Strata-Walk: Victoria Street/Avenue

The HPU led a stratigraphic walk to map the different layers of meanings, stories, and systems that make up a place. With the help of a list of prompts, the HPU explored the urban landscape in three different cities, on three different continents! It took place in Sydney, Australia (where HPU member Sarah Truman led with members of WalkingLab), Windsor (with HPUers Donna Akrey and Taien Ng-Chan as part of In/terminus Research Collective's Stories of the City exhibition opening), and London, England (with composer David Ben Shannon). Each group collectively mapped the "strata" of that street on that date.
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Victoria Avenue (Windsor)

In Windsor, it was a very wet walk, full of weather, with heavy clumps of sleety-snow falling onto our attempts at mapping en route. We focused instead on note taking and chatting about the street and about the particulars of Windsor culture. For instance, many of the street names are French, pointing to the old city roots as a French settlement, but locals have anglicized the pronounciations (for example, Pierre Street is pronounced "Piry"). The US-Canada border is, by some strange twist of geography, north of our location. One participant decided to map the responses of strangers when asked to tell their favourite story. The group reached our destination towards the end of Victoria and University Streets and decamped to a nearby pub to finish our maps over some pints. Many thanks to In/terminus and to all those hearty souls who bravely came out for this wet and chilly walk!

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Victoria Street (London) Strata-maps

Victoria Street (Sydney) Strata-maps