That time I was on the Skate Patrol for ten years (Part 1)

The 40th edition of Ottawa's Winterlude festival has opened this weekend, and its crown jewel, the Rideau Canal Skateway, is enjoying a good season. This year has had the earliest start in four years, after a record short 18 skating days in 2016 and 25 skating days in 2017.

The official @NCC_Skateway Twitter account often posts tidbits about the skateway, for example, a tweet mentioning that there is a team of 60 skate patrollers on the canal.

As it happens, I served on the Rideau Canal Skate Patrol for ten years, and I've been meaning to write about it. Now that I've been off the patrol for a while, it's time for me to come out of the shadows...

Jane's Walks this weekend!

In case you haven't heard, Jane's Walk Ottawa happens this weekend. I haven't given any since the Rescue Bronson Jane's Walk I gave two years ago. It was fun, but a lot of work. So instead I'll try to go out on a couple of other people's walks. Here are some I'm looking at that are within Somerset Ward, with the description on the Jane's Walk Ottawa website linked to the headings:

Apt613 Blog Walk of Somerset
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 2pm-3:30pm
Meet at Dundonald Park, Somerset and Bay

Staying on the Bronson theme of my 2011 walk, Apartment 613 is holding a walk in Chinatown, whose businesses are suffering from the closure of the Bronson/Somerset intersection. This one has a neat format, where they'll interview some of the business owners in the same way they do interviews for their blog entries, only it'll be live and you'll be there!

Local Confectionaries
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 4pm-5pm
Meet at Somerset and Preston

A great segue from the Apt613 walk, local cartoonist/illustrator Colin White is giving a tour of the corner stores which feature often in his drawings. I don't think I've met him in person, but I like his depictions of familiar hyperlocal landmarks.

Crescent Moonset

As I was heading to meet friends for dinner in Somerset Village, a giant red crescent moon made itself apparent right in my path. I diligently got my tripod out and took photos from the middle of the street.

As I was fiddling with the camera settings, a party of twelve came out of Mama Theresa's and watched me while they tried to figure out what I was doing. When I returned to the sidewalk and saw they were still watching me as I put away my tripod, I pointed to the end of the street and said "look, the moon!"

One ventured hesitantly into the street, saw it, and was soon followed by the rest of the group to admire the spectacle. After a minute or two, they figured it was time they got out of the road. There's a certain bemusing thrill to stand in the middle of the street to admire a sight, especially when traffic is so sparse.

Generally the moon illusion is associated with a full moon, but clarly it works just as well with a crescent moon.

Back in May, I tweeted a similar photo of the moon over the Plaza Bridge by the NAC, Parliament Hill, Rideau Canal, and former Union Station. That was a cropped version of this one, which is a stunning and classic Ottawa nighttime shot even without the moon:

3D Thursday: end of the Rideau Canal season

The end of boating season is rapidly approaching on the Rideau Canal, but back in August when we were having that beautiful summer weather, I took a few days off here and there, managing to take many photos around town, including many in 3D. I'm still working on the technique of taking photos with two cameras simultaneously, but the timing on this one was close enough to catch this yacht heading towards the Plaza Bridge at a pretty decent clip: (If you don't have standard red-cyan 3D glasses, I usually carry spares to give away if you see me, otherwise you can get them for $2.99 at the Comic Book Shoppe at Bank and Lisgar)

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

For many years the sculpture Balancing was on the last just to the right of the photo, between the National Arts Centre and Confederation Square. After four years away, John Hooper's 1981 artwork has been fully restored and was reinstalled ten days ago on the opposite side of the canal, just to the left of where the trees are on the left side of the photo. (Photos of the restoration are on the NCC's Flickr gallery on the linked page).

I took another couple of great 3D shots around the Plaza Bridge and elsewhere the same day I took this one, but I won't post them just yet. I'll save those for weeks like this one, where time pushes me to post a one-photo entry. I missed the last couple of 3D Thursday posts, but I'm working on a two-part blog post each with a number of 3D photos of a part of downtown you may not even know existed!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]