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pheloniusfriarI just got back from the two weeks in Shanghai, China and realized that is the first actual vacation I have had in four years (when I went to a friend's cottage for four days). There is no wonder I've been so burned out. I had a great time and really liked the place: it is dynamic and vibrant, a broad mix of influences, and was culturally diverse (meaning many Asian cultures and some Western cultures). Taking ground transportation (maglev) that hit 430km/h was mind blowing given the rather pedestrian speeds available on any ground transportation I've ever taken in Canada. The banking and financial sophistication there — right down to the most basic transactions with street food vendors (btw, zomg yummy!) — was also so far advanced over anything I've experienced before. Don't even get me started on social media: there, it facilitates in-person experiences rather than insulating from it and has features I've also never seen on this side of that pond to faciliate real-world communities. On a separate note, on my first outing with locals for dinner, it was inevitable: they ordered a "soup with two eggs", which was one of their favourite dishes (each person ordered a dish to share at the table). One egg was egg drop in the soup and the other was, of course, a century egg. Gotta say I was hoping to make it through my trip without having to face one, much less having it served in such a social situation. The verdict: it actually tastes good, and the texture wasn't as sketchy as I thought it would be :-). I would definitely have it again in a dish, but I can also say that I'm not going to rush out and buy a dozen to start tossing in ramen at home ;-). Baby steps. Next up? Probably chicken feet.
On my last evening there, I gave a presentation on the amazing $4 CY8CKIT-049-42xx Cypress PSoC development kit at the Xinchejian hacker space weekly open house. I use it in a number of projects I've been working on, and it's an order of magnitude more complicated (at least) than the Arduino processors that are in wide use, so I thought it might be of interest (and they did too as they invited me after I pitched the idea to them). Despite some A/V technical issues, the talk went well and there were quite a number of questions during and after (talks were given in both Chinese and English). The dev kit is also available on Taobao in China for nearly the same price (￥29.00), which is good. Hopefully more on that later, but I need to try to sleep again as I am jet lagged as fuck and need to adjust my schedule back to Ottawa time as soon as I can (I tried to sleep earlier as I was crazy tired, but I couldn't drift off, thus this post). I can't wait to go back and do some deeper exploration (and with more Mandarin language skill than I went with this time, which was effectively zero, if not less... but everyone was quite patient and we made it work by pointing and smiling to each other, or with the aid of a translator on one of our phones). Lots of other great stuff happened while I was there, but I'm going to stop here for this post. So... time to finish the series...
These short biographical essays were written as part of a 4th year Women's and Gender Studies seminar class I took in the winter/spring of 2017 called “Representations of Women’s Scientific Contributions” with Dr. Cindy Stelmackowich at Carleton University. Each of the essays required deep research into difficult to find historical and contemporary info-fragments and sometimes oblique references in order to find a coherent and accurate narrative. They also needed to be short (always a challenge for me).
Born in 1896 along the Bay of Fundy, “as a child she sailed around the world with her [sea captain] father” and growing up “often played by the shoreline, studying the tiny creatures in the water – the beginnings of her interest in fossil invertebrates” (Monteith, 1993). She earned a B.A. in general arts from McGill in 1919. However, after finishing her B.A., a field trip to Manitoba with Alice Wilson, whom she met at McGill, inspired her to follow a career in geology (Sherriff & Reuter, 1994). She went on to get her M.A. from the University of Toronto (UofT) in 1923, in 1926 became “the first woman in Canada to get a Ph.D. in geology/paleontology”, and further was “the only woman [in Canada] to have an academic position during the interwar period” in that field (Ainley, Rayner-Canham, & Rayner-Canham, 2012). She served as Associate Director and then Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from 1936 to 1957, professor of paleontology in the Department of Geology of the UofT from 1956 to 1967, and then as professor emeritus in the Department of Geology at the UofT and Research Associate in the Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology in the ROM until her death in 1990 (aged 94) (Monteith, 1993). Regarding her association with Alice Wilson, it is important to note that in 1938, for her work at the Geological Survey of Canada, Wilson became the first woman to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1942, for her prolific and influential work on invertebrate fossils and her prowess as a curator and administrator, Fritz became the second woman to receive that honour (Friedland, 2013).
