Southcentre Mall under 'canstruction': 30,000 cans of food used to for art installations
After a two year hiatus, engineers, designers and students gathered at Southcentre Mall on Thursday to create structures composed of non-perishable food items.
Dubbed "Canstruction," the 16th version of the event saw five teams convert the mall's centre court into expositions made of canned goods, all adhering to the same theme: Welcome To The Jungle.
The City of Calgary, Suncor, Maple Reinders Inc., Calgary Co-op and St. Michael School represented the competing teams. When completed, the art installations will be judged and a winning entry will be named. Judging categories include structural integrity, best use of labels, best original design and people's choice.
After dismantling, the 30,000 cans of food will be donated to the Calgary Food Bank.
The donation will help fill over 8,500 food hampers in one month.
"We see people coming every day that have used up all of their resources," said Shawna Ogston of the Calgary Food Bank.
"Now, with increased expenses – whether heating or fuel costs – their budgets are too stretched. Food is the first thing to come off the budget list, but this event will provide a great deal of help," she said.
Alexandria Matos, an instructor at St. Michael School, says the importance of the food donation was not lost on her group of students.
"We have members of our community that also use the food bank, so they understand they are helping both the greater public and their classmates," said Matos.
"They understand very well how they are helping."
The Canstruction exhibit is open to the public at Southcentre's Centre Court until March 17.
The event has raised over 455,000 pounds of food for needy Calgarians since 2006.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Drive one of these vehicles? You may pay 37 per cent more than average insurance costs due to thefts
As the number of auto theft incidents rises in Canada, so have insurance premiums for drivers, even the ones whose vehicles aren't stolen.
'I'm not wealthy': Ontario senior shocked she owes $40,000 in capital gains after gifting land
An Ontario senior who wanted to help her daughter and grandson eventually own homes one day decided to give them two lots on her property as a gift—but she didn’t know it would eventually cost her tens of thousands of dollars.
NDP want Liberals to scrap proposed election date change that could secure pensions for many MPs
The federal New Democrats want to amend the Liberal government's electoral reform legislation to scrap the proposal to push back the vote by a week and consequently secure pensions for dozens of MPs, CTV News has learned.
Israel's war cabinet minister moves to dissolve parliament: statement
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz's centrist party has proposed holding a vote to dissolve parliament in a bid to bring about an early election, his party said in a statement on Thursday.
DEVELOPING BMO clients face outages in Canada, U.S. following data centre fire alarm
Bank of Montreal clients on both sides of the border Thursday morning have reported outages with banking services. BMO said its technical team is investigating.
Exorbitant fees get Gazans out with no help from Ottawa
The comforting sound of giggling grandchildren has chased away the cloud of anxiety that has loomed over Mohammed and Intisar Nofal's home for the past seven months.
Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C., begins RBC Canadian Open defence
Nick Taylor begins the defence of his RBC Canadian Open title this morning.
B.C. mortgage broker ran $270-million Ponzi scheme, then fled Canada, bankruptcy trustee says
The trustee appointed to manage the bankruptcies of a Victoria mortgage company and its owner has concluded that they committed "numerous offences" and operated as a "massive Ponzi scheme."
Want to turn off Meta AI? You can't - but there are some workarounds
If you use Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram, you've probably noticed a new character pop up answering search queries or eagerly offering tidbits of information in your feeds, with varying degrees of accuracy.