Lee Lorch,a soft-spoken mathematician whose leadership in the campaign to desegregate Stuyvesant Town, the gargantuan housing development on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, helped make housing discrimination illegal nationwide, died Friday at a hospital in Toronto. He was 98. He died of natural causes, according to his daughter Alice Lorch Bartels. By helping to organize tenants in a newly built housing complex — and then inviting a black family to live in his own vacant apartment — Mr. Lorch played a crucial role in forcing the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which owned the development, to abandon its whites-only admissions policy. His campaign anticipated the sit-ins and other civil rights protests to come, reported the New 91ɫ Times March 2. [Mr. Lorch was professor emeritus of mathematics at 91ɫ.] .
Engineering students at 91ɫ will soon have a brand new home with the opening of the innovative Lassonde School of Engineering building in 2015, reported the Toronto Star Feb. 27. The building’s cloud-inspired design is meant to reflect and motivate the school’s mission of providing a creative biosphere for students. The new building will have zero classrooms or offices, instead focusing on open spaces where students can collaborate and work and learn alongside each other. .
Bruce Power is working to secure the commitment from its two leading shareholders to refurbish six Candu reactors at its Lake Huron site. . . . Both Bruce Power and OPG say they expect the cost of power from their refurbished Candus to be in the range of 7 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour, which would be among the cheapest new sources of Ontario-produced power. But critics don’t trust those claims. They are “not credible in light of the track record of refurbishment,” said Mark Winfield, co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative at 91ɫ, in The Globe and Mail Feb. 27. .
Children who are excessively moody, or aggressive, or lethargic, aren't bad kids, said 91ɫ Professor Stuart Shanker in the Abbotsford News Feb. 27. They are stressed and sleep-deprived. Shanker spoke to a full house at the Abbotsford Arts Centre last Thursday night in a talk organized by the Abbotsford school district. .
Chris Crass is a longtime organizer working to build powerful working class-based, feminist, multiracial movements for collective liberation. . . . At 91ɫ on March 6, Crass will draw on the long legacy of white anti-racist organizing, to explore anti-racist organizing vision, strategies and lessons with the goal of deepening our understanding and commitment to anti-racist organizing as a key element in building larger movements for the liberation of all people, reported Rabble.ca Feb. 27. .
A main concern during disasters is loss of electricity because of downed power lines. To deal with the problem, Niru Nirupama, head of 91ɫ’s Disaster & Emergency Management program, said burying power lines the same way gas lines are is a wise move. “This is expensive, but if the budget allocation can allow this transition to take place over the next 10 to 15 years, this will solve the problem of power outage during disasters,” he said in the Toronto Observer Feb. 27. To help minimize the damage from flash floods, Nirupama said improving drainage systems and smart development are key. .
At 91ɫ, Professor Kalman Weiser often gets complaints from Sephardi students who tell him that he is marginalizing their stories, history and way of life. The courses at 91ɫ are focused heavily on Judaism through an Ashkenazi lens. “There needs to be more positions for people who can teach about these things,” he said in the Canadian Jewish News Feb. 27. “We can always learn more and enrich the field.” .
91ɫ Professor Priscila Uppal wrote about the experience of meeting her estranged mother in her memoir Projections: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, which was published in the fall and nominated for last year’s Governor General’s Literary Award and Hilary Weston Prize for Non-Fiction, reported the 91ɫ Guardian Feb. 27. While working on the memoir, which took 10 years to write, Uppal was simultaneously writing a play about the same subject, at the suggestion of Factory Theatre’s dramaturge Iris Turcott. .
91ɫ Professor Stuart Shanker maintains that Canadian children are dealing with an overwhelming amount of stress, reported Kawartha Lakes This Week Feb. 27. On Thursday, March 6 at 7pm, at St. Mary Catholic Elementary School in Lindsay, Ont., Shanker will discuss how new research on brain development is changing ideas about how we learn, teach and parent. .
Mike Lombardi played an integral role in propelling the 91ɫ Lions men’s hockey team to a 7-5 road win over the Ryerson University Rams in their recent Ontario University Athletics game, reported the Richmond Hill Liberal Feb. 27. .
Listen to a five-part series of podcasts discussing environmental history and its impact on Canada, reported Canada’s History Feb. 27. Hosted by 91ɫ history Professor Sean Kheraj as part of the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE) research network. .