When your child is born two months prematurely by emergency C-section and spends his first month in the neo-natal intensive care unit at the hospital, your sole focus as a parent ought to be on his well-being.

Unfortunately, as a result of the Phoenix pay system, Sebastienne Critchley wasn’t afforded that luxury.

The Edmonton woman’s son, Logan, was born on Nov. 26, 2016, at just 32 weeks. Instead of being with him in the ICU, the Employment and Social Development employee says she was often out in the hallway, on her phone with someone at the Phoenix pay centre in Miramichi, N.B., trying to get her record of employment, the form the government is required to provide within five days of a change in pay.

“At that point they were telling me that it could be six months to get an ROE and, of course, you can’t get maternity benefits without the ROE and you can’t get the top-up that the federal public service provides without the EI. And I’m saying, ‘I can’t go six months with no income. That’s not going to work.’

“It certainly can’t be proven,” she adds, “but some of the staff at the hospital were speculating that the ongoing long-term stress of the pay situation could have contributed to Logan’s premature delivery.”

For this was hardly Critchley’s introduction to Phoenix’s morale-crushing quirks. Six months earlier, in April 2016, after her department hopped aboard the ill-fated Phoenix train, she continued to be paid through a six-week medical leave she took.

At the time, though, she wasn’t unduly concerned. “It was a brand-new system,” she recalls thinking. “There were going to be a few kinks here and there.” It wasn’t a big deal, she told herself; it would all be fixed when she returned.

It wasn’t, not then and not in July when she needed another leave, this one for family reasons. She was anxious to get it fixed before her maternity leave, expected to begin in December, kicked in. But she was told that, as she was still being paid, her file was a low priority, and that it wouldn’t even be considered before October.

In October, meanwhile, one of her paycheques was withheld entirely, without notice. She was told that it was being applied to her overpayment — which she had been putting away in order to repay it.

“I said, ‘I appreciate that you’re finally trying to do a recovery, but you haven’t told me how much I owe, and you can’t just suddenly not pay me.’

“Their response? ‘We’ll get it figured out with you next pay.’”

That didn’t happen. Her son arrived and her pay didn’t, not until January. The compensation adviser she was dealing with told her that she owed about $15,000, a figure she agreed was close to correct. Then her compensation adviser stopped responding to her altogether. One pay centre worker told her she owed $7,500. Another said the figure was $22,000. None, however, could tell her how the figures were calculated.

Her T4 slip for 2016, though, suggested the opposite: that she was underpaid by about that amount. As a result, she was unable to use certain credits that her husband, a civilian with the RCMP, used instead. Critchley, 40, says it cost the couple $1,200 to have their taxes prepared last year, a far cry more than the $200 that the government has offered Phoenix-affected employees.

Her return from maternity leave last September marked the return of her paycheque woes. “Every pay period I have two or three paycheques with adjustments for prior year this, that and the other thing. Sometimes I get two pays showing up.”

When her final pay stub of 2017 arrived, she looked at the total deductions listed for the year — about $9,300. She then added up the year-to-date deductions by individual line item — income tax, EI, CPP, union dues and such — to discover a total of slightly more than $7,200, about $2,000 less than the $9,300.

“Where is that $2,000?” she asks. “They say, ‘Oh, well, it’s all right.’ No, it’s not. They still will not answer me. They just keep telling me it’s right, if I just look at the pay stub.

“Every day I have to chase people down. I am running myself ragged trying to repay money.

She’s discovered numerous discrepancies in her pay stubs, and when she received her T4 for 2017, Box 22, which shows her income tax deducted, was blank. “In addition to the missing income tax, amounts for CPP, EI, and union dues all don’t add up, either,” she says. “I’m happy to report that the $19.47 for my health care premium appears correct, though.

She knows she owes the government money, but she’s not convinced it’s the $43,000 she was recently told. “I said, ‘You know what? Put a hold on everything. You are not recovering anything until you can give me a detailed breakdown, line by line, of exactly what I owe and why, that I can take to an accountant of my choice to have verified.’”

A subsequent letter indicates she owes $28,500. She believes it’s more in the $22,000 to $23,000 range.

“It may be that when I do my taxes I may owe some of that $5,000 (difference) to CRA, but I’ll take that up with them. I have no issue repaying what I owe, but I should not have to put in this many hours fighting to say, ‘Do the job right.’”

Some nights she’s up until 2 a.m. trying to sort out her finances based on inaccurate pay stubs, while lack of sleep is a trigger for her anxiety and depression. “And at this point I don’t trust what I’m getting from the pay centre. I need to make sure that I have my thumb on what I actually owe, so that when they DO send me something like this $28,000, I can look at it and say, ‘No. Here’s why it’s wrong.’

“I’m done with this. I just want to give up. I’ve been beaten down to that point. They keep telling me it’s all fixed, and I keep telling them no, it’s not. This is still wrong.”

Last fall, the Phoenix problems drove her to withdraw her name from consideration for a new position. She’s still in the running for another, but says she’d be nervous about accepting it. “I wonder ‘How many more screw-ups is this going to generate?”

Last fall, she estimated that she’d spent more than 200 hours trying to resolve her Phoenix issues, and the number keeps climbing. Yet as she enters just her fifth year in the federal public service, she’s not ready to abandon her position.

“I could not ask for better managers, team leaders or co-workers,” she says, “and I’m not going to find that anywhere else. The people are what keep me going back every day.”

Additionally, she says, her job makes a difference in Canadians’ lives. “There are times that I’m able to keep people from living on the street, or I’m able to keep people in a position where they can get the medications they need to live. I’m making a difference for people, and that’s something that matters to me.”

(A spokesperson for Public Services, which is responsible for Phoenix, said privacy legislation prevents the department from discussing details of the employment and pay of individual federal government employees.)

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa area’s arts community. This week Bruce Deachman talks with photographer J.A. Lamont, whose current exhibition, Hurricane, continues at Exposure Gallery until April 10. Visit exposuregallery.ca or jalamont.ca for more information.

“I got my first single lens reflex camera in 1977, an Olympus OM1. I got it because I was going into the Arctic — we did a long ski trip across Bylot Island, just north of Baffin Island. At that time I was in love with the Canadian wilderness and mountains and the Arctic, so I got the camera to document that. I’d been doing a lot of mountain travel, but just with the equivalent of a point-and-shoot. It was a way of bringing back some of what I had been seeing.

“Then I had the good fortune that Canadian Geographic published some of my articles with my photographs after that, so that really hooked me. And from there I grew increasingly interested in photography as photography, and instead of photographing to document the travel in these beautiful places, I started to travel specifically to photograph certain things and spend more time in certain places. And more recently I’ve moved, to a certain extent, into what is sometimes called conservation photography, hence the global climate change shows: the Glacial Flows: Notes for a Requiem, before Christmas, and, now, Hurricane.

