While Indigenous communities still lack access to safe drinking water, we continue to pollute and take for granted our most precious, life-sustaining resource
If you are a citizen of a major urban city who is lucky enough to have four walls and a roof to come home to and a livable income, it is likely that without even realizing it, you take water for granted. If you ever feel the slightest bit of thirst, you merely turn on the tap, maybe even run the water through a Brita filter and just like that your thirst is quenched.
People might not think about where that water comes from or what happens to it when it passes through our sewage systems. Nor about the fact that not far from us are Indigenous communities which do have to worry daily about the safety of their drinking water.
Although we all live within the same country, Indigenous communities have faced and continue to face a lack of access to clean drinking water, posing a prominent health concern for decades.
Although we all live within the same country, Indigenous communities have faced and continue to face a lack of access to clean drinking water, posing a prominent health concern for decades.
Since 1995 the Neskantaga First Nation community has been living under a drinking water advisory. For 29 years this community, much like other Indigenous communities, have had to boil their water before consuming. The uncertain health risk has led to some communities only drinking bottled water. Imagine the only trustable source of water you have access to throughout your life was water that came in plastic bottles.
On top of this, Ontario has been and continues to release only partially treated sewage water into Lake Ontario. This has led to our waterfronts being unsafe to drink from or even swim in. In addition, the Great Lakes are now polluted with microplastics.
Recently in Hamilton there has been an increase of sewage flowing into Lake Ontario. Not only has this been an ongoing issue, but it’s becoming worse as the years progress. As wastewater spreads into our waterways, it negatively impacts the biodiversity found within these ecosystems which further feeds into the negative spiral of poor water quality.
Recently in Hamilton there has been an increase of sewage flowing into Lake Ontario. Not only has this been an ongoing issue, but it’s becoming worse as the years progress.
The Hamilton sewage leakage in 2019 was reported to leak approximately 24 billion litres of wastewater into Chedoke Creek over four years. The latest reports on the progress of addressing this issue state that the city is still working on cleaning up the contamination of sewage.
We all share Earth’s water supply because water is fluid. How one region of the globe pollutes its water supply impacts all of us. Just because our pollution is localized to the Great Lakes doesn’t mean that this water hasn’t travelled internationally.
Our communities are all connected. Thus, we need to do better in how we treat our water before we return the water we have used to nature. If you have not yet experienced direct impacts of this issue, we can assure you that consequences are beginning to appear.
For example, there have been frequent E. coli warnings at the Ontario beaches this summer preventing people from enjoying the water. The dangerous levels of E. coli have been attributed to the poor management of rainwater during storms, leading to a backlog of sewage seeping into our beach water.
We hope that we can safely assume our readers believe that access to safe drinking water is a human right. Water being a human right means that we ought to ensure everyone has access to it and that we treat it with great care.
The next time you go to turn on the tap, think about why you and not someone else doesn’t have to fear they won’t be hydrated one day.
The next time you go to turn on the tap, think about why you and not someone else doesn’t have to fear they won’t be hydrated one day. We encourage you reflect on the immense privilege so many of us possess and speak up about what today should no longer be an issue.
By: Saadia Shahid
On Feb. 27, the McMaster Students Union promoted its three-day education campaign “Compost at Mac” which highlighted several composting bins around campus. The campaign encouraged students to locate areas within the university where compost bins should be placed.
This was done in efforts to reduce the waste produced by students and also to promote composting.
Another table that I came across in the McMaster University Students Centre asked students to make pledges to limit their use of disposable items. I pledged to limit my use of plastic cutlery, but how feasible is that really?
As a student, making sustainable choices is difficult when there are plastic straws and cutlery distributed all over campus. It is hard to make the environmentally-conscious choice when those items are so easily accessible.
It is easy for the MSU to put up boards encouraging students to help combat climate change, but would it not make more sense for McMaster Hospitality Services to abolish the use of plastic cutlery and disposable items altogether? This would probably help reduce the carbon footprint of the entire university.
This may seem like a drastic change, but the ease lies in switching to more environmentally-friendly and sustainable options like steel cutlery and straws. Reusable mesh grocery bags should be also sold on campus to make it easier for students to adopt sustainable habits.
In making these changes, the MUSC eating area could be also revamped into a proper food court with steel cutlery and plates given out in La Piazza. Students can then return to these items to workers stationed at the food court.
A system like this is already implemented at plenty of malls with food courts and helps to reduce waste due to the availability of reusable cutlery. The cost may seem a little high, but it is not higher than the one we will have to pay due to the effects of climate change.
This initiative can start during Welcome Week with new students introduced to the green changes.
