RESTORE COOTES

West Campus Eco-Art Project  A walking activity and site activation on McMaster’s West Campus.  West Campus Eco-Art Project is a project that incorporates creative walking activities and an artistic site activation connected with the West Campus Redesign Initiative at McMaster University. The initiative provides opportunities for connecting with nature through an on-line informational video, walking excursions and creative activities that deepen knowledge and experience with place in all its complexities (social history, citizen science, ecology and diversity).  Focusing on the Coldwater creek valley on McMaster’s West Campus, participants will learn about the history and unique features of the area and will be invited to then engage with the site through observation, sketching and stencil-making. Stencils will be used to paint text and image on the parking lot asphalt to delineate a blue line that marks an historic water route.  The project is supported by the McMas...

I'm stepping in to fill-in for the injured Wayne Terryberry on this interpretive hike - on the filled-in floodplain of lower Ancaster Creek, formerly Coldspring Valley Nature sanctuary,  currently McMaster Parking Lot M - also the site of a rehabilitation project that has peeled back the asphalt to create a 30 metre riparian zone to separate the cold-water creek from the parking. Lots to see and discuss, and this hike will have a lot more about the natural science of the space with McMaster Biology prof Susan Dudley.

Some interesting approaches to looking at rehabilitating a McMaster parking lot to become a coldwater wetland. I'll be on the panel discussing the historical aspects of the site, with other smarter people, 10am Thursday, October 25, 2018. Two days prior, Patricia Johanson  will be speaking about the way she uses art, site-specific art, to help heal the earth. Should be inspiring. Hope you can make it.

Yesterday's Forward With Integrity event at McMaster University featured poster boards of various projects funded through the FWI process initiated by McMaster President Patrick Deane. McMarsh: McMaster's Living Lab, Mapping Paradise: An Environmentally Responsible Art Initiative, McMaster Conservation Corridor Teaching and Research Facility are three projects that received FWI funding and that related directly to Restore Cootes' interest in rehabilitation of degraded natural spaces connected to Cootes Paradise. We've written (enthusiastically) about Mapping Paradise previously , but since I managed to get a photo of the display, I wanted to share it here as a way of acknowledging Judy Major-Girardin's continuing contribution to the natural world through her art classes. Somehow in my haste to visit the displays and hobnob with both the University President and VP Administration as well as students I work with who are actively contributing their talents, I...

Thanks to Judy Major-Girarden of the School of the Arts for continuing to bring ecology and art together at McMaster University. This follows up on her previous work with visiting artist  Gregg Schlanger, whose installation piece related directly to Cootes Paradise and Lot M in particular. Judy is helping bring attention and beauty to bear on the natural areas around campus.

Looking ahead, a vision for the west campus parking that scales back the west campus parking surface to replace asphalt with a 30 metre naturalized buffer zone that would eliminate surface run-off and catch basin drains that empty polluted water directly into Ancaster Creek. MacMarsh Drawing by Judy Major-Girardin At the lower end of the image is the area of the parking Lot M closed for over 4 years for a Hamilton Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) tank construction project; the vision for this section is phase one of an outdoor multi-disciplinary research and teaching facility that would focus on wetland restoration. As we know, the entire area of Lot M is the floodplain for lower Ancaster Creek , which was lost in the late 1960s as McMaster University wrested the property from the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) to create parking atop what was known as Coldspring Valley Nature Sanctuary. The spring creeks were diverted, Ancaster Creek was moved into a new channel to create mor...

The show just came down today, sad to see it go. We will not be sad to see the Lot M parking lot go, to be replaced by a restored functioning floodplain with trails and a research area for McMaster students and faculty.

For those of you unable to get to the Mapping Paradise show, I've added some images at the Facebook page (you don't need Facebook to access these pictures) -  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.229044487220700.1073741827.121004588024691&type=1&l=495a6ffa46

Visiting Artist Gregg Schlanger reviewing gallery show, photo Judi Major-Girardin When it sinks in. When it sinks in that visiting artist Gregg Schlanger chose to focus his considerable talent on McMaster's Parking Lot "M" for his contribution to the Mapping Paradise show, it ignited a thrill in me: here is art speaking a new language on a current environmental issue. That the issue is central to what I've been working on for the past several years felt like affirmation, yes, but more, like a new force has joined the cause, which has grown to include so many within just the last year. Gregg's work entitled "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" is the central defining artwork in a lively show of student work from Judy Major-Girardin's ART 2ER3 "Environmentally Responsible Studio" class at McMaster University. The form is a low wood frame box filled with water in the middle of the gallery, with a raised, flat platform - ...

Two academic exercises in mapping environmental issues come to bear on our little corner of the ecosystem: first, a project with the clever acronym GLEAM:  GREAT LAKES ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND MAPPING PROJECT (Website:  http://www.greatlakesmapping.org/home ) - University of Windsor biology professor Jan Ciborowski contributed to the map. He told CBC Hamilton that Lake Ontario and Hamilton Harbour are among the highest stress areas due to a combination of stressors: "[It's] not only population but also loss of habitat, the historical discharge of chemicals, and invasive species like zebra mussels and round gobi fish." It's a huge job, made up of many smaller parts. Fixing it means adding up the smaller parts. "It's the 'death by 1,000 cuts' idea: just restoring one thing may not be enough," Ciborowski said. "You have to fix one thing at a time, but just getting of one stressor won't fix the whole area." This attention ...

Banksy, "Parking" L.A. USA Like many others in the city, I find myself riding through Dundas Valley on my bicycle along the Rail Trail, enjoying the changing seasons, stopping to rest at a bench, maybe taking a lunch and eating it on a sunny hilltop. Yesterday, returning to the city across a newly-paved extension of the trail at its eastern reaches, we see train cars parked on the other side of a fence. The trail here parallels the train yard until the path veers to the right and joins the city street network. Those trains, or trains like them, once ran on tracks where we now walk and ride bicycles. There is a long history of trains bringing people between cities and towns, and farmer's produce to market here. The Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway (TH&B, also sometimes referred to as "To Hell and Back") was incorporated in 1884, but by 1998 the track between Hamilton and Brantford had been removed and the rail bed transformed into a crushed grave...

Nature feeds artists, nurtures imagination, roots us to our creativity. So it's nice to find a photo of local jazz singer and 2 time Juno Award nominee Diana Panton using Cootes Paradise as the setting for a publicity shot.  Diana Panton at the Desjardins Trail, source: google images Good luck to Diana at the 2012 Juno Awards!

Kaz Novak, the Hamilton Spectator On the trail of art and science TheSpec.com - Local - On the trail of art and science New York artist has RBG canvas Eric McGuinness The Hamilton Spectator (Nov 14, 2008) Restoring a well-worn nature trail partly paved with decades-old asphalt and over...