“Those were prompted, yes, by my love of those environments and, yes, by my love of photography, but equally by my realization that if I loved these places, I should try to protect them. And the reality is I think we are an increasingly urban culture, and most people I don’t think are aware of the situation that’s going on in the Canadian north with respect to the glaciers. These aren’t things that just affect us in an aesthetic sense; they’re things that will have terrible implications for our children. I sometimes say to people who say that they have no hope to stop global climate change: ‘Do you have hope for your children?’ And universally they will say yes, and I will then say: ‘Well, if you have hope for your children and your children’s future, then you must have hope that you can stop global climate change. Because there is no hope for your children if we can’t.’ So that’s been a theme, although by no means my only interest. I’m not a terribly politically motivated person, but my last few shows have been that way.

“In the Glacial Flows: Notes for a Requiem show, about what’s happening to the glaciers of the world, this is not just my assessment; this is the assessment of scientists and an eminent glaciologist that we had, in conjunction with the show, talk about what they’re seeing. And glaciers around the world are declining at an unprecedented rate, at a terrifying rate. And most of the major cities in southeast Asia — and elsewhere, such as Calgary — are fed by glacial waters, so this is going to have major practical implications as well.

“Also I’d been observing things. I did a trip to central-east Baffin Island with a friend in 1997, and then essentially the same route in 2013. And in that 16 years, an entire glacier simply vanished. We had gone through a very narrow river valley in 1997 — the glacier was 100 feet high and kilometres long. In 2013 it was simply gone. And in 2014 in northern British Columbia, Salmon Glacier — one of the great glaciers of Canada; it’s got two arms that bisect — and in 2014 the north arm was gone. Just a few gnarled, twisted blackened remnants.

“And the current show at Exposure Gallery — Hurricane — I had the good fortune to work with Environment Canada, off the west coast of B.C., in the Scott Islands, in 2011, and I was invited back in 2015 and had the very good fortune to be there when there was a hurricane in the spring.

“Around that time I’d heard Stephen Lewis say, in his speech to the NDP, that the world is fairly soon going to be facing, I think he called it “hallucinatory climatic convulsions.” And that agreed with what I was hearing the scientists saying.

“And I thought ‘Wow, I was right there.’ And the thing that struck me was not only is it hallucinatory, but it’s terrifying. And yet, in the midst of this chaos, there were signs of life, which to me was a sign of hope. So this combination of chaos and order, terror and hope and attraction, that’s almost the definition of the classical notion of the sublime. And that’s been an interest, in part, that grew out of my interest in mountains, and most of what I do ultimately stems from that. I’m motivated by the beauty and the power of what I’m seeing, and the futile desire to somehow capture something of that beauty and power.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Ottawa police are asking for the public’s help in identifying two men suspected of a break-and-enter and robbery at a Carp business.

The incident took place on Saturday, March 3 around 1 a.m., when two men allegedly forced their way into the side door of a commercial building in the 1400 block of Diamondview Road and stole a large quantity of tools.

Both suspects are described as Caucasians in their 20s. One was wearing a two-tone jacket with a hooded shirt underneath, while the other wore a hunting-pattern jacket with a hood.

Anyone with information is asked to call 613-236-1222, ext. 2655. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS), or by downloading the Ottawa Police app.

Police are looking for the public’s help in identifying two men suspected of break-and-enter and robbery.

Ottawa police are looking for help identifying two men suspected of a break-and-enter and robbery.

Ottawa police are looking for help identifying two men suspected of a break-and-enter and robbery.

Among the casualties of the strike by Carleton University’s support staff is one of the school’s governors.

Clair Switzer, who served on the 32-person board as one of its two non-faculty staff members, resigned her seat on Wednesday morning after being told that her membership in the striking CUPE 2424 local put her in a conflict of interest.

Switzer, an acquisitions financial supervisor with the university’s library technical services and a university employee for the past decade, joined the board in 2015 because she wanted to see all sides of operating the school. Her three-year term on the board was scheduled to end on June 30.

“It was a great experience and I enjoyed my time on the board,” she said from the picket line on Thursday. “Highs and lows, for sure, but we got to an impasse.”

That impasse, which is at the crux of the strike, concerns the contract language surrounding pension protections. According to Switzer, the wording of the contract under which the university’s support, library and administrative staff has worked for the past 40 years has traditionally allowed them a say in any drastic changes to the pension structure. The university, she says, wants to change that. (The university has said there would be no changes to the pension plan and that the union is “has continued to misrepresent the situation.”)

As a member of both the board and the union, meanwhile, Switzer said she faced a great deal of soul-searching about her dual position, and on Tuesday she sent a letter to the board office stating that she felt she would have to recuse herself should the matter arise in a board meeting.

In her letter, she encouraged board members who might be interested in seeing the labour issue from the union members’ points of view to watch video montages the local had posted.

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• Carleton students feel the crunch as support staff strike drags on

“I think the board, unfortunately, is insulated,” she said. “They’re sheltered. They’re getting the side that the university is choosing to give them.

“A lot of them are community-at-large members. They’re not on campus. They can’t see what’s happening. They don’t necessarily understand. They don’t get that people in the (picket) lines who are single parents are making maybe $50 or $60 grand a year, but have three kids at home and are giving up their salaries to walk the line with us.”

Shortly after sending her letter to the board, Switzer said she received a reply from Carleton’s counsel indicating she was in a conflict of interest and that her letter would not be shared with the rest of the board.

“So I thought, ‘If I can’t even have a voice as a representative of non-academic staff on campus, in the board to which I was elected, then why am I on the board? I’m going to resign my seat and make sure I have a voice as a CUPE 2424 member.”

When asked for comment, the university replied: “The board chair is thankful to Clair Switzer for her contributions as a governor on the Carleton board of governors for nearly three years. Ms. Switzer was a non-academic staff member on the board and her term was to end on June 30, 2018. The nomination process to replace her had already been approved and the election will be held this spring.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Only weeks ago, scientists reluctantly moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds, to two minutes before midnight, a proximity to mankind’s annihilation unmatched since 1953, when the U.S. and Soviet Union set off thermonuclear devices in their respective test kitchens.

We’ve never been closer to the figurative end of the world than this, although it should be noted that these same scientists, or at least ones just like them, have been known to bend the hands of time backwards, too, as they did in 1991, when the end of the Cold War added a whopping 10 minutes to our countdown to oblivion.

Fuelling the current bleak outlook of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board are, largely, three factors: climate change, the threat of nuclear war and what it describes as the “breakdown in the international order” led by an unreliable U.S. unwilling to assume its traditional mantle of world leadership, where “international diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling.”

In a word: Trump.

Is there hope for mankind? Of course. As the board notes, “Humankind has invented the implements of apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually eliminating them.”

Unbeknownst to these nervous scientists, help may be closer than we think, and it may come from a most unlikely source: Russia.

I know what you’re thinking: “Russia? Isn’t that an oligarchical kleptocracy headed by a shirtless horseman named Tom Thuggery, who is willing to poison enemies, bomb innocent civilians and annex entire nations while lining his and his cronies’ pockets with riches amassed from the blood, sweat and tears of the very people he’s supposed to serve?”

Yeah, OK, you got me there. Guilty on all counts.

But let’s talk about that mantle of world leadership for a moment, and its place in the new world order.

