Former Prof Bill Westcott is remembered, a York expert’s op-ed on the DNC, Indigenous womanhood in poetry, and more
Former music professor Bill Westcott, who taught at York for over three decades, died on July 20. An accomplished and versatile pianist and composer, he was a master of ragtime and stride. Westcott came to York in 1979 and retired from full-time teaching in 2010. He is fondly remembered by students and staff in The Globe and Mail. Rob Bowman, a Grammy Award-winning professor of ethnomusicology at York, was among Westcott’s early students. “He was instrumental in my life,” says Bowman. “He went the extra mile for students. He spent hours with me.”
Mary Henderson, another early student of Westcott, joined a student choir he led. She says she was challenged and impressed by the range of music he chose: “We did Mozart, Gregorian chant, gospel music,” she recalls. “It was incredible.”
Brenna MacCrimmon, a mentee and bandmate of Westcott, says some of his former students told her, “He gave me a crappy mark, but he was my favourite prof,” which she says fits with her understanding of her friend. “When he saw potential and ability in someone, he wasn’t going to coddle them.”
Professor Mike Cadó, a colleague of Westcott towards the end of his full-time teaching career, says he was inspired by, among other things, Westcott’s unique method of demonstrating at the piano while teaching. “It was thrilling to see him play. He really drew you into the performance,” he says. “It was like seeing a world-class European classical pianist. There was the same level of intensity.”
Although he was a trained musician who could read music, it was not from the page, but from his body and soul. It was a great pleasure to be in the room with that.
MacCrimmon speaking to The Globe and Mail
Professor Jack L. Rozdilsky writes about the 2024 Democratic National Convention in an op-ed for The Conversation and how the fast-changing political landscape and recent political violence has reawoken memories of the disastrous 1968 DNC, also held in Chicago. In their op-ed, Professor Idil Boran and her co-author write about how a joint approach to tackling climate change and biodiversity loss is still lacking, despite years of calls for a co-ordinated global policy. Referencing their recent paper published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, they argue a joint work program between the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity is the best approach.
Professor Kenzie Allen is reclaiming her Indigeneity through poetry. Speaking to The Canadian Press, she says her poems are a way for her to take her Haudenosaunee identity back from those who labelled her too much or not enough. Her debut poetry collection Cloud Missives is full of depictions of Indigenous womanhood, and transmutes the British Empire into a reminiscing dude-bro desperate to hold onto his glory days.
Pilots at Air Canada have voted in favour of walking off the job as soon as mid-September. While the travel industry is seasonal, a strike in September would still be “significant and disruptive,” Professor Steven Tufts tells Toronto Star, adding that many pilots don’t just carry people but also cargo.
York alumni and Canadian beach volleyball Olympic medalists Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson confirmed they’ll try to go from silver to gold at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Professor Emeritus Paul Delaney talks to CBC about August’s super blue moon. The term supermoon isn’t a scientific one. It comes from astrology and refers to the moon at its perigee — the closest point of its orbit to Earth. Blue moon refers to a second full moon in a month or the fourth in one season. Both happening concurrently is what made last week’s full moon a super blue. “None of these, by the way, are true astronomical terms,” Delaney tells CTV News.
Everybody likes the moon. You can see detail with the unaided eye and easily with binoculars. It’s a fan favourite. Poetry has been written about, stories, murder, mysteries, I mean, you name it. Everybody has got a story about the moon.
Delaney speaking to CTV News
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