29 minute read
In School
Two UTS teachers won impressive awards this year. Charlie Pullen won Secondary Art Educator of the Year from the Ontario Art Education Association, while Shawn Brooks took the 2020 CAP Award for Excellence in Teaching Physics. Mr. Pullen says he loves “seeing students transform from being primarily concerned with getting the correct answer to realizing the importance of generating, sharing, and valuing many possible answers.” As for Mr. Brooks, he says, “I would like my students to feel as wonderful about learning how to do science as I do right now.” He believes he can still do a better job of listening. “I don’t think I’ve praised students enough. This year, I’d like to highlight and appreciate the excellent work they do.” No wonder students love these teachers! Addressing anti-Asian racism has been the focus of UTS students, staff, and alumni following the tragedy in Atlanta, Georgia in March. This violence highlighted the increasing prevalence of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, compelling the school to collectively reevaluate our preconceptions and biases towards the experiences of Asian communities in Canada and globally. S6 (Grade 12) students Lauren Chang and Joanna Han led two events in April to generate meaningful conversation and change. A student assembly featured Dr . Cresencia Fong, Head of Teacher Learning, Technology, and Research, and English Teacher Elsa Poon, while a panel hosted alumni Andrew Chang ’17, Edward Tian ’18, and Selina Qing ’18. This ties into two 2020-21 UTS Strategic Initiatives, which aim to prevent racism and gender-based violence.
Last summer, UTS S5 (Grade 11) student Anasofia Florez, an executive on the UTS Gender Equity Committee, had an epiphany: What if there was a collaboration between all UTS groups that work towards social justice? She reached out, and last fall, the Social Justice Coalition launched at UTS, bringing together 13 student groups. From the Black Equity Committee to the Day of Pink Committee to Climate Action Now, the Coalition runs the gamut from racial justice to LGBTQ2SI+ equality to student wellness to global inequities, all sharing a deep commitment to equality and justice in our world.
“The Coalition serves as a bridge to help us collaborate,” says Anasofia. “It’s about communication and making sure that we all know what’s going on in the school and how we can help each other.” Coming soon: the Social Justice Coalition podcast!
F1 (Grade 7) student Julia Li was one of many students who tried out potential classroom chairs and desks for our renewed building. “I like the chairs that are a bit fidgety and roll on the floor,” says Julia. “They should be soft too, with a little memory foam on the seat.” She’s also fond of the standing desks. “We’re looking at flexible furniture that lets teachers design the classroom they want to have,” says Visual Arts Teacher Charlie Pullen, who helped plan the furniture tests. Six classes and UTS staff tested furniture from two vendors. Most popular was the ‘fidgety’ chair. “Some adults thought it was broken, but it’s designed for fidgety kids, and they really like it,” says Mr. Pullen. “This is the chance for students to test furniture they’ll use for the rest of their UTS careers. They put a lot of work into it.”
Call him ‘Mr. Tutoring.’ For two years, S6 (Grade 12) Anirudh Ram-Mohanram has been one of several UTS students volunteering to tutor refugee and newcomer students through the Bridge Project, a partnership between UTS and the Afghan Women’s Organization. Before COVID-19, the tutoring took place at the organization’s centres in North York, Scarborough, and Mississauga, and Anirudh taught English to a five-year-old Ethiopian girl. “At first she was very dubious, but over time we formed an emotional bond and she had a pet name for me, ‘Mr. Tutoring.’” Now the program takes place via Zoom, and Anirudh usually helps an 11-year-old Syrian refugee with reading and homework. UTS Vice Principal Garry Kollins, who supervises the program, says they’ve also recruited volunteer Arabic translators from other schools. “This program is a life lesson for our students, fostering the global citizenship our school strives for and helping them become more empathetic.” A group of six students played an instrumental role in revising the sexual misconduct protocol at UTS, working in tandem with school lawyers at Borden Ladner Gervais and school administration, as part of a far-reaching action plan to change the “culture of consent” at UTS. “We went through line by line to edit the school protocol,” says S6 (Grade 12) student Danielle Hidi, a member of the UTS Committee on Culture Reform Related to Gender-based Violence and Harassment, where students and staff advocate for curricular, cultural, and policy reform. “The first person you tell about an incident like this – their reaction can really dictate who else you tell, and if you’re going to take action.” After students and young alumni bravely raised concerns last summer, UTS established a Strategic Initiative to create a school culture free of sexual harassment and assault. Also in the works: a video on consent for parents, research partnerships, and restorative justice.
