![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Friday |
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Dube]](/images/2004/0803dube.gif)
Dubé was a winner of UW's Distinguished Teacher Award (in 2001) and a researcher specializing in French literature of the romantic period, particularly the writings of François René de Chateaubriand.
Said the dean of arts, Bob Kerton, as the death was announced: "Dr. Dubé earned the Distinguished Teacher Award as such a sensitive, effective professor, much loved by students over three decades. And one measure of the exceptional regard in which he is held by his colleagues is in the respect he was shown during Pierre's job as a superb Chair of the Arts Faculty Council."
A tribute on the French department's web site tells much about the colleague who is being mourned. Some excerpts:
"Born in Toronto of a German/Czech father and Parisian mother, Pierre Dubé was brought up in a rich cultural context. Truly multi-lingual since childhood, and as a war baby from his parents' remarkable union, Dr. Dubé grew up in an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding for cultural diversity and the power of human relations.
"It was always easy to tell when Pierre Dubé was in his office from the peals of his laughter cascading down the hallways, even well into his illness. When later asked the rather silly question, 'How are you?' his answer remained an enthusiastic 'Great!' . . .
"He was possessed of a great sense of humour, both subtle and in tune with the ridiculous."
The tribute, posted by colleague Carol O'Connor, notes some of Dubé's many contributions to the French department and the university: a founder of the long-running high school French contest, director of the French teaching specialization, an honorary fellow of St. Paul's United College. It also mentions his pioneering bibliographical research -- including early work in computerization -- and his work on a 1992 textbook (in collaboration with his wife, Ann, and colleague Paul Socken) that "drew from North American francophone contexts, so instead of providing readings to French Language classrooms from exclusively French literature, it had excerpts from Franco-Ontarian, Acadian, Cajun and Caribbean French literatures".
Among other accomplishments, he created a complete reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry in embroidery, a project that took 16 years of his spare time.
He came to Waterloo in 1972 after earning a BA and MA at the University of Toronto and a PhD at the Ohio State University.
Pierre Dubé is survived by his wife, Ann, as well as a son, Jean-Pierre, and a daughter, Diane, and their families. Memorial donations to the Herbert and Raymonde Dubé Scholarship at UW, Trinity United Church or the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre are suggested.
Visitation will be today, 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m., at the Edward R. Good Funeral Home on King Street. The funeral will be held at Trinity United Church, 74 Frederick Street, Kitchener, on Wednesday at 11 a.m.
![[Logo]](/images/2004/0801orchestra.gif){kind=small}
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She says planning for Orchestra@UWaterloo began in the winter: "We believe that there is sufficient talent and interest at the university to form a very good orchestra of students, staff, faculty and alumni from across all faculties, colleges, and departments."
She notes that "Although we welcome music students, we are an extracurricular activity and not part of the music department." (The music department operates a stage band and chamber ensembles, but does not have a full orchestra.)
The planning committee is preparing the orchestra's first season. The music director will be conductor Erna Van Daele, well-known in the local musical community. Romy Shioda, an assistant professor in the combinatorics and optimization department -- formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Symphony Orchestra -- will be concertmaster for the first year.
Lubiw says the orchestra's first recruiting effort, at Student Life 101, attracted considerable interest from incoming students.
Rehearsals will be held on Thursday evenings, and the first concert will take place on on Thursday, December 2, in the Humanities Theatre. There's more information on a new web site or by e-mail: orchestra@uwaterloo.ca.
![[Fagan home page]](/images/2004/0801fagan.gif)
Welcome to
Fagan Finder,
an easy-to-use quick reference site that's
used by
more than 100,000 people a day
and created by a UW science-and-business student.
"Fagan Finder's goal is to help people find what they are looking for," writes Michael Fagan, who actually created the site while he was a high school student in Thornhill, north of Toronto. It does that with a simple interface that lets the user search the web, various reference works (including the Guinness Book of World Records), news and weather sources, "forums" (including newsgroups and mailing lists), and several online retailers. It also includes a number of information pages, including the clearest explanation of RSS feeds I've seen anywhere so far.
Commentators have been saying good things about Fagan Finder since it was created three years ago. "Its clean design and powerful features are a welcome break from having to jump around from site to site, trying to pin down what you need," says one review from 2001.
In 2003, Fagan told an online interviewer that "I would like the main users of my site to be any internet user looking for anything. I think, however, that currently I have a higher percentage of people who are SEOs, and journalists, lawyers, and librarians; that is, more advanced internet users. Why would they come? Because it is simple and easy. . . . You might place Fagan Finder's search pages somewhere between the unintelligence of a search engine and the usefulness of a human librarian."
Says Fagan's "About" page: "Fagan Finder is a website designed as a tool, to help people find things, and it is meant to be a gateway to the Internet, a quality home page. Compare this to several websites. Like a search engine, we have searching capability, but we have many different searches. Like an exclusive directory, we include searching to or links only to high quality websites. Like a guide, we try to help you in your search experience. . . .
"I created my first website in 1998, and this is my first significant one since I closed that one in 1999. During that website, I was introduced to search engines from a marketing (aka search engine optimization) perspective, however today I am mostly on the researcher's side. While I am not an information professional, I am an expert on search, due to my own research. Since October 2002, I have had my own weblog, Puzzlepieces. . . .
"We use our own judgment in deciding what websites to include searching to, and what websites to link to. We only include websites with substantial free content, and do our best to include quality websites while excluding spam and websites selling things (other than the shopping page of course). We prefer websites which do not require additional hardware or software, websites which load quickly, those that are easy to use, those that function in multiple web browsers, etc."
CAR