Graduation, which features prominently in this issue, marks the end of one road for graduates but also the beginning of another.
Many Concordia students struggle to balance work and school or face financial challenges, and certainly all must get through difficult courses and exams. They learn resilience, one of the most important survival tools, which prepares them for the uncertain world ahead.
Nothing could have prepared George Brady for what he would have to encounter. The Czech-born man lost his parents and 13-year-old sister, Hana, in the Holocaust. But he was able to survive and persevere, eventually coming to Toronto to begin a new life.
Nearly 50 years later, after a successful plumbing career and with four children of his own, George was astonished to receive a letter from the director of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center in 2000. Through relentless detective work by the director and some of the children at the centre, they had unearthed Hana’s suitcase, the one she used to carry her last few possessions into the Auschwitz death camp, where she was sent to the gas chambers.
The bittersweet story was told in the children’s book Hana’s Suitcase (Second Story Press, 2002), by Karen Levine, and was then transformed into a play by Emil Sher, MA 92. Part of what drives our survival instinct is our resolve to pass on our stories, and Emil, himself the child of a Holocaust survivor, has helped ensure that Hana’s legacy — and those of the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished at the hands of the Nazis — lives on.
Montrealers will be able to see the stirring play, put on by Geordie Productions, at Concordia’s D.B. Clarke Theatre in November (see “Hana’s Travels,” page 10). As Emil says, the story resonates with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Another technique for learning resiliency is to add some lightness to otherwise sombre situations. That’s why I’m thrilled to be able to regularly include the cartoons of Frederic Serre among heavier topics in the magazine — such as in this issue, in which we deal with the portrayal of race and gender in media along with the Holocaust, among other things.
When I first started here (I hate to admit it, but it was 1996), my predecessor, Kathleen Hugessen, made me promise to keep the cartoonist. I didn’t need much convincing. Fred hasn’t missed an issue since — even though he has to put up with my occasional suggestions to “improve” his ’toons. He takes the feedback with good humour. He can’t help himself — he always seems to be in good humour. When I asked Fred for a short bio, he wrote, “Hard to believe, but it’s been 25 years since a gangly Frederic Serre and his cartoons of skinny guys with big noses first arrived on the Concordia University scene and started stirring things up.”
He began with The Link in 1982, and was one of the co-founders of The Concordian in 1984, before graduating from journalism in 1986. He’s truly a Concordia institution. For the Faculty of Arts and Science convocation ceremony in June, instead of asking a photographer to capture the event, I sent Fred and his pencil (“Sketches of Convocation). His “snapshots” evoke some of the excitement and colour of the moment that many of us will remember, the culmination of several years’ hard work, the day we get our degree. When we learn that resiliency pays off.
