Features - Fall 2020 Archives | Raven Magazine

This Is Your Brain On COVID

jesseplunkett — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 21:03:16 +0000

Kim Hellemans is a neuroscience professor at �Ӱ�ԭ��, chair of the department and the winner of multiple awards for teaching and student support. Her research focuses on mental health, stress and addiction.

Jim Davies is a cognitive science professor, director of the university’s Science of Imagination Laboratory and the author of two books, most recently .

Together, Hellemans and Davies host an award-winning podcast, “,” which explores cognitive and brain science, covering subjects such as sleep, climate change psychology and emotional expression. They’ve been recording it from separate locations for a few months, so we interviewed them individually and stitched together their conversation.

Prof. Kim Hellemans

Jim: I first heard about COVID-19 in late 2019 and figured it was nothing. That was fairly rational at the time. Different diseases pop up now and again and they’re usually nothing to worry about. I started thinking it was a real problem in early 2020 when it was spreading around the world and was particularly virulent and people were dying.

Kim: I follow a lot of medical and science people on Twitter and started seeing a lot coming out of China in January. It was inevitable that information would trickle out. Right before Reading Week in February, I remember telling a student, “We’ll see how long we’re going to be back for after the break.” It happened so quickly. We went from “It’s far away in China” to “Look at what’s happening in Italy” to the first cases in the U.S. There’s no way it could be in the U.S. and not in Canada.

Jim: I was in Toronto just as everything was shutting down. Hour by hour things were changing. The streets were emptying and we were figuring out how to react. My wife and I were going to see the musical Come From Away and it was cancelled two hours beforehand. Then I was on TVO’s “The Agenda with Steve Paikin,” the last studio interview they filmed. We flew back to Ottawa on a nearly empty plane and shut ourselves in.

Prof. Jim Davies

Kim: Two or three days before the university shut down I was in a departmental chairs and directors meeting devoted to COVID-19. There was a big event coming up on campus and we weren’t sure if it was going to go ahead. My heart was pounding. I was flooded with adrenaline and I was scared. “All I want to do is go home,” I was thinking. “I want to pack up my stuff, get my kids from school and go home.” There was so much we still didn’t know. It felt like the virus was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, so that was my emotional fear-driven response.

Jim: I have an intellectual interest in many facets of our world, and I think about things scientifically to try to understand them. That informs the practical decisions I make with respect to, you know, how much I stay in the house or how often I shop. Science informs my opinions and behaviours, and I try to keep my selfish urges at bay and have everything be determined by my moral compass.

Kim: Seven years ago, when I was pregnant with my second child, my husband and I made the mistake of watching the movie Contagion. Since then I have had an acute fear of pandemics. I’m very conscious of illness and am anxious when my kids get sick. As �Ӱ�ԭ�� shut down, I was combing mainstream media and social media for any information related to COVID-19. I was looking at the preprints of journal articles coming out of China, trying to learn as much as I could. That soothed me. When I’m panicking and fearful, I always turn to science. It’s a powerful coping mechanism. I turn to rational information to try to understand what I can control. I can’t control the spread of this virus. I can’t control other people’s behaviour. But I can try to control mine.

Jim: I’m immunocompromised, so I wash my hands a lot and try to wear a mask any time I go outside. I believe in modelling good behaviour. The more people wear masks outside, the more social proof it establishes and encourages — the same way that fashion works. I also don’t want to have to think about it. I know how habit works. When something becomes a habit, it becomes the default position. You just do it. Like having a cup of coffee in the morning. It’s not like people decide to have coffee every morning. Even if they’re thinking about something else, the coffee will get made and consumed.

Kim: The neural basis of routine is deep-brain basal ganglia. If something is compelling enough to override your routine, it’s going to signal to your prefrontal cortex, which is then going to signal down to your basal ganglia to put a stop to that routine and correct course. Let’s say you’re driving along a highway that you’re on regularly and you kind of tune out. But all of sudden you see ambulance lights in the distance. You’ll put your foot on the brakes. That’s kind of what happens on a daily basis. Routines and habits are good and they’re soothing. I have an exercise routine, a work routine, a home routine. But you need to have the flexibility to get out of those and adapt to the current scenario.

Jim: The function of habit in the brain is to make space for your conscious thought, your cognitive processing, your goal-directed behaviour. You can really only think about one thing at a time. But because you need to do more than one thing at a time — like walk and breathe and talk — there’s this habit system that runs those processes and controls your body when your cognitive system is occupied with other things. The problem is if you’ve got a bad habit, you can’t rely on your cognitive system to always prevent you from engaging in it, because at some point you’re going to be distracted and the habits will take over. So curating your habits and trying to replace the bad ones and encourage the good ones is necessary for good behaviour. Even without the pandemic, our lives are constantly changing and you have to end old habits. Your body tries to respond to the environment the best way it can. The reason we develop bad habits is because we have some natural instincts that aren’t great in our modern-day environment. That’s why eating M&Ms every day is an easy habit to have because sugar has been, for the vast majority of human existence, extremely rare. Developing a habit of eating sugar if you could was a great idea. Modern Canada is not suffering from caloric restriction, yet we’re still energy saving creatures.

Kim: The society we live in today is very different from what it was in 1920 and 1820. It’s often massive events — industrialization, World War I, World War II, economic collapses — that shake us up. Society is being disrupted now on a massive scale and we’re altering our behaviours. I’m fascinated by the sociology of it. What are we changing that is never going to go back? Also, what is going to be disrupted for the better? When we think about teaching going online, for example, we’re also thinking about equity and how to support students from marginalized communities and students who struggle with certain modalities of learning. What we’re doing could actually benefit certain populations if we keep them front and centre. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but if we don’t consider positive outcomes we run the risk of becoming incredible cynics and succumbing to despair.

Jim: When you’re dealing with bad uncertainty — when you don’t know how bad something is going to be — that can cause anxiety. Sometimes, in psychology experiments, people prefer to get a more intense electric shock then an unknown amount of electric shock, even if the intensity would likely be lower. That indicates there’s a value to certainty. Also, uncertainty keeps our minds thinking about things and increases our emotional response. In artistic works and in religion, where there are mysterious things that are hard to understand, your mind tends to obsess over them, in either a good or a bad way. An ambiguous ending can be a beautiful thing and your mind won’t let it go. If the ending is a little too wrapped up, it’s satisfying in the moment but your mind tends to forget it because there’s nothing really there to figure out. So uncertainty generally causes your cognitive system to think about things over and over again. If it’s a fearful uncertainty, you’re going to be re-experiencing negative emotions, because your mind is constantly returning to those ideas, and that can border depression.

Kim: One of the best mechanisms to stave off fear and anxious worry is to focus on today, on what’s happening today. We have this wonderful prefrontal cortex that allows us to time travel: it allows us to think about the past in order to plan for the future. Some say this is the root of our intelligence because our cognitive capabilities of planning for the future ensures our survival. But it may also be what is at the seat of a lot of mental health disorders, because when you think about rumination and worrying, it’s about lamenting the past and worrying about the future. So the best way to keep the prefrontal cortex in check is mindfulness — focusing on the present day, the real, the here and now. There’s also the concept of “grounding,” of thinking about what you can control. You can control how often you wash your hands and you can try to maintain physical distance. Your reaction to things that you hear about? You can’t control that. Another tip I’ve heard from psychologist friends is that if you’re susceptible to worry and rumination on the uncertainty of tomorrow, then spend 15 minutes every day thinking about or writing down all your fears and concerns. Then that’s it: 15 minutes and you’re done. You’re kind of relieved of your worries.

Jim: There’s a belief out there that in hard times people get really selfish and start turning on each other. But under conditions where people feel that we’re all in this together, the opposite happens. You get a remarkable kind of community building. Sometimes people look back at a food shortage or a power outage or a natural disaster, such as a flood, and see that they were hard times but they also reminisce fondly about the incredible feeling of mutual brotherhood that arose. This pandemic has inspired that. You see people getting to know their neighbours a little bit more and helping each other.

Kim: We’re seeing the uptick in cases of COVID-19 because I think people are getting physical-distancing fatigue. As a species, we are social. Obviously, this exists on a continuum, but most people need some socializing. Are Zoom and other digital proxies enough to keep us going? I don’t think so. We need human interactions and we’re fighting against that inherent drive. I’ve got two lovely kids, an amazing husband, and my parents and my sister and her family are also in my bubble. I have a very busy work life. All of this can maintain me, to a certain extent, whereas 20-year-olds who are unpartnered, who may be out of a job, who are not currently in school, they’re driven to hang out and be social. They’re going to bars. If I were 20 that’s where I would want to be too. I think we need to recognize that there is an inherent human desire to be social. This is the challenge. It’s not my problem to solve, and holy crap am I glad it’s not. But we need to figure out a way to live with this virus in the next few months, maybe years, that allows us to be in social environments.

