Lansdowne Education Council Platform

Have you worried about the effect that reduced courses and decreased intake will have on your program at Camosun next year? Or have you ever planned to take a course only to find that it isn't offered when the college website said it would be? I have, and I've heard that many of you have too. I'm an anthropology student finishing my first amazing year at Camosun and, as a student representative on the Lansdowne Education Council, I will help to solve problems such as these. The Education Council is the body which includes faculty members and student representatives who collectively decide which courses are offered when, what they contain, and how they are evaluated: all very important for every one of us students on campus. In the coming year especially, we will need a dedicated and responsible student representative in this position. We'll need someone who doesn't let politics get in the way of cooperation with students and faculty to maintain high-quality courses in the face of provincial funding cuts. I am that student. Vote for Bradley Clements and the Camosun Student Life Collective. Vote to avoid that extra semester of courses that weren't offered when you needed them!

Power on your voice!

2010 Newsletter

Happy 2011!
2011 - it seems weird to write that, doesn't it? It's been quite a year, 2010, and I'll try to tell you about my experience of it in the next two hours before it's gone. It is strange to recall that 2010 began for me dancing to bongo-flava music in Lindi, the remote south-eastern corner of Tanzania, with my Canada World Youth / UVIKIUTA volunteer team! In the following months I would be working at the Chamazi Community Library with Deborah near Dar es Salaam, living with my host-family and counterpart, Jackson, in Mgole, and traveling to Moshi, Arusha, and Zanzibar - all of which you have probably heard about.
After bidding a sad farewell to my team-mates of the previous six months, I returned to Ottawa in March to stay with Mom, Dad and Harry. There I worked as a humble house-keeper in the Algonquin College Residences with a very fun group of international students, largely from Africa. I also had the pleasure of volunteering at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival which allowed me to see amazing world-class performances and to work with some renowned musicians and musicologists. The family and I attended Dad's baptism on Father's Day, an event which I had been preparing for over the previous months by calligraphing, illuminating and binding a copy of the Sermon on the Mount to give to him. Mom and I got into gardening and started a plot at the new local community garden, and I did the cooking whenever I wasn't working. I left Mom with a cookbook that I bound - at least 3 inches thick and 10 inches square - of recipes which she had collected over the years and had previously been spilling out of an old binder.
In the Summer we took a road trip to the East Coast for a holiday, camping throughout Nova Scotia, a place that I had always wanted to visit. We visited our friends from S/V Sailfish from BC who we'd met in Tonga. Digger, a carpenter by trade, was employed on the construction of the new S/V Bluenose, Canada's, and Nova Scotia's signature vessel. After an amazing trip around beautiful and historic Nova Scotia - hitting the small towns of copperages and dory-builders and skipping quickly through Halifax and Sydney - we crossed the bridge to PEI for a mini-reunion with a couple of team-mates from CWY, Colin and Edith. Being from Gatineau, Edith and her boyfriend gave me a ride back to Ottawa, stopping in New Brunswick for lunch with Sally, also from our team.
At the end of August I said goodbye to Mom, Dad, Harry and Clouseau (the cat) and flew back to Victoria, BC, for college where Bill, Maureen and Dylan welcomed me warmly to stay with them. With my backpack heavy and my bank-acount lighter with textbooks, I started classes towards an Associate of Arts Degree in Anthropology at Camosun College. Stressful as my five-course-load was - Intro to Anth, Prehistory of Pacific Cultures, Elementary Statistics, English Composition, and World Civilizations pre-1500 - all prooved very interesting and I enjoyed the semester thoroughly. After my last exam on December 20th I emerged with A's across the board, except for an A- in English and an A+ in Prehistory of Pacific Cultures.
Over the course of the semester I stayed with Bill and Maureen, cooking once a week and fencing twice, and house-sat with Allison's younger brother Ben at his place for a week and looked after some dogs and cats at another place for six weeks. Dad had a showing in November of his recent series of paintings of heritage houses back in Ottawa which was very successful: he sold ten of the series and twelve in total, including four which a city-councillor bought to display in the Ottawa City Hall. On the 22nd I bused under the recently-eclipsed misty full moon to Vancouver - meeting a classmate on the ferry - and up to Princeton over the snow-laden Allison Pass to be greeted by my Grumpa at 5 in the morning. I had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas week with Grumpa and Nana: reading, watching musicals, skiing while Grumpa dive-bombed me with model air-planes, going for long walks with Grumpa to feed the native squirrels, looking at old family photos from the South Pacific, and doing archery with Grumpa. On Christmas Eve Nana and I went to her United Church where she played the organ for the service. Nana finally introduced me to my cousin Amanda who I'd never before had the chance to meet - she has started a bookshop/coffee shop/tanning saloon/computer shop in Princeton with her husband and family. After a very enjoyable week in Princeton I took the bus, skytrain, city bus, and ferry here to the Sunshine Coast where Gran picked me up. The day after tomorrow I am planning to visit Uncle John, Uncle Rick, Aunty Lisa, cousin Alice, and Great-Aunt Shendra. And then, in a week or so, I'll be heading back to Victoria for my next semester - Art History pre-1750, Anthropology of Women, World Religions of the West, Ecosystems and Human Activity, and English Literature - woohoo!
Well, it's now an hour before 2011 and I'm having a quiet New Year's Eve with Gran who's tired after a long day which has included a doctor's visit, helping a friend move, a long walk in the woods in a dimming evening, and an assailment of photos of Tanzania. I think that's just about the year in a nut-shell, or at least as much of it as I can remember in this un-edited little letter, written in the late hours of the day and of the year. I hope you've had a wonderful 2010 and I wish you all the best for 2011 - and stay in touch! May the winds and swells of life be following and favourable.
Your friend,

Bradley