Ottawa, A Source of Warmth
Story and pictures by Leslie Strom
Picture
this: A potential ice arena five miles long meanders through
a lovely northern city. It's late September and the Rideau
Canal in downtown Ottawa, Ontario is still liquid. I stand
at the top of the lock near the Chateau Laurier and look at it
thinking, "this is the land of hellatious cold. Soon this
sucker is going to be Five miles of skating perfection."
Never mind I'm a crappy skater. Never mind I'm from a place without
ice so this will be completely new to me. This is reconnaisance.
I am scoping out warm places before I return to a town that spends
half a year in a deep freeze. Will I find sources of warmth?
THURSDAY:
I'm carless and headed downtown to meet Jeff and Conrad for drinks at the Empire Grill in the By Ward Market. I stand in the warm afternoon sun at the bus stop with an older man with a cane. "Ya know," he says with something like an Irish accent, "In fifteen years Ottawa's gonna double in size. High tech. It's going to be the new Silicon Valley." If this is true, Ottawa is going to need lots more buses, I think. I'm glad I'm seeing it now, before it booms, sprawls, and fills with gold-digging opportunists from, say, Seattle.
The
bus runs up Bank Street, through the funky Glebe neighborhood, and I get out at Sparks Street, a pedestrian
mall with small shops in well-restored older buildings. Ottawa's
modern architecture blends nicely with the historic, not the
tiresome cheap 60's construction ill-inspired by the Bauhaus
that afflicts so many American downtowns. The thriving leafy
neighborhoods blend with prosperous classic government architecture,
grand boulevards, and French street signs. Three rivers spider-vein
the city - the Rideau river, the sprawling Ottawa river (which divides Ontario from Quebec) and the constrained quiet Rideau canal.
I get completely lost inside the enormous Rideau Center shopping mall before I make my way over the Rideau canal to the market area. Like other really good farmers markets, this one has stalls, fresh produce, shops, and restaurants, only with a far more international feel to them. I peek into the fish market to see what they have from Alaska. I notice they don't have my own usual home-grown favorites, Dungeness crab and Copper river salmon.
At
the Empire Grill we are treated like regulars - which Conrad
and Jeff are, and I could easily become given half a chance.
The bar's television switches between the Olympics, and coverage
of the death of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau that
day. Either way, it is an above-average Canadian news day. A
small boy sits on a bar stool drinking a soda and eating maraschino
cherries. He doesn't know who Trudeau is. Even his mother is
a bit too young to have lived through Trudeau mania, the years
in the late 60's where the dashing bachelor politician was adored
by women everywhere.
Conrad describes his new high tech business over cosmopolitans and a nice five layer dip. "In fifteen years Ottawa's gonna double in size," he says. "High tech growth." "The new Silicon Valley?" I ask, sounding almost well-informed. If this is true, Ottawa is going to need a few more nice bars like this, I think.
Jeff joins us for a bit, then we all go back to Conrad's to eat the two large Dungeness crabs I've brought from Seattle. We duel over which goes best with crab, wine versus beer. The crab is a hit either way, but a nice chardonnay wins. Having checked out the fish market I know that when the gold-digging Seattle high-tech workforce migrates to Ottawa, they're going to be miserable until their Alaskan seafood catches up with them.
The evening isn't over yet: now we go in search of dessert and flamenco. Jeff's friend Anton is playing guitar at Don Alphonso's. We share a flan, I get a quick lesson in flamenco rhythms. Conrad requests some Dunhills, which means that the proprietress has to go down the street to buy them. There are no cigarette sales in restaurants, so this is the way it is done now. We listen to Anton play guitar, the smoke drifts around the place, the wine is dark and lush, and we close the joint down at two. Where am I again? The whirlwind experience is beginning to make me lightheaded, and it's just begun.
FRIDAY:
Next afternoon Jeff is late to meet me at the Empire Grill (now a reliable place to meet because it's the one place I seem to be able to find). I go outside and call his cell phone. He's on foot and not far away. I tell him I'm on the corner of Parent and Clarence Streets. "pah-RAHNT," he corrects me to a French-sounding pronunciation. "Okay. pah-RAHNT and Clar-AHNCE." "CLAIR-ence" he says. Annoying Canadian.
We are sidetracked into a cheese shop where I find the kinds of cheeses I had in Paris. They're well-priced and the variety is wonderful. We sample, and I buy a few. Jeff doesn't want to haul around cheese all evening so he resists until he sees a stilton layered with a port-laced cheese. This he buys and carries in his pocket.
We
hit the Collection and have some Mediterranean foods and
perhaps the best Cosmopolitan I've ever had. The sleek young
Asian woman who makes the drinks handles everything with strength
and delicacy. After an hour, we're all on a first name basis.
Since it's early and we're downtown, we go from this beautiful
pan-Asian lounge to the conservative and elegant Zoe housed
in the Chateau Laurier.
Chateau Laurier is one of those amazing lavish hotels, like the Empress in Victoria BC, built by the Canadian Pacific
Railroad to create "destinations" and encourage
train travel. This evening the place is filled with well-dressed
people winding down after the work week or maybe winding up for
Trudeau's funeral. We are, after all, in the nation's capital.
