A WALK IN LAKESIDE PARK WITH JOSEPH BRANNAN
The playground at Lakeside Park in Kitchener provided a convenient meeting spot for my walk with labour organizer, library advocate and bird enthusiast Joseph Brannan, but it made for a snowy trek to the ploughed path.
“All this snow is going to melt and go into the lake there,” Brannan said. “The projects that the Creek Collective group have done recently and Ellie Anglin’s Ribbon Zine have all made me think so much more about watersheds.”
Our walk took us past the Greenbrook water treatment plant, a pumphouse that is still in operation, as well as the foundations of an old treatment station. It is this history and connection to nature that makes the park a special one for Brannan to visit.
Brannan was born and raised in Cambridge and lived in Waterloo before relocating to Kitchener five years ago to be closer to work.
“I feel like I can disparage [the tri-cities] all equally,” Brannan joked. “While I love them all for their strengths.”
One of those strengths is Kitchener’s bike network, which Brannan uses year-round. With Lakeside Park’s proximity to Mausser Park and Meinzinger Park, as well as its connection to the trail system, Brannan often finds himself passing through the green space on two wheels.
“The Iron Horse Trail is really the highway that connects KW,” Brannan said. “It’s not [highways] seven and eight. Kitchener’s bike network is really getting better and better. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty fantastic.”
As an all-season rider, Brannan has a special appreciation for what biking in the snowy weather can provide.
“There’s something really great about coming home from work in the evening on a couple of crisp centimetres of fresh snow, just the silence of it,” he said.
Biking is also a way that Brannan experiences and engages with the community. He appreciates the way cycling provides a chance to connect with other riders and pedestrians, and to be able to respond to people in need of help in a way that being contained and isolated in a car does not facilitate.
The desire for community and connection is also what drove Brannan to pursue a career in the public library sector. He works as a Library Services Coordinator at the Central branch and also serves as the vice president of CUPE Local 331, which represents the Kitchener Library employees.
“It is a joy to point someone to the resources that they need,” Brannan said. “It is a joy to connect someone with a good book and see them come back and say, ‘it was fantastic.’”
One of Brannan’s favourite parts of the job is answering patron emails, asking for book recommendations and getting into the mindset of each reader to point them in the right direction. He has also organized library programming around counter-mapping, which draws from Indigenous movements to reclaim land and examine how maps reflect use of space, power and ownership.
“I think the library is a keystone of every community and should be protected, appreciated and resourced,” Brannan said. “When the community gives their feedback on what they need from that space, that informs the work that a library can prioritize.”
We stopped at a roofed structure which Brannan identified as a swallow habitat. We trekked through the snow to look underneath at the artificial perches that encourage nest building. And when we walked to the lake, he spoke about the many birds and other creatures that inhabit the park.
“You hear the city all around, but [Lakeside Park] is a real gem of something that’s been protected,” Brannan said. “This is a huge birding hotspot in the spring and fall.”
Brannan developed a love of birds from spending time in the woods as a child and from his grandfather who passed along his appreciation and knowledge. More recently, Brannan has felt a connection to the legacy of his great-grandmother and his Mennonite heritage as he has begun to explore fibre arts.
“The slow, mechanical, hands-on aspect of stitching and knitting is something I find very soothing,” he said. “Turning a fibre into something useful is probably one of the oldest things that people have ever done, and so it feels like connecting with the entirety of human history.”
Quilting and knitting provide a chance for Brannan to make something tangible and usable, and to engage with his analytical brain while working through the math involved in those crafting projects. And he is quick to connect his interests back to the library, citing the programs for knitters, bikers and bird lovers that are offered regularly.
Brannan is optimistic about the future of Kitchener, and through his work, interests and even his commute he finds ways to contribute to building a hopeful way forward.
“One of Kitchener’s strengths is its many groups of people that are trying to build community very intentionally,” Brannan said.
“There’s a lot of potential in Kitchener,” he said.
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