Centretown time capsule: August/September 2007

Happy Labour Day everyone!

For today's post, I want to do something a little different. I wanted to give a snapshot of what was happening in Centretown five years ago in August and September 2007. With a high proportion of renters, many Centretown residents—even those active in community affairs—weren't here five years ago (nor was this blog!). For the rest of us, it'll be a trip down memory lane.

The 2007 Labour Day parade, organized by the Ottawa and District Labour Council, ended as usual at McNabb Park for the annual festival with free hotdogs, corn on the cob, and other attractions (if you're reading this post shortly after it goes up, head out there now! They should be there from the end of the parade until 4:30pm). You might recognize this photo of the wading pool as one of the four at the bottom of the CCCA's 'promo cards':

September 2007 marked the official opening of the Corktown Footbridge on the 11th (the bridge opened to traffic the previous September). Municipal politicians and interpreters in 1830's period dress were there to cut the ribbon.

Capital Pride 2012

Yesterday was the annual Capital Pride Parade, which is orders of magnitude more populous than the last time I was able to get to Pride, back in 2005.

My usual group, the Human Powered Vehicle Operators of Ottawa (who won Best Float in the 2004 Pride parade) didn't participate this year, so instead I hitched along with the fine folks from the Dusty Owl Reading Series.

The parade was huge, and the crowds were immense. At the end of the parade, everyone files into Marion Dewar Plaza at City Hall for the Pride celebrations (or otherwise disperses). We were float number 80 of 84, so most of the parade was already in by the time we got there. And yet there were still hundreds, if not thousands, of people still clamouring toward the Plaza behind us:

China Doll (centre) is a fixture of Ottawa's Pride parade, harking from the Shanghai Restaurant, the first Chinese restaurant to open in what is now considered Chinatown. China Doll puts on a raucous Karaoke on Saturday nights that is hilariously over-the-top.

I hope you had a chance to make it to the celebrations, and if not, come next year!

Museum of Nature Re-Opening Day, part 1

The Museum of Nature had its grand re-opening last year, appropriately, on Victoria Day weekend (May 22-24). That day, I posted an entry titled Museum of Nature reopens after there years of renovations--referring to the previous renovations, ending in 1972, as covered at the time in the community-owned newspaper, the Centretown News. The more recent renovations took twice as long.

I bring this up because next week there will be a free public lecture by Heritage Ottawa, Victoria Memorial Museum Renewal: Competing Stakeholders' Interests, being held next Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 7pm in the museum's auditorium. Project director Maria Somjen will describe the process of extensive renovations to the building. This is part of Heritage Ottawa's lecture series, which is normally held at the Ottawa Public Library.

I visited the museum thrice on opening day, as admission was free. Throughout the day, I took about a hundred photos, which I'm posting in a three-part series on the Museum of Nature Re-Opening Day:

• Part 1: Front entrance and main hall
• Part 2: Spaces - new architecture meets old
• Part 3: Exhibits

Maybe one day I'll get around to posting my construction photos, too.

Part 1: Front entrance and main hall

The museum looked pretty sharp on opening day, and the grass was bright green. The meagre bicycle rack was full to the brim:

Ottawa Chinatown Gateway Arch--with Grace

This is Grace Xin (pron: "Shin"), whose tenure as Executive Director of the Somerset Street Chinatown Business Improvement Area (BIA) ends on October 15, 2010. Here, Grace is pictured Thursday afternoon, after pulling off a remarkable ceremony to officially open the Ottawa Chinatown Gateway.

