Julie Ann Nesrallah: The mouth that soared

Julie Ann Nesrallah claims her mind was made up at the age of four. No musings about growing up to be an astronaut or a nurse Nesrallah wanted to be a performer.

Voice lessons began when she was 12 and, except for a two-year break, they've gone on ever since. Ballet classes were scheduled around homework. As she got older and took up waitressing to support herself, piano lessons became a lunch-time staple. Nesrallah's dancing skills won't carry her to fame, but her singing ability probably will.

Speaking in a delightfully earthy  if somewhat sleepy  voice from her hotel room in Victoria, Nesrallah knows she's well on her way to achieving her childhood ambitions. It's the morning after the night before. Nesrallah had starred as Isabella in a Pacific Opera production of Rossini's Italiana in Algieri. It was opening night and the singer is still on a high from a performance that charmed the audience.

She has to do well in the role if she wants to graduate from McGill's Faculty of Music it counts as the final recital for her artist diploma.

Professor William Neill, the chair of the Department of Performance's Voice Area, predicts big things for the dark-eyed star in the making.

He lists among her strengths "a fabulous voice, tremendous stage presence, a phenomenal depth of musical sensitivity, an outstanding personality, and great intelligence." Nesrallah is also blessed with what Neill calls "the strongest work ethic that I have encountered in my experience as a teacher."

For her part, Nesrallah says her two years at McGill have been invaluable.

"I have a better sense of what the professional world is like  a better sense of responsibility and etiquette. Singing is the easy part. In this line of work, you have to learn how to deal with your conductors, stage directors, other cast members, musicians. There are all these dynamics to be negotiated. And McGill's teachers do a fine job of preparing you for all of that.

"I don't sound anything like I did two years ago," Nesrallah adds, saying that her voice is more polished. She gives much of the credit to the faculty's husband-and-wife teaching team of William and Dixie Neill.

Gazette music critic Richard Turp once singled Nesrallah out for the "homogeneity and lustrous quality of [her] voice." The Ottawa Citizen was similarly struck by her "warm, agile, lyric-mezzo voice." Asked to appraise her own abilities, Nesrallah points first to her skill at reaching out to her audience.

"I have a strong stage presence. I genuinely like people and I think audiences pick up on that. I have an easy rapport with an audience. I'm an extroverted extrovert if that's possible."

After the Pacific Opera gig wraps up, the Ottawa-born mezzo-soprano is off to New York to play Mozart in a production of The Music Box. Her waitressing days are behind her, declares Nesrallah firmly. Whether she hits the big time or barely squeaks by, music is where she'll focus all her energies from now on.

"I'm not in it for the big bucks. I'm in it because I have no choice  this is what I was meant to do."

Daniel McCabe

The impact on these patients' lives is horrific. These are people who may have wanted to lose 10 or 20 pounds who are now facing the option of lung transplant, possibly not being alive in five years, possibly being required to carry around a pump infusing medication for the rest of their lives, unable to work, unable to care for their families, a very poor quality of life.


Dr. David Langleben, from the Department of Medicine, in an interview with The Globe and Mail. Langleben was referring to the banning in Canada and the U.S. of the diet drugs fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine which can cause life-threatening heart and lung problems for some users. Langleben and epidemiology professor Lucien Abenhaim were among the scientists whose studies pointed to the damage these drugs can do.

Why should Phyllis Heaphy have all the fun? As McGill's vice-principal (administration and finance), crafts the University's next budget, she might be surprised to discover that hers won't be the only budget proposed for McGill. A group of students, professors and staff have started work on an "alternate budget" which they hope to present to the Board of Governors.

According to Anna Kruzynski, the vice-president (university affairs) of the Post-Graduate Students' Society, students are upset about such recent budget items as the introduction of new registration and technology fees, funding cuts to departments that have resulted in fewer course offerings and the establishment of self-funded programs that charge high tuition fees.

Students e-mailed their complaints to Principal Bernard Shapiro. "His response was that criticizing is easy, offering a different solution is more difficult. So we're taking him up on the challenge," says Kruzynski.

The ad hoc alternative budget committee is composed of students, union and staff association representatives and professors from economics, educational studies, social work and other departments.

The exercise draws its inspiration from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The work of academics, activists, unions, church groups and community organizations, the CCPA's alternative budget is offered each year as a more socially responsible model than the budget put forward by the federal government.

Kruzynski's committee is currently mapping the governing principles for its approach to budget-making  "then we'll get down to the number-crunching." The group hopes to present its budget to the board in the spring.

You get tricked onto this path because it's exciting and it's clearly the future. You're given four years of money and you invest four years of your career, and then the rug is pulled out from under you. It's suicidal. You can't work like that. Even if they come back with money, I'm not doing it again.


Medicine professor Erwin Schurr expressing his displeasure to Shift magazine about the federal government's recent decision to shut down the Canadian Genetic Analysis Technology Program, a program he and other scientists credit with supporting important genetics research.

When I did my first experiments in this area, I was petrified to submit it for publication. I wondered what the social ramifications of it might be. I didn't want to see any radical interpretations of what I found.


Psychology and obstetrics and gynecology professor Barbara Sherwin in an interview with New York magazine. Sherwin's research has pointed to a strong link between estrogen loss and a decline in verbal memory in women.

The faith of Canadians in this country's justice system has been profoundly shaken as people learn that being innocent of a crime doesn't necessarily keep you out of prison.

Donald Marshall, Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard are three recently discovered victims of what has proved to be a less-than-impartial legal system. A pilot project at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School may turn up more.

Called the Innocence Project, the program will involve upper-year law students who will review cases of prisoners claiming wrongful conviction. Co-founders of the pilot project are York law professors Dianne Martin and Alan Young, who have based the program on a similar one at New York City's Cardozo School of Law. In the last two years, that program has been responsible for the release of nine inmates in the U.S.

Prisoners will not be charged for the service. According to Martin, inmates don't get legal aid to press such claims and the appeals process can be long and expensive. "(We don't) have to worry about overhead or sustaining a law practice; therefore we can get the work done by providing students with educational experience for which they'll be credited."

The program is starting on an experimental basis and will initially include only a handful of students, but Young sees its mission as crucial. "This is the kind of work that creates the motivation for a law school in the first place," he says. "It seems to me to be so integral to the whole process of understanding the law, it would be a disservice to our students if we didn't give them the opportunity."

Source: York University Gazette