Spring Garden

 It is my tradition each season to come out to the Canadian Museum of Nature to show the Landscapes of Canada Gardens through the year, and so I stopped by earlier this month. This is set on the west side of the property, and features four zones with plants, trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers. The first is the Boreal Forest, a landscape that covers a vast swath of the country, with coniferous forests being a signature of that place.

This historical plaque is found here, honouring John Macoun, a field naturalist who left a big legacy behind in Canadian science.

I took a close up of the evergreens.

Prairie Grassland is the next ecosystem. Its grasses grow long over the course of the summer here.

This sculpture has the path cross through it. It is a stainless steel iceberg, created by artist and inventor William Lishman.

Another view of it from the west side of the property also includes plants and grasses growing in between the rocks. These are the next ecosystem- Arctic Tundra.

They were doing well in spring growth during this visit.

Also here are bricks inscribed by donors- some in memory of loved ones.

The last ecosystem is the Mammoth Steppe, where around the statues of the mammoth family at left are plants that would have been growing during their time, and still grow today. Up in the glass tower of the Museum is a model of the Moon.

Spring Colours

The first colours of spring here tend to be from scilla, an early blooming flower that one finds here and there, usually blooming in the late stages of April. I photographed some in the Garden of the Provinces and Territories downtown.

On another day, I was up by Central Park in the north end of the Glebe, where I know they bloom as well. These were in a part of the east side of the park.

Many of the scilla in this park are near to the above location, on a shady, east facing slope amid rocks. They are a cheerful sight to see, a true sign of the spring.

A New Monument

 In the latter half of April, I stopped by at the grounds of the Garden Of The Provinces and Territories, which lies across from the headquarters of Library and Archives Canada. A new monument stands here. It is a monument with a long, tumultuous, and controversial history.

It is the Memorial To The Victims Of Communism: Canada- A Land Of Refuge. Dedicated last year, it started out as a concept under a Conservative government, to be placed close to the Supreme Court as a proverbial finger in the eye to the Court by Stephen Harper, the prime minister at the time, who had a grudge against the Court, among many other grudges. The original concept was a monstrosity of Stalinesque proportions that was put to an end towards the end of that government, and the concept was  scaled down and entirely redesigned, and its place was moved to where it had originally been intended for- this spot.

Governments change, and a new Liberal administration approved the changes. Covid got in the way of its completion, as well as another controversy. It was found that some of the names intended to be on the central block had in fact been Nazis back in the day (this is what you get when you erect a memorial of this nature- some of them are going to be the very fascists who fought against the Soviet Union back in World War Two), and so the monument has no names on this block. The two sections of curving metal feature a series of bronze rods that span from downward to upward, and each day of the year is inscribed at the base.

From the photographer's point of view, it's photogenic. This was my second time up close to the Memorial, after the site had been fenced off during construction for years.

Norwegian Crossing

The main branch of the Ottawa Public Library features space along a couple of walkways on the second and third floors where art is sometimes exhibited, and sometimes historical displays. In April, it was on the 200th anniversary of large scale Norwegian immigration into North America.

New opportunities at a better life was a big reason for immigration.

Those who settled in Canada, particularly in the West, would establish new lives while carrying on some of their old traditions, adding to the tapestry of the country.

Henry Larsen, descended from them, was an RCMP officer and Arctic explorer.

Norwegian archaeologists Anne and Helge Ingstad found proof that the Vikings had made it to the New World a millennium earlier in what is now Newfoundland and Labrador. Today, L'Anse aux Meadows is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

When the Nazis occupied Norway in World War Two, the government went into exile in London, while Canada would be home for training for servicemen of Norway to take back their country. This would only deepen the friendship between the two countries.