While the project has been in development for decades, the first public expression was this 3D mural built on the wall of a neighbouring building in September 2007. It was made by Cairn Cunnane as a partnership between the Somerset Street Chinatown BIA and the Ottawa Police Service, hence the police officer in the final mural:

The Gateway was built as a partnership between the BIA, various donors, all three levels of government, as well as the Chinese embassy and the City of Beijing. It is built across Somerset Street West at Cambridge Street North, which is seen here in early April 2010 [edit: Justin Wonnacott's Somerset Online has a picture of it in 2006]:

The official groundbreaking ceremony was held on April 22, 2010, with a who's-who of Ottawa and of Chinatown in attendance. A traditional ceremony was held with firecrackers, incense and a roast pig, followed by a Western ceremony--a symbolic shovelling of a pile of dirt that had been specially carted onto Cambridge Street for the occasion.

Also in the audience at the ceremony were the labourers brought in from China to build the gateway:

The gateway was built in three distinct phases, the first two of which required Somerset Street to be closed to traffic for two months starting May 31, 2010. In the first phase a local contractor buried the adjacent power lines, then constructed the massive footings (which go down 28feet into the bedrock) and the columns and structural part of the arch. Here we can see the cylindrical forms for the steel-reinforced concrete columns that will support the 100-ton arch:

The second phase involves the Chinese artisans building and installing the roof pieces and decorative panels. They did this, using special wooden moulds built by artisans in China, in a staging area in the lot behind the Yangtze restaurant on Cambridge Street North (where some abandoned houses were demolished due to frequent fires).

Because of Ottawa's sister-city status with Beijing, Ottawa's gateway is a Royal Arch, with nine roofs--the greatest number in Chinese numerology. (Chinese numerology is also why the opening ceremony was at 3:58 instead of the unlucky 4 o'clock)

Built into the structure of the arch are sybols of good luck: five Chinese coins--one from the Tyng Dynasty, over 1000 years old, and one from the Ching Dynasty, about 200 years old--made of gold, silver, copper, iron & tin, and five coloured threads (red, yellow, blue, white & black).

By mid-June, four of the roofs had been installed:

In late June, three more roofs were added to the top:

These last two roofs were built just a little bit too wide, and didn't fit as they were supposed to, as Eric explained at the time. They would be modified and installed later, until which time they sat out on the road.

Eventually, all nine roofs were placed, and the glazed roof tiles were installed on top of them. Work was also underway to reconstruct the sidewalks in the vicinity.

Decorative panels were installed in the gaps under the arches in July.

And on July 31, traffic was restored under the gateway. New scaffolding was erected for the third phase: painting. This involved a different team of Chinese artisans that came in after the first team left.

The lowest part of the gateway is 5m (16') high, and the top is 11m (33') above street level. The two pillars are about 12m (36') apart, and the entire structure weighs about 130 tons (including the 30-ton footings). These artisans preparing the roof areas for painting are dwarfed by the massive structure:

Throughout August and September, the artisans continued to paint the arch in bright colours. I posted a photo at the time, with links to other coverage of the painting.

By the end of August, much of the painting was finished and the artisans turned to trimming the arch with half a kilogram (over 1 lb) of gold leaf. The dragon panels had not yet been gilded in this picture, and still showed the yellow paint:

By mid-September, the work on the gateway was complete, and the upper scaffolding was removed. The columns only had a coat of primer, and the lower scaffolding had yet to be reomved.

Fast-forward to October 7th, where sunny weather welcomed a large crowd in the official opening ceremony. Chinese Ambassador LAN Lijun, Federal Government House leader John Baird, Ottawa-Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi, Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien, and LIANG Wei, Senior Advisor of Beijing Municipal Government, all spoke at the event.

The two lions guarding the gateway were unveiled at the end of the ceremony by Somerset Ward Councillor Diane Holmes, Somerset Street Chinatown BIA Chair Peter So (owner of So Good restaurant), and other BIA representatives and contributors: Larry Lee, Peter Yeung,Frank Ling, Bill Joe, Ron Tomlinson, and Marion Hum. By this point, the invited audience members had all gotten up from their seats to join the media in taking photos, and those of us in the crowd took our own photos from beyond the fence. Robin Kelsey does a good job of explaining the symbolism of the lions on his blog.

