#Region of Waterloo

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

This episode, Ariel speaks to Sam Nabi about One Million Neighbours, a project bringing together the voices of local non-profits that envisions the future of Waterloo Region once the population has reached one million. Sam discusses the impetus for the project, providing a voice for the voiceless, the issue with grant applications, funding the future, being proactive instead of reactive to harsh policies, and much more. What might an abundant, inclusive, resilient (Ariel says: solarpunk) city look like on the human level? Who lives there, what do they value, and what are their daily lives like? And what does it look like to take action now at the regional/municipal level to ensure that utopian vision?

[the-green-bucks-fire-hydrants]

Brigadier by Clow Canada. May, 2025. Photo by the green buck. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

[douglasdouven]

A rural October day somewhere northeast of Kitchener, Ontario Canada. Ten years ago! 14/10/19. D.e.D.

[bucktransit]

A southbound Ion Light Rail train at Victoria Park Station in downtown Kitchener, Ontario. May, 2025. Photo by the green buck.

[the-green-buck]

King Street, Downtown Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. May, 2025. Photo by the green buck.

[nickstanley]

Galt (Cambridge) Ontario

[archfeykoi]

trying to dress jaskier in chapter one of my new fic vs knowing that describing a color as burgundy implies the existence of france

[carbombrenee]

Pine Hill Pioneer Cemetery Waterloo Region, April 2023

[allthecanadianpolitics]

In the wake of the Ford government’s decision to dissolve the Region of Peel, local politicians in Vaughan are pushing the province to give the city its independence from York Region, setting the stage for the next battle over municipal governance in the Greater Toronto Area.

The province is expected to appoint facilitators to review the regions of York, Durham, Halton, Niagara, Simcoe and Waterloo to examine whether the two-tier systems should be dissolved, amalgamated or left intact. It’s part of the government’s push to streamline housing construction approvals in Ontario’s most populous cities.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[laurelrusswurm]

DONATE at https://radiowaterloo.ca/how-to/donate/ I created the audio track of this radio promo for the 2025 Spring Fundraiser for Waterloo Region's best Community Radio Station.

Radio Days

My mother appeared on the legendary CKNX Radio Station (home of the CKNX Barn Dance) in Wingham, Ontario before she'd even met my dad. A shared love of country music got my parents together, and they became the "Pine River Sweethearts."

My father hosted his own country & western music radio show on a (or maybe the) local radio station in Kitchener-Waterloo (which is now part of Waterloo Region).

CKMS Radio Waterloo

is a CRTC regulated Community Broadcaster, located at 102.7 on the FM dial, broadcasting over the airwaves in Waterloo Region, Ontario. Many of the shows generate podcasts or videos for the ⁨station's @RadioWaterloo⁩ Youtube Channel. In the 21st century it can also be streamed anywhere in the world online at https://radiowaterloo.ca/

Ordinarily a donation of $24 buys you a year long CKMS membership, which comes with a certificate to host your own broadcast radio show, which is why I've included the black and white photo of my Dad, Lynn Russwurm, with my brother Lance Russwurm, and mother, Laura Gaede Russwurm, performing on Dad's radio show. My promo centers around the CKMS opportunity, which cost just $20 during the week long fundraising campaign.

Although the fundraiser is over, the non-profit volunteer driven CKMS can always use any donation you care to make. (And if you mention this video, you might still be able to get the reduced rate!)

DONATE at https://radiowaterloo.ca/how-to/donate/

Picture Track

To turn it into a video, I added various photos I've taken at CKMS over the years, beginning with the Agriculture show, where host Jeff Stager interviewed my husband Bob Jonkman, when he was a candidate for the Green Party of Canada in 2015. These were photographed at the previous CKMS location in Waterloo (next door to Ethel's Lounge). In his post-politics life, Bob began volunteering at CKMS, and now involved in some show work, as well as providing technical support.

Photo Credits

Appearing in the video:

• Jeff Stager (CKMS "The Agriculture Show:) • Bob Jonkman (GPC 2015, GPO 2018, CKMS show host) • Michael Harris (2015 Ontario Progressive Conservative Party MP) • David Weber (Green Party of Ontario, 2018) • Lynn Russwurm • Lance Russwurm • Laura Gaede Russwurm • Ethan Russell (Green Party of Canada, 2025) • Maya Bozorgzad (New Democratic Party, 2025) • Darren Bondy (Maya's campaign manager)

With the exception of my b&w Russwurm family radio station photo and the two CKMS montage screencap sequences from CKMS shows featuring David Weber and Bob Jonkman (2015), and Maya Bozorgzad and Darren Bondy (2025).

Sound Credits:

I had a lot of fun putting this together, and would like to thank all the creators who shared their sound work under sharable free culture licenses at Freesound.

pistol_riccochet.ogg by Diboz https://freesound.org/s/213925/ License: Creative Commons 0 [ MPooman ] Horse Sounds (SE515) (High Quality) by MPooman https://freesound.org/s/681727/ License: Creative Commons 0 CGC-castanets by suonisordi https://freesound.org/s/737094/ License: Creative Commons 0

Because I used only the 1st musical phrase (a fraction of a second) from the following piece by LittleAlienXXX (credited below) I believe it would constitute a "fair use," and would not require attribution under copyright law. Regardless, as a free culture advocate, if at all possible I always provide attribution, even of public domain works.

The_good_the_bad_&_the_ugly_02.wav by LittleAlienXXX https://freesound.org/s/369402/ License: Attribution 3.0 I also used my own recording of wild birdsong in the morning in my own back yard... which I'm planning to upload to Freesound shortly, along with a few other sound files. (Licenced CC0, of course!)

