Ottawa - the place to run to

Great news for tourism in Ottawa today. Richard Lee McNair, formerly one of the top 15 fugitives wanted by US Marshalls, has praised Ottawa as one of the best places to be when on the run. [Citizen: American fugitive fell in love with Ottawa, new book reveals]

This is great news because the City can really use a new tourist demographic. We've cornered the regional market for grade eight students doing the annual tour of Parliament and visit to the Museum of Science and Technology, but let's face it, junior high school enrollment is not increasing.

Meanwhile, with the upcoming passage of the Omnibus Crime Bill and its mandatory minimum sentences, we should be seeing a huge upswing in fugitives from justice.

I'm wondering about attractions we can hold out for them. McNair rode the O-train, toured Carleton U, strolled Dow's Lake and the Rideau Canal and went for early morning jogs. It doesn't seem like museums and government buildings were a draw for him.

Any thoughts on what features of our fair town we can advertise or develop further to bolster this new tourist cohort?

[Update: I'm afraid news like this is not going to help.]

No bull

As Ottawa's festival season winds down once again, we coyotes feel a gnawing emptiness. A summer of nonstop-festivals-up-the-wazoo is about to be displaced by another cold winter of festless discontent.



But hey! For reasons that may or may not become clear if you click this link, the Irregulars' hit counter has lately been roping in mucho action from Google Image searches for "testy festy pictures".



Since coyotes are ever curious - you could ask all the cats we've ever known just how curious, if any through sheer inadvertent carelessness remain unboiled - I naturally researched this oddity. You could too, the same way. I ain't linking up to all that NSFW WTFery here. We're a family blog. A really dysfunctional family. I digress.



Let us merely state that Montana's Testicle Festival, known among the glitterati as Testy Festy, features a whole lotta breaded deep-fried prairie oysters, and a whole lotta (on the photographic evidence, apparently also deep-fried...) participants scarfing the aforementioned and behaving, ummm, somewhat badly. I figure it's probably excess testosterone.



But hey! I also figure this kind of thing is just what Ottawa needs - worse-than-usual bad behaviour to light that long, dark tunnel between the end of this weekend's Ottawa Folkfest and 2012 Winterlude, sometime far, far in the frozen future!

Will we be truly a-maze-d?

The Brits have a penchant for misnomers. There are no juggling clowns at Piccadilly Circus. Nor any wrought iron at Notting Hill Gate.

In true colonial fashion, same thing with Lansdowne Park. No green to be seen, unless you count the astroturf or the crisp market veggies that appear in warmer months.

So why not a hedge maze to enliven the redevelopment of Lansdowne, make it a genuine wow-factor magnet and put some actual park in the ol' parking lot?

We could even give the verdant passages homey names like the Larry O'Brien Logic Loop and The Zoning Bylaw Biway. Of course, we'd save a special moniker for the most tricky, dense and confusing lanes: The Light Rail Rigamarole.

The canal skating experience

Whillikers.

If ya didn't know the secrets of finding a good time in this town, ya might think that in Ottawa, on a kinda lamely labelled provincial civic holiday in the middle of winter, there'd be nothing else to do but skate on the kinda worse-for-wear Rideau Canal. And that ya might be one of maybe a million-odd Ottawattamies to think the same thing.

Actually, upon reflection, ya might be perilously close to right about that...

OC Transpo and the Strollers

On Wednesday, the City of Ottawa's Transit Committee will be asked to consider OC Transpo's report on a new policy for the seats at the front of the bus that used to be called Courtesy Seating and are now called Priority Seating.

The report is called Priority Seating - Managing the Front of the Bus. First of all, they're going to rename the seats at the front to "Co-operative seating". If people who should give up their seats don't they can still be charged with an offence under s. 18(2) of the OC Transpo by-law, but that will be a last resort.

The "co-operative" versus "priority" seating isn't why this is going to Council. The real controversy is with the strollers. On the list of stupid things people in Ottawa get worked up over, big strollers clogging the front of buses is right up there with the use of lawn chairs at Blues Fest.

The problem for OC Transpo was that dealing with strollers was left to the discretion of the drivers. This led to the unfortunate baby-napping incident of 2008. Now this will never have to occur again because the new policy has detailed criteria for baby buggies. It starts off with:

An open stroller occupied by a child will be allowed on the bus if:

1. It is capable of being folded
2. It is capable of being safely stowed
3. It will not interfere with other passengers or with the safe movement of passengers within the transit vehicle; and
4. It can be wheeled, or (when folded) carried, through the aisle without contacting the seats.

The policy carries on with wheelchair priority, and what to do with double strollers. Although I've never tried to navigate the City with a stroller it all seems to make good sense to me. Still I have to say that their plan on what to do with the strollers that can't go inside the buses caught me by surprise. Rack'n'Stroll is the sort of innovative thinking that we don't often see in this town.

Update: Looks like City Council didn't go for the new plan.

Finally, a sprinkling of public art

Ottawa's new watering can sculpture at the corner of Kent and Slater streets. Perhaps the can should be filled with vinegar given the nearby chipwagon.

Dear Ottawa: More public art, please

My Vision for the New Lansdowne

I am excited by the mayor's recent invitation for redesigns of Lansdowne Park. The main submission requirements are unorthodox. (To avoid wasting tax dollars?)

"Anyone can draw a pretty picture on a piece of toilet paper and submit it."

As always, I'm up to a challenge.

I'm afraid the definition of "pretty" will have to be stretched for my design to be accepted, but I did manage to put it on toilet paper and only ripped the paper twice. Unfortunately, because the square is so small and the ink is so wide, I could only fit in 3 of the features that are in my vision for the New Lansdowne Park.

It's really not that easy to draw a pretty picture on a piece of toilet paper.

This little piggy...

Image: Mercato Centrale, Firenze \ flickr.com

Calling all 100-mile dieters. Vegeterians. Vegans. Meatatarians. And the lactose intolerant...

A suggestion for Ottawa, courtesy of the ESI Research Director: Let's emulate our friends in Florence and countless other fine cities and establish a year-round, full-on food market in the Cattle Castle at Lansdowne Park.

Whaddaya say?

Driver, follow that canoe!

It's time for some fresh ideas to make Ottawa the great city it can be but rarely is. The Research Director and Painted Stick came up with two molto buono proposals the other night. I just sat, listened and announced I would steal them for the blog.

Here is the first, courtesy of P.S.: A water taxi on the Rideau Canal. Other cities we love -- Chicago and Venice, to name just two, have 'em. Why not Ottawa?

All those folks who skate downtown to work from the Glebe during the six weeks the canal is actually frozen would no doubt enjoy taking the O-town vaporetto down our Unesco-worthy waterway the rest of the year. It could stop at all the little skateway entry points. We could even have "articulated" water taxis to negotiate those curves and make OCTranspo passengers feel at home.

Thoughts?