I knew this would happen, already after one post I am falling behind. I am actively thinking about my updates and taking as many notes so I do not forget my thoughts at the time when they are the most fresh. Today I am going to talk a bit about last Tuesdays’ AGM for the Dalhousie Community Association. This is my second year in a row going to the AGM and I hope to be more active within the association itself this year. This years speaker was Bruce Firestone (@ProfBruce), his accomplishments being too long to list.
I have known about Bruce for sometime now but was just blown away from the more things I learned about him at the talk as well as going through his very well written blog at http://www.eqjournal.org/ He is a very progressive thinker and most important, a doer. I greatly admire people with the unbridled enthusiasm that he puts forth into his life. Always looking at life and how he could do something small to make other people’s lives easier. If there is something in his mind he thinks he can do, he will do it. He has hosted radio shows, podcasts, taught MBA students, taught students in Architecture, bought and sold properties, mortgaged those properties and most recently has written his first novel.
He is also the man who was a major player in bringing the Ottawa Senators to this city. He spent a good part of the talk talking about this as well as the main topic regarding Densification vs Intensification which I find very fascinating having spent a good amount of time traveling around the world and carefully studying how other major cities interact. A major point that I felt he tried to drive through was the need for more ‘eyes on the streets’. Stores that face the streets, more people outside interacting with each other, not big buildings with the first 3 floors dedicated to indoor garages. We need to embrace the arts, have the food trucks out there, and introduce ‘granny flats.’ Subdivisions now in Ottawa require everyone to have a car, even if just to get to a store to buy a bag of milk. That is not community, and it is one that he does not envision. I share those views whole heartedly.
It was a great meeting and a pleasure to learn more about the professor, I look forward to future articles and to hear about his future plans.