DONATE at https://radiowaterloo.ca/how-to/donate/

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

In this bonus episode, Ariel talks with Brooklin Wallis, Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate for Kitchener Centre in the upcoming snap Ontario Election. This isn’t an endorsement, but a discussion that hopes to prod solarpunk talking points into the realm of politics. Brooklin even describes herself as someone with solarpunk leanings! How does that reconcile with participation in the democratic system in Ontario, Canada? What are her solarpunk goals?

NB: We drop a bunch of hyper-local references to places. This link will be helpful for listeners who aren’t familiar with the cities in Southern Ontario: https://gisgeography.com/ontario-map/

Links: https://brooklinwallis.ontariondp.ca/ https://www.instagram.com/brooklinwr/ https://www.ontariondp.ca/ https://www.ndp.ca/

[the-green-bucks-fire-hydrants]

Brigadier McAvity by Clow Canada. May, 2025. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Photo by the green buck

[firstblacksproject]

SHORT PROFILE

Name: Maedith Radlein Place of birth: Kingston, Jamaica Current Occupation: Retired First black person to: First Black principal for the Waterloo Region District School Board

"I now use my voice to bring awareness and to remind people of these things, because these barriers certainly exist. I find that increasingly as a result of things like Black Lives Matter. You know, the great advocacy being done by the Indigenous peoples in Canada, Me Too movement, there's a lot more awareness that the status quo is not okay."

Did you aspire to become the first Black person to become a principal for the Waterloo Region Public School Board?

No, it was not an aspiration. It happened because I think timing, having become vice principal after a couple years I applied to the principal's pool and was successful. At that time, I was the only principal appointed. So, there was another Black VP, but she applied later than I did to become a principal.

What obstacles did you face getting to your position generally and racially?

It's hard to say, I can't say a faced any obstacles. I think when I started thinking about barriers was when I was being assigned to schools, because every year you were asked to, you know, indicate your interest in your goals. I always asked that, I put in a school that had that had, you know, a lot of ethnic diversity and so on, and I never was. I always wondered about that, why I was sent to schools where there were very few people that look like me, because once I started on the principal path, it occurred to me that the importance of my doing that lay the fact that I was a role model for students, the board had done an equity audit in 2009.

"A student said, you know, I can't be a teacher, because I'm not white."

I realized that the role modelling was really important. And despite my request to be placed in schools that you had a high percentage of racialized students I never was.

You're currently running for elected Board of Trustees. Are you facing any obstacles running for that right now?

I do a lot of volunteer work, and I use those positions as an opportunity to bring awareness. So, I use those positions to give voice to concerns I have about decision making that forget, you know that not everybody has the same life experience. Not everybody has the same life background, many cases. 

It can be something as simple as economic status, a lot of what we do, and a lot of what is offered, you know, is forgetting that not everybody is able to afford certain things or has access to certain things, and I think that applies also to race. The fact that many decision makers are for the most part, Canadians, and so they assume that everybody's experience is like their experiences, which of course it's not.

When I was working as an administrator, it was common for me to go to meetings, where issues came up in schools, and we'd be talking about parents and you know, it could be a racialized parent. The administrators at the meeting would make the comment, "oh, the parent came into play the race card," no reflection in terms of what do they mean by that? And what would lead them to say something, and immediately demonized the parent for calling attention to the fact that there may have been some prejudice, bias, discrimination, racism, and not reflecting at all and practice.

I think this continues in our schools, which is one of the reasons I'm going to continue to speak up, but the importance of self-reflection, where if somebody says, this is my experience, instead of dismissing it, to say, so tell me about that, and to validate the person and to understand that your experience is not everybody's experience. So rather than dismissing and demeaning, we want to listen and to accept that there are different realities.

What did you enjoy about your position? And what did you learn?

I love the students; I had a great time with students. I had a gift, I was able to remember names, so I knew my students’ names. I learned about them, and I enjoyed the students. I enjoyed the parents that I got to know in terms of their child's learning, but also you know that their children have lives outside of school and you become a part of that.

I think teaching is a wonderful profession, you have young lives that you have the privilege of being a part of and children are just delightful. They have no hang ups, they have no agendas. They see what they think, they are what they are, and I think it was a real privilege not only to teach, but to teach in the public system because it keeps you humble. It makes you realize that you live in your bubble, you are middle class or whatever bubble you live in, and there is a world outside that bubble that thinks may think differently, lives differently, has different values, an extremely enriching experience, and a real privilege to be there.

So, I learned a lot I learned about people I learned about cultures I learned that, you know, we need to respect each other. 

"In a public school, there is every religion, every culture, every language, and you realize that we are people, we are all the same, there is no other. Because we are the same, and so that was a great learning. I had fun."

[feigeroman]

Saturday Movie Night: Terminus (1961)

In this early example of what we would now call fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, the daily rhythms and dramas of a big railway station are captured to perfection, as we are treated to a supposedly typical day in the life of London's Waterloo station. Over the course of 24 hours, the gateway to the south plays host to all manner of human interactions: triumphs and tragedies; grief and joy; losses and reunions; tension and relaxation; and, of course, arrivals and departures

Terminus is one of BTF's best-loved and most successful films, and I make no apologies for admitting it's a personal favourite of mine too.

[trafficticketadvocate]

Cambridge Auto Wreckers sits on 11 acres of property. We specialize in used auto parts & used truck parts since 1977. Find more on -