Jillian Kaster is a mother of two who lives in Toronto. Along with her family, she is trying to take personal action to decrease her carbon footprint. She joined the University of St. Michael’s College community in March as content specialist.  

When I was a kid, Earth Day was a celebration. It was a day to thank the planet for supporting life, spend time appreciating nature, and learn about how we could respect our planet by conserving water and recycling. It’s been three decades since I was a child, and in that time, we have burned more than half the fossil fuels in human history.¹ Forget recycling: we are racing headlong into a climate crisis that poses unimaginable risks to our planet. Now Earth Day has become a time to grieve and to reckon with our actions that have led to this point.  

Each of us has a moment when climate change became real. For me, this moment was when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its unprecedented report in 2018 stating that our planet only had 12 years to reduce carbon emissions to avoid the worst-case devastation caused by climate change. I was on maternity leave with my then one-month old daughter. I’m still grappling with the implications of this report and what it means for my children’s future. I know their childhood will be different from my own: from methods of travel and their access to food to having to dealing with extreme weather and their relationship with nature. 

Almost every day I take my kids outside for fresh air. Time spent in nature is a highlight for all of us. I appreciate stepping away from my phone or computer and watching them engage with the world around them. Kids understand instinctively that we live in a world of natural marvels. They inspect different rocks and decide which are worthy of taking home, wave to squirrels, smell flowers and bring me ladybugs or, less to my pleasure, wriggling snails and worms. We loved playing on the swings and slides in the unseasonably warm weather this spring, but I wonder how many more days like those will we have. What is the true price tag for these gorgeous days? Will this summer have more poor air quality days due to wildfires? 

We’re bearing witness to a small fraction of the damage that is to come. I think of all the precautions my children already take to protect themselves from the planet that is supposed to be their home. They have weathered a pandemic, wash fruit and vegetables to remove the pesticides they’re grown in and diligently apply layers of sunscreen before going outside in the summer.  

We’re making a conscious effort at home to reduce our impact by switching to a plant-based diet, choosing to walk or take public transit when possible and divesting from fossil fuels. These changes give my husband and me the opportunity to have early conversations with our children about climate change and its implications. We can share why we’re making the decisions that we do even when they’re inconvenient or unpopular. 

So many of the emissions we produce are woven into the fabric of our society. To have a hope of reaching our emission reduction targets there’s much more work that needs to be done. To start, we will need to eliminate our reliance on oil, increase our usage of renewable energy, and rethink food supply chains. 

Either we choose to change, or change will be thrust upon us. I don’t know what my children’s future will hold as the full consequences of our decisions and inaction are still unknown. I struggle with how to offer guidance in an area where my generation has come up short. But the climate emergency is also an opportunity to rebuild our society with new values that prioritize the well-being of our planet. Instead of passing along my own worries, I want to demonstrate to my children how to be a part of the solution. They have a right to imagine the future they want for themselves and figure out how to achieve it.  

This Earth Day I plan on taking my kids on a nature walk. Instead of focusing on my grief, I will try to join them in their wonder and appreciation. We live on a planet filled with miracles and beauty and there is so much to preserve for those we love. The number of us who are trying to change is growing every day and while there is still so much to do, I find hope in these efforts. It may be harder, but this is still a day for celebration so long as we match it with commitments of our own.  

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Recently, St. Mike’s student Camila Justino heard a lecturer advise students not to “leave part of yourself at the door,” urging them to engage in as many opportunities and experiences as possible. As a mother and a mature student balancing family life and school with forging a new life in Canada, the message resonated with her.

When Justino saw an ad for the Dean for a Day just days later, she sat down and wrote an application essay, outlining some of the issues she would tackle if she were Dean. Her words were convincing, as she won the opportunity to trade places for a day with Prof. Melanie Woodin, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, and get an inside look at the world of administration at the University of Toronto.

“I think one of the things that set apart my 500-word essay for the contest is my constant curiosity and questions about the ways we live,” Justino explains. “The main suggestion I had also came from a place of anguish in an expensive city, with increasing rates of homelessness and unemployment. It can be difficult to transition from being an undergraduate to becoming a professional able to pay all the basic expenses. My essay questioned the pressure we students might face and asked U of T to have a career centre that considers the unique circumstances of underrepresented groups of students.”

The Dean for a Day experience began at Woodin’s office in Sidney Smith Hall on St. George St., where Justino also met some of the Dean’s staff who briefed her on her agenda. Then she was whisked off to the Experiential Learning Commons (ELC), a place she deemed “fascinating” for its work on everything from hosting career workshops on topics such as interviewing through to connecting students with potential employers.

From there it was over to Simcoe Hall to meet with Prof. Sandy Welsh, Vice-Provost, Students, and then a short walk to meet with Hart House Warden David Kim.

Finally, it was back to Sid Smith for some office time, followed by a meeting with the Arts & Science Student Union (ASSU) executive in the Dean’s conference room.

When asked to describe a high point of the day, Justino laughed and said, “All of it!” She followed up, though, but stressing how meaningful it was for her to encounter women in senior administration.

However, the most inspiring part of the day, she says, was participating in the final meeting with the ASSU, which organized the contest with the Dean’s office to raise funds for food banks on campus.

“Watching the union of students ask to lower the fees of deferred exams and their willingness to defend rights for students and make important changes definitely made me proud of being a student,” Justino says.

Camila, a Book & Media Studies major with minors in Celtic Studies and Mediaeval Studies, is poised to graduate this spring. As she ponders whether to move on to graduate school or seek a career based on her gift for writing (she earned an earlier degree in literature before emigrating from her native Brazil) she says it was “inspiring to see women taking the lead.” She was particularly impressed, she notes, by Woodin’s status as a scientist.

As Justino familiarized herself with the western side of the U of T campus, Dean Woodin’s time at St. Mike’s included a visit to the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, the John M. Kelly Library, and a brief stop in Odette Hall to say hello to St. Mike’s Principal, Irene Morra.

“The Dean for a Day fundraiser has become one of the highlights of my year,” says Woodin. “I really enjoyed switching places with Camila and connecting with the students, faculty, and staff of St. Michael’s College, while she filled in for me and provided our team with invaluable insights and perspectives about the student experience. This day truly brought back fond memories of my time as an undergraduate student at U of T.”

As the academic year draws to a close, Justino is looking forward to her next moves while expressing her affection for her soon-to-be alma mater.

“University opened the door for me (in Canada), including helping me to learn English,” she says. “I got great support from the Kelly Library and have special affection for Kelly. St. Mike’s is my home.”

Adam Hincks is a Jesuit priest and an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures.

What is an eclipse and how does a solar eclipse differ from a lunar one? Partial versus full?

Most generally, an eclipse happens whenever one body in space passes in front of another body and blocks its light. The most well-known eclipses are lunar eclipses and solar eclipses. Lunar eclipses happen around the time of a full moon if the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon and casts a huge shadow over the Moon. Solar eclipses happen around the time of a new moon if the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth. Because the Moon is a lot smaller than the Earth, the shadow it casts during a solar eclipse only covers a small area on the Earth’s surface, whereas during a lunar eclipse the whole Moon can be enveloped in Earth’s shadow. For this reason, lunar eclipses can be seen by more people at a time than solar eclipses.

Both solar and lunar eclipses can be partial or total. Total eclipses are when the whole disc of the Sun is covered by the Moon, in the case of solar eclipses, or when the whole disc of the Moon is covered by the Earth’s shadow, in the case of lunar eclipses. Partial eclipses happen when only a portion of the disc is covered. In the case of solar eclipses, there are also annular eclipses. This is when the Moon passes exactly over the Sun, but at a time when it is further away in its orbit around Earth so that its size in the sky is slightly smaller. In that situation, the Moon cannot completely cover the face of the Sun, but leaves a thin ring, or annulus, of the Sun visible.

While many people think of an eclipse as a rare event they happen regularly. What factors are involved in whether or not I am able to see an eclipse?

The orbit of the Moon around the Earth is tilted about 5 degrees relative to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. This means that during most new and full moons, the Moon is either above or below the Sun and you can’t get an eclipse. However, every five to six months the orbits line up so that the Moon and the Sun are level with each other. These are called eclipse seasons, and you typically get two or three eclipses of some kind during each season.

As mentioned above, the Earth’s shadow is big compared to the size of the Moon, so when lunar eclipses happen, you can see them from pretty much anywhere on Earth where it is nighttime. In Toronto, the next total lunar eclipses will be on March 14, 2025 and March 3, 2026. If you have never seen one before, it is well worth trying to catch a glimpse of the next one!

On the other hand, the Moon’s shadow is a lot smaller than the size of the Earth. The full shadow is typically 100 to 200 km in diameter—similar to the widths of Lakes Erie and Ontario that it will pass over in the upcoming April 8, 2024 eclipse. You need to be inside this shadow, the umbra, to see the total eclipse. So while many years there are one or two total or annular eclipses, they are only visible from a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface. As a solar eclipse proceeds, the umbra moves along the face of the earth, tracing out a narrow strip. What is special about the April 2024 eclipse is that this strip passes over Mexico, the United States and Canada and will be viewable by a huge population. The path of totality will just miss Toronto, unfortunately—see below for notes on safe viewing—since Toronto is only in the much wider penumbra from which you can see a partial eclipse. However, the umbra will cross over other locations in Southern Ontario, like Niagara Falls, Hamilton and Kingston. You can use this interactive map to see where the umbra passes; clicking on the map will tell you when the eclipse will happen.

Unlike the upcoming eclipse when lots of people will have the chance to witness it, in many cases the strip of the Moon’s shadow passes over less populated regions—and remember, most the Earth is covered with oceans. For instance, the annular eclipse later this year, on 2 October 2024, will pass mainly over the Pacific ocean and only cross land at Easter Island and the very south of Chile and Argentina.

You can use this website to explore other upcoming eclipses

In the past eclipses were more mysterious events and sometimes seen as omens. We now know when one is going to happen and we know it’s not the end of the world. Why do we remain fascinated?

Just because you understand how something works does not make it less fascinating! The Sun and the Moon are such familiar objects to us, and we literally could not live without the Sun, so when something unusual like a solar eclipse occurs, it disrupts our normal relationship to the sky in a way that naturally evokes great curiosity. It is not surprising that they have been seen as significant portents by some cultures. Today, they can be a great reminder of how awesome our Solar System is and a wonderful opportunity to learn more about Creation. When people disagree about so many things down here on Earth, it is nice when there are events in the heavens that everyone can appreciate and enjoy together.

What sorts of things have we learned from studying eclipses?

The curved shape of the shadow during a lunar eclipse was one piece of evidence—but not the only one—that ancient peoples had that the Earth is round. Aristotle, for instance, lists this as a reason for the Earth being spherical.

Precise measurements of the timing of lunar eclipses were also used to determine geographic longitude before clocks were good enough to keep time at sea. Here in Canada, the Jesuit missionaries used this method to figure out the geographical location of the Ste.-Marie mission near the Georgian Bay. The most precise measurements were made by Fr. Joseph Bressani, but Sts. Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalement also recorded observations of lunar eclipses. Bressani’s observation of the lunar eclipse on January 30, 1646 is also the first record we have of a telescope being used in Canada for astronomy.

What are some fun facts about eclipses that lay people might not know?

It is actually a striking coincidence that the Moon and the Sun are almost the same size in the sky. In reality, the Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon, but it is also a little less than 400 times further away from Earth than the Moon is. These two factors cancel out so that the two appear similar in size. There is no deep reason for this, but it means that we can observe total solar eclipses, which we couldn’t if the Moon had a slightly larger orbit around Earth than it does, and it also means that we can also sometimes see annular eclipses, which wouldn’t happen if the Moon had a slightly smaller orbit.

This coincidence of sizes and distances was propitious for a famous crucial experiment last century. Einstein’s new theory of gravity, called general relativity, predicted that massive bodies should bend the path of light. A team of astronomers, including the great Arthur Eddington, put this prediction to the test during the total solar eclipse on 29 May 1919. During the period of totality, the Sun’s light was blocked enough that stars near the Sun could be seen, and it was confirmed that their apparent positions had shifted due to their light getting bent by the Sun’s gravity along its path to us. If in some twist of cosmic history the Moon’s orbit had been slightly bigger, so that the Moon were further away from Earth and not big enough to create a total solar eclipse, that experiment wouldn’t have been possible! There are many other ways that general relativity has been tested, so it would not have been a fatal blow to Einstein’s work. As it stands, though, the observations of 1919 made headlines and propelled him to international fame.

How can we safely watch an eclipse?

You should never look directly at the Sun, even briefly, because it can cause serious and permanent eye damage. We do not have pain receptors in our retinas, but normally we instinctively avert our eyes from the Sun due to its brightness. During a partial or annular eclipse when some of the light is blocked, though, that instinct might not kick in, which means that you need to be extra vigilant because there is still more than enough light to do damage.

You should only look at the Sun through properly certified eclipse glasses. Regular sunglasses are not safe for solar viewing. You can find a list of vendors who comply with the certification here. As that site infers, some unscrupulous manufacturers may try to sell fakes, so do check any vendor against their list to be safe. (Here on campus Gerstein and Robarts Libraries were giving away certified glasses, but they have now run out.) If you do not have access to eclipse-viewing glasses, you can still view it indirectly with a pinhole camera, which still provides an exciting and worthwhile experience. See this video for more information on eclipse safety.

You can look up during the brief period of totality, when all of the sunlight is blocked by the moon. Note, however, that this will not be possible in Toronto. Even though more than 99% of the Sun will be blocked in Toronto, leaving only a sliver of sunlight, anything less than 100% is not safe to look at directly.

When is the next time the St. Mike’s campus will experience an eclipse?

As mentioned above, there will be total lunar eclipses visible from Toronto on March 14, 2025 and 3 March 3, 2026. The next partial solar eclipse will be on August 12, 2026, but only a tiny part of the Sun will be covered and you won’t notice it unless you look at the Sun with certified solar glasses (see above). The next annular eclipse in Toronto will be on July 2, 2057, and the next total solar eclipse will be on  October 26, 2144, more than 120 years away!

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For a country with a population about equal to that of the Greater Toronto Area, Ireland continues to hold a powerful fascination for people around the world, including the St. Michael’s community. 

It’s a reality that Emer Maguire, who lives in Ireland’s County Louth, discovered soon after arriving at St. Mike’s as this year’s Ireland Canada University Foundation (ICUF) scholar. 

The ICUF scholars have a mandate to teach the Irish language as well as to engage in various cultural events, including offering free Irish classes on a continuing education basis. 

“There’s a great demand for the beginner courses,” says Maguire of the free instruction, adding that this year’s classes had to be capped at 35, and a waiting list established that stands at 50 more. 

And as delighted as she is to be in Toronto sharing an appreciation for her homeland’s first official language, she says that the interest shown both by her university students and her lifelong learners will serve her well when she returns to Ireland this summer. 

Having encountered some skeptics at home who question whether there’s a market for teaching Irish, she says the interest she is encountering, as well as the level of skill she’s seeing in her university students, will be good news to many. 

“Some of the university students I’ve met speak a brilliant level of Irish — better than some at home,” she says, adding that Ireland’s membership in the European Union has resulted in a significant increase in the number of jobs requiring the ability to speak Irish.  

Coming from a rural community, Maguire is intrigued by the sheer size of Toronto, the ease of getting around on the subway, and the number of tall buildings. But the diversity of backgrounds she sees in her classes is something she is also beginning to see in her teaching job in Ireland. 

“There’s a great variety of students in my classes. Some are of Irish descent but most are from places around the world, and are simply interested in Irish culture,” she says.  

At home, where she teaches primary- classes, her students, mostly Irish-born, increasingly include the children of people from Ukraine, Poland and a variety of international locations. 

After a two-year sabbatical that began with a year in Massachusetts teaching as a Fulbright scholar, Maguire return home this summer, where she plans to head to the west coast of the country to teach in a Gaeltacht community, a district where Irish is the primary language in everyday use. 

“It’ll be a way to get the calmness back before I return to my job,” she smiles. 

Come the fall, she will be back in County Louth teaching in her local school. And while she has loved her experience in North America, she will be glad to get home to the vistas of the countryside, and to a place where she is connected to family and friends in a community small enough for almost everybody to have some form of connection. 

A brief moment in Jessica Johnson’s The Future of Journalism class offers a powerful example of how different that future looks for young adults.

Johnson, a noted Canadian writer and editor, includes a photo of Adrienne Arsenault and Ian Hanomansing, anchors of The National, CBC’s flagship television newscast, in a PowerPoint presentation she shares with her students. When she asks her class of 30 or so if anyone can identify them, no one volunteers a response.

But you would be wrong to think that Johnson’s students are not engaged with journalism or that they are unaware of critical issues in the world, as well as the challenges and opportunities in modern media. The incident underlines Johnson’s desire to demonstrate the rapidly changing face of media today.

Much of the structure and content of The Future of Journalism is based on her experience while teaching #MeToo and the Media with the late Anne Kingston in 2019, a class that looked at the media’s – and particularly social media’s – role in the social movement that stemmed from reports of predatory sexual behaviour on the part of powerful, high-profile men.

A few moments later, St. Mike’s student Lucas Sousa offers a succinct explanation of Bill C-18, or the Online News Act, legislation that was designed to see news outlets paid for work shared on social media platforms but which has resulted in news being blocked on Facebook and Instagram. He follows up by identifying an image of Catherine Tait, president and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who recently oversaw significant job cuts at the federal broadcaster.                                               

In the ensuing discussion, Sousa and his classmates demonstrate that while today’s young adults may not sit down promptly at 10 p.m. each night to watch a newscast their parents grew up on, they are knowledgeable consumers eager to learn more about fruitful engagement with authentic media. And that, says Johnson, was one of her goals in creating the course.

“What Anne and I found was that what we needed to teach how the media works, the role of social media, the industry’s business models,” she says. “The Future of Journalism is the story of media: what is journalism, its issues and practices, questions surrounding EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) and who has a voice. We are talking about what the landscape is like, and students are sharing their thoughts on what journalism is and how they want to do it.”

The result is the Thursday morning survey class, which falls under Book & Media Studies, one of St. Michael’s four sponsored programs. According to the syllabus, by the end of the course, “student will acquire an overview of the current state of journalism, along with exposure to journalism practices and current issues.” Participants, it adds, will have gained confidence in public speaking, as well as in meeting deadlines and producing work that reflects their own original ideas.

Since the class includes both those interested in journalism from an academic perspective as well as those who hope to build a career as journalists, lectures and discussions are geared to both, looking at the theory of journalism – for example, the media and democracy – as well as offering practical discussions on how to pitch a story to editors how to use the fundamentals of journalism to build “engaging, successful stories.”

Young people want to change the world, Johnson notes, and journalism is a place where they can still do that, so she spent time while building the course pondering what they need to hear.

One challenge is learning the difference between journalism and advocacy, allowing the power of facts speaking for themselves, she says, adding that there are occasional exceptions to that dividing line, citing as an example The Narwahl, the much-lauded non-profit Canadian publication that does investigative work into environmental issues.

Because the media landscape is changing so rapidly, Johnson re-thought the content and shape of the course more than once. When she began to think about what she wanted to teach she was focused on issues such as the impact of artificial intelligence but now the world faces two major wars, the United States is in an election year and it could end up an election year for Canada, too.

“Today we see suspicion and mistrust of media. While confidence is still relatively high in Canada, it is dropping,” she observes. Part of the problem, she says, is the decline in local media, as cost-cutting continues to eliminate local outlets. Instead of smalltown newspapers and radio stations covering important local stories, for example, that news is being reported on by people unfamiliar with local issues, or not at all aware.

“If you have stories that are being told by strangers rather than reporters you see in the street, with the two-way discourse that comes from being out and about all the time, you lose key insights and context.”

There are also emerging conversations on what is truth and how differentiating factors of that truth can be identified, information critical for astute media consumer, she says. It’s a topic of increasing importance as it comes at a time when fewer and fewer publications rely on fact checkers, who confirm the content of a story, noting that The Walrus, the Canadian magazine where she served as Editor in Chief from 2017 to earlier this year is, along with The New Yorker, one of the few periodicals still relying on the role.

For her students pondering a career in journalism, Johnson will address questions surrounding the changing business models of the industry and the impact that has on quality, as well as the ways in which young people entering the field need to be entrepreneurial to find their own space.

Whether students are in the course for the love of reading news or the hopes of reporting it, Johnson sees a key goal being to support her students, and especially those who show promise.

“I love teaching and I have a lot of respect for full-time profs. It takes a great deal of time to think about what students need to know now,” she says.

“I want to help students have a vision of themselves,” she says, citing a high school teacher and a couple of university professors who spoke positively to her about her writing. Voicing that feedback may make all the difference, she says. “That may be the only person in your life to who says, “You’re a good writer. You’re allowed to proceed.”

For student Lucas Sousa, enrolling in The Future of Journalism is helping him decide what he wants to do when he graduates.

“I’m in this class because I want to see the future of journalism,” he says, adding that writing for The Varsity, the University of Toronto’s student newspaper, has given him insights into some of the topics—and challenges—discussed in class. “This course is helping me to understand things in a better way and it’s allowing me to fall back in love with journalism.”

A new project from the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology (RSM) will offer educators the tools needed to help adolescents deal with the growing challenge of climate anxiety.

Climate anxiety – also known by such terms as eco-anxiety, climate grief, or climate trauma – refers to the negative impact climate change can have on mental health. Numerous surveys indicate the experience of worries and fears for the future brought on by climate change is growing and is particularly intense among adolescents and young adults.

Now, RSM Professors Hilda Koster and Cynthia Cameron are launching Critical Conversations in Catholic Education: Climate Change and Eco-Social Resilience, a series of free workshops and a conference designed to engage educators in a conversation about how best to support adolescents and young adults in the face of a rapidly changing world.

“Young people are caught in a moment of feeling overwhelmed, and feeling hopelessness in the face of it all,” says Koster, who is an Associate Professor of Eco-Theology and the Director of the Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology. She also holds the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto Chair in Theology at RSM.

Climate anxiety “is a spiritual problem, and not just a problem of morals. It’s an existential issue,” she says, noting that the syndrome can result in apathy, isolation, and depression. “It’s hard to feel connected when you are anxious.”

Koster notes that while many Catholic schools now include Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s groundbreaking encyclical on the environment, in their curriculum, there is a new but growing body of research and literature on climate anxiety that teachers may not be aware of yet. The two professors plan to draw on familiar spiritual resources such as Laudato Si’ (also referred to ‘On care for our common home’), which was promulgated in 2015, while also introducing newer materials specifically addressing climate anxiety.  

“We want to help school boards and teachers connect the dots between the ecological, religious, and mental health aspects of this issue,” says Cameron, who is Assistant Professor of Catholic Education at RSM and holds the Patrick and Barbara Keenan Chair in Religious Education. Everyone working in a Catholic school is a religious educator, she notes, and so findings ways to help students develop resilience in the face of climate anxiety touches everyone from the chaplain to English, science and health teachers, for example, through to administrative staff.

The project is designed primarily to address issues emerging in the Grs. 7-12 range, with particular emphasis on the high school years, Cameron explains, noting there is a “confluence of anxiety and depression that begins to increase around the age of 11 or 12.”

While the Critical Conversations workshops will be presented through a Catholic lens, many of the lessons learned will be applicable to all students regardless of faith tradition, she adds.

Doctoral candidate Rosemary Boissonneau, who is also working on Critical Conversations, sees the project being particularly helpful to new teachers. While not the target age of the project, many young teachers are also facing their own climate fears, she says, questioning, for example, the risks their own children may face if climate change is not controlled. These personal worries come as they work with students who are extremely stressed by the topic – one of the factors that can lead to teacher burnout, says Boissonneau, a teacher herself.

The first workshop will be led by Cameron and Koster, focussing on the topic of “Climate Anxiety, Education, and Catholic Social Teaching” In addition, there will be a presentation by teacher and alumna Gabrielle Chan on her research for her Master of Theological Studies thesis on “Laudato Si’, Climate Anxiety and Youth.” Boissonneau will speak on her work as an educator, climate activist with “Fridays for Future” and “The Laudato Si’ Movement,” and a biblical scholar.

This workshop is co-sponsored by the Halton Catholic District School Board and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board and takes place on Wednesday, February 21 from 4:30-6 pm at St. Francis Xavier Secondary School, 1145 Bronte Street South, Milton, with an online option available.

The second workshop, “Science, Suffering, and Eco-Theology,” will be held on Wednesday, April 17, will include a presentation by Prof. Adam Hincks, S.J., who is Assistant Professor and the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures at St. Michael’s. He will be joined by RSM’s Prof. J.P. Fortin, who is Associate Professor of Practical Theology, and doctoral student Deanna Zantingh, whose research area focuses on Indigenous youth suicide and environmental devastation. Sr. Mary Anne Francalanza, fcJ, a science teacher who is working toward a diploma in Theology and Ecology will also be speaking. This second workshop is sponsored by the Durham Catholic District School Board at its Pope Francis Conference Centre, at 652 Rossland Rd. W. in Oshawa. This event will also be offered online.

While the workshops are designed primarily for teachers, the concluding day-long conference will have a broader audience, including students from the Toronto School of Theology and various faculties and departments at the University of Toronto. Youth, Climate Anxiety and Religious Education, which takes place on Saturday, Oct. 5 on campus, will feature Prof. Joyce Mercer, a professor of practical theology and pastoral care at the Yale Divinity School who has written on the topic of children and climate anxiety.

Along with a keynote address, the conference will include panel discussions, opportunities for networking, and tables of information.

“This project is a two-way street,” says Koster, who says that she and Cameron look forward to listening to and learning from the experiences of teachers working with adolescents to further their own work.

The Critical Conversations project is being funded by a Moving Forward in Mission grant from the Association of Theological Schools, RSM’s accrediting body.  The professors note that the grant’s stated purpose reflects RSM’s commitment to serve the broader community, offering educational outreach to answer critical issues of the day.

Fr. James Kelsey McConica, CSB, a world-renowned scholar who served as President of the University of St. Michael’s College from 1984 to 1990 and then as Praeses of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS) from 1996 to 2008, has died at the age of 93.

“St. Michael’s has lost a dear friend whose leadership both at the University and at PIMS was extraordinary,” said St. Michael’s President David Sylvester. “A gifted administrator and academic, Fr. McConica’s research and teaching on Erasmus and Thomas More drew international attention and acclaim. His impact continues to be felt in the Office of the President and his vision for the University remains an influence.”

Born in Saskatchewan in 1930, James McConica graduated from the University of Saskatchewan before traveling to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He then pursued studies at Princeton before returning to the University of Saskatchewan to teach. In 1967 he was made a Junior Fellow – and then a Senior Fellow– at PIMS, a role he held until 1991.

He was appointed President of St. Michael’s in 1984, succeeding Fr. Peter Swan, CSB. A research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford from 1990 to 1997, Fr. McConica was appointed Praeses, or President, of PIMS in 1996.

With more than 50 publications to his name, Fr. McConica’s interests included Erasmus, More, northern humanism to 1550, intellectual history, and historical theology.

The list of honours and accomplishments earned in his lifetime was lengthy and impressive. Fr. McConica was the first Roman Catholic priest since the English Reformation to be named a fellow of All Souls College. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, with his citation noting his editing and interpretation on the Collected Works of Erasmus, as well as The History of the University of Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, he also served as a Member of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy.

During his time at St. Michael’s, Fr. McConica demonstrated a strong talent for fundraising. He also was known for his desire for the University to serve as a venue where multiple voices and viewpoints could be heard. Perhaps the most famous example was inviting Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, then the controversial Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to speak on campus in 1985. The event was so over-subscribed it had to be moved off campus to Varsity Arena. Twenty years later, Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Friends and colleagues remember Fr. McConica fondly. Sr. Anne Anderson, CSJ, who served as St. Michael’s President from 2008 to 2015, described him as “a scholar and a gentleman.”

Dr. Richard Alway, who succeeded Fr. McConica in his roles at both St. Michael’s and PIMS, echoed Sr. Anne, noting that his colleague was “a man of culture and refinement.”

Describing Fr. McConica as one of his dearest friends and a colleague of more than 30 years, Dr. Alway said that while he was a scholar of great standing, “Fr. McConica was always a priest first.

“He came to his faith later in life and he was a late vocation,” Dr. Alway added, explaining that, after years of teaching, Fr. McConica was in Montreal visiting a friend who was a priest, and that friend suggested he spend a summer discerning with the Basilians in Toronto. He entered the order shortly thereafter.

While President, Fr. McConica recognized that one of St. Michael’s many assets was its impressive green space in the heart of the city, and so he worked hard to ensure that the grounds including the rock gardens, were well maintained, recalled Alway, adding that Fr. McConica was responsible for planting the rows of oak tress that line Elmsley Place today.

The Order of Canada citation describing Fr. McConica as “a classic humanist whose influence resonated through academic circles and beyond.”

Fr. McConica’s funeral Mass will be held at Presentation Manor, 61 Fairfax Crescent, Scarborough, on Friday, December 29 at 10:30 a.m., with visitation at 9:30.

