SJRI

A Conference Board of Canada study last year found only a third of employees between the ages of 18 and 24 have any paid sick days; and fewer than half of Canadians young and old are covered by employer sick leave.

In the U.S., there’s an active campaign to improve sick day benefits, and its gaining momentum. There, nearly 40% of private sector employees have no access to paid sick leave for themselves or to take care of a sick relative.

Last week, voters in the state of Massachusetts and the cities of Trenton and Montclair in New Jersey and Oakland, California voted for everyone to get the benefit of paid sick leave. So far, 3 U.S. states and 15 cities have agreed to similar legislation.

To examine the different laws and realities in Canada surrounding sick leave, Kendra Coulter was interviewed on CBC’s “The Current”. Dr. Coulter is an Associate Professor at the Brock Centre for Labour Studies and author of “Revolutionizing Retail: Workers, Political Action and Social Change“.

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Cronin, associate professor in the Visual Arts Department in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, is sensitive to the suffering endured by abandoned cats and other animals, a passion that is evident in her research.

With winter around the corner, she recently put out a social media plea to borrow a cat shelter. Staff from Brock’s Facilities Management responded. They had already used their own time to build a shelter to protect a colony of cats living along the escarpment on the campus.

It worked. The cats have been placed in permanent homes, and the compartmentalized shelter now sits on the front porch of Cronin’s home.

Cronin’s passion for animals blends seamlessly into her research and teaching.

She is completing a book that examines how art imagery from 1880 to the First World War was an important tool to promote animal advocacy. Her research took her to Boston, New York City and London, “richly historic places in the animal welfare movement.”

Assembling the research material was surprisingly difficult.

But what did impress her was the “sophisticated understanding of the importance of images and the impact on how people thought about animals in the second half of the 19th century.” Last year she curated an online exhibit – Be Kind: A Visual History of Humane Education, 1880-1945 – exploring the relationship between humans and animals.

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Historian Michael Driedger has added a new title to his many specialties: research ambassador. Driedger has been selected to serve as research ambassador during the 2014-2015 academic year for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), an organization that promotes research in Germany and abroad using German funds.

“I’m really glad. For me, it’s a chance to pay back to the German government and German universities for the kind of support that I’ve received in the past,” says Driedger, who specializes in the history of Dutch and German Mennonites.

Driedger joins about 100 researchers across North America who are tasked with encouraging colleagues and students to conduct research in Germany and to apply for the many funding programs available to North American scientists and academics.

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