Fresh air make you feel good? Well, pure oxygen administered in a special, highly pressurized chamber can apparently make you feel great and may cut down the time required for tissue damage and sports injuries to heal.

McGill's Seagram Sports Science Centre unveiled its own Jules Verne-like hyperbaric oxygen chamber on September 10. It will be used by McGill researchers and athletes, and members of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, to test the claims about its benefits, making it the first such unit dedicated to research and treatment of sports injuries in Quebec.

The chamber is provided by manufacturers Perry Baromedical Corporation, with further financial support from the Molson Family, the Ed Ricard Fund of the Montreal General Hospital, the Canadian Arena Co., the Maurice Richard Foundation and John and Pattie Cleghorn.

A rather special musical evening is coming up next month at Pollack Hall. McGill's Trio Chanteclair will perform what promises to be a pretty eclectic concert. Sure, there's a little Mozart, and a bit of Schubert, some Ralph Vaughan Williams, but trio members Tracy Davidson (soprano), Tom Talamantes (clarinet) and Thomas Davidson (piano) also have a couple of world premieres on the program.

The first, by composer John Burge, has the intriguing title Elegy as a Message Left on an Answering Machine but of special note is the second work by McGill's own Donald Patriquin, which sets to music some of the poems of F.R. Scott. Scott (right), a former McGill law professor, was also known as the dean of Canadian poets.

Patriquin's piece, called Cycles, incorporates text from Scott's poems Overture, Child of the North, Picnic and March Field.

New construction at McGill has been rare in recent memory. Building projects require so much scrutiny, so much approval at so many levels of government and so much bush beating for funds that few actually get off the drawing board.

One that has is the new library for the Faculty of Law. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the whole project is that it is being built without a single government grant. The $11.1 million cost will be covered by donations by graduates and friends of the Faculty. The leading benefactor is Montreal lawyer Nahum Gelber, for whom the library will be named, and who is shown, with Mrs. Gelber and Dean Toope at the sod turning on September 5. The 3,346-square-metre facility will open its doors in 1998, during the Faculty's 150th anniversary.

Faculty, staff and students were united in their grief at the loss of a friend, colleague and mentor when biology professor Rob Peters died last year. Their shared grief turned to action when they embraced an idea proposed by people who worked with Peters in his lab. They suggested planting a tree in his memory in the Stewart Biology Building courtyard. Irene Wisheu, a post-doctoral fellow in plant ecology, acted as coordinator for the project. "The response was immediate. We ran an announcement in the newsletter last fall and by Christmas we had raised the money we needed."

A tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) was planted this spring as soon as the ground was soft, and the final ceremony took place on September 12 when a commemorative plaque was unveiled. Peters's widow and one of his children were present as members of the department saluted the man with wine, words and music.

"This project was important to all of us," says Wisheu. "In addition to being an academic tragedy, people felt his loss very personally."