WLURA hosts regular presentations on the last Friday of most months of the year. The next few gatherings will be a hybrid of in-person and by Zoom. Zoom invitations are sent out a few days before the event.
Pub Night at the Abe Erb pub in the Tannery Building at Charles and Victoria St. S. in downtown Kitchener.
Carol Stalker: on visiting the Costa del Sol – an alternative to Florida
Brad Dunbar, Certified Public Accountant: on tax advice and long-range planning
What birds are found in Waterloo Region and are they at risk? We have experienced significant and widespread losses of both insect pollinators and birds in North America, with a decline of one-third in individual bird abundance since 1970. One cause of the decline is the way we have developed the urban landscape. We can help birds by using native plantings and by managing our yards to provide food and shelter for insects and birds throughout the year.
Dr. Lyle Friesen worked for over twenty years as a songbird biologist with the federal government (Canadian Wildlife Service, a division of Environment Canada). His work focused on monitoring and researching native bird populations in Ontario – particularly species-at-risk – and on environmental assessment, including the impacts of wind turbines on birds and bats.
Fred Leutenegger is a beekeeper and dairy farmer from North Perth. Bees have been Fred’s passion since he was a boy. He has kept bees for 16 years and says he is “still learning from them!” In his 4 apiaries he keeps 85 large hives, each one containing approximately 60,000 bees.
We have asked Fred to bring some of his heavenly honey along for us to purchase.
This will be a hybrid gathering, in-person in the first-floor lounge of the 202 Regina St. building as well as on Zoom. In keeping with the university policy requiring masks in classrooms, masks will be required at our in-person gathering.
Not your usual road trip: driving the roads of the Yukon and Northwest Territories, with David Peirson, retired Professor of Biology. Join us for David’s narration and slide show of his trip and adventures along the way. Get to know Yellowknife, Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, the Mackenzie River, Victoria Falls in Nahanni National Park, the Alaska Highway, Whitehorse, Dawson City, and Mount Logan – parts of Canada not visited by most of us.
Election of Officers, Receipt of the Financial Statement, and Speaker (TBA).
By Gerry Schaus, Professor Emeritus, WLU.
Today, it’s the indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cultural monuments; a couple of decades ago, it was the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and the blowing up of the giant Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan that caught the world’s attention. In between, largely unnoticed, pillagers and treasure hunters have destroyed countless archaeological and historical sites for their own personal gain. It’s impossible to document all this destruction of world cultural patrimony, but at least we can glimpse this tragic loss from one archaeologist’s sad personal experience.
Nela Petkovic, Chief Information Officer for WLU, Scott Elliott, Director of Information and Computer Technologies Infrastructure and Information Security, and Yi Ruan, Internet Download Manager and Security Manager, will join us in a special session to provide information about the WLU email system and how best to continue using it. Nela and her colleagues will be addressing two major issues. The first is cyber security, of interest to all members. The second topic, more specific to users of the WLU email system, is steps recently taken to provide additional security for users of the system. This includes not only access to the system through regular login procedures, but also includes access to the WLU email archive, i.e., access to all of one’s email history for the past 25 years or so. WLURA members will have the chance to learn about the issues involved in having a secure email system.