Views from Brantford (2)

Here are some more pictures of Brantford for you to enjoy. 

Apartments and Station

Fire Fighting Department

W by Clarence Street

Railroad

Crossing

Sheri-Mar Park

Sheridan Street

Branches above Sheridan

Up Park Avenue

Down Marlborough Street

Grey Street, Brantford

Bus Stop 7

Views from Brantford (1)

 This morning was a nice but cool 8°C at Brantford, with few clouds and a slight breeze. I thought I’d take this chance to take some more pictures of the local area.

Research and Academic Centre

Wilkes House Gymnasium

Intersection of George St. and Darling St.

City Hall and Church

Superior Court of Justice

Bell Building

Statue of Alexander Graham Bell

City Hall and Court

The Courthouse

Wellington Street

The Courthouse from Charlotte Street

Brant County Museum and Archives

Contraption

Law Offices and Nelson Apartments

Chartered Accountants' Firm

The Growing Influence of Technology and the Internet

The purpose of BTM is to empower the Canadian workforce by educating entering members of the workforce, and integrating information and communications technology with the business world, as outlined by the CCICT.

Remember these guys?

As noted before, they are an organization of corporate and academic partners trying to ensure the two aspects of IT and business come together. Here are the members of CCICT:

Corporate Partners

Academic Partners (Find Laurier's logo!)

But why are all these institutions concerned about technology integrating into business? The fact of the matter is that technology has a large role in our lives. Technology quickens how fast we can accomplish tasks, and allows us to become more effective workers in general. And it continues to expand its influence right this instance. For instance, network through social media permeates North American human interaction. Facebook, the popular social networking site, boasts enough users that if it was its users would be considered its population, it would be the third largest country behind China and India.

Speaking of China, if you need more convincing on how networks, in particular the Internet is becoming more vital, let's look at the world's most populous nation and its connectivity to the rest of the world through the internet.

The People's Republic of China began the turn of the century with virtually not one member of it's vast population connected to the Internet. By 2010, the country has 384 million internet users, and since then the number has been on the rise. Domestic sites have become extremely popular, such as Tencent QQ, a social network that has 711.7 million users, making the site the largest online community on the planet. At a single instance, there are over 100 million accounts online simultaneously. The Internet and other networks proves to be an unprecedented phenomenon, which is why some countries decided to protect their citizen's rights to Internet connection.

The Republic of Estonia is a small Baltic nation located in northwestern Europe. In 2007, after a very controversial disagreement with the Russian Kremlin over a commemorative war memorial dedicated to Soviet soldiers who served in World War II, vigilante hackers against the Estonian government's stance in this incident launched a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks against the nation's infrastructure, effectively taking out the country for 32 days. Estonia's largest national bank, one of the prime targets in the attack, suffered a loss totaling in $USD 1 million within that time period. In the year 2000, Estonia had declared Internet access as a human right, highlighting the dependence the country's populace has on the network. At the same time, this incident shows the dangerous influence that hackers wield, being able to put a nation's public security at risk from their computers.

Internet Usage around the World

From examining the above cases from around the world, we can see that technology and information systems are vital today. As we progress into the future, this technology will assuredly become even more prominent. For this reason is exactly why the CCICT recognized that it is vital for the new generation of the Canadian workforce to be able to function in this digitized age. CCICT will ensure this by introducing BTM as a way to teach potential business leaders of ICTs. 

A Train

Only in Brantford.

View of Brantford's Downtown Core

In order to show what Brantford's like, I walked around Brantford's downtown and took pictures around campus. Perhaps they're not the greatest photos I could take, but I think they are useful to get a general feel of the area.

The Sanderson Centre, a theater associated with the school

Student Union Building (right) and church tower

Brantford Clock Tower, in the middle of downtown 

An arc

View of the nearby OLG Casino and adjacent parking lot

Grand River Hall (right) and exterior of Harmony Square

As you can tell from the skies in the photos, the weather began to worsen and I was unable to take more photos. Maybe soon, I'll be able to upload some more pictures later on.

How was residence at First Year like?

For my first year, I stayed at the Lawyers Hall residence. On the day I first arrived, I took a picture outside my window. 

View of Downtown Brantford, circa September of 2011

Throughout the school year, construction was happening around Lawyers Hall to renovate the neighboring defunct Brantford Expositor building into a new residence. Eventually, the alleyway between the residence (as well as the quickest route to my classes) was blocked off by construction. The workers were very diligent, beginning their work in the early hours of the morning, and throughout the day, usually when I was studying. When the Winter semester ended at April, I took another picture of generally the same view at the last day I spent at Lawyers Hall. This is what I saw outside my window:

View of Downtown Brantford, at the end of April 2012

Of course, the construction was only around my res at the time. Looking back at this picture, I now notice that I never went  to that sub store just across the street, though I did have an interest in checking it out eventually.

