Editor's Note (Spring 2010)

I’m delighted to be turning this space over to readers who sent letters and emails in response to our 90th Anniversary issue − most with kudos, some with corrections, a few with both. All were equally welcome, even the corrections, for the chance to set the record straight.

May the letters below inspire others to write with your comments, suggestions, corrections, queries and observations on all things related to Queen’s School of Business. We look forward to publishing these in the next issue.

Shelley Pleiter
Editor
spleiter@business.queensu.ca

Sincere congratulations on your superb Summer 2009 issue of QSB Magazine! It’s a keeper, along with other special editions of magazines I’ve treasured:    Harper’s Centennial Issue (1950), New Republic’s 40th (1954), New Statesman’s 50th (1963), Esquire’s 50th (1983) and Queen’s Quarterly’s 100th (1993), to name a few.

One error: Bandleader (Glenn) Miller’s first name had a double “n”. You’re not alone, though: in April 1999, the British Library displayed a huge poster of “Glen [sic] Miller.” I told the attendant about the misspelling.

I was interested in the statistics (Edgett was one of my favourite profs) re: Commerce students entering vs. graduating (70 to 22 in ’53; 80 to 24 in ’66). In September 1942, some 100 students entered Commerce; in May 1945, there were six [6!] graduates. I believe 3 of us survive.
Please keep up the great work, though it’s difficult to imagine how you can surpass that issue. (In all probability I won’t be able to wait for the Centennial one.)

Don Mathieson, BCom’45
Kingston, ON

Congratulations. It takes quite an effort to put together such an accomplishment. I’m sure all your readers will appreciate it as much as I have.
Knowing that you couldn’t include everyone in “Professors Fondly Remembered,” I would like to mention two, in particular, who had a great influence on me: Prof. Cecil Law and Dean R.J. (Rich) Hand. Prof. Law had an extensive career in business before he came to Queen’s which he was able to draw on for his Operations Research class, and Dean Hand was able to bring alive…a pretty dry subject, Economics, in quite a remarkable way.

Bill Robbins, BSc’63, MBA’68
Etobicoke, ON

Re: “The Forties: Fighting Over” and the Class of ’48 being almost exclusively veterans:
Just one correction for your archives. The BCom degree was a three-year program in the 1940s and ’50s, although it was an honours program. So Commerce ’48 came to Queen’s in September 1945. The war was still on in 1944 − very much so.

Gerald Sutton, BCom’48, MCom’49
Oakville, ON

Ed. note: Writer Anne Kershaw correctly put the year at 1945, but assuming that the Class of ’48 completed a four-year program, the editor slipped up and changed the date to 1944. As the daughter of a WWII veteran and history major, the editor deeply regrets this error.

I am full of admiration for the creative approach taken in producing such a memorial. Just to consolidate the vast mass of material represents a gigantic task. Congratulations!

John Welch, BCom’38
West Vancouver, BC

Ilke Hincer, BCom’95, pointed out that on page 28, the two jackets on the far right of the photo are from the Class of ’96, and the jacket, far left, is not from the Class of ’95.

Flashback Contest winner: Former Dean John R. M. Gordon, Professor Emeritus, identified the man on the cover as visiting Harvard professor James L. McKenney. John writes: “He’s leading a debrief of the Business Game in Dunning Hall. Amazing what a Flashback will trigger!” Signed “John – a source of Institutional Memory – sometimes.”

To send a letter to the Editor, email spleiter@business.queensu.ca or write to the address on page 1.