University

Wednesday November 21, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday November 21, 2012

Tiger-Cats to play at University of Guelph in 2013

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats will play CFL home games next season at the University of Guelph while their new stadium is being built, team president Scott Mitchell said Tuesday.

The university stadium has 7,500 seats. Mitchell couldn’t say exactly how many might be added next year, but insisted there should be enough to accommodate all season-ticket holders.

“We’re working with the university right now to get to that final detail,” he said. “I think any facility we were looking at, obviously, for 2013 was going to require some temporary facilities and infrastructure.”

A new 24,000-seat field is built on the site of Ivor Wynne Stadium, the team’s home for the past 84 years. The new stadium will also be used as a soccer venue for the 2015 Pan American Games. Ivor Wynne had a capacity of 29,600.

Guelph is a 45-minute drive from Hamilton, in an area where the Ticats have been looking to raise their profile.

“We’re really focused on two things. One is to provide a solution to all our season ticket holders — this will clearly do that — as well as enable a lot of new fans in Guelph and around the region to get to some games and . . . this accomplishes both,” Mitchell said.

He wouldn’t say how many season-ticket holders they have, but added that most will likely renew for 2013.

“We’re really focused on two things. One is to provide a solution to all our season ticket holders — this will clearly do that — as well as enable a lot of new fans in Guelph and around the region to get to some games and . . . this accomplishes both,” Mitchell said. (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

Thursday April 12, 2012

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday April 12, 2012

Mac should set the standard on openness

Universities play an important role in the fabric of democratic societies.

They are guardians of academic freedom, and carry the responsibility of instilling into their students important ideas and enduring values of our society.

A couple of those ideas are the openness and accountability of public institutions in a democracy and the right of the public to know how its money is being spent.

In that context, McMaster University’s determined struggle to keep secret the details of the financial affairs of former president Peter George is particularly disappointing. The approach to accountability, transparency and disclosure displayed over a course of years leaves the university with a black eye of its own making.

This isn’t just about McMaster. In an era of increasing public demand for open data, the lack of openness displayed is far too common among leading public institutions spending public money and acting on our behalf. We have seen it with the province’s Ornge scandal, with the city’s debate about open police budgets, with executive salaries at Ontario Hydro, and more.

As detailed in Wednesday’s Spectator, this newspaper engaged in a six-year struggle with the university over the release of documents. Every step of the way, the university has fought the release, sought to prevent the former president’s contract and his expenses from being disclosed.

Universities were made subject to freedom of information laws in June of 2006. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 16, 2006

Rare gene machine stirs Mac researcher

McMaster University took delivery of a very special package this week.

It contained what could well be described as a time machine — one with the power to create an exact picture of organisms and environments that existed long before recorded history.

The machine is a genome sequencer — one of fewer than 40 in the world and one of only two in Canada — and is capable of doing in hours what had until recently taken scientists years.

The sequencing machine, developed by Swiss giant Roche Diagnostics and introduced last October, is neither pretty nor cheap.

It is as plain as a large photocopier on a rolling stand, and it plugs into the wall like any common appliance. But at $750,000, it does much more than anything you’ll find at Office Depot.

Specifically, the genome sequencer reads and analyzes DNA bases, at a speed scientists had never previously imagined. A large mammal such as a human might have 2.8 billion base pairings. (Hamilton Spectator)