The University of St. Michael’s College extends its condolences to the Basilian Fathers, and to Fr. McConica’s many friends and colleagues in the academy and around the world.

Read Fr. McConica’s obituary as published in the Globe & Mail.

The C.P. Stacey Award Committee and the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada (LCSC) have awarded historian David A. Wilson of the University of St. Michael’s College the 2022 C.P. Stacey Award for scholarly work in Canadian military history.

Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police (McGill-Queen’s University Press) examines the 19th-century Irish revolutionary Fenian movement and its efforts to confront British imperialism in Ireland with armed invasion and insurrection in British North America. In the years just before and after Canadian Confederation, the Fenians were seen as a significant security and military threat. In Wilson’s expert hands, the story of clandestine efforts by Canadian secret police and British authorities to infiltrate and assess Fenian networks in the U.S. and British North America make great history and great reading.

“This exceptionally well-researched book has plumbed the depths of Canadian, American and British archives, as well as dozens of 19th-century newspapers and other publications, thoroughly reconstructing how authorities responded to a revolutionary threat that aimed to strike first at Britain’s North American colonies and then a newly independent Canada,” the C.P. Stacey Award Committee noted. “The Fenian invasions of the 1860s and 1870s are widely recognized as a key factor that led to Canadian Confederation in 1867, and now the secretive efforts to gather the intelligence that gave Canadian and British governments the information needed to appreciate the defence threat posed by the Fenians have been definitively addressed.”

Wilson is a professor in the Celtic Studies program at St. Michael’s College and the Department of History at the University of Toronto, as well as general editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. The recipient of many awards and prizes for research and teaching, Wilson is also known for his two-volume biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

Historian C.P. Stacey was brilliant in his ability to contextualize and frame military history in its contemporary political contexts. The award committee collectively found Wilson’s work mirrored this approach, remarking “Canadian Spy Story is a highly readable example of why military history has meaning and relevance for all Canadians.”

The award committee was struck by the considerable depth of choice when working to choose the winning book. There are two honorable mentions for the 2022 C.P. Stacey Award:

• Terry Copp with Alexander Maavara, produced a richly nuanced view of the First World War as experienced in one of Canada’s most diverse and complex cities in Montreal at War, 1914-1918 (University of Toronto Press). Their findings deepen, and frequently trouble, the understanding of Montreal’s place in Quebec and Canada during the war and beyond.
• Matthew Barrett, in Scandalous Conduct: Canadian Officer Courts Martial, 1915-1945 (UBC Press), provides a detailed study of Canadian officer courts martial and demonstrates how dismissal from the services had an influence on officers’ conduct, while allowing for redemption through service as other ranks.

The C.P. Stacey Award is named in honour of Charles Perry Stacey, historical officer to the Canadian Army during the Second World War and later a longtime professor of history at the University of Toronto. The award is presented annually to the best book in the field of Canadian military history, broadly defined, including the study of war and society. The award winner receives a $1,000 prize, made possible through the generous support of John and Pattie Cleghorn and family and the Department of History at Wilfrid Laurier University. The LCSC took over administration of the award in 2018 from the Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War.

The 2022 C.P. Stacey Award Committee consisted of Kevin Spooner (Wilfrid Laurier University; director, LCSC), Isabel Campbell (Directorate of History and Heritage, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa), and Lee Windsor (University of New Brunswick). Learn more at LCSC’s War and Society research cluster.

(Source: Wilfred Laurier University press release)

Dr. Felan Parker is a Professor in the Book & Media Studies program specializing in digital media, video games, and media industries. His current research explores the production, distribution, and reception of independent or “indie” games, and the role of fan conventions like San Diego Comic-Con in contemporary popular media cultures.

University of Toronto Quarterly recently published Prof. Parker’s review of The Far Shore: Indie Games, Superbrothers, and the Making of Jett, as part of their big “Letters in Canada 2021” omnibus issue.

San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) is not just any comic con, it’s the Comic-Con – with a copyrighted hyphen to prove it. Although fan conventions celebrating popular media like comics, games, film, and television can be found in all corners of the world, SDCC occupies a privileged place. Over the course of its 50+ year history, SDCC has become a key venue for both grassroots fan community and large-scale media industry promotion, driven by much-vaunted claims of exclusivity: exclusive collectibles, exclusive previews, exclusive celebrity appearances, and exclusive access (approximately 130,000 people attend each year, many more wish they could). The convention takes place over five days in July and offers something for practically everyone: panels and workshops large and small, cosplay (dressing up as pop culture characters), signings, a massive exhibition hall full of retail booths, screenings, gaming, interactive promotional activations, portfolio reviews for aspiring creators, and a lot of walking around and waiting in line. 

SDCC has been the subject of extensive academic research; it offers a unique site to investigate the relationship between audiences and media industries, and the intermediaries (including SDCC itself) that shape those relationships. This is a rich body of work, but the daunting scale and scope of SDCC means that every attendee has a different experience, and it is impossible for one researcher to apprehend the event in its totality. My colleague Benjamin Woo (Carleton University) and I decided to try something different: what if we studied SDCC with a large, coordinated team of researchers?

Inspired by previous methodological experiments in “swarm ethnography” and “collaborative event ethnography,” we assembled an all-star team of fandom and media industry scholars, graduate students, and undergrad students from the Book & Media Studies program. The goal of this project, dubbed Swarming San Diego Comic-Con, was to better understand the role of SDCC in contemporary popular culture by conducting up-close and personal ethnographic research from a wide variety of different perspectives, simultaneously. We successfully applied for a SSHRC Insight Grant to support a research trip to SDCC, originally scheduled for 2021 but ultimately delayed until 2023 by the ongoing pandemic.

After a crash course in ethnographic research methods and a test run at the much smaller, less mainstream Toronto Comic Arts Festival, we set out for San Diego with our six intrepid undergrad researchers in tow. Even after reading extensively about SDCC and hearing from more seasoned con-going members of the team, nothing can prepare you for its overwhelming magnitude and dizzying range of activities demanding your attention. For Shurui Wu, the research trip allowed her to combine her life-long fandom with her academic interests – disembarking the trolley in front of the San Diego Convention Centre for the first time and seeing the massive crowds of fellow fans was a “dream come true.”

Over the course of SDCC, the “undergrad squad” (as they dubbed themselves) had many unique and exciting experiences. Along with several other members of the team, Esmé Sanders was delighted to have the opportunity to see Japanese horror comics master Junji Ito in the flesh. “Lining up for 2+ hours and getting front-row seats was rewarding and made me feel like I got the full Comic-Con experience. I enjoyed watching Junji Ito draw live. It’s a privilege to see the behind-the-scenes process of some of your favourite art!” Jae Kim and Brian Tin shared their own similar experience of getting up before the crack of dawn and joining a huge line to score an exclusive Star Wars Tamagotchi toy featuring Grogu, AKA Baby Yoda.

Indeed, lining up is a big part of attending SDCC, and the lines not only build anticipation but also are important space for community-building. Jae Kim found the environment more friendly than he imagined, highlighting the important social aspect of the convention that is easily overshadowed by the flashy Hollywood promotion and consumerism. “Starting up conversations with people in lines, by the entrance, and even in washrooms came to me like second nature. In a way, it reminded me that we were all at SDCC because we were all fans, which was a nice sentiment to have amidst the chaos.” Likewise, Debi Jin was thrilled to happen up on an autograph signing session with Makoto Yukimura, creator of the popular manga and anime Vinland Saga. Although the signing was only for people who registered in advance, she joined a small group of fans looking on.  “As I looked at the faces of those in our little group, however, it seemed to me that we were all just happy to be in Makoto Yukimura’s presence. After he signed the last lucky fan’s merchandise, we all clapped and slowly went our separate ways.” The experience of seeing beloved creators in the flesh is enhanced by the communal atmosphere of the con.

Students also observed that the demographics of SDCC were not what they expected based on their experiences in fan cultures, which are often unwelcoming spaces for women, people of colour, queer folks, and other groups marginalized on the basis of identity. “Before going, I expected a hyper-masculine space filled with sweaty (and sometimes smelly) fans (myself included),” Brian recalls. “But the diversity of con-goers, in terms of age, gender, race, really pleasantly surprised me (and the venue smelled reasonably fine).” Nevertheless, there remain many issues around inclusivity and access. Esmé noted that while there were many fans with disabilities in attendance, accessibility accommodations were lacking: “it still seemed like a hectic place to navigate with an assistive device. It underscored the need for even more comprehensive accessibility measures at events like these.”

Although SDCC 2023 was billed as a return to form after several years of online and smaller-scale cons, the announcement of strike actions by the Writers Guild of America and later the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers made labour issues in Hollywood and beyond a unexpectedly central area of interest for the project. Would SDCC be diminished by the lack of big Hollywood stars promoting their work? Or would it be a return to an imagined grassroots past before Hollywood took over? Even though she would have liked to see celebrities, Shurui wasn’t too disappointed, because there was still plenty of exciting content from other sectors of the global entertainment industries. “I was surprised by how many Japanese companies where there, and the scale of their booth and activations. This made me finally understand how influential Japanese [media] industry is.”

The focus on labour issues also raised questions about how fans are compelled to participate in marketing and promotion. “One moment I found particularly striking was when fans were lining up to advertise (post) on social media pictures of the Hello Kitty x MetaZoo booth for a chance to win a gift basket,” Esmé says, echoing fan studies discourses on fandom as a form of unpaid labour. “It felt like a lot of physical labour and free advertisement.”

The research trip concluded with a debriefing and brainstorming session with the whole team at UC San Diego, where students compared notes, shared insights, posited initial observations, and raised unanswered questions that will help guide our research as we move into the data analysis and knowledge mobilization phases of the project. These invaluable contributions from Book & Media Studies students will help shape our understanding of San Diego Comic-Con and its place at the intersection of popular media industries and fan cultures.

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Orientation is a great opportunity for students to become familiar with the University of St. Michael’s College campus, before entering first year. By integrating both academic and social programming into Orientation, St. Mike’s strives to provide them with the proper tools needed to feel comfortable and prepared as they begin their undergraduate journey at the University of Toronto. 

This year, Orientation week runs from September 3rd to 14th 2023. 

Meet the team, learn the cheers and find out more about what’s going on by visiting the St. Mike’s orientation website: https://stmikesorientation.com/

Dr. Michael Salvatori, a career educator and author with extensive experience in university administration and teaching as well as at the secondary and primary school levels, has been named the new Director of Continuing Education at the University of St. Michael’s College.  

“As an alumnus of St. Michael’s College (SMC 8T9) I am delighted to take on this role and to have the opportunity to serve the university community that has played such an important role in my personal and professional development,” Dr. Salvatori says. “As a committed life-long learner and career educator I look forward to the opportunities to enhance St. Mike’s role in providing meaningful, engaging, and contemporary ongoing learning opportunities for students, alumni, and the greater community. “ 

As Director, Dr. Salvatori will lead the renewal and expansion of the University’s Continuing Education division. While overseeing existing programs such as the Diploma in Social Responsibility & Sustainability and the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Certification, he will also design, deliver, and administer new non-degree courses, workshops, and other learning opportunities for a broad audience of adult learners, including Catholic teachers. His role includes responsibility for advancing the mission and strategic objectives of the University by developing new sustainable programming based on the needs of the community and grounded in market research.  

“In Dr Salvatori St. Michael’s has a Director of Continuing Education who has an impressive understanding of pedagogy and program management, extensive practical experience in the classroom, and a passion for St. Mike’s. These skills and talents will serve him well as he re-envisions our Continuing Education division, offering our alumni and other members of our community exciting learning opportunities,” says University President David Sylvester. 

For more than a decade, Dr. Salvatori served as CEO and Registrar of the Ontario College of Teachers.  He has served as President of the board of directors for the Council on Licensure, Enforcement and Regulation (CLEAR) and French for the Future and is a lifetime member of the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers and the Ontario Modern Languages Teachers’ Association. He is currently a faculty member of CLEAR’s Executive Program for Regulators and a member of Western University’s Alumni Association Board of Directors. Dr. Salvatori comes to St. Michael’s from Niagara University Ontario where he has served most recently as Vice-President.  An Associate Professor in the NU College of Education, he has been teaching a foundations course on legal principles in education in Ontario and an elective course on contemporary issues in education in the Bachelor of Professional Studies program which leads to teacher certification in Ontario. 

Dr. Salvatori earned a PhD in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He also holds MEd and BEd degrees from the University of Western Ontario and a BA from the University of Toronto. Long a champion of second language education, he is fluent in French, Italian, English, and German and is author and co-author of numerous textbooks and teacher resources. He assumes his new role on October 2, 2023. 

We’re heading into July still smiling following all the amazing events that took place at St. Mike’s in May and June. From celebrating our new grads, our valued alumni, and a new Chancellor through to enjoying the return of the flowers on campus, May and June offered lots of reminders of how great life at St. Mike’s is, year-round.

Among the moments we celebrated in May and June:

Congratulations, Grads! — Congratulations to the Class of 2023 and welcome to the St. Mike’s alumni family! We were excited to welcome so many grads, along with family and friends to the BBQ hosted by St. Mike’s Advancement on June 13. The night before convocation, 450 people attended our annual awards ceremony and reception for graduands.

New Chancellor Installed at St. Mike’s — Toronto Archbishop Francis Leo was installed as the sixth chancellor of the University of St. Michael’s College. The installation ceremony took place prior to the Baccalaureate Mass, on the afternoon of June 12. Welcome, Archbishop Leo!

St. Mike’s Commits to Divest from Fossil Fuel Investments — At its June meeting, the Collegium of the University of St. Michael’s College committed to fully divest the University’s investments from fossil fuels by the year 2030, or sooner if possible. The University has held no direct investments in fossil fuel companies since 2013, and the Collegium’s decision will complete the process of removing fossil fuel companies from its indirect investments. Complete divestment from fossil fuels builds on St. Mike’s established initiative of investing according to its institutional values.

St. Mike’s strengthens ties to Maynooth University — The ties between the University of St. Michael’s College and Ireland’s Maynooth University are now even stronger thanks to an enhanced memorandum of understanding signed between the two universities. The agreement will further open doors for students and professors at both institutions, including new opportunities for students in the College’s undergraduate Mediaeval and Celtic Studies programs, and the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology. The MoU was signed in May when President Sylvester travelled to Maynooth, a trip that coincided with the annual excursion to the Irish university by students from St. Michael’s Boyle Seminar in Scripts and Stories, one of the many experiential learning experiences available to both undergraduate and graduate students at St. Michael’s.

Having a Blast at Alumni Reunion — From parties and pub nights to lectures and an awards brunch, over the course of five busy days filled with fun and fellowship we welcomed nearly 700 alumni back to campus as part of Alumni Reunion, which ran from May 31 to June 4. It was a pleasure to reconnect with alumni here at our “Oasis in the City” and celebrate the people who make the St. Mike’s community so special.

Dante Garden Unveiled — May saw the unveiling of an exciting new landmark at St. Michael’s, The Dante Garden. Patrons, donors, and friends gathered in the beautiful new garden, located at the corner of St. Joseph Street and Queen’s Park, which features sculptures of the cantos of the Divine Comedy, and Dante himself, by artist Timothy Schmalz. Brought to life by patrons Maurizio Bevilacqua and family, and Tony and Lina Gagliano and family, along with generous donors, this new landmark is a stunning addition to our campus, offering a new way to engage with the genius of the Divine Comedy.

St. Mike’s Hosts CCBI Book Launch — The University of St. Michael’s College was delighted to host the launch of Catholic Bioethics: A Twenty-year Perspective. We were particularly pleased to welcome Archbishop Francis Leo, Cardinal Thomas Collins, and many of the book’s contributors to the afternoon event.

MPP Visits Founders House — Rosedale MPP Jessica Bell met with St. Mike’s President David Sylvester at Founders House to discuss ways to work together to support the needs of the community.

Pride Progress Banner Raised — The University of St. Michael’s College respects diversity in all its forms and is committed to developing inclusivity an inclusive, welcoming community. Late in May, we raised a Pride Progress banner on the John M. Kelly Library, a sign of our commitment to that pledge.

Something’s Cooking… June 1^st marked the arrival of Dana Hospitality to campus. Dana will now be handling food operations at USMC and Loretto sites. 

What a Great Team! — Faculty and staff gathered in Charbonnel Lounge in June over a great array of desserts to celebrate those people marking significant work anniversaries. An especially warm welcome was offered to Jean Talman, who retired from the Principal’s Office after serving the community for 35 years, creating a strong link between the College and the greater Irish community in Toronto. Sláinte mhaith!

A Standing Invitation — It’s no secret that our Oasis in the City is beautiful year-round, but right now the campus is awash with colour. If you’re in the neighbourhood, please drop by to take in the sights. You’re always welcome!

The University of St. Michael’s College offers congratulations to Dr. Mark McGowan on the release of his latest book, Hunger and Hope:The Famine Migration from Strokestown, Roscommon, in 1847 (Cork University Press & the Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University). 

Hunger and Hope is the product of 10 years of research from a joint team of historians based in Ireland, the United States and Canada. As such, says McGowan, it is a work that reflects the benefits of collaboration and the potential inherent in the Memorandum of Understanding St. Michael’s signed with Maynooth University in Ireland earlier this year.  

McGowan was the lead researcher and created independent studies courses for two selected teams of senior undergraduate researchers from the University of Toronto–and particularly St. Michael’s College. 

These teams explored routinely generated records—e.g., census data, cemetery records, and church registers–to uncover the story of 1,490 assisted migrants from Major Denis Mahon’s estate in Central Ireland. Three in 10 migrants did not survive the voyage or the typhus epidemic that ran rampant in the sheds of Grosse Ile, Canada’s quarantine station near Quebec. 

“The book tracks the migrants from the estate through their harrowing experiences in Liverpool and their transatlantic voyage on four ships of questionable quality,” McGowan says. “It then tries to examine what happened to the survivors in Canada and the United States. It is an -eight-chapter narrative that puts names, faces, and individual stories to one of the worst and much misunderstood episodes during the Great Irish Famine.”  

Notes St. Michael’s Principal, Dr. Irene Morra, “This book speaks to the extraordinary historical knowledge and level of vital enquiry that Prof. McGowan continues to manifest in his publications and that he has inspired in his students in History and in the Celtic Studies program at St Michael’s College.” 

St. Michael’s Principal from 2002-2011, McGowan is a historian renowned for his work on the Great Irish Famine, as well as the lasting impact the Famine’s mass migration had on Canada.  

He has won multiple awards for both his teaching and writing and is also well known for his work in Catholic education, including studying the history of Catholic education in Ontario.   

 His lengthy list of publications includes The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish and Identity in Toronto, 1887-1922, Death or Canada: The Irish Migration to Toronto, 1847, and The Imperial Irish: Canada’s Irish Catholics Fight the Great War, 1914-1918.  

Cross-appointed to the University of Toronto, McGowan served as Deputy Chair of the history department (2017-19), as Senior Advisor to the Dean of Arts & Science, International (2014-17) and as Acting Vice-Provost, Students, for the University of Toronto for part of 2013.  

Most recently he served as St. Michael’s Interim Principal, from July 2020-July 2022 and continues to serve the university as as professor emeritus and special advisor to the president. 

Pope Francis has invited us to listen to one another in a synodal church. St. Mike’s hosted a panel discussion on the international theological project Doing Theology From The Existential Peripheries  a research project of the Dicastery on Promoting Integral Human Development, Holy See. The project aims at deepening the teachings of Pope Francis and renewing theology.  

Carl O’Byrne is a graduate of the University of St. Michael’s College. He has a background in education. Currently he is the coordinator of All Inclusive Ministries (AIM). 

On November 10, 2022, the University of St. Michael’s College held a panel discussion on the findings of a North American report commissioned by the Vatican as part of Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries: 

Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries is a research project of the Migrants and Refugees Section (M&R) of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Holy See. It aims at deepening the teaching of Pope Francis and promoting a renewal of theology. The project is built on the belief that those who have been marginalized, whether socioeconomically, socially, or in other ways, hold a wisdom capable of reopening discourse, especially where there are tensions. Specifically, it seeks to uncover the sensus fidei fidelium of those often excluded from discourse within society and especially within the Church. In this way, we can nurture and grow Christian thought beginning from a deep sense of faith in order to transform lives and hearts once again. 

 I have been involved in one way or another with All Inclusive Ministries (AIM) in its varied iterations since the 1980s, the height of the AIDS crisis. AIM is a Roman Catholic community of LGBTQ+ and allies aiming to provide equal access to worship, opportunities, and resources within the Church for LGBTQ+ faithful who often feel excluded or marginalized. 

Being excluded or marginalized provided a fit with the project of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Holy See. Sounds complicated? It is. How do you classify, categorize millions of people worldwide? 

Quite unexpectedly, I came to be on the panel discussion at St Mike’s. My first thought, after an immediate and sincere prayer of supplication, i.e., omG, was not some lofty goal of inclusion, but of the late comedian of some controversy, a gay icon, Joan Rivers. In the 1980s, Joan Rivers’s catchphrase Can we talk? went viral – and going viral did not precisely have the same meaning then as it does now in the age of social media. Going viral at that time might justifiably be linked more often to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Joan Rivers did a lot of talking. She talked to, with, and about LGBTQ+ people regardless of their health status. She was an advocate – in the true sense of the word – she talked toward something; added her voice. She did so for the rest of her life.  

At that time, the Church (for the greatest part) did not talk to the gay (common usage from that era) community, other than to condemn. For those of our community lucky enough to live in Toronto at that time, and still, up to the present, the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, and their parish, Our Lady of Lourdes, was the sole, and most welcome exception. They talked to us, with us, provided pastoral support, and buried our dead at a time when few others would. We will never forget.  

I have no nostalgic attachment to the 1980s. Being stuck in any particular time is never a good thing. The expression, Can we talk? cuts to the heart of the matter. It goes beyond being a catchphrase of a particular person, and era. It eliminates everything that is not essential. It holds clarity and complexity. It leads to the heart of the matter – a bonus as we enter June, the month of Pride, and also, for Catholics, the month devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

One of the very surprising things about Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality is that it actually welcomed people to talk, to share their thoughts about the state of the Church in the very early period of the third millennium. But how practically would this unfold? Many (the majority?) LGBTQ+ people have left the Church. Their reasons for doing so are valid, and easily, empathetically understood. Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of skepticism regarding the synodal process. For example, would dioceses institutionally unfriendly, or openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people now listen? And then what? Would diocesan reports sent to the Vatican accurately reflect what conversations (if any) actually discussed? 

This quandary was removed by the way the research project was conducted, and by the way it was reported to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development: directly, with no diocesan intermediary. Pope Francis also talks. For example, in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti:  

I sometimes wonder why … it took so long for the Church unequivocally to condemn slavery and various forms of violence. Today, with our developed spirituality and theology, we have no excuses. Still, there are those who appear to feel encouraged or at least permitted by their faith to support varieties of narrow and violent nationalism, xenophobia and contempt, and even the mistreatment of those who are different. Faith, and the humanism it inspires, must maintain a critical sense in the face of these tendencies, and prompt an immediate response whenever they rear their head. For this reason, it is important that catechesis and preaching speak more directly and clearly about the social meaning of existence, the fraternal dimension of spirituality, our conviction of the inalienable dignity of each person, and our reasons for loving and accepting all our brothers and sisters.  

Can we talk?  

Yes. And we did, thanks to the University of St Michael’s College. The College not only provided the physical setting; it did so much more. It facilitated and encouraged the free and welcome exchange of ideas. Courageously. With the promise to do so in the future: Theology from the Existential Peripheries. Such gratitude is well placed but St Mike’s, like any institution, is ultimately only as good as the people who guide it. So, thank you to Drs. Michael Attridge, Darren Dias, Mark McGowan, and David Sylvester. Well done. 

Please note: The Kelly Library will continue to display the Progress Pride banner until the end of September as St. Mike’s prepares to welcome the Class of 2T7 to campus this fall.

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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 31^st to June 4^th and join us all in the exciting festivities that the Office of Advancement has planned!

Read other InsightOut posts

March and April saw good news for St. Mike’s on multiple fronts. Here are just a few of the things we’ve been celebrating on campus in recent weeks:

President Sylvester Re-appointed–We are delighted with the news that Dr. David Sylvester has accepted a second term as President of the University of St. Michael’s College. Dr. Sylvester has made great strides at St. Mike’s and we look forward to another successful term.

Making Waves as a Blue Community–St. Michael’s and Regis College are now Blue Communities. We signed on as members in mid-April, formally recognizing that St. Mike’s is committed to protecting the world’s water supply and ensuring all people have access to water as a human right.

St. Mike’s, Loretto Sign Residence Agreement–In a significant development designed to protect and carry forward the impact of the Loretto Sisters on our campus, St. Michael’s announced it would be assuming the operation and management of Loretto College as of May 1, 2023.

ACCUC Meets on Campus–St. Mikes played host to presidents from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities for their most recent semi-annual meeting.

Archbishop Leo Visits Founders House–Archbishop Francis Leo stopped by Founders House shortly before his installation in March.  He  arrived with Cardinal Thomas Collins to meet with Collegium Chair Rosanne Rocchi and President Sylvester.  

Exciting Staffing News from Campus Ministry–The Campus Ministry team is expanding! Campus Ministry Coordinator Nicole Ferrante is now full-time, having successfully completed the comprehensive exams for her Master of Divinity degree at Regis College. As well, Christina Labriola has joined the team as the Director of Music.  She will remain Artistic Director of USMC’s Schola Cantorum as well as creating a student choir you’ll hear on Saturday evenings at the Campus Ministry Mass during the academic year. She’ll also offer music workshops as a means of professional development and networking for liturgical musicians in Toronto. You’ll see her Christina in action at the Baccalaureate Mass on Monday June 12.

Jesuits Shine Light on Work of Sonal Castelino and Fr. Rixon–Sonal Castelino, xmcj, and Regis Fr. Gordon Rixon, SJ,  were featured in a recent edition of the Jesuit publication Hemispheres for their work presenting the Homeless Jesus statue at Regis College to visiting high school students.

Panel Marks Good Friday Accord–St. Mike’s marked the 25^th anniversary of the Good Friday Accord, a critical step in the move to peace in Northern Ireland, with an impressive panel discussion featuring Janice McGinn, Ireland’s Consul General in Toronto, MP James Maloney, Greg Quinn, the Acting British Consul General in Toronto, Ciaran Quinn, Sian Fein’s representative in North America, and Robert Kearns, Chair and Founder, Canada Ireland Foundation.

The Return of the “Christianity and the Arts” Lecture–University of Westminster professor John Wyver gave a presentation about his BBC television documentary Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain, telling the story of the building of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962 after the destruction of the medieval building in WWII.

Innovative AI Class Announced–How’s this for exciting programming? We learned that Fall 2023 will see a new class at St. Mike’s that will be taught almost entirely with artificial intelligence tools. “AI as a Classroom” is an advanced fourth-year seminar that will be offered as part of the Book and Media Studies Program (BMS) at St. Michael’s College, in the University of Toronto.

Kelly Library Dante Collection–“They entered the Kelly Library with hope and abandoned none of it,” Kelly staffers report. Dante enthusiasts including Heather Webb, keynote speaker at the “Emotions and Communities in Dante” conference, immersed themselves in the Library’s Dante Collection in advance of her closing address at the “Emotions and Communities in Dante” conference, held at St. Mike’s from April 12-13. Webb, from the University of Cambridge, was joined in the library’s Special Collections Reading Room by other Dante scholar,  including Elisa Brilli from the U of T Centre for Medieval Studies.

2022-23 St. Mike’s Yearbook Released–The Mike Publications produced the 2022-2023 St. Mike’s Yearbook, created by a dedicated team of student leaders. It features events and programs from various student initiatives and activities throughout this academic year. To purchase a yearbook, visit https://form.jotform.com/231033563911044.  To view our incredible archive of SMC yearbooks check out  https://archive.org/details/usmcyearbooks.

SMC Troubadours Present Angels in America–The SMC Troubadours presented a staged reading of Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, to a sold-out crowd in our beautiful Father Madden Hall. This epic story involved incredibly creative staging and interactive story-telling that left a huge impact on those who attended.

SMC Campus Clean Up–Clean SMC, St. Mike’s student-led initiative focused on sustainability and creating a culture that cares for our common home, organized a campus-wide clean up with support from the President and Bursar’s offices! The clean-up had more than 30 attendees and showcased the efforts of our collective community in preparing for a beautiful spring season.

A Fruitful Retreat for All–The last weekend in April saw Sonal Castelino, xmcj, and Emma Oliver, Assistant Dean of Campus Life, take 28 students in senior leadership on a retreat at Lake St. George Field Centre. Retreatants included orientation coordinators, members of the residence council, student campus ministers, SMCSU members, mentorship coordinators and commuter coordinators.

TORONTO – Who best to teach a course on AI literacy than AI itself? 

Fall 2023 brings class at the University of St. Michael’s College that will be taught almost entirely with artificial intelligence tools. “AI as a Classroom” is an advanced fourth-year seminar that will be offered as part of the Book and Media Studies Program (BMS) at St. Michael’s College, in the University of Toronto.  

