I entered France with my Canadian passport and I decided to become a woman with a mission. I was going to find out if French were rude. About an hour after setting foot in my former country, I was ready to say yes. As soon as the plane landed, you could tell the French returning back home from the Canadians: the former loudly rushed out of the plane while the later politely let each other go first.

Years after years, I take the pulse of the population and I can’t help comparing France to Canada. While the former is still a great country on many aspects, there are many reasons why I won’t come back to live in France anytime soon. On the other side, I recently realized that Canada taught me a lot more than I expected.

Digital cameras are now widespread and the price of both DSLR and compact camera went down quite a lot. Pretty much everyone has some kind of camera these days, whether it’s a small camera phone or a high end DSLR. But few people realize that it’s not that much about the camera – it’s about the photographer’s eye.

In Ottawa, it doesn’t rain, it pours. You barely get any warning at all: one minute, the sky is grey and you feel a drop of water, the next one you are as soaked as if you had taken a shower. Similarly, thunderstorms can be quite impressive in the area: flash floods and power outages are not that rare. It’s part of our severe weather-prone country, I guess.

The Byward Market is somewhat of a fixture in Ottawa. It is located downtown, close to the Rideau neighborhood, between Sussex and Rideau St. There is a main market building (very similar to Kensington Market in Toronto or to The Forks in Winnipeg), surrounded by an open-air market on George, York, ByWard and William Streets.

On a warm summer night, I grabbed my camera and headed to downtown around sunset. I hadn’t been around the Byward Market area at this time of the day in a while. It was close to 10 pm and the sun had barely set.
I stopped by to see my favourite sculpture in Ottawa, “Maman” the huge spider by artist Louise Bourgeois, stuck between Notre-Dame church and the National Gallery of Canada.