Back to York

I took a golden opportunity to visit Canada’s second largest university. While I have never been complimentary of York’s physical layout, I found that the campus had begun to grow on me. Sort of... The point being, it wasn’t quite as bad as I had remembered or reported it to be.... I think.

Campus Walk

Random Computer Room

Anyway, York is a huge, sprawling collection of modernist/brutalist buildings on what no doubt were once cornfields. While it may not be much to look at, there is a lot going on here. With 55,000 students flowing through the halls every week, preparing to take their place as emerging leaders, the mind staggers at the potential impact of the institution. As Aaron Mix-Ross mentioned to me as we talked about it later, York highly ideological. It is not only committed to a secular ethos, but a materialist dialectic (marxist) one as well. It has made no effort to hide the fact.



Student Centre



As I entered the Student Centre, I was immediately struck afresh of the sheer dynamism of the place. Saris, Turbans, Hijabs and Yamulkes filled the compact space along with Hollister and Calvin Klein. It was an intense microcosm of the Canadian multi-cultural experiment. It struck me as I let it all swirl around me that anywhere else in the world this might go sideways in a hurry. And the fact is: York has had its own issues.

On the third floors, the religious groups had their “offices”, which ranged from the generously allotted Jewish Hillel group’s space to the closet that housed Campus for Christ. It almost seemed as if people were huddled in these spaces for sanctuary. This was certainly the case for the Korean Christian Fellowship. There was an intense physicality to the experience that would cause the student to seek some form of refuge. The danger is allowing the space to remove you from where you really ought to be. It struck me... there is so much more that needs to happen, here...!!