Category: Ottawa

Posts about Canada’s capital city, and the experience of living there

WestFest

Residents of Ottawa should strongly consider attending WestFest this year. It is a free five day festival happening in Westboro Village between June 11th and 15th. An entire street will be closed off to make room for stages, vendors, and the like. It only takes five minutes to walk there from the Westboro Transitway station.

Performers this year include:

  • 1755 (Acadian group on Thursday)
  • Joel Plaskett (Friday)
  • Buffy Sainte-Marie (Saturday)
  • Holly McNarland (Saturday)
  • Lynn Miles & Sue Foley (Sunday)
  • Andrea Simms Karp (Sunday)

There will also be authors, theatre performers, and artists about.

Emily and I are both volunteering, so you may see us there.

Evening spring ride in Ottawa

I just completed my most aesthetically pleasing bike ride for a long time. Residents of Ottawa should consider doing the following:

  1. Begin in the park near 111 Sussex, right around sunset.
  2. Ideally, start on the far side of the series of two white metal bridges spanning the water near there.
  3. About ten minutes after sunset, on a spring evening, begin following the route below.
  4. Ride to 111 Sussex and follow the path that hugs the water beside it. The path in question follows the water’s edge in this picture.
  5. Cross Sussex drive.
  6. Ride along it, past DFAIT headquarters.
  7. Continue past the Saudi embassy.
  8. Follow the curve of the road past the Kuwaiti Embassy and the National Gallery.
  9. Ride into Major’s Hill Park.
  10. Ride to the terrace beside the Chateau Laurier. Follow it to the stairs parallel to the Rideau Canal locks.
  11. Carry your bike up the stairs.
  12. Walk across the bridge towards Parliament.
  13. Carry your bike down the stairs to the path beside the Rideau Canal locks.
  14. Follow the riverside path west as far as you care to go.

The whole route looks gorgeous in the fading evening light, when the sky still offers a bit of competition for the artificial lights.

May Critical Mass

Ottawa Critical Mass

Following Ottawa’s interminable winters, Critical Masses of decent sizes have resumed. While some thin-skinned individuals were scared away by a few low-lying clouds, it was ideal cycling weather: warm and overcast, with no danger of discomfort of any kind.

For the most part, this was a civilized ride. There were a lot of first-time participants, so it was unusually important for people who knew what’s what to direct the mass. There were a couple of insane things done by taxicabs. The mass was heading up along the eastern edge of the Rideau Canal, along a two-lane road. Unwilling to wait a few minutes, to taxicabs decided to gun it the wrong way up the road, beside the mass. The second cab came within a couple of metres of crashing spectacularly into oncoming traffic.

Anyhow, here are some videos from yesterday’s mass:

I look forward to the ride next month.

Health and organs

Today, I registered for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). Once I get the card, I will no longer need to pay $60 up front and time I want to see a doctor.

I also took the opportunity to register as an organ and tissue donor (any organ or tissue they want, for transplant or medical experiments). If I do manage to die in a sudden and non-organ-destructive manner, there is no reason for which my loss should not be someone else’s gain.

Ottawa Coolness Assessment I

Coolness evaluation contract

During my ten months in Ottawa, I have had significant difficulty identifying aspects of the city that might be considered cool. Thankfully, someone much cooler than me is in the city and willing to conduct an authoritative evaluation. Below is an awkward combination of a United Nations Security Council resolution and terms of reference for a contractor:

Date: 27 May 2008

Preamble:

  1. Appreciating that Ottawa is the capital of Canada and a significant city within Canada.
  2. Acknowledging that capital cities and significant cities are centres of arts and culture.
  3. Recognizing that Milan Ilnyckyj has failed to find evidence thereof up to the present date.

Hereby resolves that:

  1. A special rapporteur shall be appointed to identify what, if any, artistic or cultural merit is possessed by the city of Ottawa.
  2. The rapporteur shall devote a minimum of one hour per day to this task.
  3. The investigation conducted shall continue for one month past this date unless specifically authorized to do otherwise.
  4. The rapporteur appointed to this task is to be Emily Rachel Horn originally of Surrey, British Columbia.

