The home of our hearts, Cape Breton – A transformative professional experience with the Canadian Water Network (Part 1 of 6: prologue)

Prologue

[part one of a special six-part blog series by Mark Ranjram, MEng student at McGill University. From June 8 to June 13 2014, Mark had the privilege of being a part of the Canadian Water Network’s (CWN) Student and Young Professionals (SYP) Workshop in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia]

Let me start this series off by expressing how life changing this event was for me. I am very much a technical water person, more comfortable expressing my knowledge of water using differential equations than a sequence of coherent, elegant words, but I’ve always loved to hear people tell their water stories, and that ability to instantiate into reality the deep connection our species has with water has always been a powerful motivator for me. After leaving the CWNSYP workshop in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia all I can think about is how the intersection of first nations experience; twenty brilliant students/young professionals from across Canada; five dedicated and inspirational mentors; and the indescribable magic of the community that is Cape Breton Island has given me a mountain of emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual capital that I will fight to carry for the rest of my life.

Before we dive into the daily experiences at the workshop, I want to take a paragraph to express what an impressive job the hosts of the workshop did in providing a framework for us participants to unleash our enthusiasm and experience a moment none of us will soon forget. As I hope I’ve successfully expressed in the posts that follow, the diversity of each day’s itinerary was something special. The commitment to providing a robust discussion of water issues contextualized against historical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of water was constant and elevated the workshop to a remarkable place. So, a sincere thank you to the Verschuren Centre of Cape Breton University and the Canadian Water Network for organizing this event; and a very special thanks to our on-the-ground Cape Breton hosts: David Alderson, Martin Mkandawire, Ken Oakes, and Ashlee Consolo Willox; and our Canadian Water Network liaison Liana Kreamer. If you ever get a chance to work with the Verschuren Centre or the CWN, I would strongly suggest you jump at the chance!

The title of this blog post is from a song called “The Island Song” which is the unofficial anthem of Cape Breton and was the de-facto theme song of our time out there (It also inspired the name of the workshop, “A rock in the stream”). 

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