For my final walking project I decided to do a walk with my mom. My family is from Sarnia and I have lived there since I was a baby. When I was about 10 my parents split up and I have been moving pretty frequently ever since. Eight times to be exact. My mom has just found a house and has said that this will be her last move. With this in mind I decided that I would like to do ‘a walk through time’ from my childhood house to each house, in order, to this new house that my mom has bought. In total this walk was almost 40kms and it took us about 10 hours to complete. My mom and I aren’t exactly the athletic types so I knew that this would be a big and difficult task to overcome for the day. As it turns out it was more than I even expected. I told my mom about a week before what my idea was and convinced her that she should come along. As soon as she said yes, she obviously regretted it and basically complained about it every time I talked to her until the day of. This didn’t give me much hope for the walk. We drove to my first house growing up, parked and got out to start the walk. The energy was high at the beginning and we had some interesting conversations about the neighbourhood and how it has changed. This was my house growing up. It was the only house of the eight that my parents lived in together. It was also the first time that my mom and I have been back in that neighbourhood since she left my dad. It was a strange feeling being back there with her and we both commented on it. We walked to the rest of the houses in order stopping every once and a while but for the most part trying to keep a good pace to get it finished by dark. There were many ups and downs throughout the walk and there were even times when I had no choice but to turn off the microphone because my mom was not happy. When we finally got to Corunna (the small town outside of Sarnia where my mom’s new house is) the mood lifted. We were hurting and exhausted but we were almost there. We looked around at the new place and talked about our excitement with the new house and new beginning. For the great finale as we were walking up to the driveway my mom started crying and said that we were ‘home’ (she’s embarrassed about this now). This was a big deal because she was worried about moving there and if it was the right decision, over the course of that weekend, she decided that she was sure of her decision and that day, during the walk she got the call from the real estate agent that her offer had been accepted. The journey had more meaning to my mom and I than I could have ever planned for.

Now for the technical stuff:
I filmed the whole walk using the Ipad app that Nathan found for me to make videos out of stills. I also recorded most of the conversations that my mom and I had on the walk. I have a few ideas for what to do with this and anyone reading if they’d like to give me feedback I would appreciate it!
The video jolts back and forth and makes you feel a bit dizzy. It’s, in my opinion, almost dreamlike. My original plan was to record some of my thoughts separately and add them in with some of my mom’s comments. Sort of like she is talking through the walk and I am thinking but not saying things. The video is shot from my perspective and only shows what I see. I am wondering if I should be focusing more on the experience of the actual walk itself of my feelings towards what the walk means and memories. Or, I could combine the two. I also wonder if anyone has a suggestion of how I could add my thoughts without it sounding too negative. I’m somewhat torn. The problem is that I have grown through most of the tough times that I revisited on this walk and I am happy and have an amazing relationship with my mom but, in revisiting these things my thoughts are somewhat negative and I don’t know how to convey this while still showing that I’m in a better place now and I am thankful to my mom for doing the walk with me. Any input would be appreciated! It was definitely an interesting and growing experience so far for my mom and I.

I must say that at the start of the day at the Pacific Mall I was skeptical about the whole idea. We got to this overwhelming and strange mall and I found myself looking around wondering what the heck I would do. As the day went on though, my attitude changed. Instead of letting the feeling of being a tourist work against me I decided to work with it and explore the area and the culture. I started thinking about ideas of tourism and relating it to my own past experience and my feelings being there. I also wanted to consider the items being sold and their significance as there seemed to be so many repeats. Lastly, I thought it was important to consider the space and the unique way in which it was organized.

Collection:
For the collection portion of the project I decided that I would take pictures of the signage on the storefronts. This proved to be somewhat difficult because of the issues with taking pictures but I was able to come up with an interesting collection. In my travels I have always found it funny how the English language is used in non-English speaking countries. For example I always found it funny when I was living in France how they used English words in a lot of the store names and advertisements. It seems that whenever they wanted to give the ‘cool’ image or appeal to the younger generation they would throw in English words. Often they would not be used in the proper way and would sound awkward. I have also found it interesting in my travels to be reminded of the power of the English language. I think that we often forget what this means being in a country where most people speak English. What has amazed me (for the most part) is how bombarded other countries are with the English language. It is often not hard to find someone close by in a non-English speaking country who either knows English or knows enough to get by. Living in France the thing that struck me the most was music and movies. Almost all of the popular music on the radio was English. It also wasn’t censored because as anyone who speaks another language may have found (hopefully not the hard way) swearwords just don’t have the same impact in a second language. I also found it interesting that the bulk of the movies hadn’t been dubbed, they were often still in English with subtitles. These are all things that I hadn’t considered and I imagine most might not consider being an English speaking person from a largely English speaking country. I find it fascinating how other cultures speaking different languages handle the English language.


Walking against the plan:

By now I had spent a few hours in the mall and began seeing many items that were repeated frequently around the mall in different stores. I wonder if they must be culturally significant in some way or if it is somehow a reflection of the Canadian culture as well as far as what is in demand. I decided to choose several different objects and wander until I found them in the storefront window. Some of the objects that I chose were a glittery cell phone cover, anything with Hello Kitty on it and a waving cat figurine. I chose to represent the walks with a simple line drawing showing the route that I took until I found that item. It seems that in almost all of the cases, that item was never far.

Larger gesture with a partner:

For our last walk Laura and I collaborated. As we wandered around the mall we found some little coloured trinkets that were supposedly lucky charms. They didn’t seem to have any other use than as a charm. We decided to purchase 10 of them and we walked around to different clothing stores putting them in the pockets of pants for others to find. It proved to be a very interesting experience for the both of us. By this time our group had caused enough of a scene that we were being watched very closely. We had to try the pants on (which of course had no chance of fitting us – I even had a girl tell me this) and in the change room we would put the charm in the pocket and take a picture. It seems strange that Laura and I were so nervous about doing this. In reality we were giving a gift to the store or to whoever was going to find the charm, but in practice it felt like we were doing something wrong.

Mushroom Foray!

When Diane said that we would be doing a Mushroom Foray to be honest, I wasn’t even sure what that meant. I love to eat mushrooms but, for the most part, I hadn’t given them a whole lot of consideration outside of the supermarket or on my dinner plate. Well, this is almost completely true. When I was about 5 a friend and I apparently got hungry while playing in the yard at the babysitter’s house and ate the mushrooms in the grass. Until doing this foray I never understood why she was so upset and worried about us. I don’t remember much about the whole experience but I do know that were both pretty sick and had our stomachs pumped. Had they been poisonous mushrooms, it sounds like I’m lucky to be around. Anyway, back to the foray. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I knew I was excited about it. I grew up in the city but almost my whole extended family lives on farms. Every year growing up my uncle took my brother and I on adventures in the woods looking for wild flowers to move to his garden. I must say that there were all sorts of flowers and things to be discovered in those woods but I never remember any mushrooms! I find it interesting to think about all of the things that people miss on their daily walks because their attention is directed at other things. After doing this mushroom foray with the class there is no doubt in my mind that there would have been all sorts of mushrooms in that forest, but I was so focused on flowers I don’t remember ever seeing any. The foray with the class brought me back to these days. I felt like a giddy kid again running around in the forest looking for treasures. It amazed me how many different types of mushrooms there are. I had no idea that that many existed or that they could be found right here in Guelph. Some of the noteworthy finds that Laura and I collected were the stinkhorn ball and the chewing gum pink slime. I’m glad that I was able to have this experience that I otherwise might never have had. I think I’m hooked, I’ve noticed mushrooms everywhere I go ever since.