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Summer 2022

Alumni updates

Hither and Yon

Here is what some of our alumni have been up to this year

‘66

JOHN BOILEAU (BA) of Bedford, N.S., achieved a milestone in his writing career in November, with his 100th article published in Legion Magazine and his 75th entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia.

‘72

DENIS BARRY (LLB) of St. John’s, N.L. is retiring after 50 years at the bar of Newfoundland and Labrador.

‘74
ANNA BLAUVELDT (BA Honours) of Ottawa, O.N., who at the conclusion of her 35 years with the federal public service, was honoured to be appointed ambassador to Iceland. Seven years as a justice of the peace with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General followed. She is now pursuing writing full time. Several of her short stories have appeared in Canadian and American anthologies, and her children’s book Kat and the Meanies came out in 2016. Most recently, her literary fiction To Play at God, was published in October 2021 by Publerati, Maine, USA.
‘75
CHRIS ALLEN (BSc) of Ottawa, O.N., was presented with the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, in a ceremony at Rideau Hall, Ottawa. He received this medal for his more than 15 years of volunteer work with the Emergency Management Program of the Canadian Red Cross. While most of his volunteer work has been in the Ottawa area and eastern Ontario, he has also been deployed to disasters in Alberta and Saskatchewan, along with Thunder Bay, Toronto and Kingston.
‘78
DEREK BUCKLEY (BSc) of Texas, U.S.A., was employed as a technologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Now retired and originally from Fredericton, N.B. Hoping for a long and relaxing retirement.
‘85
DAVID LEBLANC (BScEE) of Fredericton, N.B., retired on July 31, 2021, after a 36-year career with the New Brunswick Power Corporation. During that time, he worked as
an electrical engineer in the areas of generation, distribution, and transmission. For the last almost 30 years of his career, he worked as a protection and control engineer in transmission, working in the NB Power head office in Fredericton, as well as performing on-site commissioning around New Brunswick at various NB Power transmission substations and generating stations.
‘87
RAOUF KHODABOCUS (BA, MSc’89, PhD’93) of Geary, N.B., has been promoted from school principal to director. He is a fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada and works on the theory of inclusive education and has been putting his theory into best practice in educational institutions in Canada, as well as around the world. He is a proud father of three children: Ibrahim, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council scholar; Salma, a Karel Wiesner scholar; and Sarah, who is finishing her high school diploma. Raouf would like to hear from old friends at drkhodabocus@hotmail.com.

CRAIG WALKINGTON (BA, BBA’89) of Labrador City, N.L., who after serving 38 years in Canada’s Naval Reserve, of which 20 years was full-time service, retired in 2015. Highlights of his career included being the East Coast coordinator of activities and projects marking the centennial of the Royal Canadian Navy. Part of those activities included being the RCN’s lead planner for the Queen’s last visit to Nova Scotia in 2010. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (Military Division) for this work. On his retirement, he joined the household staff of the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia as communications advisor and deputy private secretary. He retired from that position in September 2021 and was awarded the Government House Gold Medal for his service to the Crown in Nova Scotia. Having married in July 2021, Craig moved to Labrador City in September 2021 to join his husband and stepdaughter.

‘89
MARK FRANCIS (BPE, BEd’94, MBA’09, MA’09) of Laguna Beach, U.S.A., was named director of the undergraduate sport business program and assistant professor at Concordia University Irvine (CUI), in Irvine, California in July 2021. He has recently added to his responsibilities at CUI, serving as the university’s faculty athletics representative to the NCAA. He has also overseen the development of a new MBA program in sports business at CUI. Mark also serves as a sports business lecturer at the UCLA Anderson Center for Media, Entertainment & Sports, and as a course author/professor for the Business of Hockey Institute’s MBA program in hockey management for Athabasca University in Edmonton.
‘93

JON WEAVER (BScME) of Montréal, Q.C., and Beth Weaver (née Galley) pulled up stakes in Montreal and moved back to New Brunswick. They bought Salty Towers in St. Andrews by-the-Sea and they moved in March as inn keepers.

‘95
TROY ATYEO (BScFE) of Fort McMurray, A.B., who is currently employed with Syncrude Canada Ltd., in December 2019 was promoted to program manager – Mildred Lake Mine Extension-West.
‘97
FABIAN MCKENZIE (BKin) of Glace Bay, N.S., was the head coach of the Canadian National U19 Women’s Basketball program, which finished fifth at the World Championships in Debrecen, Hungary, last summer.
‘00
MATT ROBINSON (MA) of Halifax, N.S., released his sixth full-length poetry collection, Tangled & Cleft, by Kentville’s award-winning Gaspereau Press. The poetry in this collection considers daily life with the lens zoomed all the way in, magnifying the finest grains of detail. Whether he’s writing about the New Year’s Day hangover, perfectly mown lawns, the ampersand on a wedding invitation, beer league hockey or the shattering of a deceased parent’s casserole dish, Matt susses out the seemingly innocuous web of relationships that give the domestic its complexity. Matt will be launching the book at various readings and festivals in the coming weeks and months, both online and in person (if COVID allows). Copies are available from bookshops everywhere, including local indies like Fredericton’s own Westminster Books.
‘02
GREGORY KING (BSc, LLB’05) of Halifax, N.S., was appointed deputy regional director and senior counsel of the Tax Law Services Section of the Atlantic Regional Office of the Department of Justice Canada in October 2021.

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