling these activities; but even so, everything remains tentative. My family and I have been fortunate in that we’ve been spared physical illness, and there is much to be grateful for, as we must constantly remind ourselves. Still, the frustrations and delays were often hard to deal with, as I know we can all say.
So how to cope? Why not reactivate some dormant projects, or make progress in other endeavours that I had belatedly begun? Besides being vaccinated, I have administered other pandemic antidotes to myself. Ever since I was a boy, I had wanted to learn Ancient Greek. It wasn’t offered in my high school, but I had studied it on my own, on and off over the years. The language is elusive and astonishingly complex, the hardest I have ever attempted, and as an autodidact I had never been able to advance beyond intermediate level. A good friend who is a retired Classics professor kindly offered to guide me through Plato’s Apology in the original, and with another friend we arranged weekly meetings on Zoom, reading the Greek, struggling to translate it, and having the impenetrable points of syntax and vocabulary explained to us. It was highly rewarding, not only because I now feel able to tackle other Greek texts with some confidence, but also because of the camaraderie that we felt and could look forward to experiencing every week: virtual, indeed, but genuine.
Another antidote was bagpipes. I began learning a few years ago, again fulfilling a childhood dream, and I think it’s even a harder exercise than Plato’s Greek! It takes manual dexterity and an ample lung capacity, and presents significant challenges for late beginners like me. I have an outstanding teacher, patient and encouraging, so that my weekly lessons, remote, of course, are always enjoyable, even when my renditions are less than stellar. Before the lockdowns I had accompanied the band that my teacher directs on one of their tours of Scotland, in the course of which I was able to play along (only drones, no melody, wisely), in Skye, and to meet the Queen when the band performed at Balmoral. My services were not required for that particular performance, but I was designated to present Her Majesty with a gift. On being introduced to her as my teacher’s newest student, Queen Elizabeth looked at me with some surprise, and asked, “Really? Just now?” An apt comment, but I persist, even now. I hope to be good enough to play “Scots wha’ hae” with the band on the next visit to the Wallace Monument in Stirling. Regardless, the lessons are another high point during weeks and months of confinement.
eMaybe the most important thing is to keep working and keep focus. Though the content is often good, Zoom conferences lack the immediacy and ease of interaction that you get in personal meetings, and deprived of my usual networks and sources of inspiration, I found myself floundering and unproductive for too long during the lockdowns. That had to change, and I recently roused myself to submit a new book proposal to a university press. I await the assessment, but in any case I intend to complete this manuscript in the next twelve months. As a colleague once bluntly advised me when I complained about the difficulties I was having in revising an article, “Work harder!” He was right. That was the answer back then, and perhaps it is the best pandemic antidote right now, too. It’s not the same, and it’s not as good as it might have been had so much time not been irretrievably lost. I’m only partly coping, if I’m honest with myself, but as Aristotle instructs us, the good for us human beings is always the best attainable good, even if it’s not the absolute best. So with that, with labour and Aristotelian prudence, we cope as best we can.
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St. Mike’s is turning on the local star power to celebrate the 2021 Alumni Reunion.
Four of our graduates—including two celebrated authors, a noted television writer and producer, and a famed tenor—will share their thoughts with our Alumni in Entertainment panel. The online discussion, to be moderated by St. Michael’s Associate Professor Dr. Iris Gildea, takes place Saturday, May 29 from 3 to 4 p.m.
Panelist Natalie Jenner, the best-selling author of The Jane Austen Society, graduated in 1990 with a B.A. in English literature and a minor in cinema studies. When she looks back on her undergraduate years, the memories that arise surround the power of the written word.
Jenner recalls “my Shakespeare professor warning us as they were about to read from King Lear that they always choked up during a final moment between Lear and Cordelia. I remember how surprised we all were when the professor began to read, did indeed start to tear up, and had to take a moment to collect themselves.
“When I think about my own privilege in being a published writer, it is this moment—its power, its realness, and its vulnerability—that I return to again and again.”
Kevin Sylvester, writer and illustrator of more than 30 children’s books, graduated in 1989 with a joint major in English and Philosophy (USMC) and a minor in Latin. His most recent project is illustrating The Fabulous Zed Watson! with current St. Mike’s student—and Kevin’s child—Basil Sylvester. Reflecting on his time at St. Mike’s, Kevin says that a favourite spot on campus would be “the offices of The Mike, where I was editor (sort of a disastrous one) and illustrator, and where I discovered interests and skills that would set me on the path I’m on now.”
