If the arrival this year of light rail transit announces that Ottawa has finally reached the status of a full-fledged city, it’s funny how its trains can turn otherwise full-grown men into little boys.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” admitted an excited Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson as he readied to board a car Wednesday for the first “civilian” test-run of the system.

“I’ve been down in the tunnel a couple of times and I’ve tried the simulator, but this is my first time actually riding the LRT.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” he said. “We’ve talked a lot about LRT at city council, and it’s nice to actually ride the rails.”

The interior of one of Ottawa’s new LRT cars in the unfinished Tremblay station.

Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley, meanwhile, whose uncle worked for the Canadian National Railway for 35 years, confessed he wished he’d brought his train whistle. “It would have been a lot of fun,” he said. “I do love trains.”

Another councillor at Wednesday’s unveiling, Cumberland’s Stephen Blais, who chairs the city’s transit commission, also admitted his love of trains.

“I’ve actually been looking around to see if we can get a model train of this model of Alstom Citadis vehicle. There are some toy companies that have other versions of it decked out in other transit agencies’ colours. I’m just waiting for them to come out with the OC Transpo colour scheme version.”

The mayor and councillors were joined for the journey by Mayors-for-the-day Madison Richmire, from AY Jackson Secondary School in Kanata, and Jackson Millenor, from St. Peter Catholic High School in Orléans.

Shortly after the call of “all aboard!” was sounded, car No. 1117 glided out of the Tremblay Station for its inaugural 20-minute round trip.

The interior of one of Ottawa’s new LRT cars.

Admittedly, the $10-million car did not quite hurtle on Wednesday. According to Rob Saumure, one of the car’s two operators, the area is still a construction zone, so the speed was kept to 25 km/h in the four stations it visited — Tremblay, Hurdman, Lees and uOttawa — and only 35 km/h on the open rails, a far cry from the top speed of 100 km/h that it’s expected to reach on other sections of the system.

But it was smooth, quiet, bright and clean, with comfortable-enough seats and large windows. It also had that new-car smell, while many of the car’s 120 seats remained, for the time being at least, wrapped in plastic — “like my grandmother had on her couch when she bought a new one,” Watson said.

It’s expected that the LRT system will be operational by Nov. 2, with public access beginning later that month.

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 soprano opera singer Jeanine Williams, who recently won the Nicole Senécal Emerging Artist Award, which recognizes an exceptional student graduating from University of Ottawa’s School of Music. She’ll be performing with the Nepean Choir on May 4 at Woodroffe United Church. Visit nepeanchoir.ca or jeaninewilliamssoprano.weebly.com.

“I always sang. My parents say that when I was a baby, I’d be crying and they’d put Shania Twain on and I’d stop crying and kind of babble along with it. So I think music was always a big part of my life. I’d always say ‘Mom, I want to take singing lessons. Mom, I want to take singing lessons,’ so when I was about 10, I finally took singing lessons. And pretty much as soon as you start studying in voice, privately, they push you toward more classical music, with art song — when you sing as a classical singer, you’ll be singing oratorio, choral works, opera and art song. Art song is individual poems set to music. It’s not within the context of a show; it’s not staged or costumed.

“So we began with some art song and musical theatre, and I really liked musical theatre. In Grade 10, I transferred to a fine arts high school in Calgary. It was a musical theatre program — I always tell people musical theatre is the gateway drug to opera. And I was taking voice lessons on the side, and it just started being more and more classical music, and then when I chose to do a degree in music, I started doing fully staged operas, and sort of never looked back. I love it so much.

“What is it about singing? I had an interesting conversation about that with friends recently, all of us master’s students. It starts with being good at it, and as a kid you want to be good at something. But at this level, there has to be something that keeps you coming back. There were probably five of us, and we all had a different reason. And I feel that singing is, in its union between music and text and drama, an opportunity to share the absolute range of human emotion. I love that music and singing provides a sound to go with an emotion. So I feel it’s an emotionally cathartic experience for the singer, and ideally for the audience. It means a lot to me to share and to process emotions in a healthy way, and in a beautiful way.

“When I started performing operas, people were like ‘You’re an opera singer? I didn’t know that still existed. That’s so cool.’ And I found that hilarious, because all my friends are opera singers, from coast to coast. You get in this little opera-singer niche with your blinders on, and you forget that to so many people it’s a novelty.

“I also minored in psychology, so I’m interested in music therapy as well, but I kept saying as long as I’m getting opportunities in singing, I’m going to keep doing it.

“I’m also really passionate about Canadian music and women in music, so I’m doing a women-in-music-themed recital — an hour of solo music — for my final performance as a student, including two Canadian sets by female composers: Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Winter Songs, and Floris Clark McLaren, and in the other some Jean Coulthard pieces.

“Women in music are very underrepresented, especially in classical music because so much of it is a long, historic practice. It’s important to me to find those women who really pushed against the grain to make their music. I think it’s important when women say ‘This is something I want to do at a professional level.’ And the same thing with Canadian music — we’re underrepresented because we’re a newer country, so any opportunity to get into the scene means something to me. Opera is a very global community, because it’s smaller than the popular music communities. As an opera singer, you’re constantly flying around the world. You’re always on the move, and I feel it’s important to know where you came from and have that connection to your country and your nationality. I’m going abroad for a year, in Austria. I wanted to get overseas to start doing the auditions and competitions that have a bit more money and a little more recognition, but I want to represent the Canadian tradition.

“As I said before, I think people find opera a novelty, but if you actually go see an opera, it’s very relatable and enjoyable, and not as far out there as you would think, especially the way that Canada, and France, are handling it right now. It’s very much about renewing it and putting it in a contemporary lens. For example, last year’s UOttawa’s production of Carmen was set in 2020, post-Brexit, a very interesting production concept. I was singing Micaëla, who is normally this nice little church-mouse coming to visit Don José, but in our production she was a Canadian backpacker making her way through Europe on a gap year after finishing high school.

“So opera is much more relatable than people think, and the human voice is so communicative and therapeutic, it’s so powerful. I strongly believe that if people are exposed to opera, they will enjoy it.”