“AI as a Classroom” will address a variety of issues concerning AI and its influence on society, including the ethics of AI and the impact AI has on cultural and media landscapes. It will also engage with provocative questions about the role of the professor in the creation and curation of the learning experience and in the potential of AI to enhance learning and promote proactive thought. Using the most advanced technologies in the field, including generative AI and LLMs, the course will feature a customized version of ChatGPT that has been expressly trained on course research questions. Throughout the course, students will develop skills in the use of AI in order to develop cutting-edge critical analyses of AI from a variety of ethical, practical, and philosophical perspectives. 

The course is the brainchild of Associate Professor Paolo Granata, (left,) who has a history of engaging in experimental pedagogy. During the pandemic, Granata used virtual reality (VR) technologies to foster experiential learning. He sees this course as a way of expanding these explorations of new media and the learning space.

“This is an exciting opportunity for students to explore the cutting edge of AI and its potential for education,” says Professor Granata. “By experimenting with AI tools in the classroom, we hope to provide our students with a unique and enriching learning experience that will prepare them for the challenges of the 21^st century, where AI literacy is key.” 

Inspired by the legacy of Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, the Book and Media Studies Program at St. Michael’s College has been at the forefront of experimentation in media education and digital literacy. Based on Marshall McLuhan’s adage “The Medium is the Message”, this course will provide an innovative context through which to investigate the potential for AI to enhance human agency in previously unimaginable ways. 

For information about the course, contact usmc.communications@utoronto.ca.

The University of St. Michael’s College community is fondly remembering the many contributions of Sr. Rita Marie McLean, CSJ, who gave generously of her talents to the university. Sr. Rita Marie, who served as an assistant registrar at St. Michael’s and as Dean of St. Joseph’s College Residence, died earlier this month in her 76^th year of religious life.

An alumna of St. Michael’s, Sr. Rita Marie earned a degree in French and Music in 1946. She worked for 19 years in her religious community’s secondary schools and, over the years, went on to earn an M.A. in French, as well as to engage in theological studies at St. Paul University, Ottawa and to study organ at Laval University in Quebec.

Sr. Rita Marie was appointed Dean of Students at St. Joseph’s College Residence at St. Michael’s in 1974, a position she held until 1979, where students keenly appreciated her support and kindness. In 1974, she was also appointed an Assistant Registrar in St. Mike’s registrar’s office, a position she held until 1985.

“Sister Rita Marie was a powerful influence in my life,” says alumna Ginny Hayes O’Sullivan (SMC 7T8). “I lived in residence with her from 1974 to 1978. She encouraged me to follow my inner call to leadership and become a Don at residence in my fourth year. I was also inspired by her interest and fluency in French, which I pursued as well. She was a strong woman who will be greatly missed.”

Former colleague Rick Hayward has fond memories of working with Sr. Rita Marie. 

“Although we were titular colleagues–she was Dean of St. Joe’s and Assistant Registrar and I was Dean of Men and Assistant Registrar–she was in so many ways my mentor,” says Hayward. “Her wisdom was dispensed with such good humour that I never realized that she was correcting some of my more egregiously bad ideas. She was a wonderful colleague and very supportive friend.”

Her gifts for supporting and teaching colleagues were also appreciated by former St. Mike’s staffer Jo Godfrey.

“I have very fond memories of Sister Rita. She was one of the rare gems in the Registrar’s Office,” says Godfrey. “Students loved her both in residence and when dealing with problems with courses and the like in her position as an assistant registrar at SMC. Any interaction I had with Sister Rita in my position as Executive Assistant in the office of the Principal was always very cordial and she was just a delight to interact with. I learned a thing or two in the process…she was full of innovative ideas.”

After leaving St. Mike’s, Sr. Rita Marie was named director of St. Joseph’s Centre at the Morrow Park motherhouse for three years and then continued as program director until 2000, facilitating pastoral and spiritual programs for the Catholic community. 

The University of St. Michael’s College extends our condolences to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto and to Sr. Rita Marie’s extended family and friends.  

A mass for Sr. McLean will be held at St. Basil’s Church on Tuesday, April 11 at 12:10pm.

Dr. Callie Callon has joined the Principal’s Office as SMC’s Research Officer. In this role, Callie will provide a range of research resource services for faculty members and for professional librarians. Callie holds a PhD in Christian Origins from the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She is thrilled to be rejoining the St. Mike’s community.

Callon has previously taught courses on the New Testament and Women in the Church at the Faculty of Theology and in the St. Mike’s Christianity and Culture program. She has a strong track record of writing successful academic grants and is looking forward to helping her colleagues further contribute to St. Mike’s already robust reputation for academic excellence. Dr. Callon take up her new role on April 10, 2023.

The Winter semester has been fruitful and fun so far, with great academic and social events for everyone. Here’s a sampling of some of our memorable moments in January and February: 

Listening to Indigenous Voices –St. Michael’s joined with community partners to begin monthly dinners and listening circles at the Mary Ward Centre to begin to learn more about Canada’s Indigenous history.

Dr. Sylvester Profiled by ACCU –St. Michael’s President David Sylvester was profiled recently in At The Helm, a publication from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU).”St. Mike’s is positioned to offer the human voice through our strength in theology, philosophy, ethics, the humanities, and whole person education. Everything that we do is built around collaboration,” he told the publication.  

McLuhan Meets Silicon Valley — Dr. Paolo Granata and members of the McLuhan Seminar in Creativity and Technology are just back from another successful trip to California’s Silicon Valley, a visit that made a lasting impression on students. Participant Nicole Ling says the trip allowed students to “network with high tech business leaders, CEOs, and venture capitalists on how to turn crisis into new opportunities for startup leaders and tech researchers for a sustainable world in the annual Fujitsu ActivateNow Technology Summit.”  As student Sophie Disch describes it, “investigating and experiencing up close how technology and creativity fosters innovation in the global technology centre that is Silicon Valley was an incredibly inspiring journey. …I was most interested in learning how the symbiosis between institutes, companies, and educational institutions creates a sustained spirit of creativity in Silicon Valley.” 

Kelly Library News — The John M. Kelly Library is delighted to welcome Teresa Wong as its new Digital Archivist. Teresa, who developed her passion for digital preservation at the J. Paul Getty Trust, first joined the Kelly Library as a contract archivist in 2017 and has a background in history, records management, and Critical Information Policy Studies. Teresa will be taking a leading role in developing the Kelly Library’s Digital Preservation Studio. 

A group of senior-level undergraduate students from York University’s Social & Textual Production of Children’s Literature course visited the Kelly Library to tour the Digital Studio and Conservation Studio. The course focuses on the materiality of children’s books as objects and their relationship to digital surrogates. The library’s facilities were able to highlight the relationship between physical and digital preservation of materials and their value as research objects in both scenarios.

Celebrating Black History Month — The Office of the Dean of Students, in collaboration with Campus Ministry, the Registrar’s Office, and various student organizations, hosted a series of events to celebrate Black History Month, including movie nights, a Dance Class with U of T’s Afro Dance Club, Panel’s featuring Black Experiences on campus and in religious spaces, as well as an Open Mic Poetry night featuring Eddie Lartey (@tupacshakespeare), who recently won the Canadian Individual Slam Poetry competition.  

Alumni Networking Social — The office of the Dean of Students, the Registrar’s Office, and Office of Advancement collaborated to host an Alumni Networking Social with more than 20 alums and 60 student attendees who gathered to connect and discuss opportunities for professional development and career planning. 

Supporting Irish Speakers — Anthony Trindle, who is at St. Mike’s this year as an ambassador for the Ireland Canada University Foundation and  teaching Irish Language courses – including the only advanced Irish course in Canada–has been working hard to establish a Toronto branch of Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League), the world’s oldest, largest and most impactful Irish language organization. The local chapter now has 85 members, and 35 turned out recently for an Irish language event. Congratulations, Anthony! 

Lectures on Campus — Celtic Studies professor Pa Sheehan delivered a lecture in the Celtic Studies Speakers’ series entitled Nationalism and Amateurism: Pillars of the Gaelic Athletic Association, while Dr. Catherine Keller of New Jersey’s Drew University delivered a talk on her new book, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances, at this semester’s Elliott Allen Lecture.

Varsity Hero a St. Mike’s Man — The Varsity Blues featured quarterback—and SMC student– Kinsale Philip in a recent profile. A fourth-year philosophy major, Philip is the first person in his family to attend a post-secondary institution. Read how he’s breaking cycles and building bridges. 

A Different Kind of Masking–This year, the highly anticipated– sold out! –masquerade ball returned after a Covid-induced hiatus. Students from the Medieval Studies and Celtic Studies Undergraduate Society joined faculty and friends in Father Madden hall to “party like it was 999” and to celebrate a return to campus.  

Taking to the Stage — The Troubadours, St. Mike’s Drama Society, trod the boards at Hart House Theatre for the first time in three years to put on the Tony Award winning Sondheim musical, Into The Woods, with sold-out shows and rave reviews. It was an absolute success! 

Lion Dance Celebration — We ushered in the Year of the Rabbit with  traditional Lion Dance performance!  The colourful, fun event was a great way to usher in the new year. 

Campus Skating Rink Opens — And finally, if you found yourself with a Skaters’ Waltz ear worm this winter it’s probably because our rink opened up for the winter. The rink, located in the quad, is open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Skates are available to rent through the St. Michael’s College Student Union during office hours. 

Associate Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition, Christianity & Culture Reid Locklin was featured in a U of T news story about his Christianity, Truth and Reconciliation Seminar. The course explores the complex relations of Christianity and Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.

“The purpose of the trip was to spend a week thinking about the residential school system by being on a residential school site, and doing work connected to that site,” says Locklin.

The complete article is available online: https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/bearing-witness-truth-residential-school-trip.

From the arrival of a new principal to our tradition of lighting up the campus in anticipation of Christmas, the fall was a busy time at St. Mike’s. Here are some of the things we celebrated during the months of October, November, and December.

New Principal Dr. Irene Morra Arrives — We offered a heartfelt welcome to Dr. Irene Morra as she assumed her duties on December 1, 2022. A St. Mike’s alumna with many family connections to the university, Morra comes to us from Cardiff University. In explaining why she has chosen to work at St. Mike’s, Morra says, “I’m drawn to St. Michael’s because it epitomizes, for me, the very ideal of a university experience.”

O’Mara, Donovan Receive Honourary Degrees — Two long-standing St. Michael’s professors – Sr. Mechtilde O’Mara, CSJ, and Fr. Daniel Donovan—received honourary degrees at the Faculty of Theology convocation in November.

St. Mike’s Celebrates Fall Convocation — University President David Sylvester presented remarks at the Fall Faculty of Arts & Science Convocation, which saw 139 of St. Michael’s students graduate.

President’s Capstone Awards Granted — Four graduates of St. Michael’s Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability program were awarded President’s Capstone Awards this November: Rosalind Share, Heather Anne McKelvey, Amanda Baron, and Patricia Escobar.

Convocation celebrations for 2020 and 2021 grads — On Dec. 14, St. Michael’s celebrated more than 360 graduates from 2020 and 2021. Grateful thanks to Eagle Feather Bearer Dr. Robert Phillips who led the procession Convocation Hall and to Colin Asuncion  (BA 2011 SMC), the speaker at the graduation celebration. 

Indspire Partnership Launched — St. Mike’s launched its partnership with Indspire to offer awards for Indigenous students. The application deadline for the next round is coming up on Feb 13, 2023.

 St. Michael’s Hosts Vatican Event — In November, the University of St. Michael’s College hosted the Canadian launch of the research findings from a key pillar of Pope Francis’s ongoing synodal process, work that offers a voice to those often invisible and unheard in church communities and society. More than 300 people gathered in person and online on   to hear about a report from an international theological research project, Doing Theology From the Existential Peripheries. The event has been posted on YouTube for those who were unable to attend.

Rosanne Rocchi to Chair Collegium — Toronto lawyer and St. Mike’s alumna Rosanne Rocchi was appointed Chair of St. Michael’s Collegium, chairing her first meeting, in person,  in October. 

Kelly Library Hosts Open House for Students — Staff introduced students to all aspects of our work and collections, from rare book and archival materials to research and writing help services, book preservation techniques, and Loans Desk offerings. We shared highlights on Instagram.

Research Consultation Hit New High — The Kelly Library is hitting new heights in terms of research consultations. Between May and January 1st, librarians conducted 241 research consultations, breaking the 2020 record of 200.

 Our First Christmas Market a Success — Students, staff, faculty, alumni, neighbours, and community partners helped make the first St. Mike’s Community Christmas Market a success. More than 350 people passed through the gates to visit 25 vendor tables, with partial proceeds from sales donated to Romero House. Curious? Have a look at our video of the event. 

Dante Exhibit & Reception, Manuscript Donation — Curated by Noel McFerran, our Dante exhibit won plenty of admirers at the library’s reception for the annual Dante lecture, held November 9th. Just weeks earlier, the Kelly Library was delighted to receive a modern handmade illuminated anastatic copy of Dante’s Inferno, known as Dante Guarneriano, from the Biblioteca Guarneriana in San Daniele del Friuli, one of Italy’s oldest and most venerated public libraries. Highlights of the exhibit are available the Kelly Library website.

Social Events Return to Campus — It’s been great catching up with friends both old and new as events have returned to campus. This fall, we saw the return of the Christmas tea, the Santa Claus parade party and staff Christmas party, all roaring successes. Another big hit was a donor reception honouring longtime coach Lex Bird.

Donovan Collection Work in AGO Exhibition — Babylon, a work familiar to many due to its prominent place in Madden Hall, is currently included in a retrospective of the work of artist Denyse Thomasos. The exhibit runs until Feb. 20 at the AGO. 

Student Life Hopping with Activity — Of course, our students were keen to resume in-person activities, and this fall saw classics such as the return of Kelly’s Korner. The Office of the Dean of Students in collaboration with the Library, Registrar’s office and Campus Ministry hosted a week of events to celebrate wellness on campus including Therapy Dogs, Study Cafes, De-stressor events and more. Our Commuter Dons and Campus Ministry hosted a Jingle Ball on December 1^st with carols, ugly Christmas sweaters, and lots of fun celebrations, while our residence community came together to celebrate the end of term and start of the holidays with formal dinners, where everyone dressed to the nines!

Campus Lights Shine — And, befitting the shortest days of the year, we saw the return of our festive Christmas lights, a bright spot not only for the students and employees of St. Michael’s, but for all who live and work in the neighbourhood.

Best wishes for 2023!

A seasonal display in the lobby of the John M. Kelly Library at the University of St. Michael’s College is proof that the origins of Christmas traditions can spring from surprising places.

Fr. James Farge, CSB, was engaged in doctoral research in Paris in 1972 when some silkscreened wallpaper caught his eye while on a lunch-break visit to a small gallery. That December, inspired by those images on wallpaper, he tried his hand at the linoleum-cut printing process to create his own Christmas cards, and a new tradition was launched.

Today, 20 of the 35 handmade cards he has created over the past 50 years are on display in the lobby of the Kelly Library. Each card bears an image linked to an accompanying scripture passage or a line from a Christmas hymn. Some of the images are original, while others are adaptations of work of artists ranging from the English sculptor Eric Gill, the French artists Braque and Matisse, through to the Canadian artist Gerald Trottier, all duly noted in the messaging.

The process of creating the cards begins with Farge carving out his desired image from a piece of linoleum already glued on a wood block. He then rolls special black ink over what remains of the linoleum and uses a roller, or ‘paten,’ to imprint the image onto coloured wrapping paper that has been carefully selected. The resulting prints are cut out and glued onto card stock, with a handwritten message inserted below or around the image and also inside.

“The hardest part is to find the right wrapping paper because it has to have bright colours and no black lines,” he explains.

It’s a labour of love for Farge, who currently serves as Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS). Over the years, his busy career, which has included serving as the librarian at PIMS, as well as teaching at PIMS, with cross appointments to the University of Toronto’s History Department and the Centre for Mediaeval Studies, and 10 books to his credit, has sometimes kept him too busy to create a new card, given how intensive the process is, as well as the fact that the recipients’ list has at times topped 80 cards.

Included in the Kelly Library display are some of Farge’s favourites, including a colourful image of the three crowns of the Magi, as well as a brilliant silvery eclipse of the sun surrounded by lines from the classic Christmas hymn, O Holy Night.

The latter is particularly special to him, he notes, because it was created a few years after losing his mother and is a nod to a beloved family tradition from his childhood. Every Christmas day the family would gather to sing carols while his mother accompanied them on the piano. The last song was always O Holy Night. The O Holy Night card, he notes, prompted tears in the eyes of some family members that Christmas.

The unique display is located in the case next to the Kelly’s elevator and will be up until the end of the year.

Dr. Irene Morra cites St. Mike’s academic heritage, its intellectual goals, and its emphasis on community as among the reasons she has agreed to serve as the University’s next Principal, the first woman to hold the position. The undergraduate division of USMC, St. Michael’s College is one of seven colleges within the U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science. 

Morra, a long-time Faculty member in English Literature at Cardiff University, is currently a Visiting Professor of English Literature at the University of Toronto. Dr. Morra will assume her role as Principal and will also be appointed to the UTSC (University of Toronto Scarborough) Department of English on December 1, 2022.   

“I’m drawn to St. Michael’s because it epitomizes, for me, the very ideal of a university experience,” says Morra, a St. Michael’s alumna who graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in English Literature, Musicology, and French Literature in 1997. After earning an M.A. from Queen’s University’s Department of English in 1998, she returned to the University of Toronto, earning her PhD from the Department of English, in the Faculty of Arts and Science, in 2002. 

“Academically, (St. Michael’s is) characterized by an exciting heritage and ever-developing culture of intellectual ambition and persistent, interdisciplinary enquiry,” she observes. “This emphasis is inextricable from the commitment of St Michael’s to creating an environment that helps to develop, foster, and support the overall well-being of every individual within its community and beyond: as the very motto over Brennan Hall reminds us — mousike, gymastike, and eusebeia.”  

Morra’s academic and teaching interests are extensive and interdisciplinary. Much of her scholarship encourages new ways of thinking about the ways in which the arts (particularly literature, drama, music, film, and television) engage culturally and aesthetically with each other. It also explores and critiques the wide-ranging artistic, social, and political implications of cultural nationalism, with a particular emphasis on Britain from the nineteenth century to the present day. These various interests have resulted in the publication of four books and a number of scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as Greek and modern drama; intertextuality in the Victorian novel; opera and modernism; British popular music; and the legacy of Shakespeare in contemporary drama, film, and political rhetoric.  

Her current book project is Through a Fog Darkly: Britain Noir, a history and analysis of a distinct British noir aesthetic in literature, drama, film, and the visual arts between the 1920s and late 1950s. She is also working on Britain, Canada, and the Arts: Cultural Exchange as Postwar Renewal, a collaborative study of the origins, strength, and legacy of a hitherto overlooked moment of inter-cultural and cross-national exchange. 

Morra’s teaching and administrative experience is equally broad. She has taught across every year of undergraduate and graduate study and designed over thirty courses on subjects including Shakespeare’s Comedies, Modern Drama, Twentieth-Century American Literature, Reading and Writing Homosexuality in Postwar Britain, and The Film Musical. As Director of Studies for English Literature at Cardiff University, she oversaw the implementation of new degree programs and undertook full oversight and planning of yearly curriculum offerings. She implemented new structures for students and faculty to come together to discuss course design, student well-being, and the management of student physical and mental health across University structures. Beyond Cardiff University, she has organized major collaborative and interdisciplinary events in London (England) that have brought together academics, creative artists, and major cultural institutions from Britain and North America. 

“I find it exciting to be coming to work at a University that is centred on an ideal of community shaped by the diverse gifts and experiences of its individuals and a collective sense of larger social responsibility,” she says. “I don’t see my career goals at St. Mike’s in terms of personal ambition, therefore, but as working to serve this ideal in the midst of ever-changing challenges and opportunities.”  

University President David Sylvester cites Morra as an ideal candidate for the Odette Hall office, to lead the College, and work with Dean Melanie Woodin and other colleagues in the Faculty of Arts & Science to provide students with transformational educational opportunities. 

“Dr. Morra’s academic interests, her administrative talents, and her appreciation for the unique nature of St. Michael’s will serve the University well,” Sylvester says. “As a leader she brings to the role the experience, the insights, and the imagination to further enhance St. Michael’s standing as Canada’s leading Catholic University.” 

Dr. Sylvester also offers thanks to Dr. Nicholas Terpstra for serving as the Interim Principal for the past several months, noting that his presence ensured a smooth and seamless period while the search for the new Principal was conducted. 

About the University of St. Michael’s College 

The University of St. Michael’s College is a Catholic institution of higher learning that is federated with the University of Toronto, one of the world’s leading research universities. St. Michael’s College is the undergraduate division of the USMC, and one of seven colleges within the U of T’s Faculty of Arts and Science.  

The trees are trimmed, the lights are lit, and St. Mike’s is preparing for the most festive season of the year.

Classic traditions are merging with a significant new event this year as we ready for the holiday season with the introduction of St. Mike’s own Christmas Market to our Advent and Christmas activities and events. The market, to be held on Thursday, Dec. 8 from 3-7 pm on Elmsley Lane, will feature both student and alumni vendors selling everything from jewelry to baked goods and crafts. Partial proceeds from the event will be donated to Romero House, a Toronto community of transitional housing and immigration and settlement support for newly arrived refugee claimants.

The market is open to all and will be a nice stopping-off spot for attendees at a seasonal classic beloved by alumni, our annual Christmas tea. The tea is also being held on December 8, from 1:30-3 pm in Fr. Madden Hall, on the ground floor of Carr Hall. Guests will be treated to high tea snacks and carols—and an open invitation to visit the market tables for a little festive window shopping.

The day, which marks the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, begins with Mass in St. Basil’s, with music by St. Basil’s Schola, at 12:10 pm in St. Basil’s Church.

Students have a host of social and spiritual offerings through the season, including a dinner hosted by the Commuter Dons and Campus Ministry for undergraduates on Dec. 1 and two dinners for students in residence, hosted by the Residence Council and Residence Life, on December 6 and 8.

The Student Life Committee in the Faculty of Theology will be offering an Advent Taizé prayer service in the Flahiff Centre chapel at 1:30 pm on Wednesday, November 30. All are welcome. The committee will hold its annual Advent retreat for theology students the following Friday, December 2. Campus Ministry is working with the Mary Ward Centre to host a four-week Advent “retreat in daily life,” with Scripture, prayer, and conversation. The sessions run Mondays, 7-8:30 p.m., from November 28 through to December 19.

Another highlight eagerly awaited is the annual luncheon for staff and faculty, hosted by President David Sylvester, a chance for all of us to come together as a community and enjoy each other’s company—in person!

Even if you can’t make our Christmas Market, there is an open invitation to come to campus and see our beautiful decorations, including a swath of lights—heavy on the blue, of course! – that light our way in these days when the sun sets so early. There’s a reason we are a four-season Oasis in the City, so stop by soon as the lights come down in January.

When Celtic Studies professor Pa Sheehan arrived in Toronto, he soon discovered the city’s vibrant Irish community and found that there were endless stories to tell. 

Recognizing that many people would likely be interested in hearing – and sharing – these stories, he created a podcast called Irish in Toronto, a modern taken on the classic Irish oral tradition, with a focus on the experiences of Irish people living in Canada’s largest city. 

New episodes of the podcast are posted every other Thursday, and topics range from the arts and sports through to academics and, of course, the immigrant experience.  

“I asked myself what I would enjoy hearing about the Irish living abroad and went from there,” says Sheehan, who was born in Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare,  and came to St. Mike’s to teach in 2020 after spending a year at Memorial University of Newfoundland as the Ireland Canada University Foundation Scholar. “I want to hear why they came, what made them stay, what they miss about home and whether their future will be in Canada or in Ireland.” 

While the podcast’s name links it to Toronto, the subject focus will sometimes take a wider view. Recently, for example, Sheehan chatted with John Boylan, who is Deputy Head of Mission at the Irish Embassy in Ottawa. 

The audience potential is as broad as the possible subject matter. Ireland is a country of about 5-million, with another 3.5-million Irish citizens living abroad, Sheehan notes, and Canadian census statistics indicate that more than 4.6-million Canadians claim full or partial Irish ancestry, with many feeling a special bond with the land of their ancestors.  

And, of course, the experience of diaspora is not unique to the Irish, and so many people new to Toronto will find some common ground in Irish in Toronto, no matter who far from Ireland their homelands might be. 

The current podcast grew out of an Irish language podcast Sheehan had launched in 2020, with a particular emphasis on sports and he says he hopes it will offer some information and familiarity to the Irish new to Toronto. 

Sheehan, whose course offerings this year includes Introduction to the Irish Language, The Celts in the Modern World, Sport in Ireland, Traditional Music in Ireland and Scotland, and The Blasket Island Writings, says he would like to see is some of his students become involved in the podcast. He credits St. Mike’s employee and alumna Natalie Barbuzzi with creating his logo.  

“I knew it had to have the CN Tower in it,” he laughs. 

And Sheehan is quick to point out that he’s keen on ensuring an engaging experience, focusing on issues such as sound quality and offering a range of topics. He’s open to advice and keen to hear what people say about his project. 

“I have friends giving me feedback,” he says. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised.” 

Irish in Toronto is available via various digital service platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

The University of St. Michael’s College will host a key event in Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality process with the findings from a North American report commissioned by the Vatican as part of the Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries project to be presented during a panel discussion on campus.

The panel, moderated by Dr. Mark McGowan, will take place Thursday, November 10 from 7-9 p.m. and will also be made available online.

Dr. Darren Dias, OP, an Associate Professor in St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology who also serves as Executive Director of the Toronto School of Theology, was appointed last December by Rome’s Dicastery on Human Integral Development to join the project’s North American working group, with similar exercises conducted around the world. The eight theologians conducting the research listening to the concerns of those on the margins were led by Stan Chu Ilo, a St. Michael’s alumnus who is a professor of World Christianity, Ecclesiology, and African Studies at Chicago’s De Paul University. 

“We have presented our findings in the context of a conversation,” says Dias, who explains that there is an ongoing commitment on the part of the working group–and Pope Francis–to listen to the experience of people, and especially to those who often find themselves without a voice. Each of the six working groups around the world is invited to hold some sort of event to share their initial findings as part of an ongoing conversation/listening process to ensure that the findings are known to the general public. 

The groups were assigned themes from Pope Francis’s teachings such as migration, ecology, and vulnerability. As the North American report explains, “we take readers into the world of so many people whose voices are not often heard in our churches and society,” with members of the working group visiting prisons, refugee and immigration centres, national borders, convents, holding centres, seniors’ residence, rehabilitation centres, churches and social and pastoral centres, to name a few. 

“We are committed to bolstering ways in which theology can support engaging the peripheries,” Dias says. “This is a research project, an academic exercise, and we will report our findings to the bishops, theologians, pastoral workers, and the faithful in service to the Church. This is the business of a Catholic university, to be at the margins. We are committed to bolstering a theology that supports the theological renewal proposed by Pope Francis.” 

Pope Francis launched the synodal process in 2021 to help the Church to listen to its constituents and learn from them. The pope has since extended the window during which the synodal process takes place until 2024. 

Earlier this year the University of St. Michael’s College Synodal Working Group held seven listening circles for students, staff, and faculty, and conducted 25 one-one-one interviews before submitting a report to Rome on the findings. University President David Sylvester presented a brief summary on the methods used at St. Michael’s to Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ, undersecretary and consultor to the Synod at meetings in Rome in June. 

Final reports from the peripheries project are available online: https://migrants-refugees.va/resource-center/publications. 

Watch the video for additional context: Wisdom from the Margins

RSVP to attend in person: https://bit.ly/3CIOLEt

RSVP to participate online: https://bit.ly/3yUKKvw

 Catherine Mulroney, St. Mike’s Editorial Manager, holds a BA and an MDiv from St. Michael’s. She arrived on campus shortly after the statue of St. Michael was installed in the quad and remembers the debate well. As one of the creators of the InsightOut blog, she is happy to note that today’s piece marks the blog’s 170^th entry – on St. Mike’s 170^th anniversary. Happy Michaelmas! 

If asked to name the heart of the St. Mike’s campus, it would be tough to come up with a single answer because there are so many correct responses. I’d start with our classrooms, because that is where the essential work of a university takes place. But the learning that happens in the classroom spills over into the special lectures and social events that take place in Brennan Hall, and into our residences, where friendships are formed, and to the Kelly Library, with its mix of academic services and the welcoming space of the Kelly Café. Every corner of our campus is infused with purpose, dedicated to supporting students as they learn more about themselves and the world — and how they are called to serve that world.  

In the days leading up to our annual celebration of Michaelmas on September 29th, though, I would point to the statue of St. Michael, our patron, in the quad. St. Mike’s archivist Jessica Barr notes that Michael was created by Anne Allardyce and that the 15 ½ ft tall stainless steel work was commissioned by the Collegium to mark the 125^th anniversary of the college. As we celebrate our 170^th anniversary, Michael remains a powerful symbol of our purpose and our place in the world. 