Speaking from a student’s point of view, these changes would make things easier for us and also be more beneficial for the Earth. An institution equipped with the funding makes a bigger difference than opposed to individual students struggling to find sustainable alternatives.
The MSU has done a lot of things that students didn’t vote for, such as starting the composting initiative. They encourage us to follow along as it is a change for the better, but they must at least make it easier for students to adopt.
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From April 6 to April 17, the Studio Art program’s 2019 graduates will present the annual SUMMA exhibition. Entitled Counterpoint, the show will be curated by Hamilton textile artist Hitoko Okada. For the first time in over 30 years, the McMaster Museum of Art will not house the show due to its ongoing updates. The exhibition will instead take place at the Cotton Factory.
McMaster Studio Arts is a small program, with the fourth year class consisting of only 19 artists. With instruction on a range of media and a focus on environmentally responsible practices, the program has produced diverse artists who care about the world around them. Counterpoint means “to combine elements” and is fitting considering the amalgamation of their various styles and the balance they try to strike within their individual works.
The graduates organized the exhibition themselves. While it gave them a chance to learn more about the lives of professional artists, it also taught them to work together. Coordinating among 19 people was not easy and after some bumps in the road to find the perfect venue, they are all relieved to see the show finally coming together.
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Fernando spends a fair amount of time in nature, drawing and photographing the landscape around her. Back in the studio, she takes the colours, textures and lines from the environment to create the emotional and abstract landscape paintings that she’ll be displaying at Counterpoint.
“For me, [Counterpoint is] about… this the balance between the organic and the artificialness in my work… [I]t's taking… different colors… , textures and mark making and creating harmony and balance between all those different things within one image and creating a sort of peacefulness in that work,” Fernando explained.
Throughout the process of organizing the SUMMA show, Fernando learned how to survive as an artist. She feels that she now has an art practice of her own and regards her peers as professional contacts. As she leaves McMaster to pursue teaching, she will take those skills and contacts with her.
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For Lee, Counterpoint refers to the way her class’s wildly different works complement each other. Having spent four years critiquing and supporting one another’s practice, the exhibition represents the harmony between their different themes and materials.
The Korean-Canadian artist explores traditional Korean materials in her work. She portrays these traditional materials in a modern, digital format and then incorporates threading to unite the two ideas.
“I always get confused between Canadian and Korean aspects of myself… [T]his sense of detachment, trying to attach to something or being porous, kind of like a sponge, absorbing a lot of different cultures in order to make up my singular identity. And just like maintenance of this traditional and modern form of art,” Lee said.
Currently aiming to go into interactive design, Lee feels she learned the reality of being an artist. She has been exposed to the business side of the art world by learning to solve problems creatively and produce even without inspiration. The program’s push toward using materials to convey subtle themes has evolved Lee’s art practice.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="272" gal_title="Grad Expo - Sean"]
Cooper didn’t have a lot of purpose behind his art when he entered the studio arts program. Four years later, he feels he is a more deliberate artist and currently explores ideas around memory and coming of age. At Counterpoint, he will be presenting acrylic paintings of Westdale, where he grew up.
“[W]ith my work, I just try and talk about what that experience was like… [D]ifferent places… might not necessarily be important to other people but I guess I have certain memories there,” Cooper said.
The fact that this is the last art gathering of his university career saddens Cooper, but he knows the entire class is proud of the show. Despite the challenges they faced, they demonstrated that they could accomplish anything with collaboration. The different backgrounds and art practices of the class would not seem to mesh, but Cooper feels a nameless common thread unites their work.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="270" gal_title="Grad Expo - Delaney"]
McVeigh believes process and environmentalism brings together her diverse class’ work. A self-identified environmental artist, she explores interactions between living things with one another and with inanimate objects. Having grown up in a small town near Point Pelee National Park, she spent a lot of time in nature growing up.
McVeigh’s work for Counterpoint is a series of photolithographic prints. This long and old process of creating images is meaningful to her. She tries to present her dystopian and nonsensical images in an aesthetically pleasing way with vintage elements.
“I use a lot of vintage imagery in my work… [A]fter World War II… there was the baby boom and they created a very unstable environment where it was a throwaway society. Nothing was fixed, it's all just thrown away… And then it wasn't until the ‘90s when the environment became a very serious topic,” McVeigh explained.
Her work is personal, but the program has made her more comfortable with speaking about her art. By sharing these narratives with her classmates and professors, they all grew close. She anticipates that this graduation show will be bittersweet, but there is a lot from her time at McMaster that she will be taking with her. She learned to critique her own work and reach out for help, which will help her as she pursues a career in sustainable architecture.
