Sadly, for many urban dwellers, the closest they come to nature is their city’s park system. Roos Island, in the heart of Kitchener’s downtown Victoria Park squats beautifully in the middle of dammed Schneider Creek just before it descends below ground into the maw of it’s culvert.

As each generation experiences nature, they define it based on the environment they inhabit, leading to an intergenerational blindness of what has already been lost. Recently redeveloped due to serious water quality issues related to the waste from the local waterfowl, the surface of the water shrouds a problematic relationship with engineered nature.

Seen here, facing west towards Waterloo at sunset, it is a pretty—if unsettlingly beautiful—pantomime of nature.  Larger image.

“Roos, the idyll of Victoria.”
Acrylic on panel
36×36 in
2012

This painting is in the private collection of Julia & Paul Salvini.