 | i awoke later than i had planned (7:30am) the morning i planned to depart for ottawa . but then again, an important part of my trip was that it was my own trip without itineraries or obligations, and so i elected to enjoy the extra hour or two of tardiness!! i had a fitful sleep - the kind that i thought were behind me for several weeks - but apparently not completely, so i was doubly appreciative not to be on a schedule. i packed, cleaned the cat litter, topped up the cat food and water fountain, showered and dressed, kissed the cats, and was in the car within an hour. i arrived in ottawa around 1:30pm and was amazed at the size and breadth of it! in my mind, ottawa consists of parliament hill and about 10 other buildings. it had never occurred to me that it could consist of 750,000 inhabitants and an entire city's worth of supporting industry and infrastructure, let alone a robust off-season tourism industry. i was genuinely astonished - although, that is probably to be expected from a first time visit before which you have only ever seen pictures of parliament hill and maybe 10 other buildings. my first stop for the day was to the national gallery of canada. i was recently reminded (i seem to be using that phrase a lot lately) that i was once a fairly decent artist of a sort, and the reminder evoked in me a kind of longing to know whether my interest in art is still a part of me, or something that has fallen away from me like so many other aspects of my past. i spent two hours at the gallery's special exhibits of canadian painters. edwin holgate was the eighth painter admitted to the group of seven (?!?!) and a fairly fascinating fellow as a person. holgate seems to have become best known for producing some very memorable (as in recognizable) nudes within the backdrop of the canadian wilderness. looking at his work, and more particularly at the evolution of his development as a man and an artist - spanning portraiture, wood engravings, illustration, war-illustration, and of course, his career-defining paintings - i felt a connection to his work and his style and his history that made a real impression on me. i immediately regretted having let art become such a tiny part of my life. the led me to evaluate for myself how i could have let such a formative influence of my youth become such a small part of who i am today? i think that it all began the day that we brought baby hans home from the SPCA . baby hans was easily 10 times the hellion that middle-aged hans now is. that having been said, middle-aged hans is just as effective at disrupting his father's creative endeavours and has been a major influence in the deevolution of my creative activities. any time that the drawing pad comes out (or any other horizontally situated planar surface that requires my attention), hans immediately grows jealous and needs to lie down on or immediately in front of whatever it is to which i am paying my undivided attention (and then reach out to scratch my face). i've realized that i've tolerated this mode of behavior for an astonishing and embarrassing 10 years now - it's been that long since i have endeavoured to produce anything more ambitious than a simple logo design. just recognizing this fact makes me shudder with fright - to have let so many years go by just because i don't want to push away my beloved pets. this has led me to my first new year's resolution - to make art a part of my life once again. if need be, i will buy an easel and lock myself in the bedroom!! i also whizzed through the exhibit of clarence gagnon, known for his breathtaking landscapes of the laurentian countryside. his paintings were shown in salons in europe long before canadian art was deemed worthy of such appreciation. i also rushed through the contemporary art exhibit and scratched the surface of the standing collection before my three hour threshold for magnificent art hit and my culture-migrane set in! i've experienced this before at the national gallery in london , england , and now, i am always cognizant of how much time i spend enthusing over art to avoid cerebral overload. in the evening, i had planned to run along the rideau canal (which was frighteningly bereft of ice for skating), but weather once again worked against me - there was a cold wind all around for which i failed to pack suitable running attire. that, and i had my first ever “beaver tail” which is what we back home would call an “elephant ear”. it's basically a deep-fried slab of dough, sprinkled with icing sugar. in ontario , they cover it with other sweet or meaty stuff, and i was undecided whether to have the apple-cinnamon topping or the chocolate-hazelnut topping - so i had them make me one that was half-and-half. it was so richly, sweetly, deep-friedly sickly-sweet-fattening, i don't think that my heart could have withstood a run within a day of that! so i took the night off and went for a walkabout of downtown ottawa instead. i went on a self-guided tour of parliament and saw the house of commons and the senate