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 stand-up comedian, clown, playwright and actress Rachelle Elie. She’s performing her one-woman show, Joe: The Perfect Man, on May 5 at Almonte’s Old Town Hall. Visit crowningmonkey.com for more information.

“I got kicked out of ballet school. I always did very well in the productions, but when it came to the discipline of it and the exam time, I was always joking around and messing around with friends. It was basically the clown coming out in me; I just couldn’t be serious.

“I didn’t want to be a comedian when I was a kid, but I do have footage of me telling Newfie jokes when I was six years old, so it was definitely in the stars. But I did go to theatre school for 6½ years — I went to Studio 58 in Vancouver, and also to Bishop’s University — and had great ambitions to become a serious actress. But what started to happen was that when I was very serious, people would laugh, and I’d be like, ‘Why are they laughing? This is not my intention.’

“I also started writing one-woman shows and I found that I got a lot of attention for all the comedy stuff I did. And it became very clear to me that as much as I really wanted to do acting and be serious about it, comedy was going to be what I would be doing.

“I was in Toronto in the mid ’90s, doing stand-up comedy in clubs. Coming from theatre school, it was really pooh-poohed upon to do stand-up comedy. It was considered a lower form of art compared to theatre, so I was a little embarrassed to be on stage. I was also doing visual art then, and waitressing, and I was really tired of waitressing, so I started experimenting with only doing art. I took all my Joe-job energy and put it into art, and put out to the universe that I wanted to do comedy. So that’s when my career in stand-up really started.

“In the ’90s when I went to Yuk-Yuks in Toronto, the environment was not conducive for women in comedy. It was such a gross environment, but I remember thinking that the fact that I can do this and I’m a woman means I have to do this. I remember writing in my journal ‘You can do this. You have to do this.’ Because I was so tired of being in clubs and only hearing men’s voices. And that stayed with me.

“I eventually had to stop, though, when I fell in love with a doctor and got pregnant. At that time, people were smoking in clubs, so my career in stand-up shifted. I stopped completely, focused on my visual art, and then toured a one-woman comedy show across Canada.

“But 10 years ago, I did my fifth one-woman show. It was an autobiographical show and I was embarrassed to realize that I could play all these characters really well, but I couldn’t play myself. That’s what inspired me to go back into stand-up clubs and get in touch with me.

“Robin Williams said something like if you want to do comedy, get up on stage 100 times and do stand-up, and you’ll figure out if you even want to do it. Then once you get to 100, do it 1,000 times. So the first 100 times I did it, I felt there was always this knot in my stomach of not knowing if I was going to do well or if I’d totally bomb. My biggest bomb was being on stage at two in the morning and this guy, high on coke, heckled me, then got on stage and did comedy. And I stood there watching him do comedy and kill, and I was just totally dumbfounded and thinking ‘I really suck so badly.’

“I thought about quitting many times. But I’m comfortable with hecklers, because I have two older brothers who heckled me so much.

“I think stand-up is one of the hardest art forms. Theatre is really tough, too, but the toughest part with stand-up is if you go to a stand-up club and you destroy, everybody loves you. But if you don’t do well, people didn’t like your comedy, but you also feel they didn’t like you on a certain level, so there’s a certain shame. I think that’s why I performed in character in the ’90s, to protect myself. If I bomb, no one knows who I am. So there’s a courage with stand-up — you just don’t have anything to hide behind. The humiliation I’ve felt sometimes has been really paralyzing, but when I wake up the next day or two days later, I always get hungry to get back on stage.

“But part of why I got into stand-up comedy was that addiction to laughter. I was that annoying person at house parties who wouldn’t shut up. All I wanted to do was make people laugh. That’s all I wanted, and it was a big moment when I realized that I needed to go on stage. And once you start experiencing that on stage in front of a group of 500 strangers and having them really laugh, like belly laughs, that feeling is pretty fantastic. I often say that people who get into stand-up comedy are laugh whores, because who would work so hard on perfecting laughter? And really, that’s what we live for, the laughter.”

Rachelle Elie
Joe: The Perfect Man
When: Saturday, May 5, 8 p.m.
Where: Almonte’s Old Town Hall,  14 Bridge, Mississippi Mills
Tickets and information: crowningmonkey.com

“Never wear your fascinator in public before breakfast,” my grandmother often warned. “It makes you look tawdry, like some early-morning walk of shame after a late night of drinking.”

This Saturday, however, may prove the exception to granny’s rule, as Ottawa’s royal family-watchers, monarchists and curiosity-seekers will arise — many well before the same sun that once upon a time never set on the British Empire — and tune in to the happy union of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

The duchess-to-be’s actual walk down the aisle of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle won’t happen until about 7 a.m. ET, but CBC’s television coverage of the noble nuptials will commence at 4 a.m., or roughly 30 minutes before the wedding guests even begin to arrive, leaving precious little time for Canadian viewers to change out of their Winnipeg Jets sweaters and don their Union Jack ascots, bowlers and aforementioned fascinators.

Women wearing their fascinators.

If you haven’t already made plans to do so, however, finding like-minded royalists with whom to share in the princely pre- and post-dawn pageantry may prove a difficult task, unless, that is, you’re already among the 80 or 100 lucky invitees to British High Commissioner Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque’s private mocktail matinee viewing at her Sussex Drive residence, or if ticket scalpers have decided to take advantage of some of the other sold-out functions in the area.

Chief among those is the Eastern Ontario chapter’s Make-A-Wish Foundation event being held at the Fairmont Château Laurier. Only 100 tickets were made available for the $100-a-plate high tea service at Zoé’s, which will feature the queen’s own favourite sandwiches — Royal Jam Pennies, with strawberry jam, strawberry powder and butter on white or brown bread — and coronation chicken on brioche, the Château’s take on a 65-year-old classic, and wedding cake. Towards the end of the three-hour fairytale gathering, one unsuspecting child’s wish will be revealed and granted.

A bit farther west, The High Tea Social is hosting a 6-11 a.m. tea and viewing party — also sold out — at the Kanata Sports Club on McKitrick Drive. If your charm and faux English accent can’t sweet-talk you past the bouncer there, you’ll be just a 12-minute drive to the Stittsville branch of the Ottawa Public Library, at 1637 Stittsville Main, where their viewing party commences at the more civilized hour of 10 a.m., by which time CBC’s producers and technicians will hopefully have slapped together a brilliant highlight reel.

