SHULL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-17 published
A true hero of Canadian science
Professor who won 1994 Nobel Prize didn't think his work was
very important but had to change his mind after he got award
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special to The Globe and Mail Friday, October
17, 2003 - Page R13
Canadian physicist Bertram
BROCKHOUSE once likened winning the
Nobel Prize to winning the Stanley Cup.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1994
for his work developing a technique to measure the atomic structure
of matter, died on Monday in a Hamilton hospital. He was 85.
After the prize announcement, the visibly abashed emeritus professor
of physics at McMaster University told reporters in Hamilton
that when the Swedish Academy of Science telephoned him at 6: 45
a.m. his reaction was "enormous astonishment."
"It came as a complete surprise," he said. "I would have otherwise
been dressed and ready."
He said at the time he was unaware he had been nominated.
Aside from his own personal achievement, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE is the
only Canadian Nobel laureate who was born, educated and completed
his life's work in this country.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE shared his Nobel prize with Clifford
SHULL, a
former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
who died in 2001 at the age of 85. They were honoured for research
conducted at the first nuclear reactors in Canada and the United
States as early as the 1940s and 1950s.
In announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy said "Clifford
SHULL helped answer the question of where atoms 'are' and Bertram
N. BROCKHOUSE the question of what atoms 'do.'
Much of Dr.
BROCKHOUSE's award-winning work was carried on at
the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, a facility operated by
what is now called Atomic Energy of Canada, where he was a researcher
from 1950 until 1962. The original Chalk River reactor, located
190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, drew curious scientists from
around the globe in the 1950s. Dr.
BROCKHOUSE used the neutron
beams from the nuclear reactors to probe materials at the atomic
level. Using a device he built for his research, known as the
triple-axis neutron spectrometer, he is recognized for improving
the understanding of the way neutrons bounce off atomic nuclei.
His triple-axis neutron spectrometer is still used around the
world and parts of the original device he built are still at
Chalk
River, said Dr. Bruce
GAULIN, who holds the Brockhouse
Chair in the physics of materials at McMaster.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE worked with simple materials like aluminum and
steel. Today the technique he developed, known as neutron scattering,
is used in widely differing areas such as the study of superconductors,
elastic properties of polymers and virus structure.
Scientists had previously relied on radiation from devices like
X-rays to look at the atomic structure of matter. "He is a heroic
figure," Dr.
GAULIN said.
Described as competitive in his scientific endeavours, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE
didn't want to miss a single minute. A colleague at Chalk River
once asked him why he worked so hard. "Every minute of every
day is unique," he replied. "And once that minute is gone, it
is lost forever."
While he had little spare time during his years at Chalk River,
he did use opportunities to take part in a number of amateur
dramatic productions, including three operettas. A great lover
of music, particularly for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan,
Dr. BROCKHOUSE was known for loudly singing excerpts while working
on experiments.
Bertram Neville
BROCKHOUSE was born on July 15, 1918, in Lethbridge,
Alberta. "My first memories are of a farm near Milk River where
I lived with my mother and father and my sister, Alice Evelyn,
and a variety of farm and domestic animals," he wrote in an autobiographical
sketch for the academy.
His parents Israel Bertram
BROCKHOUSE and Mable Emily
(NEVILLE)
BROCKHOUSE had two other children. One son died in infancy and
another went on to become a railroad civil engineer. The family
moved to Vancouver while Dr.
BROCKHOUSE was still a young boy.
He completed high school in 1935 and instead of going to university
went to work as a laboratory assistant and then as a radio repairman.
When the Second World War came along he used his radio skills
as an electronics technician in the Royal Canadian Navy. He spent
some months at sea, but most of his war years were spent servicing
sonar equipment at a shore base.
After the war, he returned to Vancouver to attend university
at the University of British Columbia. He later went to the University
of Toronto where he completed his PhD in 1950 with a lofty thesis
entitled "The Effect of Stress and Temperature upon the Magnetic
Properties of Ferromagnetic Materials".