Jim: It’s comforting to know that when things go bad, it’s not just every man for himself, but a lot of the changes we make as a species are situational. People want to get back to normal and will start giving one another the finger on the road again. I don’t think the feeling of community that’s engendered by this pandemic will last. The bubonic plague had enormous repercussions far beyond what we’re talking about now. It ended serfdom because so many people died and there weren’t enough serfs around and suddenly everyone’s work was valuable and everyone started getting paid. But that has nothing to do with the building of community. Disasters of the past changed society in a zillion ways, but their contribution to progress is very complex. This pandemic is bad, but it could be way worse. There’s an argument to be made that we would never have prepared for the one that’s going to be way worse if we hadn’t had one that was just a little bit scary first. Maybe we’re actually inoculating our psyches and our research priorities. We might actually start preparing for it.

Kim: We need to gather information. This is what me and my colleagues are doing. I do research on university populations and their mental health. We need to find out how they’re doing. Right now, we’re seeing if people who had pre-existing conditions are suffering the most, or is it everybody? We’re tracking them through time. We’re looking into whether we’re seeing increased rates of problematic substance use and, if so, how can we respond? How can we best provide that circle of care? If it’s virtual, what are the best virtual means to support students and people in general? We need to listen and put money towards this. Because mental health has not, historically, been a space that has been sufficiently funded. But maybe we’re going to hit a crisis point. And people like me need to keep advocating for mental health awareness and keep ensuring that the voices of people with lived experience are heard.

Jim: At a government level, this is a good time to push through legislation to increase support for mental health. My American friends are shocked because they think that Canadian medicine is socialized, but it doesn’t cover therapy or drugs. The two things that help with mental health are therapy and drugs. So, basically mental health is not covered by our so-called socialized medicine. I think that’s a real oversight.

Kim: The cure cannot be worse than the disease. The factors that are contributing to ill mental health right now are social distancing and the fears and concerns of people without jobs, without support, without access to services. We know when your mental health is suffering, you’re getting lots of proinflammatory factors coursing through your body, which makes you more susceptible to disease. There’s a reason why mental health and physical health are so interrelated. When somebody is not doing well mentally, they’re more at risk. We’re already recognizing that COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting people from marginalized populations. Mental health is a big piece of that. I feel the burden of responsibility for advocating for mental health among students, and also the burden of continuing to provide excellent educational opportunities for my students and buoying their journey, because they are more vulnerable and at-risk and they’re facing the worst economic prospects in generations. I also feel a certain amount of responsibility to be an advocate for science, period. There’s a vast amount of misinformation and politicized information out there, and I need to chime into the conversation about what’s fact and what’s evidence and what’s not.

Jim: During the pandemic people might be paying maybe more attention to science than they normally would, but I’m not convinced that faith in science has been declining. I haven’t seen good evidence for that. In Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now he makes the case that in every single way that you can think of the world is getting better and has been over the last hundred years. Even fake news. People forget that fake news was way more rampant than it is now. The very fact that people even know what fact checking is, the fact that we even have the reflection to be able to even have a concept of fake news, suggests that society is smarter than it used to be. The only things that seem to be getting worse are social capital in the industrialized world and environmental destruction.

Kim: I had a moment in the summer when I realized that I probably wasn’t going to be on campus for a while. It made me sad. I value being around students and my colleagues and have grown to appreciate them more. I’m sure there are some people who are out living their best lives and couldn’t be happier to be away from others, but I am genuinely sad. Because of my role at �Ӱ�ԭ�� and who I am, I’m usually all over campus, meeting with lots of different people, creating deep friendships and strong collegial relationships that I just can’t replace. Video calls are no substitute for coffee chats and bumping into one another in the tunnels. I’m hopeful, though. I know my emotions are going to be waxing and waning. The way I cope with that is I acknowledge it, I label it — here’s what I’m feeling — and I move through it.

Jim: The summer for me was not that much different because I usually just sit at home working all summer anyway. I wrote a book, my third, which is coming out in early 2021 and is going to be called Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are. It’s about the science of productivity, happiness and morality. If you want to be the best person you can be, how do you be maximally productive, maximally happy and a maximally good person? I didn’t change the book much after the pandemic started. In the part about productivity, I talk about research into differences between working at home and in an office. Studies show that at the office you’re more creative and at home you’re more productive. Being with people and having casual encounters helps you hash out ideas. But if what you’re doing is relatively cut and dried, then working from home is better. You know what you need to do and just need to do it.

—
Raven Magazine

All Together Now: Teaching Trailblazer Melanie Adrian Wants to Make Remote Learning a Social Experience

jesseplunkett — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:28:00 +0000

How much knowledge can students absorb in an online class with all the distractions of home life bubbling in the background?

It’s difficult enough in a university setting to compete for their attention with texts, games and news streaming into their devices. Studying from home presents an even greater variety of interruptions (pets, phone calls, pesky siblings) and temptations (pie in the fridge, poker websites, pals next door).

University students are expected to take responsibility for their schedules and class work, but the pandemic is not life as normal. So the challenge for �Ӱ�ԭ��’s professors, who had to swiftly develop online versions of their classes over the past few months, is figuring out how to engage students in course material while we are all coping with isolation, economic uncertainty and the fear of contracting a highly transmissible disease.

Prof. Melanie Adrian

Religion and human rights scholar Melanie Adrian decided to focus her efforts not on what interactive software to use but on how to create ah-ha moments online.

“How do we expand horizons on Zoom?” asks Adrian, who was appointed one of in late 2019.

“I believe that new ideas are absorbed through reading, watching and learning, but those ideas need conversation to further open horizons. That’s the challenge with being online.”

Adrian, who has never been confined by conventions in the classroom, decided to address this issue through an experiment. In September, she relaunched two versions of her fourth-year Law and Legal Studies class online. She is surveying students in each of the classes — which she has provocatively titled “Is Religious Freedom a Human Right?”— three times during the semester to assess which method works better.

Adrian spent the spring and summer rebuilding the course, mapping out her research protocol and, with her partner, caring for their two children (“I am a counsellor and cheerleader and chef and cleaner.”) She was, she admitted, “barely keeping my head above water.” She survived by being organized and disciplined about her time, parsimoniously parcelling it out among the many tasks at hand.

Like many other professors, Adrian had to put research projects on hold to focus on redesigning her courses. A process that would normally take one or two years had to be condensed into three months. The backdrop to this rapid transformation is the bumpy merger between our new digital reality and the day-today tangible world.

With widespread access to broadband internet and a variety of interactive platforms available, content is easier than ever to deliver. These technologies — which have had a disruptive impact on post-secondary institutions because they now face global competition — can help but aren’t a cure for our pandemic-induced psychological ailments.

Fear of infection, the absence of social contact with family and friends, and children out of school and daycare are taking a toll on our individual and collective mental health. Women, in particular, are feeling the impact. Recent studies show that women’s research output has decreased by about a quarter over the last eight months as women struggle to balance research with child and family care.

While Adrian recognizes her own privilege as faculty member, she’s attuned to the fact that specific populations are experiencing the pandemic in different ways.

“We know that marginalized people and poor communities are bearing the brunt and burden of this,” she says.

“What are the values we want to guide us through this? My average class will have a fair number of students who have official accommodations. Another 5 to 10 per cent will have different kinds of needs: learning, social, psychological. And students are going to have all sorts of emotions about being online. Not being social enough. Not going out. There’s going to be another layer of care added on to what we are doing.”

These disparities and needs, coupled with distancing and isolation, may sap some of the joy and intellectual growth from the university experience. They may also exacerbate the high rate at which students quit online courses.

Online dropout rates vary across countries and schools but are generally acknowledged to be significantly higher overall than for in-class courses. How, then, can one encourage students who are separated from each other to come together in a community of learning?

Lifelong Teaching

Adrian’s interest in innovative approaches to teaching was cultivated in childhood. She was in Grade 2 when her family immigrated to Canada. Her father was a professor of optometry at the University of Waterloo and her mother was a teacher who became known in the community for her social activism.

The Adrian household was always bustling with international students. Nearly three dozen lived with her family for at least half a year, she recalls, and many more stayed for a couple of weeks.

In high school, she was selected for a Rotary exchange scholarship and spent a year living in Mexico. Then, after completing an undergraduate degree in religion and peace and conflict studies at Waterloo, she took a job teaching English in a fishing village in Japan.

“Teaching is dramatically different in the Japanese classroom,” says Adrian.

“Students are expected to memorize, especially in language learning. I would ask questions and there would only ever be one answer. Because that’s what they memorized. ‘Hello, how are you? I am fine, teacher.’ So I changed things around dramatically. I really wanted to give all students an opportunity to use English inside and outside of the classroom.”

After Japan, Adrian completed a master’s degree on the Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the University of Essex, then a PhD in Social Anthropology and the Study of Religion at Harvard University. During her doctoral and post-doctoral work, also at Harvard, she began teaching undergraduates and trying different approaches.

One of her classes was physiology and sexuality. The students called it Sex 101. While teaching this course, Adrian learned to always have a plan, how to deal with awkward moments and how to bring students back to class if they felt put off or overwhelmed.

That experience set Adrian up to teach in Harvard’s freshman seminar program, in which professors teach a small group of first-year students on a vast array of topics, everything from Bob Dylan to black holes. “It’s meant to give students an intensive, immersive experience and to get them to know a professor well,” she says, “so you can try something totally new.”

