Dear Graduates and Friends of the Department of Languages,    I am woefully late with Newsletter No. 2 which I had hoped to send out by last summer at the latest. Consequently, some of the information given below may well be out-of-date or incorrect, if so, please forgive me and take a moment to bring us up to date. Tell us where you are and what you have been doing. We like to hear from you.

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NEWS OF FORMER STUDENTSMargret Strerz (1975) is the Coordinator of Elementary Programs for the Separate School Board in Thunder Bay.

Fiorella Latimer (Costanzo) (1978) is the head of Languages at PACI.

Giovannina Ruberto (1978) has two children, Natacha age 16 and Jazmine age 12. Giovannina teaches at Our Lady of Charity school.

Jean-Louis Brusset (1979) teaches at Hammarskjold High school.

Robert Martinie (1981) teaches at St. Martin's school.

Tonina Costanzo (1982) is teaching French immersion at St. Patrick's.

Lorella Costanzo (1985) called to say how much she enjoyed receiving the first newsletter. Lorella is teaching at St. Bernard's school and was off to Spain and Portugal for the summer.

Emilia Amendola (1986) is working for Air Canada in Toronto.

Lillian Franzen (1987) is on leave from Air Canada and has been teaching at St. Bernard's school. Lillian now has two daughters, Isabella, 8 years old and Katrina 9 and a half months old.

Carolyn Oleksak (1987) is teaching at St. Ignatius school.

Bruno Corbin (1988) is teaching French immersion at Hammarskjold High school. His wife Natalie will be teaching core French at Sherbrooke school. Bruno and Natalie have a son, Riley,   aged two years.

Ken Holden (1990) is currently teaching in Thunder Bay.

Roxana Vetere (Mamoojee) (1990) holds a teaching position with the York Board of Education.

Teresina Tassone (Lombardo) (1991) got married in August and we all extend our congratulations to her and her husband Tony. Last September she started a new job teaching French and    English at St. Patrick's High school.

Anita Pavelic (1992) is working for Canada Customs in Ottawa where she has just received a promotion. She got married in the fall of 1998 to Terry and we extend our congratulations.

Ana Maria Catanzaro (1994) is working with Bearskin Airlines at the Thunder Bay airport.

Barbara Modesto (1994) was married in Thunder Bay on July 11, 1998 to Michael Strickland. Barbara and her husband will be living in London, Ontario where she teaches French to grades 5 and 6 students.

 

Randy Prescod (1994) has been in Japan for three years now and is still loving it! He will be staying on for another 2 years to teach at a new position. He was married last fall in a traditional Japanese style wedding outside. We all extend our good wishes to him.

Laurence Remy de Campeau (1995) teaches FSL at St. Margaret's and Our Lady of Charity schools.

 

Nadine Singleton (1995) is currently residing in France and is teaching the International Baccalaureat at a school near Nice.

Maria Buragina (1996) hopes to study Physiotherapy in Southern Ontario but is currently enrolled at the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University in the Junior/Intermediate program.

 

Linda Grassia (1996) is completing her Master's thesis at Western on the French woman writer Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery).

 

Karen-Lynn Kruger (1996) was living in Dornstadt, near Ulm on the Danube River between Stuttgart and Munich but moved at the end of September to Switzerland where she is now working as an au-pair.

 

Chantal St. Denis (1996) is teaching French to grade 3 students, in Etobicoke.

 

In May and June Isabelle Fortin (1997) accompanied Dave Shannon on his cross-Canada tour, traveling at about 12 km/hr, raising money for the disabled. She was his interpreter at all the events scheduled along the route from Rivière du Loup to Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa where Mr. Shannon and Isabelle had an interview with the Prime Minister.

 

Rebecca Lane (1997) will be teaching grade 7 students for the Peale School Board near Mississauga.

 

Sameena Black (1998) had a challenging summer working for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General as a translator for the French language district courts in communities in

Northwestern Ontario. Last August she left for the Dominican Republic where she is teaching ESL and doing volunteer work for the needy.

 

Amy Melchiore is spending the year in France as Assistante en langue anglaise at a school in Bourg-en-Bresse north of Lyon, and not far from Geneva. Her letters indicate that she is making the most of her time there and is really enjoying herself. Amy is from Elliot Lake.

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GRADUATE SCHOOL

    Erika Dolphin (1986) is now working on her PhD thesis in Art History at New York University. Her topic deals with Juan de Borgo a, a Spanish Renaissance painter. She recently received a grant from the Spanish Government to do research in Spain.

   Lisa Korteweg (1988) is now the mother of two-year-old Thilo. She and her husband are in Vancouver and she is working on her PhD in Education at UBC.

   Tania Dolphin (1992) is now in Ottawa where she is completing an M.A. in Geography. Her thesis deals with 19th and early 20th Century English travellers in Pakistan.

   Bronwen Hughes (1994) returned to Thunder Bay after a year at the Université de Strasbourg where she has been working on her M.A. She will be back in Strasbourg in October to complete her thesis, on the Electra myth in French literature. After that she will be attending Laval University in Quebec City.

    Laurien Stafford (1997): after spending a year in Grenoble on the Rhöne-Alps exchange, Laurien liked it so much she decided to stay on for a second year. She was back in Thunder Bay in August prior to beginning an M.A. at Laval University.

