Ottawa, part one

We had a day of cold, relentless rain in Jasper, a fierce yet welcome thunderstorm in New York City (welcome because it broke the heatwave), rain in Halifax, PEI (especially on the drive to PEI), and Montreal (at the Osheaga festival). Other than that, it’s been warm and sunny, though in some cases there’s been even too much warmth and sun (being stranded in the middle of nowhere on an Amtrak train waiting for the rails warped by excessive heat to be fixed was unsettling). And everyone in Ottawa tells us it’s been really dry recently, and the rain is needed. Fine, but couldn’t it have waited until next week? The rain on the train journey from Montreal to Ottawa was as fierce as any rain I’ve seen that came without thunder. But the interesting thing about rain here is that it doesn’t seem to settle in – there are strong showers, which (if you have a slightly elevated view) you can see coming (because the land is quite flat), then they move on.

We said a final goodbye to trains of North America and arrived in Ottawa - our 15th and final stop - around 8pm on Saturday night and thankfully the rain had cleared. Jumped in a cab to the hotel, which is apparently the swishest hotel in town – so swish that QE2 stayed here on her last official visit. Before you ask, we got a good deal on wotif (or the Canadian equivalent). Wandered around the Byward Market area looking for something to eat – Ottawa lacks the obvious vegetarian options that we were starting to take for granted in other cities, restaurants seem to be much more meat-oriented here than elsewhere. I ate quite a number of vegie burgers early in this trip, but at one point (can’t remember where) we ate at a pub that had a vegie burger and I ordered something else because I was getting a bit tired of them, but I haven’t seen any since so I hope I haven’t scared them away. We ended up finding an Italian restaurant which served really nice pasta (and soup and salad for my gluten-intolerant dining partner). We didn’t stay out too late because I wanted to get up early the following day.

So anyway, I got up early the following day and made the gruelling trek one block across town to Parliament Hill. The tour of Canadian Parliament is something I’ve always wanted to do, because of all the governance models in the world, I think the Canadian model is probably the closest to the Australian model anywhere in the world. Still, I found some startling differences. Firstly, the Canadian Senate is still appointed, not elected. Appointments are on the advice of the PM to the GG. While they represent the provinces, the provincial governments play no active part in their appointment. Appointment, similar to the British House of Lords, is for life (though in Canada, they have to retire at the age of 75). Because they are appointed, they play a role of ‘sober second review’, doing lots of research and committee work, and don’t play active politics. The convention is that the Senate never gets in the way of the Commons on important measures such as the Budget, so there has never been a serious deadlock between the Houses (deadlocks are common in the Commons, though). But Senators are not proportioned equally among the provinces. Ontario and Quebec have 24 each, the Maritime provinces share 24 between them, BC has a few and some of the prairie provinces have less, and the northern Territories have one each, because they’re so thinly populated. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ANY OF THIS, TASMANIANS? The tour guide was really nice and helpful, and responded to my numerous interminable questions (seemed everyone else on the tour was interested in the architecture only). This was followed by a tour of the outside area where there are statues of monarchs and ex-PMs, with a view of the Ottawa River (with Quebec on the other side) as a beautiful backdrop.

Cathy and I then went to the National Art Gallery which was hosting a Van Gogh exhibition. Van Gogh really isn’t my thing, but he’s clearly the thing of many other people, judging by the crowd. I really liked the permanent exhibition, which included some of the Brillo Boxes done by Warhol. Until you got up really close and saw they were actually made of wood, they looked so lifelike and real you felt you could reach out and touch them. Of course I didn’t do that, but clearly that was one of the artist’s objectives, and I thought it was achieved. I’m glad I saw them.

Came back to the hotel for a swim (lovely indoor pool downstairs) and returned to find we could barely see out of the window because of the rain. Needless to say, it cleared within the half-hour, and we got a taxi across town to have dinner with some of Cathy’s colleagues who I’m glad I met. I’m sure Cathy will put some photos up in good time. Conversation was great. Following this, we attended the Mosaika exhibition at the Parliament. It was like the Enlighten or Vivid projections in Canberra and Sydney, but whereas those are ‘static’ projections onto multiple buildings, this was a full sound-and-light show projected onto a single building. In an oblique way, it told the story of Canada from about 10000BC right through to the 21^th century, with the focus from about 1860 or thereabouts being the Parliament, and the people it represents, as well as other ‘nation-building’ enterprises such as the national railroad and the CBC. I loved it, I thought it was incredibly well done. An amazingly full day where, apart from dinner a couple of suburbs away, I barely left the central two blocks of town.

So today, it’s a bit gloomy outside. We might go for a walk along the manmade Rideau Canal (not the full distance, obviously), if the rain holds, then we both have ‘work’ to do this afternoon. We’re getting very near the end.