Adrian taught two of these tutorials and considers it her first opportunity to really learn how to teach. She developed a reputation for engaging students in “weird and surprising ways,” as one wrote on an evaluation form, using poetry, music and art to illustrate her points and stimulate discussion. “Does this resonate with what we are doing?” she would ask. Generally speaking, at least a few of the students would start talking and others would join in. But there were flops.

One course she taught at Harvard had 80 students in class and 100 online. “We just recorded the lecture and made it available,” says Adrian. “There were some group interactions, but we didn’t have the platforms or technology that we have today. It was fascinating to see what kind of students took the course and how they interacted with us. Some were taking it out of interest — it was a world poverty and human rights course — and had very busy lives. They didn’t want to interact; they just wanted the information they needed to be able to complete the assignments.

“There was a small group that learned really well online. But the majority needed to digest the material in other ways and didn’t feel they were part of a learning community.”

A String of Teaching Distinctions

Adrian arrived at �Ӱ�ԭ�� 10 years ago having been awarded three distinctions in teaching at Harvard. At �Ӱ�ԭ��, she has earned a clutch of teaching awards from the Faculty of Public Affairs and the university. Her students, colleagues and university administrators have all praised her skillful planning and creative initiatives.

Professor Ummni Khan calls her a “pedagogical pioneer” who employs groundbreaking techniques to make the course material relevant and meaningful to the lives of her students. Patrick Lyons, the director of Teaching and Learning Services, says Adrian strives to ensure that her students “not only learn the theoretical aspects of the material on a cognitive level, but experience personal growth from the process.” And former students rave about her passion, warmth and encouragement.

In 2012, Adrian attended a talk by Harvard physics professor at �Ӱ�ԭ��’s annual teaching conference. Mazur, who believes that professors need to shift their “focus from teaching to helping students learn,” has written widely about the shortcomings of the traditional lecture format.

He is the author of Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual, a pedagogical approach that encourages students to discuss and debate their course material with each other. Doing so helps them to not just passively fill their notebooks but to absorb the material on a deeper level.

Mazur’s talk helped Adrian think about how better to engage her students and, at the same time, deal with larger classes. “The number of students we have is increasing,” she says. “We have to ask ourselves how we are going to be able to continue to provide quality and meaningful educational experiences within that reality. I was facing courses where I had 65 students at the third-year level. There is no way I can ask them to write 15- or 20-page papers to help me understand what they know and how they know it.”

Inspired by Mazur, Adrian tried a new approach to testing students in a third-year required course. “I had the students write three multiple choice questions and the rationale for the questions. Then they took the 90-question multiple choice exam individually. The exam was held in the same innovative teaching space where we had held the class. There are studies that show if you take an exam in the place where you learned the material, it increases your success. There is more memory, more recognition of the context.”

After they took the exam on their own, Adrian split the class into randomized groups of four to five students. They took the exam again as a team and had to agree on which answer was the correct one. “They were discussing and persuading each other and deliberating,” she says. “It was quite lively. They finished the exam knowing what all the answers were and they had reviewed all of the course material at least three times. They left having had an engaging, fluid and interesting conversation about the material that they had been exposed to throughout the semester. Our studies show that this is quite successful.”

For her online course this year, Adrian is attempting something different. In one version of the class, students are divided in half; she meets with each section in a virtual tutorial once a week. In addition, students are asked to blog in response to question prompts.

“Each student will have to make three interventions weekly,” she says.

“They will write a blog post and respond to the writing of two classmates. My hope is that this will be a conversation.”

In the other version of the course, she has divided the class into learning pods of three students. These groups each create their own blog rather than participate in a class blog. Final marks will be based on blog posts, participation in the tutorials and a final paper or podcast. Adrian plans to survey the students in both classes to assess whether those in the learning pods feel they are learning more or less because they are interacting in a small group with people they are getting to know.

“Learning is about risk,” she says. “Others won’t see the learning pods’ blogs. I’ve done that because I’d like trust to build up. I’d like them to become familiar with each other. Will students in small groups take more risks? Will they feel that they are part of a learning community? That’s the study.”

What excites Adrian as a teacher is seeing what she calls that “moment of understanding and change when a student comes into an understanding of a new framework. All of a sudden, their eyes and body shift. That widening of the horizon.”

Mazur argues that learning is, first and foremost, a social experience. It may be more difficult for Adrian to see that eye widening online, but her experiments and research are attempts to ensure that her classes remain a social experience, that her students feel less isolated from one another, that they are absorbing and thinking about the material, and that they are at least slightly less distracted by that pie in the fridge.

—
Raven Magazine

Neighbourhood Watch: Amid a Devastating Health Crisis and Rising Racial Tension, �Ӱ�ԭ�� Researchers Are Evaluating Ottawa’s New Community Policing Project

jesseplunkett — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:25:25 +0000

Ottawa Police Service Constable Vianney Calixte — a community officer who patrols his old stomping grounds, Vanier/Overbrook, in the city’s east end — used to sell insurance for a living. He’s a good talker and people like him, which is why he was a good salesman. It’s also why he’s a good cop.

This past summer, the bilingual, Haitian-born, 15-year veteran of the force received several complaints about a homeless guy living in a tent at a busy Vanier intersection. Nearby residents wanted him gone. Calixte went to visit the man and found out that he was a recovering addict and alcoholic trying to avoid inner-city shelters and the people who might suck him back into that life.

Calixte called a woman he knows who works in housing and homelessness for the city and she talked to the man about relocating to an overflow shelter in the south end. It was too far from downtown and the man politely declined, but he agreed to move away from the problematic intersection. He’s still homeless, according to Calixte, but now he knows where to find help if he changes his mind.

Officer Vianney Calixte

“People don’t take the time to just listen,” says Calixte.

“Nobody chooses to be homeless. Nobody chooses to be an alcoholic or a drug addict. There’s always a story behind it. Listening to that story, sometimes you can move someone in a different direction. I’m not here to solve everyone’s problems, but I can help and support them.”

This is probably not what you expect to hear today when someone mentions policing.

The recent killings of Black citizens by American police, plus Canadian examples of mistreatment and harassment of mentally ill and racialized citizens, have prompted calls to defund police. Accusations of misconduct and racism by the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) have sparked public anger.

“I have unequivocally and repeatedly stated that conscious and unconscious bias is a challenge for all police members,” Chief Peter Sloly in response to complaints about racial profiling by an OPS officer this fall, “and that systemic racism exists in policing.”

Given recent controversies, not to mention the global pandemic, one could argue that it’s not a great time for academics to partner with police departments. Or you could say the opposite: in an era of simmering distrust and heightened scrutiny, let’s ask a few important questions — what’s working, what’s not, and why? — in order to grow a new relationship between police officers and the public they serve.

Prof. Linda Duxbury

, a management professor at �Ӱ�ԭ��’s , believes the latter. Last year, she and frequent collaborator Craig Bennell from the university’s psychology department launched a three-year project with the OPS to evaluate in Vanier/Overbrook, Lowertown/ByWard Market downtown and Bayshore in the west end.

“We have to have a dialogue about what we want from police,” says Duxbury, “and we have to have a debate about roles. I think data helps change the conversation. We need the data, otherwise you’re basing opinions on the loudest voices.”

New Neighbourhood Response Teams

In fall 2019, long before the COVID-19 lockdown and the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the OPS, under acting Chief Steve Bell, quietly heeded calls from residents in high crime areas such as Vanier/Overbrook and assembled neighbourhood response teams (NRTs).

These teams consist of community-specific officers in schools, on the street, in frontline enforcement and in traffic control. The OPS had eliminated community officers in 2017 because, although neighbourhoods liked them, concrete impacts had never been established. This time around, the OPS is gathering facts to help it assess the value of such programs, with help from Duxbury, Bennell and a team of graduate students.

“If you knew how much money is being spent on policing in Canada, why shouldn’t business schools do research that looks at how officers spend their time?” says Duxbury.

“At Sprott, we want to make a difference in the community.”

Duxbury, who has conducted studies on change management, work-life balance and the impact of technology in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, recently completed an with Bennell. Impressed with those results, the OPS asked them to conduct an audit of its three NRT pilots.

With $350,000 in funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and MITACS, the multi-year study was launched in fall 2019, starting in Vanier/Overbrook. The researchers managed to complete a baseline round of stakeholder interviews, neighbourhood focus groups and an online survey before the pandemic ground our lives to a halt.

But while COVID-19 has forced the team to shift consultations to an online format, it also offers a unique opportunity to examine how the pandemic is impacting police officers, crime and community wellness. Last April, Duxbury launched a separate research project, in collaboration with the Canadian Police Association and also supported by MITACS, to .

In simple terms, Duxbury’s community policing group is hoping to define what an ideal relationship would look like between NRT officers and the neighbourhoods they patrol and then offer recommendations on how to achieve that. But there’s nothing simple about the work.

Synthesizing elements such as public expectations, crime prevention, feelings of safety and trust, police interactions, community anecdotes and experiences, court diversion and the quality of communication is tricky. To do that, researchers are measuring the Social Return on Investment, or SROI, a progressive tool for evaluating not just a policy’s cost and statistical outcomes but also its social value: the impacts a policy might have on a community’s health and well-being.

