"We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one." - Jacques Cousteau
For the last few months, a cohort of students from the UFV School of Creative Arts have been focused on project in a small, tucked away area that mixes innovative engineering, a natural setting, and accessible recreation with the creative and interpretive work being designed and executed by the students.
Gaudin Creek Trail, nestled off Dalke, is a detention pond for the area that evolved into a community trail. This site, with its local walking traffic and blank canvas concrete culverts, presented a unique opportunity for beautification and interpretation, and for the UFV students to learn and take part in the creation of community-oriented work for their VA392 course requirements.
The students developed designs and concepts for the trail and brought these to an engagement at the Leisure Centre in early June. Public feedback helped to inform their work and about 10 days later the students presented their ideas to a panel that included UFV and City staff, and we’re very grateful that local artist Dean Lauze was also willing to participate.
In the end, we proposed an amalgamation of elements from several concepts to have a thematic focus on water and the water cycle.
The accessible trail follows the Gaudin Creek community detention pond and its associated distribution channel; an innovative gravity-controlled storm water detention system that maintains minimum baseflows in the environmentally valuable Gaudin Creek, provides habitat enhancements and channels the overflow of higher magnitude storms into a detention pond.
This location was selected as a pilot project for combining creative elements with infrastructure or engineering elements. Since the project as it existed was already a fusion on necessary engineering works and park/trail design and natural areas, it seemed like the ideal place for this collaboration with UFV.
On August 11th we will be holding a small community event to unveil the student’s work from 6-7pm. I’m very excited to share what they’ve been working on, and how it encompasses beautification of infrastructure works (concrete culverts being painted with designs), artistic concept with how the trail and culverts are being linked to the greater water system around us, celebration of the bodies of water in that greater system through photos, and a sense of play and fun being incorporated into the experience.
Please join us from 6-7pm on Monday, August 11th at Gaudin Creek trail, Hutton Place cul-de-sac & Nottman Street at Dalke Avenue.
Continuing with the theme of waterways and water cycles, one of the Culture Days projects we are planning will be a celebration of the Fraser River on World Rivers Day (Sunday, September 28). Jack Poole Plaza will be animated with choral music, sending words down the river towards the ocean.
World Rivers Day is a celebration of the world’s waterways. It highlights the many values of our rivers, strives to increase public awareness, and encourages the improved stewardship of all rivers around the world. Rivers in virtually every country face an array of threats, and only through active involvement can we ensure their health in the years ahead.
The proposal for a global event to celebrate rivers was based on the success of BC Rivers Day, which was founded and led in western Canada since 1980. A World Rivers Day event was seen by agencies of the UN as a good fit for the aims of their Water for Life Decade and river enthusiasts from around the world came together to organize the inaugural event in 2005, which saw Rivers Day celebrated across dozens of countries. Last year, several million people in up to 100 countries celebrated the many values of our waterways.
Mission is a riverfront community, on one of the most important waterways in Canada. The Fraser River in connected to so many lakes, streams, rivers and parts of the water cycle, it is vital to a vast number of communities, people, nations and histories, it is a circulation system that feeds tradition, sport, industry, creativity and community.
For information on all Mission Arts and Culture projects, please visit mission.ca/culture
Questions or comments? Email mark.haney@mission.ca
