The Lancer men finished atop the podium at the Ontario University Athletics track and field championship meet, Saturday in Toronto. The team’s 158 total points gave it its 15th title in 16 years.

The Lancer women finished fourth overall.

Windsor’s men took gold with a meet record time in the 4x400m relay of 3:17.24. Other Lancer medallists included:

Gold for Alex Ullman in the men’s 600m and 1000m, for Nick Falk in the 3000m, Jesse Drennan in pentathlon, Branden Wilhelm in high jump; Arren Young claimed the gold and Wilhelm the bronze in long jump. Falk claimed silver in the 1500m, as did Aaron Bowman in the 60m, pole vaulter Christopher Waugh and the men’s 4x800 relay team. The men’s 4x200m relay squad won bronze.

On the women’s side, Amilia DiChiara and Sarah Swain finished one-two in the 60m hurdles event and silver medals went to shot putter Celine Freeman-Gibb, long jumper Emily Omahen and Steffi Stephenson in the weight throw; Jalicia Clarke claimed bronze in the 60m.

Read the full story at goLancers.ca.

The top two finishers in each event—as well as all student-athletes who surpassed the automatic standards—qualify for the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships, March 6 to 8 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

The University of Windsor may not have a favourite son, but psychology student Tessa Virtue appears to be its favourite daughter, judging from her popularity on the University’s social media channels.

Since winning silver with her ice dance partner Scott Moir at the Sochi Olympic Games, Virtue has dominated conversation on the UWindsor Facebook page, says social media coordinator Alisa Giroux-Souilliere.

“Saturday’s post congratulating Tessa has been our most-liked item ever,” she said. “In fact, she has been named in eight of our 10 top posts over the past month.”

The University published ads in Saturday editions of the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Windsor Star congratulating Virtue’s “outstanding performances” in Sochi, where she earned silver medals for Canada in ice dance and the team figure skating competitions.

Giroux-Souilliere says the story generated more than 900 likes.

“People are just really excited about how well Tess and Scott did at the Olympics,” she says. “They’ve been sharing the story, commenting on it—the conversations are part of what makes an online community.”

The University’s Facebook presence has more than 22,500 followers.

The Athletics Department is offering DailyNews readers a chance to win tickets to watch the Lancer women’s basketball team open its campaign for a fourth straight national championship during the quarter-finals of the Bronze Baby tournament.

The Lancers will take to the floor of the St. Denis Centre at 6 p.m. Friday, March 14. A pair of tickets to the game will go to one lucky winner, randomly selected from all correct responses received by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, February 26.

To be eligible, simply send your best answers to these questions on the team’s 83-64 win over the McMaster Marauders in Saturday’s Ontario University Athletics west semi-final:

1. Forward Jessica Clemençon led all scorers with 23 points. Which Windsor player finished second?
   a) Tessa Kreiger
   b) Miah-Marie Langlois
   c) Cheyanne Roger
   d) Korissa Williams
    
2. Clemençon’s 10 rebounds were also tops for the contest. Which Windsor player finished second, with nine?
   a) Tessa Kreiger
   b) Kim Moroun
   c) Cheyanne Roger
   d) Korissa Williams
    
3. Which Lancer was the only player in the game to sink more than one three-point basket?
   a) Andrea Kiss
   b) Kristine Lalonde
   c) Caitlyn Longmuir
   d) Anna Mullins

Contest is open to all readers of the DailyNews. Send an e-mail with your responses to uofwnews@uwindsor.ca. One entry per contestant, please. Note: the decision of the judge in determining the most correct response is inviolable.

To purchase tickets to the 2014 CIS Women’s Basketball Championships, please visit the Windsor Lancers website at www.goLancers.ca.

Psychology professor Ken Hart had an extraordinary Olympic moment last week when ice dance silver medalist Tessa Virtue mentioned his Positive Psychology course during an interview with CBC radio host Tony Doucette in a live interview from Sochi.

Virtue, a third-year UWindsor psychology student, gave kudos to Dr. Hart for the impact his class has had on her skating career and possible future plans to pursue a graduate degree in the specialty.

“It’s all about being in flow and living an engaged and meaningful life,” Virtue told Doucette. She says she carries Hart’s assigned textbook with her.

“I was honoured and I was humbled that she found the course not only intellectually helpful but that she’s using elements of the class in pursuit of a worthwhile goal,” Hart says. “The course meant something to her so I’m very happy with that.”

The skater, one half of the Virtue/Moir ice dance team that has taken the world by storm this Olympic games, has kept in touch with her professor and has shifted the focus of her future pursuits from law to positive psychology, Hart says.

He says his course is of intrinsic interest to students because, “there isn’t a person anywhere who doesn’t want to upgrade the quality of their life.”