For instance, familiar neighbourhood cops might make people feel safer, but how does that translate into actual benefits for the community? You map out the impacts using SROI indicators over time and then attach dollar figures to the outcomes. “You also talk to people and listen to their stories,” says Duxbury. “An SROI analysis goes beyond numbers to the stories that help illustrate or explain them.”

What is challenging for police, and what people have to understand, is that there’s no one view of what a positive relationship looks like between members of the community and police. “This process doesn’t work,” says Duxbury, “if the community doesn’t work cohesively and with the police to get a common view of what it wants.”

So, what do the people of Vanier/Overbrook want?

Depends on who you ask. Sources say they welcome the reinstatement of community policing, but they’re still unclear about what the officers should be doing and whether they’ll be effective in meeting their diverse needs.

Mutual Respect Key to Bridging Divide

Rob Ireland, operations manager for the on Montreal Road, has a long history of distrusting police and knows that many Indigenous people, like him, share that unease.

Higher rates of homelessness, poverty, food insecurity and addiction mean Indigenous citizens tend to have more encounters with law enforcement. First Nations, Inuit and Métis people in Canada are like African-Americans in the U.S., he says — historically, they have been singled out by racist cops for harassment, surveillance and discrimination. Or their needs have been ignored.

During our conversation, he forwarded an OPS notice about a missing Indigenous woman. He gets several every month. “It’s happening all the time,” says Ireland. “Do police take it seriously? It’s hard to know. I think they’re starting to. It’s better than it was years ago, but do we need more resources looking for these girls or more resources to find out why those girls are missing?”

Ireland does see hope in the community policing model, though. Building face-to-face relationships based on mutual respect is a promising way to bridge the divide between police and Indigenous people. That, and hiring more people of colour.

“You’ve got to really put a dent into that mindset of white superiority on the force,” he says.

“If you put in 60 per cent coloured people — Indigenous, Black, whatever — you get rid of the white majority, then they would have a better sense of what’s going on.”

Lauren Touchant would probably agree. She is president of the (VCA) and helped petition the OPS to bring back community policing. But considering the high numbers of Inuit and First Nations residents living in Vanier/Overbrook, she was surprised not to see an Indigenous member when the local NRT was created. (According to Statistics Canada, four per cent of police officers across the country in 2018 self-identified as Indigenous, a group that comprised five per cent of the national population.)

“This is an issue because we already know the complicated relationship that the Indigenous community has with police, particularly the RCMP,” says Touchant. “Not having an Indigenous officer in a significantly Indigenous area is a problem.”

She also questions the team’s vague roles and priorities and a lack of communication thus far. The VCA would like to see more crime prevention, more data sharing and more co-ordination of efforts toward safety. She acknowledges the pandemic is impacting progress and that the NRT is still new, but she’s anxious for results and is looking forward to working with Sprott scholars to improve the quality of life in Vanier.

“Our hope is to see systemic change,” says Touchant. “This evaluation is great. We’re looking forward to the results and learning from the work that Dr. Duxbury is doing. Now what I want to see are assurances that the police are going to take into consideration the recommendations and apply the proper changes. It will take a lot of courage.”

Finding a Way to Be Better

OPS Inspector Ken Bryden is looking for this kind of input. A one-time ByWard Market beat cop and now the officer in charge of the OPS community policing unit, he is a staunch proponent of the neighbourhood policing model and wants to see it succeed this time. “Our organization has the drive, the motivation, the humility and the authenticity to find a way to be better,” says Bryden.

One need only look at how community policing was handled for proof, he says: it was cut, neighbourhoods wanted it back, it was reinstated and now, with help from �Ӱ�ԭ��, they are conducting a comprehensive review. “It’s a large organization and there are a lot of moving parts — the skills of officers, the expectations, the agendas of certain officers,” he says. “The organization’s culture is very diverse and can be competing at times. Any large organization continually needs to work on its culture, its unified vision.”

Inspector Ken Bryden

Trust in police ebbs and flows depending on what’s going on in the world, according to Bryden, and right now, public trust is understandably low. Egregious examples of police misconduct, both in the U.S. and Canada, must be addressed, he says, and offending officers must face consequences.

But he also feels that the juggernaut of social media has amplified these examples to such a degree that it’s nearly impossible to have a respectful conversation about facts. Which is why he too welcomes this study from Duxbury and her team — because he wants to find value in what his officers do and he wants them to have an impact on crime and safety. Beat cops, as the front-line public faces of the OPS, have a unique opportunity, he says, to show the human side of policing.

Tom Scholberg

Tom Scholberg doesn’t live in Vanier but as manager of the ’s youth diversion program, he’s had clients from the neighbourhood thanks to the police. If an officer arrests a youth for a criminal act, they have the discretion to divert that young offender to Scholberg’s program.

From there, caseworkers refer them to agencies that offer educational, mental health, employment and other services. Most of those diversions come from school resource officers and community police — trusted officers who know the kids and the neighbourhood.

“There are definitely situations where police relationships are sour and it has an impact on individuals, families and community,” says Scholberg.

“But I’ve also seen some great successes where an officer has a real impact on a youth and on their family. So we’re always trying to move that needle, where the negative impact of policing is reduced and mitigated and the potential for positive is increased.”

Moving the Needle on Change

Duxbury and Bennell’s study is basically focusing on that needle and what’s pushing it one way or the other. When she hears people say “defund the police,” what she believes they’re trying to say is, “we want a new model of policing.” And greater investment in community policing might be a key component.

Few would disagree that law enforcement is a necessary part of policing. If you’ve been assaulted, robbed, harassed or defrauded, you call police and you expect them to find the perpetrators. But nearly 40 per cent of calls to police now are considered “mental health calls” involving someone in distress. These calls are unpredictable and can take hours — sometimes entire days — to resolve.

So how do you justify beat cops walking the neighbourhood with other more acute demands? You start, says Duxbury, by proving that proactive policing, youth diversion, crime prevention and the unique, intimate knowledge that neighbourhood officers gain on the job can actually make areas safer and potentially save enforcement costs down the road.

But you need facts to make reasoned arguments, and you need engaged research participants. “You have to prove value and they’ve never done it,” says Duxbury.

“Why? It’s really hard. You have to have a partner like the OPS and you have to have partners like the neighbourhood groups who know if they can’t demonstrate that the officers are making a difference, they’ll be yanked again.”

, a Sprott PhD student working with Duxbury on this project, is interested in policing because crime is a tug of war between perpetrator and victim and police officers are stuck in the middle, trying to balance fairness and equality for both sides using the tools they’re given: laws, weapons, experience and training. And, as Scholberg says, policing is constantly being shaped by social, cultural and technological forces and police agencies must remain malleable in order to maintain legitimacy.

Sean Campeau

Movements such as Defund the Police and Black Lives Matter, for example, are healthy in a democracy, Campeau says, because they destabilize the status quo and, when necessary, move that needle of social change quickly. But any meaningful discussion around the role of police should acknowledge a few things: officers are not all experts in mental health; they are dutybound to enforce laws; and they cannot be all things to all people.

“It’s about expectations,” says Campeau. “People understand that in society police have a responsibility for dealing with crime and ensuring public safety. And then there’s the reality of it. There’s the OPS with officers assigned to their roles, whether patrolling or community policing or criminal investigations, and they have to deal with actual situations every day. There’s that disconnect.

“A big part of our research,” he continues, “is to understand what activities the neighbourhood police officers are engaging in. We want to understand how they relate to the community’s expectations of what police should be doing and how those activities will relate to the outcomes that both the community and the police want to achieve. Getting a better understanding of the process of neighbourhood policing from the community’s perspective is important to the research.”

So far, Campeau has been inspired by the passion and commitment shown by both OPS members and residents in Vanier/Overbrook. The police want to reduce crime and make people feel safer, and they want to build positive relationships with residents. This is particularly impressive in the midst of a pandemic when crime trends are changing — increasing rates of domestic violence, mental health calls, break and-enters — and people are feeling stressed, fearful and isolated.

“Everything that comes out in the media about policing — those issues are real and need to come out — but in the day-to-day, it feels really good to hear all the ideas people have, and how much people care,” says Campeau. “Members of the community and police are working really hard to find answers. They’re all in.”

This fall, Duxbury’s team is doing a second round of surveys and consultations with various Vanier/Overbrook racialized, municipal, business and faith groups, and is continuing preliminary work in the ByWard Market and Bayshore areas. This will all include new questions about how communities are being impacted by COVID-19. In the end, Duxbury is hoping to have a large data set that offers a roadmap on how urban policing can effectively evolve.

“A lot of the things people are asking for are not huge or complicated,” she says. “It’s an issue of mutual respect. And the hope has to be that if the police start responding to this, treating people with respect, the community will meet them halfway.”

