Campus Wander

Yesterday I took a little wander around the university campus I work at (Laurentian University in Sudbury). The architecture of the campus is not inspiring, but there are some interesting things, and the wilderness setting is pretty special. Here's the view down the hill from the college where my office is; mostly concrete blocks:

But if you look a little more closely, you can see that the location is pretty nice:

That's Ramsay Lake, the big lake at the centre of Sudbury.

There's a Peace Garden across the parking lot from my college, created a few years ago by the Catholic college, I think. The entrance is marked by a set of religious icons:

The rocky thing on the right is a turtle, to represent Native and animistic spirituality:


To answer a question from Twitter, I don't know what the colours on his shell represent, if anything; I wouldn't be surprised if they had symbolic importance, though.

There was also a bit of guerilla knitting at the entrance:

Here's the path leading into the garden:


And more symbolism; this time clearly Judaeo-Christian ("Into ploughshares beat their swords...") but definitely appropriate to a Peace garden.

And then, around the corner, a large inuksuk, or more properly, an inunnguaq, since it's in the shape of a person:

For more information on these structures, Wikipedia's not bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk.

There's a little bench overlooking a scenic view of Ramsay Lake; note the Superstack in the top right corner. That's the huge smokestack from the nickel refinery, the tallest in the world, I think. It's visible from most places in the city.
As you can see, the spring isn't very far advanced, though it's farther than usual for this time of year. But there are some leaves budding on the trees:

And when a flash of colour caught my eye, a ways off the path, I clambered through the trees and found these:

So pretty in the still-brown forest; someone must have planted them, but they aren't visible from any of the paths, so they feel like a secret.

There's a golf course between campus and the rest of the city, and it borders right on campus:

The campus isn't very centralized, but the main open area, as much as there is one, is here:


This is the teepee you can see in that picture; I think it's used for student gatherings and ceremonial occasions.



And that's everything, for now at least. There are a number of lovely walks around campus, but I'll wait until the leaves are out, since they're all pretty bare still. Until next time!