Some women drive minivans. Daphne Schiff, 80, and Adele Fogle, 71, drive airplanes, began a Canadian Jewish News profile of the two pilots Feb. 18. More than 30 years ago, Schiff got her pilot’s license in Montreal. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in science, Schiff began teaching chemistry and physics at York University, where she still teaches the science of flight. Fogle opened Aviation International, a business that teaches flying, charters and services planes, sells fuel and runs a restaurant. In their spare time, the two women fly aid shipments to Africa. The past few years, they have worked with Ve’ahavta, the Canadian Jewish Humanitarian Relief Committee, to raise the $15,000 minimum required by Air Solidarité, a humanitarian organization that provides assistance to small villages in central Africa, to participate in its annual aid effort. This year, Schiff and Fogle are worried that with all the attention being paid to tsunami relief, they may not be able to raise the funds needed to make next October’s Africa trip. "The tsunami has definitely taken over the news. Everyone seems to have forgotten the needs of the people of Africa," Schiff said. But she insists that, as she once heard someone say, "the tsunami was an act of God that happened quickly. Africa is an act of man that goes on and on."
ING hires Toronto ad agency to target US market
The tiny Toronto ad agency behind the famously successful launch of ING Direct – featuring an earnest Dutch actor urging us to save our money – has scored the much larger US portion of the account, reported The Globe and Mail Feb. 22. Garneau Wurstlin Philp Branding Inc., which goes by the name GWP Brand Engineering, said yesterday that it has been named agency of record for ING Direct in the United States. Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at York University's Schulich School of Business, said GWP has earned the right to the US account. He said GWP's campaign worked well because the ads delivered a consistent, focused message. By comparison, he says ING's US ads have been "dreadful" because they weren't different enough from the campaigns other banks were running.
Study aims to help heart patients adapt to implanted defibrillators
Jane Irvine, psychology professor in York University’s Faculty of Arts, is helping those heart patients who must use miniature implanted defibrillators to cope with the psychological stress caused by these devices, reported Australia-based News Medical Net Feb. 17. Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICDs) are programmed to electrically shock the heart in the event of a life threatening heart rhythm incident. "The effect of these shocks is similar to the impact of a gunshot to the chest," explained Irvine. "Many of the patients who have experienced multiple shocks begin to develop symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder."
Law grad joins Ontario Power Generation board
Ontario Power Generation announced Feb. 22 in The Globe and Mail that Marie C. Rounding has been elected to its board of directors. Rounding is the former president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Gas Association and served as Chair of the Ontario Energy Board from 1992 to 1998. As a leading regulator, she was involved in the deregulation of the natural gas markets and the early restructuring of the electricity sector in Ontario. Rounding gradated from York’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 1975.
On air
- Khurrum Awan, a first-year student at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, discussed the Canadian Islamic Congress comments on the anti-terrorism act and how it affects the Muslim community in Canada, on the South Asian edition of "OMNI News" on Toronto’s OMNI.2 television.