In 1962, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE joined the department of physics at McMaster
University and remained there until his retirement in 1984. He
and his wife Doris raised their six children in Ancaster, a small
community outside Hamilton, in a house they occupied for close
to 40 years.
At the university, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE was highly regarded as a professor
known for having high expectations of his students and for most
often being deep in thought.
"You had the sense you were in the presence of an unusual person,"
said Dr. Tom
TIMUSK, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy
at McMaster.
Dr. TIMUSK, who shared an office with Dr.
BROCKHOUSE at McMaster
for some time, said his colleague jokingly told students after
he won the Nobel Prize that he didn't think his work was very
important but that had to change his mind after he got the award.
"I think he genuinely believed that what he did was good work,
but not so important," Dr.
GAULIN said.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE likened himself to an explorer who woke up on
any given morning not knowing exactly what he was going to do,
except follow some vague instinct about what should be explored
next.
He also liked to say that scientists were really just mapmakers
with a greater eye for detail. "The metaphor that I think of
is that of the atlas you're all familiar with. What we work on
in basic science is just a bigger atlas, with places and objects
and so on that are not as familiar."
Dr. BROCKHOUSE leaves his wife, children Ann, Gordon, Ian, Beth,
Charles and James, and 10 grandchildren.
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SHUSTER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-17 published
Died
This
Day -- Johnny
WAYNE, 1990
Thursday, July 17, 2003 - Page R9
Comedian born John Louis
WAYNE in Toronto on May 28, 1918; teamed
with future comedy partner Frank
SHUSTER at high school in Toronto
performed together in school revues; continued their act at University
of Toronto; enlisted in Canadian Army during Second World War
became popular duo on The Army Show; in peacetime, launched radio
career; 1947, landed own program on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
later switched to television; made record 67 appearances on The
Ed Sullivan Show in U.S.; remained in Canada despite huge success
and offers to move abroad.
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SHUTTLEWORTH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-30 published
LITTLE,
Alexander
Ross
Ross died peacefully at home on July 25, 2003. Born November
15, 1908 in Woodstock Ontario, he is predeceased by parents Henry
Alexander LITTLE and Emily Christina (née
ROSS,) and his only
brother Jim
LITTLE
(Lillian) of London, Ontario. Ross is survived
by his wife of 65 years, Helen and their children: Christy; Peter
(Noreen) of Owen Sound and their children Marion (Ted
HODSON,)
Martha (Eric
TIISLER,)
Alexander
(Kim
STARK,) Heather and Christopher
Andrew of Calgary; and Ron (Cath) of Calgary and their children
Jane and Jim; and by five great-grandchildren.
Childhood at Altadore, his family home in Woodstock and many
years at Lakefield Preparatory School were followed by Ridley
College School, Trinity College (U of T), (Beta Theta Pi) Osgoode
Hall, membership in the Law Society of Upper Canada and work
with the Canada Permanent Trust Company. Ross married Helen
(SHUTTLEWORTH)
on April 14, 1938 in London, Ontario then served as an Royal
Canadian Air Force Wing Commander during World War 2. Rejoining
the Permanent, he became Winnipeg Branch Manager from 1945 until
his retirement in 1972.
Volunteer commitments: The Canadian Disaster Relief Fund, Trustee
of the Winnipeg School Board District 1, Save the Children Canada,
figure skating judge, the Crescentwood Home Owners Association,
the Men's Musical Club, Kiwanis and St. George's Anglican Church
- Building Committee, Warden, Vestry and 50 year member of the
Choir.
Favorite pastimes: singing, piano, painting with Helen and Canadian
history through the Champlain Society and Hudson's Bay Record
Society, travels with Helen and Christy, a life time of golf
including many years at St. Charles Golf and Country Club and
ice dancing at the Winnipeg Winter Club with Helen.
An exemplary citizen, wonderful father and truly gentle man,
he will be dearly missed.