SEIZING SEIZING THE THE CHANCE CHANCE FOR FOR BY KIMBERLEY FEHR CHANGE CHANGE
THE ENTREPRENEUR AND THE ENVIRONMENTALIST
The pandemic simultaneously divides and unites our world, leaving no one untouched. But this disruption from life as we know it presents a chance for change, or even an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent our world. Two visionary UTS alumni, environmentalist and award-winning author Lydia Millet ’86, and JA Worldwide President and CEO Asheesh Advani ’90 discuss how we can seize this chance for change, taking the best of what we are learning from the COVID-19 pandemic and carrying it forward into the future. It begins with empathy.
From her window amid the saguaros of the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, Arizona, Pulitzer Prize nominee Lydia Millet watches the daily spectacle of life on earth unfold before her – the prickly pear cactus blooming and the darting flight of the Anna’s hummingbird – sharing an empathy with nature she says many people have now just discovered because of the pandemic.
TOP: Asheeh Advani ’90 with Canadian students at a JA Worldwide Global Youth Forum. BOTTOM: During the pandemic, Lydia Millet ’86 signs her book, A Children’s Bible, on the front porch of the home she shares with her children and boyfriend.
JA Worldwide
Aaron Young
The life of the desert unfolds outside Lydia Millet’s window, an inspiration for her environmental writing.
Lockdowns and social distancing rules led to a major resurgence in outdoor activities. Nature reclaimed the deserted streets of cities as cougars roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile for the first time, and dolphins swam further up the Bosphorus than ever before. The gates closed and wildlife made remarkable gains in renowned national parks like Yosemite.
“It wasn’t just a matter of wildlife emerging more, but also of people noticing it and wanting to observe it,” she says. “The pandemic brought a lot of people oddly closer to the other life that exists in our streets and our gardens. There’s an access to nature and wild places; to landscape and the sublime that we haven’t had for a long time.”
THE WILL TO KNOW EACH OTHER AND OUR WORLD BETTER
The closer we can get to things, the better we know them, and the more we can love them, she says, joking that doesn’t mean we still can’t get really irritated by family members during the pandemic. “But in general, we love what we know, and we can’t love what we don’t see.”
Like the red-tailed hawk circling above, she sees the big picture, and can’t look away. An author of more than a dozen novels and short story collections, she also works as the chief editor at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization with the all-encompassing mission of “saving
life on earth,” and her work there pervades her environmental fiction.
If her revered dystopian climate change novel, A Children’s Bible, named one of the New York Times Top 10 books of 2020 and a National Book Awards Finalist for Fiction, advocates for anything, she says it is empathy: the will to know the world better, to know each other better, and empathize with each other. With a plot impelled by “a righteous anger at the moral failings of the older generations,” the story begins with a group of families vacationing together in a country home, the children a tribe unto themselves, so contemptuous of their parents they won’t even admit to each other who their parents are. The earth is dying and in the words of teen protagonist, Evie: “We knew who was responsible, of course: it had been a done deal before we were born.”
As the world beyond descends into climate change chaos, the parents drink and the children become the competent ones in the novel, leaving for a safer home, only to return in an ultimate show of empathy to care for their parents and give them blood, nothing less than the gift of life itself.