—
Raven Magazine

Leap In: Ten Ways �Ӱ�ԭ�� Students, Faculty, Staff and Alumni Have Stepped Up to the Coronavirus Challenge

jesseplunkett — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:17:22 +0000

Helping the capital’s most vulnerable residents. Pushing for health equity and safe cycling infrastructure. Funding critical scientific and medical research. Protecting wildlife from people. Breathing life into historic sites. Teaching seniors how to use technology. Getting new tools into hospitals now. Sharing culture. Using data to drive policy change. Empowering Indigenous children and families.

The myriad impacts of COVID-19 have demanded a wide range of responses. Thankfully, the �Ӱ�ԭ�� community is not a homogenous group, and the ways in which students, faculty, staff and alumni have used their education and experience to address the devastating virus and its successive shock waves vary tremendously. In the following package, you’ll read about a diverse and dynamic group of people whose work show how much is possible when we put our collective energy toward alleviating the biggest public health crisis in a century.

Last Refuge: Helping People Who Have Nowhere Else to Turn
Uphill Battle: Toronto City Councillor Fights for Health Equity — and Bike Lanes
Existential Threat: Investing in Technology to Solve Hard Problems
Nature Finds a Way: Does Wildlife Rebound When We Stay Home?
History From Home: Digital Heritage Conservation Doesn’t Stop
Tech Support for Seniors: �Ӱ�ԭ�� Grads See Digital Literacy as a Human Right
Homegrown Help: Getting New Technologies Into Ontario Hospitals Now
Cross-Country Checkup: Co-Op Student Joins the Collaborative Health Care Innovation Secretariat
Virtual Community Hub: The �Ӱ�ԭ�� Dominion-Chalmers Centre Leapfrogs Into the Future
Cultural Healing: How a Social Work Practicum Helped Me Find My Niche

Social Work undergraduate student Nicole McLean

1. Last Refuge

Helping People Who Have Nowhere Else to Turn

When COVID-19 upended life in Ottawa, the city’s most vulnerable residents faced heightened risks. Rather than dodge the challenge, Nicole McLean dove in. A rule change allowed the social work undergraduate — a casual employee at Ottawa’s homeless support agency — to do her on-the-job practicum at her workplace. McLean talked to Raven in July after finishing an overnight shift at the Shepherds shelter in the ByWard Market and has now been hired on as a case manager.

Our emergency shelter clients come from the streets or the hospital or they’re brought by the police or OC Transpo — people who just need a place to stay for the night. You show them to their beds and watch out over everybody. You’re always moving and basically help clients with whatever they need.

Sometimes there are fights, which our security staff deal with, and sometimes there are overdoses and you’re the first person on the scene. We spray everybody’s hands with sanitizer when they come in and ask them to wear masks, and we try to keep everybody a safe distance from each other.

Among the population we work with, people often have coughs or feel sick — these aren’t new symptoms, it’s just their day-to-day lives. Everybody was told to stay at home when the pandemic started, but home wasn’t an option for them.

Sure, there are risks, but because we’re following proper safety procedures I’m not concerned about my own health. For a while, I wasn’t seeing my family, which gave me a new perspective, because a lot of our clients aren’t in contact with their families. Working at the shelter, I’ve come to see that we’re all one big community and we need to support one another. The pandemic doesn’t change that.

My initial contact with the homeless population was when I started at the Shepherds of Good Hope about a year and a half ago, and I fell in love with it. Every day is different and you never know what to expect or who you’re going to come in contact with, but you meet people and build rapport with them.

One night when I was working, a woman who had been sexually assaulted came in. She’s hearing impaired and was worried that she wouldn’t be able to tell anybody what had happened. I’m learning American Sign Language and happened to be on shift, so I could translate for her. I sat in a room with her and a police officer and helped her make a report. She came back the following weekend and felt safe and comfortable, even though the assault had taken place nearby. She remembers me, and seeing her around every so often warms my heart.

Joe Cressy (right) with fellow city councilor Mike Layton on a new bike lane on Toronto’s University Avenue/Photograph by Joan Wilson

2. Uphill Battle

Toronto City Councillor Fights for Health Equity — and Bike Lanes

Since first getting elected in 2014, Toronto city councillor — a Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management graduate from �Ӱ�ԭ�� — has represented the downtown ward of Spadina-Fort York, championing affordable housing, expanded community services and safe cycling infrastructure. The latter has received a lot of press over the past few months as thousands of people took to two wheels for transportation and recreation. That work, and Cressy’s role as chair of Toronto’s , has put him at the forefront of the city’s pandemic response.

With COVID-19, whether you’re a decision-maker or a front-line worker, it’s been like running up a down-bound escalator for months — you can’t stop or you will fall, so you just have to keep sprinting.

The pandemic has exposed many things, including the systemic underfunding of public health infrastructure. COVID-19 has been most fatal for people who are experiencing inequities such as inadequate housing or precarious employment. The social determinants of health — income, housing status, race and so forth — are more likely than anything else going to dictate who gets sick, who lives and who dies.

In the world of public health, we have been rolling this rock up the hill for years. The difference now is that some people are listening.

Could this be a transformational moment that we emerge from stronger and more resilient and finally address these vulnerabilities? It could, but I am not entirely sure. I think we might see some incremental improvements when more drastic change is required. I believe that coming out of this we will continue to roll that rock up the hill.

Going back to March, it was always a conversation of when not if Toronto would increase space to facilitate safe transportation options. At the time, the predominant advice was to stay home, but we knew that as things opened up, we would need to support active transportation, at which point the when kicked in — the need for an interconnected cycling and pedestrian network. More broadly, we know that we need to redesign our streets to move people safely.

That’s a 21st century objective for cities like Toronto separate and apart from COVID, whether it’s weekend closures of major streets or the establishment of to facilitate mobility for people who are travelling to and from work.

Going into �Ӱ�ԭ��, I had mostly been involved in community issues and protests, so the education I received around how policy change can take shape inside legislatures and the public service was very helpful. It was an exceptionally rich environment in terms of learning how to build coalitions and approach change.

In the context of Toronto city council, I’d be lying if I told you that suddenly there was a newfound consensus that cycling infrastructure is an overarching priority. Rather, I believe there was a consensus reached in the urgency of this moment.

I describe the art of changing the City of Toronto as radical incrementalism. Sometimes it can be slower than you want to go, but you’re ultimately heading in the right direction.

Thistledown Foundation founders Fiona McKean and Tobi Lütke

3. Existential Threat

Investing in Technology to Solve Hard Problems

When Fiona McKean and Tobi Lütke launched the in January, the couple seeded their charity with a $150-million endowment and focused on carbon removal technologies. McKean, who runs The southwest of Ottawa and has a master’s degree from �Ӱ�ԭ��’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, and Lütke, the founder and CEO of Shopify, want to support climate change solutions through philanthropy. Then the pandemic hit and Thistledown set its sights on improving supply chains for personal protective equipment and accelerating COVID-19 research, the latter through a $5-million contribution to an organization called .

In January, I was with three people in Thistledown’s temporary office — an abandoned Italian restaurant in Ottawa that smelled like sour beer — talking about carbon. Then, in March, a huge shift took place. It was a surreal moment that felt like we were suspended in time and nobody knew what was on the other side. We faced an existential threat. So we started talking to doctors and scientists we knew. We read research papers and data sets. It was terrifying and intense, and we didn’t have enough info to know what to do. Then Fast Grants came to our attention. It’s an American project with a panel of biomedical scientists who make funding recommendations, and we sort of shoved a wedge under the door so we could support Canadian research.

Clearly, right now we need doctors, we need epidemiologists and we need biologists, and we need their research, but from a donor’s perspective, I can’t vet them. How do you gauge the veracity of all the claims you’re bombarded with? You turn to the experts. Even though everybody was busy and scrambling, Fast Grants funded more than 130 projects within 48 hours of the first call for applications in April and responded to the second round of applicants in July within two weeks.

Canada has a long history of quietly putting our elbows up to make sure that we have a seat at the table. If we’re not included, then the solutions do not have our particular problems in mind. Every country is having a different experience during the pandemic, and even though we’re all dealing with the same virus, every country’s toolkit is different.

One example of somebody we supported is Dr. John Bell, a cancer researcher at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He immediately switched gears to see if the work that his lab was doing could be applied to COVID. [Dr. Bell’s research is “trying to create multiple vaccines … delivering coronavirus proteins directly to the critical cells required to generate an effective immune response.”]

The connection between climate change and COVID is at the species level. Thistledown believes that technology can help address hard problems. The question was never if we could try to help during the pandemic, but how — how can we go beyond sprinkling money around with little impact? I think people shy away from philanthropy because of that, but we took a leap. We found the right people to support, and now we’re leaving them alone to do their work.

A road-killed hummingbird, one of the bird species monitored by the C19-Wild Research Group/Photograph by Ewen Ebarhardt

4. Nature Finds a Way

Does Wildlife Rebound When We Stay Home?

By Susan Nerberg

Last spring, with airplanes grounded, cars and trucks parked and people isolating at home, there were reports of wild turkeys, deer and even cougars exploring city cores. Lenore Fahrig knows how rare this is.