Memorial service: Saturday August 2 at 11:00 a.m., St. George's
Anglican Crescentwood, 168 Wilton Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3M 3C3.
In lieu of flowers: the St. George's Memorial Fund c/o the Church,
Kiwanis Club of Winnipeg Foundation Inc. 430 Webb Place Winnipeg,
Manitoba R3B 3J7, the Winnipeg Art Gallery 300 Memorial Blvd.,
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 1V1 or Save the Children Canada, 4141
Yonge Street, Suite 300 Toronto, Ontario M2P 2A8.
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SHUTTLEWORTH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-13 published
Singer was hit on Hit Parade
Canadian-born performer played violin with Jack Benny and posed
as wife of Sid Caesar
By James McCREADY
Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, September
13, 2003 - Page F11
She was called "Canada's First Lady of Song." In the late 1940s,
singer Gisele
MacKENZIE was so popular on Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation radio that she was known just by her first name.
When she was 23, she headed off to Hollywood, where she became
one of the main singers on Your Hit Parade, a popular American
network television show in the 1950s. By the time television
started in Canada in 1952, she was already a star in the United
States, appearing on programs with Jack Benny and later with
Sid Caesar, the hottest comedian of his day.
Gisele MacKENZIE, who has died at the age of 76, was not always
known by that name. On the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
she was known simply as Gisele, though a 1950 Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation press release did call her by her proper name --
Gisele LAFLECHE. As soon as she moved to CBS in 1951, she adopted
the stage name Gisele
MacKENZIE.
The reason, she told a New York
reporter in 1955, was that the name Gisele
LAFLECHE "sounded
too much like a striptease artist's." The real explanation was
an American audience would have trouble with so French a name.
It was the television network that ordered the name change.
Marie
Marguerite
Louise Gisele
LAFLECHE was born on January 10,
1927, in Winnipeg. The name
MacKENZIE was from her paternal grandmother.
Her father, Georges, was a doctor, who played the violin, and
her mother, Marietta
MANSEAU, was a concert pianist and singer
as a young woman. Ms.
MacKENZIE started playing the violin seriously
when she was 7. She made her first public performance at the
Royal Alexandra Hotel in Winnipeg at the age of 12.
When she was 14, her family sent her to the Royal Conservatory
of Music in Toronto. She studied the violin and the piano, and
planned on being a concert violinist. Later in life, a story
circulated that she never took voice lessons, but Jim
GUTHRO,
who was at the conservatory at the same time, remembered a voice
teacher who took an interest in her. He also remembered that
she attended at the same time as Robert
GOULET and they would
sing together.
When she first came to Toronto, she stayed at Rosary Hall, a
residence for Catholic girls on Bloor Street at the top of Jarvis
Street. Tess
MALLOY, who was there at the same time, remembered
her. "She lived right across the hall from me. She and her girlfriend
used to drive us nuts practising the violin."
Ms. MALLOY didn't remember her singing at the residence, but
somewhere along the way someone discovered Ms.
MacKENZIE could
sing. It was close to the end of the war and she started to perform
for groups of servicemen. It was then that she was discovered
by musician Bob
SHUTTLEWORTH, a lieutenant who led a band for
the Royal Canadian Navy.
Right after the war, she started singing with Mr.
SHUTTLEWORTH's
band at the Glenmount Hotel on the Lake of Bays, north of Toronto.
Mr. SHUTTLEWORTH, who later became her manager and her husband,
took her to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which then
broadcast live popular music over the radio.
"Bob SHUTTLEWORTH called me at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
and said, 'Get a studio, a piano and a vocal mike. I have someone
I want you to hear,' recalled Jackie
RAE, then a music producer
at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, later leader of his
own band (and, incidentally, the uncle of former Ontario premier
Bob RAE.) "I remember her wonderful voice and how fresh she was.
We hired her straight away to do three programs a week."
The program was Meet Gisele, and it ran for 15 minutes on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. The program started on October 8, 1946,
and lasted for four years. She was so popular the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation used her in other programs with names such as The
Girl Next Door or The Song Pluggers.
