It is with profound sadness that we inform you that Mary Miller died suddenly on December 19th. Mary was the wife of Jim Miller, mother of Andrew and Christian, friend of countless people including everyone in this department, and director of the Diefenbaker Centre. Mary's funeral will take place Thursday, December 23, at 2:00 pm in St.Thomas More College Chapel. A reception in the College will follow the service.

Memorial donations may be made to UNICEF or the Canadian Cancer Society and would be appreciated in lieu of flowers. Condolences may be sent to mail@saskatoonfuneralhome.com.

The Diefenbaker Canada Centre will post memories of Mary on their webpage at http://www.usask.ca/diefenbaker/. If you have any stories that you would like to share, and/or photographs, please e-mail the Diefenbaker Centre's webmaster, Robert Paul at paul@admin.usask.ca.

Brent R. MacFarlane has been awarded first prize in the Classical Association of Canada's National Junior Undergraduate Essay Contest (for students in introductory courses in Classics) for his essay, "The Romans Wore Bowling Shoes: Plautine and Terentian Devices and Resulting Reflections of Society in John Hughes' Uncle Buck," written for John Porter's Classics 121: Roman Culture and Civilization. As the awards committee notes, "the author demonstrates convincingly that the satirical devices used by Plautus and Terence work equally well when applied to the neo-conservative movement of the 1980s."

Congratulations to Roger Carpenter, whose book The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade:The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609-1650 has just been published by Michigan State University Press. Roger is a term appointment in our department, and taught previously at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Click here to learn more about the book.

Congratulations to M.A. candidates and new parents Jennifer Hamel and Darren Friessen on the birth of future history student Benno Thomas Friessen, born early in the morning on December 7th, a few weeks early, at 6 lb, 10 oz. And congratulations to you, too, Benno.

Those interested in prying into the lives of dead English and Welsh people are in for a treat. MyFamily.com and The National Archives in London have come together to launch a new co-branded (read: "for profit") online service. For the first time, fully searchable indexes and scans of original documents from the 1881 and 1891 censuses for England and Wales are now available. And over the next two years all historic censuses from 1841 to 1891 will be made available online in the same way, providing a wealth of information, including ages, occupation and place of birth. The press release neglects to mention that the prices run $14 Canadian to view an individual record, $59.95 for a quarterly subscription to the whole set, and $139.95 for a year's subscription. Click here to find out more.

John Porter’s article, “Nicolaus Reads Euphiletus: A Note on the Nachleben of Lysias 1,” has just appeared in Ancient Narrative vol. 3 for 2003, pp. 82-87. The account of the Lydian king Gyges’ ascent to the throne offered in Nicolaus of Damascus’ Universal History (1st C. BC) has been traced directly to the work of the fifth-century Lydian historian Xanthus. This study examines Nicolaus’ clever manipulation of narrative motifs derived from the Bellerophon myth and the first speech of the 5th/4th-century Attic orator Lysias. The use of the latter, in particular, suggests that the relationship to Xanthus’ account is far from straightforward and tells against the view of Nicolaus as a mere redactor.

The winner of the November moustache contest was Jennifer Hamel, for tolerating her husband Darren's lovely Tom Selleck style 'satche for a whole 30 days. The runner-up was Chris Clarke for his biker-like 'handle-bars.'