Day 3 - Queens, RMC, ÉTS

Hey friends, so today I explored some parts of Canada I haven't seen before. I had spent the previous night in Oshawa, and when we woke up we started making our way towards Kingston to see Queens and RMC! Anthony Vieira joined me on my trip starting today, so it was great having company on my journey.

When we first got to Queens, one of the first things I saw was an engineering teaching sculpture (or a teaching tree as I like to call it). I had originally planned my trip around taking a picture with every school's tree, only to learn that most schools in Canada don't actually have a tree, and that it's mostly an American thing. Nonetheless, it was great to see that Queens had one! We didn't really know where to go, but Anthony had been to Queens before so he took me to Queens EngSoc Office, which was in a building Beamish-Munro Hall Integrated Learning Centre (or ILC for short). While there, I made a new friend, his name was Carson and he is the incoming Queens EngSoc President, and we seemed to hit it off quite well. He graciously took a break from the "exciting" work he was doing (which entailed digitizing old EngSoc documents) to show us around the campus. 

The beautiful thing about Queens campus is the 1800's style architecture of so many of their buildings. They were beautiful on the outside, and one of them was full on stained glass windows on the inside, so it was great to see. This particular building is where they run an event similar to the "Meet the Dean" event at Waterloo, so it was cool to see the similarities between the schools. We then went to see Clark Hall Pub, which is their Engineering campus pub, and it was FULL of so many amazing Engineering memorabilia, including every year's "class sign", which is designed by a person from that year, every year (except 1972, apparently an alumnus stole that sign. There were also some great murals that were painted by former students that depicted the fascinating Engineering culture at Queens. There is so much history on their campus, which was great to see. One of the last things we got to see was the very first building built on Queens campus, Summerhill, which was built in 1839. I don't get to see many Queens students or hear about what they have on their campus, so it was a very fun time getting to see their campus.

The next place we got to see was definitely the biggest surprise of my trip this far. We went to visit the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), and were blown away by how big and beautiful their campus was. We had to park the car elsewhere and walk over to their campus, and had to comply with the regulations of their campus due to it also being a military base. They had the more beautiful school sign I've seen yet, so it was a pleasure to tap my ring on it. While I had previously mentioned that so many campuses had random art pieces all around it, the statues at RMC all had a purpose. There were tanks, airplanes, torpedoes, and other military-based machinery. It was also surrounded by both Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, and the campus itself was significantly larger than I had imagined. It was interesting seeing all the students there in military uniforms, and the different activities that were occurring on their campus. Definitely a pleasantly surprising experience overall, with the only drawback being how many bugs there were flying around.

After leaving Kingston, we then ventured outside of Ontario and made our way over to Montreal to visit École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS). The drive to Montreal was pleasant along the 401, and then all hell broke loose as we got a bit further into Quebec. And when we got to Montreal, we spent a significant amount of time trying to figure our parking, so those were the less pleasant parts of my day. But when we got to ÉTS, Bryan Gingras showed us around his campus. Fun Fact: ÉTS only offers Engineering and nothing else, and it has over 10,000 Engineering students; it is also 100% french, so I'm thankful we had a tour guide to take us around their campus. We first stopped by the Association étudiante de l’ÉTS (AEETS, basically their EngSoc) office, and he gave us a bunch of stickers and patches as souvenirs. He showed us the various clubs and design teams that ÉTS has to offer, we accidentally interrupted a team meeting for their autonomous sailboat team, but they saw my covies and just laughed it off. The main piece of art found at ÉTS was a giant copper wire loop in front of their bookstore, and given that they only offered Engineering it was quite suitable. Our last stop on their campus was the campus pub, 100 Génies, and I got to meet some of his fellow ÉTS Engineering Students.

Aside from the bugs and driving in Montreal, today was a blast. Tomorrow we visit Concordia, McGill and École Polytechnique, so that should be an adventure as well. Will definitely be investing in a day pass for the Montreal Metro for tomorrow.

Queens: www.instagram.com/p/BiTVM0ClX14
RMC: www.instagram.com/p/BiTV19slx7O
ÉTS: www.instagram.com/p/BiTWxaYF7Wa