July 9

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to say that today was awesome! Despite the fact that when I woke up this morning it was pouring rain with thunder and lightning.

As usual, all of the Shads at McMaster University woke up bright and early to walk down to the East Meets West Bistro for breakfast, the only difference being that today we all had to don raincoats or carry umbrellas to stay dry. Fortunately, the storm had started to let up by breakfast time, so we were not confronted with the task of walking through a raging thunderstorm to get breakfast.

After we had all eaten our fill of the excellent food at Bistro, we were informed that we were going on a hiking/canoe trip to Cootes Paradise. Once we were all changed and ready to go, our group of 48 Shads was split into two sub groups, one of which took a bus to Cootes Paradise to do canoeing while the other joined the 'goodly Doctor Chad Harvey' in a hike to the water.

I was in the group that went with Chad on the hike, which we started from the campus, going into the forest behind the university. One of the main parts of our hike was to collect samples from two bodies of water that we came across to see what types of organisms we could find and to observe the biodiversity of the two bodies. Among my catches were a rather large rock (I don't know how it got in the net) and some beetle/mosquito larvae, while others managed to catch things like mites, ticks and even a small fish. We were given a sheet to help identify each of the organisms that we managed to capture, and then we tallied up how many of each organism we caught to observe how biodiverse the body of water was. After we collected all of our data it was time to hike to Cootes Paradise to meet up with the other group, have lunch and go canoeing.

In my canoe group, I was the only one with any canoeing experience, which meant that I was going to be in the back of the canoe. I had loads of fun steering our canoe around the water for half of the trip and brushing up on some rather rusty canoe skills. However, after we had been out on the water for a while and had seen the fishway that keeps cod out of Cootes, my group of three decided that it was time for me to step down as the steerer of the canoe and become the princess (ie. the person who sits in the middle of the canoe and doesn't paddle). This proved to be ironically even more enjoyable for me as I got to see how my two friends, who are inexperienced with canoeing, tried to cooperate to get us moving back to land. To put it shortly, we didn't exactly take the most direct route back, as a lot of the time was spent just trying to get the canoe to face the right direction. The whole experience was just fantastic and highly amusing.

Finally, it was time to take a bus back to Hedden Hall so we could eat, change out of our drenched clothing and then go to supper. After supper was free time, and then three great Shad Speaks. We then had time to work on our month-end project (the deadlines of which are all too fast approaching!!) and some more time to work in our commitees.

To close this fantastic day, we had a snack of crackers and dip, after which some of us had an intense round of my new favourite board game, the name of which escapes me, but which is like a cross between curling and darts. And now I'm finishing my blog - I can't wait for tomorrow!

Ian McKenzie, Shad Valley McMaster University 2010
Hometown: Demorestville, Ontario