ENTREPRENEURIALISM FOR EVERYDAY PEOPLE
On the other side of the country, Asheesh Advani’s work as the president and CEO of JA Worldwide extends from his pandemic-era office in the Boston-area home he shares with his wife and children, to the far reaches of the globe, touching the lives of 12 million students each year. The organization is transformed from the Junior Achievement of Asheesh’s youth, where the teen entrepreneur served on the management team of a student T-shirt business, never suspecting that one day he’d become the leader of the global nongovernmental organization, and yet here he is.
Today JA Worldwide operates in over 115 countries and takes a broad definition of entrepreneurship beyond the stereotypical tech whizzes to encompass financial literacy and work readiness, rooted in the idea of mindset and resilience – the critical skills needed to prepare youth for the future of work.
The pandemic has made us more global and more local at the same time, says Asheesh, showing us the tremendous interconnectivity between what happens in one part of the world and the impact in another. At the same time, policy-making and natural tribalism are pulling us in the direction of not trusting other tribes and communities.
While the pandemic inspires many acts of altruism and requires extraordinary heroism of medical professionals, Lydia says there also is an opportunity to examine how social behaviour turned away from the collective and common good, citing the “radical disinterest we saw in the States in helping each other through these basic measures like wearing masks and social distancing. I’m hopeful that the shock of that will make us rethink our relationship to community in a way that may help also with the climate crisis.”
EMPATHY NEEDS TO GO GLOBAL
JA Worldwide is uniquely positioned to make a difference on this front, with the ability to reach some of the most optimistic future leaders of the world at a time when they’re building what Asheesh calls their “empathy muscles.” This weighs on his mind because he feels JA Worldwide is obligated to forge these global connections through the learning experiences they deliver in schools.
World Economic Forum Asheesh Advani ’90 speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
S arah Edwards Schmidt
TOP: Lydia Millet pictured with her brother Josh Millet ’89 in New York during the nineties. BOTTOM: The cover of Lydia’s book, A Children’s Bible.
“One of the most critical problems in the world is the need for young people to have a global mindset and empathy for other people’s issues and problems and pains,” says Asheesh.
UTS has always been ahead of the curve in understanding that, he says, reaching future leaders and giving them the global well-rounded education they need to make a difference. “I’m forever grateful to UTS for instilling both empathy and confidence in me,” he says. “Being at UTS allowed me to build some incredible friendships and fostered a love of learning and curiosity about the world.”
At UTS, Asheesh took part in Model United Nations, never imagining that one day he would grow up to address the United Nations, as he did at the United Nations Economic and Social Council in May 2017. He is also actively involved with the World Economic Forum as a member of the Global Agenda Council for the Future of Education, Gender, and Work. When Lydia attended UTS, she was neither an aspiring environmentalist nor a writer. “I did a lot of writing which was probably very bad but my teachers were kind – they were so interested in it, which made them able to see something there.” She’s now working on a memoir called We Loved It All, about extinction, religion, and people’s views of the natural world, which will also discuss how the engagement with ideas and critical rigour at UTS helped forge her path.
A ROLE MODEL OF RESILIENCE
Resilience is not something that people learn from a book but it can be taught, says Asheesh, noting that youth disillusionment is now one of the top 10 global risks, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2021. Disillusionment in the young is a harbinger of many social problems that can eventually manifest in radical ways, even as terrorism. “Youth are facing the challenge of not learning as effectively as they used to be able to do in person, and the inequities are exacerbated when some kids have great broadband and computer access and parents who can provide support, and others do not.”
Add this to a job market that was already changing before COVID-19 gutted entire sectors, and there are fewer jobs, especially for the young, he says. A “powerful data point” is that the average young person is going to have at least seven careers and 20 jobs, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report. Some of these job shifts will be involuntary, which means an essential life skill is the ability for youth to think of themselves as people who are resilient and can pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start something new.
Resilience builds from learning how to transform negative thoughts into positive ones, and learning from the experiences of role models. “Picture a 12-year-old girl in India whose dad is a rickshaw driver and mom works at home,” he says. “Her scope of what she thinks is possible is influenced by the people her parents spend time with and the people she meets.”
