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Red Dress Day at Waterloo raises awareness
By Angelica Marie Sanchez. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo News.
On May 5, the University of Waterloo community came together to observe Red Dress Day, also known as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S). The commemoration ceremony was led by Indigenous Knowledge Keeper, Elder Myeengun Henry, at B.C. Matthews Hall (BMH) Green. The Waterloo community was invited to help hang red dresses on trees around BMH Green to represent and honour the lives of the missing and murdered, while showing solidarity with their family and loved ones.
“We’re so proud that the University of Waterloo has taken on the commitment to Indigenous People by implementing these ceremonies because the students who graduate from this University will now know how important it is to know about Indigenous People,” Elder Henry said. “And when the students leave here, it’s an avenue for the future, for the people to find a way to close the gap in this country between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, and to stop the violence and the oppression against Indigenous People that have been plaguing our community since Christopher Columbus.”
MMIWG2S is an ongoing human rights crisis of gender-based and racialized violence in Canada. In 2019, the MMIWG National Inquiry released their final report which found that staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls amounts to race-based genocide. Between 1980 and 2012, more than 1,000 murders of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit People were recorded by the police. Where an estimate of more than 4,000 Indigenous people has gone missing during the same period.
Jaime Black is an Indigenous artist who created the REDress project — an art installation — by hanging empty, red dresses to represent the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit People. Since 2010, red dresses have become an important symbol of strength and honour the Indigenous women who have shared their story and the families who have lost their loved ones.
Read the rest of the article on Waterloo News
Waterloo Weather Station named for Ric Soulis as part of anniversary celebration
In February 2023, the University of Waterloo Weather Station celebrated 25 years of taking the region's temperature.
On Thursday, May 18, the Weather Station will celebrate the anniversary with an open house at the station and an official renaming ceremony. The station will be renamed the 'Eric D. (Ric) Soulis Memorial Weather Station.'
Professor Ric Soulis, a longtime Waterloo civil and environmental engineering professor who passed away suddenly in 2018, was the original driving force behind the establishment of the weather station more than 25 years ago. In mid 1997, the equipment for the Climatological Station was provided to the University of Waterloo by Meteorological Service of Canada, a division of Environment Canada. The station, which began operating in February 1998, is operated by the Waterloo Hydrology Lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and is used for teaching and research purposes. It is regularly relied on by the community for weather data. The station's coordinator, Frank Seglenieks, maintains a blog that provides meterological rundowns, summaries, updates, and runs the annual Weather Station Contest where you can guess the exact date and time that the mercury will climb to 20 degrees Celsius every year (This year a temperature of 20.3 °C was reached at at 12:15 p.m. on April 11, and the winner was Jeremy Karm).
The station is located beside Columbia Lake on the north campus of the University and is accessible from Westmount Road North.
Civil and Environmental Engineering invites the University community to an open house beginning at 3:30 p.m. on May 18 that includes tours of the facility, and the short renaming ceremony that will start at 4:30 p.m. Cupcakes and refreshments will be served. Register for the open house online.