BU - Gaiters

Gaiters Home Page
Athletic Department
Intramurals
About Bishop's
Gaiter Club
RBC Wall of Distinction

Varsity Teams
Football
M Basketball
W Basketball
W Soccer
M Rugby
W Rugby
Golf

HEADLINES

Student athletes found academic niche: The green connection

By Mike Hickey, Special to the Record (Friday, January 5, 2007)
This is part II of The Record's look at the two local football players who will attend an international environmental conference in Abu Dhabi later this month.

*******

When Bishop's University head football coach Leroy Blugh talks about Charles Burke and Simon Jones, he does so with understandable pride.

"Charles and Simon have come up with a plan to attend this environmental conference and it is great to see them take the initiative to fundraise and make their plan a reality," Blugh said.

Burke and Jones took completely different paths to Bishop's University, although the initial lure -- an opportunity to earn a university degree while playing CIS football -- was the same.

Once on the Lennoxville campus, the duo found that they had more in common that just the love of sacking opposing quarterbacks.

Jones grew up in industrial Hamilton, within sight of the smoke stacks of the city's famed steel mills.

Burke spent his early years in a more rural environment, but at the age of 12 his family moved to a suburb of Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Said Burke: "I grew up on a farm in LaSalle, Ontario, surrounded by animals as well as acres of nature. I spent much of my time exploring the forests and wetlands that flourished around our property." These adventures are now but distant memory as the land was eventually developed and replaced with subdivisions and urban sprawl.

When the Burke family relocated, Charles found a new natural playground: the Atlantic Ocean.

"We owned a boat and nearly every weekend was spent on the ocean, fishing, snorkelling, and exploring. It was here I learned the value of conservation, and preservation of nature in order for all of us to enjoy."

The family eventually returned to Canada and became active environmentalists. "We started a successful recycling company that began recycling jute and burlap bags from peanut processing factories and this business diversified into the recycling of plastics," Burke said. "By the time the company was sold in order for me to continue my education, we had saved over one million pounds of plastics from entering landfills and became a licensed recycler for the county of Essex, Ontario."

When he arrived on the Bishop's campus Burke found success in and out of the classroom. He maintains an 89-plus academic average and is a member of the International Golden Key Honour Society for top university students.

"While attending Bishop's I found my other passionate interest, football. I am a captain on the university team and love the competition, discipline, and leadership opportunities that it provides. My current pastime is keeping up with the latest information on energy technologies. Attending classes such as Global Change and Human Impact on the Environment has interested me in the problems of climate change, greenhouse gases, and human effects on natural systems. Renewable energy sources is the major component in solving such problems, and this is the major focus of the Environment 2007 Conference."

For Jones, working on environmental change allows him to attack a problem that he has been aware of since his childhood days in Steeltown.

"As we all know, Hamilton is an industrial city," Jones said. "I lived only a few miles from the smoke stacks of the large industrial factories producing steel, chemicals, and electricity. Some family members, neighbours, and friends were employed in these factories so I have had a tie to industry my whole life.

"This lifestyle is in stark contrast to my heritage as a Jamaican. My family has had its roots on this beautiful island for centuries. Jamaica is well known for its pristine beaches, crystal blue waters, as well as various arrays of tropical vegetation, spices and herbs

" This life is in such stark contrast to the industrial environment of Hamilton I could not help but think of the great environmental impacts these lakeside factories have created in the Southern Lake Ontario Region. Thus when it came time to further my education at university, Environmental Studies was a natural choice."

"At Bishop's within the Environmental Studies Department I have made friends easily.... I enjoy nothing more than speaking in front of a class while giving a presentation on an environmental subject, or interacting with my peers in group projects. I have maintained an overall average that allows me to be eligible to receive a scholarship to pursue my studies due to my involvement as a leader on the Bishop's University football team.

"Attending this conference allows me to go places that I would not have the opportunity to reach under most circumstances. I would like to use this event to meet contemporary leaders in the field of environmental science and create a network that could potentially award me career opportunities in the future. This conference would be a major highlight in my university career and would catapult me to new heights of interest and understanding."

Once enrolled in environmental studies, Jones and Burke gravitated towards each other because of their ages and a shared passion for football.

They're in their mid 20s, and older than many of their classmates. And they're also expected to show leadership on the football field, surrounded as they are by many younger players.

Neither student athlete has any qualms about being a role model.

"We would like to be the first students to attend a major environmental conference at Bishop's in recent memory and inspire students to use our model to spearhead their own initiatives in the future," Jones said. "As leaders we see this as an opportunity to act as delegates of the university and represent our school and our program at an international level. Our ultimate goal however is we would like to create a Bishop's University Environmental Initiative Program that provides students with the interest and planning model to follow our path. One final note, being mature students we see this event as a pathway to transcend our degree as being a paper on the wall into becoming a career that we can put our life's work behind."

© 2007 The Record (Sherbrooke)