THE BAROMETER OF HOPE
In India, Asheesh’s organization took young girls on a tour of GE Healthcare and introduced them to a female nutritionist in her late twenties. She told them how she used to be just like them when she was young, how her interest in science blossomed and led her to this career where she helps people who are ill in Mumbai hospitals access meals at scale. “I looked at the eyes of the girls, and you could see every one of them wanted to be her. At the end of the day, we asked what they want to study and almost every hand went up for chemistry and STEM. You could see their entire lives changing in that moment.”
Moments like these are “incredibly empowering” he says, and give him so much hope for the future. Another barometer of hope comes from the young people taking part in student entrepreneurial competitions hosted by JA around the world.
“You get a really good sense of where the world is headed based on the entrepreneurial ideas of young people,” says Asheesh. “The smartest, most ambitious young people no longer want to be investment bankers or lawyers – they want to be social entrepreneurs. They want to bring technology together with biology to create new
businesses. They’re interested in brain-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. That’s where the energy is.”
The interest in sustainability – ensuring business is a force for good and addresses climate change – is across the board. “Every idea that students have is looked at through that filter and I estimate more than 70 percent of new student businesses have some sustainability component to them. It’s truly remarkable and gives you so much hope for the future.”
THE POSSIBILITY OF AN EXTRAORDINARY REDEMPTION
Lydia wrote of the “possibility of an extraordinary redemption” in her New York Times article on November 25, 2020, that called on President Joe Biden to “rise up and save us” as part of her climate change work at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Indeed, it seems possible, looking back to the day the Center’s legal wrangling and ‘Noah’s Ark’ strategies first gave polar bears protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and now how the Center’s work has garnered federal protection for about 732 species and half a billion acres of habitat. But increasingly, protecting species has become synonymous with protecting the planet itself, an even more daunting challenge.
“This is the moment for heroic measures right now,” Lydia says, with just a 10-year window to tremendously reduce our emissions to have any hope of staying under 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming that could prevent the worst kind of cataclysm. “The best thing we can do as individuals is put pressure on governments and elected representatives to be forced by the will of the people to make these swift, legislative changes that are required. That simply is the most important thing. Anything we can do as individual people is dwarfed by that.”
As for Asheesh, he’s leveraging the scale of JA Worldwide to mobilize a global movement of youth empowerment. Under his leadership, JA Worldwide has become one of the top NGOs in the world, named by NGO Advisor as the seventh most impactful in 2021, a ranking the organization has held for three consecutive years. JA Worldwide operates as a branded network of teams, like Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, where Asheesh previously worked after the company he founded, Circle Lending, was acquired and renamed Virgin Money.
Asheesh’s vision for the future is simple but powerful, one where every young person who participates in JA is empowered to think of themselves as somebody who can create at least five jobs: a job for themselves and four others. “Most young people are seeking meaning and a way to be productive members of society,” says Asheesh. “You don’t have to be a technology entrepreneur to be a job creator. You can do it in any setting, whether you work for a company, non-profit, university, or in a small business or social enterprise. If you think of yourself as someone who can secure a budget to hire people and deliver a product or service that others value, you can create economic stability for yourself, and for others.” With over 120 million JA alumni, his dream of JA providing meaningful livelihoods and hope for both rich and poor communities is touching more lives all over the world.
Lydia envisions that our in-person encounters with actual people will acquire a “new kind of exuberance” after the pandemic made us so hyperdependent on screens. “I think we will learn to find greater joy in those kinds of moments.”
And as we face a climate change crisis in the midst of a pandemic, she says, hope is the only way forward. “That hope has to be immediately backed up by action. We can’t despair. We shouldn’t despair; it gives us nothing. Hope is really the only way, but through hope to action.” ■
Photo: © JA India
TOP: Asheeh Advani sits in on a JA India class with students. BOTTOM: Photos from Asheesh Advani's address to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in May 2017, as posted by his spouse Helen Rosenfeld on Facebook.
