Claire Heenan: Outing the Redpath

Claire Heenan still can't quite believe her good luck: fresh out of university, she is working in a job that uses all her skills and allows her to develop the ideas and practices she began in her geography studies at McGill. What's more, unlike her three older siblings and many of her friends, she's got work in Montreal.

"It feels funny to have made this switch so rapidly from being a student to being a staff member," says the 24-year-old, comfortably seated at her well-worn desk. As she chats, she is surrounded by crafts materials, posters of whales and other exotica of natural history, the substance of the Redpath Museum where she began in September as the institution's first ever science educator.

While some readers will already know Heenan as the woman in costume teaching their children the benevolence of bats or the antics of ants -- and getting them to make highly original handicrafts on the week's theme, to boot -- few realize that the Sunday afternoon Discovery Workshops are but a third of her work.

Heenan is also responsible for handling visits from schools, training docents (volunteer tour guides), meeting with the 140-strong Friends of the Redpath volunteers and donors, coordinating some of the 20 student volunteers and raising funds to increase the programming and accessibility of the museum.

The Redpath has had part-time animators for its Discovery Workshops for a few years now, but Heenan's position, with its other responsibilities, is brand new. The science educator position, a yearly contract, was made possible thanks to an anonymous donor.

Heenan has been thinking up schemes for making the Redpath better known and used. One goal is to prepare specialized educational materials -- an activity package for schoolchildren that would lead them on a treasure hunt to find such Redpath holdings as the Albertasaurus, the mummy and the ostrich egg, for instance. Another involves developing a floor plan of the 116-year-old museum for visitors. Ideas, of course, cost money to implement.

In that vein, Heenan, who got her fundraising experience while working for NDP candidate Tooker Gomberg in the last federal election, is trying to heighten the museum's profile so that it will take its place alongside Montreal's other museums, not only as an enjoyable and educational place to visit, but also as a place in which to hold receptions and parties.

"We have to put it on the map, get society people in, those with connections," says Heenan, the daughter, in fact, of one society person, lawyer Roy Heenan of the well-known law firm which carries his name.

What excites Heenan most about her mandate to popularize the Redpath is her belief in the museum as a vehicle for attuning people to the natural world, its strength and fragility and our relationship to it. "I had a humanities student in here, for instance, who didn't know that the Earth was made of molten rock. This place is a great introduction to the sciences relating to life," recounts Heenan, adding that she draws inspiration from "hanging out and chatting with people who have been coming here for 50 years, who have their favourite rock."

While Heenan "always had a craft drawer," having to prepare the 11 workshops offered this fall means considerable research, not only on the subject, but also on the handicraft. "I've had to learn tons," says Heenan, who is "just learning about the world of hot glue guns, plaster of Paris" and is grateful for the tips from the Redpath's paleontology curator, Ingrid Birker, and geology curator, Joan Kaylor.

She's also grateful for the diversity of tasks involved in her job: "I don't get stuck in a rut," says Heenan, who has just been working on creating databases on the number and variety of Redpath visitors. "I have all this organizational stuff to do, then I switch to the right side of the brain to figure out a craft to make."

Bronwyn Chester

What is it about McGill chemists? They're just bound and determined to get the general population thinking about science, it seems. Professors David Harpp and Joe Schwarcz have each earned national awards for making scientific subjects palatable for non-scientists.

Now Emmanuelle Boubour and Marie-Caroline Bourg (pictured), a pair of doctoral students in the department, are doing their part for the cause.

Boubour and Bourg are the creators and co-hosts of a bi-weekly program on CKUT/Radio McGill called Digital Delirium. Airing every other Wednesday at noon, the show focuses on Montreal's scientists. Guests discuss their research and the general trends in their field.

"They seem to really enjoy it," Boubour says of her guests. "For many of them, it's the first chance they've had to explain their work to the general public."

Boubour and Bourg worry that science doesn't get the attention it deserves. Pointing to a recent referendum in Switzerland on the subject of genetic manipulation, Boubour and Bourg say it's more important than ever for people to expand their grasp of science if they're going to be able to make informed decisions on such matters.

"The scientific press do a good job," says Bourg, singling out Québec Science magazine and Radio-Canada's Les Années-lumière for praise, "but the general press often presents a bad interpretation of what's going on."

So far, Boubour and Bourg (with the help of technician Luc Desbaumes, yet another chemistry student) have interviewed McGill scientists about artificial vision, nanotechnology, the possibility that life once existed on Mars and the use of computers in the creation of music. Scientists from other universities and local companies have also been featured. Upcoming shows will look at electric cars and how science is applied to solving crimes and restoring art.

Digital Delirium rotates with another bi-weekly show, The XX Files, that focuses on women and technology. CKUT is at 90.3 FM.

It's a sensitive issue. I think there are more women who do not want to know than those who want to know.


Dr. Patricia Tonin, from the Departments of Human Genetics and Medicine, talking to The Globe and Mail about a new screening method that she and other scientists from McGill, the University of Toronto and the Université de Montréal have developed for susceptibility to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. The screening method is specific to French-Canadian women.

If you have hayfever, you've got to be rooting for Zygogramma saturalis. You're a big fan of Ophraella communa too.

These beetle-like creatures love nothing better than to chow down on the ragweed plants that are the bane of your existence. About 10 percent of Quebec's population suffers from hayfever.

A team of researchers at Macdonald Campus are using the bugs in an experiment aimed at attacking ragweed.

A post-doctoral fellow from Russia, Myron Teshler, got the project rolling a few years ago when he told his new McGill colleagues about Russian research on the bugs. The Russians accidentally imported ragweed from Canada in grain shipments 20 years ago. The weed spread like wildfire, prompting the Russians to send a team of scientists to Canada in search of a natural ragweed nemesis. What the Russians discovered was Zygogramma saturalis. The bug journeyed back with them and did its work well.

Intrigued by the Russians' experience, plant science professors Alan Watson and Toni Di Tommaso decided to look into the insect. They received funding from an unexpected source -- a group of carrot farmers southwest of Montreal were watching their crops get squeezed out by the nefarious weed.

Using Ophraella communa (essentially a close cousin of Zygogramma saturalis), the team headed out to the carrot fields this past August. "It was late in the season and the ragweed was already in an advanced state of growth. Still, they had a major impact," says Di Tommaso.

"They feed on ragweed and nothing else. We gave them lettuce, onions, all sorts of things, to make sure they wouldn't go out and start devouring the [farmers'] crops. These insects would rather die than eat anything other than ragweed."

Next year, the bugs will get to work early. "If they can take care of plants that are a metre high, we look forward to seeing what they do with seedlings," says Di Tommaso.

In Russia, the insects had no natural enemies -- they were able to go about doing their job without hassle. "Here they do have enemies, so we're looking into processes for mass rearing them. We also have to see if there are implications for the ecosystem -- if there are more of these bugs, would we see an increase in the population of their predators too?"

Still, the results so far are promising and government agencies and companies have expressed interest in the work. "We don't see this as the only solution, but it's certainly a tool in our arsenal," says Di Tommaso.

Over 100,000 puffs, a smoker's body learns that one puff equals a small nicotine high. Even if they use nicotine gum or the patch, even if they manage to quit, they've learned over the years that puff equals pleasure. That's hard to shake.


Pharmacology and therapeutics professor Paul Clarke, speaking to The Montreal Mirror about the nature of cigarette addiction. Clarke's research looks into techniques for taking the joyful buzz out of smoking, making the habit easier to kick.