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. 

Past And Present Journeys

I am concluding this series today. And a note to those readers in the area- Winterlude gets underway this weekend.

Lieutenant J. Thad Johnson was part of a group of escort pilots who accompanied Charles Lindbergh on a tour of North America in 1927. It ended badly for Johnson, whose Curtiss P-1 Hawk collided with another in the group south of the city; he would die of his injuries. The American pilot received honours from his Canadian hosts in death as dignitaries officially mourned him. The accompanying display case features a photograph of the wreck, a model of his plane, and the strut of the plane itself.

The Second World War saw Ottawa become a place of refuge for the Crown Princess of the Netherlands and her daughters. Princess Juliana stayed here through that period, and one of her daughters, Princess Margriet was born here, with the government of the time passing a law to declare the maternity suite temporarily extra-territorial. A display case features photographs and copies of the birth certificates, in English and in Dutch. It is a connection that has endured, as Margriet has been over to Canada on numerous occasions.

Another visitor- The King himself. A panel and display case feature Elvis Presley's 1957 visit (long before his rhinestone jumpsuit era).

From one King to an actual Queen. 1967 was the centennial year, and Queen Elizabeth II came over for the occasion. She brought along six swans from the royal collection. Their descendents still are here today, swimming the Rideau River in warm weather and spending their time these days in winter quarters.

In 2013, six young people and their guide started walking on snowshoes from a Cree community in northern Quebec to Ottawa, reaching the capital by March. They were the Nishiyuu Walkers, calling for attention to the Idle No More movement, following the traditional routes of various First Nations peoples. Our prime minister at the time went out of his way to avoid them. 

This is a different kind of art. Joan Tenasco is the Anishinibeg artist behind this, an example of birch bark biting. The idea is to fold a thin slice of birchbark and bite it to form patterns and shapes.

2017 was our 150th anniversary, and among the visitors that year were a giant spider and a dragon horse. La Machine was the company behind a grand event of street theatre in the capital, with Kumo the spider facing off against Long-Ma the dragon horse around the landmarks of the city. A nearby video screen was set up with a short video of those few days, so I filmed it, which you can see right here.

And I finish off with this display case of gifts to the city from foreign ambassadors and dignitaries.

Canada 150: The Celebration For The Country

In the lead up to our anniversary year, the government at large had various Canada 150 projects in mind. So too did the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau. And so too did the community; library branches hosted Canada 150 groups with their own ideas for the event in the year or two beforehand. For myself, I decided that my Canada 150 project would be to document the year in the national capital region as much as possible. That included a number of events that were added onto the usual course of the year, and which kept me busy- I was glad to be able to make use of my writer's blog as an additional publishing spot when things were exceedingly busy. 

Today I have a reflection on the year past with more shots of the anniversary year, beginning with this shot taken on Parliament Hill on New Year's Day, 2017. A concert had been held the night before.

One early Canada 150 event the city put on was called Crashed Ice. A speed skating track had been placed along the Ottawa Locks of the Rideau Canal in the weeks leading up to the early March event, and a group of slightly insane speed skaters rocketed down the course on a couple of exceedingly cold nights, much to the delight of onlookers.

Yesterday I made mention of La Machine, the urban theatre event with giant machines facing off against each other among various landmarks in the city. This was from the finale, with the dragon horse proving triumphant over the spider. Both machines are visible here. The event was put on by the city, and proved to be quite a success in how it drew people in.

Populace was the title of an exhibit held outside the Museum of Nature during the summer to mark the anniversary. A pottery guild here in Ottawa placed ceramic feathers, English roses, and fleur-de-lys sculptures in the grass on the east side of the property.

Canada's Table was an event that I covered in the writer's blog, taking place in August on what turned out to be a lovely day. Restaurant owners collaborated with chefs from the region and the country as a whole in a thousand place setting, four course meal on Wellington Street in the shadow of Parliament Hill, an event benefiting charities, yet another celebration of Canada 150. I photographed it as preparations were underway in the afternoon.

On a late June day near this same spot, I happened to be in the downtown core one day when I came across an official function taking place on the street. This was on a national day for our indigenous peoples. Prime Minister Trudeau was speaking, and can be seen in this shot in the center of the shot, above the heads of onlookers. The former location of the American embassy, across from the Parliamentary district, has been turned over to the First Nations of Canada for their use as a cultural center in the heart of Canada's political power, one more step in the ongoing process of reconciliation. I put this photo up at my Facebook page that day, after listening to the Prime Minister speak. It's the first time I've seen him in person, and he is a good speaker. It's nice to have a government leader in the job that you don't have to be ashamed of.

