The Our Town - Clarenville Blog by Paul Tilley

  Bare Mountain is one of the prominent features of the Clarenville's skyline. It towers some 156 meters above Clarenville’s harbour .  You can reach the peak of Bare Mountain relatively easily along the Bare Mountain hiking trail that can be accessed at numerous points in the town.  At the top, you can overlook most of the town, Random Island and Smith Sound as it leads into Trinity Bay.   Beyond Clarenville residents, people are familiar with Bare Mountain because of the prominence of the large star that sits at its top.   Each Christmas season the star is lit - making it visible from the Highway many kilometers beyond Clarenville's boundaries.   The Bare Mountain Star was a 1967 Centennial project of the Town of Clarenville. The original Centennial Star was designed, welded, wired and assembled by students and faculty in drafting, carpentry, electrical, welding and pipefitting programs at Clarenville campus.  They e...

Almost three years ago Greg Pittman, Winter Games Host Committee Chair, approached me about being part of the organizing committee for the 2014 Winter Games that would be held in Clarenville in March of 2014. During that same conversation, in a very enthusiastic voice, Greg said - "and I'd like us to make a video of Clarenville...". That was the start of a project that would boil down two years’ work into three minutes. It encompassed shooting over 250 shots of Clarenville through its four seasons, at every imaginable event - in High Definition. I took Greg's proposal to my colleagues here at the College. Deidra Strowbridge is an expert at design and crafting ideas. She has been behind our award winning Enactus team. Shannon Oake is an extraordinary visual designer and expert photographer, and Jody Locke is a master at video production, editing and photography - Shannon and Jody's work is behind a lot of the new media production that the find in several Distribu...

Over the past few years, Clarenville has budgeted quite a few dollars for what has been dubbed as Economic Development activities.  The focused goal has been to spur business development in the town and generate money.  This has been met with varying degrees of success (depending on who you talk to)  (see my previous post on this  http://ourtownclarenville.blogspot.ca/2013/04/economic-development-or-community.html  ) I would like to propose a radical rethink of this approach. First and foremost, the term Economic Development is much too narrow and too focused on money rather than the people it is supposed to benefit.  What we really need to talk about is Community Development .  The goal of community development is to take efforts to improve the “livability” of our town by making it a better place to live for its citizens and by creating a positive experience for its visitors.   This is known as “Placemaking” and has been the subj...

Over 60 students and staff at Clarenville campus attended the Day of Remembrance event Thursday, December 6, marks the 23rd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre in which Marc Lepine walked through l’Ecole Poyltechnique in Montreal , separated the men from the women, and then proceeded to shoot and kill 14 women while making anti-woman statements.  A new generation of students now attend postsecondary schools like Clarenville Campus all over the world.  These commerations ensure we will never forget this tragic event and others like it - many of which happen closer to home..