Category: Community
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Mid-Century Modern Ottawa: Briarcliffe
Briarcliffe’s twenty-three houses represent mid-century modern domestic architecture at its best… This is one of Canada’s first protected heritage areas of midcentury modern architecture. ~ Exploring the Capital: An Architectural Guide to the Ottawa-Gatineau Region I turn left off Montreal Road and onto Blair, coast down the hill, brake and turn into the wooded subdivision.… Read more
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A Psycho House on Top
While most people who drive the I-81 through Syracuse, New York are focussed on the gargantu-signs that foretell their arrival at the state’s largest shopping complex, I am fixated on another architectural curiosity: a decrepit Victorian house on top of an abandoned warehouse. Read more
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Nicolas Cage Returns to Burritts Rapids
Also see the Facebook Page: Nicolas Cage in Burritt’s Rapids ***** In 1986, a 22-year-old shirtless Nicolas Cage starred as world-champion sculler Ned Hanlan in the Canadian film production of “The Boy in Blue,” partially shot in the village of Burritt’s Rapids, Ontario over eight days in September 1984. On Wednesday, April 19th, 2017, Cage… Read more
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Developing a Personal Point of View
I stop for a latte and drink in the view. The café, six tables and a banquette against the plate glass wall, offers a window onto the Byward Market and the Gatineau hills. Wind pushes the clouds across the city in an ephemeral drama of light and shadow. A commercial crane, red and ten stories tall, anchors the scene. Read more
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A Ride Home from Prison
I don’t have any time to waste on jail anymore ~ Stanley Bailey, newly-released former inmate Carlos Cervantes, a former inmate, says every ride home from prison is different. He picks up men released from life sentences after California reformed its three strikes law in 2012. Most of the men don’t have family or friends anymore;… Read more
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More Than Enough Refugee Blues to Go Around
Refugee Blues was published by writer and poet W.H. Auden in 1939, at the start of World War II. It’s safe to say not much has changed and, perhaps, it never will if war and hatred continue to be our modus operandi. The million dollar question is this: Are we doomed as humans to this destructive cycle of scapegoatism… Read more
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What I See When I See Smiths Falls – Part 2
This is the second in a series of visual love letters to Smiths Falls, one of my favourite towns in Eastern Ontario. You can find the first installment here. Read more
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Skating the Rideau Canal in Burritt’s Rapids
I love living in a place with distinct seasons. What I particularly love is that just when I start to really, really enjoy something – swimming in the river, gardening, snowshoeing, falling leaves – it’s gone. Skating on the Rideau Canal in Burritt’s Rapids is like that. And its fleeting and unpredictable nature makes me appreciate… Read more
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What I See When I See Smiths Falls
This is the first in a series of visual love letters to Smiths Falls, one of my favourite towns. I’m from Vancouver, and while there are great things about the westcoast, I have called rural Ottawa home for the past 20 years. The single best thing I love about living in the east is the riches of… Read more
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The Sham of Highest and Best Use
This triplet of houses in Québec City defies the modern logic of “highest and best use” and its inherent rule of being “maximally productive.” It flaunts every last morsel of economic thought except one: It is a keeper of history, and provides a vital and extraordinary point of interest in the city’s viewscape, arguably contributing to the profits realized by the city’s… Read more