Trent Centre for Biomaterials Research Hosts Conversation With International Sustainability Experts

Carbon Conversations: Sustainability, Labour and Low Carbon Development in Guyana and the Caribbean

Monday, March 3, 2014, Peterborough

Trent University will host a conversation about "Sustainability, Labour and Low Carbon Development in Guyana and the Caribbean" with the minister of labour of Guyana, Dr. Nanda K. Gopaul, and Canada's high commissioner to Guyana, Dr. Nicole Giles.

The conversation takes place at Blackburn Hall, Room 126, from 3:00 - 4:30 on Tuesday, March 4, as part of the ongoing Carbon Conversations Seminar Series hosted by the Trent Centre for Biomaterials Research (trentu.ca/tcbr).

Event Details:

What: The Trent Centre for Biomaterials Research engages a broad spectrum of thinkers in the Carbon Conversations – from students and scientists to philosophers and consumers – generating discourse about carbon-related sustainability issues and the future of our world.

Featured speakers:

• Dr. Nanda Kissore Gopaul, Minister of Labour, Guyana
• Dr. Nicole Giles, Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana, Ambassador to Suriname and Plenipotentiary Representative to Caricom

When: Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Time: 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.

Where: Blackburn Hall, Room 126, Trent University, Symons Campus
1600 West Bank Dr.
Peterborough, ON K9J 7B8

Media are welcome to attend. Please note, this is an invitation only event; seating is very limited.

For more information, please contact: 
Professor Suresh S. Narine, director, Trent Centre for Biomaterials Research
705-748-1011 ext. 6105 or sureshnarine@trentu.ca

2014 Local Hero Award to be presented at Trent University Oshawa Black History Event

“One Song, Many Voices” features lectures, workshops, musical entertainment, local artisans, children’s activities, and more 

Friday, February 28, 2014, Oshawa, ON

For a third year, Trent University Oshawa will host an annual Black History month event, One Song, Many Voices – Continuing the Dialogue at the Thornton Road Campus on Saturday, March 1 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., featuring a special series of lectures, workshops, musical entertainment, local artisan vendors, exhibitors, children’s activities and more.

“This free and open to the public event is an opportunity to bring together communities within the Durham region to embrace diversity,” said Rose Marcells, student chair of this year’s Black History event at Trent Oshawa. “I think it is essential to acknowledge, reexamine and observe the history of slavery, but also to promote peace, leave behind the past and look forward to the future.”

Highlights of the event include an appearance by two-time Juno award winner Liberty Silver who will provide musical entertainment in celebration of black history. Ms. Silver shaped the foundation of R&B/ soul for an entire generation of black female singers in Canada. To date she has opened for several famous musicians including, Bob Marley, B.B. King and Celine Dion, and has performed for U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Black History event will also be the venue for the presentation of the 2014 Local Hero Award, an annual accolade presented by Trent Oshawa to a deserving community member in the spirit of equality and diversity. The award will be presented by Durham Regional Chair Roger Anderson to Mr. Marvin Ishmael, an actor, director, educator, and champion of Caribbean culture on an international scale. Mr. Ishmael appears as Mr. Bhandari on television’s Degrassi: The Next Generation, and is currently writing a new comedy series, Dreaming, featuring a multi-ethnic cast. Mr. Ishmael has been instrumental in creating cross-cultural awareness with The Caribbean Dinner Theatre in Scarborough and on stage through his theatrical work with We Are One Theatre Productions, for which he received a Chalmers award and a Dora Maver Moore award.

The Trent Oshawa event will also feature keynote speaker Paula Madden, a Ph.D. candidate in Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University and author of African Nova Scotian-Mi’kmaw Relations. Ms. Madden’s research examines the history and outcome of rights legislation in Canada and the United States.

Sharing the floor with Ms. Madden is David Austin, author of Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security and Sixties Montreal, a text which won the 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize for Caribbean Literature in English or Creole. He is also the author of the forthcoming The Unfinished Revolution: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Poetry, and the New Society. Mr. Austin’s talk is entitled Fear in the Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in the making of Canada.

Throughout the day, visitors are encouraged to browse the campus hallways where local artisan and food vendors will sell local goods and where community information booths will be on display. Further, the International African Inventors Museum, a mobile museum, will be located in the front atrium for the day.

The full schedule is as follows:

1:00 p.m.: Welcome Ceremony, Room 121
Formal welcome, introductory remarks and tribute to Nelson Mandela

1:10 p.m. -2:10 p.m.: “Ubuntu” Community Drumming Celebration, Room 121
Ubuntu”: Our heritage, our roots, our gift. A celebration of Black History – Community Drumming
2:20 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.:  Academic Panel: Paula Madden and David Austin, Room 125
Paula Madden – African Nova Scotian-Mi’kmaw Relations
David Austin – Fear in the Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in the making of Canada

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.:  History of Oral Presentation Workshop and History of Jazz Lecture (running concurrently) Rooms 103, 115
Choice of workshop or lecture
History of Oral Presentations (Workshop – Roger Gibbs and Tara Woods)
History of Jazz (Lecture - Professor Michael Morse)
4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.: Liberty Silver - Entertainment, 121
Two-time Juno award winner Liberty Silver takes the stage for a special musical performance

5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Local Hero Award Ceremony, Room 121
Remarks from Durham Regional Chair Roger Anderson, Oshawa Mayor John Henry and Pickering-Scarborough East MPP Tracy MacCharles.

This event is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. Last year’s Black History Month event attracted hundreds of visitors.

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The Science of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis: What Dexter Doesn’t Know” among 14 new Trent University Continuing Education Courses

Public invited to “Meet the Instructors”: March 3, 2014

Thursday, February 27, 2014, Peterborough

Trent University’s Continuing Education program invites the public to a “Meet the Instructors Reception” on March 3, 2014 from 4 – 5:30 p.m. to learn more about a fascinating new selection of courses for spring 2013.

