Volume 29 - Number 11 - Thursday, February 27, 1997


These young figure skaters from the Club de Patinage Artistique Gadbois took to the ice at the Bell Amphitheatre last week to help raise money for the McGill AIDS Centre. Guillaume Lambert-Rouleau gets plenty of support from his friends (clockwise from left), Vlada Finagin, Darryl Lampitt, Eric Lightbourne and Camelia Lightbourne.




Our man in Toronto

Back in September, at the laugh-filled Leacock Luncheon for McGill graduates, Vice-Principal (Development and Alumni Relations) Derek Drummond posited that English Quebecers define angst as "Anglos Now Going Straight to Toronto."

Well, Drummond has taken steps to ensure that if McGill graduates do relocate to the land of bland bagels, they'll find that their alma mater now has a permanent presence in Hogtown.

"The best way to describe it is as a consulate," says Colin Campbell, the head of McGill's new Ontario Region Development and Alumni Relations Office. "There are 26,000 McGill graduates in this province and we're not sure they're thinking about the University as often as we would like them to."

It will be Campbell's job to foster fond thoughts about McGill from Kingston to Hamilton. The new office will officially open next month, headquartered in the Royal Bank Plaza on Bay Street.

In 1995, a report commissioned by Drummond's predecessor, Michael Kiefer, on the future of development and alumni relations, urged McGill to open a permanent office in Ontario. "The anglophone business community, our historical great benefactor, is eroding in Montreal as more and more businesses move offices and executives elsewhere, but particularly to Toronto. A Toronto office of development and alumni affairs appears to be a must."

Campbell earned a science degree from McGill in 1962. He went on to management positions in Quebec, Alberta and Ontario and recently served as the president of Junior Achievement Canada.

He says the idea of universities opening offices in other cities isn't new. "The University of Toronto has an office in Hong Kong and many of the large American universities operate offices in the major U.S. cities to stay close to donors and graduates. If we want to keep in touch with our benefactors and potential benefactors in this province, it's easier to do it from here than from Montreal."





The Citizen's point of view

Economics professor William Watson isn't exactly a neophyte when it comes to journalism. He earned a National Magazine Award for a sharp-witted article about New York he published in Saturday Night and he's been a columnist for both the Financial Post and the Gazette. Still, he admits his new job as editorial page editor at the Ottawa Citizen throws him for a loop now and then.

"It's amazingly different from being a professor. You know that quote about 'the quiet and still air of delightful studies' engraved on the McLennan Library? Well there's none of that here."

Watson took a one-year leave of absence from McGill to see how he liked working at the Citizen. He says he finds the frenetic pace of a major daily newspaper both exhilarating and taxing. "It's fascinating to see how this part of the world works--more academics should have an experience like this. On the other hand, I don't have time to read anymore and I feel my human capital depreciating pretty quickly."

Watson is overseeing an ambitious overhaul of the Citizen's editorial pages--the paper will offer a meatier editorial section that regularly tackles both national and local issues. He even has a hot tip for his McGill colleagues--the Citizen will soon start running 1,500-word op-eds on a range of subjects and he's looking for submissions.

There is one caveat--Watson has final say over what's published.

"I get to impose my taste on 150,000 people every day. That part of the job is definitely fun."






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