For the past 30 years, the �Ӱ�ԭ�� biology professor has been studying the fallout from people getting in the way of animals. So when the was formed to find out what happens when we get out of their way, Fahrig was asked to serve on the advisory panel, drawing from her decades of research into the effect of roads on wildlife, including birds.

Biology Prof. Lenore Fahrig

C19-Wild — spearheaded by University of Manitoba ecologist Nicola Koper — brings together conservation scientists from around the world, each gathering and sharing data on birds, mammals, reptiles and other animals in their regions. The project’s main study tracks birds in Canada and the continental United States.

While the nexus of Fahrig’s research has been to map negative human-inflicted impacts such as roadkill and habitat loss, the focus of C19-Wild, she says, “is to see whether we can detect a positive effect on birds as a result of the reduction in traffic, especially early on during the lockdown.”

To do so, the project used eBird observation app survey data from 2017 to 2019 in American and Canadian cities that have a population of 50,000 or more. It compared this data with bird surveys done since mid-March to determine whether there were any variations in bird distribution and population dynamics.

“By having hundreds of sites and by having variation in the sites and differences in the decrease of traffic, we got around the problem of the short timeframe,” says Fahrig. Luckily, birds are among the most documented of all organisms, she adds, so many of the study sites had a solid record of pre-pandemic data points.

“To ensure what we looked at was the effect of a reduction in traffic,” Fahrig explains, “we correlated bird survey data with cellphone records.” These show how many phones — and people — stopped moving every day. “Some cities had a big drop in traffic, others had a small drop, depending on the lockdown rules in the different jurisdictions,” says Fahrig.

“So what we could determine was, in places where you had a big decrease in traffic, did you get a higher number or occurrence of birds?”

The C19 team submitted its draft paper in early October and found, from looking at more than 4.3 million “bird detections” from spring 2017 to spring 2020, that of the 82 species assessed, 79 showed distribution changes during the pandemic — and that “increases in [bird] use of human altered areas with decreased traffic were much more common than decreases.”

Although the cause of these changes — less road kill or less traffic noise? — remains unknown, one conclusion is clear: human activity impacts much of the continent’s bird community. “From an environmental perspective, the pandemic is like a reversal,” says Fahrig. “It reinforces that the scale of human activity is too much for nature. If we are serious about reducing our impact on birds, we need to reduce how much we travel.”

�Ӱ�ԭ�� Martello Tower/Photograph courtesy Parks Canada

5. History From Home

Digital Heritage Conservation Doesn’t Stop

Finishing up her first year as an Architectural Studies student last spring, Sarah Mojeski was looking forward to a paid summer internship at the . She was going to travel to Saint John, New Brunswick, to help create an immersive digital tour of the — a two-century-old National Historic Site that’s undergoing renovations — as part of the lab’s SSHRC-funded . The pandemic put a stop to those plans, but Mojeski spent the summer working on the tower project from her home in Grimsby, Ont.

The �Ӱ�ԭ�� Martello Tower was built in 1813 by the British military to help defend the city during the War of 1812. It has undergone five major renovations in its lifetime. In 1930, it became a National Historic Site — it has an amazing view over Saint John — but was put back into military use during World War II.

A fire command post was installed on top of the roof: a two-storey concrete structure for rangefinder equipment and harbour defence. That was so heavy it caused the walls to bulge, so Parks Canada is fixing that and doing other restoration work as part of a multi-year construction project.

Parks Canada wants to have a digital representation of the tower that people can experience while it’s undergoing construction and also to better meet universal accessibility standards. The tower is accessed from the exterior by a staircase that goes to the second level, and then the ground floor and the roof level are both accessed by staircases that aren’t wheelchair accessible. So they’re trying to make it possible for people to see the tower from home, which has become especially timely during the pandemic.

We’ve created a Building Information Model of the tower using point cloud data that they got before construction began. Point cloud data is generated by a laser scanner and creates an extremely accurate picture of the building. You can see the exact conditions and even what’s on the walls. We’re using that data and panoramic images of the tower to make a 360-degree video that will be posted to Parks Canada’s YouTube channel. It’ll provide an interactive way to “visit” the tower for anybody.

Not only do these types of immersive digital experiences help meet accessibility standards and allow people to see places from remote, you might learn some extra things about a site from a video that you wouldn’t know if you went in person. The technologies and software that we’ve been using can provide new perspectives on history. Digital heritage conservation will become even more important in the years ahead.

Connected Canadians co-founder Tas Damen helps a senior at a pre-pandemic session organized with Ottawa Community Housing

6. Tech Support for Seniors

�Ӱ�ԭ�� Grads See Digital Literacy as a Human Right

By Brenna Mackay

Joan Cleary is a retired nurse who lives in a small town in Newfoundland. She has an active lifestyle: skiing, hiking and singing in the choir. When physical distancing measures were instituted, Cleary had to learn Zoom to stay in touch with friends. That’s when she discovered , an Ottawa-based non-profit, started by two �Ӱ�ԭ�� alumni, that provides older adults with the training and support they need to use technology safely.

“It was broken down in a way that I was very comfortable with it,” says Cleary, who was paired with a Connected Canadians tech mentor last spring.

“I wasn’t one bit intimidated.”

A few weeks later, Cleary’s brother passed away and some relatives couldn’t attend his funeral. But Cleary was able to video call them and bring her family together to grieve. “You can talk, you can laugh and you can cry — all through Zoom,” she says. “In this day and age, technology should be accessible to everybody.”

Connected Canadians client Marie with co-founder Emily Jones Joanisse

That goal is at the heart of Connected Canadians. Founded in 2018 by Emily Jones Joanisse (who has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and an from �Ӱ�ԭ��) and Tas Damen (who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and math), the idea stemmed from their experience working in the software industry. When the women realized that they were frequently acting as tech support for the older adults in their lives, they saw an opportunity.

“We wanted to serve the community and not charge seniors any money,” says Damen, “because we strongly believe that digital literacy is a human right.”

Cleary’s story is just one example of how Connected Canadians is helping seniors at a time when people are relying on technology more than ever. To Jones Joanisse, the pandemic has emphasized how crucial it is to help seniors stay connected to their families and communities to curb their loneliness and isolation. “Prior to COVID-19, people thought of digital literacy for seniors as a luxury,” she says. “What we had been saying from the beginning has been validated and amplified.”

As social gatherings became virtual, Connected Canadians has seen an increase in requests for support. From teaching an elderly Catholic nun how to join her online spiritual circle to helping Ottawa’s Capital Pride seniors host virtual bingo nights, the organization has met this growing need by collaborating with organizations outside Ottawa and by training clients and volunteers across the country through online workshops.

The solutions they’ve come up with include a joint initiative with national charity that sees volunteers work with seniors to set up tablets that are sent to them for use in isolation, and a program that allows seniors to interact with one another online while playing language-based games. In May, Connected Canadians was awarded a grant from the City of Ottawa to retrain food and beverage industry workers who lost their jobs so they can become paid technology mentors. The organization now has 21 paid mentors on staff.

“It’s humbling to go from a startup to having national partners and large organizations such as the National Gallery of Canada and Apple that are impressed by our delivery model,” says Jones Joanisse, who, while remaining the full-time CEO, has returned to �Ӱ�ԭ�� this fall to begin a PhD in management at the Sprott School of Business.

She plans to focus her thesis on how volunteering helps new immigrants integrate into the Canadian workforce.

Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization President and CEO Gail Garland/Photograph by Giordano Ciampini

7. Homegrown Help

Getting New Technologies Into Ontario Hospitals Now

Gail Garland, who has a biology degree from �Ӱ�ԭ��, is the President and CEO of the (OBIO), a not-for-profit that, through partnerships with industry, investors, academia and government, supports the commercialization of human health science companies. OBIO’s (EAHN) — which connects health-care institutions with companies developing technologies that are ready for adoption — was launched in fall 2019 but quickly shifted gears to address COVID-19. Its first eight projects were announced in July and range from a portable dual x-ray device to a clinical decision support tool that can help physicians determine when to safely transition patients off ventilators.

When the pandemic hit, OBIO put out a call across Canada through the EAHN program for companies that were creating or adapting their technologies to help address COVID-19. We screened more than 75 applications and talked to the companies, assessing their technologies and the teams running these companies to determine their readiness. Then we selected eight initial companies and partnered them with hospitals. Those projects are in various stages of implementation, but we’re still working with the others that applied, and there are successive rounds of funding planned.

Hospitals see the merit of working with new technologies through the EAHN program because in many ways we’ve de-risked it for them. Hospitals are interested in evaluating new technologies, but the technologies and the companies developing them have to be ready. For this to work, hospitals have to be innovation friendly, which is largely cultural, and not every hospital is of that mindset. So we partnered initially with a small group of hospitals, and that list has grown extensively.

Most hospitals are innovation friendly if you go to them with technology that’s been vetted and can help their patients. Senior leadership at hospitals is also very interested in understanding the economic benefits of adopting innovative technologies. As we dialogued with industry, one of our key learnings was that industry didn’t know which door of the hospital to go through and were wasting valuable time trying to find the right people in a hospital, or the right hospital. Our model facilitates that for them, and the pandemic has put a fine point on the need to support innovation for the sake of innovation. Because you never know when you’re going to need it.