The event will allow community members to chat with instructors and browse 14 courses spanning a diverse range of topics, such as building team leadership skills; bloodstain pattern analysis and “the CSI effect”; medieval legends of King Arthur; and more.  

Trent’s Continuing Education program aims to bring the joy of life-long learning to the entire community, providing a range of courses to individuals of all ages; no prerequisites are required. All courses are offered at Traill College, conveniently and centrally located in the heart of downtown Peterborough, just two blocks south of Parkhill Road between Reid and Stewart Streets.

“We are pleased to be able to offer such a wide range of educational subjects through the Spring 2014 Continuing Education courses,” said Dr. Doug Evans, director of Continuing Education at Trent. “I encourage anyone who has an academic interest in one of our course topics, or who simply wants to learn some new life skills in a community setting, to attend our ‘Meet the Instructors’ reception to find out more about Continuing Education at Trent.”

Trent’s Continuing Education line-up for spring 2014 is as follows (full descriptions follow below):

1) Building and Leading Highly Effective Teams - Bill Templeman 

2) Basic Facilitation Skills - Bill Templeman 

3) Courageous Conversations: Moving Forward, One Conversation at a Time - Colleen Carruthers 

4) Oral-Aural Focused Introductory Chinese - Shaoling Wang 

5) Great Minds Don’t Think Alike: Your Guide to Self-Understanding - Dr. Vern Belos, LLM, CHRP

6) The Science of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis: What Dexter Doesn’t Know - Mike Illes 

7) Aging Well through the Creative Process: ‘Getting older is not for the faint of heart!’ - H. Fay Wilkinson 

8) From Tired to Inspired - Colleen Carruthers 

9) Reserved for Conversation - Colleen Carruthers 

10) Reading Like A Writer - Juliet Sutcliffe

11) Works in Progress: Advanced Workshop for Writers - Michelle Berry 

12) Legends of Arthur: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Drew Maxwell

13) Writing Your Story: Creative Non-Fiction - Mary J. Breen 

14) Modern Technology – Heather Tjeerdsma

More information on Continuing Education at Trent is available on the program website at www.trentu.ca/continuingeducation.

Registration is now open for all sessions and courses, which begin as early as March 20, 2014. Interested individuals may register online, by telephone at 705-748-1011 ext. 1736, or by visiting Scott House, Room 102.4 at Traill College, 300 London Street, Peterborough.

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...And sometimes a hoax is REALLY not a hoax!

A friend of mine sent me a Huffington Post article today detailing the latest news about the Kenneth Tong promoting-anorexia story, which I posted about yesterday. Apparently Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent, interviewed him before he came out with the statement that it was a hoax. Based on their original conversation, Hari has asserted that this was NOT a hoax and that Tong is only claiming this now because he is scared of being legally liable for hurting people.

The full story is available here, but below is just a taste of why this whole thing made me so angry:

Women should "get thin or die trying," and you can "never start too young." It is better for a girl to "risk [her] life dieting than be sub-par by being a plus-size." Remember: "Hunger hurts but starving works."
"The words lunch, breakfast, and dinner should now mean nothing to you, you have eaten enough for a lifetime. Stop. You are disgusting."

Sometimes, a hoax is not just a hoax.

I am absolutely disgusted that this @MrKennethTong character, who was promoting "managed anorexia" on Twitter last week, has turned out to be a hoax. If there is one thing more disturbing and harmful than declaring curves to be ugly and encouraging women to starve themselves to become a size zero, it is an elaborate "experiment" designed by some dude to prove a point to another dude about "harnessing the power of social media" on a global scale.

Whoever this person is in real life, he should be truly mortified. Instead, he has posted an apology for "offending people," made a donation to a UK charity, and will now proceed to appear on several talk shows and likely get rich and famous for his efforts. Listen up, asswipe: you didn't just offend those of us who happened to stumble upon your Twitter posts, which some have compared to "spewing excrement". You literally caused at least a few dozen women to starve themselves to the point that their bodies are likely permanently damaged, to say nothing of their mental health. Eating disorders are NOT something for you to play with.

If anyone wants to read the "statement" that was posted today, I've pasted it below (I suspect it will be taken down soon). He has already deleted the tweets that he originally posted -- all that's left on the @MrKennethTong page are things he has retweeted from other people -- but even those are enough to give an idea of the general public opinion of this issue.


Kenneth Tong
On Tuesday 11th January 2011, @MrKennethTong said:

I think it is time for to come clean. The whole size zero thing is a hoax. It came about after an interesting discussion I had with a friend of mine. The discussion centered round whether it was possible, to go from nowhere to be a globally recognized figure within a week harnessing the power of the internet and specifically Twitter, which I have always maintained is a better medium than national TV. My friend said it wasn’t possible. I said it was. To prove him wrong, I decided as a hoax to promote via Twitter something that was universally appalling, I chose managed anorexia. I would like to make it clear, I chose the subject as a hoax as I knew it’d be appalling to men and women. The campaign has worked; I have been a Trending topic on Twitter for over a week. I am scheduled to appear on TV, the Press and Radio shows, over the course of the next week: Grazia, Telegraph, The Sun, The Sunday Times etc. Now it’s time to come clean and stop the bandwagon. My honest personal opinion on managed anorexia is it is an disgusting and illogical idea. It is a mental illness. It cannot be managed. To all the people I have offended as part of this scientific experiment, I would like to apologize to you and to show my sincerity I will making a sizeable donation to beat: the leading UK charity for people with eating disorders and their families. Furthermore, I have decided to auction my custom Apple iPod Nano watch on Ebay, the proceeds from this will be going to the charity, beat.