Professor Emeritus wins at the World Triathlon Championship Finals, York experts comment on the postal strike, ice cover on lakes, and more
Professor emeritus Glen Norcliffe, 81, won the 80 to 84 age group of the male sprint distance race at the 2024 World Triathlon Championship Finals held in Spain on Oct. 17. “It was 81 years in the making,” says Norcliffe of his win. Next year, Norcliffe has qualified for a triathlon in Australia and a duathlon.
Professor Steven Tufts talks to CBC about the Canada Post workers’ strike and whether a shift in Canada Post’s business model is needed. Tufts says Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has some leverage in negotiations because of holiday spending, but there’s a bigger issue: What should the business model of a company that has lost money in the last six years look like in the future? CUPW has been pushing for expanding services, such as postal banking and seniors’ wellness checks, but Tufts says they have not built the large-scale public campaign needed to pressure Canada Post into changing its business model.
Artist and PhD student Shannon Garden-Smith wants us to think more about a crucial building material we are running out of: sand. Her recent artworks were created using pigmented dust from sand she collected around the city. For this year’s Nuit Blanche, she created an 2,500 square-foot interactive floor installation using vibrantly dyed sand to form marbled patterns. During the all-night event, attendees were invited to walk across the ‘carpet’, disrupting the sand patterns and muddying colours in the process. “I invite viewers into a kind of collective erasure,” she tells CBC. “Their engagement becomes visible in the living, changing work as an index of movement.”
Scientists who study the characteristics of inland fresh-water systems are confronting — and rushing to address — a serious knowledge gap on the role winter ice cover plays on lake cycles and functioning. Professor Sapna Sharma comments on new research into under-ice conditions that is challenging what limnologists thought they understood about lakes’ winter behaviour. Speaking to Inside Climate News Sharma says there was a concentrated interest in winter limnology during the 1960s and ’70s. Then the work paused before slowly beginning again about a decade ago.
At the 6th Muskoka Summit on the Environment on Oct. 4 in Bracebridge, Professor Deborah McGregor shared simple truths that have guided Indigenous stewardship for thousands of years, reports MuskokaRegion.com. “We cannot manage water; we can only learn how to live with water,” says McGregor, and “Water is a relative of ours. We depend on water for our lives. Wise stewards treat water with humility and respect.”
Wise stewards treat water with humility and respect
McGregor at the Muskoka Summit on the Environment
Do you have a new research study or an academic achievement to share? Contact media@yorku.ca with details. For daily York in the News highlights, follow @YorkUnews on X.
