Canstruction Waterloo Region 2024, presented by Cohen Highley Lawyers, raised an incredible 113,284 meals for people in need in our community.

This annual event, held at Conestoga Mall during March Break, helps raise food and funds, increase awareness about food insecurity in our community, and brings together local businesses and groups to creatively build a future without hunger.

This year, 14 teams used their talent and skills to build impressive structures using over 24,000 unopened food cans. The public was invited to view the structures and donate to The Food Bank to vote for their favourite build to win the People’s Choice Award. Structures were also judged by a panel in set categories.

MTE Consultants, a multidisciplinary engineering firm, and WalterFedy, a multidisciplinary design firm, were two of the 14 participating teams. For both businesses, the 2024 event marked their 15^th year participating in Canstruction!

“Community has always been core to who we are,” says Laurie Stephens, director, internal communications & employee experience of MTE. “Because our staff work and live in this community, it’s a no brainer for them to want to participate in Canstruction.”

“As an architecture and engineering design firm, Canstruction aligns perfectly with our values,” says Jordan Thatcher, project manager at WalterFedy. “It challenges our design team creatively while allowing us to give back to the community. We believe in contributing positively to the places we live and work.”

First, teams participating in Canstruction must design their builds. After holding a brainstorming session and narrowing down their ideas, MTE decided to construct a bulldozer. They named their structure ‘Clearing a Path to Food Security.’

“The team really likes to build things that people walking around the mall will recognize,” Laurie explains, “And we’re in the construction industry so a bulldozer is related to what we do.”

WalterFedy also brainstormed ideas as a team. They chose to build a combine harvester, naming their structure ‘Harvest Against Hunger.’

“We aimed to prepare the best meal possible using a variety of foods to meet community needs,” Jordan explains.

After finalizing their design ideas, teams are responsible for sourcing and buying the food needed to build their structures. WalterFedy held various creative events to raise funds, including a Valentine’s Day cookie sale and Kernels Popcorn sale. With the money raised and generous donations from team members, staff, and WalterFedy, they were able to buy the food items needed to bring their design to life. To build their structure, they used cans and packages of penne pasta, hot chicken sandwich sauce, creamed corn, cut wax beans, diced tomatoes, gravy, mixed vegetables, coffee, crackers, Crispers, Wheat Thins, Mr. Noodles, Cheerios, spaghetti, peas, Rice Krispies, cereal, and carrots. In total, they used 921 cans!

“We feel extremely fortunate to be able to participate in this important event each year,” Jordan says. Some of the highlights of participating in Canstruction include hearing about the incredible impact the food and donations collected from this event will have on our community, walking around the mall and seeing the amazing designs that all the teams create, using our skills in the architecture, engineering, and construction fields to support a worthwhile cause, seeing our vision come to life on Build Day, chatting with members of the public about our build, Canstruction, and The Food Bank as we work on Build Day, challenging ourselves to be creative and push the limits to build exciting structures, and giving back to our community.”

To build their structure, MTE sourced and bought cans and packages of lentils, breadcrumbs, spaghetti, chickpeas, beans, and macaroni and cheese. Altogether, they used 2,400 cans!

“Canstruction has resonated with our staff because they get to design and build the structure,” Laurie says. “A lot of engineering is designing buildings. They go out to the sites and check on how things are going but they’re not the contractor. They’re not the ones out there actually building the thing that they’ve been looking at on paper for years and sometimes months. Canstruction appeals to them because they get to design it on paper and then go out one night and build it and troubleshoot and see it come to life with their own two hands. I think that’s why this is an event that they want to come back to year after year and participate in.”

We’re so thankful to MTE, WalterFedy, and the other teams for their support of this event. We can’t wait to see what teams come up with in 2025!