Speed River Clean Up, June 12 – Volunteer Opportunities
For the past thirty one years, in June every year, members of the Guelph community have gathered to clean up the Speed River. The 2010 Speed River Clean Up will be held on Saturday, June 12 at 8.30 a.m. at Royal City Park (on Gordon Street, across from the Boathouse).
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) – Guelph is looking forward to another fun, successful event as a part of Canadian Rivers Day!
OPIRG would like to invite back all of the dedicated volunteers that have helped with the clean-up in the past, and also to roll out the welcome mat for all members of the local community to join in this worthwhile effort.
After the clean-up there will be an open mic, to showcase some of our amazing local talent… and a 100 mile potluck at the McCrae House Museum on Water Street. All are encouraged to bring and share your favourite local and home-made dishes with your neighbours and community members. All participants will be entered into a draw for The Woolwich Arrow and Creemore Springs Speed River Dinner!
If you would like to just help out with the actual clean-up (picking up grabage etc.), you don’t need to sign up before hand – just show up at 8.30 a.m. on the day in Royal City Park.
If you would like to sign up for specific volunteer opportunities (below) please contact OPIRG-Guelph by June 3 at 519-824-2091 or opirgguelphvolunteer@gmail.com.
Friday Set-Up Volunteers (2 people)
When: 2:00– 6:00pm
Load up the vehicles at the OPIRG office, last minute errands, start the set-up.
Morning Set-Up Volunteers (2 people)
When: 7:30–10:00am (free to help out in other areas after this)
Put up signs, organize hip waders, garbage bags, crew leader kits, free coffee and breakfast food, etc.
Morning Greeters (2 people)
When: 8:00–10:00am (free to help out in other areas after this)
Sit at the Registration table, assign participants to crews, and answer questions.
Crew Leaders (12 people)
When: 8:30am – 12:00/12:30pm (join us for the BBQ afterwards)
Walking with the “crews”(of up to 20 people) to a pre-arranged section of the river and supervising the picking up of garbage (as well as picking up garbage yourselves). You are also responsible for writing down the names of the people in your group and recording interesting objects they retrieve from the river. (Please note: Crew Leaders must be at least 19 years old.) Please let staff know beforehand if you’d like to sign up for a particular river sector and it you will be bringing a vehicle that you’d like to use. Nature interpretation skills are an asset, but definitely not necessary. OPIRG-Guelph will be holding a pre-clean-up tour to give you an orientation to the river, it’s ecology, history and health.
Lunch Volunteers (2 People)
When: 10:30-2:00pm (you can do this as well as morning setup or greeter if you’d like)
Help set up lunch items, serve food, hand out door prize tickets and help with the take down after the event.
Afternoon Take-Down Volunteers (4 people)
When: 1:00-4:00pm
Help clean up and return supplies to OPIRG-Guelph.
Photography Volunteers
When: 8.30 a.m.-1.30 p.m.
Enjoy taking pictures? Why not take photos of Guelphites cleaning their community?
General Clean-Up Volunteers
When 8.30 – 11:30 a.m.
Remove garbage from the river and the riverbanks! You can sign up before hand, or just show to register in Royal City Park on the day. You will also be able to enjoy a Community 100 mile Potluck Lunch afterwards in the grounds of the McCrae House Museum.
Local Performers
When:12.30 – 2.00 p.m.
Entertain the hard working clean-up volunteers while they snack and mingle! We want you to jump up on our open stage and showcase the amazing talent that this city has to offer. Anything goes! Poetry, acoustic instruments, or whatever you do best is welcome!
Please contact OPIRG-Guelph by June 3 at 519-824-2091 or opirgguelphvolunteer@gmail.com to sign up for any of these positions.
For more information, please visit www.opirgguelph.org.
Formerly Royal City Rag 
Will The Real Karen Farbridge Please Stand Up?
Posted in Commentary, tagged Bob Gordon, City of Guelph, Guelph Mercury, Karen Farbridge, OPIRG on September 22, 2009| 1 Comment »
Bob Gordon
Farbridge Past And Present
Bob Gordon, Freelance Journalist/Royal City Rag Contributor
Guelph Mercury, September 21 2009
Mayor Karen Farbridge’s credentials as an environmentalist are impeccable. She has an MSc and PhD in biology from the University of Guelph. She was an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph and taught courses in environmental policy.
Most importantly, in terms of environmental activism she was the Director of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) at U of Guelph for a decade. OPIRG Guelph’s website identifies its mandate as recognizing “that there are many ways to initiate and support grassroots radical change, and that our strength as an organization lies in the diversity of our experiences, approaches and tactics…. we operate without hierarchy and uphold the core values of anti-oppression and consensus. We mobilize through a wide variety of methods such as research, creating awareness, lobbying, media, training, protest, and direct action.”
As director of OPIRG Guelph, Karen Farbridge defended that approach articulately and frequently. In the summer issue of Alternatives Journal in 1998 she spoke glowing of the importance of the consensus approach to decision making and environmental activism: “consensus decision making is synonymous with the PIRG experience.”
(Take a look at “PIRG Power, Public Interest Research Groups in Canada celebrate 25 years of student activism by: Karen Farbridge and Peter Cameron” here)
Describing a PIRG organized occuption of a nuclear facility she wrote approvingly of the practical importance of consensus decision making, “When the police tried to arrest the ‘leaders’, hoping to undermine the occupation, they found that it did not dissolve in confusion because everyone was a ‘leader’.”
In a OPIRG Guelph newsletter she authored an article announcing the launch of the Speed River Land Trust Association stating, “Natural areas in the watershed provide habitat and nourishment…. These rivers, their riverlands and the wider watershed define our local communities and are our tangible link to the global environment.”
In an article published in The Guelph Tribune in the early nineties she noted, “our wetlands still face the pressure of urban sprawl—tragically with less protection now than a year ago.”
In her January 2008 Annual Address to Council she continued to speak of vision and high ideals, of doing things differently, “I feel fortunate to be Mayor of a City where the Council, City staff, and community at large have embraced the idea of making a difference. When we included this vision in our Strategic Plan, we knew we were setting the bar high. We did so deliberately, because there was a feeling in the community that if you don’t strive for great things, you have no hope of achieving them.”
Madame Mayor, where has this vision gone?
Bulldozing the Hanlon Creek Business Park forward is not ‘radical change’. Charging seven individuals and ‘Jane and John Doe’ (the community-at-large?) for events surrounding occupation of the site flies in the face of your own assertion that ‘everyone is a leader.’
Have you forgotten “Natural areas in the watershed provide habitat and nourishment…. These rivers, their riverlands and the wider watershed define our local communities and are our tangible link to the global environment”?
Have you forgotten “our wetlands still face the pressure of urban sprawl” and that sprawl is sprawl whether it occurs within or beyond municipal boundaries?
I remind you Madame Mayor of a document you authored in 1993, entitled Overview of the Hanlon Creek Watershed Study. In it you wrote, “The City has shown intent to develop industrial land in the watershed…. If cold-water trout streams are damaged both the City as a corporation and individual councillors will be liable under the Fisheries Act.”
Madame Mayor in 1999 you e-mailed city staffer Andrew Goldie stating, “If I can find enough money I would love to put a solar powered composting toilet in one of the parks.”
What we have is embarassingly ugly, dysfunctional pissoirs in downtown parking lots.
Madame Mayor, you spoke glowingly of the importance of wetlands and what we have is the Hanlon Creek Business Park.
Bob Gordon
bob34g@gmail.com
For more on this and other community issues, tune into Royal City Rag, Saturdays 7-9 a.m. on CFRU 93.3fm.
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