After graduating with her Bachelor of Fine Arts with minors in theatre and film studies and music, Conti will be going into teaching. Her teaching program will focus on educational art programming in the community, something that Conti is an advocate for. She is excited about the fact that Counterpoint will bring her program’s work off campus and into the Hamilton community.
Conti will be showing a five-piece installation consisting of floating boxes with deconstructed paintings in them. Her work revolves around her experiences with depression and anxiety to open a dialogue about mental health.
“[S]o for this body of work, there's five different stories to which I'm telling, one of which is the story about my mother's cancer. Normally… they're more negative experiences that I'm trying to understand in a more positive way. So my strokes are colors that are brighter in trying to… accept these experiences and… learn from them but also move forward,” Conti explained.
With her theatrical background, Conti sometimes feels as if she is performing herself. There is vulnerability in her portrayal of her life and she explores privacy versus vulnerability in her work. However, her time at McMaster gave her the confidence to tell her story through theatre, music and art.
The graduation show will open with a reception at the Cotton Factory from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 6. The graduating class looks forward to sharing their work with the Hamilton community.
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On March 1, creative co-working space Steel City Studio threw a grand reopening celebration to mark the completion of its expansion and renovation. The changes, which began last November, brought better workflow to the space and will allow the studio to grow as a business.
The studio is now 2,000 feet larger than it once was. When the second floor unit beside the studio became available, cofounders Nadine Ubl and Jennifer Donaldson jumped on the chance to increase their square footage. By knocking down the walls between these two units, Steel City Studio now enjoys a brighter and more open space.
Beyond expanding, the renovation involved refinishing the oak flooring on the second floor, replacing the front door with a glass door, changing the tile at the front of the studio, adding a double glass door at the entrance and bringing the wiring up to code. It was important to Ubl and Donaldson to stay within the existing layout and maintain the charm of the 120-year-old building.
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The most significant updates involved making the space more environmentally friendly. The old windows facing east and south were replaced by more efficient windows. Wherever they changed the light fixtures, they also changed the light bulbs from halogen to LED to decrease their power draw.
“[P]art of what we do is keeping in mind [the] environmental component. So by sharing a lot of resources, it means that we can sort of lessen our environmental impact,” Ubl explained.
The studio has become green in more ways than one. The most impressive part of the renovation is the moss wall and ceiling on the second floor. The greenery was done by Greenteriors, one of the businesses that uses space at Steel City Studio. While designed to absorb acoustics in the new open floor plan, the moss also serves to inspire the makers and benefit their health. It is also a sign of new beginnings.
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To celebrate these new beginnings, the studio hosted an event to share the refreshed space with the community. They filled the space with artwork by the Hamilton Female Artists Collective and provided snacks, a cash bar and live acoustic music by musician Murray Thiessen.
They also announced the winner of their Spring Start-up Contest. The contest, which was ran through their socials, was open to creative entrepreneurs, artists and small businesses. They then invited the nominated makers to share their vision and tour the studio. The lucky winners were awarded two months of free studio space.
“[W]e hear a lot that people want to gain access to the studio, but they're not really sure how to go about starting or, financially, they're not sure if they can make that commitment. So the point in this contest was to give someone the opportunity to get started in the space for a couple of months and help them to grow their business so that they can sustain staying in the studio,” Ubl said.
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Helping small creative businesses grow is the main goal of Steel City Studio. Not only does the studio offer space on a membership basis, it also provides flourishing businesses with business knowledge and supplies. An example of this is the six-week program, Open Co-tivation, which kicks off on March 12 and is designed to help entrepreneurs keep one another accountable.
In addition to these programs, the studio hosts various workshops, such as the upcoming Screenprinting Basics on March 16. And on March 30, the business will be hosting its seasonal Open Studio, which allows members of the community to check out the studio as well as meet and buy from makers.
Expanding the space will allow the studio to further meet its mandate and grow its influence in the city. There is a definite benefit to being able to work with, support and seek advice from other makers. The studio wants to continue to cater to individuals who are just starting creative endeavours.
“I think what we hope to be is that next step for people that are transitioning into either work in a creative field or into their own business…. [T]hey had everything at their fingertips while they were at school and then when they go to leave it's like ‘okay and now I'm doing this from home, how do I do that?’ So we definitely want to solidify that a little bit,” said Ubl.
Steel City Studio occupies a unique niche in Hamilton by bridging the gap between the maker and start-up cultures. By expanding its space, the studio has more room for Hamilton’s small creative businesses to grow in.
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