The EAHN gives Canadian companies that are evaluated within the Ontario health system the opportunity to stay and grow here. They don’t have to go to Boston or Silicon Valley because there’s an ecosystem here that will support the company through the development and commercialization process. And then we can export it to the rest of the world.

The pandemic has given us all an opportunity to understand why a robust health science sector here in Ontario and in Canada is critical. Whether it’s the next wave of COVID-19 or another crisis, we need to be prepared.

Yassen Atallah

8. Cross-Country Checkup

Co-Op Student Joins the Collaborative Health Care Innovation Secretariat

Last January, Yassen Atallah — a master’s student at �Ӱ�ԭ��’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs — landed a co-op position as a policy analyst at Health Canada’s Health Care Innovation Secretariat. He expected to work at the agency’s Ottawa office, applying his studies in international organizations and global public policy toward improving the country’s health care system. By the time he began his co-op from remote in May — a four-month post that has been extended to the end of December — the landscape was different.

Like every other organization, the public service wasn’t totally prepared for this pandemic. We’ve adapted very well, but when I started it was like being put in the middle of a forest fire: everybody was running around trying to put it out and I was trying to find the buckets and the water. My training wasn’t traditional. It was, “Here’s a bunch of tasks, you’re going to learn as you go.” So from day one I just started helping wherever I could.

The secretariat is juggling a number of COVID-19-related files on data policy, digital tools, health innovation and bilateral agreements between the federal government and our provincial and territorial partners. We’re also negotiating funding agreements with provinces and territories so that they can improve their virtual care capacity. Generally speaking, any policy or research or funding is primarily focused on COVID-19, but we also understand that the implications of this work can reach beyond the pandemic.

I’m especially passionate about assisting with the Canadian Health Information Forum. Our team supports biweekly meetings with federal, provincial and territorial associate deputy ministers and other senior government officials to discuss Canada’s COVID-19 response and how governments and other pan-Canadian organizations can work together to address health data gaps and priorities. This is important as the availability of and timely access to data is needed to understand, monitor and respond to the pandemic.

My responsibilities include analyzing federal, provincial and territorial objectives and needs, as well as preparing the logistics for each of the meetings. The forum is a really dynamic, fast moving group — we tackle a number of topics every meeting — and lessons learned in various provinces and territories can lead to a more effective response to COVID-19.

It’s pretty cool to see how provinces and territories aren’t just focused on their own jurisdictions. They’re communicating with one another and sharing knowledge. That’s really inspiring, because to make a significant change we need to work collectively.

Working at Health Canada has allowed me to gain invaluable insight into the inner workings of health ministries and how they navigate complex crises to deliver a wide range of services. Ever since my undergrad, I’ve wanted to be at the intersection of the social and natural sciences. Being at Health Canada during these trying times has provided me with a great opportunity to apply my policy skills to improve the lives of some of most marginalized people in Canada.

�Ӱ�ԭ�� Dominion-Chalmers Centre director Mara Brown/Photograph by Fangliang Xu

9. Virtual Community Hub

The �Ӱ�ԭ�� Dominion-Chalmers Centre Leapfrogs Into the Future

By Sissi De Flaviis

On a cold April day, Mara Brown walks into her workplace in downtown Ottawa, closes the door and confronts a strange reality. She is absolutely alone in a 37,000-square-foot building.

As the director of the �Ӱ�ԭ�� Dominion-Chalmers Centre (CDCC) — the historic church that the university has transformed into an arts, performance and learning space — Brown is responsible for managing everything from renovations to events that bring audiences into the building. Which is a major challenge when COVID-19 has put an abrupt halt to mass gatherings.

“When there isn’t any activity in a building, it starts to lose physical integrity and energy can drain out,” says Brown. “The empty space was daunting at first but became inspirational pretty quickly, walking the halls and dreaming about the great future to come.”

The word “pivot” is overused when talking about how organizations have responded to the pandemic, but it certainly applies to the CDCC. After welcoming more than 85,000 people in the 10 months leading up to lockdown, the centre will now be fulfilling its cultural and academic role in an entirely unexpected way.

With organizations such as the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, Music and Beyond and Ottawa Chamberfest unable to hold performances, the CDCC turned its multi-year master plan upside down and quickly became a venue for livestreaming and recording concerts.

“We always knew we wanted to have high-tech audio-visual equipment and infrastructure throughout the building, but we imagined doing this much later,” says Brown.

“Suddenly, we have recognized an opportunity to provide options for people to perform and reach those who are experiencing sustained isolation. It’s been strange and amazing to flip our planning on its head.”

Overcoming the logistical challenge of setting up new technology in an old building, as well as shipping delays due to the pandemic, the CDCC has installed an array of equipment: cameras, tripods, lenses for capturing close-ups and wide shots, switchers for changing angles, software to process video content and more than 3,300 feet of cable.

Ottawa Chamberfest helped test the new equipment and hosted a six-part livestreamed concert series at the centre this fall. A team from the local Rogers TV station recorded three days of performances in June with the Music and Beyond virtual summer festival, which was previously an in-person experience and is now online. The Rogers recordings not only brought life to the centre but also helped the broadcaster create cultural content — such as a collaboration with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra at the CDCC in September — and fill the gap from the loss of live events in its schedule.

While the resumption of in-person activities still needs to be mapped out, the CDCC hopes to support small recitals by music students who must do live performances to graduate. Meanwhile, the doors opened in September to the United Church congregation to resume on-site worship, albeit with physical distancing and strategic seating.

“It is fair to say that large group gatherings will be one of the last things to return,” says Brown, “but it is fascinating to witness the rapid evolution of how we’re sharing art through online technologies. In-person gatherings can never be replaced, but one of the best things about creative industries are the people who have the ability to problem solve and evolve.”

Andrew Simpson

10. Cultural Healing

How a Social Work Practicum Helped Me Find My Niche

Andrew Simpson earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degree in social work at �Ӱ�ԭ��. Born and raised in Bancroft, Ont., and of Métis ancestry, he works for , an Indigenous well-being agency based at Hiawatha First Nation with more than 20 offices spread out over eight First Nations and off-territory towns in south-central Ontario. Simpson started at the agency — which provides culturally based wraparound services to children, youth and families — for his grad school practicum last spring and was hired on as a full-time family service worker.

In this field, people allow you into their world. You play an active role in the lives of individuals and families, helping to connect them to community support. One of the most difficult aspects of this job is fighting the urge to jump in and try to fix problems yourself. Each person or family has their own blueprint, and you work with them to identify and connect to the resources they need.

There’s no cookie-cutter approach. They are the guides, and you need to take the time to listen to their stories and find the right way forward. You need to step back, take a breath, ask questions and allow people to be heard, and then work as a team to alleviate some of the challenges they’re facing.

We integrate culture into the healing process and help reintroduce people to their cultures. That’s been the most beautiful thing that I’ve seen. Indigenous cultural practices have the ability to connect people to each other and to their communities and, at the same time, they challenge colonization.

Trying to navigate Indigenous services and supports in Canada can be difficult, but these are things that our communities need and I’m proud to be part of this journey. As a social worker and as a social justice warrior, I want to help fix the system we live in for the betterment of the people who we support.

My mom is also an Indigenous social worker. Through her and through my aunties, I started to connect with my culture while growing up. As I got older, I started to dig into things more deeply on my own and was exposed to ceremonies and teachings from Elders. It’s definitely been a reconnection for me.

When the pandemic began, I was grateful for the technology that we had, because it allowed us to still connect with families while distancing. We transitioned some of our cultural programming online without skipping a beat. But it was difficult, because a lot of the sense of community we have was built through face-to-face interaction, so I was really happy when we were able to resume seeing people in person in some situations, including visits outside in parks. It meant a lot to see people’s faces — not on a screen — again.

I hope COVID-19 reinforces the importance of community. I hope that people slow down and take the time to be kind and loving and take small steps to help others. Even if it’s a little thing, it could mean something big to someone else.

—
Raven Magazine

Etuaptmumk*: Business Professor Rick Colbourne Investigates the Economic Impact of the Pandemic on Indigenous Communities

jesseplunkett — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:05:58 +0000

Before put a list of distinguished letters after his name from universities in Canada and abroad, and long before he joined �Ӱ�ԭ��’s as a professor last year, he taught himself guitar, formed a rock band called Hard Poetry and opened for acts like the Barenaked Ladies.

“I was always writing and playing music — that’s how I made sense of the world,” says Colbourne, an Anishinaabe from the Mattawa/North Bay Algonquin First Nation, who, around the time his band was touring, worked with low-income and homeless people for a non-profit charity on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

“The songs I wrote,” he says, “reflected what I was experiencing and feeling out on the streets.”

Prof. Rick Colbourne

Yet after releasing albums and playing gigs across the country, Colbourne changed directions. “There’s a certain point when you hit the ceiling in the Canadian music industry,” he says, “and it’s very difficult to move beyond that.”

Considering what followed, perhaps that ceiling was a blessing.