Trent University
How is it that Tom Symons graduated over 70 years ago yet his principles and his legacy so well exemplify the values embodied by University of Toronto Schools today? The simple answer is the school has always instilled its students with a love of learning, a desire to take initiative, and a sense of social and global responsibility, all hallmarks of Tom’s life and career as a scholar, innovator, champion of human rights, and the revered founding president and vice-chancellor of Trent University.
But that doesn’t seem like an adequate explanation. Time passes. People and institutions change. The 1940s are not the 2020s. Tom’s classmates wouldn’t recognize the UTS of today: co-educational, culturally diverse, technologically advanced, physically revitalized and expanded. Yet at the heart of the school beats a constant theme: the talent and spirit of its staff. Even though he earned degrees from the University of Toronto, Oxford, and Harvard, Tom said UTS had the greatest impact on him, of all the schools he attended. He also said that his UTS History Teacher, Andy Lockhart, was better than any university professor he ever had.
When people talk about Tom, they invariably reference his humanity. “He was a leader, but he was a leader in a very interesting way,” says UTS alumnus Dr . Stephen Stohn ’66, now chancellor of Trent University. “He was a gentleman. He was very reserved and quiet. But he had this vision for Trent University. And we all got imbued with that vision. So we followed him like a leader… Like a Beatle. Like a rock star.”
OPPOSITE: Tom Symons C.C., O Ont, FRSC ’47, the founding president and vice‑chancellor of Trent University, takes part in Trent University’s 50th Anniversary parade procession in 2014. TOP LEFT: The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell O.C., O Ont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, presented Tom Symons with the Gabrielle Léger medal and certificate for Lifetime Achievement in Heritage Conservation, in 2016. TOP RIGHT: The 2016 ceremony in Trent University’s Bata Library to mark the inaugural meeting of what would become the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Left to right: Tom Symons; Trent University President and Vice‑Chancellor Leo Groarke; Peter Ittinuar, the first Inuk in Canada elected as an MP; and former Trent University Chancellor Mary May Simon C.M.
Tony Storey ’71, retired Trent University alumni affairs director, and Makeda Daley, the first director of outreach programs and community engagement at UTS, who attended Trent in the late 1990s.
Tom knew how to bring the levity to life. “I was there on the shores of Champlain College when Tom was addressing the students,” Stephen says, “and suddenly decided to dive into the Otonabee River fully clothed in his suit, still smoking his pipe and wearing his watch and wallet.”
When Tom was offered a high-profile federal appointment in the sixties, he was so revered at Trent that “nearly half of the university marched to Tom’s offices to plead with him to stay on as president of the University,” recalls Stephen. In true UTS fashion, Stephen was one of the ringleaders of the protest, which achieved its goal.
One of Tom’s former students, Owen Kane, who graduated from Trent in 2015, said that Tom embodied the broadminded public virtue defined by Aristotle as “highness of soul” and by Cicero as “the will to do a kind service, even though nothing happens to come of it.” Tom inspired people to do more and be more, says former Trent colleague and UTS alumnus Tony Storey ’71, while Owen puts it like this: “Leaving a meeting at Tom’s house, you felt, for a time, that you could make anything happen, so long as you put your mind to it.” It’s precisely that impact on others that connects Tom’s UTS of the 1940s to Stephen and Tony’s of the 1960s and 1970s to the UTS of today. “The tone he struck and culture he shaped was one of civility and collegiality,” says Tony, who was a graduate of Trent before he became its alumni affairs director. “Also intimacy and community. All of that strikes me as very UTS. Tom always said, ‘Education is inescapably an individual experience.’ Meaning, personal relationships, knowing the students as individuals, are critical for the best possible education. He learned that at UTS, as did I. And that’s what he brought to Trent.”
