Daily Bulletin

Brewery sculpture unveiled today

But the history of the community's 140-year association with Labatt Breweries will be remembered with the installation of "John Labatt Barley Field," a sculpture by UW fine arts professor Jane Buyers (right, photo by Barbara Hallett).

The work will be officially unveiled in a ceremony at noon today at 62 Park Street (near the corner of Norman Street in central Waterloo).

Consisting of 61 barley "plants" with hand-forged steel leaves and stalks with hammered copper flower heads, the work is "planted" in a landscaped four-meter circle, surrounded by a new housing development on the site of the former brewery.

"In addition to referencing brewing, the field of agricultural plants is clearly readable as a marker for loss in a number of different ways -- the loss of agricultural land, the disappearance of nature in the urban landscape and the elimination of agriculturally based industry which historically has been the dominant economic force in the Waterloo Region," says Buyers in a statement submitted as part of the proposal for her work. "While serving as a reminder of the past, the sculpture also embodies a sense of transformation and rejuvenation that parallels the new life of the site."

Funds for the sculpture, the jurying process and site preparation were donated by Labatt Breweries when the company sold the land for development.

Non sequitur The Bulletin has some careful, not to say literal-minded, readers, which explains a note I received by e-mail yesterday. "I don't normally complain about things that are typos or something similar," it said, "but this seemed a bit unfortunate: In the item today titled 'Non-credit course teaches branding,' it eventually says 'As always, the non-courses and training programs . . .'. I hope that's not a Freudian slip."

Restoration work starts after fire

There isn't an official figure yet, says Dave Reynolds, manager of REV and the Columbia Lake townhouses, but he noted that the Waterloo Fire Department gave an initial estimate of $100,000 in damage. The fire, started by a candle about 7 a.m., destroyed the living room area of the three-storey townhouse and did extensive smoke damage to the bedrooms upstairs.

"We're rebuilding," said Reynolds. He added: "The only thing that really matters is that the occupant is safe. We can't replace her, but we can replace carpets."

Most of the furniture in the house belonged to the university. There was also some damage to the tenant's personal property, Reynolds noted.

The house is the middle one of five that were built as "tutors' houses" in 1967, for faculty members involved with the lives of students in Village I (and REV, formerly Village II, when it was added to campus in 1969). More recently some of the houses have been rented to members of the residence life staff, and one of them is currently being used for offices of the food services department.

The walls between the houses are solid concrete, and there was no damage to the neighbouring houses, Reynolds said.

Students write stock exchange software
-- from the UW Recruiter newsletter for co-op employers

For many years, the lives of traders at Scotia Capital had been complicated by the paperwork that went along with processing and tracking their trades. Since much of the work was manual, there was always the chance that errors might be made and left undiscovered. In order to improve the system, management at Scotia Capital decided to develop a new equity trading application that would, among many other things, provide traders with an electronic tool to manage their positions and various books throughout the day. It was an ambitious project and the system they had in mind was to be the first of its kind in all of Canada.

Since it had been determined that the code for the application would be written in Java, the first step for both Mike and Jim was to quickly research and learn the computer language that neither had worked with before. Given business models and development standards for code production, the two then collaborated with a variety of business analysts, developers, and user reps, i.e., the traders themselves, to create the "Trade Management" application.

Both Mike and Jim devoted two hectic work terms to this project and their efforts were rewarded when one version of the system was successfully implemented in the summer of 1999. According to Heather Lloyd, Assistant General Manager, Front Office Development, the reaction of staff and management "was extremely positive" when the software was first introduced, and continues to be to this day. The new system is fully automated, with no manual work involved. Trades can be tracked through an internal clearing system and traders can easily view them via html -- reducing most of the work to a point and a click. Overall, there has also been a considerable difference in quality, as the number of mistakes and the processing time have been drastically reduced. . . .

Jim and Mike felt that their work terms at Scotia gave them much more than just increased technical ability. In fact, Mike stressed that the lessons he learned about corporate structure and management were more important to him than the technical skills he acquired. . . . Mike cited his biggest benefit from working for Scotia Capital as the "development of working relationships with managers and other employees." Jim agreed, stating that "building relationships is more important than building the application."

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
| Yesterday's Bulletin
Copyright © 2000 University of Waterloo