Those who were around in the days when Michael was new to campus often mention that the work prompted much debate. It certainly isn’t the traditional Renaissance Michael, adorned in armor and leather battle skirt, sword held aloft. That the work was contentious doesn’t surprise, because change is often unsettling, and when art is effective it often moves us out of our comfort zones. The lively discussions offering interpretations of Michael speak to our role as a liberal arts university. Our purpose is to encourage students and others to participate in fruitful, often challenging, discussions about our world and our understanding of what we know and what we think we know, helping to clarify and deepen our thinking on topics such as faith and beauty – and conflict. 

Michael can be seen as the heart of St. Mike’s because its distinctive look points not only to our Catholic roots but also to our place as a home to a diverse student population, as the Archangel Michael is recognized across the Abrahamic religions. It is fitting, therefore, that the statue provides great orientation to anyone visiting our campus and offers an ideal meeting spot. Often colleagues crossing the park to attend meetings at the University of Toronto will meet up in the centre of the quad, and it always makes me happy to pass by Michael and see students seated on the statue’s surrounding wall, chatting about everything from a recent lecture through to plans for the weekend.  

Michael also deserves to be considered the heart of the campus because it sits in the middle of the quad, surrounded by both dorm rooms and classrooms, its stark beauty standing in stunning contrast to the green space encircling it. There’s a reason many refer to St. Mike’s as an oasis in the city, as our grounds are an inviting outdoor space not only for students but also for neighbours in the local condos. Whether it’s the students monitoring our bee boxes or groundskeeper John Scarcelli planting milkweed in our rock gardens to encourage monarch butterflies to visit, we are dedicated to creating a sustainable campus both indoors and outdoors, and Michael is ensconced in with the middle of it all. 

But Michael also deserves to be considered the heart of the campus because of how the archangel is depicted. From many angles, the statue looks poised to take flight, a classic metaphor for university life. Our goal as an institution of higher learning is to help our students find their purpose and their goals, helping them learn how to launch into life. At the same time, though, the wings of the statue also suggest protection, safe haven, and welcome, reflective of our commitment to offering students a safe and welcoming place for them to think and learn and wrestle with the great questions of life.  

That welcome, of course, extends to our alumni and friends. As we mark Michaelmas this Thursday, September 29, which is not only the feast of our patron saint but also the day on which many of the world’s great universities mark the beginning of the fall term, everyone is invited to join in the celebrations. St. Mike’s does not exist in isolation, in an aloof ivory tower, but very much as part of the world and we are eager to come together as a community to celebrate that ongoing reality.  We hope to see you then.

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James Roussain is currently Interim Chief Librarian at the John M. Kelly Library. He joined the Library staff in 2017. Prior to that, James worked at Scotiabank, where he was involved in the maintenance and deployment of the corporate records management program. James is a past president of the Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) and the Toronto Area Archivists’ Group (TAAG). In his spare time, he is pursuing a Master of Education in Higher Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). He holds a Master of Information degree from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.

Although we were able to keep our doors open for most of the last school year and come ready with years of experience, the Kelly Library is feeling some back-to-school jitters as we approach the new semester. A lot has changed. What is in store for us this coming year?

The biggest question being asked around the library right now is focused on our students: What will they need? Our role on campus has long been to help our students reach their academic potential. We are here to help by offering research consultations, lending books, media, and technology, and offering a quiet and comfortable place to gather and study. This is our wheelhouse–at least we think it is. After two-plus years of online learning, are we now out of our depth? How have the needs of our incoming students changed?

After more than two years of online learning there is little doubt that our users are now comfortable operating in a wholly new environment than where we left off in the “before times.” As everyone returns to campus this fall, we must be ready to adapt to new expectations of the campus library. For some students—say those who were in Grade 10 in March of 2020—two years of online learning has meant that, for many of them, this may be their first time approaching an academic library. Do they know what we can offer? How can we help them navigate this new and often intimidating world?

We can take comfort in two things. The first is that while we may be nervous about a return to in-person work and meeting the needs of a changed student body, so too are the students. Openly acknowledging the challenges of reacquainting with the university experience is a good icebreaker. Second, the Kelly Library can certainly rely on our slate of services, collections, and in-house expertise. While we look openly to understanding how we can engage students in the academic process, we remain ready to go. Here are a few highlights and updates on where we stand as of September 2022.

Looking to learn from our experience hosting online services, we are restructuring many of our core offerings with an eye to improving accessibility and to meet students where they are (both physically and in an academic sense). All our research and writing consultations will be offered in a hybrid model, where students will be able to choose whether they wish to meet online or in person in the library. Our academic librarians have met with more students over the last two years than since we began tracking these things. There was a clear need to improve accessibility and we hope that being able to meet online going forward will continue this trend. For those who seek a quiet refuge on campus, all our study spaces—including our group study rooms—will be fully open as of September and we welcome all members of our community to come visit and say hello.

We are also looking forward to further welcoming students enrolled within the Regis St. Michael’s federation. While students from all colleges have been welcome to avail themselves of our services and collections, the new federation and the corresponding excitement on campus have caused us to look for

new ways of engaging our community more broadly. For those of you who are new to the Kelly Library, welcome, and we look forward to seeing you around the stacks.

Ultimately, our role on campus—both within the library and more broadly among faculty and staff—is to stay abreast of trends within teaching and learning. The last few years have been a challenge for all of us, perhaps more so for our students, as we faced an accelerated period of change. If anything, this has taught me to stop and listen. Listen to what our students are saying, listen to their frustrations—cameras off is okay!—and seek to understand how we can help them succeed. If we all take a similar stance, I am confident we can smooth the transition to an in-person university experience for all of us. The librarians and staff at the Kelly Library are ready, and we look forward to seeing you all again soon.

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Noted public intellectual Dr. Michael W. Higgins is to be the inaugural Basilian Distinguished Fellow of Contemporary Catholic Thought at the University of St. Michael’s College, University President David Sylvester announced today. 

The three-year appointment, which begins this month, will see the esteemed academic, writer, and university administrator conducting research for books and articles, including a coming book on Pope Francis, as well as delivering an annual lecture.  

“I am delighted that Professor Higgins is joining us at St. Michael’s and look forward to the many contributions he will make to the life of the university,” says Sylvester. “He is a powerful voice articulating the role of Catholic thought in society and the Church, here in Canada and around the world.  We are privileged to have him share his vast knowledge and insights with our students, our faculty, and the broader St. Michael’s community. It is most appropriate that Michael will hold this distinguished fellowship named for the Basilian Fathers, founders of St. Michael’s and educational leaders in Canada for almost to two centuries.” 

For Higgins, the appointment marks a return to St. Michael’s. 

 “What a special joy and sweet symmetry to return to the university setting where it all began: St. Mike’s,” Higgins says. “In the late 1970s I was designated a Special Sessional Lecturer and commenced my fruitful—for me, at least—association with the faculty of Theology and the Christianity and Culture Program.  I welcome the generous offer to return, have many projects on hand—foremost of which is a book on Pope Francis for House of Anansi Press—and look forward to being part of the life of our national leader in Catholic higher education.” 

Higgins is Distinguished Professor of Catholic Thought Emeritus, Sacred Heart University (CT), Senior Fellow of Massey College, author of numerous academic studies and biographies, many award-winning and several translated into French, Italian, German and Norwegian, and a regular contributor to The Tablet (London), Commonweal (US) and The Globe and Mail.  He is an award-winning CBC documentarian, has a doctorate in English and is an Affiliate Professor in the Oblate School of Theology (San Antonio).  He is a past president of three Canadian Catholic universities and has been awarded two honorary doctorates. 
 

The Toronto School of Theology (TST) is pleased to announce the appointment of Rev. Dr. Darren Dias, O.P. as the new Executive Director of TST. A long-time member of the University of St. Michael’s College community where he has served in its Faculty of Theology since 2008, Dr. Dias will assume his duties as Executive Director on September 1, 2022, while continuing his research and teaching as an Associate Professor of Systematic Theology in the newly formed Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology. 

“Dr. Dias is a firm believer in the ecumenical mandate of the Toronto School of Theology and will offer strong leadership to our unique consortium of theologates,” says Rev. Dr. George Smith, CSB, who is Chair of TST’s Board of Trustees. “The board was unanimous in its decision and I am pleased to welcome him to TST.”

The first Faculty member from St. Michael’s to hold the position, Dr. Dias’s appointment to TST comes just as the theological faculties of USMC and Regis College are brought together, an exciting new venture in TST’s 52-year history, notes Regis St. Michael’s Dean, Jaroslav Skira.

“This is a positive development for all,” says Skira.

Dr. Dias earned his doctorate under the supervision of Prof. Robert M. Doran, S.J., where he received the Governor General’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence. Dr. Dias’ current research and publications revolve around interreligious dialogue, relations and decoloniality.

Currently the President of the Canadian Theological Society, he is also now working on a project with Dr. Stephan Van Erp, funded by a Templeton Foundation grant, entitled Metaphysics of Contemplation: Religious Life and Form of Thought.

As a member of St. Michael’s Faculty, Dr. Dias took on numerous administrative roles. At TST, he has served on the Basic Degree Council and the Graduate Studies Council. He also serves on the University of Toronto Faculty Association’s Gender and Equity Committee. In addition, Dr. Dias serves in various ecclesial leadership roles and committees, nationally and internationally. 

Dias succeeds Dr. Pamela Couture, the Jane and Geoffrey Martin Chair in Church and Community at Emmanuel College, who assumed the role of TST’s Executive Director in 2020. Among her leadership accomplishments, Dr. Couture led the TST members through the rigorous UTQAP review process during her tenure.

“I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Pamela Couture, who served TST so well during the extraordinary circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Dr. Smith. “We are grateful for all she has brought to the position.”

The Toronto School of Theology, founded in 1970, is a consortium of seven theological schools, each accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Academic standards are consistent with those of the University of Toronto, which is regularly ranked among the top 25 research universities in the world.

TST’s seven member colleges are: Emmanuel College (United Church of Canada), Knox College (Presbyterian Church in Canada), Regis College (Roman Catholic: Jesuit), St. Augustine’s Seminary (Roman Catholic: Diocesan), University of St. Michael’s College, Faculty of Theology (Roman Catholic: Basilian), University of Trinity College, Faculty of Divinity (Anglican), and Wycliffe College (Anglican, Evangelical).

In addition, TST has connections with three affiliated member institutions: Conrad Grebel University College (Mennonite) at the University of Waterloo, the Institute of Christian Studies (Christian Reformed) in Toronto, and NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community, based from Prince Edward Island.

The TST consortium offers a full range of professional and academic degrees. Some are primarily professional while others are oriented to general theological studies or research. All degree programs operate at the post-baccalaureate level, and a number of degrees are conferred conjointly by the University of Toronto. 

Summer has brought welcome changes to the University of St. Michael’s College campus. As the flowers bloom, and we prepare for the school year, we are taking time to look back on June and July, and share some of our wins, successes and achievements of the season. 

Convocation — We celebrated the Class of 2022 and welcomed this year’s graduates into the St. Mike’s alumni community at our Graduate & Family BBQ hosted by St. Mike’s Alumni Affairs. Elmsley Place provided a beautiful setting to celebrate graduates’ achievements, open Convocation gifts, and enjoy a delicious lunch.

Mentorship program — We are proud to announce that the mentorship program has more than 135 first-year mentees matched with upper-year mentors, with more students signing up daily!

New Hires — We welcomed a number of new hires, who continue to serve and help enrich our students, faculty, and community. Some new hires gathered on July 22 to connect with each other and build new relationships. From left to right: Tamarah Bryan, Erica Figueiredo, Sumeeta Farrukh, Karina Stellato, Nabil Arif, Kevin O’Rourke McColl, Jashan Khokhar.

Dr. Nicholas Terpstra took up the position of St. Michael’s Interim Principal on July 1. Terpstra, whose research examines the intersection of politics, religion, gender, and charity in Renaissance Italy, has taught at the University of Toronto since 1998. His current research is focused on two main areas: a digital mapping project based around Renaissance Florence, and a study of of how different social, cultural, and religious groups used spatial and sensory boundaries to navigate their relations with each other in 16^th-century Tuscany.

Regis-St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology welcomed its new Dean: Dr. Jaroslav Skira, who hosted an open house gathering at Regis on July 13 which was well attended.

Regis College also welcomed its new President, Gordon Rixon, SJ.

New Journeys — We bid Dr. John McLaughlin goodbye as former Dean of the Faculty of Theology. He will continue to serve as a Professor of Old Testament /Hebrew Bible at the Faculty of Theology. We are also celebrating the goodbye (for now) of Mark McGowan, the former Interim Principal at the University of St. Michael’s College from 2020-2022. He is going on sabbatical for research in Ireland. After that, he will continue to serve as Senior Advisor to the President, on Catholic Education, and will return to Celtic Studies and the History Department following his leave.

Renovations — We had some window cleaning at Founders House, which allows our staff to continue to see our Oasis in the City all around us. The Wellness Centre renovation in Elmsley Hall is moving wonderfully and is scheduled to be completed before Labour Day weekend. 

Retirement — We celebrated the retirement of Jean Talman, Program Assistant for the Celtic Studies program, with 32 years of service at the University. Sláinte!

Ukrainian Visitors — MASI is proud to #standwithukraine. On June 29, the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies (MASI) had a planning session to prepare for the hundreds of Ukrainian students expected to arrive from Ukraine at the University of Toronto this fall, thinking about how we can support them at the University of St. Michael’s College.

Welcome Day — On June 11, St. Mike’s opened its doors for an in person for Welcome Day, an opportunity for incoming students and their parents to learn about the university experience and critical first steps as they begin their university journey. Hybrid academic info sessions hosted by the Registrar and Student Services staff, campus tours, booths for student resources at St. Mike’s, and lunch in the Canada Room were some of the activities available to our newest students.

Summer has brought us beautiful weather and gorgeous flowers and trees — and Summer Camp. We currently have educators and students from Rome–seen here with President Sylvester are Alina Axinte and Celestine Cavalcante from The Parioli English School– on campus this summer for the Sol language Camp.

We hope that each of you can visit to see our campus in person, which gets more beautiful every year. There’s a reason St. Mike’s is known as the #Oasisinthecity!

“The most important part of SMC Orientation is showing students that they belong here.” 

-Alessia Baptista and Sophia Poulimenakos, Orientation Coordinators 2022  

Alessia Baptista and Sophia Poulimenakos are this year’s Orientation Coordinators. Alessia is a fourth-year student studying English with minors in French and Anthropology, while Sophia is a fifth year studying Political Science with minors in Sociology and Music History. Orientation holds a special place in their hearts as they both have been a part of orientation since their first day at SMC.  

 When we were told we’d been given the green light to have a fully in-person Orientation this year you could not contain our excitement. Both of us were orientees in the pre-pandemic Orientations (in 2018 for Sophia and 2019 for Alessia) but neither of us knew that this amazing event that changed our lives would be held in an entirely different way when we chose to get involved. When we signed up as leaders in 2020, the world turned upside down, and the need to find community became even greater. Orientation is special: we would argue it’s the most special and important event any university has to offer. It presents an opportunity like no other to show our new students that SMC is their corner of the campus: a corner that belongs to them and will always be there for them. In times like these, when community building is more valuable than ever, we did not take the responsibility of planning the first in-person Orientation in two years lightly.  

If you asked each of us what the most important part of Orientation is, we wouldn’t say the countless nights planning our events schedule, calling numerous vendors, or even the days we spend contemplating the smallest things (we’re overthinkers; what can we say?). The most important part of Orientation is ensuring each student knows that they belong here. No matter where they come from or who they are, SMC has a place for them.

But it’s only so much to make such a bold statement; we had already found our places within this community, so this year we made it a top priority to implement everything we could to ensure everyone can see themselves reflected in this community.  

We started small, right down to our team. Our main concern became who would be the first people welcoming our students to SMC, and we wanted everyone to see themselves reflected in student leadership. We took a lot into consideration, from our younger staff taking on larger roles to ensuring not only those willing to scream at the top of their lungs in front of a crowd would apply for roles, and even encouraging first-time student leaders into our team. Our first step in creating a community where students feel they belong is representing them at the onset. When a team looks and acts like the people they are leading, others feel like leadership not only welcomes them, but needs them to function to their fullest capacity.  

Our next step became looking wider than our own community, even wider than our own country. With both of us being domestic and commuter students, Toronto life came more naturally to us, but that wasn’t the case for many of our international friends. We started holding debriefing sessions with our staff, mainly targeting our international staff members, asking them what we could do better and, honestly, what we weren’t considering, having always lived in Ontario. Resources were huge, from small things such as where to buy groceries or “what even is Presto card?” to much larger things like buying an apartment in the city, applying for a SIN number, or finding mental health and community resources in the city when students felt alone.  

We came to the collective conclusion that SMC Orientation was not doing enough to highlight how hard it is to move your whole life to a new country many incoming students had never seen before. The solution was to implement tours of Toronto, international student workshops built right into our Orientation programming, and a Cultural Club Showcase exceeding what SMC can provide. Designed by international students for international students, we granted our team the ability to take the lead on creating the programming they knew would have helped them. With this, our hope was that it would give our international population the chance to even have just a little more ease in their transition.  

Of course, Orientation is not without tradition, and the green light to have everything in person meant we got to bring not only new ideas to the forefront but also old ones that our older staff had come to miss. With our theme this year being SMC: Treasure Island, the opportunity to bring back events became even easier. With campus tours disguised as campus-wide scavenger hunts, Zumba parties in the Quad encouraging exercise for their treasure hunt adventure ahead of them, and a Formal at the Hockey Hall of Fame showcasing operation “find the crowned gem” – in this case finding the Stanley Cup and taking a picture with it. All this work to find the most important treasure of them all – friendship! Okay, not just friendship, but the chance to be crowned the winner of the O-Cup and have their team’s name immortalized at SMC forever. This year’s theme is reflective of the very thing we wanted to portray for this year’s Orientation, on a treasure hunt you may feel like you’re on your own towards the goal of finding “treasure” – but what you find along the way is people who want to help you and support you and your goals.  

SMC Orientation has always been about team building and finding community, but this year we wanted to make sure that we understand that a community is only as strong as each individual within it. The art of planning the first fully in-person Orientation in two years comes down to combining the new with the old–much like our staff and students–and it becomes our job to ensure everyone finds their place within the place where we found ours.  

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July 29, 2022 — The institutional members of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Canada are pleased that Pope Francis has apologized to the Indigenous Peoples on this Land for the Catholic Church’s role in the operation of residential schools. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #58 requested that the pope apologize to the “Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools” in Canada. 

This apology represents an important and necessary step, but there are many steps that need to be taken by the Catholic Church in the process of reconciliation. These further steps include ensuring all documents are released by religious orders, dioceses, and archdioceses regarding Catholic-operated residential schools to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; delivering upon the $30 million pledge to Indigenous communities to support survivors; and drawing on Indigenous spiritual wisdom and authentic Catholic Social Teaching to bind the wounds of our tragic history and heal the harm inflicted on our common home. 

In unison with the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), we too as the leaders of Canada’s Catholic universities and colleges are also called to work toward reconciliation and implement the Calls to Action. We recognize that we must continue to work to enrich our curriculums with Indigenous knowledge, listen to the guidance offered by Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Indigenous colleagues; and provide added supports and safe spaces for Indigenous students that respect and honour their heritage, including Indigenous spirituality.  

Link to Pope Francis’s Remarks and Apology:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/pope-francis-maskwacis-apology-full-text-1.6531341

About Us 

The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Canada (ACCUC) is an organization of Roman Catholic institutions of higher education located across Canada. The ACCUC acts as the official voice for Catholic higher learning in Canada, as it seeks to spread “the spirit of learning” throughout the country.  

Sincerely,  

Erica Figueiredo is the Recruitment and Enrollment Officer at the Faculty of Theology. Prior to this role, she completed her Master of Divinity degree at Regis College and served as a Director of Campus Ministry for seven years. She has been married to her best friend Carl for over four years.  

I was 22 years old, sitting in my cubicle at the first job I landed after graduating from university. On my computer screen, I found myself oscillating between two tabs: one, an Excel spreadsheet compiling something about reinsurance companies (companies that insure insurance companies, I learned) and the other an application form for a Master of Divinity degree program. I recall the motivations I had to proceed with each tab. On the one hand, I could remain here and continue what likely could have been a quickly rising, lucrative career in the financial district.  Conversely, the prospect of studying theology and entering ministry was something that had not even registered as a possibility until recently.

My mind raced back to the surprising turn of events during the last two years of my undergraduate degree. After a profound experience at a retreat, I finally felt convinced that instead of waiting for someone else to form a Catholic club at my university, the person whom God was calling to do that was me. From there, an unforgettable journey ensued. Once I plucked up the courage to start this club (which only two other students had agreed to support thus far) God led me past the realms of what I thought possible. Within a year I was the inaugural president and co-founder of a vibrant Catholic community. Students from all fields of study came to the meetings with an eagerness to know their faith more deeply. For my part, I couldn’t be anything but honest about the doubts I had also had as a cradle Catholic. But the philosophy student in me sought to tackle these doubts head-on and in a Lewisian style, embark on a journey to conclude if Christianity was true or completely false, in which case I should abandon it entirely. In His own beautiful time, God revealed to me that the former was undeniably true and the quest for truth, beauty and goodness could be found within my Catholic faith instead of looking elsewhere. As I graduated from university and fondly recalled my latter two years of journeying with this group, I also recalled a priest I met telling me that this club could over time develop into a formal campus ministry. Upon graduation, I pushed this thought to the back of my mind and preoccupied myself with finding a ‘normal’ job.

Close your eyes and think about a moment in your life when you had the most joy.

Erica Figueiredo, is featured smiling in a picture above, wearing a white top and glasses, standing against a brick wall.

For me, the reasons were two-fold. The theology degree was where God had been leading me to finally figure out the “why” behind the “what” of Catholic teachings. Furthermore, a theology degree would, in turn, serve to professionally prepare me for a future career in ministry. When I sat in the cubicle of the insurance company thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life I took a piece of advice I heard at a Catholic talk: Close your eyes and think about a moment in your life when you had the most joy. The answer for me was simple–I felt most alive when I was ministering to university students and meeting them in their spiritual joys and doubts. Thus, though I had no idea how to even go about translating this joy into a career, I left my full-time job and began my MDiv studies full-time in the upcoming Fall. Lo and behold, before I could complete my thesis, I was hired as the first Director of Campus Ministry at the exact university where I had founded the Catholic club.

 You now know a little about my journey and what led me to study theology. In serving as the Recruitment and Enrollment Officer at the Faculty of Theology, I hope to be able to help you think about your potential or ongoing journey with theology!

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Dr. Nicholas Terpstra has been appointed Interim Principal of St. Michael’s College effective July 1, 2022. A distinguished scholar of the Renaissance period, Terpstra is a Professor of History at the University of Toronto who has previously served as chair of both the departments of History and Italian Studies.  He will hold the position while the President and the Principal’s Search Committee conclude their work in the appointment of the next Principal of the College. 

Terpstra, whose research examines the intersection of politics, religion, gender, and charity in Renaissance Italy, has taught at the University of Toronto since 1998. His current research is focused on two main areas: a digital mapping project based around Renaissance Florence, and a study of of how different social, cultural, and religious groups used spatial and sensory boundaries to navigate their relations with each other in 16^th-century Tuscany.

“We are delighted to welcome Nick Terpstra to Odette Hall,” says St. Michael’s President David Sylvester. “He is an internationally recognized scholar, a seasoned administrator, and a wonderful colleague known to many here at St. Mike’s.”   

In 2017, he received an honorary Doctor of Sacred Letters degree from Regis College.  

Terpstra will take on the interim post as Professor Mark McGowan completes a two-year appointment in the position this month.  

McGowan, who was previously St. Michael’s Principal from 2002 to 2011, will be on research leave from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. He will continue to serve as Senior Advisor to the President, Catholic Education, and will return to Celtic Studies and the History Department following his leave. 

In advance of National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21, Dr. Mark McGowan, Professor of History and Celtic Studies and the Interim Principal of the University of St. Michael’s College for the 2020-2022 academic years, celebrates the value of a gift made by the Haudenosaune peoples to Irish migrants who arrived in Canada, fleeing the famine.

The Irish Famine (1846-1852) was one of the most traumatic events in modern Irish history. With the repeated failure of the potato crop, upon which two-thirds of Ireland’s 8 million people depended, the social and economic fabric of Irish life was torn to pieces. By the early 1850s, one million people had perished from hunger and disease and another 1.5 million simply left Ireland. One of the unsung episodes of the Famine was the donation of $179 (the figure is disputed) or just over $6,300 USD in todays currency, from the Choctaw Nation in the USA to Irish relief. There is much irony in this act of generosity from the Choctaw. They themselves were destitute having been forced to relocate from their traditional lands in the southeastern United States, to the designated “Indian Territory” in present day Oklahoma. From 1831-1833, this “Trail of Tears” initiated by President Andrew Jackson, himself of Irish descent, caused the deaths of thousands of Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole First Nations. Yet only fifteen years later, the Choctaw, in their own poverty, recognized the plight of the Irish, identified with it, and scraped up what meagre resources they had, to share with their fellow human beings living an ocean away. According to Choctaw historian and writer LeAnne Howe: “buried deeply within the Choctaw body politic is a sense of giving shelter, food, and/or aid to our relatives, friends, and allies. Ima, giving, is a cultural lifeway.” The Irish in Ireland have not forgotten the gift and have erected a large monument, highlighted by a massive circle of eagle feathers, to the Choctaw gift, named Kindred Spirits, near Cork.

What has gone virtually unsung in Canadian history is a similar gift, made by the Haudenosaune peoples to Irish migrants who arrived in Canada, fleeing the famine. In 1847, the traditional Mohawk territory of Hochelaga, then Montreal, was the scene of tremendous suffering and death. Afflicted with typhus and other serious infections, thousands of Irish migrants were herded into hastily built sheds at Point St. Charles, just east of the downtown area. The Mohawk Nation of Kahnawake, south of the city on the St. Lawrence River, immediately responded to the Irish, bringing food from their lands to the sheds. In addition, despite living in poverty themselves, the Mohawks took up a collection for Irish relief in Montreal, raising about $150, or just shy of $5,000 in today’s dollars. This was an enormous sacrifice for a people that had been marginalized and made sedentary near the great Island that once housed their council fires. At the time, Governor General, Lord Elgin, wrote to the Colonial Office indicating that “several Indian tribes expressed a desire to share in relieving the wants of their suffering white brethren.” Little else was said and the great kindness of the Mohawks  was virtually forgotten in Canada. In fact, Canada’s Irish soon became part of the vanguard of settler-Colonial “nation building.” In Ireland, however, both the Lord Mayors of Dublin and Belfast have come to Canada to formally thank the Mohawk people for their great generosity in Ireland’s time of need. For her part Mohawk chief Christine Zachary-Deom, remarked during a Famine commemoration in Montreal, that the Haudenosaune and the Irish shared many qualities—they are “resilient, determined, and tough people.”

It is time that we look less to the “nation building” motifs that have so typified the writing of our history, and look for moments where “Kindred Spirits” prevailed. This might be one other way of seeking truth and affecting reconciliation. Such spirit was evident in 2020, when the Irish national lacrosse team gave up their place at the coming World Games, so that the Iroquois Nationals could play in their place this coming year in Birmingham, Alabama. The Nationals had been denied a place because they, according to the World Games administrators, were not a sovereign nation.

The need for generosity of spirit is ongoing.

St. Michael’s Principal from 2002–2011, Dr. McGowan is an historian renowned for his work on the Catholic Church in Canada and the Great Irish Famine, as well as the lasting impact that the Famine’s mass migration had on Canada.

As spring settled in we eagerly joined in lots of activities in April and May, especially enjoying the return of in-person events! 

This year’s reunion was particularly special as it was the first in-person reunion since 2019. Hundreds of alumni joined us online and in person to learn from faculty lectures, reconnect with classmates, make new friends and celebrate milestone graduation anniversaries together. Highlights include Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie’s keynote speech at the Annual General Meeting, a Young Alumni Pub Quiz held in Yorkville, fascinating faculty lectures by Dr. Michael O’Connor, Dr. Alison More and Dr. Cynthia Cameron, the Double Blue All-Alumni Party and two wonderful brunches – one to celebrate the 50^th graduation anniversary of the Class of 1972, and one to honour this year’s Alway Award winner, Barry McInerney (SMC 8T5), for his contributions at St. Mike’s and beyond. We’re already looking forward to next year’s Reunion!  

Our incredibly popular 1^st-year Gilson Seminar in Faith and Ideas finally made it to Rome for the pinnacle of the program. Piggybacking groups that missed the trip because of the pandemic allowed all students to have a chance to make the tri. Their stay in the Eternal City included a visit to the Vatican, as well as the Vatican Observatory, as well as numerous day trips and lectures. No doubt a great time was had by all. 