Signed: Emily Horn, Milan Ilnyckyj

We shall see what she produces in the course of her official duties.

Net neutrality

Curved bench in Toronto

Today, there is a rally on Parliament Hill in favour of net neutrality. Basically, these people are arguing that internet and telephone companies should not sift through the kind of data their customers are using: designating some for the fast stream and letting some linger or vanish.

In general, I am very supportive of the idea of net neutrality. On the one hand, this is because packet filtering has creepy privacy and surveillance issues associated with it. On the other, it recognizes that established companies will usually do whatever they can to strangle innovative competitors. Without net neutrality, its a fair bet that we would never have had Skype or the World Wide Web.

At the same time, there are legitimate issues about bandwidth. There are people out there exchanging many gigabytes a day worth of movies, music, and games. I am not too concerned with piracy and intellectual property, but that traffic is a real strain on the network and a burden to others. It pushes up costs for everyone as ordinary users subsidize excessive ones.

The best solution seems to be to allow bandwidth capping but disallow packet filtering. That way, sending a terabyte a month of illegally copied films will be restricted, but Skype-like new services will continue to emerge and there will be fewer general opportunites for telecom companies to abuse.

I cannot go to the rally myself, since I will be at work, but I would encourage those who are free and feeling a bit activist to attend.

Seeking the Ottawa social scene

Having spent two evenings searching with little luck, Emily and I have concluded that it can be challenging to find interesting social things happening in Ottawa. The University of Ottawa seems particularly devoid of life, though I suppose classes are not in session.

How do people who have lived here longer work their way into situations where entertainment of some kind is provided, as well as where it is possible to meet new and interesting individuals?

On constancy

Readers should be warned that my posting is likely to be less regular over the summer. The day-to-day expectation of one long post between 7:00am and 8:00am and a shorter post between 6:00pm and 7:00pm should be partially suspended.

I will certainly try to upload a post and a photo every day, but we shall see if that remains feasible given other ongoing projects.

Embassy artwork

Ugly statue outside the American Embassy, Ottawa

The city of Ottawa is quite well provisioned with public art. Some pieces, like the wooden spiral in the park near the mint, are quite charming. The piece above, located in the US embassy compound, is probably the worst of the lot.

As you can see, the sculpture looks a bit like a balloon animal where the balloons have been replaced by black steel beams and the angles have been randomly altered by twenty or thirty degrees. Sitting within a perimeter fence that never contains a visible human, the statue also symbolizes how faceless and harsh the whole compound is.

While concerns about security are obviously of enormous importance for an American diplomatic facility, nothing about them seems fundamentally at odds with good taste. A less ghastly bit of art, and an embassy that somehow demonstrates that the United States is a nation full of people basically just like Canadians rather than an imposing neo-military facade, might be a start along that road.

P.S. In the spirit of fairness, it should be noted that the British High Commission is equally externally unpopulated and far more lacking in architectural virtue.

P.P.S Two other statues notably for their oddness and lack of aesthetic appeal are the strange rocket ship / polar bear statue at the building formerly intended to become city hall and the giant evil spider outside the National Gallery.

Day three of illness

Rubble and the CN Tower

Sorry to have nothing interesting to say this morning. Unfortunately, I have been laid low by some bug with a fondness for the cells in my larynx. This seems to be the season for upper respiratory tract infections. Half my floor at work has become an impromptu orchestra of hacking coughs. The situation is similar with my neighbors.

The worst thing about all this is just how draining the illness is: demanding twelve hours of fitful attempts at sleep per day, yet still leaving you exhausted whenever you are up and about. The curious oscillations between only being comfortable when wrapped in several layers of wool and blankets and feeling hot when sitting around at room temperature in ordinary clothing are also notable. Falling asleep is also made challenging by the constant headache and joint pain. Even when one has managed to fall asleep for a few minutes, either a bout of coughing or a perceived temperature swing is sure to end that before long.

I am very much hoping that a weekend spent tossing and turning in bed will vanquish this bug.