Around the Ring

Bamfield facility gets set to grow
The Bamfield Marine Science Centre (BMSC) will soon be adding a major expansion, thanks to a $900,000 donation from Dr. Don Rix, chairman of the Burnaby-based MDS metro Laboratory Services. The gift will be used to build the Rix Centre for Ocean Discoveries, containing a new lecture theatre, more labs, and space for students and faculty to meet for discussions. A new student lodge, another lab building and more housing for researchers will also be built with money being raised in an $8 million fundraising campaign. Located on Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the BMSC was founded in 1972 by five western Canadian universities, including UVic. It supports research by marine scientists, offers university-level courses in marine and coastal sciences, and runs hands-on educational programs for school groups and visitors.

Bake sale proceeds go to Korean attack victim
Students from UVic's English Language Centre held a bake sale in the SUB and in the Clearihue Building on June 18 to raise money for Ji Wong Park, the Korean student who was attacked while jogging in Stanley Park on May 27. Over $2,000 was raised during the four-hour sale, in which students sold baked goods, candles, postcards and other items. "We were very surprised," says Mayumi Ogata, a student from Brazil who helped organize the event. "We thought at first we would get $200 to $300 dollars, so we're very happy."

International physicists meet on campus
Nearly 200 particle physicists from Europe, Asia and North America were on campus last month for planning meetings associated with "Babar," an electron-positron collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) at Stanford University. It was the first time Babar collaborators have met in Canada. Dr. Mike Roney, UVic's principal investigator on the Babar project, says the purpose of the Victoria conference was to evaluate the validity of recent scientific work and determine which results are ready to be presented at upcoming conferences. Electron-positron collisions conducted at the 1,200-tonne Babar detector help physicists study why the universe has more matter than anti-matter even though it contained exactly equal amounts during the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Past experiments at SLAC have resulted in three Nobel prizes.

UVic creates unique co-op portal
Soon it will be easier for co-op students, their employers, and colleges and universities to keep in touch and informed. That's because UVic's co-op education program is producing a province-wide portal where users can both post and access information related to co-operative education. "They'll be able to find out about job and career opportunities, employer profiles and statistics," says Dr. Elizabeth Grove-White, executive director of UVic's co-op education program. "The portal will also streamline our methods of recruiting and placing students." The $50,000 portal is being funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education and should be functional by the summer of 2003. The co-op gateway will be the first of its kind in B.C.

Youth, staff benefit from new custody centre
Victoria's new youth custody centre, which opened in June, "will significantly improve the ability of its staff to do the kind of work they want to do," says Dr. Sybille Artz, director of UVic's school of child and youth care. "With this facility, they can provide the kind of intervention and treatment the youth in custody need." The new centre will facilitate better separation of boys and girls and more mental health services for all youth in custody. Artz was approached by the centre's administration in 1999 to help do research and train staff in the unique experiences and needs of girls and boys who find themselves in custody. With funding from Justice Canada and the provincial Ministry for Children and Family Development, Artz conducted research into "what the staff needed, what they'd like to do, and how they'd like to do it." She then worked with custody centre staff to develop training materials and delivery methods.

Our southern neighbours make us funny
Canada's self-deprecating humour is partly a result of its subordinate mentality, says Dr. Christopher Thomas, a UVic history in art professor and authority on Canadian and American culture. "Modern Canadian identity largely derives from reacting to the American presence," he says. "After the American civil war there began a tremendous spread of American wealth, power, militarism and popular culture, and here's Canada, more or less abandoned by Britain, struggling as a nation next door." Thomas says that subordinate societies often specialize in entertainment and humour as a way of coping, and that it's no surprise entertainers are one of Canada's biggest exports. "I think humour and patriotism in a country like Canada can be a form of resistance, they're something we should be supporting. We have an irony about us, and we don't take ourselves seriously. I think there's even a level at which Canadians are laughing at our own need to be Canadian."