Spring saw a great group of doctoral candidates in the Faculty of Theology offer successful thesis defences. Congratulations to Shannon Wylie, Aleksander Krogevoll, and Somyong Lee. 

The Faculty of Theology held its annual commissioning Mass, a beautiful tradition that sees the community come together to pray for graduates as they head out into the world to minister in a variety of ways. 

Congratulations to librarian Silvia Vong. One of her recent articles on information literacy was rated among the top 20 instruction article of the past year by the American Library Association (ALA) Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT). 

A book shifting project on the 2^nd floor is now finished. Spearheaded by librarian Remi Pulwer, the floor’s entire collection was shifted over 12 months of work to create space for new books and titles from our print reference collection. 

To paraphrase Shakespeare, in spring, a young student’s heart turns to …. sports! Construction began on St. Mike’s Athletic Field thanks to the initiative of the St. Michael’s College Student Union (SMCSU), who have funded the project, which includes new fencing, grass, and picnic benches for students to enjoy the outdoor space in our #Oasisinthecity. 

Meanwhile, the SMC Crochet club completed their blanket tapestry to celebrate the community here at St. Michael’s! 

And of course, while spring always leaves us guessing, it arrived in all its splendor on campus, each year a little more beautiful than the one before. There’s a reasons St. Mike’s is known as the #Oasisinthecity! 

The University of St. Michael’s College is pleased to welcome several new employees to campus, an inspiring group who will serve our students and broader community very well.

Nabil B. Arif is the new Assistant Registrar: Advising and Recruitment to the Office of the Registrar and Student Services. Nabil is a U of T and Harvard alumnus who possesses an interdisciplinary academic background that constitutes culture, communication, user experience design, environmental science, public service, social innovation, and management. Nabil served on the University of Toronto Governing Council, Academic Board, and Academic Appeals Committee, alongside numerous student and regional groups, clubs, and societies. For his exemplary service, he was awarded the Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award at U of T in 2015. He is delighted to be a member of the ORSS and looks forward to inviting and inspiring potential and current SMC students.

Tamarah Bryan will join the Communications Department on June 20 in the role of Social and Content Specialist. Tamarah brings experience from Governance Professionals of Canada, where she held a Communications, Content and Events Specialist role. Other roles include a Social Media Coordinator position at Beyondblackwhite.com, and the Associate Brand Manager at Allegion Canada. She completed her Master of Professional Communication degree from Toronto Metropolitan University and her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies at York University. Tamarah has been a voice-over talent for public service announcements, advertisements, and features. She is also passionate about audio editing and podcasting, and crafting the best message and sounds for listeners. In her free time, she enjoys Pilates, ice skating, and learning about different cultures.

The Office of the Registrar and Student Services welcomes Sumeeta Farrukh as a Student Services Assistant. Sumeeta is a graduate of the University of Toronto, having double-majored in Computer Science and Linguistics. It was during her time at U of T that she first found her love of working with students and held a range of positions, including in student government, residence life, and orientation planning. Most recently, Sumeeta has been working with students in admissions consulting, helping them plan for their future academic and professional careers. She is excited to be back at her alma mater in a student services role where she can apply all she learned as a student and in her professional life to serving current SMC students’ needs. Sumeeta will join the ORSS team June 20.

Cassandra Lima earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 2020 and an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree, with Distinction, from U of T in 2018. As an undergraduate, Cassandra was a member of St. Michael’s College and was engaged in various social and academic events. She now wishes to apply her experience as a St. Mike’s student and alumna to the role of Advancement Officer, Engagement, as she strives to bring others the same sense of community that the college brought her.

The Office of the Dean of Students welcomes Joseph Sebastian to the role of Residence Life Intern. Joseph recently completed two years as a senior Residence Don at St. Mike’s, where he distinguished himself as a student life leader. Joseph is a 3rd year PhD candidate at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at U of T and was recently selected as a Vanier Scholar, one of the most prestigious honors for a doctoral student in Canada. Joseph’s undergraduate research has been nationally recognized and resulted in 13 publications and 5 international conference presentations. Outside of academia, Joseph is an avid marathon runner, competitive tennis player, and a violinist.

The Office of Dean of Students is pleased to welcome Karina Stellato as Campus Life Coordinator, as of June 1. Karina recently completed her Bachelor of Education degree at York University, where she was the Lead Coordinator of ‘YU Explore,’ a program that helps students discover the major that best suits their strengths using peer mentorship, academic advising, career counselling, and skills workshops. Prior to York, Karina received her BA and MA in History from the University of Toronto, where she held a variety of student leadership roles here at SMC. She is excited to give back to the community that was so influential to me during her formative years at university. 

Welcome to all! We look forward to seeing everyone on campus.

Dr. Jaroslav Skira, a seasoned academic with extensive administrative experience, has been appointed inaugural Dean of the new Regis-St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology. 

Dr. Skira, whose research interests and expertise include modern Eastern Christian theology, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ecumenical relations and the Second Vatican Council, has been appointed for a five-year term. He assumes his duties on July 1, 2022, when the federation is formally launched. 

Currently a member of the Regis College Faculty, he has also taught at St. Michael’s, including in the undergraduate Christianity and Culture program, the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies (MASI), and the L’viv Theological Academy, precursor to today’s Ukrainian Catholic University, Ukraine.  

From 2011 to 2018 he also served as the Founding Director of the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies at the Toronto School of Theology, the ecumenical federation of Christian theological schools to which both St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology and Regis College belong. 

“I am really delighted to be part of this new chapter in the life of both Regis and St. Michael’s, of further advancing the close collaboration that has been going on for years between these two leading Catholic academic institutions,” says Dr. Skira. “I have great confidence that the new federation will more fruitfully contribute to the theological academy, and that it will enhance student experience and excellence in the various vocations and ministries that our students pursue in the church and in the world.” 

Dr. Skira, who served as interim director of MASI in 2018, will both teach at and supervise some of the institute’s Advanced Degree students. 

His appointment comes following a “strong recommendation from the search committee,” says St. Michael’s President David Sylvester. “The committee was particularly struck by Dr. Skira’s administrative experience and felt he will offer strong leadership as Regis-St. Michael’s is launched. I am delighted to be working with him as we begin this exciting new era.” 

Regis President Thomas Worcester, SJ, agrees.  

“The search committee that sought the right person to serve as the inaugural dean of the Regis-St. Michael’s federation merits gratitude for its astute choice,” says Dr. Worcester. “These are exciting times for Regis and St. Michael’s. With Professor Skira as its dean, our federation can now move ahead in achieving its goals.” 

A Memorandum of Agreement was signed in October, 2021 which provides for the federation of Regis College and the University of St. Michael’s College for the purpose of “forging a world-class centre of excellence in Catholic theological study, whose mission is to promote teaching, research and formation to serve the needs of the Church and society, in Canada and globally.” 

On May 15, 2022, at the invitation of Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Micheál Martin, University of St. Michael’s College Principal Mark McGowan was part of a small group commemorating the 175^th Anniversary of the beginning of the Great Irish Famine.

The memorialization took place on the grounds of the National Famine Museum, Strokestown, County Roscommon, where Mark has focused his research since 2013. He served on the Historical Advisory Panel for the newly renovated museum, soon to re-open in June 2022.

Dr. McGowan is an historian renowned for his work on the Catholic Church in Canada and the Great Irish Famine, as well as the lasting impact that the Famine’s mass migration had on Canada.

He is currently doing research in the archives of the old St. Patrick’s College and the collections of All Hallows College in Maynooth, Ireland.

Photo credit: Jason King, Irish Heritage Trust.

A message from University of St. Michael’s College President David Sylvester

Dear members of the St. Michael’s community, 

I am writing to let you know that Sheril Hook, Dr. William D. Sharpe Chief Librarian and Director of the Archives, will be leaving the University of St. Michael’s College after eight years of wonderful work. Although we are sad to see Sheril go, it is also a time to congratulate her on her new role as Associate Dean, Teaching and Learning at York University Libraries.

Sheril has been an integral part of St. Mike’s and has played a key role in bringing the community together with exceptional services, spaces — including the creation of a conservation studio and digital preservation studio–and the development of collections to support a diversity of intellectual pursuits. 

Upon arrival at St. Mike’s, Sheril initiated the development of a five-year strategic plan that included revitalizing library spaces, building staff capacity, and increasing the staffing complement. She guided the library toward projects that could enhance both the student and faculty experience while also increasing the visibility of and the ability to care for special collections.  

Aligning with institutional priorities and ensuring staff capacity for shared leadership at Kelly Library, Sheril collaborated across divisions to create a robust annual lecture and exhibit program; created a new position for an outreach archivist that led to greater student use of special collections and advocated successfully for a new position for a conservator that led to the development of a front-of-house conservation studio to allow for both experiential learning opportunities as well as a high standard of care for the collection. Revitalizing the Kelly Print Studio led to the creation of beautifully designed letterpress publications that linked to the academic programs at St. Mike’s and involved the broader community in print production. With existing donations, generous support from the Friends of the Kelly Library, and feedback and funding from St. Michael’s College Student Union, Sheril increased and revitalized all seating in the library, added five group study rooms—the first group study rooms in Kelly, and refurbished existing spaces to create research and writing consultation rooms; purchased equipment to outfit the new digital preservation studio to digitize, store, and provide e-access to special collections; and built a new, enlarged space to house the rare book collection, paving the way for a new student-focused multi-use space on the first floor of the library. 

I know that her colleagues, including those at the larger University of Toronto Libraries system, will miss her strategic insights and strong commitment to student learning and success.  

Sheril’s last day at St. Mike’s is May 13, 2022. We expect to provide information about how the transition will be handled in the days ahead.  

Dr. David Sylvester is the 8th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. A professor of medieval social and economic history, he holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Fordham University, New York City and has taught for three decades in universities in Canada and the United States.

Finding Hope When the Rains Come

The academic term is at an end. We are heading into the holidays. Christmas is but a week away, and this has been a year like no other…except for, well, maybe last year.

Yes, it’s been another long year of starts and stops, another year of disappointments, another year of, “we had so many plans, what happened?”

Or, as the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney complains in his poem Holly, “we went looking for Christmas holly and it poured rain, and we got really soaked”:

it should have snowed.

But here we are in the fourth week of Advent, preparing to celebrate the coming holidays. And, our hope is not diminished. This year, like last, St. Mike’s found new ways to work, to study and to live together. I am most grateful for my colleagues, our students, our trustees, and our alumni for the love, kindness, and creativity that made this such a successful year on Clover Hill. The fruits of their labours are many.

Or, if I may return to Seamus Heaney again, as he always has the best words:

Now here I am, in a room that is decked
With the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff.

And I almost forgot what it’s like
To be wet to the skin or longing for snow.

May all of you enjoy a safe and happy holiday, and may you and your family enjoy many blessings together in the New Year.

From all of us here at the University of St. Michael’s College.

David Sylvester

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St. Michael’s new Executive Director of Advancement brings extensive fundraising experience at one of the country’s top universities to her new role.

Lisa Gleva, who begins her duties at the University of St. Michael’s College on December 13, has worked in York University’s Division of Advancement since 2005, most recently as the Executive Director of Principal Giving, Donor Relationships and Stewardship.

“Lisa is a talented addition to our team and will offer our Department of Advancement and Alumni Affairs strong leadership and a depth of expertise,” says University President David Sylvester. “With her clear understanding of the unique issues and opportunities of university life Lisa will serve St. Mike’s well.”

Gleva says she is honoured to be taking up her new position, calling St. Michael’s an exceptional university dedicated to providing students with an extraordinary education within a welcoming, diverse community.

“I focus both professionally and personally on our collective wellbeing as a community, and I’m excited to engage with students, alumni, faculty, staff and donors as we work together as a powerful voice for social and environmental justice and the advancement of the common good,” she says.

“Investing in the student experience has incredible returns,” Gleva adds. “With a degree from one of the top-ranked universities in the world, infused with compassion and bolstered by a vibrant, tight-knit community and lifelong relationships, our graduates will be successful leaders whose commitment to service sets them apart.”

Prior to York University, she worked at United Way and focused on building resilience within the social services sector in York Region.  

Gleva also has an extensive volunteer life. She currently serves on the board of Cedar Centre, a charity that provides therapy for people who have experienced childhood trauma, and spent three years as a member of the Ethics Resources Committee of the AFP Greater Toronto Chapter.

She also serves on the board of Friends of Killarney Park, enjoying the provincial park as a place to hike and reflect.

Fr. Andrew Summerson, S.Th.D., is an Assistant Professor of Greek Patristics with the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in the Faculty of Theology in the University of St. Michael’s College.

History and Theology as Contemporary Wisdom from the Ancient Desert

In Athanasius of Alexandria’s 4th century “best seller,” Life of Anthony, we are told that upon his parents’ death, he begins soul-searching. An interior inquietude overtakes him and he starts to wonder about the writings of the New Testament. He ponders the apostles’ single-hearted mission to leave everything and follow Christ. He also considers the life of the early Church documented in Acts, where the company of believers laid everything at the apostles’ feet and put it in service of others (Acts 4:35). Anthony’s mental ruminations are confirmed one day in church, when he hears the proclamation of the Lord’s words to the rich man in the Gospel: “Sell everything you have and give to the poor” (Mt 19:21). With this, Anthony offloads his inheritance and takes to the desert. He learns from elder ascetics, practices prayer unceasingly, wrestles with the devil, keeps vigil in caves, heals the sick, and confutes philosophers.

Athanasius explains that Anthony, “a man in the flesh,” is assisted in all these efforts by the “Lord who for our sakes became flesh.” This is a rather loaded statement that needs untangling. Athanasius, the writer of the Life of Anthony, is also one of the greatest theological minds of the early Church, who forcefully defended the faith articulated at Nicaea in 325. The council aimed to narrate precisely who is this “Lord who for our sakes became flesh.” This Lord is of one substance (homoousios) with the Father, a detail still recited every Sunday in the Nicene Creed today, or in the Byzantine tradition, to which I belong, it is sung at every Divine Liturgy.

What is at stake for Athanasius in this doctrinal battle is not simply an ethereal philosophical dispute about the nature of God but rather the accurate reception of God’s revelation to us “according to the Scriptures.” Nicaea means the difference between worshiping a false idol or worshiping the living God, who providentially connects the dots between Anthony’s initial interior stirrings and the public proclamation of the Gospel. The Life of Anthony details the process of the ascetic’s transformation from a quiet kid to a heroic saint, “initiated in the mysteries and filled with the spirit of God.”

Nicene theology creates the conditions for more Anthonys to spring forth in this world. Anthony has internalized Nicaea and proclaims it in his own flesh. If Jesus is a human creature, he is no more than a model to imitate. On the other hand, if Jesus is God who takes on a human nature, he offers human nature a new possibility: to bear “all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19).

Perhaps Athanasius’ greatest contribution as a theologian is his ability to bridge the gap between the heights of doctrinal controversy and grassroots spirituality. As a historical theologian, I specialize in gaps, particularly gaps between the past and the present. My principal sources are figures from the first millennium. I engage them precisely because it is here, in the cauldron of the first millennium, the language for naming God’s activity in Scripture is formulated for ages to come. These writers developed a grammar that Christians are heirs to. Truthfully, one can speak a language without knowing the grammar. Infants surely begin to formulate sentences long before they can diagram the contents of their principal parts. But learning grammar shows us the sheer power of language, exposing the heights and depths of what words can do when used to their full potential. For us, the grammar of the Nicene Creed may just be a common place prayer that is muttered through Mass. For Athanasius, the creed is the very condition that provides a way for saints to emerge in this world, charged with the power that comes from “the Lord who was made flesh.”

We are continually tempted to forget how we learned Christian language. In our own speaking, we lean on clichés, phrases coined by others so often repeated they have lost their meaning. Such repetition excuses us from the burden of thinking. One must not forget that clichés come about in the first place because they are powerful statements that conjure up popular agreement and therefore are worth repeating. Studying the sources of Christian language ensures that the truths of the faith do not become vacuous statements but remain powerful and transformative. When properly interrogated, reading the texts of the ancient dead ensures that we can hear them as clearly as Anthony did the Scriptures. Historical theology aims at the same results. Without access to these sources, we cut the Christian tradition short. We miss the power of its language, capable of cultivating Anthonys, whose life captivated a 4th century crowd and is worth the hard work of making sense of in the 21st.

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The following was written by University of St. Michael’s College Interim Principal Mark McGowan as part of his weekly message to his staff.

Each Name was a Life

This missive comes a few days earlier than usual… Normally I would not disturb you during Reading Week, but Remembrance Day is this week, and I could not let it pass without some thoughts about the College and the students and alumni who lost their lives in the major wars of the 20th century. Each year I try to attend our ceremonies of remembrance at the Slype, the walkway between More and Fisher Houses, which is where the names of those who “fell” are inscribed. I regret that I am unable to be on campus tomorrow but would like to leave you with a few thoughts about the “last names.” 

The last name on the list of young men commemorated for their service in World War I is Fred Webster. Early in my teaching career at SMC, I had a mature student in my history of Christianity class who offered me a story about his mother’s favourite uncle, this same Fred Webster, who coincidentally was part of a much larger research project in which I was engaged. Fred was a student at St. Michael’s College who suffered from a debilitating heart condition. When he tried to enlist locally in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, he was refused on medical grounds. He tried many times to join his classmates overseas, but every time the refrain from recruiters was the same: rejection. On the streets of Toronto, Fred was berated by passersby as a young man who was a shirker, not doing his bit for “King and Country.” They had no idea of the story of his repeated attempts to enlist and his repeated rejections. In January 1918, however, when the Allies were desperate for reinforcements in a war that was not going very well, Fred was accepted and was sent to the military training camp near the Toronto Exhibition grounds. As a well-educated recruit who worked in banking, Fred was promoted to Acting Sergeant in March. During the mandatory swim near Hanlan’s Point, however, Fred had a massive heart attack and drowned. At age 24, his war ended in Canada. 

When I arrived at St. Michael’s in 1991, I attended my first Remembrance Day ceremony at the Slype. Among the group of students and Faculty I noticed a woman standing at attention close to the opening of the Memorial. She remained for some time after the ceremony had ended. In the months to come I saw her from a distance, from time to time, in Alumni Hall. The following year, on November 11, she was at the Slype again. I asked my colleague, Mimi Marrocco, who this older lady was, standing at a distance from the group. Mimi told me her name was Sister Mary Zimmerman, CSJ. She had been the Executive Director of St. Michael’s Hospital (1963–85) and was currently assisting Father Bob Madden in Alumni Affairs. Then Mimi added that she came here every year to remember her husband, Maurice Dier Zimmerman, the last name on the World War II list. An alumna of SMC, Bernice Veronica Lannan (Sr. Mary) met Maurice at St. Basil’s Parish, where she was actively engaged in parish activities. They were married in 1943 at St. Basil’s, just before Maurice shipped out with the RCAF. He never returned; his squadron was stationed in the Middle East, and he was declared missing, later killed in action, when his plane crashed during a raid over Greece in July 1944. Four years later, after having worked in the pharmacy at St. Michael’s Hospital, the widowed Bernice (Sr. Mary) decided to join the Sisters of St. Joseph where she had a distinguished career, including an associate professorship in U of T’s Faculty of Medicine. She insisted on keeping her married name in religious life. Each year she ventured to the Slype to honour her Maurice. She died in 1994, faithful to a love that never ceased. 

Every time I pass through the Slype, I remind myself: Each name was a life. Each life was a story. Lest we forget. 

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Joanne Granata is a Writing Instructor in the University of St. Michael’s College Writing Centre and a University of St. Michael’s College graduate.

A Flicker of Hope in the Darkness

September 14 of this year marked the 700^th anniversary of the death of Italy’s “sommo poeta”— Dante Alighieri. As an Italian Studies instructor, and with this week being the International Week of Italian Language and Culture, I would be remiss not to mention or reflect upon this important anniversary. When I was a St. Michael’s student, I studied Dante in many of my undergraduate Italian Studies courses, and, later, he became the topic of some of my own articles and presentations as a graduate student. Now, many years later, Dante’s seminal text on the journey from Hell to Heaven takes on a new meaning for me as a Writing Instructor in the USMC Writing Centre.

Although the central motif in Dante’s Commedia is man’s pilgrimage to God, allow me some poetic license as I reflect on my experiences as a Writing Instructor through the lens of Dante’s Commedia. Dante begins by expressing a sentiment of being lost in a “shadowed forest” (Inf.1.2), a “savage forest, dense and difficult” (Inf.1.5). Often, as a writer, we too can be just like Dante, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of an assignment, lost in the dense forest of our thoughts. While writing this piece, I found myself reminiscing about my own undergraduate days, spending many late nights with my peers in the Kelly Library, lost, so to speak, in the mountain of books and notes and papers strewn across my favourite table, writing research papers, trying to find my way back to the “path that does not stray” (Inf. 1.3). Now, as a Writing Instructor in this same building, I assist students with some of these same difficulties, some of whom are taking the same courses I took as an undergrad. The irony is not lost on me. I can’t help but smile and think, ‘funny how life works sometimes’.

As a Writing Instructor, I have the privilege of meeting many exceptional students with great minds, who, like all of us, have different approaches to research and writing, to their education, and to life in general. Many come to the Writing Centre and are often unsure of what to do, fearful to make a mistake or to do “poorly”. They are, in a sense, like Dante: faced with a long and difficult journey, and afraid, “hindered in [their] path along that lonely hillside” (Inf. 2.63), but still eager and willing to make that journey up the mountain to reach their desired destination.

Like Dante, the students I see slowly begin to find a way out of the “savage forest, dense and difficult” (Inf.1.5); they begin to recognize the “error of their ways”, so to speak, and, with a little gentle nudge here and there by their Virgilian guides, begin to see a path through to the light. Many receive the reassurance they were seeking or are gently prompted into a successful brainstorming session that leaves them filled with satisfaction. After an appointment perhaps their understanding of an assignment isn’t as black-and-white as they had liked; perhaps it is more grey than when they arrived, but, much like Dante, they “[grow] to be as one who, while he wants what is not his, is satisfied with hope” (Par. 23.13). That hope, that “certain expectation/of future glory […] the result/of God’s grace and of merit we have earned” (Par. 25.67–69) often instills a sense of confidence within our students. They leave their appointment having learned a new skill or having worked out a major problem in their writing. More importantly, they leave with the knowledge that they can succeed, that they can exit that dark forest and reach the top of Dante’s sunlit mountain.

What is so interesting is that of course the sense of satisfaction or hope does not remain solely with the student, but spreads throughout the community; our students impart it onto their colleagues, and onto us, their Writing Instructors. I am often amazed and inspired by the perseverance and dedication of many of our students; although they come to me for help, it is often they who help me. They share their newfound hope and energy with me, and then I am able to take that hope and that sense of having helped and guided someone along the “right path” into my next appointment and into the next. After such a long struggle with our global pandemic, this flicker of hope, in the most unexpected of places, becomes a reminder that, just like Dante’s journey, there is always light in the darkness.

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Laurie Morris is Communications Director at the University of St. Michael’s College. She holds a B.A. in English from U of T and a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from St. Michael’s. Laurie lived in New York from 1998 until 2014.

Twenty Years Since that Terrible Rainy Day

Saturday, September 11 marked 20 years since the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. Living at that time in the West Village and working for the Associated Press (AP), I was a first-hand witness to the devastating story as it unfolded.

I’m also someone who didn’t know anyone who died or lost someone that day. But even 20 years later I remember small details that bring back a feeling of loss.

There were obvious losses that Tuesday. I heard the first plane hit the Towers as I was leaving my apartment to catch the subway to Rockefeller Center where the AP office was located. I thought it was a huge car crash and glanced down Hudson St. but saw nothing. By the time I got to the subway station at 6^th Avenue, people were standing in the street. I joined them, again looking for the crash I’d heard minutes earlier. It was only when I looked up instead of down that I saw flames coming out of the World Trade Centre. I knew enough to call my dad to share the news with my family, and to let them know I was well out of harm’s way.

Inside the offices at AP, we watched the breaking news “A-wire” stories tracking missing planes while the local news wire ran reports of ambulances with body bags being stationed along the West Side highway. At the same time, like everyone else, we watched events play out on television, complete with audio from phone calls made by people from inside the towers.

As unbelievable as it may seem, when the first tower fell, I felt a slight wave of relief. The unimaginable had happened, signaling that the worst was over. We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

After the second tower fell, we were told to evacuate our building since it was unclear if there were other landmark buildings that might be targets. The journalists on the news floor stayed put. I walked a long, hot 60 blocks home, crossing through an eerily empty Times Square where the jumbo screens were filled by fires and the smouldering wreckage.

Closer to home, people started gathering at St. Vincent’s Hospital to post photos and photocopies of those who had gone missing.

Over the next 48 hours, there were enough posters to fill an entire brick wall outside the hospital. And in the details on those posters, there was a deep sense of loss—the clothes people were wearing, the company they worked for or the WTC floor they worked on, the time of last contact or sighting—and the best number to call when they were found or identified. There still seemed to be possibility.

On Friday, September 14, it was no longer sunny and hot in New York. I remember waking up to the sound of pouring rain and flipping on the news to see the latest from Ground Zero. The rain was good for the fires, which continued to burn, but for me, it evoked a sense of loss that was beyond any I’d felt to that point. The shock and adrenaline brought on by the crisis was waning and the magnitude of the tragedy was settling in. Three days since the attacks, there was no longer possibility.  

Tuesday, September 14, 2021 marks 20 years since that terrible rainy day. My heart still goes out to people I never knew—the first responders, the family and friends of the 2,977 people who died and the many others around the world who experienced their own sense of loss.

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Mary E. Hess is Professor of Educational Leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. During the 2016-2017 academic year she held the Patrick and Barbara Keenan Visiting Chair in Religious Education at the University of St. Michael’s College, in the University of Toronto. Her most recent book, co-authored with Stephen S. Brookfield, is Becoming a White Antiracist: A Practical Guide for Educators, Leaders, and Activists (Stylus Publications, 2021).

Living into the Light

I’ve lived in St. Paul, Minnesota for more than two decades. St. Paul is a deeply Catholic city, and I live in a parochial space that has a vibrant K12 school, as well as many, many Catholic organizations which have long been active.

The last five years, however, have been a time of great urgency and anguish, as those of us who are white and middle class have finally begun to listen deeply to our neighbors who do not resemble us. The world joined us in that listening in May of 2020, when a video recording of George Floyd being murdered in the city next door to us, by a Minneapolis police officer, was shared around the globe.

That new awareness brought along with it a deep recognition of how blindly we—and here I mean to speak only of my white and middle-class neighbors—how blindly we accepted the dominant stories of a zero-sum world in which racism was only a personal attitude, and justice meant being “color blind.” I share that now, to offer context for the rest of what I want to say here.

Pope Francis wrote in Laudato ‘Si that a key conviction of our faith is that we have: “an awareness that each creature reflects something of God and has a message to convey to us, and the security that Christ has taken unto himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his affection and penetrating it with his light (221)”.

What can it mean to live into that awareness and that light—in all the rich meanings of those words? And how might persons who look white, and thus benefit from racialization, participate deeply in the kind of communion to which our faith witnesses?

I have come to believe that doing so requires being actively involved with learning how to dismantle racism, learning what it means to inhabit an anti-racist stance in the world. I don’t think this is a place I can ever fully come to, a stance that I ever fully achieve, but rather it is something into which I am always growing, always seeking, always yearning towards, always becoming.

Much of the learning I have done in the past decades in this journey has to do with recognizing a few key insights.

First, whether I want to or not, whether I understand this or not, whether I choose to draw on it or not, I live within a world defined by white privilege. That doesn’t mean that various other aspects of who I am might not be challenged or oppressed, but it means that my whiteness prevents me from seeing, from experiencing, much of what my neighbors who do not resemble me, live with in daily ways. Rather than seeking to deny that I participate in racism, I need to stop, take a deep breath, and learn what that means. A really good book that spells this out is Heather McGhee’s Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. While her book was written in the US context, I believe it has resonance for the broader North American continent.

Second, doing this work never ends, and I have grown to understand that as a white person, I have two choices: I can do it imperfectly, or not at all. And so I choose to try, and to realize that I will often fall down, mess up, make mistakes, and need to start again. Here is where my faith is a crucial resource, because I have learned what it means to repent, to seek forgiveness, to accept God’s grace, and to take the next step. There is much to lament about how the Catholic hierarchy has engaged with racism, but there is also much to draw upon—and here the many documents, sermons, hymns, and catechetical resources offer us so much! I start with the work of theologians Fr. Bryan Massengale and Dr. Shawn Copeland, but many dioceses have also put together excellent materials.

