If investing has its prodigies, York University student Brandon Dewji could be a candidate. He began studying and buying stocks at the age of nine after reading Peter Lynch’s books and talking to his father, an investment adviser. During his teens, he held summer jobs as an equity analyst at Fidelity Investments, Putnam Investments and other firms. Currently, he is an intern at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, where he works as a portfolio analyst. In the fall, he’ll return to his business studies at York University. “After reading books by Peter Lynch, Seth Klarman, Joel Greenblatt and Ben Graham, among others, my investing style has always been bottom-up, value and growth at a reasonable price,” said Dewji in The Globe and Mail May 10. Read full story.
Researchers say being kept out of ELA despite Ontario’s promise to have facility open
Despite promises from the provincial government to keep the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) open for research this year, scientists trying to get to the research facility are finding they are still being denied access….York University environmental studies Professor Lewis Molot recently asked for permission to go to the ELA to start work on an experiment that has been maintained at the facility for more than 40 years….He followed official channels and asked permission to use the government-owned road, but never received a response or even an acknowledgement of the request from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). “They’re being completely unresponsive, it seems like nobody at DFO can make a decision even of a minor nature. The request gets kicked upstairs and we never hear back from them,” said Molot in the Kenora Daily Miner and News May 9. Read full story.
Canada renews push to buy 100 specs ops vehicles
Canada’s special operations forces will try once again to purchase a new fleet of vehicles for long-range reconnaissance patrols and urban warfare. The first attempt to purchase such vehicles began in 2008 but was put on hold two years later after procurement officials with the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) determined that existing vehicles on the market did not meet requirements….York University Professor Martin Shadwick said this time CANSOFCOM is proceeding in a manner that makes sense. “We tend to go for an all-singing, all-dancing approach as in this first [special operations] procurement, but that ultimately works against us,” Shadwick said in Defense News May 11. “Sometimes, having a vehicle that doesn’t meet all of your requirements, but meets, say, 95 per cent of them, is the way to go, rather than risking burning the entire project down.” Read full story.
Kim Dorland: Beautiful stuff
In 2003, York alumni Kim Dorland got his MFA at York University in Toronto. After graduating from York, he still had a lot to learn, mainly about himself. He dabbled in abstraction, realism, various styles. “It was convincing,” he said, in Canadian Art May 10, of the casting-around period, “but inside I felt like it wasn’t what I was after. And then it kind of came to me what I was after: I wanted to tell my own story.” Read full story.