Hart invites all of his students to participate in “active participation exercises” to examine how course materials may be personally useful to each of them in their own lives.

“We look at way to identify your talents, abilities, strengths and gifts and use what you’ve identified for the purpose of achieving worthwhile goals,” Hart says. “There is that sense that you’re getting closer to seeing your dream come true and one of the side-effects is a sense of satisfaction with your life and what we call happiness.”

The professor says he takes great satisfaction in knowing that students enjoy his classes and take lifelong skills away from his teaching.

“It’s more than just information dissemination,” he says. “Part of what is going on is character development—character education, where students come to know what they’re good at and look at opportunities in life to achieve what they think is worthwhile.”

Hart says feedback from Virtue and the dozens of other students who stay after class to chat is an outstanding motivator for his own teaching and research pursuits.

“She has actually increased my sense of work satisfaction and life satisfaction because I feel that my own activities are making a difference to my students.”

The Lancer men’s and women’s basketball teams both won their first post-season tests Saturday, with the no. 1 ranked women knocking off the McMaster Marauders 83-64 in a divisional semi-final and the men, ranked seventh in the country, defeating the Laurier Golden Hawks 91-68.

The men will now head to the Wilson Cup Final Four tournament for the second straight year.

The women’s team will host Laurier on Saturday, March 1. Game time is 7 p.m. in the St. Denis Centre.

Men’s hockey team sweeps into OUA west semi-finals

The Lancer men’s hockey team eliminated the Toronto Varsity Blues in the first round of the Ontario University Athletics playoffs Saturday with a 5-2 win at South Windsor Arena. Windsor had taken the opener 3-2 Thursday.

Derek Lanoue, Mike Christou, Evan Stibbard, Drew Palmer and Spencer Pommells scored for the Lancers on Saturday.

Windsor will face off Thursday against Western in London to open a best-of-three series.

League honours Lancer forward

Ontario University Athletics has named forward Jenny MacKnight of the Lancer women’s hockey team its player of the year after her 40 points led the league in scoring.

MacKnight, a fourth-year environmental studies major, was also honoured as a first-team all-star. Her Windsor teammate, defenceman Kayla Dodson, was a second-team all-star selection.

Read “MacKnight named OUA Player of the Year” at goLancers.ca.

African-descended people played an important role in bringing slavery to an end in Canada’s Maritimes, but that came with some cost, according to an historian who will speak here Thursday night.

“Slavery ended in the Maritimes by around the 1820s, but when it ended, it was replaced by an unprecedented form of racism,” said University of Vermont history associate professor Harvey Amani Whitfield.

Dr. Whitfield, who earned a PhD at Dalhousie University in 2003 and finished a dissertation entitled Black American refugees in Nova Scotia between 1813 and 1840, will speak here as part of the University’s observance of Black History Month. His lecture is titled “Slavery in Canada: The Maritime Provinces.”

He said while Canada made great contributions to helping African descendants through its involvement in the Underground Railway, slavery still thrived in many areas of Canada.

“It’s easy to think of slavery as an American problem, but it’s clear that it was here, in what would eventually become Canada,” said Whitfield, who authored an undergraduate textbook in 2005 called From American Slaves to Nova Scotian Subjects: The Case of the Black Refugees, 1813-1840 and a monograph entitled Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860

Whitfield said many slaves had escaped slavery in the U.S. and came to eastern Canada under the premise of being free, but were often re-enslaved when they were hired on as farm workers only to not get paid for their labour.

While many people owned slaves in the Maritimes, slavery wasn’t technically recognized by statute law, so many slave owners felt insecure about what they regarded as their property, Whitfield said.

“Slavery wasn’t legal in the sense that there wasn’t a slave code, although it could be recognized as a form of private property,” Whitfield said. “So there was a constant battle to legally recognize and define what slavery really was here.”

He said many slaves took their battles to court, and with the help of local abolitionists and sympathetic judges, the practice eventually ended. However, that end contributed to a sense of resentment that manifested itself in openly racists attitudes and behaviour, he added.

Whitfield will deliver his lecture at 7 p.m. February 27 in the Oak Room, Vanier Hall. All are welcome.

A film about the treatment of performing orcas—and how one sought revenge—is the inaugural screening in the Environmental Wednesdays documentary series, debuting tomorrow at 1 p.m. in the International Student Centre on the second floor of Laurier Hall.

The 2013 film Blackfish tells the story of Tilikum, a performing orca that killed several people while in captivity. Director-producer Gabriela Cowperthwaite compiles shocking footage and emotional interviews to explore the creature’s extraordinary nature, the species’ cruel treatment in captivity, the lives and losses of the trainers and the pressures brought to bear by the multi-billion dollar sea-park industry.

The screenings, sponsored by the centre and UWindsor Green, are free and open to the public.