Third, this is collective, systemic work. It is never only personal and individual. Here again, my faith sustains me because it invites me to see all of the many ways in which human brokenness—human sin—puts stumbling blocks in my path. Yet it also invites me to see all of the ways in which God has created us in deep interdependence. We are created for each other; we are drawn into relationship. When one hurts, we all hurt. We need to be open to seeing and hearing and feeling that hurt. There is deep wisdom in our tradition, wisdom forged through centuries of pain and anguish, wisdom that invites us into lament, and from lament into remembering whose we are, to whom we belong. We are a communal people, and “re-membering”—putting back together the Body of Christ —that communion means that we can look to collective action, to practices that challenge systemic and structural forms of racism. Humans have created racism, and humans can deconstruct it and live into God’s light.

Fourth, breath matters. I often remind my students that we can live for many days without food, and even a day or two without water, but we cannot live for even 10 minutes without breath. In an era in which “I can’t breathe” resonates not only due to police brutality, but also through a COVID-19 pandemic, and in the midst of climate catastrophe, remembering to breathe, to slow down, to feel God’s love in our lives in the midst of trauma – that is an essential practice. It is also an ancient form of contemplative prayer. Whenever I feel particularly anxious or defensive or even despairing, I stop, I slow down my breath, and I pray this short prayer based on one verse from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God (inhale/exhale slowly), Be still and know that I am (inhale/exhale slowly), Be still and know (inhale/exhale slowly), Be still (inhale/exhale slowly), Be.”

Fifth, and finally (at least for this moment), learning to be anti-racist as a person who looks white means leaning into relationships of accountability. To whom am I looking for leadership? Am I hearing the voices of communities which have been oppressed? One of the glimpses of hope I draw, as a US person, from the Canadian context, is that acknowledging the painful history of residential schools can open up new avenues of relationship and hope. Here in Minnesota we have a Lieutenant Governor who is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and she is leading us in the hard work of truth and reconciliation. I draw comfort from the years long work of Canada’s TRC, and I try to live in a posture of learning and humility. I have been startled by how energizing and hope-filled that work can be, even in the midst of the deep pain and anguish to which I need to be present.

I return, now, to the reminder from Pope Francis with which I began, that a key conviction of our faith is: “an awareness that each creature reflects something of God and has a message to convey to us, and the security that Christ has taken unto himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his affection and penetrating it with his light (221)”.

May Christ’s light continue to illumine our anguish, and draw us ever more deeply into God’s love.

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Dr. Cynthia Cameron is the newly appointed Keenan Chair of Religious Education and Assistant Professor of Religious Education in the Faculty of Theology. Prior to coming to St. Mike’s, she taught undergraduate students at Rivier University and graduate students at Boston College and Loyola University New Orleans. Her research focuses on adolescence, particularly female adolescence, and the history and mission of Catholic schools.

Pandemic Safety and the Classroom

“I don’t want to see my students as threats.” 

This was the anguished comment from a Catholic high school theology teacher in a graduate religious education course last summer, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were discussing the challenges and opportunities presented by teaching during the pandemic and, in particular, the possibility of Catholic high schools returning to face-to-face instruction in the fall of 2021. This student’s entreaty struck a chord with the class. 

On some level, this reflects a common problem in schools. The busyness of planning for in-person teaching leads to a tendency to treat students as pieces in a complex puzzle. The task for educators is to figure out how to arrange the pieces so that students can be in classrooms efficiently and, now, safely. A rather de-humanizing perspective on the young people in our classrooms. 

But, more importantly, these teachers were reflecting on how the push to in-person instruction— often decided on without much input from the teachers themselves—made them feel unsafe. The students, as potential carriers of the coronavirus, were threats to the physical safety of teachers.  At this point in the pandemic, at least in the United States, it seemed that children and adolescents contracted the virus at lower rates and tended to suffer milder cases of COVID when infected. Which was, of course, good news. However, teachers are adults and, as such, were at greater risk from the virus. And, teachers were being asked to take on this significant risk in order to teach in a face-to-face environment. All over the US, some teachers decided the risk was too great, that their students were a threat, and some even left their jobs. 

For the students in my class—all dedicated, but relatively novice, Catholic high school teachers—this led to a fascinating conversation about how we think about, talk about, and treat the adolescent students in our classrooms in a time of pandemic. What happens when we think about our students as threats? How can this not change the ways that we relate to them? And how can Catholic theological anthropology guide us in resisting this kind of thinking?

Theological anthropology is the branch of theology that wonders about what it means to be a human person created by God and in relationship with God and others. This is where the Church reflects on the meaning of our humanity. The two doctrines that most often come up in contemporary Catholic theological anthropology are that we are created in God’s image and that God took on human form in the person of Jesus. The first of these doctrines—that we are created in God’s image (Genesis 2:26-27)—suggests to us that there is something about humanity that reflects the reality of the divine, that we are like God in some way, that humans reveal in some small and imperfect way what God might be like. And, importantly, since God created humanity in God’s own image, humanity is fundamentally good. The second doctrine—that God became human in Jesus (John 1:14)—also points to this fundamental goodness in humanity. For God to take on the human condition suggests that God thinks highly enough of the human condition to be concerned for humanity. In Jesus, God is telling us that humanity is taken on by God, loved by God, and saved by God. So, drawing from these two doctrines, we can be comfortable saying that humans are created by God and loved by God and that there is goodness in our humanity.

But humans have historically struggled to act as if we are fundamentally good. We don’t always treat one another and ourselves in ways that reflect our theological commitments to the fundamental goodness of humanity. And, since teachers, even Catholic school teachers, can fall into this trap just as easily as anyone else, I often ask them to reflect on this question: “Are your students basically good or basically bad? Are they good kids who occasionally mess up or are they little monsters who need to be whipped into shape?” How a teacher answers this question reveals a great deal about how they will relate to their students. And, in my experience, the vast majority of teachers view their students as fundamentally good human beings, even when they are difficult or annoying.

But, how is this positive vision of the human person disrupted when the students become unintentional threats to the lives of the teacher? How are we to maintain and live out a conviction that they are fundamentally good if we are afraid of them? Does our conviction that they are fundamentally good mean that we have to ignore the threat that they may pose?

I don’t have any answers for my student or for any of us who found ourselves fearing our fellow human beings and the risk that they posed to us simply by existing alongside of us. On the one hand, the gradual reopening of things that has accompanied increasing vaccination rates in 2021 has started to lessen the need to think of my fellow human beings as a threat to my health and safety. On the other hand, as it has done with so many other issues, the pandemic has revealed to us the ways that we fail to live up to our theological ideals. The fact that we did think of our fellow human beings as threats is a challenge to all of us to think about what it means to love our fellow human beings, who are created by and loved by God, who are fundamentally good.

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The University of St. Michael’s College offers its best wishes to Lisa Rae, who is leaving the University to accept a position with Addictions & Mental Health Ontario (AMHO).

Rae, who currently serves as Director of St. Michael’s Office of the President and Secretary to Collegium, will begin her new role as AMHO’s Director of Public Affairs in early August.

“We are, of course, very sorry to see Lisa leave St. Michael’s, but it is exciting to think that such a gifted person will fill this crucially important role in our community and have an impact provincially,” says President David Sylvester. “Lisa’s ability to lead on complex policy initiatives has served St. Michael’s very well. Her leadership role on bringing the St. Mike’s 180 strategic plan to life and the ongoing renewal of university governance policies and procedures means she leaves St. Michael’s in a stronger place than when she came. It is great to know that AMHO will have such an asset at a time when we are all increasingly challenged by the issues surrounding mental health and addiction.”

“This truly is bittersweet for me.” says Rae. “I have truly enjoyed my time at St. Michael’s and getting to know the people that make this community so resilient. I am genuinely excited for the campus reopening this fall, and the university’s path of renewal.”

Rae’s input in Collegium matters has been invaluable, notes Paul Harris, who serves as Chair of the University’s governing board.

“Lisa’s appreciation for process and her understanding of governance issues have been influential in making the Collegium more efficient, and we are especially appreciative of her efforts to introduce ongoing board education. We are grateful for all her work,” Harris says.

Rae joined the University in 2019 with an extensive background in strategic leadership and stakeholder engagement in the post-secondary field. Her role included overseeing the operations of the President’s Office and supporting in identifying priority issues, facilitating planning, and driving project-based initiatives across the University.

AMHO represents more than 200 mental health and addiction organizations across Ontario, with a goal of building a comprehensive, accessible system of addiction and mental health care in communities across the province.

A search will be launched in the coming weeks.

Reid B. Locklin is Associate Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition, a joint appointment at St. Michael’s College and the University of Toronto Department of Religion. His research and writing focus mainly on Hindu-Christian Studies and Catholic theologies of interreligious dialogue. He lives on the Rouge Tract of Williams Treaty Territory, which is the subject of a specific land claim submitted by the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Re-Remembering the Land

I was hired to teach in St. Mike’s interdisciplinary Christianity and Culture programme in 2004. At least since that time, the story of the University has always been told in a fairly straightforward way:

St. Michael’s was founded in 1852 by Bishop Armande de Charbonnel, the second Bishop of Toronto, who entrusted the school to his childhood teachers—the Basilian Fathers of Annonay, France—in 1853. The University would continue to grow, becoming a leading centre of international scholarship within a century of its founding.

When asked about the particular tract of land—Clover Hill—on which the University sits, presidents and chancellors will push the story back one frame, praising the prominent Catholic convert, John Elmsley (1801–1863). Elmsley gifted Clover Hill to the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Basilians for the specific purpose of responding to de Charbonnel’s request. And there, at least in its usual telling, our story ends. In our collective memory, the University and the land it occupies more or less spring into being from the heart of the Church, aptly symbolised by Elmsley’s own heart, now lodged in the walls of our collegiate parish. It’s a beautiful, inspiring story for me, as a Catholic convert myself and as a member of the college faculty.

The story is also, regrettably, a pernicious lie.

I am being deliberately provocative here. I don’t actually doubt that Elmsley transferred a piece of paper he had acquired for these lands to our founding religious congregations in 1851. The lie is not in what our collective memory affirms; it is in what it presumes or, worse, deliberately hides from view. The lie is in the unspoken assumption that the land was Elmsley’s to give.

How might we remember our story more truthfully? A couple of years ago, as part of a larger project, I asked a talented Ph.D. student at the Department for the Study of Religion to research this question. She wrote a new history of the land, one that begins in the year 900, rather than 1851. Here is a selection from her executive summary:

People have lived on this land for thousands of years according to Anishinaabe oral traditions. First Nations such as the Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Anishinaabek, and Tionnontati, traveled and made homes in this part of Turtle Island for centuries. More recently the Mississaugas of the Credit have belonged here, when they migrated south via the Carrying Place trail in the late 17th century.

Europeans began arriving in Turtle Island in the 1600’s. In 1805 the British Crown illegally claimed the land north of Lake Ontario for the city of York—what is now Toronto—in order to establish a capital for Upper Canada . . . The first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, nonetheless established York in 1793, 12 years before the Crown deemed the Toronto Purchase official, and despite protests from the Mississaugas. He divided the land into Park Lots: long rectangular-shaped sections of land that ran between what are now Queen and Bloor streets.

The University of St. Michael’s College lies on what was originally Park Lots 9 & 10. These lots were owned by John Elmsley, a Chief Justice of Upper Canada. When his son—also John Elmsley—inherited the land, he donated two acres of Clover Hill to the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1851 and then four lots to the Basilian Fathers for a new St. Michael’s College site. 

—Sarina Annis, “This Land.”

The full narrative is definitely worth your time. It includes references, archival images of relevant treaties and other legal documents, and links to First Nation and Canadian government web sources on the history of Tkoronto.

Now, I want to be clear that I do not think that this longer history is “the truth.” Haudenosaunee colleagues in particular might question some of its claims. But I have reason to believe such colleagues would also view it as a vast improvement over the story we have been telling ourselves so far—precisely because it draws attention to our collective lie about the land.

What significance might a new narrative have for St. Mike’s as a university community? We cannot undo the past. We can, however, choose to remember that past more truthfully and to begin taking real steps to (re)build relationships. Consider the financial settlement reached between the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Government of Canada in 2010. This settlement does not resolve all outstanding differences or redress most specific harms of the Toronto Purchase. It does mean that, a full six years after I settled into my new job and office in Odette Hall, the University’s claim to set that building on that land attained some degree of moral legitimacy. Beyond this, through a partnership with SHARE, the USMC administration is exploring ways to deploy its financial assets—a primary fruit of the illegitimate acquisition of land—to advance initiatives related to (Re)Conciliation.

We are an academic institution, of course, and the main fruit of re-remembering this land will be in our teaching and research. There are tentative signs of movement on this front. The Faculty of Theology and the College division have introduced new courses responsive to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Along with our academic partners in the wider University of Toronto community, we have begun to include a land acknowledgement at the beginning of major events and many of our classes—and also on our website. I was relieved to learn that, in the wake of the horrific discovery of 215 unmarked graves at Kamloops, St. Mike’s joined other members of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Canada in calling for greater accountability on the part of the global Catholic Church and our own academic institutions. Some St. Mike’s staff, faculty, alumnae, administrators, board members and benefactors have also raised their own voices in grief and protest.

These are initial steps, of mainly symbolic value. In the coming months and years, we will learn whether and to what extent we are committed to translating them into substantive action. If we do make such a commitment, I believe, it will follow at least in part from our willingness to re-remember our own history, and the longer story of this land.

This post was amended on June 24, 2021 to note that the Kamloops discovery was of graves rather than bodies.

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Laurie Morris is communications director at the University of St. Michael’s College and the proud owner of a Conklin Carnival t-shirt. She holds a B.A. in English from U of T and a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from St. Michael’s. 

Appreciating the Gifts of Dad

As Father’s Day approaches, I’m thinking about my late father more than usual. He wasn’t a prodigy, but he definitely had a record of doing things at a young age.

My dad married at a young age. He was 19, and my mother had just turned 20. They met in September at teacher’s college, went to the Royal Winter Fair on their first date, and got married that summer after graduation. My mum got a job at St. John Fisher teaching Grade 4 while my dad found himself at what was then called John Newman Catholic School, teaching Grade 8, which made him about six years older than his students. 

Both my parents were very committed to education. Once I came along, the only way for my dad to complete his Bachelors’ Degree and go on to get his MEd was to do it outside of his actual teaching job, going to school nights, weekends, and throughout the summer—shout-out to Woodward (7T4). I didn’t see much of his day job, but I do remember him coming home after night courses and greeting him with a hearty “Hi, Dave!” much the way my mother did.

The earliest memories I have of my dad “at work” are of his summer job. He worked at a service station fixing cars, pumping gas and—most impressive to my five-year-old self—he got to feed the guard dogs that lived out back in the junk car lot. He would sometimes bring home monarch butterflies that had found themselves on the wrong side of the front grill of a car. Although dead, they remained fascinatingly beautiful. As far as I was concerned, my dad had the coolest job in the world. It was only later toward the end of that same summer, as the days got shorter and the nights began to cool down, I found out that my dad was actually a teacher, and that he would be heading back to school in September. I was shocked and not just a little disappointed. I was also very suspicious about what else my parents had been keeping from me. It was soon after that my sister Lisa was born.

My dad became a principal at a young age. He had very strong views about education—and everything else for that matter—but as an educator and an administrator he was very focused on meeting the needs of every type of learner. He and my mother ended up at the same school, Dad as principal and Mom as resource teacher (fortunately I was at a school a few miles away) and there they had the opportunity to pilot a number of teaching approaches for children on the autism spectrum, as well as increasing support services for children with learning disabilities and expanding literacy programs.

As I became a sullen teen, I frequently challenged his desire to “work for the man” that was the Catholic school board, which at the time—at least at my high school—shied away from teaching evolution and characterized anything non-Catholic as “other religions.” 

We often argued it out at the dinner table. He’d listen, I’d rant—he’d listen again and then say: “Laurie, if you want to make change, you have to get in there and make change. You have to co-opt the system to change the system.”

My dad died at a young age, in 2013. He was 67, and as much as his students benefited from teaching innovations in his elementary schools, he also benefited from a U of T teaching hospital where his unique health issues were finally diagnosed. Later, the complexities of his condition became the topic of many white papers. While dying, he became a case study that advanced learning in research and health care.

I miss my dad at least once a day. I miss the way he could laugh so hard that he’d lose breath. I miss his ability to fix pretty much anything with WD-40 and epoxy glue. I even miss arguing with him. I appreciate the gifts he shared and the things he taught us. Father’s Day and every day, I’m encouraged to be more like him.

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Martyn Jones is a content specialist in St. Mike’s Office of Communications. On a freelance basis, he also writes reported features, essays, and criticism for online and print outlets. He and his wife Melanie are the parents of two boys.

The Hidden Life of Moms 

My wife and I welcomed our second child into the world on March 17 of this year. Bauer Timothy Jones has been a quiet baby so far, but it’s unclear to us whether that’s because of a personality difference between him and our older boy Fox, or because we have been better able to meet his physical needs before they foment emotional crises. 

Because of the ongoing pandemic, my wife’s maternity leave so far has mostly taken place within view, or within hearing distance, of where I work during the day. Often, I need only to look up from my screen to be able to see her and the baby. It’s a major improvement over my reliance on texted photos and videos during our last-go-round. Being present for these earliest days of Bauer’s life is one of the great unsought gifts of this era in our lives. 

Melanie demonstrates an easy, unselfconscious care with the baby that two years ago she and I would have regarded with envy and admiration. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard has a passage in his most famous book, Fear and Trembling, about how a person learns to swim by attempting with each stroke to make the ideal or infinite gesture—to imitate their idea of the “form” of swimming. However, once the swimmer has internalized the form, they can swim freely, making each stroke without reference to anything but how fast they want to go and the conditions of the water. 

Fox, our first child, almost overwhelmed us at this stage in his life. To continue Kierkegaard’s metaphor, with every wave we struggled anew to figure out how to stay afloat. Innocent of experience and sleep-shocked, we were left to rely on things we’d read or watched, the half-remembered examples of our own parents, and decades of media representations of parenthood. We hadn’t yet internalized the form. 

Things are different now. My wife acts from years of constant and very physical practice, with a level of dedication that goes beyond that of professional athletes or musicians because there isn’t a time of day when she isn’t a mom. To see her expertly remove Bauer from harm’s way when our toddler Fox wobbles on top of his climbing frame, or to observe the balletic grace with which she scoops the baby out of his bassinet while cradling the back of his head, is to catch sight of a kind of pure human excellence it’s easy to miss without the frame of a television camera or an announcer’s hyped commentary. 

Mother’s Day is often an occasion for celebrating feelings—love, compassion, and all the other things we associate with moms, especially our own. Mel and I are both fortunate to have been raised in loving and supportive homes, and I in no way mean to discount the emotional dimension of the holiday. But what I see and find remarkable to reflect on now is the myriad of physical activities that give love its meaning, and the domain of learned competencies with a huge variety of tasks that, while unexciting on their own, add up to the work of love itself. 

Love is a verb, after all, as the CCM band DC Talk emphasized repeatedly in an energetic hit single by that name that came out during my childhood. While I used to enjoy late-night conversations in the dorm about love’s many possible meanings and aspects, and about the theological and philosophical frameworks that can give it even more meanings and aspects, at this point in my life nothing is so interesting to me as the simple acts and gestures that convey love without announcing it. 

Mel is downstairs with Bauer right now coaxing him to sleep, as my own mother did with me, and her mother did with her. Mother’s Day is an occasion for celebrating all these tiny and unsung acts of love that make whole lives possible. As George Eliot writes in the novel Middlemarch, “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life.” 

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Angela MacAloney-Mueller is St. Mike’s Physical Plant Coordinator. She’s been a part of the USMC community since August 1994, and notes that the comfort of students and staff are her top priority. She is, you’ll see, an avid birder.

Bird Nerd on Campus

I still remember the first time I visited the campus of the University of St. Michael’s College. It was for a job interview in July of 1994. With the luscious greenery, the full-grown trees and beautiful flowers, the grounds took my breath away. I thought to myself as I was leaving the campus, “Yes, I would like to work here.” Social media accounts for the university often use the hashtag #oasisinthecity and, as it turns out, we humans are not the only species who think so.

Some migratory birds travel thousands of miles twice a year during spring and fall migration. Toronto is on a major migratory flyway, and every spring the nighttime skies are filled with thousands of birds coming north for the summer to set up territory, find a mate and raise young, all before the long journey home. The city, and the campus grounds themselves, with their close proximity to Lake Ontario, are a perfect resting spot for those birds after a long night of travel. 

I was working at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies when I started birding more than 20 years ago. I’ve had a couple of lifers at work (a lifer is what it’s called when you see a bird for the first time). The campus gave me my first Oven Bird and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. The spring offers a chance to see a wide variety of summer migrants, including Baltimore Orioles, Indigo Buntings, Scarlett Tanagers, and so many others. Many of the migratory birds will continue further north to the boreal forest, but a few do stay in and around the Toronto area, like the feisty red-winged blackbird. 

Every spring I get work orders regarding the “attack bird” on campus. It seems the last few years a pair of red-winged blackbirds have thought the grounds lovely enough to build a home and raise young. The male is a fierce protector and will often swoop at people if they get too close to their nest—or, in this case just walk along the path. It is illegal to tamper with a migratory bird or its nest, but we have posted signs to warn people of what may happen. I have a lot of respect for the males: I’ve seen one swoop at a bald eagle! Fortunately, the nesting season is short, only about two weeks, and then peace and harmony return to the grounds.

Over the years I have been able to share a little of my knowledge regarding birds on campus. A couple of our yearlong resident bird species come to mind. A former co-worker came to my office one spring morning to let me know that a baby sparrow had fallen from its nest and asked what should we do. He was flabbergasted when I said, “Put it back.” The old myth that a momma bird won’t take care of its young if it’s been touched by a human is alive and well. Birds have no sense of smell, so it is very safe to put them back in their nest if you are able, which we did that day. The chick’s eyes were not yet open, but as soon as we lifted it close to its nest under the Elmsley Hall walkway, it instinctively crawled back into its nest.

Another time, a don in Elmsley Hall called to let me know a student had a baby robin in her room because it couldn’t fly and wanted to know if I could help. We went to the student’s room, where I discovered she had a fledgling. When a baby bird first leaves the nest, it is called a fledgling and is unable to fly for a few days. The mother robin will hide her fledglings in shrubbery, where she we will return and feed them throughout the day. After explaining this to the student, we took the baby robin back outside where she had found it. It wasn’t long before momma robin was there to check on her baby, much to the relief of the student.       

The St. Michael’s grounds play hosts to a variety of birds and wildlife year-round. When enjoying the flower gardens during the summer months around Brennan Hall you may see a ruby-throated hummingbird or monarch butterfly. The fall and winter months always bring the hawks to campus, where they help with pigeon control. Spring is the real star of the year though, with the many colourful songbirds and warblers passing through. The chorus of birds singing at dawn and dusk this time is joyful to hear, and I am sure wakes many of our students in residence.  

I believe the variety of birds and wildlife add to the campus. Many times, I have seen the delight on a student’s face who has never seen a squirrel before. I’ve pointed out American goldfinches and downy woodpeckers to coworkers when walking from building to building. And it doesn’t matter how many times you see a northern cardinal, you are going to stop and stare at his brilliant red colouring.

Birding for me, as always been a source of stress relief. How lucky we are when on campus, that we can leave our office to walk to a meeting in another building or just to enjoy the grounds and surround ourselves in nature. The St. Michael’s campus truly is an oasis in the city.  

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Emma Hambly is a communications coordinator at the University of St. Michael’s College. She has a B.A. in English Literature and Classics from McGill University, and an M.A. in Literatures of Modernity from Ryerson University. In her spare time, she sews, makes collages, designs zines, writes comics, and looks for more hobbies.

A year of friendship at a distance

In September 2019, my best friend travelled almost 14,000 kilometres to New Zealand on a work/study visa. We kept in touch the best we could, video chatting each other at those rare moments when the 18-hour time difference worked for both of us. Once she called while she was halfway through a mountain hike and had to yell over the high winds.

In March 2020, she caught one of the last flights back to Canada before New Zealand went into full lockdown, so that she could be with her family as everyone sheltered out the surging pandemic. I never imagined that I’d be video calling her just as much when she lived only 20 minutes from me as I did when she was half a world away.

Somehow, suddenly, we’ve marked a full year since everything changed. A year since the World Health Organization classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. A little less than a year since we all realized the whole staying-at-home-thing wasn’t going to blow over in two weeks.

One of the many, many things that we’ve had to adapt to during this time is friendship at a distance. Figuring out how to stay in touch with anyone outside our quarantine bubbles has taken resourcefulness, perseverance, and so, so much patience. Thank goodness I have friends who are always willing to put in the effort.

It started with trivia. A month into the pandemic and tired already of group Zoom calls with nothing real to update one another on, my friends and I started creating and hosting trivia nights. They’re silly and fun and a great distraction, but also a surprising lens into my friends’ personalities. Our American expat got us all into Texan history, and who knew that her husband had an encyclopedic knowledge of world flags? My best friend asks questions about cooking and wonderfully evocative Yiddish words. A usually laid-back friend puts on a blazer and gives his best cheesy game show host impression whenever it’s his turn.

We keep coming up with creative ways to spend time with each other and push through the quarantine fatigue. Playing video games and board games online, synchronizing our watches or counting down so that we can watch movies at the same time, celebrating the strange creature that is the pandemic birthday.

A year of quarantine feels like a concrete signpost in what has otherwise been a shapeless span of time. I don’t need to tell you how much everyone has lost. And I know how lucky and privileged I am that my loved ones are still safe and healthy and employed.

But I hope it’s fair to say that I’m missing the little things, like going to the movies, making tea for my friends, staying up too late dancing, even being able to sit in companionable silence without having to say no, my screen isn’t frozen.

This feeling of wistfulness has made me want to focus on what I could make of quarantine, rather than on what I was lacking. It ended up leading to the best thing to come out of my personal experience with this year: pen pals.

I love writing and have always thought exchanging letters with someone, sounded wonderful. Why not try it now, with all this time at home? It turns out many people had the same idea.

I posted on a “seeking pen pals” message board and described myself and interests a little—hoping to find one or two people to connect with. Long story short, I received way more responses than I expected, and I now have more than 20 pen pals. I had to make a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.

So, for the past few months, I’ve been sending letters to places all over the world: a spread across Canada, six different American states, three cities in the UK, even two spots in New Zealand.

Alongside letters, I’ve received stationery, stickers, Polaroid photos, tea bags, and a hand-drawn comic. I get to see all the care and creativity people put into their letters, and there’s something heartwarming and personal about seeing someone else’s handwriting.

I’ve been learning what life is like for people in different countries—almost like travelling without travelling. A primary school teacher from Dublin sent me a list of Gaelic phrases and a handmade St. Brigid’s cross—a traditional Irish symbol of protection. A grad student in Singapore sent me a nengajou (Lunar New Year card)she painted herself, and wrote about eating mandarin oranges and pineapple tarts during the holiday.

Despite how far flung we are, there’s so much we have in common. I’ve connected with my pen pals over our shared love of reading, making art, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and watching bad movies. I get to learn how other people have been coping with the pandemic, and share in their joy when vaccine supplies get announced.

One day, when it’s safe to fly again, I’ll have friends in other countries I can meet for the first time.

It’s been a hard year. Something that keeps bringing me comfort is people proving, again and again, that they want to stay connected. That they want to keep friendships going, no matter the odd shapes they take these days.

As we look forward, tentatively, to warmer days and vaccines, I hope we can take pride in our bonds with other people, knowing how much harder we had to work for them.

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Martyn Jones is a content specialist in St. Mike’s Office of Communications. On a freelance basis, he also writes reported features, essays, and criticism for online and print outlets. He and his wife’s toddler Fox has just turned two years old. 

Reading Out Loud or, The Whale 

When Herman Melville died in September of 1891, his novels were out of print. He had by then spent several decades writing poetry no one seemed to enjoy, least of all his long-suffering wife. The success and fame he earned early in life writing semi-autobiographical novels about seafaring—those stores had all been depleted long ago. His obituary in the Times even misspelled the title of his greatest book, still decades from being recognized for what it was.

1851 is the year Melville published Moby-Dick or, the Whale. It is the story of Ishmael, a man who, to rid himself of his depression and see the world, joins the crew of a Nantucket whaling ship called the Pequod. Captain Ahab presides over the vessel, emerging from his cabin to clomp across the deck with one leg made of whalebone. In a violent encounter with an albino sperm whale on an earlier voyage, Ahab was “dismasted,” and after recovering from the loss of his leg he developed a diabolical obsession with the perpetrator. His mission of revenge against the whale will, in the end, cost the lives of every man aboard the ship but one.

While this summary makes Moby-Dick sound like one more adventure story written from Melville’s experiences as a young sailor, the book departed from its predecessors in containing a huge amount of musing about—well, everything: life, the universe, the whaling industry, fate, democracy, table manners, civilization, the taxonomy of whales, and the human situation in the midst of it all.

Moby-Dick was first reviewed in England by critics whose three-volume copies were both censored in various places and misprinted to exclude the epilogue. The latter would have been a minor error had that last page not explained how Ishmael, the book’s narrator, survived the cataclysmic wreck of the Pequod at the climax of the book. Imagining their simple-minded American cousins capable of accidentally writing a story narrated by someone who does not survive the events being narrated, the critics attacked Melville, and American reviewers, cowed by their sophisticated English peers, adopted their posture. Moby-Dick sold poorly, as would everything else Melville wrote from then on. 

