The Laurentian architecture program focuses on hands-on learning and design-build projects where students create structures — like wooden ice stations along Sudbury’s Ramsey Lake Skating Path — starting in their first year. A team of about a dozen architecture students and recent grads are building a pedestrian bridge at La Cloche Provincial Park, just south of Massey, Ont., and about 100 kilometres southwest of Sudbury.

The bridge marks the beginning of the Heaven’s Gate (Kitchitwaa Shkwaandem) Trail, a rugged, 40-kilometre backpacking route through the northeastern Ontario wilderness. The project is a partnership between the school, Ontario Parks, and Sagamok Anishnawbek, a First Nation on Lake Huron’s north shore. The project began in 2019, but ran into a series of pandemic-related delays. A silver lining however, is that several Laurentian cohorts have been able to work on the bridge, which grew from eight to 16 metres over the course of its design. The partners hope to open the bridge by summer’s end, coinciding with the architecture school’s 10th anniversary.

Students have been keenly interested in the history of the area and incorporating traditional values and knowledge into the design, said Ross Assinewe, Sagamok Anishnawbek’s director of planning and infrastructure. For example, the cedar logs that will be used in the structure were felled by members of the First Nation on their land.

The bridge is the first of several opportunities for Sagamok Anishnawbek to work with Laurentian to further develop and upgrade the Heaven’s Gate Trail and strengthen local tourism, said Mr. Assinewe, whose community is negotiating with the province of Ontario on a land-claim settlement for Fort La Cloche. The partnership is also a chance to build connections between the community’s schools and the university, he said.