(Additionally, the Greenboro branch of the Ottawa Public Library, at 363 Lorry Greenberg Dr., will also be streaming the royal wedding from their two digital screens.)

According to library manager Jane Venus, their event grew out of a royal wedding-themed display that was put up a couple of weeks ago at the library — including a life-sized cardboard cutout of the queen.

“There was lots of public interest in the display,” she said, “so we thought, ‘Why not? We’ll open the program room on Saturday and serve tea and biscuits, and see what happens.’”

There will also be a large postcard on hand for visitors and well-wishers to sign, which will be mailed to the newlyweds.

Failing that, you can always simply wander the pre-dawn streets in your spats and fancy plumage, and see what party offers you get.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

The clangs of progress hammer loud and long across the street from Dalal Ayoob’s Sandalwood Crescent townhouse off of Heron Road, as cranes, trucks and workers move heavy building materials into place. When they’re finished, in June 2019, Timbercreek Communities, the developer, will cut the ribbon and open doors at its HG7 project — three six-storey apartment buildings that will boast nearly 350 units.

Ayoob may not be around to see the project’s completion, however. She received notice last week from Timbercreek that she and 104 of her neighbours have to be out of their houses by the end of September to make way for further progress. Ayoob and her husband currently pay about $1,300 a month on rent — a sizeable portion of the $1,900 they get through the Ontario Disability Support Program — so she’s resigned to the fact that, likely unable to afford Timbercreek’s new offerings, they’ll have to move away from the neighbourhood she’s called home since leaving Iraq a decade ago.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” she confesses. “Our son and daughter are helping us find a new house, but it’s very difficult, especially for old people. We’re used to living here.”

She says she’s looked at available homes online, but hasn’t found anything for less than $1,600 or $1,900.

On Thursday, about 50 people, including residents, local ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) activists and politicians gathered near Ayoob’s home to march to Timbercreek’s nearby offices to ask for at least a couple more months to find alternate housing.

ACORN representative and evictee Margaret Alluker entered the office while marchers waited outside and kept the struggle alive with chants of, “We’re tired, we’re hungry, we won’t go away. Stop the war on the poor, let the tenants stay.” After exiting the office, she said no one from Timbercreek would meet her to hear her concerns.

“They told us to contact the head office,” she said, promising to keep pushing.

(Timbercreek’s website, however, promises that “it takes more than bricks and mortar to make a community. It takes commitment — to our Residents. … Choosing a place to call home is a big commitment and we want to ensure you can call your Timbercreek community “A Great Place to Live”.)

A straw poll of some residents’ experiences suggested that those words and the company’s actions don’t always jibe. Sidewalks are pocked with pieces of asphalt and old paint chips off the houses.

Laddia Jean-Baptiste, who has already been looking for another place to move to, says her complaints of basement flooding and invading squirrels were met with indifference. Another Timbercreek resident, Lisa Brinston, holds out her cellphone to show pictures of a mouse she found in her bedroom dresser drawer. “I’ve had cockroaches and bad carpeting, too,” she adds.

ACORN activist and Heron Gate resident Margaret Alluker shouts chants at the front of Thursday’s march.

Alluker, meanwhile, has lived with her four children in the neighbourhood for four years, in both a highrise apartment and her current townhouse, where she’s been plagued with broken pipes, windows and doors, and unwanted mice. “And other tenants have told me of mould, broken windows, elevators not working … lots of issues. It’s my understanding the Timbercreek just cares about money, and not the people that live with them in this community.”

Among those marching in support Thursday were former CUPW head Jean-Claude Parrot, Ottawa South provincial NDP candidate Eleanor Fast, and current Liberal MPP John Fraser. Fraser grew up and raised his family in this same neighbourhood.

“In 1968, this was the model community,” he said. “What ACORN is asking for is reasonable and fair for the tenants. We brought in inclusionary zoning as a tool for cities. They’re asking for an extension, and I think that’s a reasonable thing to do. And they’re asking for affordable rent in the new places that are being built. And that’s reasonable.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Spotlight is a weekly look at some of the people who are part of the Ottawa-area arts community. This week, Bruce Deachman talks with author Jean Van Loon, whose recently released first book of poetry, Building on River, is based on the life of lumber baron J.R. Booth. Visit cormorantbooks.com for more information.

“I always wrote, but I didn’t write literary material until shortly before I retired in 2000. I wrote briefings, memoranda, cabinet documents, position papers, speeches; anything to do with government.

“I was itching to do something creative, and somebody told me about a workshop on creative writing at Carleton, and I thought, ‘That’s it! I’ve worked with words all my life — I’ll make something out of words.’

“I started with short fiction, and that first workshop was only three months, but by the end of it I was hooked. I took other workshops with different people. I did Humber College’s graduate program in creative writing and worked with Isabel Huggan. I took UBC’s master of fine arts, and part of that program was that you have to do a number of different genres, so I tried screenwriting, literary translation, poetry, non-fiction — as many as I could — and I got really interested in poetry then, and it’s become my obsession in the last five or six years.

“An initial trigger for Building on River was a historical plaque down near LeBreton Flats. And it became clear to me that this was a major industrial centre, and I had never thought of Ottawa that way, even though I grew up here. I certainly was familiar with the remnants of an industrial past — the smell of sulphur dioxide on certain mornings, the booms of logs in the river and the piles of saw logs over at the E.B. Eddy plant — but I had no idea how important the scale was. Booth’s plant on the Chaudière was, at one time, the largest in the world, and that got me interested. And then I started reading about him, and he’s so interesting and there are so many quirky tales about him.

“And I remember my mother talking about Booth. She grew up on Renfrew Avenue in the Glebe, when it was a brand-new suburb with no pavement and no trees. She and her friends used to go on skis down the canal to the Arboretum to go skiing, and she mentioned the lumberyards by Dow’s Lake, tucked in by Carling, where all the Booth-related names are now: Opeongo, Madawaska, Kippewa, Jackson, Booth and Frederick. So that was probably something that impelled me to dig in to him, too.

