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...

Peds on Weds: Toronto-style sidewalks part 3 - the downsides

There has been a fair amount of criticism of the Toronto-style sidewalk design since it was made the standard in the City of Ottawa in 2006, just as there have been various challenges implementing it. As with any standard, you can't please all of the people all of the time, especially in a constrained physical environment like Delaware Avenue, below:

In the first part of this series, I described what "Toronto-style" sidewalks are and how they're supposed to work. In the second part, I detailed the rather technical history of how this sidewalk design, also known as "ramp-style vehicle access crossing", became standard, following through minutes from post-amalgamation City of Ottawa through to 2006.

Feedback about the design started as soon as the sidewalks on Delaware (pictured above) and Holland Avenue were installed for the pilot project. Since then, the design has also received its share of criticism from various sources. Today I'll be discussing these criticisms, and other issues the standard has encountered. I'll finish the series next week with a review of alternatives, starting with how Ottawa's sidewalks have been designed through the ages.

Bixi's back for 2013

As of today, Capital Bixi is back in action! For subscribers like me, that means my key should work for the remainder of my one-year subscription (which I bought last June). And for you readers of my blog, that means I'm going to blog about it!

I never got around to blogging my Bixi photos last year (and the year before, my season-opener blog post used photos from the 2009 pilot), so I get to include some of those with this post. For example, the one above was taken last June at the Museum of Nature's east lawn, at Elgin and McLeod. On Saturday night, the bikes had been re-installed, though it was decidedly snowier:

Joe Cassey, 1926-2012

Last Friday, longtime Centretown resident Joe Cassey passed away.

I had the pleasure of meeting Joe when I interviewed him in 2009 for the video celebrating the 40th anniversary of the CCCA. The video was debuted at a special event in April 2010 where the four couples featured in the video (Joe & June Cassey, Nan and Tony Griffiths, Maureen and Mike Cassidy, and Elspeth and Jim Menendez) were each given a special CCCA Legacy Award for getting Centretown organized in the first place back in 1969. Here are Joe and June with their certificate:

As a result of that interview, his is one of the voices that tells the story of the community association's beginnings in 1968-1969 in the video:

Joe was born in 1926 in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) Ontario, and served in the Navy in World War II.

He subsequently moved to Ottawa in 1959, and in 1968 moved into a house at the end of Cartier Street with his wife June, where the couple became famous for giving the best parties in Centretown, for which Joe did most of the cooking himself. The house dates to the late 1800s and served as a branch of the Bank of Ottawa from 1911 to 1919:

Just months after moving in, Joe and June learned that their house might be demolished (as previously described in the video, starting at 2m50s) in order for the City to run offramps through the neighbourhood as a replacement to Pretoria Bridge. This was part of a greater scheme of proposed massive downtown road projects including the 17-lane downtown distributor.

The fight to protect the Pretoria Bridge (and the neighbourhoods) involved many existing and nascent community associations banding together to form the Federation of Citizens' Associations (described in the video at 9m19s). As Joe recounts in the Video, he felt it was important that these efforts be recognized, which they were with a plaque that named the associations following the reconstruction of the bridge in the '80s:

After helping to found the community association, Joe succeeded Mike Cassidy as alderman for Wellington Ward (the Eastern half of what is now Somerset Ward) in 1973-1974, where he worked alongside Britannia Ward Alderman Marion Dewar, another community-based representative who treated the position as a full-time job.

Joe worked on many issues, including improving conditions in rooming houses (he told me of a pair of young women who had to use a garbage bag for a door or be kicked out if they complain to the landlord) and raising awareness of gay issues.

In the following municipal election, Joe made an unsuccessful bid for the Board of Control, coming in fifth in the race for four spots. A 1974 issue of the Centretown News covered his candidacy, as well as that of Marion Dewar who did get on the Board of Control that year, eventually to become Mayor of Ottawa: (click to view full size)

In 1976, Brian Bourns, who played a central role in the development of the Centretown Plan and who is still active in the CCCA, was running for a second term in Wellington Ward. Joe instead put in a successful bid against incumbent alderman Don Lockhart in Capital Ward, just on the other side of the Queensway. Here is an ad of his that ran in the December 1976 Glebe Report (PDF) days before the December 6 election:

The same issue has a profile of Joe on page 6. Already by this time he had served on community associations, the FCA, the Air and Water Pollution Board, the Regional Housing Committee and the Youth Services Board.

As he told me in the interview (mp3, 0m36s, 585KB), he got some criticism for not living in the ward. June recounts, at the end of the clip, that Joe's response was "Do you want an alderman who works in the ward or one who sleeps in the ward?"

Joe later served as President of the Central Canada Exhibition Association (he credits Nancy Smith for saving the Aberdeen Pavillion from demolition) and as the founding Chair of the Ottawa Congress Centre.