Fritz’s relationship to her mentor at the UofT, William A. Parks, is mentioned in nearly every article on her career. It is telling that even in the mid-1920s, Parks was willing to share credit with her. For instance, a mid-1920s US government index of geological work contained the following reference: “Parks, William A. 1711. (assisted by Madeleine Fritz). The stratigraphy and paleontology of Toronto and vicinity; Part III, Gastropoda, Cephalopoda, and Vermes: Ontario Dept. Mines, 31st Ann. Rept., vol. 31, pt. 9, 45 pp., 5 pls., 1923.” (Loughlin & Mansfield, 1926). In 1971, she wrote a biography of Parks (Fritz & Museum, 1971) in which she indicated a number of notable individuals to whom he was instrumental in launching the careers of; however, she does not number herself in that list, although she acknowledges his role in her own bio at the end. While Parks facilitated her advanced studies – she was the only woman graduate student at the UofT in the 1920s – and worked with her at the ROM, she indicated that she operated in an overall atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement, and commented “that she felt accepted by the men and that no one tried to discourage her” (Ainley et al., 2012). At the same time though, “aware of the difficulties married women faced in academe [...] chose to remain single and pursue graduate studies” (Ainley et al., 2012).
During her career, she published more than 70 academic papers on samples that she both received and collected from the west of Canada (Fritz, Unknown) to the east (Fritz, 1966) and points in between (Fritz, 1957), and was responsible for the discovery and naming of several new species (see, e.g., (Fritz, 1941)) and the re-classification of others (Fritz & Royal Ontario Museum, 1981). Her impact on the field of invertebrate paleontology cannot be understated as “she achieved world renown for her scientific papers on fossil Bryozoa”, and “so many Fritz-educated professors have taught in paleontology departments of universities around the world that she has been called ‘the great-grandmother of Paleozoic Bryozoa’” (Monteith, 1993). Despite direct opposition by the Geological Survey of Canada to women participating in field work (Ainley et al., 2012), she continued to engage in such endeavours through much of her career while also working as a researcher, administrator, and teacher. “Her three-pronged professional path was unique in the history of Candian women and science, because men dominated such positions in geology/paleontology, in both university and museum settings. [Other successful women] followed the more usual path of ‘surrogate mother’ as dean or warden for women” (Ainley et al., 2012). Fritz’s professional ambitions, determination, and resourcefulness stand out to this day as exceptional during the times in which she flourished (Prentice, 1991), and while she perhaps sacrificed her personal life to be allowed to work, opened opportunties to many that followed.
References:
Ainley, M. G., Rayner-Canham, M. F., & Rayner-Canham, G. (2012). Creating Complicated Lives: Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880-1980. McGill-Queen’s Press - MQUP.
Friedland, M. L. (2013). The University of Toronto: A History, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press.
Fritz, M. A. (Unknown). Permian Bryozoa from Vancouver Island. [Microform]. Retrieved 14 April 2017, from http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM881840&R=881840
Fritz, M. A. (1941). Fenestrellina multistriata, a New Devonian Bryozoan from Quebec. Journal of Paleontology, 15(1), 94–96.
Fritz, M. A. (1957). Bryozoa (mainly Trepostomata) : from the Ottawa formation (Middle Ordovician) of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence lowland. Ottawa, : E. Cloutier, Queen’s printer. Retrieved from http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/18102986
Fritz, M. A. (1966). Diplotrypa schucherti, a New Bryozoan Species from the Long Point Formation (Ordovician), Western Newfoundland. Journal of Paleontology, 40(6), 1335–1337.
Fritz, M. A., & Museum, R. O. (1971). William Arthur Parks, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 1868-1936 /. Toronto : Royal Ontario Museum,. Retrieved from http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/60786
Fritz, M. A., & Royal Ontario Museum. (1981). The trepostomatous bryozoan Amplexopora solitaria Dyer 1925 redefined as Heterotrypa solitaria (Dyer). Toronto [Ont.: Royal Ontario Museum.