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A WORD OF WELCOME

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FORMER FACULTY AND STAFF

Nadine Barnole , from Perpignan was assistante during the 1994-95 session. After her year in Thunder Bay, Nadine taught for a while at a Language Institute in France and then accepted a position as assistant to the director of a marketing firm in London (England) where she is now in her second year.

 

Sylvie Berbaum - We were very fortunate last year to welcome Sylvie as a sessional lecturer in French. She arrived in Canada from France in 1990 and in 1995-96 was Rockerfeller Visiting Fellow at Lakehead University in order to continue her research on Ojibwe culture. This past year she taught Oral French at the first and second year levels. Sylvie received her Teaching Certificate in Music in 1987 studying Pedagogy, Musicology and the Esthetics of Music. She has composed and directed works for students in a French high school as well as an incidental monologue for the theatre. She has considerable teaching experience in France and an extensive background in Ethnomusicology, a field of research in which she completed a doctorate. Her other fields of interest are anthropology, philosophy, the science of religions and mythologies. She has now returned to France to resume her teaching career there.

Alan Moorhead whom many of you will remember as an instructor of Intermediate and Advanced Oral French as well as advanced translation courses was in Thunder Bay for a while this summer prior to leaving for Europe. In the fall Alan will be translating at the United Nations in New York.

Cécile Chauvel-Gobin - Our Assistante for 1997-98, was from Nantes. She was really impressed by all the facilities on the campus and was surprised to discover that they included shops, bank machines and even a post-office. She was also surprised by the relationship between instructors and students, which seemed to be less cold and distant than in France. She feels that nowadays it is very important to speak at least three languages. Two years ago she spent five months in Ghent (Belgium) participating in the European student exchange program ERASMUS. She was on a translation program and took classes in Dutch and Russian. Cécile has worked as a hotel receptionist in Austria, as assistante in a primary school in Germany and as an English language guide on the French naval base in Nantes. Nantes is twinned with Seattle in the United States and Cécile is an active member of the association uniting the two cities; thanks to the association there have been a number of exchanges and Cécile herself had the opportunity to spend some time in Seattle three years ago. She likes to travel and enjoys tennis, riding, sailing on the Erdre river in Nantes. Congratulations to our former technician

Jyrki Helin (1991-93) who got married to a Russian girl named Tania. For their honeymoon they flew to Hong Kong where they witnessed the hand-over from Britain to China. The happy groom still works for the same company and his wife is working on her PhD at the University of Helsinki. They are expecting their first child in May.

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COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY

In the area of communications and technology, I want to thank the Bombardier company of Thunder Bay for their generous assistance in maintaining our satellite reception capabilities.

 

As many of you will know TV5, the International Francophone channel which used to be available via satellite unscrambled at no expense to the viewer, changed to a scrambled, subscription service some two or three years ago. We could afford neither the new equipment nor the annual subscription fee and therefore much valuable material from Quebec, France, Belgium, Switzerland and other French-speaking countries was lost to us.

 

An appeal to Bombardier in Quebec, asking for their support in our endeavours to represent Francophone cultures in this relatively isolated part of the world resulted in our being able to acquire the necessary equipment and pay the annual fee.

 

On behalf of our Department and our students I extend our most sincere thanks to the company.

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NEW FRENCH COURSES

The French program has had some changes which include French 1120 Language and Culture, French 2420 French Civilization, French 2801 Survey of French Literature, French 3603 (French Canadian Literature), French 3801 (19th Century French), French 3802 (20th Century French), French 3811 (Oral Expression (Drama)), French 3820 (Special Topics), French 4517 (The Enlightenment) and French 4820 (Special Topics). The two new Special Topics courses will allow the Department to provide a more contemporary focus on several literary and cultural issues that heretofore we have not explored.

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RETIREMENT

Emil Dolphin Retires

On June 30th 1999 I shall begin my official retirement although I hope to continue teaching a couple of courses every year for a little while yet. I can't say I am looking forward to retirement, except for having more freedom to travel; I wouldn't know what to do without a class in front of me and young people to talk to and interact with. I have really enjoyed my years of teaching, in a number of different countries, spread over almost forty years--the last twenty-three of which have been at Lakehead. Time flies by.

I feel that I have made a lot of friends over the years, and, in general I think I have done a reasonable job; I have certainly given it all my strength, energy and enthusiasm. We can all look back and discover things we would now like to have done differently, and we can all find things we have not been particularly successful in. I am no exception to the rule.

One project I regret not having started sooner is the Scholarship Fund I told you about in the previous Newsletter. The Department undertook to raise $5,000 by March 31st 1999. If we were successful the Provincial government would match the amount dollar for dollar, giving us the possibility of establishing a $10,000 scholarship fund for a graduating high school student in French planning to continue French studies. It seemed, and still seems, a very worthwhile endeavour, but I regret to report that we are still a long way from our objective and time is running out.

I have always felt that teaching languages is one of the most important tasks facing society to-day since it builds, understanding and linguistic and cultural bridges between communities and nations. Because of this fact I am putting aside my own aversion to appeals for financial support and asking any of you who sympathize with our objectives, and who are in a position to do so, to help us in these last few weeks before the deadline. Any help would be more than sincerely appreciated. I would like to see this project succeed before I retire.

If you can help please send your cheque, made out to the Department of Languages OSOTF Scholarship Fund , Department of Languages, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, P7B 5E1.