The rise of globalization has been an inevitable fact for at least a century and a half, as efficient and almost instantaneous communications, from transatlantic telegraphs to the Internet, have leapt tall walls and seemingly impregnable iron curtains, fed Arab springs and erased geopolitical borders in their wakes. Meanwhile, following its late, great entry into the Second World War, the U.S. positioned itself as the world’s alpha superpower. That whole race to put a man on the moon, you’ll recall, was not so much about mankind’s insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge (blah, blah, blah) as it was an exercise in being the first dog to piddle on our nearest neighbour’s lawn.

All that and democracy, too.

Its global hegemony, not to mention the unwavering rightness of its course, thus established, it was only natural that the president of the U.S. would come to be pretty much universally recognized as “the leader of the free world” and “the most powerful man in the world.” After all, the decisions he makes affect not just the 300+ million people in his electoral basket, but billions, everywhere, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. How different might the world look today if Harry S. Truman hadn’t authorized the use of the atomic bomb in 1945? If Richard Nixon hadn’t courted China in 1972? If Ronald Reagan’s efforts to defuse the Cold War in the late 1980s had failed?

Speaking to the Press Club in Washington in 1969, then-Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau likened Canada’s close relationship with the U.S. to sleeping with an elephant. “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast …” he said, “one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

In other words, when the U.S. sneezes, the whole world catches a cold. And when President Trump announces tariffs on steel and aluminum, you can bet there’s some kid in Duisburg, Germany who’s not getting a second slice of black forest cake that night.

So let’s look at one of the chief questions now being asked by special prosecutor Robert Mueller III, and others. Did Russia meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election?

Well, of course it did. That, at least, is the conclusion of the FBI, CIA, NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And it must surely rankle America’s collective sense of fairness and its values to see one country interfere in the affairs of another, or at least to see someone ELSE do it, and so well. After all, the U.S. has for decades effectively owned the podium when it comes to sticking oars in foreign electoral waters. It medalled for such subversion in Italy in 1948, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Japan in ’58, Chile in ’64 and ‘73, Israel in ’92, Serbia in 2000, Honduras in 2009 … the list goes on. According to Carnegie-Mellon University researcher Dov H. Levin, the U.S. attempted to sway 81 foreign elections between 1948 and 2000, compared to just three dozen similar Russian or Soviet undertakings.

And 2016 was hardly the first time the two superpowers were all up in each other’s grills. In 1961, then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted to John F. Kennedy that the U.S.S.R. helped him win the U.S. presidency a year earlier. In 1982, meanwhile, KGB chairman Yuri Andropov ordered operatives to engage in “active measures” to discourage Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election.

On the flip side, who can forget Time magazine’s July 15, 1996 cover, depicting Russian president Boris Yeltsin holding an American flag, underneath the headline “Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win”?

Did Russia meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election? The very phrasing of question presupposes a certain negative response. The word “meddle” is so … so … well, meddlesome. How about “participate”? Did Russia participate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election? Yes, and really, why not? By then it had already heard Hillary Clinton’s sniffles and sneezes from her tenure as Secretary of State, and well knew it didn’t want to catch the full-blown cold. Trump, a noted germaphobe, was the obvious choice.

But at least Russia engaged in the process.

Can Canada, its economic future now muddied under the threat of a shredded North American Free Trade Agreement, say the same?

Did Libya, Somalia, Syria and others, whose citizens now cannot, because of a contentious travel ban, eat at any of Arby’s 3,300 stateside restaurants, buy even a single Facebook ad in the run-up to the election? Did even one CO2-friendly nation — I’m looking at you, Chad — knock on a single door or put up a Bernie Sanders lawn sign?

Admittedly, Russia’s contributions to the 2016 election were, in hindsight, a little heavy-handed and clumsy at times, but, to be fair, the country hasn’t enjoyed as much practise with global democracy as have other nations. It’s a bit like the excited youngster who, by noon on Christmas Day, has already broken most of her toys. They’ll learn with time, and perhaps with our help. On Sunday — incidentally the fourth anniversary of Russia annexing Crimea — Russian voters head to the polls to decide which of seven presidential candidates they would like to see finish second to Vladimir Putin (I kid you not: when he declared his candidacy a little over a year ago, Communists of Russia chairman Maxim Suraykin announced his intention “if not to win, then, in any case, take second place. It cannot be otherwise.”)

One of Putin’s loudest opponents, Alexei Navalny, was disqualified from the race due to an embezzlement conviction that he says was politically motivated, while polls suggest none of the other candidates enjoys more than 10 per cent support. But one of them, 36-year-old Ksenia Sobchak, was host of a popular Russian reality TV show; what happened the last time the establishment underestimated a reality-TV host-turned-politician?

In the last presidential election in Russia, in 2012, Putin won with almost 64 per cent of the vote, and there are hopes among supporters that he might top 70 per cent this time. Meanwhile, there’s not much time left to get involved. But who’s to say? It’s not over until the polls close, and maybe not even then. As Joseph Stalin reportedly said almost a century ago, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this —who will count the votes, and how.”

Do you really want to make the world a better place? Then get involved. Think globally and act globally. If enough people write a few Facebook messages here and there, post some Instagram photos of encouragement, create a little “fake news,” who knows what might happen? Perhaps someone can hack their way to a few thousand emails worth leaking. One thing is certain: no good will come of sitting idly by and staring at the Doomsday Clock as its hands approach midnight.

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa area’s arts community. This week, Bruce Deachman talks with burlesque performer and promoter “Helvetica Bold.” She will be hosting and performing in La Maison Derrière: A Burlesque Tribute to The Simpsons on March 24 at Café Nostalgica. Info: www.facebook.com/Misshelveticab/

“I got into burlesque about 12 years ago. There was no burlesque happening at the time in Ottawa, and a friend of mine who was working promoting and producing punk shows was trying to get me to promote his events. I was a journalist at the time and mostly wrote about sex, and I told him ‘I can’t really promote your punk shows unless there’s a way for me to tie it together with the sex scene.’ He said ‘Well, what if we have burlesque?’ and I said ‘There is no burlesque. Good luck, buddy.’ And he said ‘What if we start a burlesque troupe?’

“So that was the catalyst, but I have a lot of arts education and have always been an artist. My parents stuck me in theatre classes when I was a little kid because I was such a dramatic little s—. So I had a decent base of stage performance and public speaking experience and I was connected with the sex scene locally, and I’ve always had an aptitude for art and visual things.

“And when my friend came to me with this, I was 19 and was well known as a party girl who would just get drunk and take her clothes off. If there was an orgy, I may have started it. I was definitely known for throwing wild parties. So it just became an experimentation process of getting other local people involved and we just learned from each other. People with a dance background would teach the others choreo; I know how to sew, so I would help with some of the costuming, and I knew how to put on events, so I took a … leadership role in that. And we worked together to put on what were, by today’s standards, these terrible shows. But things have blossomed since then.

“My first solo burlesque performance was at Babylon, to the Zombies’ Spooky Little Girl, and I was so nervous. I wore all black, which is a huge faux pas because it eats light on stage. And I knew that, but black is sexy. So I wore all black and I did a strip tease with an orange feather boa and a chair. And there were probably 300 people there.