Loughlin, G. F., & Mansfield, G. R. (1926). Contributions to Economic Geology (Short Papers and Preliminary Reports, 1925: Part I. - Metals and Nonmetals Except Fuels). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior.
Monteith, J. (1993). Memorial to Madeleine Alberta Fritz. Geological Society of America, Memorials, 23, 95–98.
Prentice, A. (1991). Bluestockings, Feminists, or Women Workers? A Preliminary Look at Women’s Early Employment at the University of Toronto. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada, 2(1), 231–262. https://doi.org/10.7202/031036ar
Sherriff, B. L., & Reuter, S. (1994). Notable Canadian Women in the History of Geology. Geoscience Canada, 21(3). Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/GC/article/view/3842
On my last evening there, I gave a presentation on the amazing $4 CY8CKIT-049-42xx Cypress PSoC development kit at the Xinchejian hacker space weekly open house. I use it in a number of projects I've been working on, and it's an order of magnitude more complicated (at least) than the Arduino processors that are in wide use, so I thought it might be of interest (and they did too as they invited me after I pitched the idea to them). Despite some A/V technical issues, the talk went well and there were quite a number of questions during and after (talks were given in both Chinese and English). The dev kit is also available on Taobao in China for nearly the same price (￥29.00), which is good. Hopefully more on that later, but I need to try to sleep again as I am jet lagged as fuck and need to adjust my schedule back to Ottawa time as soon as I can (I tried to sleep earlier as I was crazy tired, but I couldn't drift off, thus this post). I can't wait to go back and do some deeper exploration (and with more Mandarin language skill than I went with this time, which was effectively zero, if not less... but everyone was quite patient and we made it work by pointing and smiling to each other, or with the aid of a translator on one of our phones). Lots of other great stuff happened while I was there, but I'm going to stop here for this post. So... time to finish the series...
These short biographical essays were written as part of a 4th year Women's and Gender Studies seminar class I took in the winter/spring of 2017 called “Representations of Women’s Scientific Contributions” with Dr. Cindy Stelmackowich at Carleton University. Each of the essays required deep research into difficult to find historical and contemporary info-fragments and sometimes oblique references in order to find a coherent and accurate narrative. They also needed to be short (always a challenge for me).
Born in 1896 along the Bay of Fundy, “as a child she sailed around the world with her [sea captain] father” and growing up “often played by the shoreline, studying the tiny creatures in the water – the beginnings of her interest in fossil invertebrates” (Monteith, 1993). She earned a B.A. in general arts from McGill in 1919. However, after finishing her B.A., a field trip to Manitoba with Alice Wilson, whom she met at McGill, inspired her to follow a career in geology (Sherriff & Reuter, 1994). She went on to get her M.A. from the University of Toronto (UofT) in 1923, in 1926 became “the first woman in Canada to get a Ph.D. in geology/paleontology”, and further was “the only woman [in Canada] to have an academic position during the interwar period” in that field (Ainley, Rayner-Canham, & Rayner-Canham, 2012). She served as Associate Director and then Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from 1936 to 1957, professor of paleontology in the Department of Geology of the UofT from 1956 to 1967, and then as professor emeritus in the Department of Geology at the UofT and Research Associate in the Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology in the ROM until her death in 1990 (aged 94) (Monteith, 1993). Regarding her association with Alice Wilson, it is important to note that in 1938, for her work at the Geological Survey of Canada, Wilson became the first woman to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1942, for her prolific and influential work on invertebrate fossils and her prowess as a curator and administrator, Fritz became the second woman to receive that honour (Friedland, 2013).