“I was casting about for something more than just a one-off poem about him, something I could keep nibbling at over time, and I just started working on Booth. I became fascinated with the language of the time and the names of the tools and the whole apparatus of lumbering and milling and so on. I just got hooked, and about 3½ years later I said ‘I’d better stop now, because nobody’s going to want to publish a 1,000-page book of poems about J.R. Booth.’

“The book basically follows the arc of his life. It starts with a poem in the voice of the river — the eternal voice — and then starts with 1827, when Booth was born. And it moves from there, following his career path, until his death.

“I was trying to focus in close on emotionally powerful moments or turning points in his life. I wanted to create a picture of his life as if you were watching a man in a darkened room walk across the room by strobe light — flash … flash … flash … flash — and you fill in all the connective tissue that I didn’t fill in.

“When I started out, I thought, ‘I’ll find the definitive biography and write poems from it,’ but there isn’t one. And I know there’s a school of thought that says you should never make up words to put in a real person’s mouth, even if they’re almost 100 years gone. And I can see the reasoning behind that, but I’ve been to a lot of panels and have read debates about it, and my conclusion was as long as it was clear that it was a work of imagination, then I felt I wasn’t doing violence to the person.

“I don’t know what he’d think about it, except maybe that I was foolish to waste so much time on something that’s bound to not be lucrative. But I would hope that he would think that it was in many ways true and respectful of him and what he achieved, without being worshipful.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

“Please pray for me. I am going through a lot right now. Tonight I am frightened.”

Lynda Kitchikeesic’s Facebook post last Saturday presaged the emergency medical surgery that the Ottawa activist and volunteer underwent on Wednesday when, near death with her kidney function at just four per cent, a dialysis line was inserted directly into her heart via her neck.

“I have had no intention of doing dialysis and went away to Florida cheerfully prepared to die,” she wrote Thursday following the procedure. “Well I didn’t. Mainly because I have a beautiful son Lyndon — who is set to achieve the loftiest of goals, a PhD. I hope to someday witness this great achievement.”

Kitchikeesic, who was born in 1965 in Northern Ontario to an Ojibway mother and raised by her adoptive family in Old Ottawa South, learned recently that she had polycystic kidney disease, an inherited kidney disorder, and, without treatment, had only two months to live.

She returned to Ottawa for surgery and treatment.

For decades she has been involved in community issues, particularly the Idle No More movement and the Ottawa Police Service’s Community and Police Action Committee (COMPAC), the goal of which is to “nurture and develop … communication, respect, accountability and trust” between police and minorities.

She also helped organize powwows for Indigenous youths, the annual Flotilla for Friendship, and was an on-air host of CTV’s Aboriginal Voices.

A friend of Kitchikeesic’s, Tori Cress, has started a YouCaring crowd-funding page for her, hoping to raise $2,500 for various medical and living expenses.

“Lynda has given everything in her volunteer work and has asked for nothing in return,” writes Cress, “except maybe a warm hug and big smile. She has been a best friend to so many people. She has been a mentor, matriarch, sister and best friend from even before the first moment we met in person.”

Kitchikeesic, meanwhile, remains in hospital, recovering.

“Your kind words and deeds are helping me deal,” she wrote on Thursday. “Right now I am fighting for my life, and so if you don’t hear back from me, please don’t be angry or sad. I just need some time. I really don’t want to talk about it. I am afraid and I am in pain. They say I will feel better soon and I am counting on that happening.”

Click here to make a donation, or go to youcaring.com and search for “Kitchikeesic.”

With files from Blair Crawford.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

After crossing the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge from her home on the south side of the Queensway, Tiana Benoit stops at the north end of the bridge and waits. It’s just before 8:30 on a bright Monday morning, and close to 20 minutes remain before the final morning bell at Fisher Park Public School will call her inside.

Moments later, Sammy Siscoe comes bounding up the bridge’s decrepit concrete steps from Helena Street and greets Tiana. The two 12-year-olds are best friends and schoolmates at Fisher Park, but they’re not in the same class, so they meet on the bridge every morning and walk the remaining hundred metres or so together, chatting before their school day begins.

“On our first day of school,” recalls Sammy, “we were nervous to go to Fisher Park because it was our first year there, so we walked to school together.”

“And we decided to walk to school together every day from then on,” adds Tiana.

Sammy Siscoe and Tiana Benoit, both 12, attend Fisher Park school and meet on the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge each school day to walk to school together.

*

Opened in 1963, the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge over the Queensway has for more than 50 years been a popular thoroughfare for pedestrians and cyclists travelling between the Wellington West, Fisher Park and Hampton Park neighbourhoods and the Civic Hospital area. More than simply a timesaving shortcut for the estimated 500 people who use it each day, the bridge is a safer, more human and pastoral way to span eight lanes of highway traffic.

But the bridge, chipped away by time, wind, rain and snow, and wrapped in a makeshift metal safety truss, is nearing the end of its lifespan and is slated to be torn down, likely later this month or in June. Over the summer, an enclosed replacement span and footings will be put in place. New access ramps and stairs will be installed in 2019, and rails, lighting and landscaping completing the $13.5 million project by June 2020. With a finished replacement still two years away, however, Sammy and Tiana, and many others, will be forced to find alternate routes.

Taking the bridge actually adds about five minutes to Tiana’s walk to school — she could get there much more quickly if she simply walked along Holland Avenue. “I live really close and could walk down the hill,” she says, “but I walk with Sammy because I want somebody to walk with.”

She admits that the Holland Avenue route she’ll have to take next year isn’t the end of her world. It is closer, after all. “But I’ll be lonely,” she laments.

The Harmer Avenue bridge helps link together people and communities that are separated by the Queensway, the busiest autoroute through Ottawa. Prior to the Queensway’s construction, narrow railroad tracks, divisive but much less so, passed through.

The bridge’s pending demolition, meanwhile, is already creating waves in the community. Elise Merrill and her young son, Edgar, are crossing the bridge from her home on the north side to visit a prospective day care on the south side. “I’m already concerned about the bridge closing,” she says. “This daycare is a good candidate, but knowing that the bridge is closing is impacting our decision. It’s like closing another door, which is upsetting.”