“I was very nervous, but afterwards I was, like, ‘Well, I’m never not doing this.’ It was such a feeling of elation. It’s such an easy formula: Take off clothes, room of people cheers and you get that positive feedback. And that becomes a feeling that you want to chase. So it was very easy to decide that this was something that I wanted to continue doing. I guess you could call it attention-seeking behaviour, but I call it art.

“I like having this avenue to express myself creatively and politically. Burlesque, at this point in my career, having been doing this for almost 12 years, is very much a form of activism. There are a lot of people out there who look like me who are doing this, but we’re often second-tier performers or pushed aside. We don’t make as much money as younger, thinner performers, and the industry had kind of started from this punk-rock place where everyone was welcome — men, women, gender-queer people, trans people, a lot of people of colour — and a lot of circus art forms were incorporated. Just a lot of weirdos. And as the art form has evolved, it’s mirrored mainstream society quite a bit. The normies took over, and a lot of what people picture now when they picture burlesque is the image of a striking, statuesque, thin, white, probably blonde woman covered in rhinestones. And that is something that exists in burlesque and there’s room for it and it’s beautiful and it’s valid, but that’s not all that burlesque is, and I am here to scream and shout for the weirdos and the people who want to do comedy and don’t have normatively attractive bodies and who aren’t seen as as highly valued by mainstream society.

“It’s always a fight, because the people that we’re looking at as the ideal that we’re trying to destroy are people. That thin woman covered in rhinestones is my friend, and she’s lovely and I don’t want to take her down, but what she represents is the exclusion of so many of the rest of us, and I think it’s time that we’re in the front.

“The Simpsons tribute is what you’d expect from a burlesque variety show: Different performative art forms — dance, comedy, strip-tease, air guitar — but all done as Simpsons characters or in tribute to themes from The Simpsons. I’ll be performing. I do a tribute to Mrs. Krabappel. There was a classic Simpsons episode, and it was just a one-off scene, a gag bit, where they were going into a talent show and the teacher, Mrs. Krabappel, was doing a balloon-popping burlesque number as part of the talent show. That was one of my first impressions of burlesque as a young person, and I’ve been doing that act for a number of years, and it’s always been an homage to Mrs. Krabappel. So I do the pink balloons, and it’s to Peggy Lee’s Fever, and I’m popping them with a cigarette. It’s a standalone act; it works if you don’t know the reference, and I think that’s the hallmark of a good burlesque act — if it is an homage to pop culture, is it still entertaining to someone who doesn’t know the reference? So you don’t have to know The Simpsons to appreciate that performance. But if you do know The Simpsons, it’s a really fun inside joke.

“Also, one of the former Canadian air-guitar champions will be doing a performance as Otto, the bus driver. And the monorail scene is being performed, by Beave Arthur. A snake-oil salesman comes to Springfield and tries to sell the town a monorail as a solution to their transit problems, and he ends up doing a song and dance in a community town hall as part of his sales pitch. It reminds me a lot of Ottawa’s light-rail fiasco.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

The Ottawa Citizen was nominated for a pair of National Newspaper Awards on Monday, with Christina Spencer earning a nod for her editorials, and Ashley Fraser honoured in the feature photography category.

Spencer, who became the Citizen’s editorial pages editor in 2016, had previously covered all levels of government as a reporter and editor, in the process developing expertise in many federal, provincial and local matters.

She won a National Newspaper Award in 1998 for her international reporting for the Citizen. She has also won a National Magazine Award, two Canadian Science Writers Awards, and was part of the Ottawa Citizen/Postmedia team that won the Michener Award for Public Service Journalism in 2012.

“This is really an honour,” she said following Monday’s announcement. “I’m quite thrilled because I love this work.

“But all editorials are collaborative, in that your editorial board colleagues, and your newsroom colleagues, really help clarify your arguments by the kind of hard work they do every day. Trying to develop a cohesive, consistent editorial stance is really the icing on the cake of the great journalism the whole Citizen newsroom does.”

Spencer’s submission included three editorials: one about the lack of transparency at Ontario’s long-term care homes, another concerning how disingenuously the federal government was selling its proposed changes to corporate taxation; and a third about The Salvation Army’s planned residential care facility in Vanier. All displayed her thorough research and thoughtful conclusions, distilling complex issues for readers while offering stakeholders prescriptive remedies.

Ashley Fraser’s photo of Brent Schmidt surfing the Ottawa River at Bate Island last April has been nominated for a National Newspaper Award.

Fraser, meanwhile, caught the judges’ attention with a moody photograph of a fog-enshrouded surfer off Bate Island.

“I’m just super excited and proud of the nomination,” she said on Monday.

This is Fraser’s second nomination for the prestigious award. She was nominated in 2007 for a spot news photo she took of a man in a Santa costume getting arrested in front of the prime minister’s residence.

Santa Claus and several of his elves visited 24 Sussex to voice their concerns to stop the North Pole from melting due to global warming while talks on the climate took place in Bali in 2007. Santa, arrested, sits in the back of the police truck.

“I am so pleased that Christina’s and Ashley’s work has been recognized with National Newspaper Award nominations,” said editor-in-chief Michelle Richardson. “Their nominations are a testament to the above-and-beyond efforts each of them regularly contributes to our newsroom, and reflects our dedication to quality journalism as a team.”

Journalists at Postmedia newspapers picked up 12 of the 63 nominations in 21 categories. The Edmonton Journal led the chain with three nominations, while the Citizen, National Post, London Free Press and Vancouver Sun/Province each had two.

The Globe & Mail led all newspapers with 18 nominations, followed by the Toronto Star and La Presse with 12 and eight, respectively. The Winnipeg Free Press claimed three nominations, while The Canadian Press and New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal each had two. Seven other organizations received one nomination apiece.

Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Toronto on May 4. Winners receive $1,000 and a certificate. Other finalists receive citations of merit.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa area’s arts community. This week, Bruce Deachman talks with storyteller Mary Wiggin. She’ll be performing at the NAC on May 24 as part of the Ottawa StoryTellers’ Speaking Out series. Info: www.ottawastorytellers.ca.

“I loved to read when I was a youngster. I absolutely loved to read. I was a huge Nancy Drew fan, that kind of thing. But my parents were not fans of reading. They would read occasionally. But I would be punished quite often for wasting my time, for not doing anything when I was reading. But somehow I just kept at it anyway.

“When I was nine, I had heard about this wonderful thing called the public library. We lived in the first organized subdivision in Canada — Oakridge Acres in London, Ont. My parents went there because there was nothing but houses; they didn’t want us tainted by corner stores and other such nonsense. And so there was no way to get to the library branch at our end of town except to be driven there. There was no bus or anything. So I asked my father if he would take me to join the library, and he was so put out at having to give up part of his Saturday to do that. But I kept bugging him.