Fritz’s relationship to her mentor at the UofT, William A. Parks, is mentioned in nearly every article on her career. It is telling that even in the mid-1920s, Parks was willing to share credit with her. For instance, a mid-1920s US government index of geological work contained the following reference: “Parks, William A. 1711. (assisted by Madeleine Fritz). The stratigraphy and paleontology of Toronto and vicinity; Part III, Gastropoda, Cephalopoda, and Vermes: Ontario Dept. Mines, 31st Ann. Rept., vol. 31, pt. 9, 45 pp., 5 pls., 1923.” (Loughlin & Mansfield, 1926). In 1971, she wrote a biography of Parks (Fritz & Museum, 1971) in which she indicated a number of notable individuals to whom he was instrumental in launching the careers of; however, she does not number herself in that list, although she acknowledges his role in her own bio at the end. While Parks facilitated her advanced studies – she was the only woman graduate student at the UofT in the 1920s – and worked with her at the ROM, she indicated that she operated in an overall atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement, and commented “that she felt accepted by the men and that no one tried to discourage her” (Ainley et al., 2012). At the same time though, “aware of the difficulties married women faced in academe [...] chose to remain single and pursue graduate studies” (Ainley et al., 2012).
During her career, she published more than 70 academic papers on samples that she both received and collected from the west of Canada (Fritz, Unknown) to the east (Fritz, 1966) and points in between (Fritz, 1957), and was responsible for the discovery and naming of several new species (see, e.g., (Fritz, 1941)) and the re-classification of others (Fritz & Royal Ontario Museum, 1981). Her impact on the field of invertebrate paleontology cannot be understated as “she achieved world renown for her scientific papers on fossil Bryozoa”, and “so many Fritz-educated professors have taught in paleontology departments of universities around the world that she has been called ‘the great-grandmother of Paleozoic Bryozoa’” (Monteith, 1993). Despite direct opposition by the Geological Survey of Canada to women participating in field work (Ainley et al., 2012), she continued to engage in such endeavours through much of her career while also working as a researcher, administrator, and teacher. “Her three-pronged professional path was unique in the history of Candian women and science, because men dominated such positions in geology/paleontology, in both university and museum settings. [Other successful women] followed the more usual path of ‘surrogate mother’ as dean or warden for women” (Ainley et al., 2012). Fritz’s professional ambitions, determination, and resourcefulness stand out to this day as exceptional during the times in which she flourished (Prentice, 1991), and while she perhaps sacrificed her personal life to be allowed to work, opened opportunties to many that followed.
References:
Ainley, M. G., Rayner-Canham, M. F., & Rayner-Canham, G. (2012). Creating Complicated Lives: Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880-1980. McGill-Queen’s Press - MQUP.
Friedland, M. L. (2013). The University of Toronto: A History, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press.
Fritz, M. A. (Unknown). Permian Bryozoa from Vancouver Island. [Microform]. Retrieved 14 April 2017, from http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM881840&R=881840
Fritz, M. A. (1941). Fenestrellina multistriata, a New Devonian Bryozoan from Quebec. Journal of Paleontology, 15(1), 94–96.
Fritz, M. A. (1957). Bryozoa (mainly Trepostomata) : from the Ottawa formation (Middle Ordovician) of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence lowland. Ottawa, : E. Cloutier, Queen’s printer. Retrieved from http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/18102986
Fritz, M. A. (1966). Diplotrypa schucherti, a New Bryozoan Species from the Long Point Formation (Ordovician), Western Newfoundland. Journal of Paleontology, 40(6), 1335–1337.
Fritz, M. A., & Museum, R. O. (1971). William Arthur Parks, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 1868-1936 /. Toronto : Royal Ontario Museum,. Retrieved from http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/60786
Fritz, M. A., & Royal Ontario Museum. (1981). The trepostomatous bryozoan Amplexopora solitaria Dyer 1925 redefined as Heterotrypa solitaria (Dyer). Toronto [Ont.: Royal Ontario Museum.
Loughlin, G. F., & Mansfield, G. R. (1926). Contributions to Economic Geology (Short Papers and Preliminary Reports, 1925: Part I. - Metals and Nonmetals Except Fuels). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior.
Monteith, J. (1993). Memorial to Madeleine Alberta Fritz. Geological Society of America, Memorials, 23, 95–98.
Prentice, A. (1991). Bluestockings, Feminists, or Women Workers? A Preliminary Look at Women’s Early Employment at the University of Toronto. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada, 2(1), 231–262. https://doi.org/10.7202/031036ar
Sherriff, B. L., & Reuter, S. (1994). Notable Canadian Women in the History of Geology. Geoscience Canada, 21(3). Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/GC/article/view/3842