Elise Merrill and her son, Edgar, were crossing the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge to check out a daycare.

Plans to add temporary painted bike lanes to Holland Avenue — the nearest underpass — has upset a number of residents in the area who cite safety issues and lost parking spaces among their concerns, as well as skepticism over the word “temporary.”

City councillor Jeff Leiper, in whose Kitchissippi ward the Harmer bridge sits, says that such connections are critical to the health of a city and its neighbourhoods. “With the building of the Queensway, you really severed neighbourhoods. I live on Hamilton North, and there’s also a Hamilton South. That was once one street. Harmer Avenue … all those streets used to go through. The Queensway severed those neighbourhoods so that today they are distinct communities, and that is artificial — the result of the Queensway being there.”

On the south side, he notes, there are few parks or schools, and no traditional main street. “There’s no place where you can just walk up and down in shops where there are people you know with services you want to buy. All of that is on the north, and the south side has been cut from that.

He points to the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association, a 2,000-household group whose borders go from Island Park in the west to the O-train in the east, and from Carling Avenue to the Queensway. “That community doesn’t have a community centre,” Leiper says. “They use the Hintonburg Community Centre, on the north side.”

The Queensway, Leiper adds, is a barrier that prevents the community to the south of the Harmer bridge from being whole on its own. Apart from the bridge, underpasses connect the two sides, but most of them — Island Park Drive and Holland and Parkdale avenues in particular — are not, in Leiper’s words, “kind environments” for pedestrians or cyclists.

“So how do people get from that community that was cut off by the Queensway, to all these amenities of the community to the north? I would suggest that the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge is one of the few attractive ways to do that. It’s one of the few ways that you can meander. It’s one of the few safe cycling ways to do that. It’s a connection that is geared towards a more human mode of travel.

“I think the bridge occupies a really centrally important role, and unfortunately it is too unique — we should have more of them.”

*

There’s an almost measurable cadence to the ebb and flow of life on the bridge. The dog-walkers and joggers who make up most of its pre-dawn traffic are eventually augmented by people going to and from work — at Tunney’s Pasture, Agriculture Canada, the Experimental Farm, the Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital and points elsewhere.

Nate Keen lives south of Carling Avenue, and uses the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge at least twice a day, for traveling to and from work, getting groceries and kids’ activities.

Nate Keen, a south-sider who for a decade now has used the bridge to get to and from work, for grocery shopping and various activities with his children, isn’t sure what he’ll do when the bridge comes down. “It’s one of the nicer walks,” he says. “I walk all winter and bike through the summer. I guess my alternative is Holland (Avenue), which is not nearly as nice a walk or bike ride — it’s a terrible bike ride.”

Keen lives south of Carling Avenue, in River Ward, and wishes there had been more public consultation in his neighbourhood about the bridge’s closure. “There are a ton of people from my neighbourhood who use this bridge. Fisher Park softball starts next week, and there’s going to be tons of parents coming here to go to Fisher Park for day camp, for going to school here.”

Catherine Walsh has used the bridge to get to and from work every day for the past 22 years. On her way home each day, she looks at the gridlocked traffic on the Queensway below, and thinks, “God, I love living here.”

On the heels of Keen and Walsh come the school children, headed to Fisher Park, St. George or Elmdale schools, some crossing the bridge four times a day. Throughout the day, a parade of people use the bridge for any number of reasons: appointments or visits at the Civic, or lunchtime exercise. For some, the bridge is their destination; they come just to watch the traffic below.

Catherine Walsh has crossed the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge every day for the last 22 years.

“There’s definitely a rhythm to people using the bridge,” says Jane Snider, a Helena Street resident who has lived in the shadow of the bridge for 17 years and confesses to having mixed feelings about the structure. “I know exactly when it’s time to go back to school; at 1:35 it gets busy with kids up here. You sort of follow the rhythm of the day by how many people are on the bridge.

“But we wouldn’t miss it if it weren’t here,” she admits. “It’d be nice not to have all the foot traffic right in front of our house. I can’t say I love having the bridge here, but I understand that it’s used a lot. And if it’s deemed that it’s necessary, I’d rather have a bridge that is solid and secure, with nice landscaping, than what’s here right now.”

Another Helena Street resident, Arlene Drake, admits she’s not thrilled to see her street turned into a construction site for two years, but is happy the bridge is being replaced. She uses it to get to her work at Natural Resources Canada on Booth Street, as well as regular dog-walking duties. “Do you want a new bridge or not?” she asks. “So you have to make some concessions.”

Arlene Drake has lived three doors from the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge for 12 years and loves the access it provides.

While some feel that two years seems like a long time to replace the bridge, few pedestrians or cyclists argue against the project. Exposed rebar is visible under crumbling concrete, and the existing approach ramps don’t come close to conforming to current accessibility standards.

“Things obviously need to be fixed,” says Mary Wadland, who has lived by the Civic for seven years and, without a car, walks everywhere. “After I heard the story of the bridge collapsing in the States, I walked across here and thought about the stairs that were crumbling, and I thought, ‘Hmm, maybe I should be walking a different way for a while, just on the off-chance that this one might be going, too.”

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Finn Duncan was crossing in the opposite direction, returning home from his early-morning workout at the Ottawa Rowing Club. He grew up on the south side, but attended Elmdale, St. George and Fisher Park schools — all on the north side.

“My whole life has been on this bridge,” he says. “I literally grew up on it. I remember trying to make trucks honk when I walked across when I was little — me and my two brothers — and our parents would know we were coming home soon if they heard the trucks honking. So it’s a nostalgic bridge, I guess.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Mary Stuart only just moved from Stittsville to Kanata last month and hasn’t set up her television yet, so she knew she had to go somewhere to watch Saturday morning’s royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Her daughter and two grandsons also live in Kanata, but Stuart, 71, didn’t think they’d be particularly overjoyed to see her show up at their door at four in the morning, so she instead opted to wait until the more civilized hour of 10 a.m., and then avail herself of the tea and biscuits and public viewing party offered by the Stittsville branch of the Ottawa Public library.

