Category: History & Heritage
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Unexpected Things You Find in Your Garden
I stand in my robe in the front yard at 7:15am staring at my newly-installed siding, admiring, critiquing, dreaming of spring plantings. The sky is a grim, Vancouver-grey, and every deciduous thing is naked and brown. We inhabit the season of ugliness which refuses to yield to the energetic vibrancy of indigo and goldenrod, my house colours. I don’t… Read more
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24 Sussex Drive is Falling Down
Contrary to opinions offered by former tenants of the building, reality television stars, CBC listeners, and social media commentators, there is no single right answer to the question: What should become of the Prime Minister’s residence at 24 Sussex Drive? In fact, it doesn’t matter whether the building is razed or retrofitted. Either way, there… Read more
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A Zibi Kind of Day
Sunshine. Twenty degrees. Light breeze. Birdsong out-gunning any human distractions. Views to the Ottawa river. And wildflowers, vines, bushes and trees in bloom everywhere. It was just another perfect day shooting the Domtar lands as part of the Workers History Museum cataloguing project. While the industrial buildings remain the focus, Mother Nature with her natural green roofs, biodiverse ‘gardens’… Read more
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Shooting the Domtar Lands – Part 2
Another glorious day working outside, this time photographing a series of attached buildings beginning on the corner of Rue Eddy & Boulevard Alexandre-Tache. The mostly stone buildings are encased in high chain link fencing, held tight by cross-wires and reinforced by steel posts and beams endeavouring to keep all the bits together. Bill worked the overview from across… Read more
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Jane’s Walk Burritt’s Rapids May 2 & 3, 2015
Click here for the complete schedule of events & activities Please note the change: The car collection will only be in the village on Saturday ******* The title and tagline of our press release reads: Rural Burritt’s Rapids Joins Jane’s Walk Ottawa ~ Why should urbanites have all the fun? I point this out not… Read more
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Everything Changes: Shooting the Domtar Lands
Since mid-winter, I’ve had the pleasure of photographing the Domtar lands with a team of volunteers from the Workers History Museum in Ottawa. Windmill Development Group, Inc. is poised to re-develop the land which has been home to pulp and paper giants E.B. Eddy and Domtar since 1891. Because of the placement of the buildings, there isn’t much… Read more
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Marie Watt: Piecing Together A Story
It was my first community sewing circle. I couldn’t have chosen a better introduction than the one I received from Marie Watt, a Portland, Oregon-based artist whose storied circles bring creative ideas to life. A half-dozen tables bisected the Great Hall of the National Galley of Canada, arranged beneath the canopy of glass and steel that frames the finest views in Ottawa. … Read more
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LeBreton Flats: An Acre of Time
Dear Phil: It was my pleasure to meet you for coffee and finally put my hands on An Acre of Time, a history of LeBreton Flats. I wasn’t kidding when I said I discovered you in the most random of ways, a mention buried in the comments section of a review of a book of historical maps of… Read more
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Walking the Carleton Place Labyrinth
We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us – the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to… Read more
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The Inconvenient Indian
On the Canadian and American policies of forced removal and relocations – and re-relocations – of First Nations peoples from their own treaty-protected lands: Moving Indians around the continent was like redecorating a very large house. The Cherokee can no longer stay in the living room. Put them in the second bedroom. The Mi’kmaq are taking up… Read more