chambers first hand. i also went up to the clock tower observation deck and the memorial chamber. i walked to the supreme court of canada which was a big thrill for an old jurisprudential philosopher like myself. seeing the statues of “truth” and “justice” at the entryway to the court was a rush. i was surprised to see that in canada at least, justice is not blind, but has her eyes wide open! i actually contemplated a return to the pursuit of a career in law - for about five seconds. finally, i went to the war memorial in the centre of downtown. this was a very moving moment, since i had been deeply moved this last remembrance day, and to see the memorial in person up close was a poignant and significant part of my trip. i went for a bite and a few martinis to an overpriced downtown spot, and then returned to my humble hotel for a well-deserved rest and to prepare for the next day's adventure. i awoke late again on thursday morning, which seems to be a habit when i travel. i left the hotel around 9:30 to take photos of landmarks in the daylight (most of my evening shots were blurry and unrecognizable!) and to get a cup of coffee from the nearby marketlplace. first off on the agenda was to visit my parents' old apartment. my parents met in ottawa in the centennial year of 1967. they lived in an apartment off of Elgin Street called the Elphin, and i was surprised to discover that not only was it still standing, but it was still a dumpy apartment high-rise that reminded me of one of the earliest apartments in which we lived, the imperial towers in edmonton . i guess this is where i inherited my love of high-rise apartments. visiting the site where i was (allegedly) conceived, i thought of a time when love and goodness were enough to make the foundations of a relationship. times now are far more complicated and these simple prerogatives are gone, but it was a momentous thing to be confronted for the first (well, second, i suppose) time, the place where one's life began and to which you have never been since that auspicious event. having achieved this circle-completing moment in my life, i decided to make one more stop on this first return to ottawa - the trip to the museum of civilization. the museum of civilization is actually located in hull, quebec , so this trip also marked my first sojourn into french-canada! of course, given my inherent ability to become lost in the simplest of locales, i drove around for an extra half and hour trying to find the route to the museum - i think i was about half-way to montreal before i got my bearings! in the end, i managed to find the museum and make my way through its exhibits. the special exhibit was “ petra ” - the lost city of the lost city of stone. situated within the country now known as jordan , petra was an important trading post and crossroads for spice export from arabia to rome . the display itself was vastly interesting, learning about the nabateans and the influences of hellenistic trades and culture on their indigenous styles, but i was a little disappointed at the scale of the pieces. i remember seeing the siq passages in the third indiana jones movie and marvelling at the scale and magnitude of the artistry there. the pieces in the exhibit were impressive and educational, but lacked a certain “awe” factor. i felt a little cheated by that exhibit. the rest of the museum was interesting, but not altogether unexpected. there were a lot of first-nations exhibits, a comparison between nomadic tribes of the prairies and the russian steppes, and other things that i have seen over and over in western museuems. the real thrill that i was hoping for from this museum was to come from the imax movie that i paid to see - the deep sea . this film was supposed to take you down to the ocean floor to see things that no human had or could possibly see without incredible technology to overcome the impossible pressure of the depths. i guess i got my movie trailers mixed up though, because this film was more finding nemo than the abyss. it was narrated by no less than johnny depp and kate winslet, but that hardly made up for the fact that we hardly got below the depth of coral reefs, and there were far too few phosphorescent deep-sea creatures for my liking. one good thing was that the imax screen at the museum was sort of convex shaped, and even though i arrived not-early-enough-for-the-sold-out-show, and had to sit in the front row, the chair i was in reclined back and the imax image filled my field-of-view with an incredibly immersive experience. after this, i felt tired and decided to leave for home, to check on my artistic-career-killing pets. i made the 470km trip home in under four hours, and was able to snuggle-up my babies by 9:15. i think that it took a trip to ottawa to recognize that i should spend more time investigating the city in which i am currently living - it too is full of marvels and attractions! ottawa was beautiful though, and i enjoyed my self immensely!! - g
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