Apart from giving her an excuse to wear her black-and-white polka dot dress featuring yellow roses — the Queen’s favourite, she noted — and wrap-around straw hat fitted with a floral adornment, it also was the perfect opportunity to return a book she’d recently borrowed, Emily Post’s Wedding Etiquette. She brought along her camera, too, and took some snaps of the large-screen wedding.

Saturday’s nuptials also gave her pause to reflect on love. “I fell in love 44 years ago on this weekend, the May 24 weekend,” she said. That led to a wedding and 42-year marriage to air force pilot Wayne Stuart, whom death parted from Mary in 2016.

When Mary walked down the aisle in Fort Erie in 1974, her sister sang a song from the recently released Vanessa Redgrave movie, Mary, Queen of Scots: “This way Mary, come Mary/ Share the world with me/ Make this moment our moment/ And our memories.”

The monarchy, Stuart says, represents a sense of stability, faith and tradition that’s often missing today. (Although perhaps not Prince Charles, whom she describes as “a cad.”)

Cutout masks of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were on hand at the Stittsville branch of the Ottawa Public Library’s Saturday viewing of the royal wedding.

Her connection with the Royal Family extends back some decades, even before she was born, when her father, Jack Legg, went to Europe to fight for the King. As a young Brownie in London, Ont., Stuart was part of a ceremony that greeted the Queen.

In 1992, when the Queen came to Ottawa for Canada’s 125 celebration, Stuart was a girl-guide leader whose daughter, Briana, then 10, presented Her Majesty with a single red rose before the monarch flew back to London.

Stuart and her daughters also dressed in fancy hats seven years ago to attend the visit to Ottawa by Prince William and Kate Middleton. The day prior, Stuart hosted a royal tea at her house.

“It’s beautiful,” she said of Saturday’s wedding, “just beautiful. It’s about love — love forever. Yes, families come into it, and yes, and there will be children, but it’s about love, and that’s the base for our life.”

Essie Liu came to the Stittsville branch of the Ottawa Public Library on Saturday to view the royal wedding.

By noontime Saturday, just over 20 people had taken part in the library’s large-screen wedding-watching levee, including 26-year-old North Kanata resident Essie Liu, who watched with both a professional and personal interest. A wedding and event violinist, she was fascinated by the ceremony. She was also curious about the royals and their attire, and the royals’ place in Canadian culture. Throughout the ceremony, she texted with her family members who were also watching, from their home in Yangzhou, China.

“I don’t know a lot about their story,” she said of Harry and Meghan. “Just what I see on the internet. But I’ve performed at a lot of weddings and I noticed something very universal: the connection between them, and an excitement and nervousness. And a love that resolves the barriers of different cultures, which is becoming more and more common.

“I think a wedding like this is the dream of every girl,” she added, “or at least it’s mine. The whole globe is celebrating this, and it gives me hope for the future.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Ottawa Fire Services made quick work of an apartment fire Saturday in a medium-rise building at 300 Lacasse Ave. in the Vanier district.

Responders were notified at about 12:35 p.m. of smoke and alarm bells coming from an eighth-floor apartment.

Residents were not home at the time and firefighters had to break down the apartment door to enter and control the fire.

The fire was quickly extinguished and a dog was safely rescued from the balcony of the apartment.

About 10 minutes before the Vanier call, firefighters were called to a fire at 2000 Beaconwood Dr., Gloucester.

The blaze began as a grass fire that spread to a tree and onto a nearby garage.

Firefighters quickly brought the fire under control.

There were no injuries in either blaze and fire investigators have been call to both scenes.

Firefighters responded after smoke was reported coming from an 8th-floor apartment at 300 Lacasse Avenue Saturday afternoon.

A man was taken to The Ottawa Hospital’s trauma centre Saturday with possible spinal injuries following a collision involving two vehicles and a hydro pole.

The incident occurred shortly after 2:30 p.m. at Hunt Club Road and Bridle Path Drive, where firefighters, police and paramedics responded to reports of someone trapped in a vehicle.

Firefighters began their 16-minute extrication process at 2:45 p.m., after which the man, one of two occupants in the vehicle he was in, was transported as a high priority to the hospital.

The second occupant of that vehicle was able to get out it unharmed. The occupant of the second vehicle refused treatment.

Ottawa police are investigating the cause of the collision.

The Napanee OPP, saddled with the task of corralling and removing horses from a 70-year-old woman’s property, continued with the relocation process Friday, but, unable to safely wrangle them all into custody, said they would press on over the next few days.

Accompanied by the Ontario SPCA and township officials, the OPP last Tuesday executed a search warrant on Charlotte Bright’s Blessington Road farm, between and north of Napanee and Shannonville, following months of complaints about her horses running loose in Tyendinaga Township. The horses, neighbours claimed, caused damage to their crops and property.

The OPP announced Wednesday that they had charged Bright with one count of mischief under the Criminal Code of Canada and, as part of her bail conditions, were temporarily removing the horses and housing them elsewhere until an appropriate enclosure could be erected to prevent them from leaving Bright’s property. Police had determined that inadequate fencing had allowed the horses to roam. The OPP also received concerns about the horses’ health and welfare, which the Ontario SPCA was investigating.

Police indicated last week that they believed there were 35 to 40 horses involved, but that the large wooded area made an accurate count difficult.

According to Tyendinaga Township chief administrative officer Steve Mercer, horses have been escaping periodically from Bright’s property for about six years.

In a statement issued Saturday, the OPP indicated that although the remaining horses were currently secured on the property, a potential risk remained that some might escape their enclosure, and encouraged motorists in the area to exercise particular caution.

— With files from Luke Hendry, The Belleville Intelligencer.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Health Canada has seized four unauthorized products from the shelves of a Vanier grocer, and is advising people who may have purchased them not to use them, and consult their healthcare professional if they have.

The products are Ampicillin, Kamox 500, Medampi 500 and Medomox 500, each of which is labelled as containing antibiotics that can only be dispensed with a prescription. None of the products has been evaluated by Health Canada for safety, effectiveness or quality, and they may pose serious health risks. Possible side effects include severe allergic reactions, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, as well as signs of liver and kidney problems.