The story goes that every year, Tom memorized the names, photographs, and key information for every new Trent student. “He knew all of our names,” recalls Stephen. “I’ve never been able to figure out how he was able to do that.”
A DEPARTURE FROM THE TREND
Speaking to CBC Radio in 1969, Tom said, “The organization of the university and its general character is a pretty pronounced departure from the current trend in higher education in Canada and still more in the United States.”
Tom called on UTS classmates and friends Dick Sadlier ’47 and John Leishman ’47 to join him in founding a university he intended to be unlike any other in Canada. Dick served as dean of men, head of the English department, and vice president. John served as controller, then vice president of finance, then executive vice-president of external relations and financial affairs.
Tony recalls how Tom described the university’s strategic goals from the beginning. “He wanted there to be no class, race, or culture barriers to attending Trent. He felt Trent belonged to the community and ought to be accessible to all. His position was that everyone is an equal and has the same right to education. He established unique programs at the university to build a culture of understanding and inclusion.”
Trent was the first university in the country to establish a Canadian Studies program and has been home to the Journal of Canadian Studies since 1966. It was also the first to offer an Indigenous Studies program, partly founded by one of Trent’s first Indigenous students, Harvey McCue, an Anishinabe from Georgina Island First Nation who was in the Class of 1966. In addition to a PhD option in Indigenous Studies, it now also offers a program in Indigenous Environmental Studies, and a specialized Diploma in Foundations of Indigenous Learning that provides access for people of Indigenous heritage. It also houses Nozhem: First Peoples’ Performance Space.
Today, a historic plaque hangs in Trent’s Bata Library to mark the site of the inaugural meeting of what would become the Inuit Tapirisat, now known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national representational organization for Inuit in Canada. In 1971, Inuit organizer Tagak Curley arranged for Inuit leaders to meet to discuss mounting threats to their culture and livelihood, and Tom offered them a space to gather. Among many things, he was a connector and catalyst for change.
Makeda Daley, the first director of outreach programs and community engagement at UTS, attended Trent in the late 1990s and says she felt Tom’s penchant for community building as a student.
“The university continues to emphasize both Canadian and global citizenship,” she says. “As a Black student, I never felt anything other than a sense of connection to the school, and there were more Black and international students there than
Trent University
I expected. And though I studied English literature and women’s studies, I learned more about Canadian history at Trent than anywhere else. I also read Indigenous authors for the first time. And I remember how the campus was a positive space for LGBT students and a place where we were all encouraged to learn about each other.”
Looking back, Makeda sees parallels between Trent and UTS culture. “It’s about the conversations at all levels, including between teachers and students. The open-mindedness, the multiple perspectives, the close relationships. If Tom learned that at UTS, I can say that it was firmly planted at Trent and flourished well beyond his term as university president.”
BUILDING A BETTER WORLD
After leaving Trent’s leadership in the capable hands of others, Tom embarked on a multifaceted career that balanced and connected his passions for teaching, global education, human rights, environmental and historical conservation, and service to his country.
He served as chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 1975 to 1978, where he helped lead major advancements, particularly for the LGBTQ2SI+ community. He served two terms as chair of the board of United World Colleges, which brings young students from all backgrounds together to engage in social change. Aligning with Tom’s belief that education should be independent of socioeconomic means, the vast majority of United World Colleges students receive financial assistance according to their needs.
He also served as the chair or founding chair of the Association for Commonwealth Studies, the Canadian Association in Support of Native Peoples, the Commission of French Language Education in Ontario, the National Library and Advisory Board, the Ontario Heritage Trust, and many other organizations.
In addition to humility and humanity, “Tom was always smiling and had an infectious joy of life,” says Tony. “People felt that energy when he stopped to talk to them about anything at all. He made everyone feel important, which of course they are. But a person doesn’t walk around feeling that way. He had great instincts for what people need in order to be at their best and also for what our country needed so it could be better.”
