Letter
from Alasdair McKay to:
.
The Honorable Mr. K. Streatch,
Minister of Economic Development. 23 Nov 92
.
Dear Mr. Streatch,
In October, Mr. McInnis was very supportive of my acceptance of
an invitation from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology to spend
2 weeks with them in Russia. I have already reported on this to
your department, and will also do so at the "business day" at
Bedford Institute of Oceanography on 24th Nov.
.
I am about to leave (on 28th Nov.) on a Trade Mission to Japan
for 3 weeks, under the auspices of External Affairs Canada. This
will focus on mathematical aspects of the geosciences and will
visit Tokyo, Osaka and Tsukuba. After the end of the official
mission which runs from 7th to 11th Dec, I will return to Tsukuba
for a full week to pursue negotiations with the Geological Survey
of Japan about cooperative work between Canada and Japan in
marine geophysical work and to do some investigative work for
Hypercomp (the N.S. initiative in high performance computing) to
see if there is scope to relate it to the Japanese "Real World
Computing" program, a new initiative which has its headquarters
in Tsukuba.
.
During 1990, I lived for a year in Tsukuba and worked with the
Geological Survey of Japan to whom I was highly recommended by
Mr. T. Nickerson of the N.S. Research Foundation. I regret to say
that, unless you can give me some reassurances on the matter, I
will be going to become re-acquainted with my former colleagues
with serious misgivings. This situation arises out of my abrupt
dismissal on grounds of redundancy from the NSRF after 19 years
of service in April this year. In Japan, this will have to
reflect rather badly either on me or on Nova Scotia, and perhaps
on both, but I think that in the circumstances, you will hardly
blame me for taking whatever action may be necessary to minimise
the adverse effects on myself, whatever the consequences for
N.S. may be.
.
It is, I think important to try to foster long term relationships
with other countries for various reasons, and I think that I have
been doing fairly well for the Province and for Canada by my
activities over the years. On both my recent visit to Russia
and on my 1990 visit to Japan, all of my living expenses within
the respective countries were payed by my hosts (and goodness
knows the Russians can ill afford that just now). Such
invitations do not come easily, but are the result of many years
of progress and publication in the international scientific
community. The contacts and relationships so opened are a firm
basis for lasting intercourse which will inevitably lead to the
opening up of more trade in commodities, manufactured goods and
ideas.
.
As a commercial grower of grass yourself, may be interested in one
aspect of Tsukuba. As a new
city, Tsukuba has open areas which are still awaiting development. Many
of these are used in the meantime for growing grass, mainly for
sale to new golf courses. The technique which they use there is
to cut a layer of turf sufficiently thin that the underlying root
structure of the grass remains intact and will quickly regenerate
without re-seeding. I do not know if it is possible to do the
same in N.S. Perhaps the soil and climate are against it. The
method seems to work very well in that part of Japan.
.
Yours sincerely,
.
Alasdair McKay
Return to Main Page