I didn't meet Joe until long after all this activity, but every time I stopped by he was always in the mood to talk.

I visited him in hospital a month before he passed away and he was still on top of current events at City Hall, asking me one by one for the latest news on each of the files. He was quite a force and I am glad to have known him.


Arrangements are to be held at Hulse, Playfair and McGarry (McLeod and O'Connor) this evening and tomorrow. Details are at Legacy.com, as is the virtual guestbook. Donations in memory of Joe can be made to the University of Ottawa Heart Institute Foundation.

CCCA Documentary now online, AGM next week

The annual general meeting (AGM) of the Centretown Citizens Community Association is Tuesday, 7pm @ City Hall (Colonel By Room), and a lot of people may not know what the association is all about.

While the association's many members and eight committees are also involved in a lot of current initiatives, including the mid-Centretown Community Design Plan being conducted by the City and the Rescue Bronson Avenue effort being led by the CCCA in partnership with other community groups, our biggest accomplishment has been the groundbreaking community-driven process to develop the Centretown Plan in the 1970s and our continued efforts since then to defend the Plan. But the Centretown Community Association (as it was known at the time) was formed in 1969--four years before the Centretown Plan was initiated. I talked a bit about the context for this in a post in August 2009.

At last year's AGM, I presented a slideshow on the beginnings of the CCCA on behalf of the Centretown Heritage Committee, and in April turned this into a video which was screened at a special event, where the four couples who started the association were given honourary lifetime membership in the CCCA.

I'm now able to share this video which shows how much hard work has been contributed to make Centretown the wonderful neighbourhood it is today. View it below or on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlPtm2dN95E

I hope this video inspires you to come to the CCCA's Annual General Meeting on Tuesday and that you will and participate in our activities to carry on this long history of making Centretown a great place to live, work, and play.

Pretoria Red Light

On Wednesday, the CBC had an article that the City of Ottawa is increasing the number of intersections with red-light cameras.

Back in early February, I had spotted one being installed at Elgin/Pretoria Bridge and Queen Elizabeth Drive, an intersection I find myself in every now and then, though admittedly rarely during rush hour.

Technically in the Glebe, but Pretoria Bridge is certainly important to Centretown.

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

What's new on the Rideau Canal Skateway in 2010

The Rideau Canal, allegedly* the world's largest skating rink, and verifiably an UNESCO World Heritage Site, opened its skateway for the 41st season on Thursday.

If you're planning on going out, be sure to check out this page, which says whether the canal is open, how much of it, and what the conditions are (currently listed as poor).

Here's a tour of what's happening this year so far:

First of all, the Canal is only open from the NAC to Bank Street, just over 4 kilometres. See? Fence at Bank. At least this year they kept the stairways on the inside of the fence--it was a long walk last year to the next set of stairs when the ones at Bank were closed!

Not much happening until Fifth Avenue. Here they're loading the souvenir hut onto the ice.

A minor detail, but an important one: they added stairs to the near side of the washroom trailer at Fifth Avenue. The heavy traffic on the stairs on the other side, combined with the heavy traffic on the stairs up to the roadway, made it dangerous to go to the loo last year.

Ever seen a sixty-foot-wide zamboni ice-resurfacing machine? Now you have. (I haven't seen it in action yet)

Edit January 2011: Article on the machine in the Citizen: click here

Fans of the proposed Midtown Footbridge will be keen to see the footprints crossing the canal between Second Avenue in the Glebe and Herridge Street in Old Ottawa East.

And after many years, they finally moved the stairs at Patterson Creek so they are right in front of the doors of the heritage chalet. They've also upgraded these and many more of the stairways to the sturdier new metal design.

Pretoria Bridge is no longer under construction. Really I just like the bridges along the canal.

The canal also has a new pet this year. This muskrat has been hanging around the ramp at Concorde, diving underwater for weeds, then bringing them back up to snack on. This photo may not be the best, but I wanted to give the little guy some space.

The skate rental place is, of course, still there. You can rent those red sleds, too. I'm pretty sure they've modified the front steps from last year. Definitely different from two years ago. The skate rental/sharpening place at Fifth Avenue is only open on weekends. The one at the NAC is open all week, as will be the one at Dow's lake once the canal is open that far.

And red flag means the end. The north end is not yet open, but it's most of the way there. Since all the salty stormwater flows out through this, the narrowest part of the Canal, it's often the last bit to open. The snowbowl is not happening this year, but the skateway is not likely to go all the way under the bridge due to the aforementioned diffculty to attain sufficient ice thickness.

What are you waiting for? Go out there and enjoy it!

^ Ironically, despite being founded to settle arguments about superlatives, the GWR website bears no reference to such a record

Tale of the Elgin Street Century, Part II

In part I, I discussed the replacement of a couple of squares of sidewalk on Elgin Street, dating back to 1905. I find that there's quite an underlying lesson here.