Here is the male lion. Mayor Larry O'Brien and LIANG Wei then 'painted' the eyes of the lions to let them see, and a ribbon with the logos of Canada, Ontario, Ottawa, and Beijing was officially cut.

To top off the ceremonies, Chinese dragons danced at the base of the arch while everyone watched and celebrated:


The gateway is remarkably beautiful, and the artisans did an excellent job. Note the reflection in the red paint on the side of the roof section:

This great ceremony was all in a day's work for Grace Xin. Thank you and congratulations, Grace!

For more photos of this arch and others around the world, visit www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/, maintained by Eric Darwin.

Firefighters memorial

As mentioned in the post Firefighters Memorial Sneak Peek, there was a ceremony on the 11th to commemorate fallen soldiers in the Ottawa Fire Service, following a parade from the Museum of Nature. This year was special because the first phase of the local firefighters' memorial was unveiled (as opposed to the national firefighters memorial, to be built near the new condo on Lebreton Flats)

As I arrived, the parade was just finishing up, with historical fire vehicles and equipment coming up off Laurier Avenue onto Marion Dewar Plaza, many being pulled by volunteers:

These vehicles assembled in front of City Hall.

The ceremony was being held across the grass at the site of the new memorial. Behind the memorial, a gargantuan Canadian flag was suspended from ladders 13 and 24. Many firefighters in dress uniform were arranged to watch the ceremony:

There were many civilians, including passersby and family and friends of lost firefighters.

Most of those, I suspect, were in the seating area in front of the three long rows of firefighters.

Politicians and other officials were kept contained in a stage area. The woman on the grass with the salmon coloured shirt is Louise Carota, who designed the monument.

While those officials were on a stage, the attention was focused on the monument, from which most of the speeches were delivered. Here the contributors and contractors are being recognized. Signs were posted on the monument recognizing the contributors; unfortunately, these have since been removed.

On the other end of the memorial the band played. You can also see many fire trucks parked on Laurier bridge.

Pumper P11B was covered in black ribbons and the lights were covered in black cloth. Members of station No. 11 presented the plaque with the names of firefighters who lost their lives in the line of duty.

This, of course, is just a slice of the memorial. I was pleased that the ceremonies tended to focus on the loss of local firefighters, and on the work involved to get the memorial built. It was very formal and ceremonial.

You couldn't see them from in front of the memorial, but these eight firefighters were standing at attention beneath the massive flag. While some of my friends have said they thought the flag was a bit much, I'm impressed merely from a technical standpoint: not only is it big, but it was windy. It was tough getting photos of the flag hanging straight down.

For links to relevant sources, including the fund for the next phase of the memorial, please see the previous post on the firefighters memorial.

Budget time at City Hall

It's that time of year again, when our fair City looks at its financial position for the following year, sees a mess, then proposes to cut vital community services to make up the difference.

As part of the requisite song-and-dance, town hall meetings are held for each ward for the public to come out and ask questions. Five central-area wards (Somerset, Capital, Kitchissippi, Alta Vista, and Rideau-Vanier) combined their meetings to this past Monday, November 24, from 7-9pm at the Assembly Hall at Lansdowne Park (which, by the way, is located in the Civic Centre, by going to the rear of the building and going down the stairs next to the upramp. Pity that the Lansdowne Park website and on-site directional signage doesn't tell you this.)

The meeting was fairly well attended, though there were plenty of spare seats.

They had a good system for speakers: instead of having everybody line up and wait, they gave out numbers early in the meeting so that people could remain seated. In all, 37 people were scheduled to speak, though some people left before their turn came up.

By luck, I was in the right place at the right time and got a low number.

