The Fellowship of the Ring in The People’s Photo Album

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/fellowship-of-the-ring-famous-alumni-of-st-francis-xavier-university/article12941864/

“The Fellowship of the Ring: Famous Alumni of St. Francis Xavier University” first appeared in The Globe and Mail in July, 2013.  It was updated in May, 2018.

Famous and not so famous StFX alumni appear throughout The People’s Photo Album: A Pictorial Genealogy of the Antigonish Movement.  Allan J. MacEachen ’44 and Brian Mulroney ’59 appear together on p. 109 on the occasion of Pierre Elliot Trudeau receiving an honorary degree from StFX in 1982.  Allan J. MacEachen was closely tied to the StFX Extension Department when he was Professor of Economics at StFX in the 1950s, contributing to Extension programming through CJFX radio’s University of the Air.

The family connection between Annette Verschuren and StFX Extension is less well known. Annette Verschuren ’77, ’01, currently the CEO of energy-storage firm NRstor Inc., led Home Depot’s nationwide growth from 19 stores to 180 between 1996 and 2011.

Photo Courtesy of The Globe and Mail

Photo Courtesy of StFX Alumni News, Summer 2017, p. 4

Annette’s parents began their life in Canada in the 1950s at the Mount Cameron Experimental Farm managed by StFX Extension.  They worked and lived cooperatively in the “small house” on Mount Cameron with the van de Wiel family.  The Verschuren family moved to Cape Breton before Annette was born but the picture on p. 157 of The People’s Photo Album shows her father Tony (Toon) Verschuren with Sisca Van de Wiel holding Annette’s older sister Dorothy.

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