“We got to the library and he stayed in the car, because he had no interest in being in the library. And I went in and announced — I was a very timid little kid — that I wished to join the library, and there was a very nice lady there and she said, ‘Well, where is your mother or father?” And I said ‘Well, my dad’s waiting in the car.’ And she said ‘Well, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to go get him, because he has to sign your application.’ So oh, boy, then he was really put out, that he had to get out of the car and come inside.

“Well, we got all of that done, and he told me I could take one book out of the library that time. So I picked The Five Chinese Brothers, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it for three weeks — it’s a very old folk tale. There’s death and different things in it; it was really very good.

“So it was due in three weeks, and my father dutifully drove me back top the library so I could return the book. And for some reason I was told I couldn’t take another one out that day. So I didn’t. I went in to the library and I went over to where I had gotten this book off the shelf, and I very carefully put it back in the spot where it belonged, and I left.

“And of course, a couple of weeks later, my father got a letter from the library saying my book was overdue. It had not been returned and if it wasn’t, we were going to have to pay for the book. And he was outraged: ‘I took you to the library. I thought you returned that book.’ And I said ‘Dad! I did! I did!’ and off we had to go to the library again. And oh, there was steam coming out of his ears this time. And we got inside and thank God it was the same lady at the desk in the children’s department. She looked in her paper files and said, ‘No, dear, you’ve not returned that book.’ And I said ‘I did! I did!’ and I went over to the shelf and thank God it was there, and I pulled it off. And so then she explained to me … because of course no one had told me how the library worked. And after that I was fine and dandy, and I was able, eventually, to go to the library on my own. And I’ve been doing that ever since.

“For a long time, I believed, like an awful lot of other people do, that storytelling was an art that had kind of frittered away. I had three children, and I was a huge proponent of taking them to the library. And we read every night, until they were in their teens.

“And then when I was on my own, in my early 50s, I wanted to try some new things. So I joined a writing group, which was a great deal of fun. And one day I was at a grocery store, and they had the bulletin board with all the bits stuck onto it, and there was this little handwritten card that said, “Storytelling workshop, offered by Ottawa Storytellers, at Rasputin’s Café. Two full Saturdays. Two hot meals. $45.’ And I thought, ‘I’m never going to get a better deal in my life.’ So I signed up.

“I think it was 2002. There were more than a dozen participants, and there were about six of us who really gelled as a group and really took to the storytelling. And at the end of the training there was a concert, and as terrified as I was, I thought, ‘This is kind of nifty.’

“Then one night, I was at Rasputin’s and had told a story, and I got home and there was a message on my answering machine from (children’s author) Jan Andrews saying, ‘I’m wondering if you would like to be on the Fourth Stage come March. I really like your way with a folk tale; you don’t let yourself get in the way. So you think about it, and you call me.’ And I stood there going ‘Oh, my God, I couldn’t do that! Oh, my God, she’s asking me.’

“So I did it. I did it. That was my first major public performance, outside of workshops and telling at Rasputin’s a bit. And it was terrifying. There were probably about 100 people there, and I was just so thrilled. I learned this story called Three Strong Women, a folktale from Japan. It was 25 minutes long and I had full-blown bronchitis, and I managed to tell it without ever coughing. And then I had to go into the green room and scrape my lungs up off the floor. But I didn’t care; I was just so ecstatic.

“Storytelling really speaks to my soul. I love the search for the right story for a particular group of people. There are an awful lot of really dreadful folk tales, so you read 100 to get one. And it’s so wonderful to be telling something that might have first been told by someone five- or six-hundred years ago. And there are stories that resonate through all cultures; I think there are over 600 versions of Cinderella. So storytelling is a knitting together of cultures and people and what resonates with people and makes them tick.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa area’s arts community. This week, Bruce Deachman talks with pianist, composer and teacher Miguel de Armas. He’ll be performing in Tropicana Night on April 28 at the Shenkman Arts Centre. Info: www.shenkmanarts.ca. He also performs regularly at Brookstreet Hotel. Visit www.migueldearmas.com for more information.

“I was born in Havana, Cuba, and I am a pianist, composer, band leader and educator.

“My first toy was a stick. I carried it with me everywhere. When I heard music, I tried to reproduce the whole arrangement with my stick. And my mom noticed that I paid close attention to music.

“I started to learn music at the age of eight. I liked all kinds of music – pop, jazz … It was difficult to hear groups like the Beatles – they were prohibited. But we were close to the United States, and so we heard their music on the radio, and sometimes on television. But never in public – usually just in your room, at night.

Since I was a kid I loved percussion — timpani, xylophone, cymbals and snare — and that’s where I got my musical degree. In Cuba, musical education is very well structured and you start when you are a kid. Music is at the core of Cuban culture. Music and dance. And when children show an interest in music, they’re taken to a music school where auditions are held, and the school chooses the best candidates. There are three stages of musical education: primary school; secondary school; and university, or the national school, in Havana. I went through all of them.

“When you study an instrument, such as guitar, sax, trumpet, percussion, violin, etc., you must take piano lessons as well. I remember my piano teacher at that time — we’re talking about the early 1970s in Cuba — most of the teachers were Russian. You can imagine the level of technique and discipline. I was very grateful for that because piano gives you a great foundation in harmony, composing tools and a better understanding of music as a whole.

“A turning point for me came in 1978, when I was 17. It was my first year at the Conservatory, and the director called me to give me an invitation to attend an important concert. I didn’t know anything about it. But Jimmy Carter was the U.S. president then and he was trying to open up relations between the two countries, and decided to do a cultural exchange, and he brought a delegation of musicians. So at this concert was Weather Report, Billy Joel, Earth, Wind and Fire, Rita Coolidge …

“When I saw this show, it was a shock. It was a big show with everything — smoke and lights and big sound. It was my first live experience and bigger than anything I’d seen before. I didn’t know that things like that were happening in the world, and I realized that I either had to really study music or just stop. And I realized that night that music was my fate.

“I was lucky enough to start playing in many bands when I was 17. And I also started touring internationally after university. I was part of a new music collective that became an iconic band in the Cuban music scene: NG La Banda. We toured the world, played the most important jazz festivals and venues across the globe. And after 14 years with the band I joined other Cuban orchestras and I became fond of doing musical collaborations.

“Leaving Cuba was never part of my plan. I came to Ottawa because I fell in love and couldn’t help it.

“I created my own project in 2013: Miguel de Armas Quartet, and we have performed in many venues, such as the Ottawa Jazz Festival, Stewart Park, Canada Scene, NAC Presents, all with great success.

“But since I was a child, I knew music was my fate. Music is a critical part of who I am. I think music. I breathe music. I eat music. When I eat music, I feel fine. It is my main vehicle to express myself, my sorrows, my joys, and it’s my way to connect with others.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Carleton University and CUPE Local 2424 reached a tentative agreement Monday night, ending, for the time being at least, the strike that has been in effect since March 5.

According to Jerrett Clark, president of the local representing 850 non-academic staff at the university, the tentative agreement was reached shortly after 10 p.m. Monday, following a full day of talks facilitated by an external mediator. The two sides had also met with an external mediator last Wednesday, in a session that lasted 19 hours.