The drugs were seized from Gigi’s Market, a Caribbean grocer located at 23 Montreal Rd. A store representative had no comment when reached on Saturday.

An Ottawa woman charged with criminal offences related to an attempt five years ago to smuggle opium into the city in the heels of women’s shoes, was found not guilty on all counts this week.

Haniyeh Jahangiri was 25 when she was arrested in June 2013, after Canadian Border Services Agency officers at a mail processing plant in Montreal intercepted a suspicious package addressed to the St. Laurent Blvd. apartment where she lived. Inside the package, almost 2 kg. of opium was discovered hidden in the heels of women’s shoes.

A similar package containing about 1 kg. of opium was addressed to Jahangiri’s sister, Samira Jahangiri, then 30, in Port Moody, B.C. Samira was also found not guilty of charges against her.

The two were charged with conspiracy to import opium and importing opium, while Haniyeh was additionally charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking. The trial spanned 13 days in 2017 and 2018.

In his May 14 decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Marc R. Labrosse indicated he believed it “highly probable” that both Haniyeh and Samira were involved in some capacity with the delivery of the packages, and that text messages between the two were “suspicious and point to the fact that both were probably involved in some form of illicit activity,” yet he ultimately pointed to enough circumstantial evidence and evidential gaps in the Crown’s case to make it impossible to conclude the guilt of either beyond a reasonable doubt.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Barn swallows nesting under Billings Bridge, at Bank Street and Riverside Drive, will force work on a proposed pedestrian/cycling underpass at the high-traffic intersection to be postponed.

Construction on the $2-million project is now expected to start in September, when the birds, protected under the Species at Risk Act, retire to Central and South America for the winter. Under Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources regulations, barn swallow nests in the province can’t be moved between May 1 and Aug. 31.

However, according to Capital councillor David Chernushenko, tree removal operations for the project will proceed as planned in the summer.

Barn swallows nesting under Billings Bridge, at Bank Street and Riverside Drive, will force work on a proposed pedestrian/cycling underpass at the high-traffic intersection to be postponed.

The existing pathway at road level at the intersection will remain, even after construction is completed, to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross when spring flooding closes the underpass.

The underpass will improve the safety for pedestrians and cyclists crossing Bank Street at Riverside. This is the same intersection where cyclist Meg Dussault was killed in 2013 when she was struck by a cement truck.

This is not the first time swallows have caused construction delays. Widening of Jockvale Road in 2013 was delayed when swallows’ nests were discovered under an overpass there.

Barn swallows nesting under Billings Bridge, at Bank Street and Riverside Drive, will force work on a proposed pedestrian/cycling underpass at the high-traffic intersection to be postponed.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Ottawa Public Health on Sunday notified the public of a precautionary food recall issued on Friday by Quebec’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ). The recalled products were “ready-to-eat” items prepared at Marché Adonis, at 920 boul. Maloney Ouest in Gatineau, with best-before dates between May 8 and May 18, 2018.

Included are various pasta, pizza, kibbeh, rolls, Armenian pizza, or lahmajoun, sambousik, or meat pies, and turnovers sold up until May 17.

No cases of illness were reported, but the foods may have been contaminated by the hepatitis A virus, which affects the liver and is transmitted by ingesting contaminated feces. Symptoms, which can take up to seven weeks to develop, include nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain and yellow skin or eyes.

People who have purchased these foods are advised not to consume them. If you are concerned that you may have eaten any of the recalled food items, contact Ottawa Public Health at 613-580-6744, weekdays (311 on weekends or holidays), or consult a health professional.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Four people were rescued from the Ottawa River Sunday evening after the canoe they were paddling in capsized.

The incident occurred shortly before 7 p.m. in the vicinity of the Deschênes Rapids. Three of the canoeists were able to swim back to shore, while the fourth was rescued by Ottawa Fire Services water rescue team. All four were wearing flotation devices.

According to Ottawa Fire Services, none in the group was seriously injured. Because of the cold water, however, the four — two men and two women, each in their 20s — were transported to hospital.

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 artist Colin White, who has been documenting numerous storefronts in his Chinatown neighbourhood. Visit colinwhite.ca or patreon.com/ColinWhite for more information.

One of artist Colin White’s illustrations of storefronts in Chinatown.

“Art was something I was good at as a kid. I was always drawing and cartooning and doing creative stuff in general. I wanted to be a journalist, because of the Tintin comic books. I wanted to be a reporter, so I founded a local newspaper and published articles and took photographs. This was near Burnstown, where I grew up. I think I was about 11 and I used my dad’s photocopier and made four issues over the course of a year-and-a-half or something like that. And then I got interested in something else — I think it was animation. Then I wanted to be a film director, so I borrowed my uncle’s old Super 8, or whatever it was at the time, and wrote some films. Then, in high school, I started doing some graphic design work for organizations and local garage bands, and then I made the decision to go to art school. Design school, actually; it was a little more practical and useful.

“But I remember thinking, when I was 11 or 12, that I should make a career out of something that I enjoy. I don’t know where that came from, although I was encouraged by my parents, which was helpful. And I had two really good art teachers at high school in Renfrew, at Renfrew Collegiate Institute.

One of artist Colin White’s illustrations of storefronts in Chinatown.

“It was my series on corner stores that started me on this whole notion of fading storefronts and change in a city. It started with a fellow who grew up in one of these stores — Mike’s, on Rochester. At the time I was doing house drawings, and he commissioned me to do one, but the house that he grew up in was a corner store with an apartment behind it, and I became very interested in the building and the idea of these stores being in integrated neighbourhoods, and the fact that we don’t see new versions of these anymore and there’s some quality to them that’s kind of from another, fading era.

“But simultaneously, every body came and talked to me while I was doing it. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I love this store,’ ‘Please tell me it’s not for sale,’ ‘I hope it’s not going away.’ So that was part of it, and I decided to go look at other stores in the city. And that has grown into other themes. Last year, I was working on fruit and flower shops in Toronto. So the idea of the family-run or neighbourhood store has become the bigger interest from there.

