Construction Blog

Photo credit: David Feldman

It was a grand room for the 2013 Grand Moot, held in the beautiful Victoria Chapel on October 3rd. The soaring ceiling, solid oak doors and vintage podium were quite the Ivy League contrast to Flavelle's mid-eighties Moot Court Room

The Grand Moot, one of the largest mooting events at the law school, had our best mooters facing off in front of a bench led by Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michael Moldaver. It included Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Robert Sharpe, and Ontario Superior Court Justice Katherine Swinton.

The problem dealt with positive rights under section 7 of the Charter, and whether life, liberty, and security of the person can extend to cover the right to health care on Aboriginal reserves.

Read more about the Grand Moot topic and mooters here.

The Class of 2016 has survived the first month of our first year of law school.

It began with a fantastic Orientation Week jam-packed with activities. The days were filled with events to let us get to know our classmates and get a sense of what law school is like.  Using the beautiful Hart House quad as a starting point, there were events ranging from the insightful - lectures from faculty members and an Ontario Court of Appeal Justice - to the less serious and more fun - a scavenger hunt and laser tag!  It was a great week and a credit to the upper-year volunteers, faculty and staff who put it on.

But, alas, Orientation Week seems a distant memory now.

With a few weeks of class under our belt, we first years are making law school life at Victoria College our own.  There is a constant hum of chatter from the students’ lounge and a steady stream of students going to study in the reading room in Birge Carnegie. There are students taking advantage of the last throes of summer by catching up with friends and eating lunch on the stone wall between Emmanuel College and the Old Vic mansion. And, of course, you can always find classmates in the hallway outside the library checking their locker and making sure they have the right books for the next class.

I’ve written about the Faculty of Law’s commitment to a sustainable renewal project—excess, old furnishings from the Bora Laskin Library recycled or donated, demolition materials sorted and separated for reuse, and the revitalization of green space with native species.

And I’ll be posting updates on the state-of-the-art green initiatives to be deployed in the Jackman Law Building as we hit each construction milestone.

It also helps to be working with a team which shares our green philosophy, such as Eastern Construction and B + H Architects.

Recently, B + H participated in World Green Building Week, one of about 25,000 organizations from 98 countries, to band together and highlight that ‘green is good.'

The annual event encourages members to host events, raise awareness and celebrate sustainable projects.