Canstruction takes on the Yellow Submarine

‘Twas the night of canstruction and all through the mall, people were whirring, straight through down the hall. The cans were stacked, up high with care, in hopes that the foodbanks shelves won’t go bare.

On March 12th, 13 teams of builders and 37,000 lbs of food converged on Conestoga Mall. Ten hours later in the early morning of March 13th, uniquely different can sculptures stood complete and Waterloo Engineering Students were along for the ride. A team of 7 builders from various disciplines and years, banded together to brainstorm, design and then build a structure out of cans.

With a generous donation of $2500 from Research In Motion, the team used over 2000 cans to construct a yellow submarine out of a mix of no name tuna, soup, sardines, turkey and pasta. Starting at 6:30pm and running until after 1:00am, the team of Kevin Ling, Melanie Snow, Ahmed Mezil, Kirusha Srimohanarajah, Yasser Al-Khder, Michael Seliske and Nizar Hisan worked their tails off to create the best Yellow Submarine ever. There were a few hiccups and rebuilds along the way but by the end of our 10 hours of building, a wonderful submarine surfaced out of the floor.

Canstruction is a North American annual event which encourages members of the community to collect and raise donations of food, in order to build a piece of art which can be shown off to the community. Winners are declared in each of several categories at local competitions and then move on to compete at a North American level, where grand champions are selected. Once the art has been displayed to the public and thoroughly enjoyed, the creations are dismantled and the food is all donated to the local food bank. At the Waterloo region event alone, there were 14 structures created out of 34,000 cans of food. The event was a huge success and Waterloo Engineering is proud of their creation. Check the EngSoc website at http://engsoc.uwaterloo.ca for an update on how they did in the judging.