David P. O’Brien, L BA 62, was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in December for his contributions as a respected corporate leader and generous supporter of post-secondary education across Canada. David is Concordia University’s chancellor and chairman of both the Royal Bank of Canada and EnCana Corporation, North America’s largest independent oil and gas company. In November, he announced a $2-million donation to Concordia’s John Molson School of Business to establish a Centre for Sustainable Enterprise.
Mark David Gerson, BComm 75, was honoured in November in Albuquerque, N.M., for his debut novel, The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy (LightLines Media, 2007), which took the Fantasy/Science Fiction prize in a New Mexico competition. The MoonQuest is the tale of a young bard’s pursuit to restore vision and imagination to a mythical land in which stories have been banned and storytellers put to death. This was The MoonQuest ’s fifth award and its second this year: in March, it won a Gold Medal for Visionary Fiction from the Independent Book Publisher Awards. Mark is a former assistant director of public relations at Concordia and moved to New Mexico in 2005. He lives in Santa Fe and also authored The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write (LightLines Media, 2008).
Sal Iacono, BComm 76, received Canada’s Telecommunications Hall of Fame Career Service Award October 29 at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que.
Sal retired from Bell Canada in 2008 after 30 years of distinguished service. Most recently, as senior VP of Product Marketing with Bell’s Enterprise Group, he was responsible for a $1.5-billion portfolio of services. In 2007, Sal received the Just One Person award for his work in the Ottawa community. In 2008, he was United Way/Centraide Ottawa Campaign Chair.
George Vatistas, BEng 77, MEng 80, PhD 84, is a professor of Mechanical Engineering in Concordia’s Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science. In January, George’s research into the stability of vortex rings was chosen as one of the top 10 discoveries of 2008 by Québec Science magazine. He and his research team were the first to validate Nobel Prize winner J.J. Thomson’s 126-year-old theorem of vortices, which has practical applications in the study of tornadoes and hurricanes. (See “From Homer to Thomson to Concordia,” Concordia University Magazine, Fall 2008.)
Pat Sheahan, BSc 78, GrDip 81, MA 99, is head coach of the Queen’s University Gaels football team. In November, Pat was honoured with the 2008 Frank Tindall Trophy as Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) football coach of the year, the first time in his 20-year career as a CIS football head coach. In 2008, in Sheahan’s ninth season as the Gaels head coach, his team finished 8-0 in conference play and claimed its first regular season title since 1997. The Gaels suffered a 23-13 loss to the University of Ottawa in the semi-final round of the Ontario University Athletics playoffs. Pat arrived at Queen’s in 2000 after 11 seasons at the helm of the Concordia Stingers. In 1998, he led Concordia to a Vanier Cup appearance against the Saskatchewan Huskies.
