Generations of Environment alumni reconnect at Homecoming
Reunion celebrations spanned five decades, 12 events and two cities.
The Faculty of Environment welcomed alumni back for Homecoming on September 18 and 19, with approximately 140 alumni and guests registered for 12 events across Waterloo and Toronto.
This year’s celebrations brought together alumni marking milestones spanning nearly half a century: Man-Environment ’76, Planning ’81, Planning ’11, BES ’16, Planning ’16, BES ’21 and Planning ’21.
Across nine class champion-led reunion gatherings, alumni picked up conversations with former classmates, reconnected with friends they hadn’t seen in decades and revisited the people and places that shaped their time at Waterloo.
For the Man-Environment Class of 1976, celebrating 50 years, the weekend offered plenty of opportunities to look back. Members of the class even gathered on the steps of EV1 to recreate a class photo taken decades earlier.
Then, now and next
The past was also a big part of Dean’s Update: Then, Now and Next, where Dean Bruce Frayne took alumni through more than five decades of Faculty history.
Organized around the reunion years of 1976, 1981, 2011, 2016 and 2021, the presentation mixed archival photographs and stories with trivia, audience participation and plenty of laughter.
Some of the biggest reactions came from a photograph of David Suzuki speaking with Waterloo students in 1972, an image of Professor Colin De’Ath’s Health and Bodily Awareness class in 1976/77 and a Class of 2021 prompt that took the audience straight back to pandemic-era learning: “Who remembers… ‘You’re on mute’?”
The update then turned to Environment today. Current student Amelia Upper, Professor Mike Wood and Manager of Indigenous Initiatives, Amanda St. Marie shared stories reflecting the Faculty’s values of thinking differently, working together and acting with purpose. They joined Frayne at the end of the session to answer one final question: what gives you hope about our ability to meet the environmental challenges ahead?
Trivia winners also took home copies of Environment: The First 50 Years. The books had special relevance for members of Man-Environment ’76, who are marking their own half-century milestone with a digital class book capturing their stories and memories.
Coming home to Environment
Alumni gathered for the faculty reception, took class photos and tried their hands at making beeswax wraps, an appropriate Homecoming keepsake following the introduction of Environment’s new bee mascot earlier this year.
The formal Homecoming program was only part of the weekend. Class gatherings took place in a professor’s homes, Faculty spaces, Uptown Waterloo restaurants and Toronto venues.
And sometimes, there was no program needed. Former classmates spotted one another across a room, stories resurfaced after decades apart and groups quickly fell back into conversation.
For alumni who studied in the Faculty in the 1970s, graduates whose final years at Waterloo unfolded during the pandemic and those in between, there was plenty that had changed. Homecoming also offered a reminder of what hadn’t: the friendships, memories and connections that brought them back.
Become a class champion
Celebrating a milestone reunion soon? Help reconnect your class and bring your reunion to life. Contact the Environment alumni team to get involved.
