City Daily Photo Theme Day: Favourites

For the last theme day for City Daily Photo, the theme is Favourites, and you can see other interpretations of the theme right here. 

I decided to select several from over the years. This first one was the first shot I featured in the blog back in 2013. The Peace Tower on Parliament Hill is nicely framed from within the entrance of East Block. It's not possible to take this shot right now, what with restoration work being done on Centre Block and in East Block; this entrance is presently fenced off.

Parliament Hill in a different manner: each year during the summer a multimedia show is projected onto Centre Block (not this year, but Covid might have a lot to do with that). This shot is from near the end of one such show.

This shot is from September of 2015. For several years Ottawa featured an all night event on a given Saturday night called Nuit Blanche (which I wish they'd bring back). I was out and about that night taking in arts events at various spots, including Arts Court, where Allison Blakley, a member of a local dance group, was putting on an audience participation performance mixing together the pinata and Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. After the performance, I got this shot of her, with a marvelous expression.

One of the big festivals each year is Winterlude, held both in Ottawa and Gatineau, and this shot features a large snow sculpture in Jacques Cartier Park over in Gatineau.

Another festival is of course the Tulip Festival, and this shot is taken in Major's Hill Park here in Ottawa during a previous year.

2017 was the year of Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation, and there were multiple events that year. One of the biggest weekends featured La Machine, a street performance company that  held this event over several days with giant machine animals moving through the city streets towards an inevitable confrontation. This was the first time the company performed in North America, and one of the two beasties was a spider.

The other was a dragon horse. This shot was taken as it passed Parliament Hill.

Another event that year was MosaiCanada, a display of giant topiaries over in Jacques Cartier Park. They included my favourite, a First Nations take on Mother Earth, surrounded by animals. She was huge.

Another of the events usually held each year is Doors Open, which brings visitors into over a hundred different buildings and facilities over a weekend in June. This year it wasn't held, but this shot from last year stuck with me. I was in the National Arts Centre on stage, and happened to take this shot of a woman holding up the conductor's baton. Her smile made the shot.

This shot is from 2017 before Christmas, a vintage shop not far from where I live. This cat was sitting in the window at the time. It's the same cat I featured in a post a few days back, dozing in the same window.

Here we have a shot from last year, taken at the University of Guelph while I was visiting southern Ontario. The gryphon in the background is the school symbol. My brother and I are both miscreants, scoundrels, rogues, and rascals. And proud of it.

I finish with two shots taken in the fall of 2018, on the same day in the Gatineau Hills. The Mackenzie King Estate is in the heart of Gatineau Park, gifted by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to the country. Along with the homes on the estate are several follies that King had erected, using parts of other buildings. This one is called the Abbey.

Not far away is the Champlain Lookout, where the Hills have a dramatic overlook of the Ottawa River Valley as the river comes from places further west and north.