Moby-Dick has a claim to being the great American novel; if it isn’t that, it may at least be the greatest American novel so far. Ahab’s vengefulness against an animal foe develops a superlatively powerful expression of the theme of humanity’s struggle with nature. Vivid metaphors in every chapter suggest meanings beneath meanings and other meanings under those, giving the story a feeling of infinite depth. The many voices and registers, the occasional stage directions, the scenes of comedy, the stately rhythm, and the exclamation points—he uses them unsparingly!—all make the book an absolute blast to read out loud.

This is just what my wife and I have been doing to conclude the day. After our toddler is asleep, our chores are done, and we’ve closed the laptop after a last episode of whatever show, I bring out my heavy and heavily dog-eared paperback copy of Moby-Dick and start to read. We’re over a quarter of the way through, having just witnessed Ahab’s dark speech to the crew about their voyage’s singular objective, and the toast the crew makes to the death of the whale.

Melville’s complex and semicolon-laden sentences sometimes flow too hard to shape them with the right intonation or verbal emphasis, but this is all part of the fun—as is sounding out unfamiliar words, or laughing in spite of yourself. (The Pequod’s third mate, Flask, is unable to help himself to butter while dining with the captain for reasons of psychology and decorum, which Melville explains at length before saying, “however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!” I laugh every time I read this passage and still couldn’t tell you why.)

Shakespeare’s plays—themselves meant to be spoken and heard rather than read—were Melville’s literary obsession before composing Moby-Dick, and their rhythms provide the book with its line-level tempo. There are whole passages that would scan as perfect blank verse with the addition of a handful of line breaks. Like a steam engine, the rhythm of iambic pentameter creates momentum, and when you start to hear that rhythm and match it with your own voice, it can carry you away.

It’s easy to get carried away, of course: to use silly voices, to read too loudly or forcefully, or even for your voice to crack or give out. In my experience, this adds to the enjoyment for the reader and the listener. When you give voice to someone else’s words, you put your own stamp on them, and through the processes of your memory, they leave an imprint on you as well. The quiet chuckles and pauses to sort out some obscure meaning add something to the experience of the book: a quality of communal enjoyment.

Melville’s spotty career and tumultuous personal history are relevant, too: as they created the conditions that gave rise to his great book, so might there be a kind of perfection in the awkward or unsteady voice of a parent, partner or friend reading Moby-Dick out loud, especially if they’re reading through the imperfect medium of a video call. Even in this scenario, far from ideal, reading aloud transforms art into shared experience. When stuck at home—or “whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul,” as Ishmael says—there are few things as needful as that.

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Maxine Webster serves as Advancement Officer, Alumni Engagement at St. Mike’s. She holds a B.A. in Media, Culture, and the Arts from The King’s College in New York City. 

Virtual Connections with St. Mike’s Alumni

Since starting work within the Advancement team two months ago I’ve come to appreciate the special nature of St. Mike’s.

I was initially drawn to the role based on the understanding that the College is supported by a loyal and generous community of alumni. And as someone who graduated from a small liberal arts college in a big city, I appreciate the juxtaposition of being part of a safe, tight-knit community while simultaneously being surrounded by the resources and opportunities a bustling city—and one of the world’s leading research universities—affords.

This is an interesting time to be working in university alumni relations, as so many things have shifted in the last several months due to COVID-19. Traditionally, St. Mike’s alumni would be looking forward to various in-person social events. On the flip side, alumni who may not have been able to access a local event in the past can now tune in, a unique opportunity to connecting with one another virtually.

So, while we all wait to return to “normal” when it is safe to do so, it is my job to engage and support the alumni community throughout this time—and I think we can all agree it is more important than ever to stay as connected to one another as we can.

Alumni volunteer activity is a critical asset to any university, and I am particularly grateful for the Alumni Association Board and Young Alumni Committee. These groups provide invaluable perspectives and insight as the mouthpiece for St. Mike’s alumni at large. Their contributions and ideas support the relationships between St. Mike’s and alumni, as well as within the alumni community, through alumni programming. They have a direct impact on the future of St. Mike’s. Right now, there is an opportunity and a priority to grow these groups to further represent the diversity and various backgrounds of the alumni body.

There are a couple of new virtual programs coming up. I am really looking forward to the St. Mike’s Alumni Workshop Series in partnership with the Office of the Dean of Students, where alumni who represent varying industries and experiences are meeting with a small group of current students over Zoom throughout February and into March. Each session is focused on a particular theme, such as “Finding a Job in a Difficult Market” and “Entrepreneurship.”

Another program in the works is a Faculty Speaker Series, a way to highlight and share St. Mike’s fantastic faculty and programming with all University of Toronto alumni through virtual presentations. We also look forward to traditional programming—the Lenten Retreat, Alumni Reunion, and Spring Convocation—done in new ways, for now.

Furthermore, I have been inspired by ideas alumni bring forth—from social media initiatives to thematic virtual events—and I am honoured to witness the progress that continues to take place at St. Mike’s, through St. Mike’s 180 strategic plan. I look forward to continuing to spend time in conversation with alumni in an effort to connect, learn, share ideas, and make plans.

More than anything, I realize time and time again what a special place St. Mike’s is. Stories of Catholic services and religious pursuits, campus life and community involvement, stimulating classes and academic advisors, all remind me that St. Mike’s is a place where some of life’s fondest memories have happened, and continue to happen. Even in the midst of a challenging season, I am constantly reminded that a strong alumni community makes for a stronger St. Mike’s.

If you would like to introduce yourself or get in touch with me about any of the things above (I really enjoy hearing from alumni!), you can reach out via email or phone (416.926.7260 ext: 67260).

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Kathryn Elton joined the University of St. Michael’s College in 2016, as Chief Advancement Officer, overseeing fundraising and alumni programming. One of the best parts of her work, she explains, is meeting and getting to know St. Mike’s incredible alumni community.

Remembering Long-time St. Mike’s Alumna Gloria (Chisholm) Buckley

The University of St. Michael’s College and University of Toronto communities lost a treasured friend with the passing of alumna Gloria (Chisholm) Buckley on January 25, 2021. Gloria, who graduated from St. Michael’s College in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts and Science, majoring in chemistry, was a beloved alumni volunteer leader. She was also a trailblazer who shone a path for women in science and returned her good fortune by serving others.

When Gloria was presented with St. Michael’s Alway Award in 2014 she was celebrated as a “pioneering spirit, a scientist, working mom and community volunteer…at peace with both faith and science, a lifelong passion for knowledge, and thrilled by discovery. With a penchant for asking questions, a feminist before the movement began, a desire to contribute to saving lives, to fight for health and to understand the world at its most basic elements. She has lived up to the highest standards in numerous ways.”

Gloria’s accomplishments were extensive. She was:

• a researcher at University of Toronto and at St. Michael’s Hospital’s Lipid Centre
• a scientist in the private sector, including in bioscience and clinical chemistry specializing in cancer research
• a member of the Christian Family Movement—helping peers with children cope with the pressures of life while raising families
• a member of the Associates of the Sisters of St. Joseph for more than 25 years
• one of the longest-serving members of the U of T Senior Alumni Association
• the founder and leader of the organizing committee for University of St. Michael’s College Alumni and Friends Annual Lenten Twilight Retreat

 and

• the longest-serving Board Member of the USMC Alumni Association.

Gloria was also the proud mother of sons Roger, Brian, and Phillip, all of whom attended St. Mike’s.

She was a much-loved friend among the alumni community. St. Mike’s alumna Marcella Tanzola remembers:

“I had the honour of knowing and working with Gloria for many years on the St. Michael’s Alumni Board. With Father Bob Madden, we both helped to establish the Annual Twilight Lenten Retreat and worked closely over 25 years to make this a memorable and meaningful event. Gloria was a tireless worker and supporter of all alumni pursuits. For me she was a ready ear and good counsellor. We shared wonderful conversations during all those years and I learned what a remarkable woman she was as we exchanged our life experiences. Rest in a much deserved peace Gloria. I will miss you.”

Miriam Kelly, another alumna and colleague, adds:

“The Basilian Fathers, the University of Toronto and the University of St. Michael’s College, and the Annual Lenten Twilight Retreat will all be thankful for the many years Gloria gave to their many endeavours, sharing her wisdom, hospitality and sense of humour. Gloria will be much missed and remembered. Rest in Peace.“

When I joined St. Mike’s advancement and alumni programs team in 2016, all my new colleagues recommended that Gloria be one of the first alumni I should meet. She had a long-standing connection with St. Michael’s, deep commitment to the university, and astute perspectives on our past and our future. She was also a frequent attendee at alumni meetings and events, and I soon learned why she was loved by my colleagues. Betty Noakes, a member of our advancement team who knew her for more than 10 years notes that “Gloria’s kindness, knowledge, sage advice, and grace made the world a better place. She exemplified Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge. I will hold her in my heart, and miss her dearly, as will, I’m sure the community she has left behind.”

The University of St. Michael’s College is truly blessed by a loyal and committed alumni community, and I have a special place in my heart for Gloria. From our first meeting in fall, 2016 until our last conversation this past fall, when she was sharing ideas about St. Mike’s vision for the future, I have felt extremely lucky to have known her, even just a little.

Thank you Gloria. God speed.

Gratefully, Kathryn.

Alumni who wish to share memories and tributes to Gloria are invited to send messages to: smc.alumniaffairs@utoronto.ca. We will collect them and send them to the family.

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James Roussain begins a new role at the John M. Kelly Library this January as the Interim Head of Public Services, a change from his position as Outreach and Instruction Archivist, which he has held since 2017. Prior to joining the University of St. Michael’s College, James worked at Scotiabank, where he was involved in the maintenance and deployment of the corporate records management program. At the Kelly Library, James assists students with their research, exposes students to the treasures in the Kelly Library’s Special Collections, and teaches in the college’s Book and Media Studies program. James is a past president of the Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) and the Toronto Area Archivists’Group (TAAG). In his spare time, he is pursuing a Master of Education in Higher Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). He holds a Master of Information degree from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.

On Jellyfish, Loneliness, and Learning

As the new semester gets under way in the coming days, it is important to take a step back and think about those we are working to support: our tireless and dedicated students. With our new reality of living apart and working remotely becoming just that—our current reality—we need to remember that these are indeed strange and stressful times not just for us but for our students, too. As a librarian at the Kelly Library, I am fortunate to work directly with students assisting them in their research, writing, or in navigating the complexities of the University of Toronto’s immense library system. For many, the library is an intimidating space in the best of times. Compounded with the challenges of remote work and a lack of helping hands, finding resources and completing research has never been more challenging, especially so for many of our first-year students, for whom the academic library is an entirely new entity.

During the fall semester, the Kelly Library, in partnership with the Principal’s Office, hosted twice-weekly Research and Writing Help Drop-In sessions, where students were able to join us—remotely—for one-on-one assignment help. With two writing instructors at my side, we would greet students and, using private break-out rooms, answer as many questions as possible over a two-hour period. What started off as a way to accommodate students who were unable to snag longer scheduled appointments grew into a window on our students’ lived reality: too many due dates, a mess of assignments vying for their attention, and an overwhelming sense of isolation and, at times, loneliness. Logging in from their living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and sometimes an enviable patio, students shared with us their frustrations in working alone and, for many, navigating time zones and poor internet connections. This has not been an easy time.

As I helped students find articles, tidy up citations, or figure out the best keywords for their upcoming essay on, say, vestigial traits in jellyfish, I grew to realize two things. The first—and perhaps sacrilege to our faculty readers—is the trivial nature of our work during these incredibly challenging times. In more than one occasion I felt the need to reassure students that while, yes, your essay is important, so too is the need to care for yourself and reach out to others. This is not to say we must lessen academic rigour, but rather carry a realistic understanding of what is possible. The second thing I learned is how little I know not only about jellyfish but about every single topic brought to me during these drop-in sessions. The level of academic achievement on our campus is truly astounding. There has not yet been a case where working with a student on their research has not taught me something new, and for that I am thankful.

In looking ahead to the coming semester and the challenges it will surely bring to our students, especially those graduating into a world of social, political, and simply logistical unknowns, we need to work together to ensure empathy and perspective are at the front of our minds. The rise of mental health programs and services on campus—so well advocated for by our dedicated students on SMCSU—brings overdue awareness to the importance of creating community wherever possible. Week after week, soon after logging in, the same group of students would join our drop-in sessions. Some came for detailed questions on style and structure, while others came just to check in. We created community in the most unlikely of places: a Zoom call focused on academic research and writing help. Who knew? In our own unique way we forged a space where students could share their frustrations, get some help, and see a familiar face at the same time. It is easy to get caught up in administrative matters, the daily to-and-fro of emails and meetings, or the challenges of bureaucracy. Take a moment, as often as possible, to guard against these blinders and seek our community. Or, if so inclined, check in with our students and ask them how they are doing. What may be seen as a hollow “How’re you?” during pre-COVID times may now carry more weight than you know. 

While the library’s stacks are closed for the time being, our dedicated staff remains available to help. We strive to place the student experience at the centre of our work and tailor our collections, services, and spaces to offer them an inclusive, welcoming, and supportive environment—both in a physical and virtual sense—where they can flourish during their time on campus. In my own role within the library, and my small role on the University of Toronto campus, I am proud to have the opportunity to work daily with our students and to learn alongside them.

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Adrian Ross is the Executive Assistant to the Principal at the University of St. Michael’s College. Trained as a musician, he is an historical keyboardist specializing in harpsichord and clavichord. He is engaged by the agency of music, especially rhythm, in health and liturgy, especially in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

InsightOut: Les Barricades Mystérieuses

The therapeutic potential of music has long been recognized: King David and Orpheus disarmed evil by the lyre, and harmony and rhythm could restore the revolutions of Plato’s soul, to give but a very few examples. Indeed, and perhaps because of this, the restorative power of music is particularly attested in times of plague. The prescription of music was especially prevalent not just as palliation, but as prevention and treatment, during outbreaks of plague in mediaeval and early modern periods. More generally, music is often desired during life’s most uncertain, critical, and mysterious experiences, notably in dying. The composer Guillaume Dufay (1397–1474), for example, even wrote a motet for his own deathbed (Ave Maria Caelorum III) and to this day music at the bedside continues in palliative care.

It is difficult to define precisely what technical qualities make music capable of healing physical and spiritual crises, and this may be subjective to a certain degree. One piece that has always spoken to me as particularly consoling is the enigmatically titled Les Barricades Mystérieuses (The Mysterious Barricades) by François Couperin (1668–1733). It is one of the most popular and abiding pieces of music written for the harpsichord, a keyboard instrument predating the piano and using plucked strings, like a guitar.

Like much current popular music, Couperin’s piece features a refrain (the rondeau) and three verses (couplets). Beginning with a masterfully simple refrain, each of the verses becomes increasingly dramatic, culminating in the last verse. Having moved from the simple to the relatively complex and uncertain, this last verse prolongs the musical tension and the expectations of the listener until that final resolution and dissolution back into the final refrain. This arc of experience is not unique to this piece, to music, nor indeed to the arts at large.

We are now in November 2020, still in the midst of pandemic and called by the Church to reflect on the passing of life to death and, by grace, to glory. Listening to music, even music of past ages, is an opportunity to experience the beauty of art not merely as entertainment and distraction, but as a transcendental that defeats our barriers, opening the human heart to relationship with others and God.

Please enjoy my interpretation of Les Barricades Mystérieuses, recorded on an instrument built by Yves Beaupré (Montréal), generously on loan from Charlotte Nediger, using a tuning system by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764).

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Dr. Pa Sheehan is from Sixmilebridge in County Clare, Ireland. He was living in St. John’s, Newfoundland when the pandemic started and moved to Toronto in July. He teaches the Irish language at the University of St. Michael’s College as the Ireland Canada University Foundation (ICUF) scholar. 

Finding One’s Inner Resilience

Whenever this pandemic ends and we can look at it in the past, we will all be able to say that it was a defining period in each of our lives. I want to be able to say to myself that it was the period in my life during which I realized what resilience I had always possessed but was not always sure how to use. We cannot control the end result but what we can control are the decisions we make during the process that lead us to the end result. That may sound a little contradictory but it is a perspective I have borrowed from the sporting world and adapted to use in my new normal life.

As a teenager, and even during much of my time at university, I began noticing that I enjoyed being in control of my destiny, that the final outcome would always align with my desires. We all know that this is not always the case, however. There are instances when the outcome does not correspond with the initial intentions. This used to make me feel bitter, angry, anxious and many other things. I look back at exam results with which I disagreed or at not having been picked on a particular sports team and how I allowed these external decisions make me become upset. Little did I know that these external decisions were outside of my control and that I had already done my part, so as long as I was satisfied with the role I had played, I had no reason to feel any ill sentiments.

I truly believe that this pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for me personally. I do not want to belittle the appalling circumstances in which many people find themselves due to the pandemic. I only want to acknowledge the wonderful things it has done for me and I hope you can appreciate that. I talked about resilience at the beginning of this article and I want to refer to it again.

Many moments have tested my resilience during this pandemic. I am from Ireland and have had trips home cancelled, meaning I have not seen my family in well over a year now. My job involves organizing social events and fostering a sense of community amongst the Irish themselves in Toronto as well as anyone interested in Irish culture. This has obviously been affected. One could view my moving to Toronto during the pandemic as a pity, considering I cannot experience what the big city has to offer in its fullness. I am also a sports fanatic, whether it be playing or watching and this aspect of my life has been considerably impacted as well, as sports events were cancelled one after one. I was in the middle of training for my first marathon, which inevitably succumbed to the pandemic. Having been deprived of playing my first love—the Irish sport of hurling—while living for a year in Newfoundland, I welcomed the move to Toronto as it would afford me the opportunity to play it again, given the number of Irish expatriates living in the city. Of course, the pandemic continued and these plans were scuppered along with many others.

A couple of years ago, I would have viewed these setbacks with frustration as I could do nothing to control them. However, I realize now that there is beauty in the fact that I cannot control them. It means that I must make new decisions which are within my control. For example, my inability to physically go back to Ireland has encouraged me to reach out more to people back home whom I may have neglected in the past, whether they be family or friends. It has also motivated me to appreciate the greatness of my homeplace, something I strive to illustrate each day in my teaching of Irish language and culture. Not being able to physically host social gatherings has afforded me opportunities to organize more online events and I am extremely thankful for this as I have most definitely interacted with more passionate and enthusiastic Irish people as a result of the compulsion to go online. The cancellation of marathons and hurling championships has reminded me of the reasons I initially fell in love with playing sport. I do it because it makes me feel good, simple as that. I am still running almost every day, but not because I am training for a marathon that may or may not take place in the future. I have no control over that. I train to feel well. And whenever I can play hurling again, the result of the match will not be significant, nor will the quality of my own performance. All that will matter will be the sheer enjoyment I derive from playing the game and making my best possible effort. Never in a million years would I thought I would have uttered that last sentence!

As plans continue to go awry, flights continue to be booked and cancelled, restrictions are lifted and then enforced again, events are planned only to be aborted once more, I take solace in the fact that my mind is not bound by the outcomes which I cannot affect but by the decisions which I choose to make every day to make the best of every possible situation. Resilience is something each human being possesses but only initiates when necessary. I encourage anyone to solely focus their minds on the decisions they can control. Although you have no say in them, the results will probably astonish you.

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Dr. Adam Hincks, S.J., holds the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures at the University of St. Michael’s College. Dr. Hincks, who specializes in physical cosmology, completed a B.Sc. in physics and astrophysics from U of T in 2004. In 2009 he earned a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University and then entered the Jesuit novitiate in Montréal. After pronouncing vows in 2011, he pursued philosophical studies at Toronto’s Regis College and later did a Bachelor of Sacred Theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University. Returning to Toronto, he worked on a Master of Theology and Licentiate in Sacred Theology at Regis College from 2018–20. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2019.

What Parish Are You At, Father?

“What parish do you live at, Father?” It’s a question I’ve been asked a couple of times since I was ordained last year. The answer—“I’m not based at a parish”—can be unexpected for those who are only used to seeing priests at Sunday mass. The fact of the matter is that most ordained Jesuits are not parish priests, nor have we ever been since our founding in the sixteenth century. The same can be said for those in many other religious institutes, such as the Basilian Fathers who are so important to St. Michael’s College. This doesn’t mean that none of us have parishes—for instance, here in Toronto, Our Lady of Lourdes is served by Jesuit priests and St. Basil’s by Basilians. Nor does it mean that we don’t help out at parishes in various ways. But it isn’t our sole defining ministry.

In my own case, my principal assignment, which I just began in July, is as a professor here at the University of Toronto. To be honest, when I became a Jesuit in 2009 fresh off of a doctorate in physics, I never dreamt that I would come back to the St. George campus, where I had been an undergraduate, as a professor! I figured after the many years of Jesuit formation I would could end up in an academic setting, perhaps at one of the scores of universities we run around the world, but it was only a vague idea.

The position I have begun here is new and unique. Supported by the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures, I have an appointment both in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and here at St. Michael’s College. The majority of my research is purely scientific, in the area of physical cosmology, or the study of the Universe as a whole. I work on telescopes that observe the very early universe and that map out the cosmos on its largest scales. But with my training in philosophy and theology, I also have an interdisciplinary interest in how science relates to faith and vice versa. And so a good part of my teaching will be precisely in this area—such as SMC371, “Faith and Physics”, which I shall teach in the winter term of 2021.

Still, one might return to the spirit of the question I began with and frame it a bit differently: why should a priest be engaged in research and teaching at a public university? There is the somewhat facile answer that there have been clerics on faculties ever since the first universities of the West arose in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Church has always valued education and the pursuit of knowledge, and thus her clergy and religious as well as her laity have always contributed to these great endeavours. But looking at the question from within the tradition of my own religious order, I am reminded of the notion of “finding God in all things”, a formula often used to capture a key aspect of the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, our principal founder.

“Finding God in all things” is not a vague aphorism or a flaky aspiration, but is rooted in the deeply Biblical conviction that as Creator, God is intimately present to his creatures, or, as Thomas Aquinas put it, “God is in all things, and innermostly.” This does not mean that if you use a powerful enough microscope (or telescope!) you will suddenly find scientific “evidence” for God. But it does mean that studying creation—whether through the lenses of the humanities, the social sciences or the natural sciences—can be a springboard to contemplating its Creator. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8, NABRE). And ultimately, it is “contemplation of divine things” that is one of the principal tasks of those of us in religious life.

So I consider myself blessed to have this opportunity for contemplation, even if the busyness of the job means that I can’t always advert to it! I am looking forward to collaborating with all my colleagues at this university—fellow faculty, other researchers and students—as we lift our minds to consider true and lovely things “worthy of praise.” Not everyone contemplates science from within a religious worldview, and of course there are some who think such a stance is ludicrous. But I’m excited that St. Michael’s College has opened the space to explore it further, and I’m excited to see where it leads. I trust it will make me a better scientist, a better Christian—and a better priest.

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Risa de Rege is a library technician at the Kelly Library. She has a B.A. in history, art, and medieval studies from the University of Toronto, and is currently a master’s degree candidate at the Faculty of Information.

The Ups and Downs of a Paradigm Shift

The past year, and the unwelcome pandemic that came with it, has brought a lot of change to my life. Usually I’m a person who is happy with things the way they are, but every now and then the paradigm shifts, so here I am. Since January I’ve started a new job here at St. Mike’s, seen my hobbies completely change for the foreseeable future, and enrolled in a graduate program. Nothing is normal, and every day I feel the stress of a global disaster. But maybe the British were on to something with “keep calm and carry on.”

I’m no stranger to libraries. I worked at Victoria College for several years at the circulation desk, and in 2018 joined USMC as a processing clerk in the technical services department. A few years ago I decided to make a career out of this experience, and recently finished my library technician diploma. In January I had the pleasure of joining Kelly’s access and information team full-time—only for us to shut down about 10 weeks later. After a few months working solely from home (probably the longest I’ve gone without visiting campus since high school), I was back on-site to help with shifting in anticipation of an ongoing construction project. I then helped with curbside pickup and, more recently, re-opening for study space. Not exactly how I imagined my career really taking off, but sometimes that’s just how it is.

Working from home offers more flexibility and no more time lost to commuting. I have a bit more time to myself, but nothing to do with it. Outside of work and school I spend most of my time singing opera, a hobby which for obvious reasons will not be coming back anytime soon. A trip to perform in England this summer was postponed to a healthier year, and I have many friends whose shows, if not whole seasons, were cancelled. I have been singing virtually, though. While unfortunately my local opera society has not ventured online, I’ve rejoined the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, which is producing a virtual concert season, and I continue to sing with a community choir which has adapted marvellously. This all-ages, all-abilities group generally sings music written specifically for it by local composers. While singing together live on Zoom is basically impossible due to a host of technical issues, our current composer-in-residence is creating music specifically with this situation in mind. It’s been fun to explore music this way, but it’s not the same. It’s really articulated to me that I sing not only for love of the art form but for love of the people I sing with.

One true advantage of COVID is that working from home means I can foster kittens. I’ve fostered adult cats for years and now have my own, a tabby named Autumn who I picked up the day after Kelly closed. But now, being home most of the time means I’m here to keep an eye on things (I love cats, but I don’t trust them). I started taking in kittens in July, and I’m on my second pair now: two brothers who have a mild neurological condition that affects their balance and motor skills. Among all the stress of a global pandemic, a million dead, a looming election, an environmental crisis, etc., it is extremely grounding to take care of two sweet, vulnerable babies and know that I am giving them a second chance at a happy life. Sometimes all the good we can do is small, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make a difference.

Another thing I’ve started during COVID is my master’s degree at the Faculty of Information. While I’m grateful that the Faculty committed to an entirely virtual semester early on, an entire graduate program quickly moving online is not without its difficulties. But I was eager enough to start that I didn’t want to delay another year just on the off chance that in-person courses might return in the fall of 2021, and I don’t regret it. It’s nice not to have to worry about commuting any farther than across my bedroom to my computer desk. And while online classes are still pretty structured, there’s a bit more flexibility to go at my own pace. I did my library technician diploma completely online, through Mohawk College, and it was an entirely different experience that I found very positive. Classes designed to be delivered online are very different from classes designed to be in-person that get thrown into Zoom. Everyone in academics has described this year as a “learning opportunity.” What we learn from it remains to be seen.

The biggest downside is that communication is much harder and mostly relies on the strength of one’s internet. With professors still encouraging group discussions as a major part of classes, I’ve found that a lot of my time is spent trying to hear someone over background noise or a bad connection. Due to either bandwidth or shyness, few people have their cameras on so it’s been very difficult for me to feel like I’m getting to know anyone. If there’s one thing COVID has taught me, it’s how much I rely on casual social interactions: chatting before class starts; stopping by a former workplace to catch up; and the subtle body language and facial expressions that contribute so much to conversation. In some ways staying behind a computer is good for social anxiety; in other ways it’s far worse.

Still, things have been okay. I want to do a thesis and I’ve been able to start refining my ideas and doing some preliminary research this term. I’m interested in fringe beliefs, like conspiracy theories, the paranormal, or pseudoscience, and why people believe in these things. While I’m pursuing this mainly out of personal interest, it’s not hard to justify why understanding science resistance is pretty important in the current state of things. If we ever want to go back to learning in-person, we need to get more people on board with the latest epidemiology.

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Betty Noakes has been a proud employee of St. Michael’s College since 2009. She has served as Alumni Affairs Associate, responsible for numerous alumni and community events for many years, and, most recently, as Advancement Associate, responsible for donations processing and donor stewardship. Betty earned her BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from St. Mike’s/UofT in 2013, crossing the stage at Convocation Hall at the age of 50, finishing off studies that were postponed in the 1980s. One of the greatest joys of Betty’s work has been interacting with and getting to know many St. Michael’s students, alumni and friends. Betty is also one of the human caretakers of Toby, the 11-year-old Newfoundland/Labrador dog and, most recently, nine-week-old Baco the kitten. 

A Family’s Best Friend Gets a Pandemic Pal

Toby, our big brown Newfoundland and Labrador mixed-breed dog, came to us 10 years ago when he was just a year old. We found him on Kijiji a few days after our family dog Jake passed away. Losing Jake, our family felt anchorless. We had always had a dog, and we felt so incomplete. Our cat Luke missed having his dog friend to chase around the house, to torment, and to cuddle with during the day when the humans were away. We wanted a dog who was large and gentle and who would enjoy time with our family at our cottage on the Crowe River. A dog who loved water would be best, and we thought love of water would be ingrained into a Newfoundland and Labrador’s DNA. We were right about that!