Even dressed casually, we are made to feel welcome at the bar
and the drinks are very good. Jeff seems to be choosing bars
for maximum variety and contrast.
How the hell can you tell a French word from an English one around here? It's all so interchangable and they sound alike when rattled together like Yahtzee dice. I find my answer at the Cafe Paradiso (there is no name outside the building but you can find it at 199 Bank Street), where we meet up with Conrad again. The answer is that you learn it word by word, absorbing bi-lingualism as a lifestyle, then you switch it on and off as it suits the situation. Conrad's bilingualism comes from growing up in New Brunswick, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that now I understand this word, oops, now it's in French, there it is again, words I understand. French blah blah blah "downsizing" French blah blah some more. Hm. I guess there are some French words with no English equivalent, even in Canada. Conrad speaks only English to me on one side, only French to the woman from Quebec sitting next to him on the other side at the Paradiso's bar. Jeff gets by in both languages, though he isn't as quick to pipe up in French.
Shane, the bartender who keeps the seven-seat social whirl at the little bar going strong, serves grappa to a French-speaking woman sitting wedged between her sister and Jeff. She thinks it tastes like something green. Not sure she likes it. I try one, and it's not just green but woody, like lawn clippings with a past. Another exotic discovery. It's not French or Canadian either, but I decide to make grappa my Ottawa taste, the way I connect Guinness with my college days in London, and pesto with a particular little restaurant high atop Monte Carlo. Not to mention cheap generic beer with the wheatfield busts in Pullman, Washington.
SATURDAY:
Newspapers, televisions, and all the half-mast flags have been memorializing the life of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau since I got there. Trudeau's casket is lying in state at Parliament so Conrad and I go over to see the crowds. Two lines of thousands of mourners patiently wait to pay their respects. The less patient walk right up and pay their respects at the Centennial Flame ("It used to be called the Eternal Flame but it kept going out," Conrad whispers) which is piled high exclusively with the trademark red roses Trudeau wore in his lapel. There are no other colors or varieties of flower that I can see. I read the sentiments from school children and immigrants praising his leadership, how he gave them a Canadian identity, a future and hope. A man behind me throws a coin past my head into the fountain surrounding the flame. I think it's a rather strange gesture, but now he's added something of his own to the memorial. Two sober young pages in blazers march past me and spread another heap of red roses on the rustling sheaves of cellophane-shrouded flowers.
A block away are a few low-key demonstrators with folding
tables, a large van selling poutine (French fries drowning
in gravy and curds) and a man waving a modified Canadian flag,
altered with light blue vertical stripes between the red and
white blocks. "Would you like to know more about the Unity
Flag?" he asks two school girls. They shrug and look at
the blue-striped thing. Conrad grumbles something about how he's
not sure that messing with the flag is going to unify anything.
The
visitors and the flowers are to come throughout the night and
all through Sunday before Trudeau's casket is taken Tuesday morning
for burial in Montreal. Conrad and I linger with the teeming
crowd at the not-so-eternal flame a bit longer before meeting
Jeff at yet another watering hole, the unwholesomely-named Black Tomato, downtown near the market. The Black Tomato
reminds me of little places on Ile St. Louis in Paris,
with the stone pavers and old ivy-covered courtyards. We sit
at the sidewalk tables and share a thin crusty pizza with pine
nuts, basil and a bunch of other lovely ingredients on it. It
starts to rain so we go inside, then back out to the patio.
Jeff shows up after having given his teenage daughter a driving lesson. We sit out on a patio under a radiant heating lamp with our drinks. We read the newspapers, 16-page Trudeau tributes, coverage, interviews, pictures, back-story. I think maybe I couldn't have come at a better time to see Ottawa at its best.
We move on to the crowded bar at the Social where Jeff has a spectacular scallops dish at the bar, which we all sample and rave over. Architecturally, the Social is another thoughtful dowtown restoration taking advantage of the soaring vertical space and the coolness only stone and brick can impart.
We've been burning the candle on both ends for three days, and we're all tired. It's exceptionally late on a Saturday night and I try to find a cab as I walk south on Bank Street. The walk is so interesting that I'm several miles down the street, chatting with strangers, enjoying an incessant street life, before I decide to catch a bus the rest of the way. The bus is full of college-age kids who talk about computers and their Palm Pilots. "I hear that soon Ottawa is going to be the new Silicon Valley," I say to them. Their response is polite, like this is a tiresome statement of common knowlege. Their conversation turns to rock and roll. Soon, I think, Ottawa is going to need lots more on-line humor magazine editors.
The bus passes over the Rideau Canal which shines with street lights, then the Rideau River, lurking darkly under the Billings Bridge. This coming winter I should have no trouble at all finding plenty of warmth in the deep freeze.
Get Lost Magazine editor Leslie
Strom knows the difference between figure skates and hockey
skates, but still isn't sure about the difference between taking
major nosedives in them.
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