The single-most contentious issue at play in the dispute was the university’s planned change to the collective agreement language guaranteeing a defined benefit pension plan for workers.

The details of Monday’s agreement, Clark noted, will remain confidential until it can be ratified by both sides. The CUPE members are scheduled to vote on it at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Hellenic Meeting and Reception Centre on Prince of Wales Drive. Clark said he expected the voting process could take a few hours.

“We certainly wouldn’t be bringing something to the membership that we, the negotiating team, are not prepared to recommend. But ultimately, that decision is entirely up to our membership.”

Clark added that if the new contract is ratified, the earliest that CUPE 2424’s members could be back at work would be Wednesday. In a tweet Monday night, meanwhile, the union announced that its picket lines would be suspended immediately.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

The strike of Carleton University’s 850 non-academic staff has ended.

CUPE Local 2424 announced on social media that its members ratified a new agreement with the university on Tuesday night, following a strike that lasted 30 days. The tentative deal had been reached late on Monday, following a full day of talks facilitated by an outside mediator.

Jacynthe Barbeau, CUPE’s national representative, said that the union’s members were satisfied with the new three-year deal, which runs until the end of June 2020. “And I think members are happy to go back to work (Wednesday).

“We’re relieved, to say the least,” she added. “It was a long road.”

Rob Thomas, Carleton’s assistant vice-president, human resources, issued a statement following the agreement that read, in part, “Our employees have been missed over the last four weeks. We look forward to them returning to work on Wednesday, April 4, so we can continue to support our students through their studies, together.

“The new agreement is a balanced, fair and reasonable settlement that protects the pension plan and its governance and keeps the plan financially sustainable. It also includes salary increases over three years, enhancements to benefits and improvements in contract language for CUPE 2424 members.”

At the heart of the dispute was the university’s planned change to the collective agreement language that guaranteed a defined benefit pension plan for workers.

According to a summary of the agreement provided to the union’s members, provisions in the new agreement will make it no longer possible for the university’s board of governors or its pension committee to unilaterally eliminate the defined benefit aspect of the plan.

A clause in the new agreement also eliminates the possibility of the board amending the terms of the pension plan without first negotiating with the unions or obtaining a recommendation from the pension committee. The union, meanwhile, will have a grievance procedure by which it can challenge future changes to the pension plan that it considers adverse to its members’ interests.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

A wind alert has been issued for Ottawa, with wind gusts expected to reach as high as 80 to 90 km/h late this afternoon or early this evening.

The winds could produce power outages, while damage to buildings, such as to roof shingles and windows, may occur. Loose objects may be tossed by the wind and cause injury or damage.

Rain and snow may accompany the wind, with a low tonight expected to reach -11 C.

Environment Canada urges people in the Ottawa area to take necessary safety precautions. The warning extends from Eastern Ontario to Hamilton.

After a three-year absence, Blue Rodeo will be returning to Ottawa’s RBC Bluesfest main stage.

Organizers announced the lineup addition on Wednesday. The band, led by frontman Jim Cuddy, will perform on July 12 in support of its new album, 1000 Arms.

Other acts added to the popular music festival’s lineup since it’s initial launch include Common Deer (July 8); Eat A Peach: Allman Brothers Band Tribute (July 12); Hunter Siegel and Chuurch, presented by Deadbeats (July 13); and Lilly Hiatt (July 14).

It was also announced on Wednesday that due to scheduling conflicts, Shaggy, aka Mr. Boombastic, will not be performing at Bluesfest.

Visit ottawabluesfest.ca for more information.

Booth and Eddy streets across the Ottawa River are expected to remain closed until 2 or 3 a.m. Thursday morning as emergency crews deal with debris blown onto the Chaudière Bridge by high winds.

According to Ottawa police, the roof from a building at 6 Booth St. on Albert Island, between Wellington Street and Alexandre-Taché Boulevard in Gatineau, was split in two by the winds, which have produced gusts in the area in excess of 80 km/h.

Gatineau police report that the incident occurred at approximately 7 p.m. There were no injuries reported.

The roof of a Sandy Hill house blew off in Wednesday’s high winds, although no one was reported injured.

Ottawa firefighters responded to a 911 call at 168 Osgoode St., a six-unit building near Sweetland Avenue, shortly after 8:30 p.m. and searched the area where the roof had landed to ensure no one was hurt. They also searched the top floors of the building, and remained on the scene to assist other emergency responders.

Earlier in the night, Booth and Eddy streets had been closed when a building at 6 Booth St. had its roof torn off by the high winds.

Roofs were torn off, debris scattered and roads closed as winds gusting in excess of 80 km/h ripped through the Ottawa area on Wednesday night.

Booth Street reopened at about 6 a.m. Thursday after emergency crews cleaned up debris that was blown onto the Chaudière Bridge after a building at 6 Booth St., on Albert Island, had its roof torn in half. That incident occurred at about 7 p.m., with no injuries reported.

In Sandy Hill, the roof of a six-unit building at 168 Osgoode St., near Sweetland Avenue, was also blown off. Firefighters responded to a 911 call shortly after 8:30 p.m. and searched the area where the roof landed, as well as the top floors of the building, to ensure no one was hurt.

A roof was peeled off a row of townhouses on Osgoode Street in Sandy Hill Wednesday as winds gusted at up to 90 km/h. The roofing from three to four units fell on a car and some back decks in the alley behind the homes. Julie Oliver/Postmedia

Ottawa weather: Holy moly it’s cold outside

Meanwhile, Gatineau police closed a number of streets from concerns over safety due to debris from the wind. The most significant of note is a block of Maisonneuve Boulevard, in both directions between Elisabeth-Bruyère and Papineau.

Streets were reopened in time for the morning rush hour.

In the west end, service on the Quyon Ferry was shut for several hours as the winds made the Ottawa River seem like the high seas.

Environment Canada issued a wind warning for the region shortly after 4 p.m. on Wednesday, with gusts of up to 90 km/h expected, accompanied by 2 cm of snow and a low of -11 C.

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa area’s arts community. This week, Bruce Deachman talks with folk singer, radio host and Ottawa Folk Festival co-founder Chris White.

“The Beatles, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot … they’re all in my DNA.

“I grew up in a musical family. There was a piano in the living room and my dad played. I remember him coming home late at night, when we were just falling off to sleep, and he’d be playing downstairs. Those are really positive memories. He played piano and was a song leader, as his mother was before him. She was the choir leader and organist at the Cornwallis Baptist Church in Halifax. So my father came by it honestly. And now I’m leading songs in different singing groups in the community, but I wasn’t really planning that. When I think back, I absorbed that from childhood.

“Coming from a mixed-race family and growing up in a Scarborough that didn’t have any other mixed-race families was interesting. My dad had choirs all his life, including a kids’ choir in our town, in Agincourt. At the peak there were 70 kids who used to come over to our house on Saturday night and sing, and I absorbed all those songs. My dad was very charismatic and very musical and engaging, and everybody was on board. He’d get everybody singing in harmonies, including my brothers and sisters and myself, so we were singing in harmony from an early age and getting up and performing from time to time. We made a little record to send to our grandmothers, and things like that.

