Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Congrats to two OPIRG McMaster working groups!
Background
This award was established by Paul McKay (journalist, environmental activist, and former OPIRG-Peterborough staff member) in 1988, in memory of his mother, Peggy, who died of cancer in 1987. By encouraging environmental action, the awards will hopefully lead to a decrease in the cause of her death.
The Awards
Two prizes of $250 each will be awarded in April of each year. Once awarded, the money may be spent by the recipients in any way they choose.
criteria:
a) Novelty – Is the project something that isn’t necessarily tried and true – something a little different within the context of PIRG projects?
b) Effectiveness – Did the project meet its goals? If not, why not? Failures, so-called, can also be usefully evaluated.
c) Timeliness – Does the project contribute to an understanding of current environmental issues? Does it bring to light some new environmental issues for us to worry about?
d) Creativity – Does the project utilize new and imaginative methodology to reach project goals?
e) Networking – Does the project attempt to utilize and integrate existing community and/or campus resources relevant to it? In this context, resources are broadly defined and include people, organizations, libraries and so on.
So some deserving efforts are rewarded, thanks to the working groups and the Peggy McKay committee for their work on the difficult choices to select only two out of the submissions.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
who cares about food? OPIRG's PEAS working group, that's who!
Who Cares About Food?
Introducing the City of Hamilton Community Food Security Stakeholder Committee
Hear about efforts underway to develop a sustainable and socially just food system for Hamilton!
Panel Discussion:
- Katrina Simmons: Freelance writer and "Eat Local" columnist for The Hamilton Spectator
- Zsuzsi Fodor: McMaster University student and campus-based [i.e. OPIRG McMaster's PEAS Working Group] food activist
- Jeff Crump: Executive Chef at the Ancaster Old Mill, and author of "Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm"
- Ruth Klahsen: Cheese entrepreneur and owner/lead lead cheesemaker for Monforte Dairy Company
- Carmen Salciccioli: Director, Good Shepherd Centre
The panel will be followed by an overview of the Community Food Security
Stakeholder Committee, its mandate, and its activities to date, hosted by
Committee Co-Chairs Dr. Sarah Wakefield and Councillor Robert Pasuta.
Location: The Hamilton Spectator Auditorium, 44 Frid Street
Date: Thursday, April 30, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Admission is free
Monday, April 06, 2009
arts and stories: Tings Chak
Tings worked as OPIRG's Resource Centre student staff for the last two years - her handiwork adorns the office and her many beautiful posters were ubiquitously scattered across campus. Go see her show at Hamilton Artists Inc during the Art Crawl. Congratulations Tings!
Paul Wilson, The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 6, 2009)
When she was in Grade 9, Tings Chak travelled from her home in suburban Toronto to see the alt-rock band Incubus at Copps Coliseum.
It was her first time in Hamilton and she didn't think much of the place. "Everything seemed so grey."
But four years ago, Tings returned and enrolled at McMaster.
Many Mac students learn little about the city. They get as far off campus as the Snooty Fox and the Westdale Theatre.
But Tings has come to know Hamilton as well as many who were born here.
Test her if you like, this Friday night during the monthly James North Art Crawl. She will be at Hamilton Artists Inc., James just north of Cannon, along with a window of her work.
Tings was born 21 years ago in Hong Kong. She and her mother and father lived in a tiny apartment in a highrise in the middle of the city.
In 1989, when Tings was a toddler, she came with her parents to visit an aunt in Toronto. While they were here, the Tiananmen Square massacre broke out. That, and the looming handover of Hong Kong to China -- then eight years away -- convinced her parents they should move to Canada.
They got a little place in Thornhill, on Toronto's northern fringe.
When it was time for Tings to start school, she was placed in an ESL stream. She was still there in Grade 3. "Maybe I was slow."
But that year she won a spelling bee and it all changed. At Thornlea Secondary, she got 90s.
Suburban life, however, did not fit her well. "I became a wanderer."
She would take York Regional Transit to the subway, then ride all day. She would get out at every station, look around. She would take the streetcar to different parts of the city -- the Junction, the Beaches, everywhere.
She wanted to really wander, take a year off after high school. Her parents said that wouldn't be happening.
So Tings applied to several universities and got acceptances at all of them. Environmental science. Fine arts. But she decided on arts and science -- at Mac. There are only 60 people a year in the program.
The first year Tings lived on campus, the second in Westdale. But she found herself always going to the core -- shopping at the Farmers' Market, teaching art to at-risk youth at the Welcome Inn, just exploring. "I realized I was doing what I did in Thornhill, getting out of the suburbs to go downtown."
So last year she and her roommate got an apartment in an old brick building right behind City Hall. And she got to work on her thesis, exploring urban spaces in Hamilton through everyday stories. She wanted to know how and where people move about within the city. What do they need? Do they use the green space? What are their favourite places?
She talked to about 50 people -- shopkeepers, poets, artists, lawyers, teachers, students.
"I talked to one man who came to Hamilton for love. He lived with his sweetheart for 35 years and sometimes they sat and enjoyed the gardens at Whitehern. Then she passed away and he scattered her ashes there."
Until then, Tings thought of Whitehern as just a handsome old house. But with that story it became a richer place, the kind of place city planners need to consider in their work.
Tings took the process a step further and sketched some of those places. "I draw the buildings to get to know them better," she says. "It feels quite intimate."
Tings turned in her 15,000-word thesis yesterday. Her art will be on display on James North April 10 to April 20.
And two days after that, Tings and Hamilton part company. She will spend the summer with Kingston inner-city kids on canoe trips in the Algonquin wilderness.
Then she will get her year off. She wants to do three things -- bicycle through Europe; learn to build a cob house; turn her Hamilton project into a "graphic novel." (She says that's "just a fancy word for a big comic book.")
Then on to graduate school, probably for architecture or urban planning. And if in class one day they're looking at Canadian centres and this gritty city comes up, Tings will be able to tell them another side of the Hamilton story.
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