Putting a Name to the Unknown Soldier

“What if, 40 years from now, people had no memory of Corp. Nathan Cirillo and the 2014 attack at the National War Memorial in Ottawa?” asks Dr. David Sheinin, professor of History at Trent University who says that Canadians must work to ensure Cirillo’s legacy isn’t forgotten the way so many lives have been forgotten from the worst of times in South America 40 years ago. He says in 1970s Argentina, terrorists killed more than 3,000 people. “Those deaths have been largely forgotten in Argentine popular culture. My work aims to recover those memories and that history through interviews with survivors.” He is also interested in understanding and analyzing the process of memory-making since the 1970s dictatorship; how popular memory on human rights and terror was formed, and how other memories were “forgotten” and stigmatized.

Without Music, Life Would ‘B Flat’

“In any generation, there will be music that rises above an undifferentiated landscape because it is attempting to say or do something genuinely of-the-moment,” says Dr. Hugh Hodges, a professor with Trent’s Department of English. “Music scenes can be political in ways that have little to do with the content of the music they cohere around. In other words, the way people use music is often political, or rather micro-political, in ways the music producers did not anticipate,” he explains. So, can Canadian music be categorized under ‘political response’?, “I can't think of any bands writing songs about Justin Trudeau the way English bands wrote about Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, but, hey, you never know.”

Nourishing Community

Mary Anne Martin, a PhD candidate in the Canadian Studies program at Trent University is encouraged by Peterborough’s wide and vibrant network of food programs, initiatives, and advocates.  A self-described food activist, Ms. Martin’s dissertation is centered on her study entitled, Moms Feeding Families in Peterborough City and County, where she is working to explore the extent to which community-based food initiatives can provide support. “Part of my study looks specifically at the ways that local community-based food initiatives currently support or could better support mothers living on low incomes in ensuring their households are fed.”

A Whale of a Story

Kaitlin Breton-Honeyman has been having a whale of a time in Nunavik as she works to understand our environment. A Ph.D. candidate in the Environmental and Life Sciences program at Trent University, her research examines different approaches to studying marine mammals, focusing on beluga whale habitat ecology in Nunavik, the Inuit region of Arctic Québec. “Much of my research has involved learning from the knowledge and experiences that Inuit Elders and hunters have of beluga whales,” she says. Ms. Breton-Honeyman is currently writing her dissertation and putting her research into practice in Inukjuak, where she is director of Wildlife Management for the Nunavik Marine Region Wildlife Board (NMRWB). “I am deeply honoured and grateful for the privilege of working together with different partners and communities to improve our collective understanding of species and the environment that sustains us all.”