Alumni Association of Boston

Branch Board
President: Laurence Gagnon, Cert PR Mgmt’07
Past President: Linda Lieberman, BSc’96
Vice President: Stuart Paap, BA’97
Treasurer: Ian Christopher Pilarczyk, BA’92, LLM’97, DCL’03

Member at Large:
Lindsay Cook, BA’75
Debbie Levy, BA’89
Christopher Ranjitkar, BCom’06
Phelps Turner, BA’03, BCL/LLB’07

Calling all book lovers!
Join us for McGill Reads in Boston, the McGill Alumni Association's Boston-area book club. We are an informal group that meets every seven weeks in the home of one of our members to read and compare notes about books set in Montreal.

Information will always be available on our events page, but please boston [dot] alumni [at] mcgill [dot] ca (let us know) if you're interested in participating.

Past Selections
Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner
Juliet in August by Diane Warren
Under the Dragon's Tail (Detective Murdoch, #2) by Maureen Jennings
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
Kit's Law: A Novel by Donna Morrissey
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Cockroach: A Novel by Rawi Hage
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King
The Iguana by Theriault Denis
Fall by Colin McAdam
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
The Edge by Dick Francis
Fault Lines by Nancy Huston
Go Figure by Rejean Ducharme
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
The Favorite Game by Leonard Cohen
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Someone Knows My Name: A Novel by Lawrence Hill
Mercy Among the Children: A Novel by David Adams Richards
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
Black Bird by Michel Basilières
Mercury Under My Tongue by Sylvain Trudel
The Birth House by Ami McKay
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
Dobryd by Ann Charney
La grosse femme est enceinte (Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal, #1) by Michel Tremblay
Necessary Betrayals: A Novel by Guillaume Vigneault
Bonheur d'occasion by Gabrielle Roy
Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill
Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs
Solomon Gursky was Here by Mordechai Richler

Dear Alumni and Friends,

It’s hard to believe that another year is already well under way. I don’t know about you, but I find time seems to be moving faster than ever! I hope you were all able to get together with loved ones to celebrate the holidays.
 
This year will be a busy one for our alma mater. McGill is preparing to bid farewell to Professor Heather Munroe-Blum, who will be concluding her second five-year term as Principal and Vice-Chancellor in June. She is going out on a high note, having been chosen to receive the Chief Executive Leadership Award by the Washington-based Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The award, recognizing her distinguished service to McGill and her wider contributions to post-secondary education, was presented in January at a CASE conference here in Boston.

Thanks to the generosity of more than 91,000 donors so far, McGill is on track to exceed its Making History fundraising campaign target. This is great news, of course, but with unexpected government cuts to Quebec universities and a continuing tuition freeze, it will be critical to maintain the campaign’s momentum going forward.

There are lots of advantages to membership in the McGill Alumni Association (and as a graduate, you are automatically a member), including the opportunity to participate in a special travel program. Trips are open to your family and friends and the Alumni Association has put together a spectacular package of travel destinations for 2013. There’s a trip for every taste, whether you’re up for a tour of South American vineyards or a Baltic cruise featuring lectures by Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walensa. If armchair travel is more your style, it’s always fun to browse through the program brochure and to check out the blogs and photos from McGill travellers.

The Alumni Online Community is a great source for news of graduates and the University. Don’t forget the McGill News magazine website which offers award-winning writing and news stories. Because of postage and printing costs, the magazine is now published only twice a year, but the content of the online edition is regularly refreshed. You can also follow the News on Twitter at @McGillNewsMag.

Our local branch of the McGill Alumni Association offers a variety of events and learning opportunities, and we hope you will join us. See the next few pages for upcoming activities. If you have ideas for events that you would like to see, please don’t hesitate to let us know about them. If you’d like to be part of the branch executive, or just try volunteering at a single event, send us an email to advise of your interest.
 
With warm McGill regards,
 
Laurence Gagnon, Cert PR Mgmt'07
President, McGill Alumni Association of Boston
boston [dot] alumni [at] mcgill [dot] ca