Justin Jalea, who graduated in 2007, is a human rights activist, conductor and JUNO-nominated tenor. He graduated with a specialist designation in Philosophy, with a focus on ethics, legal and political philosophy. The St. Mike’s campus is particularly dear to Justin’s heart, with his favourite spot on campus the “picturesque” Scollard Park, in between Brennan Hall and St. Basil’s.
The significance of that spot?
“I walked through the square almost daily as a student and always tried to take a moment to enjoy the relative peace and quiet. I have such an attachment to the (park) that I even proposed to my fiancée there,” he says.
Rounding out the panel is 1980 grad Peter Mohan, a writer and producer of Canadian and American dramatic programming, including The Hardy Boys, Orphan Black and Night Heat. While at St. Mike’s, Peter spent long hours in the Coop, but his fondest memories are of Faculty of Theology prof Fr. Arthur Gibson, who wrote a book on the films of Ingmar Bergman. Peter took a film class from Fr. Gibson and remembers him as being “brilliant, supportive, and truly insane.”
The panel is just one of many great events scheduled for this year’s reunion, which also includes a Dons Reunion, a lecture by Drs. Alison More and Paolo Granata on building a virtual scriptorium to bring mediaeval manuscripts to an online format, a virtual cocktail party for honoured years, and, of course, the Alumni Mass. For more information and a complete list of events, please see our alumni reunion page.
St. Mike’s alumni returned to campus for Alumni Reunion 2019 from May 29 to June 2, where they had the opportunity to catch up with classmates, make new friends, and reacquaint themselves with the college that remains an important part of their lives.
The Alumni Affairs team organized 18 different events scheduled around reunion celebrations hosted by the University of Toronto, and in the final count, more than 600 people attended St. Michael’s special events. This year, the honoured classes ending in ’4 and ’9 came back to campus to celebrate their milestone anniversaries, including alumni returning from as far back as the class of 1949.
Some alumni traveled from as far away as New Zealand, England and Houston to participate, while others found themselves returning from a short distance away as they settled back into residence at Elmsley Place or Loretto College for the weekend.
The reunion kicked off with a SHAKER gathering at Ripley’s Aquarium with St. Mike’s young alumni in attendance, and concluded with a full house for Sunday’s Mediaeval Symposium by Dr. Alison More. A selection of photos from these and other events can be found at the bottom of this post.
Highlights from Alumni Reunion include:
- Lectures and presentations from St. Mike’s faculty, including Assistant Professor Felan Parker’s engaging Stress-Free Degree lecture on Fortnite and video game culture and a standing-room-only presentation by Assistant Professor Alison More, who had just returned from conducting an international learning experience in Ireland with Boyle Seminar students.
- Anniversary Masses, one celebrated by Fr. Morgan Rice, CSB (2009 graduate of the Faculty of Theology) in the Loretto College Chapel, and another at St. Basil’s celebrated by Archbishop Michael Miller, CSB, (USMC 1969) who travelled from Vancouver to enjoy his 50th anniversary of graduating from St. Michael’s. Alumni toured the John M. Kelly Library, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary since opening in 1969, and Chester Gryski’s (USMC 1969) spoke about the Canadian Fine Press Exhibition, which featured items printed by the late Glenn Goluska (USMC 1969). If you missed your chance to share memories or photos of the library during reunion, you can still do so—just send an email to usmc.archives@utoronto.ca.
- A revival of the st. mike’s pub. The Class of 1994, in conjunction with the Class of 2009, marked their 25th and 10th anniversary, respectively by turning the Firkin on Bay into the st. mike’s pub, a former campus hangout space.
- A capacity-crowd All Alumni Double Blue Party in the newly renovated Brennan Hall Lounge and The Dodig Family COOP. Alumni had the opportunity to travel down memory lane with a display of photos and flip through yearbooks from the honoured years.
- “Canadian Writing Now,” a panel discussion hosted by Principal and Vice-President Randy Boyagoda and English Chair Professor Paul Stevens. One of the authors, Anthony De Sa (USMC 1989), dedicated his reading to Fr. Robert Madden, CSB, and shared a story of Fr. Madden going out of his way to offer kindness and support after Anthony’s father passed away.