I pointed out that all of the attention in communities and the media and by the many individuals and groups who came out to meetings such as this one was centred around a mere $10M in social spending, and that this was a red herring compared to the tens of millions of dollars of road-building projects in the budget, each of which add annual operating costs in future budgets. Later in the night, Old Ottawa South Community Association (OSCA) President Mike Jenkins echoed this when he lamented that one of the wealthiest cities in the country is talking about cutting daycare, volunteer-run rinks, and community centres.

Ted Horton of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa asked for support for the U-Pass pilot project, which would see $125 added to each U of O student's tuition fees in return for a transit pass. There is a real possibility that this pilot will finally come to fruition after years of hard work and negotiations by University groups and Councillors alike.

I happened to step out of the room again and caught the CTV cameras interviewing Ted before leaving at 8:30 to file their report:

Delegation #10 made a splash. I didn't catch the name of their garderie, but they did say that they were the only francophone daycare, I believe in all of Ottawa. A dozen or so of them on both sides of the aisle stood up, all wearing little blue scarves to represent the childcare services slated to be cut:

She then presented each of the Councillors at the table, plus City Treasurer Marian Similuk, with a scarf. Similuk, Holmes, and Doucet all donned their scarves.

Other interesting points that I caught included:

• Christina Tessier, Director of the Bytown Museum, described the perennial stress that community service groups like hers face: Every year, the draft budget threatens to cut funding to programs like the Bytown Museum. While there is a decent chance Council will reinstate the funding, staff still must face the possibility that their job will not be there January 1st. Ms. Tessier said that after many years of this, she has made the difficult decision to leave her position for a more stable job in the private sector. I encountered this problem with my staff each year while on the board of a community group which used to run City programs.


• Someone from the McNabb Skatepark, which the budget threatens to cut entirely, pointed out that a skatepark caters to all income levels, that it promotes health and wellbeing through physical activity, and that kids will skateboard anyway, so we'd be better to provide a positive alternative to, say, the human rights memorial!


• City Hall denizen Catherine Gardner, of Bells Corners, pointed out that the rinks in Bells Corners are proposed to close yet kids won't be able to get to rinks in other parts of the city because of transit cuts!


• As the official meeting closing time passed, Helen from People for a Better Ottawa compared the Consumer Price Index, which has an inflation this year of 2%, with the informal "Municipal Price Index", which is going up by 4.1%. This is because municipalities don't buy much bread or milk--things in the CPI--but lots of asphalt, concrete, and other materials whose prices are inflating quickly. Councillor Holmes said that Statistics Canada had been working on a MPI, but they took the person off of that project. Councillor Doucet pointed out that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is developing a MPI, on his recommendation.


• Loretto Beninger, who is the vice-chair of the City's volunteer Arts, Heritage and Culture Advisory Committee, described the philosophy of the City's budget process, which dates back to the 1950's "grooved thinking" or "male breadwinner" model. In this outdated model, everything that was important to men (such as roads for a man to get to work, sports recreation for him when he gets home, plus sewers and garbage collection) was deemed "core" services, and womanly activities (such as arts and culture) were deemed "special interests". Despite the tremendous leverage in terms of return on investment that cultural spending brings to Ottawa (e.g. in tourism dollars), this model based on gender relationships continues to this day.


• For the first time in 8 years, average tax assessments in Capital Ward are roughly at the municipal average. This is not the case in Somerset Ward, particularly in Dalhousie, where assessments are skyrocketing. This will magnify the effects of the inevitable tax increase.

The delegations finished at 10:30pm--an hour and a half past the scheduled closing time. By this point, two councillors had left, as had much of the audience who had already spoken.

Next week, Council will be hearing delegations from the public from Monday, December 1 until however long the delegations go. Originally, they were planning to have delegations on Monday and Tuesday, with Council to debate and decide on Wednesday to Friday, but last I heard, they were booking delegations into Thursday afternoon! It's going to be one hell of a week (or two) at City Circus!