“In terms of purchasing my first music, 45s come to mind, like Question Mark and the Mysterians’ 96 Tears. I remember listening to that over and over again and asking my dad ‘How do you play those chords?’ It turns out there’s only really two chords. So I soaked all that up, and then I started going to the Mariposa Folk Festival, and that is where I heard all kinds of diverse music from all different backgrounds and cultures and styles. And the way that Estelle Klein, the artistic director in those days, programmed it — she was unbelievably brilliant — she would put different musicians from different backgrounds on stage in what she called workshops, and they’d take turns and comment on each others’ songs and be influenced by what the person before them played, and they would join in and jam on each others’ songs. This became, for me, the model of what a folk festival is, and when the opportunity came up to start an Ottawa folk festival, that was my model.

“I’ve been writing songs since high school, and performing. But more so when I hit Ottawa and discovered Rasputin’s Café, in 1978. Here’s a little hole in the wall on Bronson Avenue, right beside the old Folklore Centre. It ran for 38 years, and got to the point where seven nights a week there were performances in there of some sort. It had a profound influence, because not only was it a space where people would listen to your songs — that was strictly enforced; there was no talking when anybody was on stage — but that was also the place where we would meet. All the early Folk Festival planning sessions were at Rasputin’s, as well as any special events or media launches. And that was the place where touring musicians like Stephen Fearing or Jane Siberry would play when they came through town. So Rasputin’s, the Ottawa Folklore Centre and CKCU’s Canadian Spaces were the triumvirate, and the Folk Festival came out of those things. The strength of the listenership of Canadian Spaces was the reason that Max Wallace, who was the station manager at CKCU, said ‘Let’s start a folk festival.’ And I said ‘Yeah, let’s.’

“I had a big epiphany at a certain point. I brought in Andy Rush, this brilliant choral director who lived in Kingston. Every year at the Blue Skies Festival, people could rehearse over the weekend. Andy would lead it, and then they’d get up on the main stage and sing. So I said ‘Let’s do that at the Ottawa Folk Festival.’

“So we did that, and it just so happened when that choir of people who came to attend the festival went to a couple of rehearsals and then got to be a part of it and perform for everybody, I looked up and saw the looks on their faces, and I looked out at the audience and saw how much they all loved this. These aren’t professionals — this is us.

“The commercialization of music, to me, is a tragedy, and I’m using that word very deliberately. All the people that I run into every day, who believe that they cannot and should not sing because it’s only for professionals or only for people who have some sort of seal of approval, when my thing is that people are designed to sing. Humans are designed to sing. Parents all over the world instinctively sing to their babies, and that’s as it should be. And we should not stop just because when we were in Grade 1 some teacher said ‘Oh, you shouldn’t sing because your voice is in the wrong range.’ I could go out on the street right now and talk to 10 people, and nine of them would tell me they can’t sing. But they should sing. It’s a healthy thing to do. It bonds us together. It creates a positive vibe, a healing vibe. It brings us together. All I have to say is, ‘We shall overcome,’ and 200,000 people singing that is a powerful thing. Of all the evil that’s going on in the world today, the weird thing is that singing can counteract that.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

They first met in 1987, at the Perley hospital. Dora Pucci was 18 and training to become a nurse, while Brian Aspelund, five years her senior, was an orderly working in the hospital’s laundry.

They dated and danced, and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. On June 29, 1991, the pair exchanged wedding vows.

Last Monday, Dora, 49, and Brian, 54, were killed in an automobile collision on Merivale Road. Police have charged Sishun Liang, 19, of Ottawa with two counts of criminal negligence causing death. He is also charged with careless driving and stunt driving under the Highway Traffic Act. 

Dora and Brian’s son, Matt, 19 and a second-year economics student at the University of Ottawa, recalls the Easter supper that he and his sister, Katelyn, and their parents spent at his aunt’s house last Sunday — the day before his parents’ deaths. There was lamb and frittatas, and, most importantly, lots of family time together.

“That will be my last good memory of them,” Matt said on Friday. “We were just talking and everyone having a good time, for hours on end.

“Everyone was happy. It was a good memory for everyone to have. It was a good night.”

Family was central to Brian and Dora’s lives. Sunday dinners were reserved for Dora’s mother’s home, while, since the death of his father two years ago, Brian visited his mother almost every single day as her dementia worsened.

Similarly, Dora was tireless in caring for her mother.

“There was nothing they wouldn’t do for their kids and nothing they wouldn’t do for their parents,” recalled Matt.

Not that they didn’t have time for others. They always had time for others. Brian, said Matt, “could make a friend out of anybody.”

Matt and Katelyn Aspelund.

Katelyn, now 17 and in her final year at St. Pius High School, recalled a visit to New York City when her father befriended a homeless man, then bought him a pizza. In Chicago, he talked to an Uber driver for about 20 minutes. In Ottawa, he regularly tipped the servers at Tim Hortons and thumbed his nose at online banking in favour of person-to-person contact.

“He was so generous and friendly, and never looked down on anybody. He treated everyone equally.”

He cut neighbours’ lawns and shovelled their driveways when they were away. He attended church regularly and enjoyed sci-fi and action movies.

He was also an avid sports fan, cheering on the Senators and Redblacks, as well as baseball games and old-school boxing. He was that dad who loved taking his kids to 6 a.m. practices.

“When I stopped playing competitive hockey two years ago,” said Katelyn, “I think he was more devastated than I was. He was going to miss it more than me.”

Dora and Brian Aspelund on their wedding day, June 29, 1991.

Although Brian was typically up at that hour anyway, a political junkie who read the newspaper with his morning coffee. His music preference leaned to the classic rock of CHEZ-106, while Dora favoured the newer pop on HOT 89.9. Brian liked to make people laugh (although, Katelyn admits, he was also that dad who told dad jokes, Don Rickles style, often to his or his children’s embarrassment).

For a while Brian was a video editor at CJOH-TV on Merivale Road before getting a job at Passport Canada’s Gatineau office. Dora continued nursing, most recently in the intensive care unit at The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus, where her caring personality shone through.

“It really takes a special person to do that job,” Matt said.

Brian loved the outdoors, whether it was taking Matt and Katelyn skiing at Camp Fortune or teaching them other sports, or tinkering around the house and garden, pressure-washing and sealing brickwork, caulking the roof, raking leaves and annually painting the deck. “He wanted the house to look like, ‘Wow!’ ” Matt said.

Dora and Brian Aspelund hit the dance floor on an early date.

Dora enjoyed taking her children shopping. And as recently as a year ago, when he was 18, would insist that Matt come out of clothing stores’ dressing rooms to show her how he looked in his new clothes.

Like Brian, Dora loved to socialize, and would often join her sister or work colleagues in such activities as painting classes or martini parties. Another preferred pastime was feeding the slot machines at Rideau-Carleton, after which she would typically announce her losses by declaring that she “broke even.”

“But she would do anything to make us happy,” said Katelyn. “They both would.”

