Guide to Getting In

Maclean's has just published its Guide to Canadian Universities, no doubt a soon-to-be-dogeared document in those households with students graduating from high school. Competition for admission is stiffer than ever as the "echo" generation, the babies of the boomers, get ready to go to university. Last year alone, applications to McGill from Ontario were up by 29%, from the U.S. by 24% and from overseas by 13%, although McGill enrolled only 2% more undergraduates.

The Guide gives a mini-profile of each Canadian university, including a "What's Hot" and "What's Not" list. (Hot at McGill: the 100-plus student clubs; campus radio station CKUT; Montreal nightlife; Not: "It's Montreal: your parents will visit.")

Touting the University's exciting new facilities and programs in computer engineering, bioinformatics, genomics and information technology, the Guide hails McGill for its "sheer brain power," which "has made it a hotbed for innovation, and exceptional students flock to the university from across Canada and around the world."

This year, says the publication's editor, Ann Dowsett Johnson, "the professional became personal" as she and her son joined the families "shopping for a university." McGill is on her short list, and in an introductory article she described taking a campus tour, part of a process which has her "peering in the rearview mirror at my undergraduate years."

The Maclean's publication also ended its profile of McGill with a look back -- to a 1954 essay by author and McGill professor Hugh MacLennan: "He wrote that his school's 'student body is international, its campus is located in the heart of a great city, and its spirit is astonishingly free of the sentimental exclusiveness of most famous universities.'"

Bruce of Arabia

	PHOTO: Courtesy Bruce Kirby

McGill's Macdonald Campus has a reputation for selecting people who have gone to the extremes in life as speakers for its Founder's Day celebration. In recent years, the February 10 birthdate of Sir William Macdonald, founder of what is today the University's Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, has been commemorated by the likes of Canadians Bernard Voyer, who scaled Everest and skied to the South Pole, and swimmer Mark Tewksbury, a gold medallist at the 1992 Olympic Games.

This year's speaker, Bruce Kirkby, Canadian adventurer, photographer and author of Sand Dance: By Camel Across Arabia's Great Southern Desert, was no exception to the trend. Kirkby, two friends, three Bedouin and 12 camels crossed a desert that no one of European descent had crossed since the renowned British explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger made the trek twice in the 1940s.

Kirkby spoke to a full house of students, staff, retirees and alumni at Macdonald's Centennial Centre. With breathtaking slides illuminating his words, he described the trials and tribulations of organizing and surviving the 40-day journey over the world's largest sand desert, a region known as the Empty Quarter, which covers parts of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Through his tales of ornery camels -- "They don't spit, they puke" -- the extraordinarily generous Bedouin and the stunning beauty of 300-metre sand dunes, Kirkby had his audience both awestruck and in stitches. His decision to leave engineering to follow his heart outdoors and his general message that education should not be about job training but about opening the doors to life's many possibilities, struck a romantic chord.

Student Sara Atti was one who gave Kirkby's talk an enthusiastic thumbs-up. A master's student in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and Plant Science, Atti appreciated Kirkby's humility and the extent of his research on the history of the desert and the Bedouin. "He was humble, simple, and not asserting he has the best way of life," said Atti, a French national of Tunisian origin who was happy to exchange a few words of Arabic with Kirkby.

"What I appreciated most is that he managed to make us dream of the sand dunes and the adventure-type of life, but he also succeeded in inserting some pedagogy in his story."

See Spot Mush

All Management students at McGill study human resources, but how does a graduate prepare to oversee a staff of two dozen canines? Shannon Brockman, BCom'97, (below), owns and operates a kennel of 25 sled dogs in Nenana, Alaska. "I didn't even know what a sled dog was when I was at McGill, other than having an eccentric aunt and uncle who had a recreational team in Yellowknife," the London, Ontario, native says. "I had a drive to have a 'real' career, one that would lead to financial stability," she says, but a trip to Europe after her third year made her realize she wanted more adventure in life. After spending time with her relatives and their dogs in Yellowknife, she decided to move north and get her own team.

In February, Brockman tackled the Yukon Quest, billed by its promoters as "the world's toughest sled dog race." Despite the event's intimidating reputation, it seemed like the natural next step in her career as a musher after she had successfully completed a series of other races. She finished the Yukon Quest in just under 12 days, placing tenth out of 45 entrants, and was recognized with the "Rookie of the Year" award for beating all other first-time racers.

The thousand-mile race traversed a treacherous trail between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon. Competitors had to sleep and eat on their sleds in brutal cold, pausing only occasionally at designated checkpoints. "I didn't stress about all the things that could have gone wrong or I'd have been a basket case," Brockman says. And it seems she won't be resting on her laurels. "The fact that the dogs and I completed something so challenging and that generally we're all really happy at the end keeps me striving to do more."

For Brockman, the joy of these contests is as much in the journey as hitting the finish line: "Getting to travel through country that otherwise you would never get to -- on a trip we move through 50 miles of country a day and in the Quest it's about 100 miles of trail a day- -- it's just beautiful."