Brendan Burke With Father Brian Burke

TORONTO, CANADA – A moment of silence will be held for Brendan Burke, the son of Toronto general manager Brian Burke who died in car accident, before the Maple Leafs play Ottawa on Saturday night.
The 21-year-old Burke died after his car slid sideways into the path of another car on a snowy Indiana road on Friday. Burke’s friend, 18-year-old Mark Reedy, also died in the accident.
Maple Leafs players found out about the accident after a loss in New Jersey on Friday night.
Toronto’s Francois Beauchemin played for Burke when he was general manager for the Anaheim Ducks and recalled celebrating their 2007 Stanley Cup win at a gathering with Brendan.
“You never think, ‘that’s going to happen to me,’” Beauchemin said after Saturday’s pregame skate. “But when it happens to somebody really close, like Brian, you kind of do think about it. It can happen any time, and it’s really tough.”
Brian Burke is also the general manager of the U.S. Olympic team that will begin play in Vancouver on Feb. 16.
“It’s the worst news you could ever receive,” Leafs forward Christian Hanson said. “I don’t think there’s anything that can be worse than losing a family member.”
The driver of the truck was reportedly uninjured.
Brendan Burke attended Miami of Ohio and was a manager for the school’s top-ranked hockey team. He made news last year after ESPN.com ran a story about his decision to tell his father he was gay.
“I had a million good reasons to love and admire Brendan,” Brian Burke said in the story. “This news didn’t alter any of them.”
Father and son discussed the news during a joint appearance on Canadian television TSN last year. Brendan Burke said while he was initially nervous about coming out to his father, he knew he would find support.
“I was surprised, but Brendan’s a wonderful kid,” Brian Burke said in the interview. “He’s been a joy since the day he came home from the hospital, and I support him. I’m very proud of him.”
Burke said he told his son he loved him.
“He’s supported me with everything I’ve done in the past,” Brendan Burke said during the interview. “I knew he would support me on this, too, and it really meant a lot. My whole family has been there for me, and been behind me 100 percent.”
Both men said the positive feedback overwhelmed any of the negative they might have received.
“Pioneers are often misunderstood,” Brian Burke told TSN. “You don’t wish this on your son, you wish that someone else carries that burden first, and then he can grab it and help. But this is what he wanted to do, and we support him.”
Leafs goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere also played for Burke in Anaheim and knew his son.
“It’s really sad,” Giguere said. “I don’t think we can even comprehend what Burkie is going through at this point. I think, right now, it’s best to just let him grieve and make sure that we do our job here at the rink to make sure he doesn’t have to worry about that.”
from The Associated Press

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CANADA – It’s a question which has troubled science since Darwin: if homosexuality is, at least in part, inherited, how are those genes being passed down to new generations?
Canadian researchers say they have found the first evidence to back up the theory that gay men have the evolutionary advantage of being “super uncles”, a way of enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives and — indirectly, at least — making it more likely their genes are passed on.
Paul Vasey, associate professor in the University of Lethbridge’s department of psychology, said his research found evidence that gay men may be more willing to support their nieces and nephews financially and emotionally.
The idea is that homosexuals are helping their close relatives reproduce more successfully and at a higher rate by being helpful: babysitting more, tutoring their nieces and nephews in art and music, and helping out financially with things like medical care and education.
The question of whether homosexuality clashes with evolution has puzzled scientists for decades. The trait appears to be inheritable — but because homosexual men are much less likely to produce offspring than heterosexual men, researchers have struggled to explain why the genes for the trait weren’t extinguished long ago.
“Maybe it’s in this way that they’re indirectly passing on at least some of the genes that they’re sharing with their kin,” he said.
Researchers conducting similar studies in the U.S. and England did not find any supporting evidence for the theory, said Vasey. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll do it in a non-Western culture and chances are I’m going to find exactly the same results and it’ll be the nail in the coffin for this hypothesis,’” he said.
Vasey and University of Lethbridge evolutionary psychologist Doug VanderLaan spent time on the Pacific island of Samoa surveying women, straight men and the fa’afafine — men who prefer other men as sexual partners and are accepted within the culture as a distinct third gender category. “Some are so feminine that they pass as women to the naive observer,” he said.
Vasey found that the fa’afafine said they were significantly more willing to help kin, yet much less interested in helping children who aren’t family — providing the first evidence to support the “kin selection hypothesis.”
“We argue that this would allow the fa’afafine to distribute altruism toward their nieces and nephews in a more efficient and adaptive manner compared to men and women,” he said.
The findings are published online this week in the journal Psychological Science.
Researchers are now trying to establish whether the fa’afafine’s professed willingness to help their kin is reflected in their actions by studying whether they give more money to their relatives. “It’s a crude measure, but it’s a start,” he admitted.
“There is this distinction between willingness to do something and then do they actually do it in the real world,” he added. “Research takes time, so we don’t have all the answers right away.”
Vasey said he was initially shocked by the results, and conducted the questionnaire three times to be certain of the results. “I think I’ve convinced myself it’s real,” he said.
Vasey has a few theories about why researchers conducting similar studies in the U.S. and in England found no difference between the way gay men and straight men treat their nieces and nephews. In Samoa, communities are closer geographically and families are more tightly-knit, while North American families are more dispersed, he said. Homosexuality is expressed differently in Western culture — where it’s also less accepted, he said.
from The Montreal Gazette
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