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!

Science North Wander

This was a #wander around Science North here in Sudbury, Canada. @ScienceNorth is not just a museum but an interactive science centre with interactive science exhibits. You can search for fossils, interact with animals, build robots in the robotics lab, try various experiments, examine rock samples, use lapidary equipment, etc. -- very hands on. It's a science lover's paradise!


We went for a walk in the nice areas around the building before going in. Here is @AvenSarah with our son.

Sudbury (& all of this part of Canada) is located on the Canadian shield...

…essentially a big slab of rock.


The @ScienceNorth buildings are built on top of and into a giant protruding rock.

The outside of the building is made of stainless steel in honour of Sudbury's nickel mining, with large glass windows.

There's a boardwalk around Ramsey lake outside of @ScienceNorth.
The boardwalk hangs off the rock over the lake.

For some reason the raccoons had been particularly busy in one spot on the boardwalk.
Here's a bit of graffiti painted on the rock.
And here's a rustic old bench.
Here's a nice distance shot of the @ScienceNorth buildings.
And here are some nice shots of @ScienceNorth through the trees.
These are from the front entrance to @ScienceNorth.
You can see from inside how the rock is incorporated into the building.
And that's it, that's my #wander — hope you enjoyed it.

Northern Ontario

I'm delighted to have been asked to contribute to this blog of wanders; I was inspired by the Wombat wanders, and have enjoyed all the others posted here. I suspect my posts will be mainly nature walks, both because I don't get out into town on foot very often, and because there is not a vast amount of architectural interest in the town of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. But I hope I will manage to find a few places of interest, to myself at least. In the meantime, I will start by posting our Good Friday walk through one of the local conservation areas:

Although we've had lovely weather for the last several weeks, everything's still in early spring greyness (except the evergreens, of course). The pines are always beautiful, though:


There was still ice in the shady spots, in the ditches by the side of the path:


There were a few spots of colour, though:


There was evidence of recent beaver activity:


They must have been using the birches for their dam:

And here's their lodge:


We could see traces of their work all around (look for the pointy stumps):


Then we passed this bridge, over a little stream, small because of the beaver dam just upstream:


A few shots of the typical Canadian Shield landscape (though the predominance of birches, rather than spruce, is partly a result of the deforestation caused by the pollution of the Sudbury refineries in the last century; the reclamation and regreening process has been amazing, but the soil is still very thin in many places, and it's still at the stage of the fast-growing birches):


And a final picture, particularly appropriate for Sudbury: some slag from the nickel refinery, used as fill for the construction of the path through the conservation area!


It was a lovely day, even though the signs of spring were few and far between. Maybe later in the season I'll be able to show some of the beauty of the reviving greenery.