Anyone who listens to “Here and Now,” CBC Radio One’s afternoon drive-home program, will be familiar with the sound of its energetic and quick-witted host Matt Galloway, reported the Owen Sound Sun Times Jan. 6. He is part of a new wave of bright and articulate young people attracted to public radio without the formal broadcast training of journalism school. “The CBC in particular is a really unique thing. What I do [there] I couldn’t do anywhere else,” Galloway said. “There are a whole lot of different programs out of the CBC now that work to bring a whole lot of new people in, whether it’s young people or different people who don’t think they have the radio voice.” Galloway “came out of high school with a really wide range of interests” and didn’t know what he wanted to do before heading off to York University to study English, said the Sun Times. Galloway graduated with a BA in English in 1994.
Prof isn’t among missing after tsunami
A day after publishing leaked government lists of Canadians reported missing or dead in Thailand, the Toronto Star has found that 50 of them are, in fact, safe, the newspaper reported Jan. 6. They include Guida Ching-Fan Man, a professor in York’s Atkinson School of Social Sciences, and her husband Michael Stein, who were to go to Phuket but changed plans at the last minute.
Rising executives combine York and Harvard degrees
Two newly appointed presidents of major Canadian firms boast a combination of York and Harvard degrees. Gregory L. Ebel, the new president of Union Gas, earned a BA in public policy administration from York in 1987 and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s advanced management program, stated announcements published Jan. 6 in the National Post and The Globe and Mail. Ebel was most recently vice-president of investor relations and secretary of the executive committee of Duke Energy, the parent company of Union Gas. Susan Black, newly appointed president of non-profit research firm Catalyst Canada, holds a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a PhD in administration from York’s Schulich School of Business, earned in 2000. Since 2000, when she completed her PhD, she has been VP of Catalyst Canada, stated a Jan. 6 announcement in the Globe.
Art no excuse for physical pain
A Toronto Star reader objected in a Jan. 6 letter to an article “promoting” the “revolutionary” art of Istvan Kantor, whose work will be exhibited in February at the Art Gallery of York University. Allister Thompson was responding to a Star story that listed some of Kantor’s infamous achievements, including a video of two performers slitting the throats of two cats, then wearing the gushing carcasses as hats in an apparent critique of people who value pets over fellow human beings, and the burning of a car filled with white rats. Thompson wrote: “What self-respecting revolutionary, university, newspaper or performance venue would aid and abet an artist who has utilized this sort of savagery and cruelty? Art may be sacred to some and seen as a tool to spread political views, but it is not an excuse to physically hurt anything or anybody.”
Symphony composer segues to jazz
Glenn Buhr, a vaunted Canadian pianist, conductor and a composer of symphonies, ballets and other works that have been recorded and broadcast by this country’s leading ensembles, has a (semi) secret life – as a jazzman, reported the Toronto Star Jan. 6. The Buhr Quartet makes its Toronto debut Jan. 10 and 11 at The Senator. “I found that with classical composition there was so much time spent sitting with oneself,” Buhr said. “Jazz is a social thing. It involves sharing, some originality and crowd participation,” he said, “and after all, when I did study at York University, my teacher was Casey Sokol [music professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts].”
On air
- David Wheeler, professor of business and sustainability at York’s Schulich School of Business, discussed whether the corporate sector is doing enough to help victims of the tsunami, on CBC Radio’s “Ontario Today” Jan. 5.