Ottawa Vantages

As you may have noticed, I have switched out header images for something of more of a winter theme. The new one is from this past February during Winterlude, when we had ice dragon boat racing on Dow's Lake.

I have some odds and ends today. My first shot is the most recently taken of these photographs. The Supreme Court is an Art Deco wonder on the west side of Parliament Hill, a relative rarity in a city with plenty of Gothic architecture. I took the photograph on a snowy morning in November. The shot that follows was from an evening some weeks before, capturing the building by night.

This is the Bank of Canada Building from the Wellington Street side. You can see the Confederation Block of Parliament Hill reflected in the windows of the more modern portion of the building. The older building, partially submerged into the glass structure, dates back to the early 1930s. The sculpture on its terrace is a bronze from 1966 simply titled Flight, by an artist named Sorel Etrog. The building has a particularly unusual door which seems to evoke ancient Greece. 

Victoria Island in the Ottawa River features this old carbide mill, dating back to the 19th century. The bare bones of the old mill still look solid, but this being the age of lawyers, it's all fenced off to keep trespassers out. A lot was done here, as you can see from the accompanying panel.

A short walk away at the Ottawa entrance to the Portage Bridge is something new, an art installation just placed here earlier in the fall overlooking Richmond Landing. The Gather-Ring is the work of designer Manuel Baez and artist Charlynne Lafontaine. It incorporates the dream catcher and the cedar tree of the base into a single circle. In Algonquin, this is titled Tediba Mamandosewin.

I finish with something else installed this year. Outside the Chateau Laurier is a bust of Yousuf Karsh, the esteemed Canadian portrait photographer who called Ottawa home and worked out of his studio in the Chateau for the second half of his professional career.