People for a Better Ottawa are holding a rally at City Hall on Monday, December 1. At 10am residents are called upon to fill Council chambers to the rafters, then at noon there will be a rally at the newly-named Marion Dewar Plaza (formerly Festival Plaza--it's the Laurier entrance of City Hall), to "ask City Council if people matter as much as sewers and roads".

May we live in interesting times...

Marion Dewar visitation

The photo taken above depicts a portrait of Marion Dewar in the middle of Ottawa City Council chambers (Andrew Haydon Hall) this past Tuesday. The portrait is flanked by the current and former flags of the City of Ottawa. In front of the portrait is a table, upon which is a book for signatures and condolences.

I went today to pay my respects, to give my condolences to her family, and to sign the book of remembrances. I could not bear the thought of photographing the event, out of respect for the Dewar family. If you want photos, the Citizen has a decent gallery of the ceremonies here. The images in this blog entry are purely of the written variety...

I only met Marion Dewar once. It was in the cloakroom in the wet morning of the first Imagine Ottawa Social Forum in September 2006. We had both arrived early; she and I said hello. During that forum, which was just over a month before a municipal election, she gave what remains the most rousing and optimistic speech I have heard on the topic of municipal politics. No doubt a new generation of activists was inspired that day.

While I arrived at City Hall today in the early afternoon, after much of the pomp and ceremony had taken place, the building was still abuzz with Ottawa's who's-who. The Citizen's Randall Denley bristled pensively into the cafeteria. Former mayor Bob Chiarelli chatted with Councillor Diane Deans in the foyer. Two journalists chatted outside the Lisgar entrance on a smoke break, while other people I recognized stood in line.

The decorations were dignified and momentous, but not overly extravagant. Walking into City Hall, I was immediately welcomed by the soothing sound of a violin duet playing Pachebel's Canon, while a red carpet, bordered by velvet rope, guided friends and wellwishers from the Laurier Street entrance, past a display of memorabilia from Ms. Dewar's life and mayoralty, and into the open space of Jean Pigott Hall.

Various members of the Dewar family greeted visitors at the entrance to the main hall, though Paul--the only one I know personally--was away when I passed by. This day also had significance in my own life, as it was the anniversary of the death of my own mother, who herself was a leader in a field dominated by men. That gave me a lot to think about during my visit.

I felt a bit awkward there, as I was among the youngest, clearly not one to have had the opportunity to know Ms. Dewar very well. I occasionally looked over my shoulder in search of familiar faces, and when I found one, I nodded quietly. I had learned much about Ms. Dewar since first hearing her speak, and it was important to me to honour this woman I had come to respect.

The casket was draped with the City of Ottawa's flag, a single yellow rose resting upon it. Two boquets of white roses stood on tall, thin tables on either side.

Unseen in the Citizen's photos, a wall of alternating Canada and Ottawa flags lined the front edge of the reflecting pool. The weather cooperated magnificently, with the sun shining brightly in, highlighting the words "ex oriente lux" inscribed on City Hall's East window, the scene serene and peaceful. Two formally-dressed firefighters stood, bowing their heads, at the corners of the casket. On the hour, the guard changed with two paramedics in formal dress took their place.

Passing the casket, I followed the queue along the carpet toward the table with a book of remembrance, which had been moved out of Council chambers and into the Southwest corner of Jean Pigott Hall. I tried my best to ignore the chatter of an elderly gentleman behind me who was striking up a conversation with the woman in front of him on topics which I did not think suited for such an event. A second antique table joined the first in order to accommodate the overwhelming number of people coming to pay their respects. Atop each table was another boquet of white roses, and the former City of Ottawa flag stood aside Ms. Dewar's portrait.

Some took long to write their messages, some went quickly. I had already assembled my remark in my head, pausing to sculpt the final draft before putting pen to paper.

I picked up a commemorative card as I left. A second card (both cards reproduced below) encourages donations to the Marion Dewar Fund for Women's Leadership at Oxfam Canada, which she chaired from 1994 to 1999.