the three r's...research, reading, ans (w)riting...

Gentle readers, new visitors to this blog, herewith a quick overview of the various blogs I write:

To begin, all of these blogs have their origins in two seminal books that I read during the winter of 2003. The first was an academic study prepared by University of Waterloo that presented the case to have the Grand River designated as a national heritage river. That document approached the entire Grand River watershed as one system and reviewed the watershed's physical form and cultural heritage attributes. That book led directly into my reading of Putnam's seminal text on the physiographic regions of Southern Ontario. The two books led to numerous rambles of exploration throughout the Grand River watershed and to the creation of my first blog, La Grande Riviere to be found at www.grandriver.blogspot.com.

One outcome of those watershed rambles was my personal dismay at the unchecked urban sprawl taking place in the tri-cities of Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge and the need to take action. Thus, when at one City of Waterloo Council meeting, a delegate I think of as our very own Erin Brokovich mentioned that the Owen EIS report contradicted itself, I took up the challenge to obtain a copy and to read and deconstruct this highly technical report. Many of the posts made to www.grandriver.blogspot.com provide summaries and links to the background research I did at that time.

Like a river rushing ever onwards, time moved on and brought with it new acquaintances and new commitments and so the need for a second blog. One of this community's heritage activists proposed a newsletter to focus on the Forsyth demolition issues: my second blog, Shirt Tales, www.forsyth.blogspot.com soon took all of my energies. As well, I set up two other blogs to store notes on other readings of mine. I have plans to collapse those other blogs later this summer and to move the posts to either the Grand River blog or the Shirt Tales blog.

For the most part, the Grand River blog was written for an audience of one-- a well-known and respected delegate to various Councils on regional environmental issues. I continue surprised by the number of visitors to that first blog as it is the Shirt Tales blog that has attracted its devoted following. Hence, most of my posts since summer of 2005 have been made to Shirt Tales. Thus, if you are looking for coverage of Hidden Valley you will find it in Shirt Tales.

Some of this week's blog visitors have been referred here in order to prepare for next week's City of Waterloo Council meeting. Rather daunting to find the Waterloo Moraine related posts? Like flipping through a 1,500 page book without chapter headings or an index? Hence these tips:

Check both blogs for the relevant research in one of two ways:

a) use the search function at top right hand corner of each blog to locate all blogs related to a particular subject by typing in key words such as "Waterloo moraine," "wetlands," "City of Waterloo" and the blogging software will very quickly bring up all posts related to that subject;

and/or

b) use the print preview option in order to call up a section of the archive in order to very quickly scroll through all posts during that time period-- a quick glance at photos and the lead paragraph should be enough to determine if the post is of interest.

For those who have the time, I would suggest the following reports to be extremely useful and worth reading:

1. Region of Waterloo RGMS document, Protecting Significant Moraines in Waterloo Region, available here:
http://www.region.waterloo.on.ca/web/region.nsf/8f9c046037662cd985256af000711418/03D38C261628882E85256D280053291C/$file/Protecting%20Significant%20Moraines.pdf?openelement
2. Ken Ogilvie, Air Water and Soil Quality commissioned by the Neptis Foundation "for consideration by the Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel established by the Government of Ontario. Link here:
http://neptis.org/library/show.cfm?id=47&cat_id=9

In closing, gentle readers, thank you for your quiet support and unstinting encouragement of my blogging efforts. It means a lot.

Elizabeth aka Rambling Rose