In 1951, Ms.
MacKENZIE was spotted by Bing
CROSBY's son, and
went to work in the United States for Bob
CROSBY's
Club 15, bumping
the Andrews Sisters from their regular slot. The pay was $20,000
(U.S.) a year, worth $150,000 in today's money. She was 23.
The money was something Canada could never match. Mr.
GUTHRO,
later head of Variety at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
guesses she was making $200 a week for her radio programs.
"Gisele Leaves for Hollywood. Canada's Loss," read a headline
in one Toronto paper. The article guessed at the pay package,
and it was right.
Ms. MacKENZIE was about to have her best decade ever in show
business. After a short stint on Club 15, she worked on the Mario
Lanza Show, before landing her full-time job at Your Hit Parade.
The idea behind the NBC program was to take the top seven songs
on the hit parade that week and have them done by the regular
singers in the Your Hit Parade troupe. The half-hour program
was a huge success in the United States and in late 1953 the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation picked it up for a while.
Ms. MacKENZIE was the only regular singer on the program to have
her own hit record, Hard to Get, in 1955.
Though none of her family shared her success, all were musical.
There were her parents, both of whom were serious amateur musicians
two of her sisters sang and played, and a brother played the
cello. Along with Gisele, two of them had what is called perfect
pitch.
"It's rare and she had it," Mr.
RAE said. "You would play four
notes on the piano and she could match them. Perfect pitch isn't
always a great thing, but in her case it was."
Ms. MacKENZIE's training as a classical violinist came in handy
on the Jack Benny program, on which she first appeared in 1955.
The droll comedian always made a thing of how he couldn't play
the violin. One vaudeville-type act they would do on his show
involved her patiently showing him what to do with a violin after
he made some awful screeching noise with his bow.
She was Jack Benny's protégé, and he helped land her own television
program in 1958. Called the Gisele
MacKENZIE
Show, it lasted
only six months.
But she remained famous. At one stage, she was the subject of
This is Your Life, which involved linking up with old Friends
and relatives. She was a regular on game shows that featured
minor celebrities, such as Hollywood Squares.
In 1963, she was cast as Sid Caesar's television wife and made
regular trips to New York City, where the program was done. Like
other television programs of that era, it was live, since videotape
was only just being introduced.
Ms. MacKENZIE also acted and sang in live musicals in the United
States, things such as Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific.
Over the years, she also worked in Las Vegas, performing in night
clubs there. She returned to Canada for the occasional concert
and television special, including one on the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation in late 1960. It was about "her story book career"
and included the yarn, always told by her publicists, of how
she decided to take up singing after she lost her $3,000 violin.
By the end of the 1960s, the big work started to dry up and Canadian
newspapers were running the occasional "Where Are They Now" articles.
She was in a sprawling ranch house in suburban Encino, Calif.
She also owned property in Palmdale and Marin County, Calif.,
as well as a house on Lake Manitoba back home.
All that detail came up in a nasty divorce from Mr.
SHUTTLEWORTH
in 1968. Because he was also her manager, he kept 10 per cent
of her gross income for the next three years. She later married
a banker, Robert
KLEIN, but that also ended in divorce.
During the rest of her career, Ms.
MacKENZIE kept working in
regional theatre and made guest appearances on television series,
including MacGyver and Murder, She Wrote, as well as singing
stints on programs such as the Dean Martin Show. She also did
television commercials in the United States and Canada.
Ms. MacKENZIE had some odd hobbies. She collected and mixed exotic
perfumes and in the 1950s she took up target shooting, becoming
an expert shot. She and her first husband had a large collection
of pistols, rifles and shotguns. In her later years, like many
Hollywood stars, she was involved with Scientology.
Ms. MacKENZIE, who died in Burbank, Calif., on September 5, had
two children with Mr.
SHUTTLEWORTH, a son Mac and a daughter
Gigi (short for Gisele)
DOWNS.
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