- The Honoured Years’ Dinner and Medal Ceremony where alumni who graduated 55, 60, 65, and 70 years ago, with a standing ovation for Vicky Houghton (USMC 1949), the first ever Female Athlete of the Year at St. Michael’s, who recently donated her Varsity jacket to the USMC Archives.
- Dr. Mimi Marrocco (USMC 1969) was recognized for her work in adult education, corporate social responsibility and ethics as the recipient of the 2019 Alway Award, named in honour of former President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Richard Alway (USMC 1962).
President David Sylvester expressed his appreciation to the campus community following the weekend, writing:
“Many thanks to the staff, faculty and students who contributed to the success of Alumni Reunion It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with generations of St Mike’s graduates. Our alumni felt warmly welcomed, thoroughly enjoyed the gatherings, lectures and tours and commented on how lovely the grounds and facilities looked. The weekend was a tremendous community effort, which showcased St. Mike’s at its best.”
See you next year! If you’d like to see more photos from the weekend, please email smc.alumniaffairs@utoronto.ca.
Gifted Educator and Founder of the first program providing executive education in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility recognized by University of St. Michael’s College alumni
Dr. Mimi Marrocco (Class of 1969) has received the 2019 Alway Award, an honour in recognition of her decades of service and important contributions to the life and reputation of the College. As her former students and colleagues attest, her work—especially in the area of Continuing Education—has influenced the lives of thousands of people.
Former University of St. Michael’s College President Sr. Anne Anderson, CSJ said Dr. Marrocco “gifted USMC with her passion for Continuing Education.” That passion, Sr. Anne said, yielded “innovative, cutting-edge programs across a broad spectrum of interests,” including “our internationally known Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility.”
Over 300 participants from across Canada and over 20 countries have gone through the CSR program, and over 250 alumni from the program hold positions as VP, Director, or Manager in CSR and Sustainability capacities.
“Mimi is the heart and soul of the CSR Certificate Program,” CSR Program Manager Kathryn Cooper said. She described Dr. Marrocco’s contribution to the field in Canada as decisive: “Dr. Marrocco developed an innovative collaboration with the Conference Board of Canada to launch in 2002 the first program providing executive education in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility. This program created the platform for the very first developments of the body of knowledge, best practices, mentorship and action learning projects in business for Corporate Social Responsibility.”
As the first recognized, professional University Credential in Canada related to CSR, the St. Michael’s program Dr. Marrocco founded has also created a network of alumni and mentors in the field. Program participants receive mentorship support for 13 months, which helps them achieve first-time success in implementing the CSR/Sustainability projects they undertake during the program. To date, participants have implemented over 200 action-learning projects at their companies and organizations, including numerous CSR, Sustainability and Community Investment strategies.
Dr. Marrocco’s former students describe her as a dynamic leader whose talent for teaching is matched by her care for them. “Mimi is so lovely and insightful,” said one, while another said that Dr. Marrocco “has been instrumental in helping me to open my mind to different perspectives.”
After earning a BA from St. Mike’s, Dr. Marrocco received an MA in 1970 and a PhD in 1978, both from the U of T, where she later taught as a member of the English Department. Dr. Marrocco worked for over a quarter century as Director of Continuing Education at St. Michael’s, and served as faculty leader for the CSR Certificate program.
An industry leader as well as an educator, Dr. Marrocco has served on academic and community boards, including stints as president of both the Ontario Council for Lifelong Learning and the Canadian Association of University Continuing Education.
She has served in many roles for Catholic educational and charitable institutions, and she continues to serve in board and/or committee member roles with organizations such as the Arts and Letters Club or Toronto, the Toronto Hunt Club, and the Advisory Committee of the Canadian Business Ethics Research Network at York University.
Named for past St. Michael’s President Dr. Richard Alway, a member of the USMC Class of 1962 and our first lay president, the Alway Award is given in recognition of alumni whose significant contributions to society bring esteem to them and to the College.
For her pioneering work in the field of Continuing Education in Canada, for her support of the mission of the University of St. Michael’s College, for the way she has helped shape the lives of her students, and for her many other achievements, St. Michael’s is proud to call Dr. Mimi Marrocco one of its own. The Alway Award is a small token of the College’s gratitude for her life and work.