Erin Fitzpatrick has great plans for her Toronto company, Bel Ami School Headbands, which makes customized jewellery and hair accessories for private girls schools and three universities. How can Ms. Fitzpatrick’s jewellery company continue to grow yet adhere to ethical manufacturing standards? “Apparel companies like Canada Goose and American Apparel do all their manufacturing in-house, provide their employees with superior working conditions, and still manage to outperform many of their rivals,” said Andrew Crane, director of the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business at York University’s Schulich School of Business, in The Globe and Mail Oct. 23. "Ethical sourcing won’t break the bank, but Ms. Fitzpatrick could almost certainly find a manufacturer that would undercut a responsible supplier that takes employee rights seriously. But the question she already seems to be asking is – at what cost? She is marketing to a consumer group that is plugged-in, socially aware and keen to align their values with their purchasing.” Read full story.
Degrees of disruption
Supporters of open-access journals and massive open online courses have been quick to label their initiatives disruptive, but a recent analysis by a York University professor suggests only one of them has the potential to spark considerable change, while the other is likely to remain an alternative alongside traditional offerings. "Disruptive” has become one of higher education reformers’ favourite adjectives, jostling with “innovative” and “revolutionary” for the top spot. To mark Open Access Week, Richard Wellen, associate professor of business and society at York University in Canada, examines the degree to which open-access alternatives in scholarship and research can change their respective areas within higher education, reported Inside Higher Ed Oct. 23. Read full story.
First Canadian narrative drama in Yiddish debuts in NY
A new film opening this week in New York and Los Angeles is in a language most people – including the film’s director – don’t speak, reported the Times of Israel Oct. 22. Filmmaker Naomi Jaye didn’t know a word of Yiddish before making The Pin, but her artistic vision called for dialogue exclusively in mammeloshen. The Pin, a love story set against a Holocaust backdrop, is the first Canadian cinematic narrative drama in Yiddish (with English subtitles). . . . The actors in the two leading roles took several months of intensive language lessons with Yiddish teacher Ana Berman and worked on learning and memorizing Jaye’s script, which had been translated from English by York University Yiddish Professor Gloria Brumer. Read full story.
The TTC is building six new stations up to Vaughan. Five are under construction. One is not
The future site of the York University subway station is a rectangular hole – 152 metres long, 20 metres wide and about 14 metres deep. Water hides its floor. Surrounded by plywood walls, the hole yawns there, taunting administrators who stare down into its murk from Kaneff Tower. Lake York, if you will, has sat unattended since July, when Obrascón Huarte Lain and FCC Construcción, the Spanish consortium that dug the hole, handed it over to EllisDon, which has the contract to build the croissant-shaped station, designed by celebrated British architect Sir Norman Foster. . . . The TTC has already postponed the subway’s opening by a year, to the fall of 2016. Now the hole handover is delayed, reported the National Post Oct. 22. Read full story.