Canada Day 2008 adds up to smash hit

by Patricia Duguay, CPA

UW’s 24th Canada Day was a great success by any measure. This year’s party brought out approximately 70,000 people. (Many of them can be seen relaxing at the end of the day around Columbia Lake, in this photo by Heather Fritz.) That number matches last year's, despite the fact that this wasn’t an anniversary year for the city or the university.

Without question, this event is the largest "town and gown" (partnership of university and community) boasted by any Canadian university, and quite probably any university or college anywhere.

Today’s UW Canada Day party comes from humble beginnings 24 years ago when students, concerned that they were developing a negative reputation in the local community, decided they wanted to "give something back" to the families in Waterloo.

As the event grew, so did the task of managing it, and so the Federation of Students and UW became involved in overseeing the enormous job of creating a fun-filled day for the families in our community. All 31 members of the volunteer steering committee are UW students. The committee is created in May and works tirelessly until 2 p.m. on July 1 when the real work begins!

Interesting facts about UW’s Canada Day celebration:
• Years in the making: 24
• Volunteers: 220 (approximately 102 from UW, 118 from local high schools)
• Food vendors on site: 8
• Student societies involved: 3
• Community sponsors: 19
• Buns sold: 2880 (only from UW concession stand)
• Port-a-potties: 32
• Recycling bins: 80
• Campus police on duty: 4
• Regional police directing traffic: 7
• Liters of sunscreen used by volunteers: 33 (15 x 220 ml=33 liters)
• Arts and crafts vendors: 20
• Community activities in place: 10
• Children’s stage performers: 8
• Performers on the main stage: 10
• Glow sticks sold: 4212 (proceeds to community charities)
• Smiling faces because the weather co-operated: about 70,000

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UW student enables low-cost radio in India

Aaditeshwar Seth (left), a doctoral student in UW’s school of computer science, has been awarded $200,000 for creating software that allows a computer to become a digital radio transmitter and reduces the cost of setting up a community news station in India.

Seth is one of this year’s winners of the Knight News Challenge, which gives awards for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. Says the Knight Foundation about Seth’s award: “This project will connect rural radio stations to the Internet by using new software and computer-based FM transmitters. The innovations will significantly reduce the cost of creating the stations in India — from an estimated $50,000 to $2,500.

“India is issuing a new round of community radio station licenses, so the proposal is timely. The effort will start by helping nonprofits already operating in India launch radio stations.”
Seth’s research in the CS school “is focused,” says the foundation, “on low-cost wireless communication infrastructures for rural areas, including developing hardware and software for starting radio stations in rural areas. He earned his BTech degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, India, in 2002. Prior to his PhD work, Seth founded Kalzoom Technologies, an Indian software company. He also co-founded a student organization at the University of Waterloo that gives technical support to nonprofit organizations in India.”

The India project is one of 16 “ideas to fund innovative digital projects around the world” that were awarded a total of $5.5 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It’s the second year of the $25 million Knight News Challenge, which funds “digital information innovations that transform community life”.

Announced at the Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas in May, this year's projects “will touch people in rural India, the townships of South Africa and on college campuses across the United States, among other places.” The prizes ranged from $15,000 to $876,000, and were given to individuals, philanthropic organizations and for-profit businesses.

Several of the projects, says the foundation, “focus on bridging the digital divide, such as one to deliver news by text message to inexpensive cell phones used in developing countries. Often these mobile phones are the only modern communications devices in a community. Other projects sought to develop tools that make it easy for anyone, not just technology specialists, to join the digital conversation.”

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Notes, mostly about architecture

A note from the School of Architecture: "This weekend Architecture presents 'Chora: Daedalus and the Labyrinth,' an ensemble of performances, environments, and architectural installation that explores being, making and thinking through the story of mythology's first architect, builder of the Labyrinth of ancient Crete, and inventor of ingenious and devious mechanisms: Daedalus. Five distinct scenes span across time and space, media and genre, to explore the often paradoxical facets of the promethean hero and his wonder-working artifacts.Traditional theatre, musical performance, dance, spectacle, and 50 kinds of amazing craziness come together in a narrative that both celebrates the power of creativity and questions the costs at which we create.
"Chora is being hosted by Cornerstone Home Interiors (90 Main Street, Cambridge) who have generously donated use of their newly renovated space. Performances will be Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with bar and reception before and after. The event coincides with the Mill Race Folk Festival which is taking place adjacent to the site. Tickets are $5 and are available for advance purchase at the Melville Cafe (7 Melville Street South, Cambridge). Tickets will also be sold at the door. For more information or to reserve tickets, please see the Chora website: www.studentarchitecture.com."

There’s another triumph for architecture faculty members Kathy Velikov and Geoff Thün, who were recently named winners of the annual Young Architects Forum Competition. The two, who are also in professional practice in the Toronto-based firm RVTR, have received an honorable mention at the Living Steel 3rd International Architecture Competition for Sustainable Housing, held in Helsinki. The competition presented the task of creating energy-efficient, single-family, detached housing for the extreme conditions of northern regions. The houses, to be located in the Russian city of Cherepovets, are to minimize climate change emissions and withstand temperature extremes, but be affordable to build. RVTR’s response, “Latitude”, is a system of prefabricated highly engineered lightweight steel modular units that act as an energy-efficient building envelope, integrated structural system, space-defining elements and infrastructural chassis for building services. The interiors of all of the houses extend to the exterior, fostering a healthy lifestyle of outdoor living, local food production and communal recreational space, responding to long-term change in the local climate.

Three female computer science students have received funding from the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships, operated by Google Corp. in honour of one of the first women to earn a doctorate in computer science. Christina Boucher receives $5,000 as an Anita Borg Scholar; Alma Juarez-Domiguez and Georgia Kastidou each receive $1,000 as finalists in the program. All three are PhD students in UW's David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Finally, a correction to Friday's note about the "win a bike" promotion. The bicycle on display at Pastry Plus in Needles Hall may be won by someone who purchases "any Coca-Cola beverage with a combo," and takes part in the associated draw, explains Allison Kitson of Food Services. She adds: "As a note, no purchase is necessary, as per contest rules, but anyone wishing to obtain a ballot can do so by visiting the FS office in TH 5."

CPA staff

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