Toby’s previous home had been in a high-rise apartment in the GTA where, during the day and for most of the night, he was kept in a crate. His previous owner had to move and so put Toby up for sale. Lucky for our us! We like to think lucky for Toby as well. From the very beginning Toby loved us and we loved him. It wasn’t long before he became well known in our neighbourhood from his walks and visits to the local park, as he would greet everyone with a tail wag and a smile and could get along with most other dogs. For the past several summers, Toby has become infamous on his stretch of the river by our cottage where he stands in the water for hours on end “fishing,” often mistaken for a bear by passing boat traffic.

Toby and his cat Luke were best buddies, and often curled up together to sleep in Toby’s favourite chair. After long days at work or at school each of us would be greeted with such excitement! It was as if he had been waiting for our return all day. These greetings and the kisses that came with them were magic, and helped us leave the stresses of our days at the door. Evening time was always a flurry of supper preparations and clearing, homework, chores, and a walk for Toby. Afterwards, when things quieted down for the night, Toby would stretch at our feet and receive pats and scratches, with Luke snuggling in my lap as we read or watched TV.

As the years ebbed on, Toby was always at or under our feet or by our sides. When he sensed we were sad or when things were not going our way, he would put his big chin on our laps or rub against our legs and we would automatically reach out for the comfort of patting him, without even realizing we were doing it. Toby always seemed to know when anyone was sad and needed an extra bit of his gentle, unconditional love.

It’s been 10 years since Toby arrived, and our two sons have grown. One of Toby’s human brothers moved away and Luke the kitty recently went over the rainbow bridge. These changes came in the winter of 2019 and were hard on Toby. He missed the human who grew up with him and he kept looking in the vacated room, sometimes just sighing heavily and lying on the floor of that room, waiting for his brother’s return. When his cat brother passed on, Toby was extremely sad, looking for Luke in all his favourite spots, and cuddling with the cat’s abandoned stuffed toys. Toby was depressed and seemed to lose his enthusiasm for things that used to give him so much joy. We tried to pat him even more and show him extra love, but he just seemed so sad, so despondent, although he went along wagging his tail, likely for our sakes.

Then suddenly, about six months ago, things changed again in Toby’s world. We humans stopped going out every day and stayed home most of the time. All of the sudden there were more walks and more pats on the head! We humans who were left in the house, however, seemed sad and worried to Toby, as we sat more in front of the TV news shaking our heads. Toby became even more attentive to us, sensing we needed to pat him, and hoping we needed to go out for another walk soon. It seemed to help Toby’s sadness having us around so much, and we sure know it’s been a big comfort to pat him, to walk him, and to look into his big kind brown eyes full of unconditional love for us. We pat him and we feel our worries ebb away; worry and concern for his needs takes us out of ourselves a little bit.

Though Toby has been busy looking after us the past six months, he still seemed a bit sad, and still went to the same spots looking for Luke the cat. But recently, the opportunity to give a new kitten a home presented itself. We jumped at the chance to give a home to a cute little kitten born in a barn in a vineyard. We’ve named the kitten Baco, after the delicious Baco Noir which hails from his birthplace.

For now, Toby and Baco are sniffing at—and closely keeping an eye on—each other.  Over the past few days, Toby has an extra spring in his step, although for now it may be the prospect of humans leaving open the door to the room where the cat food is, giving him the opportunity to gobble it up before we or Baco know what is happening. Or it may be the realization that in Baco he has a new friend to commiserate with about the humans, to share toys and to cuddle with—and eventually to keep him company when the days return that prompt the humans go back to being away from home for hours on end.

For now, though, Toby is delighted to lie at our feet and let us pat him while he sniffs at the kitten swatting at his nose from my lap.

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Laurie Morris is communications director at the University of St. Michael’s College and the proud owner of a Conklin Carnival t-shirt. She holds a B.A. in English from UofT and a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from St. Michael’s. 

Do You Want to Go Faster?!?!?

In the five months since most of the country went into collective lockdown, there have been countless memes and chin-stroking think pieces about the effect of COVID-19 on our perception of the passage of time. March went by in a millisecond, April lasted 1100 days and now, according to the Gregorian calendar at least, the end of summer is upon us. But how will we know the summer’s over if we can’t go to the Ex?

For as long as I can remember, going to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto has been a welcome but bittersweet segue between seasons. Even when I lived in New York, I’d factor the dates into my vacation calendar. It would never be the primary reason for a return visit to Toronto, but it never fell off the radar either. The CNE was something that kept me strangely anchored to “home.”

I’m sure most of us have a mental reel of Exhibition highlights. For me, it includes Holly Hobby doll prizes, huge boxes of Double Bubble gum (100 pieces at once!!) and the Polar Express guy who keeps asking if you want to go faster. And, of course, the thrill of discovery in the “oddities and novelty” factor—the invisible dog, Labatt Blue tube socks and, more recently, a larger-than-life sculpture of Justin Trudeau made entirely of butter.

But when it comes down to it, the lure of the CNE (at least for me) was less about what actually happened there and more about the promise of one last chance to exhaust the potential of summer, complete with corn dogs and top hats emblazoned with glitter. A trip to the Ex offered an opportunity to embrace simple, silly pleasures and a brief distraction from the more serious business of “getting down to business” in the Fall.

COVID-19 has challenged us in unexpected ways. Among other things, it’s called us to be flexible, patient and quick to realign expectations to find the best path forward—arguably some of the same skills required to scale the shifting steps of the Fun House.

But as much as the virus has us taught us about masking, distancing and cleaning, it’s also given us the opportunity to be creative and impressively resilient. Not nearly as satisfying as corn dogs, but important to recognize nonetheless. Many of the usual milestones and markers that we’ve depended on to bridge transitions and provide a sense of renewal don’t work well in a time of social distance and sanitization.

So this year, we have to draw on lessons learned from CNEs past and COVID present. As we head into Fall, give yourself permission to embrace silly, simple pleasures and to delight in the smallest things. The gates of the CNE are temporarily closed but we can still make the trip.

(Contributor’s note: No invisible dogs were harmed in the making of this blog post.)

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InsightOut: Connective Threads  

Emma Hambly is a communications coordinator at the University of St. Michael’s College. She has a B.A. in English Literature and Classics from McGill University, and an M.A. in Literatures of Modernity from Ryerson University. In her spare time, she sews, makes collages, designs zines, writes comics, and looks for more hobbies.

Connective Threads

Push the needle through two layers of fabric, then loop the thread back through itself to make a neat little knot before continuing. It’s a motion I’ve done thousands of times. But during quarantine it’s taken on a new kind of meaning.

***

I’m lucky to be surrounded by very creative friends and family. It seems that most of them have taken the quarantine as an opportunity to take up old hobbies or delve further into their current projects.

One friend is writing again for the first time in years, and another is 52,000 words into her science-fiction novel. My mum is painting more frequently than she has since art school, and my dad is creating collages in the same sketchbook he left half-finished 20 years ago. My best friend is cross-stitching patterns with dainty florals and profanities. My partner is cooking and baking new recipes and continues to feed our temperamental sourdough starter.

As for me, I’ve been sewing. A lot.

Since quarantine started, I’ve been sewing gifts for friends and family and donations for strangers in need. I’ve hand-sewn 16 plushies, embroidered a beret, and made 60 face masks. Our small apartment is bursting at the seams with sewing supplies. My recent online purchases from small Canadian sellers include glass eyes, sheets of vegan leather, metallic felt, and a wonderfully soft faux fur called “minky.” Right now, I’m working on a little bird for my aunt’s birthday and a plague doctor doll because…well, I suppose that one doesn’t need an explanation.

There’s something enormously comforting about a simple task that gives you a sense of control during uncertain times. For me, sewing is a magical combination of enjoyable, relaxing, and creative, a form of self-expression that helps to counteract pandemic-era feelings of anxiety and powerlessness.

My mum, who is a talented seamstress, taught me how to hand-sew when I was six. And since then, the slow but sure process of turning a few pieces of fabric and some thread into a three-dimensional object with its own personality hasn’t stopped enchanting me.

Quarantine may be filled with necessary constraints, but it has let me pursue my hobby unrestricted.

In the earlier days of the pandemic, I volunteered for Stitch4Corona, an initiative organized by U of T Engineering students to provide fabric masks to Torontonians in need of them, like seniors and the unhoused. With access to a sewing machine and basic skills, it felt like the least I could do. When I was able to expand my social bubble to include my parents, my mum offered to help.

Sitting at the dining room table on a rainy day, listening to the whir of the sewing machine, took me back to my childhood, watching my mum make my Halloween costumes. Year after year, she would create an impeccable, real version of whatever I had dreamed up: a furry tarantula with eight interconnected arms, a red rose with my face peeking out of the petals.

This time, though, we were working together. I sewed the fabric into its basic mask shape and stitched in the elastics. My mum gave each rectangle three neat pleats, and I finished the sewing, adding in the nose wires and leaving pockets for filters.

We switched, laughing, when we realized she had accidentally pleated all the masks so far upside-down, and I was much slower at topstitching. We found our rhythm and spent the afternoon turning a pile of fabric sheets, elastic, and wire into a thick stack of masks.

Before I could start my third round of sewing, Stitch4Corona announced that with COVID cases decreasing in the city, they were wrapping up their initiative. In the end, more than 600 volunteers sewed more than 14,000 masks.

I turned back to my lifelong hobby, sewing by hand.

When quarantine started, I felt caught up in the need to do some small thing to let my loved ones know I was thinking of them. So, I bought two pattern collections (32 designs in total), sent the images around to my friends and family, and asked them to pick their favourites. I’m about a third of the way through the list.

I’m worried about my grandmother’s wellbeing and I haven’t been able to spend quality time with her in months, but I’m glad to know she keeps the little raccoon I made her right next to her computer. My friends’ faces lit up when they picked up their creations at our 6-feet-apart, masks-on barbecue.

It makes me happy to create something tangible for my friends and family when our connections these days are so digital. And I hope my silly plushies can bring them a smile in these strange, stressful days.

Time, effort, and connective threads. Put simply, sewing is the art of bringing things together. Sometimes, it can have that effect on people as well.

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St. Michael’s unique community owes much to the people who have worked at the College and contributed to its culture over many years. Employees who this year celebrate work anniversaries ranging from 5 to 30 years were honoured by the College with service awards.  

Many of those honoured this year belong to Facilities & Services and the physical plant, including Steve Craig (10 years), Isabel Louro (15 years), and Irene Wiseman (15 years). These departments were among the few that remained largely on campus over the summer to provide essential services, focusing on health and safety. 

Members of the Office of the Principal and the Registrar’s Office include Jean Talman and Guillermo Mejia (both 30 years), representing decades of faithful service to St. Michael’s students in sorting out everything from questions about program requirements to the logistics of convocation. Given the Office of the Registrar’s fast transition to remote service delivery in response to COVID, it remains possible for even a veteran of 30 years in the department to experience something new at work.   

The list of honorees also includes admired professors such as Christianity and Culture’s Michael O’Connor (15 years), esteemed members of the Kelly Library such as Remi Pulwer (15 years), and staff and faculty from still other departments whose work continues to strengthen the bonds of St. Michael’s community even in a time of physical isolation.  

In addition to these figures who continue to serve, St. Michael’s also honours two members of the community who have concluded their work for the school. Fr. Peter Galadza retired from his position as Director of the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies this summer. In addition to decades of teaching and research at the institute, he oversaw its transition to St. Michael’s from St. Paul’s in Ottawa. Debra Matthews in the Office of the President concluded her career at St. Michael’s this year as well after providing direct support to three presidents during her tenure. She has retired in order to spend time with another community: that of her children and grandchildren. St. Michael’s wishes both Fr. Peter and Debra all the best in their next chapters.

Catherine Mulroney is a communications officer at the University of St. Michael’s College. She is also a double alumna of St. Mike’s, holding a B.A. in English and Mediaeval Studies and a Master of Divinity degree. That equals many hours in Kelly Library and many, many overdue fines.

Raising Our Voices

It began—as many of the best things do—with someone volunteering an absent colleague for a little extra work.

Our new St. Mike’s blog, InsightOut, is the result of an after-hours conversation with Communications Director Laurie Morris and Theology prof Dr. Darren Dias on March 16, the last day we were all present on campus. Dr. Dias mentioned that his colleague, Dr. Michael Attridge, was self-quarantining at home after a research trip to Italy.

“It’s a good story,” Fr. Darren said. “You should ask Mike to write something for the website.”

Then the wheels began to turn. While not one of us could predict just how the comings weeks and months would play out, we knew we were facing an extraordinary moment in the university’s history. There would be value, we thought, in hearing each other’s experiences in, and thoughts about, living through such a momentous period.

Four months later, we now have a pattern established of InsightOut blog posts running on the St. Mike’s home page every Monday and Thursday. Each story, each opinion, is unique. And as the person privileged with soliciting and receiving submissions, I am humbled by the chance to be part of the process.

Graduate student Fr. Gustave Noel Ineza, O.P., for example, spoke about his childhood during the Rwandan genocide and urged us not forget the suffering of the broader world as we focus on local troubles.

Alumnus Dr. Christopher De Bono,Vice President of Mission, People and Ethics at Vancouver’s Providence Health Care, wrote about how moving he found his neighbours’ nightly ritual of banging pots and pans and making noise to celebrate the dedication of health care workers.

Interim Principal Dr. Mark McGowan, meanwhile, a professor of History and Celtic Studies, submitted a video explaining the typhus epidemic of 1847 in light of the current situation.

Professors have written about what their subject areas tell them about the pandemic, while students have talked what St. Mike’s means to them. And alumni members like Patricia Dal Ben, along with her colleague John Kostoff, a member of St. Michael’s Collegium, offered their professional wisdom on how families can keep a faith life alive when unable to get to Mass.

Some people have shyly offered to submit while others, when approached with a specific topic, agree with grudging good humour.

Coming posts will touch on the reality of working from home as a parent, how we are preparing for the coming academic year, and even how to get married during a pandemic. Pieces have ranged from moving to amusing.

Anyone who has worked through these past months will have experienced their colleagues in new ways. Zoom meetings reveal family photos or a glimpse of a partner or pet. A phone call might be interrupted by a delivery person at the door of what has become a home office.

For those of us working at St. Mike’s, the blog has taught us about family, we’ve heard admissions from those who miss their colleagues, we now know about our officemates’ hobbies, and we have gained insight into who we are as a community and what makes us unique. When we are at our best, it seems, we are closer to being family than colleagues.

But lest this sound like busy work or a grand vanity project, it’s anything but. While we’ve gained insight into our colleagues, the blog’s purpose is very much outreach. Having worked on planning various campus events, I know how people look to St. Mike’s to keep them engaged with the world and continuing on a path of lifelong learning. And if we can’t do that in person, some reflections and mini-online lectures are a sound alternative.

Parents of future students may come away from this blog reassured that not only are the people who’ll be working with their children skilled, capable professionals, they are also decent and caring people.

Future students can read the blog and find out some of the cool work happening on campus, and look forward to engaging in the kinds of discussions that make university a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And alumni can engage with InsightOut and know that their alma mater remains vibrant and in good hands.

One of the great ironies of this time of masks and social distancing is that through it we have been brought closer together. We now know more about each other and, more often than not, knowledge brings with it respect. We have learned to work together in new ways and have seen the value in teamwork.

As we approach the fall, this blog will begin to pivot toward other aspects of life at St. Mike’s, looking ahead to a time when we can put the pandemic behind us.

If you are connected with St. Mike’s and would like to participate in InsightOut, please send me an email to chat about a submission.

Having heard the stories of the St. Mike’s community, I am confident we will head into the fall ready to take on pretty much anything. As the hashtag says, we really are all in this together.

Read other InsightOut posts.

Matt Doyle, Advancement Officer, Special Projects, has worked in the St. Michael’s Advancement Office for eight years, involved with a range of alumni and fundraising projects. A graduate of U of T (UC), he has studied business and project management. He lives in a place with way too many books and no television.

Living with Books

A good friend of mine once said “you live with books,” and that sentiment has resonated with me, as I’ve been working from home for nearly four months now, surrounded by my books. COVID-19 has given me more time to spend with them, gazing at their spines neatly lined up on the shelves, knowing which ones have been read and which others will be enjoyed in the future. I’ve finally found the time to alphabetize them all.

I shared that statement with someone last year and she looked at me quizzically, wondering what I meant. For the bookworm like me, it made perfect sense, with no need for an explanation. Books are different than art. Art hangs on the wall, but books are something special in your house. They’re there to be enjoyed—pulled off the shelf, returned, moved around, sorted, read, and re-read.

One author represented on my shelves is Morley Callaghan, an alumnus of St. Mike’s who graduated in 1925. Sadly overlooked today, and more remembered for knocking down Ernest Hemingway in a boxing match refereed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, at one time Callaghan was one of the most popular novelists and short story writers in Canada. His novels and stories are written in a deceptively straightforward style which belies the deeper moral concerns underpinning each one. Toronto was still very much a part of the British Empire in the 1930s, and Callaghan’s dramas focus on the Catholic minority in a city that was beginning to lose it homogeneity.

Callaghan’s career began while he was an undergrad studying at St. Mike’s, writing for the yearbook, submitting short stories to publishers, and penning articles for the Toronto Star. Besides his writing, Callaghan also organized the St. Mike’s Literary Club, where he chose the books and plays to be read by the other students, with a heavy bent to the modernist writers who were his near contemporaries. Conrad, Fitzgerald, Tarkington, Galsworthy, Shaw, and O’Neill were some of the authors Callaghan chose, all of whom were giants in the early 20^th-century literary world. One wonders if the Basilian Fathers who were teaching at the school knew who Callaghan was encouraging his fellow students to read.

Debating was a popular activity on the U of T campus in the 1920s, and Callaghan was a member of the St. Michael’s team that won several debates, which would help his studies when he went to Osgoode Hall Law School after he graduated. It should also be mentioned that St. Mike’s was not only the place where Callaghan started his literary career, but he was also awarded for his boxing skills while at the college, which would come in handy when he was later challenged to that bout by Hemingway.

That’s one of the things I enjoy most about working in the Advancement Office at St. Mike’s—learning the rich traditions and stories of the College’s nearly 170-year history. The pandemic has prevented our usual in-person events from happening, including Alumni Reunion, when alumni are invited to return to campus. I miss meeting with our alumni and hearing their stories about their time at St. Mike’s. I know it’s only temporary, and our alumni will be back on campus soon. Our recent grads are our newest alumni, and who knows—maybe someday one of them will be Canada’s most popular author.

Read other InsightOut posts.

Sam Hodgkins-Sumner is the Executive Assistant in the Office of the Principal. He graduated from U of T last year with a B.A.in Philosophy, and a minor in Christianity and Culture. Currently, he is in a cabin somewhere in the woods.

Cardboard, Thresholds, and Hope

If you’d told me in late February that assembling and packing boxes with Randy Boyagoda’s books and personal effects would be the highlight of my workweek, I’d have probably laughed (or maybe wanted to cry) at the idea. Yet that’s exactly how things turned out on June 11^th. There I found myself sorting books alphabetically by last name—Ellison, Faulkner, Gaddis—and receiving instruction from the incoming FAS Vice Dean, Undergraduate on how to fold down cardboard flaps so as not to require any tape—a trick he learned working at a book factory in his student days. Only the crunch of the occasional Dorito break punctuated the thumps and thuds as we stacked pounds and pounds of American literature and Catholic tradition. Not a typical day at Saint Mike’s, but it sure beat Microsoft Teams meetings.

Why was this packing session so bittersweet for me? It had to be something more than working, eating, and chatting with our outgoing Principal, because I’d had the chance to do all of those during my year in his office. But in a sense, that was all it was about. For the preceding ten weeks, I’d missed the many interruptions by the people who show up at my door (who would have guessed that?), discussions of current events over morning coffee, and running into people on my way to the mailroom. My work hadn’t featured the conversation, shared meals, or other un-screen-mediated interactions that so make being a part of the USMC community rich and joyful.

We find ourselves in a liminal time. We’re passing between life before and after COVID as case numbers drop in many parts of the world, but worries of second waves and the absence of widely available vaccines or immunity tests mean that we haven’t crossed the threshold yet. We don’t know what life on the other side of that threshold will look like. Many have died; many have lost their loved ones, others their jobs. The pandemic, along with the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing demonstrations and public discourse, has reminded us of racial and economic inequality in this American election year. We can only hazard guesses at the timeline that runs towards social and cultural normalcy, towards full concert halls, naves, patios, and any of those other places where we gather in embodied groups.

Further, we find ourselves in a spiritually liminal time. Our regular rhythm of movement about the city, with its many external distractions and stimulation, has been disrupted. The resonance between COVID workspace and monastic cell is evident for those of us with the privilege of working from home; we were afforded a lot of time for rumination and reflection, at least before summer weather broke. The occasional escape-via-HBO-binge notwithstanding, something has shifted inside of most of us.

Again, we wonder: what ramifications—social, political, economic, and spiritual—will result from this liminal time?

As another entry in this series reminded me, times of privation and uncertainty can also be occasions for memory and hope. One of the most enjoyable and memorable aspects of my time in the Principal’s Office so far has been serving as a staff member in the Gilson Seminar in Faith and Ideas. The Seminar is a synecdoche for St. Mike’s at its best: Gilson involves the integration of work, play, and friendship. Gilsonians study great texts together, enjoy pelting each other with dodgeballs every month, and share an experience of travel (barring pandemics). It’s been inspiring watching Professor Boyagoda offer his whole person to the Seminar as he led our office in its administration, taught students with the support of our two postdoctoral Fellows, and even brought his family to many of its events. Such leadership is among the many reasons we will miss him in the role of Principal. Although he’s moving on to the Faculty of Arts and Science, Professor Boyagoda will remain the instructor of the Gilson Seminar—an occasion for hope!

Another occasion for hope in our office lies in the fact that we’re gaining Principal Emeritus Mark McGowan on an interim term. Professor McGowan’s devotion to Saint Michael’s over the years, and his considerable institutional memory, will surely prove invaluable in the months to come.

I value working at a place like Saint Mike’s, a place that seeks to nurture the whole person in a community of study, service, friendship and spiritual practice. Although we can’t currently be together in the way we’d want, we can remember what USMC was like before our liminal moment, and look to the future with hope.

Read other InsightOut posts.

Dr. Mark McGowan is a Professor of History and Celtic Studies, and the Interim Principal of the University of St. Michael’s College for the 2020–2021 academic year. Dr. McGowan is an historian renowned for his work on the Catholic Church in Canada and the Great Irish Famine, as well as the lasting impact that the Famine’s mass migration had on Canada.

Explore other InsightOut posts.

Assistant Professor, Christianity and Culture Stephen Tardif is now co-editor of The Hopkins Quarterly, an international journal of critical, scholarly, and appreciative responses to the lives and works of Gerard M. Hopkins, S.J., and his circle. He begins his duties at the same time as fellow co-editor Dr. Michael D. Hurley of Cambridge University.

“I’m delighted to be co-editing the Quarterly, which has been the major journal in Hopkins studies for almost a half-century,” Tardif says. “It’s also a great pleasure to extend The Hopkins Quarterly‘s long-standing connection to St. Michael’s College.” Past co-editors include St. Michael’s Professor Emeritus Joaquin Kuhn, who co-edited the journal for 25 years.

Founded in 1974, the journal publishes academic articles and book reviews, notes and notices, as well as special issues, from new and established scholars. The first issue of the journal under its new co-editors is now available, featuring articles on “The Wreck of the Deutschland” and Hopkins’ and Christina Rossetti’s poetic depictions of flux, and a number of book reviews.

Readers looking for a new book to pass the time during social distancing will find many options for expanding their minds and imaginations in the work of authors at St. Michael’s. While the school has been a centre of excellence in teaching since its founding, USMC has also provided an institutional home to authors who have published in a wide variety of genres. 

Advancing Research 

Professors in St. Michael’s sponsored programs and the graduate Faculty of Theology publish scholarly monographs and edit collections of academic essays to advance research in their fields.  

Alison More, holder of the inaugural Comper Professorship in Medieval Studies, explores the story of pious medieval laywomen in Fictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200-1600 (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her book continues a long tradition of excellence in medieval scholarship and publication at St. Michael’s, which also includes the regular publication of books under the publications programme of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (PIMS).  

Book and Media Studies is a natural fit for students interested in studying book history, but what about books themselves? St. Michael’s Assistant Professor Felan Parker made use of his cutting-edge work in game studies while co-editing Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), a collection of critical essays on the beloved video game franchise. In the same department, professor Paolo Granata has written numerous books in Italian on media and media ecology, including the first guide to art resources on the web ever published in Italy.  

Parker and Granata‘s BMS colleague Iris J. Gildea’s book Toward a Poetics of Freedom: An interpretive analysis of Ricoeur and Dante (Lambert Publishing: 2014) argues the thought of philosopher Paul Ricoeur changed after an encounter with the poetry of Dante Alighieri—and the great Italian poet is himself the focus of a special collection of rare books and illustrations housed in the Kelly Library.  

Religion adds a special dimension to the scholarship of several St. Michael’s authors. Christianity and Culture professor Michael O’Connor’s Cajetan’s Biblical Commentaries: Motive and Method (Brill, 2017) has been described as “a very welcome addition to our knowledge of religious scholarship in the Renaissance.” Fellow Christianity and Culture prof Reid Locklin is the co-editor of Teaching Civic Engagement (Oxford University Press, 2016) a book that explores the role of religious education in fostering a vibrant democratic order.  

On the civic theme, Canadian historian and St. Michael’s professor Mark McGowan is the author of historical studies such as The Imperial Irish: Canada’s Irish Catholics Fight the Great War (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), which brings together Canadian religious and military history. His book It’s Our Turn: Carrying on the Work of Pioneers of Catholic Education in Ontario (Novalis, 2017) tells the story of Catholic education in Ontario, and casts a vision for its future.  

Professors in the St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology advance scholarly conversations in fields ranging from Historical Theology to Interfaith Studies. Professor John McLaughlin, an Old Testament scholar recently appointed Interim Dean of the Faculty of Theology, has written numerous books including An Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Traditions (Eerdmans, 2018), currently available in an e-book format for under $3. Professor Callie Callon’s Reading Bodies: Physiognomy as a Strategy of Persuasion in Early Christian Discourse (T&T Clark, 2019) explores the use of physiognomy in the rhetoric of early Christian theologians and writers.  

Enriching Culture  

Authors at St. Michael’s have also written for audiences outside the confines of academic disciplines. Principal and Vice-President Randy Boyagoda has published several critically acclaimed literary novels and a widely-reviewed biography of an important American Catholic public intellectual. He is currently at work on a Dantean trilogy of novels. The first, Original Prin (Biblioasis, 2018), is an academic satire set on the downtown campus of a Catholic university.  

Celtic Studies Assistant Professor Máirtín Coilféir’s poem Cumhdach (Kelly Library Print Studio, 2019) was custom printed and bound at St. Michael’s. He is currently working on a translation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn into Irish.  

Professors Boyagoda and Coilféir belong to a long lineage of creative writers at St. Michael’s. In the first half of the 20th century, Canadian novelist Morley Callaghan called St. Mike’s home. After graduating, he would help build the Canadian literary tradition with numerous novels, and short fiction for outlets like the New Yorker. Midcentury novelist Hugh Hood called St. Michael’s home as well, as have more recent creative writers such as poet Anne Carson, novelist Anthony De Sa, and Unbuilt Toronto author Mark Osbaldeston.  

The literary legacy of St. Michael’s continues, with dozens of faculty and staff publications made available for borrowing from the Kelly Library in a special section near the entrance. The building is closed for now, but the list—including many more books that could not be mentioned here—is available online, with some books available for electronic borrowing.  

University of St. Michael’s College President David Sylvester is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. John McLaughlin to a two-year term as Interim Dean of the Faculty of Theology, effective July 1, 2020.

Dr. McLaughlin served as the Faculty’s Interim Dean in the 2014-15 academic year prior to Dr. Ginther’s arrival.

“St. Michael’s is fortunate to have such a capable administrator with a strong familiarity and history in the Faculty” says Dr. Sylvester. “Dr. McLaughlin’s presence in the Dean’s office will help make this process seamless, and I look forward to working with him in this role.”

A professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, Dr. McLaughlin earned a BA from St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB before enrolling at the University of Toronto, where he earned an MA in Philosophy. He then studied Theology and Scripture at St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, earning an MDiv and a PhD.

Professor McLaughlin joined the St. Michael’s faculty in 2002 after teaching for seven years at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia. He is an Associate Member of the Graduate Faculty with the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at U of T, and is a past President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures and as an Associate Editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

Current Dean Dr. James Ginther completes his five-year term on June 30 of this year. After a 12-month research leave, Dr. Ginther, a mediaevalist and historical theologian, will return to the Faculty to teach and conduct research.

Dr. Sylvester has expressed his gratitude for Dr. Ginther’s service over the course of his term in the Dean’s office. “I would like to thank Dr. Ginther for his tremendous service to our community as a member of the President’s Advisory Group and Senior Administration team, in his leadership within the Toronto School of Theology, and in many other collaborative initiatives, including in his field of expertise at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies and the Centre for Medieval Studies,” he says. “I look forward to Jim’s return to campus following his leave and to his renewed leadership at the University.”