Brian and Dora Aspelund’s visitation is at Kelly Funeral Home, 585 Somerset St. W., on Sunday and Monday from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m. The funeral mass will be held at St. Anthony Church, 427 Booth St., on Tuesday 10 at 10 a.m.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa area’s arts community. This week, Bruce Deachman talks with singer, songwriter, oboist and pianist Angela Schleihauf. A member of folk trio Three Little Birds, Schleihauf is project manager of the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra’s 3D StringTheory project. She is also recipient of this year’s Shannon Reynolds Memorial Endowment Fund Internship and will be mentored under the leadership of a professional sound designer working on a GCTC production during the 2018-19 season.

“I didn’t really know what music was doing for my life until I had a moment where I stepped back from it, and I realized that it’s a large part of my identity; if I go a long time without practising, I feel a bit weird and uncentered. (Music) really helps me reflect on life and — I’ve never been diagnosed with anxiety or depression, but I find when I take music away, I have traits that tend towards those things. I think music has the same power as when you put a traumatic experience into words: you gain an understanding of it, you’re able to work with it, you’re able to move past it and build it into your narrative of who you are and how that’s going to continue to affect you.

“With music, if there’s something going on in my life that I don’t understand, or just that accumulation of little things throughout the day that happen to anyone … for me, music gives me a sound parallel to whatever that feeling was. If I’m composing something new, I will play chords until I find something that represents the feeling that I have. I think a lot of people have that reaction to music. You can’t understand why this assembly of notes makes you feel that way, but it has an emotional effect built into it. And I’ll keep working on the chord until I find something that represents everything, and then I build another chord after it, which represents an interaction between different feelings, and then build phrases off of that.

“For me, music is a way to reflect on those things, give it a form and share it with people, which is also cathartic — hopefully for them as well as for me. Even if I wasn’t performing, I would still need to play music.

“There are different ways of approaching a musical career, and some people decide they’re going to do classical orchestral and then they just bee-line for it. I’ve done a lot of classical training — that’s a large part of my background — but the projects that I like to be involved in and the writing that I like to do is inspired by a lot of other influences. I have very diverse interests, so I’ve worked on building a skill set that allows me to work on my own projects, so I can be involved in writing new music, being in bands, doing session work. I see my classical training as a way of giving me the tools to perform and the ability to play in those contexts, but without doing that exclusively. 

“My mom was a piano teacher, so she had all of us in piano lessons from a young age. And we also all needed to sing in a choir at some point, and we got to pick another instrument as well. Her philosophy comes from a Hungarian school of music teaching, which is that music is an essential part of anyone’s education and shouldn’t be restricted to people who want to take private lessons — it’s just like reading and writing; everyone should have the foundational elements of music to be able to express themselves and explore that whole artistic tradition.

“We moved around Ontario a bit when I was a kid, and ended up at one point in Blenheim, where my dad got a position teaching high school. We knew we were going to get to Ottawa, but we didn’t know exactly when. And some of my cousins studied at Canterbury, and my mom thought it would be great if I could apply, in case we ended up in Ottawa.

“Up to that point I had basically just played piano, but there was no piano program there. So I ended up picking up the flute and working on that for about six months before taking the Canterbury audition. They asked me about the other musical things I did, and I got to play a piece for them on piano. And they ended up sending me an acceptance letter on the condition that I switch to another instrument, which is not what you’re expecting as a 12- or 13-year-old. But there were lots of flautists around, people who’d been playing since they were five or six years old.

“So they gave me the option of oboe, bassoon or French horn, which were instruments I didn’t even know about. But it turned out my aunt studied oboe in university for a year before deciding to do other things, so she had an oboe around. I cried the first time I played it, because I didn’t know what I was doing and it sounded like a terribly sick duck or a foghorn or something that was not an appealing sound. I spent a summer working on the oboe, and then started high school at Canterbury. I’d only been playing for about three months, when everyone else had been playing their instruments for years, so it was a big catch-up period, and at that point I developed a fair amount of performance anxiety. I didn’t understand that everyone is on their own journey. I felt like I should be at the same level as everyone else, immediately, and had a hard time accepting that.

“By the end of high school, I had decided that music performance was something I wouldn’t be able to do, because of this anxiety that was creeping into my performances. I ended up traveling for a period of time, and while I was doing that I was volunteering at a school, and I found that the most meaningful contribution I could make there was musical, so that led me back to music.

“I started playing with other ensembles, and I discovered that playing outside of school, outside of the classical realm, gave me my own voice, and, collaborating with other musicians, all that performance anxiety just kind of melted away.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

After spending nearly three decades in listeners’ living rooms, cars and kitchens, Wendy Daniels is, for the time being at least, leaving Ottawa’s airwaves.

The popular on-air radio personality and host of Boom 99.7’s midday show was let go on Monday, with the station announcing the news on its Facebook page.

“We made some changes to our boom 99.7 programming lineup today,” it said. “Wendy Daniels is no longer host of our midday show. Wendy is a true broadcast professional with many years of experience and significant accomplishments in our local market. We want to sincerely thank her for her many contributions and wish her the best of success in her future endeavours.”

Boom, or more accurately CJOT-FM, is owned by Corus Entertainment.

In her own Facebook post, Daniels thanks her fans, noting “I’ve spent 29 years, 6 months and 23 days working at 1504 Merivale Road and made some wonderful friends and memories. It was an honour to go on air every day. Thanks for hanging out with me on the radio. Maybe we’ll do it again sometime.”

Her post prompted hundreds of likes ands scores of messages of support, including one from former radio personality Sandy Sharkey, with whom Daniels often shared philanthropic hosting gigs: “I’m on the road in Lubbock, Texas,” she wrote, “otherwise I’d be drinking a bottle (or 2) of wine with you right now Wendy Daniels. I would raise a glass to you~ one of the most beloved talents ever to grace the Ottawa airwaves. You delivered the kind of radio that made people stay in their car listening to you long after they had arrived at their destination. You are the original Wicked Wendy. The music, the stories behind the music, the breaking news, the local stories that mattered, the tears when one of our rock and roll icons passed away .. we shared all of this with you. Thank you for always being the best.”

Daniels attended Humber College’s radio and television program in the mid 1980s before lending her voice to 580 CFRA as an evening host. In September 1989, she moved to the Bear 106.9, hosting midday programming as well as the station’s morning and afternoon drive programs. She remained with the station in its various incarnations until 2013, when she moved to Boom.

Over the years, Daniels, known as “Wicked Wendy,” volunteered for numerous charities and events in the area, including the CHEO Telethon, the Max Keeping Bowl-a-thon for CHEO, Manotick’s Dickinson Days Parade, the Special Olympics, and the Run for Miracles and the Army Run. She was a board member at the Ottawa Humane Society and was involved with Hopeful Hearts Dog Rescue. In 2014, she received the Mayor’s City Builder Award for her volunteer service and support.

There was no immediate word as to why she was let go or who would replace her. “Wendy Daniels is a terrific broadcaster and we want to thank her for her contributions to boom 99.7,” wrote Corus Entertainment spokesperson Rishma Govani on Tuesday. “We are excited about the future , and look forward to sharing our plans with our listeners at a later date.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com