A display in the Leddy Library lobby promotes the inaugural I Read Canadian Day, a national celebration dedicated to encouraging young people to read, or be read to, a Canadian book of their choice.

Organizers challenge participants to “read Canadian” for 15 minutes on Wednesday, Feb. 19, and to share their experience at their library, in their school, with their families and friends, or on social media.

Sharon Jennings, president of the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers, says the idea is to raise awareness of the richness, diversity, and breadth of Canadian literature.

The Leddy’s display also promotes a fund supporting reading programs in Indigenous, rural, and remote communities. Learn more on the fund’s website.

Lancer basketball will open post-season play Wednesday, Feb. 19 — the women at home to the Lakehead Thunderwolves and the men in Sudbury to take on the Laurentian Voyageurs.

The women will tip off at 6 p.m. in the Dennis Fairall Fieldhouse; get tickets online. The men’s game will tip off at 8 p.m.

Varsity action continues on the weekend:

• Track and field will compete in the Ontario University Athletics championship tournament at the Toronto Track and Field Centre on the campus of York University, Friday and Saturday, Feb. 21 and 22.
• Volleyball will close out the regular season at home, hosting Brock on Friday and McMaster on Saturday in the Dennis Fairall Fieldhouse. Both nights the women play at 6 p.m. and the men at 8 p.m.

All these contests will be livestreamed on OUA.tv.

Windsor’s men’s hockey team ended its season Friday, falling to the Brock Badgers 5-4 in the second game of their first-round series. Get the details at goLancers.ca.

The Centre for Teaching and Learning has approved nine proposals for the Nanadagikenim - Seek to Know grant.

Jaimie Kechego, Indigenous curriculum and pedagogy project co-ordinator at the Centre for Teaching and Learning, said she felt an immense sense of pride as she read the proposals.

“It’s nice to see the support by the University and the initiatives taken by faculty, staff, and students,” she said.

She said she felt relieved when the Office of the Provost was able to garner more funds so that nine of the grants could be funded.

“I thought that all the grant proposals were fantastic in the way they incorporated Indigenous knowledge and community,” said Kechego.

With successful partnerships established with the Bkwjwanong (Walpole Island), she said she hopes the projects will lead to new developments that include and support respectful partnerships with other Indigenous communities, both urban and rural.

CTL director Erika Kustra expressed thanks for those who helped with the process.

“We appreciated the time and thoughtful contributions of the grant review committee with representation from the Indigenous community, including an elder from Caldwell First Nation,” she said.

The grant is a response to the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and the Universities Canada Principles on Indigenous Education.

Among the critical principles of reconciliation found in the TRC report are: the importance of healing relationships through public truth sharing, apology and commemoration to acknowledge and redress past harms, and an emphasis on creating a more equitable and inclusive society by closing the gaps in social, health, and economic outcomes that exist between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.

The list of proposals is available on the CTL website.

Combining his background in science with her English education made translating a work of science fiction an enjoyable project for geology professor Frank Simpson and his wife, Barbara Marszał.

The two translated writer Stanisław Lem’s novel Return from the Stars from his native Polish. Originally published in 1961 under the title Powrót z gwiazd, the book has been released in a new edition by the MIT Press, its seventh since 1980.

It documents the experiences of astronaut Hal Bregg, who returns to Earth at the end of a 10-year expedition to a distant galaxy. Thanks to relativistic time dilation, 127 years have passed on the home planet since his departure and he experiences culture shock in a very different world. His bewilderment at unfamiliar realities, frequently loutish behaviour toward a new generation of humans, and efforts to come to terms with change form the basis of the story.

“I think that the most enjoyable aspect for both of us was working together on a translation project that was very different from anything we had done before,” says Dr. Simpson. “We had a lot of fun dealing with Lem’s neologisms, which in addition to their practical applications, in some cases contain shades of irony.”

Simpson met Marszał in 1965 during his doctoral studies at Jagiellonian University, where she had earned a degree in English philology. They translated numerous scientific papers together, says Simpson. She continued her education at the University of Windsor and was teaching immigrants English as a second language at the time of her death in 2012.

Simpson lauds Lem as a visionary, noting that among other predictions, his novel anticipated audiobooks and e-books — Return from the Stars has been published in both formats.

The UWindsor payroll department advises that T4 slips for the 2019 tax year have been processed and are available online on the myUWinfo employee portal.

This convenient and secure option will allow faculty, staff, and student employees to print and re-print their tax slips wherever and whenever they like with no waiting, no time lost in the mail, says payroll manager Jessica Higgins: “It’s accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week for as long as you have access to myUWinfo.”

Before users can view or print their tax slips, they must consent to accept their tax slips online.

“If you have not previously consented, your tax slip has been mailed to your home address,” Higgins says. “However, you can still view and print them online if you wish.”

Instructions on the myUWinfo > my PAY section will help users through the process.