The City of Brantford

Now that you know all about the five different locations Laurier University operates from, it's time to learn more about the City of Brantford. 

The City of Brantford

Brantford is a city located in southern Ontario, Canada. At times, Brantford is known as The Telephone City, in honour of one of former residents, Alexander Graham Bell. From the outskirts of the city, Bell conducted the world's first telephone call to Paris, Ontario in 1876. Another famous individual from Brantford is Wayne Gretzky.  The city has renamed the intersection leading into Brantford the "Wayne Gretzky Parkway" and a recreational center the "Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre" in honor of the famous hockey player. 

Wayne Gretzky, playing for the New York Rangers

Other notable Brantfordians are the artist Lawren Harris, who was a member of the Group of Seven, and comedian Phil Hartman.

Lawren Harris, artist

Phil Hartman, comedian

If you are wondering why this blog is called "Life on Brant's Ford", instead of "Life in Brantford", it is because of this man.

Captain Joseph Brant

Born of the native Mohawk tribe, Thayendanegea fought in the Seven Years War and the American Revolution, allied to Great Britain in both conflicts. He was a particularly influential military and political leader among the indigenous population. After the decisive American victory, Brant led his followers and the Loyalists from the former province of New York northwards to British North America, also known as Canada.

The Mohawk people were rewarded a land grant along the Grand River of the Province of Upper Canada (Ontario, as we call it today) by the British Crown for their loyalty in the war. Brant and his people crossed the Grand River and established a permanent settlement at the Six Nations Reserve. This area around the Grand River became known as Brant's Ford. In 1847, European settlers established a settlement of their own near the river, and named that village after the area that surrounded it. Over time, this small village grew into a city that we know today as Brantford. 

The Five Laurier's?

If you are still wondering why the Laurier campus at Waterloo, Ontario (also where the University of Waterloo is located at, unsurprisingly) does not offer this BTM course that I've been talking about in past posts, it's probably because it's the wrong campus. That's right, Wilfred Laurier University has a grand total of five separate campus scattered across Ontario. The most commonly referred to campus is the big one over at Waterloo. 

The main Laurier Campus at Waterloo.

Established back in 1911, the school's official colors of purple and gold were determined in 1927. It was named in honour of Sir Wilfred Laurier, the seventh Prime Minister of Canada, who occasionally graces us with this presence on Canadian five dollar bills. 

$CAD 5 Bill with Prime Minister Laurier 

The mascot of the school is the Golden Hawk, which is also the name of the varsity teams that represent Laurier. The Hawks compete in baseball (men only), basketball, cross country running, curling, ice hockey, North American football (men only), golf, lacrosse (women only), rugby,  soccer (association football), swimming and volleyball.

Logo of the Laurier Golden Hawks

Another campus can be found at Kitchener, Ontario, where the historic St. Jerome's College has been the base of the Laurier social work program, the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work. The building itself was built in 1907, and it was renovated before Laurier Kitchener opened up in 2006. The campus serves 280 graduate students.

St. Jerome's College, renovated as Laurier Kitchener

More information on Laurier Kitchener can be found here: http://www.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=2202

Laurier also boasts a presence in the capital of the province of Ontario. (Fun Fact: it's Toronto. Ottawa, while also located in Ontario, is the national capital of Canada.) Laurier Toronto's offices supports co-op work placements and partnerships with the potential employers. Other tasks include: "student recruitment, alumni relations, university development activities and government relations." The office is able to host guest speakers, workshops and information sessions.

Laurier Toronto Campus at 130 King St. West, Toronto

More information can be found at: http://www.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=12128

Next up is the one over at Brantford, the campus that exclusively offers the BTM course to interested students, along with Journalism, Criminology and other courses. As stated in the first post, this campus was established on 1999 with a total of 39 students in its first year. Since then, the student body has extensively grown. The campus is heavily integrated with the surrounding downtown core of the City of Brantford. This blog will focus extensively on this particular campus.

The Carnegie Building, accompanied by impressionable youth and professor.

For more information on Brantford, and the BTM course in general, please read this blog.

Finally, there's the proposed Laurier Milton campus, to be located at Milton, Ontario, a fast-growing town that wanted to introduce a post-secondary institution into their community. Milton approached Laurier back in 2007, noting the university's success in developing the Brantford campus since 1999. Negotiations were held and by March 2008, both parties signed a memorandum of understanding to 'explore the possibility of establishing a campus and developing a "Milton Education Village"'. Since then, both the town and Laurier have kept updates on the situation to inform the public of developments in their agreements. 

The future site of Miltonian Post-Secondary Education?

More detail on updates at Milton may be found here: http://www.wlu.ca/page.php?grp_id=28&p=18470