THE HUMAN CONDITION SERIES - Terror 2008
The Human Condition Series is held annually at the Laurentian University campus at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Barrie is located approximately 45 minutes north of the Pearson International Airport in Toronto.
Toronto is the largest city in Canada with a population of 2.5 million people and a total population of 5 million people within Toronto and the Great Toronto Area (GTA). Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world with over 100 languages being spoken, and is also ranked as the safest metropolitan area in North America.
The commute from Toronto to Barrie is easily accessible by car, shuttle, bus, and train. The 400 highway is a six lane highway that runs directly from Toronto to Barrie. Bus and train service is also available through Go Transit which services the GTA and surrounding areas. The population of Barrie is 125,000 and is one of the fastest growing cities in North America.
The region of around Barrie was settled 6,000 to 7,000 years ago and was inhabited by Algonquin, Chippewa and Ojibway peoples some 2,500 years ago. Barrie was initially established by Indigenous peoples as a small community at the eastern end of a portage route between Lake Simcoe and the Nottawasaga River, which empties into Georgian Bay on Lake Superior. French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, arrived in 1615 and utilized the portage route for trade with the Huron, Algonkin and Montagnais peoples. Later, this route became known as the Nine Mile Portage by trappers and fur traders.
After the American Revolutionary War, many United Empire Loyalists settled in the fertile region along Lake Simcoe’s shores. In the early 1800s, the Hudson Bay Company established a storehouse at Kempenfelt Bay on Lake Simcoe. In the 1790s, Lieutenant Governor Simcoe began the construction of Yonge street, one of the longest streets in the world, northwards from Toronto to Lake Simcoe. During the War of 1812 between British Canada and the United States, Barrie became a strategic settlement for the British who utilize the Nine Mile Portage to move equipment, supplies and troops from Upper Canada to outposts around Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
Barrie continues to be a strategic intersection where the temporal and spatial ebbs and flows of water and land, indigenous and foreign, rural and urban, east and west, north and south, local and global are played out, creating an alternative space from which the Human Condition can be interrogated.
Getting to Toronto Pearson Airport
http://www.toronto.com/community/article/000-360-792
Simcoe County Airport Service
Provides door to door service, from Airport to Hotel, one way for $49.00 (CND)
http://www.simcoecountyairportservice.ca/
(800) 461-7529, or (705) 728-1148, Fax: (705) 728-8524
Go Transit
Bus schedule is open, but Train times are restricted to commuter schedule
http://www.gotransit.com/
Greyhound Bus Lines
http://www.greyhound.com/home/
Barrie Local Taxi Service
Deluxe Taxi (Airport Service as well) - (705) 728-4444, or (705) 728-5555
Barrie Taxi - (705) 721-7777
Ace Taxi - (705) 727-9999