Greening the Campus, October 27

Today our seminar group was visited by Claire Bennett from the Sustainability Office in the Laurier Physical Resources Department. She introduced herself and the sustainability office’s role in environmental initiatives at Laurier such as programs to meter the various campus building’s power, water and gas usage.  Claire also works to integrate sustainability programs into old and new buildings at Laurier.  As part of her master’s degree at the University of Waterloo, she participated in the design process for the new “ENV 3” building. The goal of the design was to ensure that the new building was certified to L.E.E.D. platinum standards. The objective of L.E.E.D. is to design buildings with the utilization of natural resources, little maintenance costs, and a reduction in overall energy use.

Following this introduction, we walked to the University of Waterloo for a tour of the Environmental 3 building and its facilities.  The building utilises a grey water system that replaces potable water in the building’s toilets. This grey water is recycled rain water that is filtered through a simulated wetland then stored in a cistern to be pumped into the building’s plumbing.

The building also has a unique architecture that takes advantage of natural light. Daylight is used to light interior offices, which would otherwise be artificially lighted at greater cost.  To improve air quality in the building a “nature wall” is utilized to naturally filter the building’s air. The filtering results in small but significant change in the air quality of the building. A “nature wall” is a wall of plants that are embedded in a foam base and sustained by a hydroponic nutrition system.  The building’s clever design puts the stairway front and centre at the main entrance promoting its use over the somewhat hidden elevator. All these designs create a very impressive whole that achieves a sustainable objective.

An unexpected encounter with 2nd year planning students allowed us a chance to tour the planning design studio and hear about the students experiences in the program. One of the students we talked to had actually been sleeping in the studio for over a week because of the amount of time spent on his group’s planning project. The projects were large models of proposed plans for the improvement of downtown Kitchener, complete with miniatures of the buildings and landscape; all sizes were to scale.

Our walk home, Dr. Sharpe took us on a nice adventurous walk alongside the Waterloo Park Petting Zoo. We as a group stopped here to enjoy the environment and the company of nature as we had fun interacting and petting emu’s and donkeys.  

By: Chris Porter and Brayden Libawski

Downtown Kitchener, October 13

This week’s class started different than any of the others; we began by boarding the iExpress to downtown Kitchener, getting off at the Charles St Terminal, and walking to Kitchener City Hall where we began our discoveries.  From the 10^th floor cafeteria we could overlook much of Kitchener, which arguably has the best view of the city.  Although this cafeteria is now closed to the public, by visiting it we were expressing our right to occupy public space.

A key focus for this week’s walk was the discoveries and the serendipitous moments that arise while walking, Dr. Sharpe discussed the history of his Kitchener home and the many ways he acquired this knowledge. The moment especially connected to walking was that the name of the previous owner of his house was listed as a donor on a fountain in a park nearby.

Another key historical finding was in Kitchener 

Public Library where Dr. Sharpe did a great deal of reading through uncatalogued research. While showing us this area of the library we also noticed a display case that showed a former shirt and collar factory and its workers in Kitchener. The workers were primarily women but there was one man shown who may have been their supervisor, and may have been the previous owner of Dr. Sharpe’s property. The man, who was laid off during the depression, added rental apartments to his home.  By walking to these apartments we were able to recreate the journey he may have taken to work at the shirt factory.  Also, along our route we explored the former site of a button factory and discovered in the crumbling concrete foundations some pieces of the shells once used in the manufacture of buttons.

The last place we visited was the Tannery which is Kitchener’s last standing tannery and now is used as office spaces for Google, Desire2Learn and other hi-tech companies.  In the Communitech Hub we were able to experience the Hive, a 3D virtual environment used for research and meetings.  We were able to experience an entire 3D house model while wearing specialized glasses. This building has a unique look because of the combination of the old infrastructure and new technology.

The final challenge Dr. Sharpe gave us was to find our way back to the bus stop and university without any assistance. This was a true test of the skills we have acquired thus far in the course.

By:  Nicole Lindman and Ashley Stratton

A Nature Walk, October 6

Our fourth seminar of “Walking Paths to Discovery” began a little differently than usual. We met as a class to catch a bus which was organized to take us to Cambridge for a hike.  On the bus, Dr. Sharpe provided us with maps of the area we would be hiking through, and a poem entitled Nutting by William Wordsworth. We were asked to read the poem to ourselves on the bus, and to keep in mind the ideas and meaning of the poem throughout our hike.

After about half an hour we arrived in Cambridge at the rare property, where Dr. Sharpe gave us a brief history of the area. We then began our hike. Not far along the trail, we observed an archway made entirely of natural resources designed by local artists. This was a very interesting way to begin our journey through nature.

Along our hike, we also learned of the bird monitoring activities on the rare property, which involves bird banding in order to keep track of bird populations. One of the most interesting things that we learned about on our hike was geocaching. We learned that geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers with other participants in the activity. We were lucky enough to find a container filled with notes and random items from different people at different times. As a group, we decided to add the poem Nutting to the container to leave our mark.

This seminar was one of the most informative and relaxing thus far. We are looking forward to our next walking experience.

By: Shannon Reeves, Janneke Van Den Nieuwelaar, and Anique de Bruyn Kops

Uptown Waterloo, September 29

Our third seminar of “Walking Paths to Discovery” began with brief presentations from all students on our ideas for our research papers. Everyone had unique ideas about the research paper which ranged from how walking is used as a method of protest to how walking is used to create suspense in movies. One of the most common themes was how danger can be felt while walking.

After sharing our ideas, Dr. Sharpe took us for the Waterloo loop. We started the walk by strolling on Bricker and Ezra Avenues through, what some residents fear has become, a student ghetto.  On these streets, almost all the housing, including older decrepit homes and new apartment buildings, are occupied by university students.

We then made our way along Albert Street to Waterloo Park, a hidden gem in the city.  In the park is a zoo which once housed large animals but now is primarily a petting zoo because of humanitarian reasons.  There is also a boardwalk which is a walker’s paradise that traverses a century old, mill-pond know as Silver Lake.  Although this is a beautiful site, the trained eye of the geographer will spot the substantial silt deposits caused by erosion upstream. We learned that continuous development along Laurel Creek upstream from Waterloo Park and on the west side of Waterloo has caused the erosion of silt which travels down river until it is deposited in the pond.  We continued our walk through up-town Waterloo where we took note of some heritage buildings and observed the character of the uptown core. Our walk ended at the former residence of one of Dr. Sharpe’s geography professors on Albert Street. We are looking forward to our next walk, which will be through a secluded woodlot setting.

By:  Warren Brayne, Stephen Di Carlo and Dylan Ingram