Accessibility Walk, November 17

This week’s class had two components to it. We were first visited by the manager of the Accessible Learning Office, Gwen Page. The Accessible Learning Office assists students with disabilities in a way that will help them reach their full academic potential. To get the class thinking about accessibility to people with disabilities, Gwen asked us where we thought people with disabilities would find difficulty getting around campus. Some of the physical barriers that were brought up were stairs, architecture, and landscaping, such as the hills throughout campus. Gwen also brought up invisible barriers, such as attitude and communication. After the discussion about the difficulties that students with disabilities face, Gwen took the class on an “accessible walk” showing us the routes that people with disabilities have to take and how they differ from our everyday routes.

An example of this is the route that we took outside from the DAWB  to Mid-campus Drive and then through the buildings to the Peters building.  Along this walk, Gwen made note of a number of obstacles to the physically disabled.  For example, she showed us how the weight and pressure of the doors would be a struggle for a disabled person to open.

During the second half of the class, we participated in “How to Get an ‘A’ Grade” workshop. This workshop was structured to assist the class in revising our essays into university level, or academic papers. Dr. Sharpe was able to make our strengths and weaknesses evident to us, and gave the class the opportunity to revise the first draft of our papers.  The class seemed to find this workshop very beneficial in developing their research papers.

By: Nadege Bertrand and Alysha D’Souza

Schneider Creek, November 10

This week’s class started by taking the GRT bus straight to the Charles Street terminal, where we then walked to Victoria Park. We began to talk about how stormwater management was an important environmental issue and expensive challenge to the city.   Many years of subdivision development upstream along the upper reaches of Schneider Creek has led to tons of silt carrying various chemical contaminants being transported into Victoria Park Lake.  This has greatly affected water quality in the Lake which is now being dredged in order to solve the problem.  The impact of just how dirty the water could be was really evident as we walked by a gargantuan mass of a mixture of chemicals, oil, and decomposing organic matter that floated on top of the lake.

We then followed the stream upwards, observing the concrete channels that the city had built to stop overflowing rainwater during storm events from causing damage to surrounding buildings. Eventually we stopped behind a Sobey’s market and began to walk back, but through a different route. This time we stopped to examine several key featurs of interest, like a statue of Queen Victoria, a bridge that had been scheduled to be modified for safety reasons, and an island that had a gazebo used for community events.

The key factors that made this walk so significant were that we could easily see the effects of pollution on water quality. As we walked up a stream, there were many parts where the water levels were low enough that ducks could easily walk across. Silt deposits caused numerous little islands and in some areas, there were discarded oil cans and shopping carts in the water. This week’s walk gave many of us a look into the increasingly urgent situation of protecting the natural waters that we have in the area.

By:  Jeremy Chan and Dylan Campbell

Beating the Bounds, November 3

For this week’s class we started off by doing our Research Paper Slams. Each student had one minute to present one Powerpoint slide about our research essay topics. Although we have all presented our research topics in previous classes it was interesting to see how students have changed their topics and how their papers are evolving.

After our one minute slams, we welcomed Dr. Markus Poetzsch from the Department of English and Film Studies into our class.  Dr. Poetzsch gave us a new perspective of walking as a form of defining space. He informed us of the European tradition of ‘Beating the Bounds’. This processional walk lead by a priest is used to enforce the knowledge of parish boundaries and the importance of remaining within ones local boundaries.

He related this to a reading entitled “Walking in the City: Spatial Practices” by de Certeau which emphasizes how walking allows us to define characteristics and dimensions of a city which maps wouldn’t enable us to.

Dr. Poetzch also shared interesting information about how walking can in fact improve memory and even counter the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. A second reading entitled “In Praise of Walking” by Leslie Stevens elaborates the idea that walking allows us to make memories by connecting our physical presence to certain locations and making memories from that.

After the short lecture we adventured throughout the Laurier campus to find our own boundary marks which we later shared with the class.  Overall this week’s lesson was very interesting, and gave us new insight to the ideas of walking as a form of place making, and as a framework for memories.

By:  Hayley Kraik and Mianda Thwaites