Urban field camp in downtown Toronto turned science student into a hometown tourist

Rivi Hume-Beardall had no idea that she’d spent nearly a decade doing her piano exams at the birthplace of McMaster University.

That was the first in a week’s worth of revelations that made the fourth-year science student feel like a tourist in her hometown. The urban field camp run by associate professor Michael Mercier and professor Robert Wilton turned Canada’s largest city into a living lab for Hume-Beardall and 37 other Mac students.

Hume-Beardall, who was born and raised in Toronto’s west end, registered for the course thinking she had a homefield advantage. “I thought I knew it all when it came to Toronto. But then we spent the entire week going to places and spaces I’d never been or really ever noticed before.”

Hume-Beardall says she gained a new perspective and deeper appreciation for her hometown. She also flooded her mom’s phone with texts and photos all throughout camp. “I was constantly sending her highlights that started with ‘did you know that…? And ‘look at this’ and ‘guess where we are.’”

The camp delivers a full term worth of experiential learning during the last week of summer. The days are long – the camp runs from 8:30 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. – and students cover a lot of ground. “Our third day was set up like a scavenger hunt that took us all the way from Lake Ontario to Bay Street.”

McMaster’s Toronto campus at 180 Bloor Street West was basecamp. Pre-pandemic, students stayed overnight in Toronto but soaring room rates turned campers into daily commuters.

“I had the shortest commute of all my classmates,” says Hume-Beardall.

Before heading out on the first morning, Mercier asked if anyone knew the significance of the four-storey Victorian building across the street. Hume-Beardall knew the building well – it’s home to the Royal Conservatory of Music. She had started going there for annual piano exams when she was10 years old.

But she didn’t know the building had been McMaster’s first home from 1890 until the university relocated to Hamilton in 1930. Hume-Beardall made the same move 92 years later as a first-year student. “It’s like I was destined to go to Mac.”

Mercier launched the urban field camp with professor Walter Peace in 2011 for social science students who’d been asking for their own version of the Northern Ontario field camp offered to physical science students. Wilton stepped in after Peace retired and has worked with Mercier on 10 camps.

A city that’s Canada’s largest and eighth oldest makes it the ideal location for students to explore, say Mercier and Wilton. The concepts that students have studied in their courses – how cities grow, evolve, adapt and wrestle with the competing demands of what’s feasible versus what’s needed – are playing out in real time.

“Toronto’s a good illustration of the creative destruction that happens in big cities,” says Wilton. “Profound changes are happening at an accelerated pace for better and for worse.”  The camp lets students see, experience and engage with those changes in ways that couldn’t be fully conveyed through in-class lectures alone.

Students have also witnessed the impacts of a global pandemic and how cities recover. COVID-19 emptied out downtown Toronto, says Wilton. It left students in previous camps exploring near-deserted financial, retail and entertainment districts.

“But during this year’s camp, the downtown core was full of people. This was the first year where it felt like we were back in pre-COVID Toronto.”

Along with tying together everything students have learned, the camp sets the stage for the students’ third and fourth-year courses in urban planning, housing and transportation. Conversations that started in Toronto continue on campus, says Mercier. “Students draw a direct line between what they’re studying in our courses to what they saw and did during their week in Toronto.”

The camp also helps students hone essential research skills. “Field work is an essential part of geography,” says Wilton. During the week, students observe the design and social use of different urban public spaces, document the changes happening along Yonge Street and also create and then conduct public surveys about key urban issues, including housing affordability, commuting and multiculturalism. Hume-Beardall persuaded her team to run their on-the-street surveys around Toronto Metropolitan University’s bustling downtown campus.

Students spend their last day developing urban development proposals for a site in the core of the city. That site used to be a parking lot but a developer has since put up a condo tower.

Like the city, the camp curriculum and assessments constantly change. Students visit new places and work on different projects. This year, Wilton added a day one walking tour that highlights the Indigenous influence on Toronto’s historical and contemporary urban geography. Students learn that Tkaronto is the traditional territory of the Wendat, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas of the Credit peoples and the land is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Planning and running the camp is a major commitment and workout but well worth the time and effort, say Mercier and Wilton who supervise the students during all five days. “We get in a lot of steps that week,” says Mercier.

“I’ve always loved being in downtown Toronto. It’s energizing. And it’s exciting that Rob and I get to introduce the city to our students in a unique and immersive way that brings to life everything they’ve been learning at Mac.”

For Hume-Beardall, the urban field camp gave more than a new perspective and deeper appreciation for her hometown – it got her interested in how people live, work, learn and play in cities. “That’s something I’d never thought about before the camp and now I’m taking a course on urban planning to learn even more. Dr. Mercier and Dr. Wilton have definitely made an impact and their camp has been a real highlight of my time at Mac.”