The Chair of York’s Counselling & Development Centre, Marc Wilchesky, was quoted in the Toronto Sun Aug. 26 in a story on students’ stress when they return to school. Wilchesky said there are many things students can do to either keep stress at bay, or deal with existing anxiety. “With good time management, you can plan ahead and fit in all the things you need to fit in,” he said. “That’s a good way to avoid stress.” For those students who are already stressed, Wilchesky recommends “parking” their stress. “It’s like when you go to work and park your car for the day and go about your business,” he said. “Sometimes, if something is stressful, you can just park it…. It’s not denying it’s a problem, but it’s saying: ‘Okay, I’m going to park this stressor over here and I’ll get back to it later’.”
Protecting Ontario’s threatened farmland
Bruce Flattery, York English professor in the Faculty of Arts, is one of 15 people who have been appointed to The Ontario Farmland Trust, reported the Toronto Star Aug. 26. The trust was officially launched at a conference in June on farmland preservation, and was sponsored by the agricultural college at the University of Guelph. Among those on the 15-member trust board are Flattery, King Township Mayor Margaret Black, Don Prince of the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust, and Nancy Walther of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. Their principal goal is to protect and preserve Ontario’s threatened farmland and countryside as farmers face the lure of huge cash deals from developers for their farms.
Health vs. wealth
Dennis Raphael, professor at York’s Atkinson School of Health Policy & Management, was quoted in a story carried in two PEI newspapers, The Guardian in Charlottetown and the Journal Pioneer in Summerside, Aug. 25. Raphael was speaking at the 2004 Atlantic Summer Institute on Healthy and Safe Communities in Charlottetown, held Aug. 22-25. He told delegates there is a common obstacle in the fights for health promotion, crime prevention and social development. “Poverty is a major cause of all these problems – poverty and exclusion,” he said in an interview. “It’s not a question of how thick your wallet is, but whether you can participate in the activities that are expected as a member of an affluent society.”
According to Raphael, it is not the wealthiest nations that do the best job of fighting diseases and of preventing crimes, but the ones that do the most to make sure that people are able to continue to participate in and contribute to society. He said social policy is one of the surest mechanisms for both safer streets and healthier lives.