When we think of heritage, we tend to focus on the buildings, and not so much the built infrastructure between them. Yet for all the change that Elgin Street has seen since 1905, including the construction of buildings along the same block, pieces of it still survive to this day. Only the bits that have needed replacing have been replaced, and remarkably, some of them simply haven't needed to be.

Nowadays, if someone proposed to demolish an entire neighbourhood and replace it with brand-new buildings, they'd be chased out of the room. It was done in the mid 1960s in Lebreton Flats, and the 1965 [Correction:] DeLeuw Cather Ottawa-Hull Transportation Study proposed much the same for Centretown in order to accommodate suburban commuter traffic. As the below diagram indicates, King Edward Avenue was to be turned into a Queensway-like expressway, Somerset and MacLaren were to be twinned (as Albert and Slater were), with a bridge over the Rideau Canal. As for the houses, they'd be demolished and replaced with towers. Kent and Lyon had already been widened, as documented in this Urbsite post.

Even more shocking were the plans for Laurier and Gloucester, as depicted in the diagram below. Aside from Lebreton Flats being turned into a mess of cloverleafs feeding expressways on Booth and Preston, the blocks between Laurier and Gloucester were to be levelled and replaced with a 17-lane expressway, called the "Downtown Distributor".

The Bridges of Rideau Canal, part 2

This is the fourth in the canal series of posts, depicting photos from the Rideau Canal Skateway and Winterlude. Last time, in The Bridges of Rideau Canal, Part 1, we peered at the Arboretum footbridge, and visited the overbearing and majestic (respectively) Bronson and Bank street briges. From here, we'll continue North!

Since the Midtown Footbridge hasn't been built yet, the next bridge in our tour is the bridge at Patterson Creek in the Glebe. This is by far the smallest one you can skate under. I like to clack my skate blades against the ice to hear the echo while skating under it. But this wasn't possible the day this photo was taken. There was an awfully big snowfall in early January, so the snow would have muffled any echo. Here you can see some cross-country ski tracks in the snow leaving Patterson Creek:

The next one is another beautiful old bridge, Pretoria. I've shown shots of Pretoria bridge in some previous Canal posts, but we need a little backstory. Here it is early in the 2009 season, when the Canal was only open from Pretoria to Bank:

Rideau Canal Now Open! Timeline to 2009

The Rideau Canal has opened for the season, and what has become a bit of a personal tradition, I've gone out to enjoy the first day. While the parts abutting Centretown are not yet open, it's certainly something to go out and enjoy!

[Note: The Canal is only open from Pretoria Bridge to Bank Street, excluding the bridges and Patterson Creek. If you're coming on the South side from Bank, keep walking NE on Echo Drive until you get to the stairs down to Colonel By Drive at Pig Island (and similarly on the North side), as the stairs at Bank Street are on the closed side of the bridge.]

Before we get to today's shots, allow me to share some photos from the last couple of months that document preparations.

In October, the Canal was drained of water, exposing the ugly green algae coating much of the rock. Here's a shot of the algae with Lansdowne Park's Aberdeen Pavillion in the background:

This is when the chalets are installed.

Here are a bunch of them at Fifth Avenue.

In late November, they put gravel down at the stairways so that they would have a good fitting at the correct height.

This was when the canal started to ice over. Here's progress on Nature taking its course between the Corktown Footbridge and Laurier:

The ice was thick enough at this point to trap the debris beneath it, but thin enough to see that debris. The vines in this shot seem to be trying to push out. It was also neat to see leaves blowing across the surface of the ice (not pictured).

Fast forward to December 30th. The ice had been flooded and plowed, and just needed a couple more days of cold to compensate for a brief warm spell. Here a City plow clears the pathway alongside the canal, distributing salt from its trailer hopper:

And today the canal finally opened! In the afternoon, it got pretty crowded on the short stretch of ice that was open. Here's the crowd of people getting on at Pretoria Bridge (note the long line of boots along the wall!)

They were all getting on there because the Canal was only open from Pretoria to Bank (excluding the bridges and Patterson Creek):

The washrooms, however, were open. The washroom trailer at Fifth Avenue has a new ramp to be wheelchair accessible. The stairs next to it were also new and wider than the old ones (some of which are still in use at other entrances).

The skate sharpening/rental hut was also open. Don't let this pre-noon shot fool you--there were three or four lines over ten people deep to get in there in the afternoon!

And the yellowjackets were out in full force. The NCC officers, paramedics, and Skate Patrol were all out. Word is that more of the canal will open on the weekend, though I don't recall which stretch. I grabbed a photo of a pair of Patrollers heading into the sun (this photo has been altered slightly):

Altogether it was a fun day. I enjoyed getting out and getting some exercise. I'd have gotten a Beavertail, too, had the lineup not been halfway across the canal!

Next time...