Media releases

• Historic photos from Brock collection part of AGO and ROM exhibits

  Thursday, April 27, 2017 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 27 April 2017 – R00087
   
  The photographs are simple. And yet the stories behind the subjects in them are incredibly complex.
   
  A collection of photographs from Brock University’s Special Collections and Archives are being featured in a pair of high-profile exhibits at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum.
   
  The photographs are part of a remarkable collection donated to Brock University by Rick Bell in 2010. It features more than 300 photos and various papers spanning more than a century that document the Bell and Sloman families, who descended from former slaves in the American south.
   
  Julie Crooks, the AGO’s Assistant Curator of Photography, found the collection on Brock’s Digital Repository.
   
  “As a photography historian I was thrilled to discover Rick Bell’s archives in the Brock Collection,” she said. “The collection reflects Canadian history, Black-Canadian history and a history of photography. I think both the AGO and ROM exhibitions are deeply enhanced with the inclusion of the rich images from the Brock Collection.”
   
  David Sharron, Brock’s Head of Special Collections and Archives, was happy to work with Crooks on the project.
   
  “It’s always a thrill to see people using our collections in new and innovative ways,” he said. “When we got this collection in 2010 we knew it was really significant. It shows a little bit of the black community in St. Catharines from about the 1870s all the way up into the 1980s. So it’s a really fantastic view of a family over time.”
   
  The AGO exhibit entitled Free Black North, which opens Saturday, April 29 and runs until Aug. 20, shows how historic Black Canadian communities used photography as a tool to explain their complex histories.
   
  Crooks is also one of the curators on The Family Camera, an exhibit running at the ROM from May 6 to Oct. 29. It uses family photographs as a way to tell the story of migration — not just with families escaping the American south, but of those moving to new locations around the world.
   
  A digitized photograph of Richard and Iris Bell is part of the Family Camera’s online slide show while some of the originals will be on display at the museum.
   
  “These were just family photos, but they also show photography as art and as history that wasn’t quite written down,” Sharron said of the Rick Bell Family Collection. “It shows what was important to them and what their families were like.”
   
  In addition to the AGO and ROM displays, an additional photo from the collection is being used by the Black Creek Pioneer Village as part of an exhibit on Canada’s 150th anniversary.
   
   
   
  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
   
  * Dan Dakin, Media Relations Officer, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970
   
  Brock University Marketing and Communications has a full-service studio where we can provide high-definition video and broadcast-quality audio.
   
  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases

• Industrial agriculture can have negative impact on local communities: Brock research

  Wednesday, April 26, 2017 | By Brock University

  26 April 2017 – R00086

  Industrial agriculture might seem good on paper, but the trend of reducing biodiversity in the name of profits is harmful to communities.

  Liette Vasseur, a Brock University Professor of Biology, says many species of vegetable and fruit plants that have fed communities around the world for generations are being phased out to make room for large commercial crops such as coffee, tea, wheat and canola because of the strong international market demands.

  “When heritage crops are lost, we reduce genetic diversity,” she says. “We know that native species that have been there for a long time are often more adaptable to local conditions and may respond better to changing conditions, especially those coming from climate change.”

  Vasseur is part of an international team that researches ways of connecting plant biodiversity to agricultural systems in communities in Ecuador and Canada, and examining how this relates to climate change.

  The team’s project, “Agro-biodiversity, Nutrition and Sustainable Marketing of Heritage Crops in Ecuador and Canada,” is headed by Brian McLaren, Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources Management at Lakehead University.

  Vasseur said the profits gained by replacing heritage crops with commercial crops, or even non-food products such as cotton and tobacco, are often short lived.

  In one particular community the Brock researcher was working with, the government encouraged farmers to replace their heritage crops with potatoes to meet high demand.

  “All the farmers started growing potatoes,” she says. “The problem is the market got saturated, and when that happened, they can’t get a good price for their potatoes. It has been the same for quinoa.”

  Not only does that translate into less income, but it means fewer nutritional food choices for families.  

  The research team was recently awarded $660,000 from the Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Advanced Scholars Program. As a co-applicant, Vasseur will receive a portion of that fund.

  Under the project, Vasseur and several graduate students at Brock will work with researchers, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from Lakehead and Escuela Superior Politecnica de Chimborazo university in Ecuador.

  The team will look at how communities in that country, as well as in Ontario, can expand their food production by preserving their heritage crops and growing various species of crops together.

  Having a wider selection of crops will increase communities’ access to nutritious food while protecting the environment, says Vasseur.

  “The community we’re working with in Ecuador is gradually losing its original biodiversity and has overused agrochemicals,” she explains. “Now they’re having issues with water shortages and decreased water quality because of fertilizers and pesticides.”

  The research team’s activities include:
  •    Documenting how small-scale agricultural production enables farmers to adapt to climate change and conserve biodiversity
  •    Describing opportunities and barriers related to farm-based agro-biodiversity conservation
  •    Understanding changes in consumer attitudes, nutrition and well-being associated with new marketing methods and logistics, such as e-commerce, organic co-operatives, and the promotion of traditional food culture

  Brock University Professor of Biology Liette Vasseur is available for interviews about her research.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
   
  * Dan Dakin, Media Relations Officer, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970

  Brock University Marketing and Communications has a full-service studio where we can provide high definition video and broadcast-quality audio.

  – 30 –
   

  Categories: Media releases