Category: The outdoors

Hiking, camping, canoeing – if it’s an outdoor adventure, it should be under this heading

Jacobs’ four top requirements for cities

To generate exuberant diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

  1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.
  2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.
  3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.
  4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.

The necessity of these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 1961. p. 150-1 (hardcover)

Tour of Ottawa sights

My Saturday in Ottawa involved a rather comprehensive trek.

Beginning at the home of my friends Andrea and Mehrzad, I walked up Booth Street – past the first apartment I rented in town and the War Museum – and across the Chaudiere Bridge to the Terrasses de la Chaudière complex which includes Environment Canada headquarters.

On the Quebec side, I then walked to the Museum of Civilization, which has been rebranded by the Harper government as the Canadian Museum of History. I then crossed the Alexandra bridge back into Ontario, putting me near the National Gallery. I walked through Major’s Hill Park and crossed the Rideau Canal near the Chateau Laurier. I then entered Parliament Hill, walking the scenic northern edge, looking out over all the major government buildings of the National Capital Region.

I carried on west, walking around the Supreme Court, before heading east again to buy a ticket for the guided tour of Centre Block. While near Parliament Hill, I had a peek at the building where I used to work for the Privy Council Office, along with the Blackburn Building (home of the PCO library) and the Langevin Block (home of the Prime Minister’s Office).

I then walked through the downtown core, mostly along Bank Street, getting a peek at the new Venus Envy location before diverting west down Somerset. I also had a quick peek at the headquarters of the Department of Finance and Treasury Board Secretariat. I also talked to some not-especially-interested salespeople at Henry’s cameras about the relative merits of the 6D and 5D Mk III.

All through the walk, I was struck by how small a place Ottawa is. Having spent five years working there, every neighbourhood is peppered with memories and (at least on a pleasant summer’s day) they can all be walked to quite easily.

I walked down Somerset all the way back to the Booth neighbourhood and said hello to Andrea’s hilarious dogs before following the river back to Parliament Hill for my tour. The guided tour included the elegant corridors and atriums of Centre Block, committee rooms, the senate, and the extremely beautiful Library of Parliament.

After the tour, I walked up Elgin Street, passing the pub where I used to do trivia on a team of tax economists on Tuesday nights. I headed south to the Museum of Nature before having a look at the much-developed Beaver Barracks complex where I used to live. I then walked back to Bank Street and south through The Glebe to the redeveloped Landsdowne Park.

From there, I visited the Bank Street canal bridge and wandered along the canal and through neighbourhoods as far as Dow’s Lake, before making my way back to Andrea’s via the Natural Resources Canada complex on Booth Street.

Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada

Yesterday, a friend and I visited Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada, a new privately-run aquarium located beside the CN Tower in Toronto. I have uploaded some of the photos already, with more to come.

It’s certainly a spectacle, both in terms of the species on display and the layout of the facility. A big portion consists of tunnels of plexiglass through large underwater habitats, allowing visitors to see many species arrayed around them at once.

I am, however, left somewhat divided about how to feel about the place. Their website says that they have a “Comprehensive Environmental Purchasing Policy”, but it remains the case that the facility is an artificial hotspot of biodiversity, drawn together from around the world and presented for the entertainment and education of paying guests.

I’m open to the argument that people need to see nature and biodiversity in order to value them, and the aquarium does make some allusions to the harm humanity is doing to the global ocean through over-fishing, pollution, and climate change. It’s plausible that some aquarium guests will come away from the experience with a greater appreciation for marine biodiversity, and perhaps a greater willingness to play a role in protecting it.

At the same time, there is a degree to which the aquarium is nature in a box for the privileged. The habitats are full of artificial coral and kelp, and ecological themes are mentioned more than emphasized in the surrounding documentation. The “[p]olicy banning staff use of plastic water bottles on site” seems inadequate compared with the main environmental impacts of the facility, both in terms of the acquisition of so many species – some explicitly labelled as endangered – and in terms of the huge power and water usage the facility clearly requires.

The aquarium was full of beauty and biological novelty and I was grateful to go. I would encourage others to do so as well, though it is probably worth thinking about what such places imply for the human relationship with the rest of nature, as well as the contrast between the energy and expense we are willing to devote to showcasing the diversity of life, at the same time as our large-scale choices are rapidly causing that diversity to diminish in the wild.