While June weather has been calling me to get outside (aside from bad air days!), I have still been working on a number of posts that I’m excited to share in the coming weeks. A couple of them have required more reading than usual to understand the issues, such as the recent provincial announcement about ‘breaking up’ Peel region and how that might impact Waterloo Region. So stay tuned for that piece, as well as a strange decision at Cambridge Council, and some thoughts on housing.
Until then, however, I wanted to remind you of some great events happening locally that you may want to get in your calendar now. It’s Tri-Pride tomorrow, from 12-8pm in Willow River Park (aka Victoria Park). The park will also host the 56th annual Multicultural Festival on June 24th and 25th. For me, this is the event that really feels like the start of summer. And, if you haven’t been downtown lately, you’ll want to check out Gaukel Street. This pedestrianized area offers seating, murals and street art by local artists, and lots of events. I’m particularly looking forward to the Gaukel Street Block Party on June 17th. Head on down to enjoy music all day with Good Co. Productions, face-painting, balloon twisting, food, and fun!
The combination of warm weather and a recent tweet about the importance of riding with a helmet has me thinking about cycling infrastructure. While I tend to wear a helmet while cycling, there are some pretty interesting articles about whether that’s needed and even the potential negative impacts of wearing safety gear such as helmets and vests. Either way, I hope it’s clear that imploring people to wear a helmet when riding a bike should not be our first priority when striving to create safe streets. As is often the case in such Twitter discussions, folks started debating the merits of cyclists riding on the sidewalk and who really breaks the most traffic rules. While I consider many of those discussions a distraction from the real task at hand (building safe streets), I did address some of the reasons cyclists may ride on the sidewalk or ‘break’ other traffic rules in a previous post, called Scofflaw Cyclists.
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Thanks for pointing out all the amazing things happening in June - and there’s so many more.
I love summer, but it’s also challenging. So many amazing local events, all happening on the same days. A good dilemma to have, and I’m grateful our region has so many interesting things happening. I want to do them all! It’s hard to choose and/or keep time for all the other “life” things.
My memory of the Multicultural Festival is from the time when I visited once with my partner at the time, before I fled for India.There was good food there, I saw people who had darker skin tones. What I remember most is a white woman expressing her upset feelings towards a group of (I forget but it may have been) Vietnamese people over their stall serving juices/shakes and that they were not approved to do so. There were children there, hearing her being upset really ruined the space for me, especially as this was after having fled a space that was supposed to be devoted to learning and education and having been verbally harassed while walking at midnight to recover from traumatizing events. Nobody seems to really recover from events like these out here, those wounds lay waiting in a permanently scarred state for some cruel person, group, or institution to trigger and rip those wounds right open and traumatize once more. What good is holding any events, attempting to create space for anyone when this is the state of the community that surrounds it.