Snow Sculptures

Here we continue with the snow sculptures in Jacques Cartier Park as they looked for Winterlude 2017.

I mentioned in yesterday's post about what was then a glimpse of the future. MosaiCanada was a big event for Canada's 150th anniversary. It was held in the park that year and the following, with big topiary sculptures. This was the biggest of them all, an Indigenous Mother Earth sculpture. At the time of this visit, the frame of it was wrapped in white canvas awaiting the spring. If you'd like to see more of it, go for a deep dive by clicking MosaiCanada in the tags below.

My last view today: a look towards the Ottawa shoreline with the spires of Parliament Hill in the distance.

 

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Smiles

 The first day of each month is a theme day for members of City Daily Photo, and for February, that theme is Smiles. See how others are interpreting that theme right here.

I'm relying in part on archive shots, starting with this one taken at Arts Court downtown in 2015 during Nuit Blanche. Allison Blakley, a member of a local dance company, did a performance piece through the night at Arts Court and gave me this shot following one of those performances, with a splendid smile.

2017 was the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, and there were multiple events to mark the occasion that year in the city. One of those events, running through the year, was Ottawa Welcomes The World, held at Lansdowne Park in the Glebe. It was a series of events held by embassies to showcase their countries. One such occasion for Columbia featured this woman, Pilar, part of a chocolate consortium, with a bright smile.

Another occasion, profiling the country of Uruguay, featured candombe dancers with bright smiles and high energy.

Another event held that year was MosaiCanada, which was done over on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River in Jacques Cartier Park. Part of the park hosted large topiaries in 2017 and 2018. They included a majestic First Nations version of Mother Earth with a gentle smile.

Doors Open is an event usually held here in Ottawa at the beginning of June. We'll see if it happens this year. In 2019, I happened to be at the National Arts Centre on stage and took this shot at the right moment, with a woman at the conductor's position holding the baton.

And then there's the smile. In 2019, the Canada Science And Technology Museum, another of our national museums, hosted an exhibit marking the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, examining his art, inventions, and concepts from a scientific perspective. That included an in depth analysis of his most famous painting, presented in multiple visual spectrums, with a look beneath the surface of the work, and an actual sized replica of the painting, front and back.

What is Mona Lisa smiling about?

Now for some fresh shots, these brought out smiles or laughs from me. First, this sheet I've come across showing the proper and improper way of masks in the Covid era, Gotham City style.

This is in a restaurant window in Centretown.

And this is the front billboard for a church in the Glebe.

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. 

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Best Of The Year

Continuing on with my favourite shots of 2018, today I'm concentrating on Gatineau and the larger area called the Outaouais- a French translation for the Ottawa River and this area along its shore in the province of Quebec. Winterlude has activities in Gatineau as well as in Ottawa in February, with Jacques Cartier Park on the shore of the Ottawa River being turned into a massive snowy playground. Snow sculptures are part of that.

In May, Tom and his wife came up to Ottawa to see the tulips, and I escorted them on tours of the area. That included an excursion into Gatineau Park, a large swath of nature beyond the city of Gatineau in the regional municipality of Les Collines-des-l'Outaouais. We stopped at this countryside church, St. Stephen's Catholic Church, in the village of Chelsea. The parish has roots that go back to 1840, with the current building dated to the 1880s.

Up in Gatineau Park itself, the Mackenzie King Estate is to be found. William Lyon Mackenzie King, one of our finest prime ministers, left this weekend retreat that had been his real home to the people of Canada in his will. This is a view of one of the houses, Moorside, taken in May.

The Gatineau River flows along the east edges of Gatineau Park towards its terminus with the Ottawa River, and here at the village of Wakefield, we find the Wakefield Covered Bridge crossing it. This view from the north gives a good view of the bridge, which was rebuilt in the 1990s after the first bridge was destroyed by fire. Today it is a pedestrian and bikes only bridge, and it is a beauty, spanning a length of 87.8 metres.

The Canadian Museum of History stands along the shore of the Ottawa River in Gatineau, another of our national museums, and I've visited several times over the year. Each visit always includes a look at the monumental abstract mural Morning Star, by the First Nations artist Alex Janvier, high over the Grand Hall. This photo includes people in the upper level, reinforcing how big the mural is. If I had to pick a favourite work of art in the National Capital Region, this would be it.

