Long-time North Yorker Joan Goldfarb’s dedication to improving the lives of others and her passion for visual art have earned her the Order of Ontario, the highest honour bestowed by the province, reports The North York Mirror March 2. Goldfarb and her husband have been long-time benefactors to York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and their generosity was rewarded in 2001 with the opening of the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts at the University, says the newspaper.
Empty posturing
In a letter to the National Post March 6, Eric Lawee, a humanities professor in York’s Faculty of Arts, responds to an editorial on what distinguishes us from the Americans by Mark Kingwell: “Prof. Kingwell writes of Canada’s relationship to the United States that ‘If you were the only dissenter in a room holding a dozen people, standing up and saying “I’m not the same as you,” would be a clear mark of moral courage.’ This is true, however, only if the dissenting view you advocate is morally courageous. It is false if the position you counsel is immoral or cowardly. And Prof. Kingwell’s claim is especially untenable if, as is so often the case with Canada, your dissent involves no position of substance at all.”
Students around the globe join in anti-war protests
More than 700 students from high schools, universities and colleges across the city converged downtown yesterday afternoon to protest a pending war on Iraq. The protest was part of an international student outpouring against the pending U.S.-led war. Students in more than 10 Canadian cities, from St. John’s to Victoria, and at more than 230 American campuses, raised their voices yesterday, hoping to do what no international leader has been able to — sway U.S. President George W. Bush against attacking Iraq, reported the Toronto Star and many other media outlets. At York, protesters set up pickets at three entrances to the campus and police shut down the pickets after four hours, sending protesters to camp outside York president Lorna Marsden’s office said the Toronto Star.
On air
- A new book by Moshe Milevsky, a professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, concludes women are better retirement planners than men, reported “680 News” (CFTR-AM), Toronto, March 4.
- Margaret Beare, director of York’s Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption, was interviewed about a new law in Quebec allowing the province to share the proceeds of crime seized in a raid on bikers in Montreal with the city, which plans to share them with the police, on “Absolutely Canadian” (CBC-NW), March 3.