Over his lifetime, Tom earned 13 honorary degrees from Canadian universities and colleges and played a role in founding more than a dozen other colleges and universities. In 2019, when Martha Drake, UTS Executive Director, Advancement, visited him in his home (which he purchased from Robertson Davies), Tom talked about his current work helping to establish Canada’s first Arctic university.
“One of the purposes of my visit was to present Tom with his Hall of Fame award for his contribution and commitment to education in Canada,” says Martha. “We talked about his continued involvement at UTS and his memories of some of his favourite teachers – called ‘Masters’ then. It was touching to hear how much he cherished his time at the school seven decades later.”
If anyone embodies the maxim to leave the world a better place than they found it, it’s Tom Symons. He did so by creating communities and opportunities that did not previously exist. Bob Rae P ’02, now Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, said of Tom, “He just built things.” He did, with his characteristic openness to life. He also knocked things down, like prejudice and barriers to equality. All while holding UTS in his heart. ■
TOP LEFT: Tom Symons C.C., O Ont, FRSC ’47 (second from right) at the UTS Groundbreaking Ceremony for our renewed building on December 12, 2018. TOP MIDDLE: Trent University Chancellor Dr. Stephen Stohn ’66, also a well‑respected entertainment lawyer, award‑winning producer, songwriter and author, pictured with Tom Symons. TOP RIGHT: At UTS, Tom Symons served on the Twig Editorial Board.
CONSTRUCTION CORNER
The renewed building at 371 Bloor Street West is beginning to look a lot like the school we always dreamed it could be. Soon the floor-to-ceiling windows outside the library will be fully installed. The steel frame and roofing are complete, and most of the heavy lifting is done. Imagine hoisting 33,000 pounds of HVAC equipment to the rooftop of our new building (and that was just one load) for an idea of the magnitude of this project.
Now, the transformation is taking place inside the building as Eastern Construction continues to forge ahead, not slowed down by COVID-19 construction restrictions. Walls are being primed and painted. Tiling is underway. In the halls, there are shiny new lockers waiting for the day when students will reap the benefits of the incredible support our UTS community has given to the Building the Future campaign.
Come November 2021, UTS students will step into the next stage of storied history in a beautiful, inspired space, just as extraordinary as they are. Every day now, we are closer to the day we come home, and we can’t wait to see what comes next! ■
Luigi Cifa
RIGHT: The new Withrow Auditorium will soon be adorned with 700 seats, engraved with recognition from the Take Your Seat initiative. ABOVE: The Fleck Atrium, named for UTS Board Chair and Founder Jim Fleck C.C. ’49, P ’72, will be a central hub connecting the historic and new parts of the school together. LEFT: The green roof at UTS will promote energy efficiency in our renewed building, keeping it cooler in summer and warmer in winter, as well as improving air quality and reducing the urban heat island effect that compounds climate change.
BUILD AVI’S CLASSROOM
F2 (Grade 8) student Avi Shah is excitedly looking forward to the renewed building and everything it means for his future at UTS, from playing in the Junior Winds Ensemble on the Withrow Auditorium stage to broadening his understanding in new science labs. He might even start working out with the new fitness equipment in the Ridley Centre.
To ensure the renewed building is ready for the return of Avi and his schoolmates later this year, UTS launched the Build Avi’s Classroom campaign to provide the new furniture and equipment students will need inside the new building. The extensive list of items ranges from beanbag chairs to kettlebells, a 3D carving machine to a green screen, study chairs to stationary bikes, and much more, all with the goal of ensuring students like Avi are supported with world-class facilities in the renewed UTS.
Avi loves the “culture of learning” that thrives in UTS classrooms, when it sometimes it feels like you’re collaborating and interchanging ideas so well on group projects that it’s like a “collective brain.” One of his favourite things is how when he asks classmates, “Do you want to help each other prepare for this test?” they say yes.
“At UTS, everybody wants to help.” he says.
To learn more about the furniture and equipment Avi and his classmates need for the new building, visit: build.utschools.ca or call the Office of Advancement at 416-978-3919. ■
