East Coast Trip - Day One: Toronto-Ottawa

The Parliament Buildings (Centre Block)

First off, let me apologize for the delay in getting this first day summary out – rest assured that it is entirely the fault of our hopeless B&B proprietors. It’s remarkable that they are able to assure potential guests that they have wireless internet considering that none of them seem to have the slightest idea regarding anything remotely related now that we have established that it is in fact not working. They assure us that the wired internet is running fine, which would be great if I had brought a network cable, which I didn’t because they assured me that they had WIFI. But let me begin…

After a 90-minute departure delay from Thornhill, we were off and running just a few minutes after 9AM this morning. First stop: back to Andrew’s for his forgotten sandals. After that, relatively smooth sailing on the 401 under heavy, overcast skies, found us driving through some of the most boring stretches of Ontario scenery, which we happily tuned out by listening to some new music and keeping track of out-of-province licence plates. Luckily Ottawa isn’t that far away, and it seems to appear out of the bushes as you round a corner on the 417 highway.

Finding our bed and breakfast was easy. Accepting the fact that it was actually where we were staying was a little more difficult. The internet description of being near the city bus station should have tipped us off that it was probably not in the best part of town, but at booking time and without any previous knowledge of Ottawa, economy won out and we decided to stay here, lured heavily by the advertised wireless internet amenity and the proximity to the downtown core. It hasn’t disappointed on the latter, which, since we are but laying our heads here at night, is ultimately the winning point for it, but one can only barely classify it as a B&B given its box-like spartan rooms, shabby décor, and location on a principal freeway exit corner across from a fenced-in school, city bus terminal and empty lot formerly the site of a crack house. The proprietors can only be as perplexed (as we now are ourselves) as to why two guys from Toronto driving a BMW are staying in a hovel like this. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but the truth is that heading east, things can only get better from here.

The lodging situation, however, is where our grievances end, for as we found out quickly when we went out for a late afternoon walk, Ottawa is a pleasant, small city, whose compact, downtown core is graced by grand government edifices, patriotic and tasteful monuments, stylish contemporary museums, and relaxed pedestrian thoroughfares.

The parliament buildings are truly majestic buildings whose setting on an open, grassy expanse can do nothing but inspire a sense of national pride, which it was no doubt meant to do when it was reconstructed in 1927. The Canadian flag that flaps against a brilliant blue sky on the top of the 92-metre Peace Tower seems to be a beacon marking the geographic and symbolic heart of the capital city region, with Ottawa laid out to its south and Gatineau, Quebec across the Ottawa River.

Ottawa seems to ooze the feeling of “government at work”, a turn of phrase that visitors from other parts of the country may consider an oxymoron. But indeed, with so many government buildings and their resident employees who fill the streets, cafes and restaurants at lunch and after four o’clock, there’s an underlying sense of the country’s business being taken care of at the same time that you walk around admiring the sights.

We were fortunate enough to have one such employee offer us an incredibly thorough introduction to what Ottawa has to offer. Suzie, a friend from university with whom I have kept in touch with, despite having taken just one Spanish course together many years ago, met us for dinner tonight after finishing at the office, where she works as legal counsel to the Senate. Over our meal and on an evening downtown stroll afterwards, she shared her encyclopaedic knowledge about the capital, its politics and its history, information that she seems to have effortlessly amassed during three summers of tour-guiding and 5 years of living here since she began law school. We got the low-down on the building of the Rideau Canal as we walked by the locks that connect it to the Ottawa River, the scoop on the bars where the Liberals and Conservatives go (separately) to let off steam after a long day on the Hill, and the little-known fact that the Royal Mint here doesn’t produce any Canadian currency (it leaves that to the facility out in Winnipeg), but rather handles printing and minting for numerous countries around the world.

She did all this, and like the experienced tour guide she is (or was, rather), returned us smoothly back to Parliament Hill just in time for the sound and light show projected on to Centre Block of the parliament buildings. A nice, if slightly cheesy, Canadian way to end an evening in the nation’s capital.