Colbourne went from performing to producing concerts to earning his MBA from Simon Fraser University, then worked on media and entertainment projects for the professional services multinational Accenture. While developing and pitching digital music solutions to record labels around the world, he realized that music executives underestimated the impact that the internet and digital platforms would have on their industry.

Colbourne transitioned to academia when he was hired by the University of Westminster’s School of Media, Art and Design in London to redesign its Music Business Management master’s program. These experiences informed his interest in the dynamics of power and learning in corporations, which led to a PhD in management at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School.

Bridging Different Worlds

Curious and nimble, Colbourne discovered at a young age the value of being able to bridge different worlds. He learned how to cope with uncertainty, make new friends, take risks and manage change from his Anishinaabe father, who worked in the Canadian Armed Forces medical corps and was posted — and brought the family — to bases across Canada and Europe.

Now, suitably armed with a string of life experiences, a network of multiskilled collaborators and notable academic credentials, Colbourne is settling into Sprott and focusing on managing a different type of change: reconciliation and decolonization.

What do these words mean? Well, it’s more than “just introducing a case study on selling bannock or crafts,” he says. “It involves recognizing that we are all colonized peoples, and that government, post-secondary institutions, businesses and corporations are complicit in colonizing Indigenous peoples in Canada.

“Decolonization demands that we develop partnerships with Indigenous communities and organizations that legitimize and draw on Indigenous worldviews and ways of being to bring about institutional movement from simple inclusion initiatives to more meaningful reconciliation strategies. And today, this has to include how we consider the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This past spring, in the midst of teaching courses, mentoring grad students and developing partnerships with Indigenous communities, Colbourne found himself, like so many others, struggling with the constraints of economic shutdowns and isolation. This led to intense discussions on the effects of the pandemic with colleagues at , a national non-profit that plays an intermediary role to connect the private sector, Indigenous groups, government and post-secondary institutions.

Those conversations revolved not only around the impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous workers, entrepreneurs, communities and economic development corporations but also around resiliency, coping and mitigation.

They came up with two projects. One is a series of video podcasts exploring how Indigenous people are coping with isolation and working from home. The second will paint a bigger picture, investigating what’s happening with Indigenous businesses. Community-owned development corporations are major employers in First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities and range from on-reserve gas stations, convenience stores, tourism guides and outfitters to large-scale natural resource operations.

Colbourne’s study, with funding from �Ӱ�ԭ��, will compile cross-Canada baseline data on these businesses and chart what has happened to them since March 2020.

This is valuable information because Indigenous economic development corporations contribute back to their communities by supporting initiatives that focus on enhancing health and resiliency among Elders, youth and other community members.

“Canadians often don’t understand that these development corporations have a strong role to play in Canada’s economy,” says Colbourne, who in September became . “We need to demonstrate this and clearly articulate these contributions, so non Indigenous Canadians can appreciate the value of collaborating with Indigenous economic development corporations.”

In the initial phase of this project, D’Arcy O’Farrell, a Sprott PhD candidate and research assistant who specializes in finance, will source, compile, aggregate and analyze annual reports, financial data and other information from First Nation, Métis and Inuit sources. Then a team of researchers will determine which businesses are struggling and which are staying afloat — and why — to inform more effective Indigenous, federal and provincial policy making.

This research is guided by the Indigenous principle of reciprocity and OCAP: ownership, control, access and possession. All of the findings will be shared with Indigenous communities and economic development corporations.

Podcasts Are Perfect For Indigenous Storytelling Traditions

The video podcast project is still preliminary and awaits provincial funding but those involved are already busy preparing. , the President and CEO of Indigenous Works, says podcasts are perfect for Indigenous storytelling traditions and will be easily accessible on multiple online platforms. For those lacking a decent internet connection, he’s hoping libraries and other institutions will download them for public use. Short and sweet, they will offer tips and tools on how to survive and thrive in this stressful, unpredictable, work-from-home lifestyle.

“It’s a way to help employees adapt but you can also look at it from a performance lens: now that you are working in a blended or at-home environment, what can be done to ensure you maintain or even improve productivity?” says Lendsay.

“Podcasts provide a storytelling platform and share peoples’ experiences. Listeners trust those voices because they’re authentic.”

While it’s true that Indigenous peoples have embraced social media — “the talking stick on steroids,” Lendsay calls it — he’s hoping the podcasts will offer another layer of support, featuring stories from urban, rural and remote locations addressing challenges such as connectivity, technology fatigue, productivity, self-care and loneliness. Indigenous Canadians have faced devastating biological and social afflictions before and the coronavirus might be triggering bad memories, especially for Elders, which is another theme to explore.

To assist this work, Colbourne has solicited the podcasting skills of one of his students, Joel Flynn, who is doing a PhD in management at Sprott and shares many of his supervisor’s interests, including social justice and the intersection of culture, technology and music. Along with running a podcasting and recording studio in Vancouver, Flynn is a singer who, prior to COVID-19, hosted community-driven live music events involving local musicians and singers. With their common interests, student and professor appear to be kindred spirits.

As if these pandemic projects aren’t enough, Colbourne has another ambitious goal: tackling the world’s “wicked problems” with etuaptmumk, a Mi’kmaw concept meaning “two-eyed seeing.”

With a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant submission in the queue, this unique Indigenous-led research initiative has assembled a team of more than a dozen leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers from around the world who are committed to using two eyed seeing to frame understandings of and responses to the wicked problems of sustainable development, social justice and urban inequity.

“Indigenous peoples are keepers of holistic knowledge generated over thousands of years of adaptation to global forces,” says Colbourne, “through which they have the capacity to foster the transformations necessary to respond to grand challenges.” In other words, Indigenous peoples have a lot to offer in the wake of failed capitalist and neoliberal policies regarding the climate, our environment and the economy.

This project reflects Colbourne’s self-described role as an activist business prof. “I’m trying to reframe how we see things,” he says. “Instead of thinking about organizations and ventures created purely for profit — to exploit or extract from communities — how do we reframe this from an Indigenous perspective? How do we think about ventures from a values orientation?

“I provide a critical voice and, in the past, sometimes I’ve been the only critical voice,” continues Colbourne.

“But at �Ӱ�ԭ�� and at Sprott I am excited to be working with faculty and staff who share the same values and perspectives and are wanting to change the world for the better. That’s why I’m here. I’m aligned with our dean, Dana Brown, and her vision for building a business school that values social impact and social innovation and is committed to engaging in reconciliation and Indigenization.”

It comes down to sharing wisdom and moving forward together, as equals, says Colbourne. Lendsay agrees and praises �Ӱ�ԭ��’s commitment to flipping the research model to promote community-led, needs-based projects instead of the outdated academic tradition of indulging esoteric notions, disembodied from the people and communities being studied.

Sprott is not just talking the talk. It was the first of dozens of post-secondary faculties to sign the Indigenous Works’ , a proposed multi-year strategy to advance Indigenous innovation and research collaboration through partnerships with businesses, universities, research agencies, Indigenous businesses and communities. The charter is essentially a commitment from powerful mainstream players to support and amplify Indigenous-led research and innovation projects with expertise and money driving economic transformation and jobs.

“We’re looking for more long-term relationships and long-term benefits coming out of research that engages Indigenous communities and resonates with their needs, values and perspectives,” says Colbourne. “Indigenous-led research has to contribute to community socio-economic health and well-being by facilitating self-governance and self-determination. It cannot be extractive. It has to be collaborative.”

Lendsay likens this to organizing a sports league: all you have to do is show up and play. “These partnerships are going to be powerful because everyone is so stressed and busy,” he says. “People want to do this, they just don’t have the time to be part of building networks. So that’s what we’re doing — building an infrastructure and ecosystem to support these collaborations.”

Igloolik Project Shows Potential of �Ӱ�ԭ��’s Approach

One need only consider what’s happening in Igloolik, Nunavut, more than 2,500 kilometres north of �Ӱ�ԭ��, to see just how powerful this approach can be.

Igloolik residents want to use excess construction materials currently languishing at the dump to build a meat and fish processing plant and possibly a hydroponic greenhouse to grow vegetables. But they have neither the money nor the research expertise to design such things, says the town’s mayor, Merlyn Recinos. So Colbourne is teaming up with �Ӱ�ԭ�� colleagues in Industrial Design, Information Technology and Neuroscience to bring their knowledge to the North.

Upcoming community consultations with Elders, youth and others in Igloolik will determine project priorities and design elements and then �Ӱ�ԭ�� graduate and undergrad students will work on shaping community objectives into reality. And, in the process, they’ll have an opportunity to learn about Arctic environments and Inuit innovation.

“It’s very refreshing for us, at the community level, to hear this,” says Recinos.

“If you really want to create change, what you need to do is come to us as an empty vessel with the skills that you have and listen to the community to find out what we want. Communities truly want to create their own change and they want to be part of it. For this to happen, co-creation and collaboration needs to be at the forefront.”

Recinos uses the word “refreshing” because this is not something he expected. “It’s surprising to think of a business school caring about culture, community and the environment,” he says. “But that’s what reconciliation is all about: not just trying to understand the other side but working with the other side to ensure that, at the end of the day, we’re all benefitting.”

—
Raven Magazine