On another visit, I took in one of the temporary exhibits. Medieval Europe is soon to finish up its time here, and examines life in Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. At the heart of the space are a series of screens that rotate between images of European architecture and period statues. This particular one, with visitors amid the architecture, stuck with me.

Jacques Cartier Park hosted the topiary event MosaiCanada for the second and final year, a fabulous collection of living, sculpted art. They included a mother and cub pair of foxes, much larger than life.

This one featured a shepherd, sheep dog, and sheep- the dog's expression was priceless.

One of the show stoppers was this massive tree containing a variety of birds.

And of course my favourite of all the topiaries, a First Nations inspired take on Mother Earth, surrounded by animals and looking quite peaceful.

An October visit back to the Gatineau Hills brought me back to the Mackenzie King Estate for the fall colours. King was something of an eccentric, taking bits and pieces of buildings that were demolished and incorporating them into his estate as follies. They included various pieces that make up what is today called the Abbey, which looks splendid among fall colours.

And I finish with this grand view. There are several lookout spots not far from the Estate. This one is the Champlain Lookout. Here the visitor can look out over the steep drop to the valley floor. The Ottawa River is there in the distance, winding its way upstream.

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Friend

The first day of each month happens to be a theme day for those of us who are members of City Daily Photo, and for the first of November, that theme is Friend. Take a look at how others are handling this theme here.

My primary take on the theme is taken from history, but at the suggestion of one of my readers, I thought I would start with this topiary that I recently featured, and am reusing one of the shots for today. MosaiCanada was a two year event held here, at Jacques Cartier Park on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River. It featured a series of topiary sculptures on a big scale. I spent a good part of October on a series with my visit, which you can start looking at right here if you'd like. One of the final topiaries was a fitting one for this theme. Hachiko The Loyal Dog is based on the true story of a Tokyo professor and his dog, who accompanied him to the train station each day when the professor would go off to work, and would wait there each day for his return. This continued for years after the professor had suddenly died. Today a statue of the dog is at that station.

My main take on this theme highlights the friendship of two of our founding Fathers of Confederation: our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald and the most eloquent speaker and writer in Parliament, Thomas D'Arcy McGee. They were among the politicians who worked together in the 1860s to forge the country that would become Canada, and theirs was a friendship that was very much a brotherhood. Both men were drinkers; in his book Blood And Daring, which tells the story of Canada during the American Civil War, John Boyko recounts an incident that speaks to the camaraderie of the two. One morning after a long night drinking, McGee was found sleeping it off under an editor's desk at the Ottawa Citizen. Macdonald admonished him by saying, "look here, McGee, this cabinet can't afford two drunkards, and I'm not quitting."

The Bytown Museum, a local history museum nestled by the Ottawa Locks of the Rideau Canal, has a section that examines the McGee assassination. McGee was shot in the back of the head coming home  to his boarding house from a session in the House of Commons one night in April 1868, and a Fenian sympathist was tried, convicted, and hung for it. Macdonald took the murder of his friend hard. I took these shots in August, on Colonel By Day. A portrait of McGee himself hangs here among the displays.

This bust is by Marshall Wood, done in 1874 in marble. It depicts Lady Agnes Macdonald, the wife of Sir John. The quote on the wall indicates her shock at the assassination, as well as the closeness she would have felt where her husband's friend was concerned.

A display case features various items related to the assassination- the original plaque that hung at the site of the crime, a book by McGee, funeral souvenirs, and something a bit odd- a casting of McGee's hand, done after his death. Death masks were common at the time in Victorian culture, but given the damage sustained in the shooting, it was not possible in this case. His hand was a suitable alternative, particularly given his eloquence as a writer.

One day in October, I went up to Parliament Hill. Statues of both Macdonald and McGee are among the set of monuments up there around the buildings. Macdonald's statue stands to the east side of Centre Block, with an allegorical figure at the base.

I finish with this photo of McGee's statue on the Hill, from a post earlier in the year, taken in the winter. When I took the above shots around Macdonald's statue, I came around to this area on the north side of Centre Block, hoping to get another shot or two of McGee from this spot. The work going on here at the Hill prevented that- this particular spot is presently just beyond public access. While one can go along the fenceline behind the statue, one can't get in front of it. So this wintery shot of the great man will do quite nicely. It is an appropriate spot for his monument- his statue stands facing the Library of Parliament, a fitting location for such a gifted writer and speaker.