“I’ve started a Patreon account, which may be a way to help tell the stories of these places I’m drawing, perhaps by doing comics to tell about the people around them or the people who interact with them. And one of the goals of that is to draw every corner store in Canada. I don’t think it’s really possible, but it’s nice to have a goal — maybe just do it in every province and territory, or in every major city.

One of artist Colin White’s illustrations of storefronts in Chinatown.

“Last year, I thought might have to move, and maybe out of my neighbourhood (Chinatown). And I was very nostalgic and not looking forward to leaving, so I decided to go and draw my favourite block, which is Somerset from Upper Lorne to Booth — that’s always been my favourite little block in the whole city; I love the way it curves. There are maybe 12 storefronts there, and I started doing those. And from there I just started moving outwards, getting other buildings in the neighbourhood that I really like and that has this sort of visual requirement I have. It’s hard to describe — there’s a feel, and signage has a big impact; some thought to the typography. And age has to do with it as well. If a business has been there for 30 years, it’s because it’s worked. So a building has to resonate a bit in the neighbourhood. There’s a human element to it. So that’s sort of where I come from.

“The archival element is also important, although I didn’t really recognize it right away. It became more apparent as I went along, sort of an after-the-fact factor. And I do think it’s quite important — for the city, for people in the communities. These places clearly have meaning to people for their own reasons, but there’s a broader community meaning to these places. You can just tell, when a corner store closes up … Boushey’s, on Elgin Street, was by far the best example of a place that people were heartbroken to see close. We knew well enough in advance that it was closing, so I did as many studies as I could, so I was out there a lot that summer and talked to a lot of people. I remember one woman came up and said that she would go to the Market or to church every week, and after, they would go to Boushey’s and get a Lebanese pastry of some specialty they could only get there. This woman was in her 50s and tearing up over this, because this place reminded her of her and her dad when she was a kid.

“So it’s more than just a place to get your milk and whatever, and what I’m doing becomes more than just a sketch of the place. Change is always happening in a city, and I sort of felt an obligation to keep doing this, and expand it, and try to get as much of it done as I can.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Carleton University and CUASA, the association representing more than 900 professors, instructors and librarians, reached a tentative collective agreement on Sunday night.

The details of the agreement were expected to be released following a ratification vote by the university’s board of governors and members of the bargaining unit. According to CUASA president Root Gorelick on Monday, a date for the association’s ratification vote had not yet been set.

The university had asked for a conciliator on May 2, a move that the Carleton University Academic Staff Association feared would lead to a lockout. Appointment of a conciliator is a required stage in labour negotiations before there can be a strike or lockout. The association’s members had been without a contract since April 30, 2017.

According to postings on the union’s website, issues in the dispute included salary, pension language and pay equity for female professors.

— With files from Jacquie Miller

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 artist, performer and glassblower Lauretta Peters.

“I feel I’ve always been a closet pyromaniac, but this is a way you can do it without seeming crazy. I also do some fire-performing — spinning things that are lit on fire. It’s not glass-related at all, but I started them at around the same time. I just have some props — hula  hoops and fans … circus stuff, and I’m mostly working with a group from Toronto: Crimson Fire Show. And I eat fire, too.

“I got into glass by accident. It was in 2011 and I had just moved to Edmonton from Saskatchewan, and I called my cousin. He owned a company called Pixie Glassworks, and they had just been on Dragon’s Den. They didn’t get a deal, but overnight, after it aired, they got something like 200 emails, so they were doing 16-hour days in the studio, trying to make it work, and they’re sitting there having breakfast and saying ‘We need to hire somebody,’ and that was literally the exact moment that I called. So I started working for them the next day.

“I started just packing orders in the studio for them. Then after a month they had me try the torch, and I caught on really fast, and within six months they asked me to go full-time.

“Right away, I loved it. The medium is really cool. It’s super-fluid and the way it moves is really captivating, especially working with a 2,000-degree torch — you feel like a badass.

Pendants by Lauretta Peters.

“Right away, I loved it. The medium is really cool. It’s super-fluid and the way it moves is really captivating, especially working with a 2,000-degree torch — you feel like a badass.

“My first day on the torch, they got me to make these little flowers. I made 13 of them and not one looked like a flower. But I went back to the studio the next day and made 30 of them, and 13 looked like flowers, and it increased from there.

“I keep one of my failed pieces with me, mostly just so I can remind myself that you always start somewhere that you’re not happy with, but if you just keep putting the time and dedication into anything, you’re going to get results.

“So I was making aromatherapy pendants for them throughout the day, and then I’d usually stay late and work on my own projects and try new things. I moved back to Saskatchewan and didn’t do any glass for a couple of years and was getting miserable, so I applied to go to the Haliburton School of Art and Design.

A vase by Lauretta Peters.

“In my second week in the hot shop, I burned my entire hand. The end of the pipe that’s holding your piece on is called the moyle, and it’s one of the hottest parts of the piece. I was two weeks in, so of course I’m the professional — a little overconfident — and at one point I flipped the rod the wrong way and grabbed the moyle, and my entire hand was stuck to the glass.

“I had just moved from Saskatchewan and didn’t yet have an Ontario health card, so I just stole some burn cream from the school fridge, coated my hand and wrapped it all up. Luckily, the next week of school we were doing drawing for glassblowing, and the only parts of my hand that weren’t burned were where I held a pencil. So that was all I could do.

“Now I make mostly jewelry and vases and stuff like that. I also do memorial jewelry, like cremation paperweights, where you can actually incorporate the ashes with coloured glass — they’re really beautiful. I also do these galaxy universe pendants, where you incorporate the ashes.

“The more detail I can put into a piece, the more meticulous it is, the more fun it is for me. Something that would be a pain in the butt for most people is like a form of meditation for me. I get so zenned in that two hours go by like nothing and I feel so relaxed.

“It’s a medium that you can never master. You can work forever, but there are these incredible Venetian artists that have been doing this for generations and generations, and at 22 years old they’re better than I’m going to be at 60. But it’s one of those things you can never master — there are 1,001 things that you can do in glass, and if you don’t love one thing you might love another, and there are always more techniques to learn and more ways you can refine and get better, so it’s a great medium to always do more. You’re never going to get bored.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com