FIELD TRIPS
Friday, July 28 Field Trips
We are pleased to offer field trips in addition to our main conference programming. Details below.
- The Royal Botanical Gardens (8:15 am - 1:00 pm)
- The Royal Ontario Museum (9:00 am - 3:30 pm)
- The Eco-Geo Tour of the Guelph Area (9:00 am - 4:30 pm)
1. The Royal Botanical Gardens
When
8:15 am - 1:00 pm (4.75 hours)
Description
The Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington is Canada’s largest botanical garden with a wide variety of both native and cultivated shrubs and trees. We will spend the first part of our tour in the Arboretum which is more like an English landscape park than a garden. We can get up close to the trees and shrubs and walk through the Synoptic Woody plants garden which is an A–Z living encyclopedia of shrubs. We will reboard the bus and go to Hendrie Park where the Rose Garden should be at its peak along with all the other summer-blooming annuals and perennials as well as the University of Guelph trial gardens. You can choose to join a tour led by horticulturist and CSCA member Valerie Sikkema or wander on your own with provided maps and a list of the best parts of each garden to visit.
Price
$75 USD
2. The Royal Ontario Museum
When
9:00 am - 3:30 pm (6.5 hours)
Description
The visit to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) will feature the first gallery of its kind in North America: The Dawn of Life. You will enter one of the world’s most astounding fossil collections within a new, nearly 10,000-square-foot gallery. While fossils on display date back to nearly 4 billion years, a major focus is on the museum’s superb collection of Burgess Shale fossils. There is an array of bizarre soft-bodied early Cambrian creatures, presented not only in their fossil forms but through animated dioramas and digital interactives, which bring the animals to life. The gallery winds through time, appropriately closing at the start of the age of the dinosaurs. The adjacent display area is the ROM’s unique and world-class dinosaur display. Other time will be given to exploring the many other fascinating aspects of the museum, or people may choose to spend a little time exploring the heart of Toronto’s uptown Bloor Street district. The trip will be led by ROM research staff as well as the ASA’s own paleontologist Keith Miller.
Price
$90 USD
3. The Eco-Geo Tour of the Guelph Area
When
9:00 am - 4:30 pm (7.5 hours)
Description
This field trip includes visits to two Christian-based centres for conservation, plus some easy hikes and stops to explore the rich glacial geomorphology of the Guelph and Hamilton areas. The first stop is the Cedar Haven Eco-Centre, part of A Rocha’s global network of support for conservation and ecological stewardship. We will learn of their various projects and hands-on educational work with science, gardening, wilderness skills, etc. The next stop will be Crieff Hills Community, the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s national retreat centre. We will have a tour of their environmentally focused projects, including a current program of eradication of invasive species that uses their flock of Soay sheep. We will also enjoy a pleasant hike through a deciduous forest and examine superb examples of “stagnant ice topography” at the heart of the Galt Moraine. Other stops will include excellent examples of glacial striations on bedrock and a visit to the top of the Niagara Escarpment and its vista of Lake Ontario. The trip will be led by Bob Geddes and staff of the two centres.
Price
$90 USD