Canada 150 saw the renewal of the permanent gallery at the Museum of History in Gatineau. It reopened for Canada Day, with the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attending the ceremony. The spaces here have been extensively reorganized with an emphasis on telling the story of Canada from its very beginnings, interweaving the story of indigenous and settlers throughout. I found the end result very well done. This is a wide view taken from my visit. 

Kontinuum was a multimedia exhibit that ran through the summer in what will be an underground LRT station beneath the city core in 2018. Lights and music made for a fascinating walk through what will eventually be typical infrastructure when the east-west system comes online. It felt like a sci-fi movie, and I visited it numerous occasions, especially towards the end of the run as I'd moved into a new place a couple of blocks away.

Ottawa Welcomes The World was an event that ran through the year at Lansdowne Park, allowing embassies from various countries to present themselves to visitors. I found it enlightening and entertaining, visiting many of these events during the year. I posted some of the series at my writer's blog, and others here after the packed schedule of summer had ended. Below are some of the events: musicians on stage during the Ireland event, an artist at work during the Columbia event, and candombe dancers who were part of Uruguay's presentation.

MosaiCanada was another major event, held in Gatineau at Jacques Cartier Park. I attended the topiary exhibition several times, enjoying the sculptures. Two of them are here: puffins and musk oxen, representing two very different parts of Canada.

And I conclude, as I did with yesterday's post, with two images from Miwate, the light show that illuminated the Chaudiere Falls. Canada 150 was an event that will certainly live on in many memories; the anniversary year was quite a milestone, and I enjoyed documenting things as I went along.

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Best Of The Year

The first day of each month is a theme day for members of City Daily Photo, and January 1st is always a retrospective of the year that has come before, with best of the year or photo of the year being the chosen theme. Take a look at how other members around the world are selecting their choices for the theme here.

I have a number of different choices, and I'm starting with our Winterlude event, an annual celebration of winter held in February in both Ottawa and Gatineau, with snow and ice sculptures, skating on the Rideau Canal, and many more activities. Confederation Park hosts a series of ice sculptures, both sheltered and out in the open. Perhaps the best time to come see them is at night when they are lit up. This first large one marks a centennial for Canada- the hundredth anniversary of the pivotal Battle of Vimy Ridge, which happened during the First World War and was the scene of a bloody victory for Canadian troops over German soldiers. The Memorial is incorporated into the ice in two ways, both on the main structure and in the reproduction of one of the many sculptures that adorn  the Memorial itself in France, standing closer to the visitor.

This is a mermaid sculpture, one of a number of sculptures held under shelters elsewhere in the park.

The National War Memorial is one of my favourite photo subjects in the city. 2017 was the centennial year for the battles of Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, two critical moments in Canadian history, as well as the 75th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid, a dark day for Canadian servicemen in the Second World War. April 9th marked the centennial of the first day of Vimy Ridge's four day battle, and there were commemoration services in France and here; I attended the Ottawa ceremony. The evening before, I also attended a vigil ceremony at the Memorial, where images of the era were projected onto the monument and cadets stood at post around the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier. That is the final resting place of an unknown Canadian serviceman who fell in action at Vimy.

I was also here on Remembrance Day in November for the national services, and at the end of the day, I happened to be in the right place at the right time as a pair of active servicemen came up to the Tomb to place their poppies and give a final salute. The image really stood out to me.

In May we have the Tulip Festival, which is a legacy of the Second World War and which takes place each year on both sides of the Ottawa River. In this case, these beds are in Jacques Cartier Park on the Gatineau side of the river.

2017 also happened to be the 150th anniversary of Canada's Confederation, something that has been marked across the region and the country all year- I will have more of that in a retrospective tomorrow. On Canada Day I was out and about taking in a lot of the celebrations; these were fireworks taken at the end of that day.

One of the Canada 150 events that really made an impression was called La Machine, in late July. This was urban street theatre involving a company from France bringing two giant machines, a spider and a dragon horse, and over the course of four days having them move through the streets of Ottawa and engage with the city in their marches and confrontations. It captured the imagination of so many people, and I covered it extensively. If you'd like to see the whole affair, just click here for the first post of the series of seven posts I did on the series, including videos.

Another Canada 150 event that really drew people in took place over in Jacques Cartier Park starting around Canada Day and going into October. MosaiCanada was a topiary exhibition featuring over thirty sculptures. My favourite, a First Nations version of Mother Earth, is seen here in two perspectives.

And I finish off with another Canada 150 event called Miwate, a partnership between a First Nations group and a lighting production company called Moment Factory. The Chaudiere Falls, in the heart of the Ottawa River, was opened to public access after a century plus of being isolated by the presence of industry, and for a month from early October into early November was the scene of a light show in the evenings. The falls were illuminated in a ten minute light and music show that was magical to watch. I did some videos at the time; if you'd like to see it, click here.