The big heat seems to be over and win­ter will be here soon enough… So on Sat­ur­day, I took my cam­era and went down­town for long walk. Despite its “bor­ing” rep­u­ta­tion, Ottawa is actu­ally a really nice city.

I first went on Par­lia­ment Hill. Fun place to hang out, there’s always some­thing hap­pen­ing: deposed politi­cians try­ing to net­work, busy Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, demon­stra­tors, tourists try­ing to take a per­fect picture…

On the right side of the cen­tre block of Par­lia­ment build­ing and its mas­sive Peace Tower are the Rideau Canal’s locks. On June 28, 2007, The UNESCO added the Rideau Canal to the World Her­itage List (Cana­dian pride and a cou­ple of signs added along the Canal). Right in front of the locks, across the river, is the province of Que­bec. The steel bridge is the Royal Alexan­dra Inter­provin­cial Bridge, extremely busy at rush hours since a lot of peo­ple in Gatineau (Que­bec) work in Ottawa.

The Par­lia­ment

The Locks

One of my favorite place in Ottawa is the Byward mar­ket, nearby Par­lia­ment Hill. The mar­ket build­ing is open year-round, and open-air stalls are oper­ated in the warmer months (trans­la­tion : May to Octo­ber — bliz­zard and fruits don’t mix well). The mar­ket build­ing is home to a bunch of eth­nic restau­rants (Chi­nese, Lebanese, Japan­ese, Ital­ian, French…).

The Byward

The Mar­ket

The Rideau Canal

Fire Acci­dent In Chinatown

I then walked towards the busi­ness dis­trict, on the other side of the Rideau Canal. Streets were empty and quiet — for once… From MacKen­zie Bridge to busy Elgin Street, from Elgin to Bank Street, from Bank to Somerset.

The Par­lia­ment By Night

The River At Sunset

Chi­na­town. Cana­dian mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism : post­ing board with ads in every lan­guage, Chi­nese churches and mul­ti­lin­gual ser­vices, Tamil movies and Span­ish tacos stalls, kids play­ing hide and seek and par­ents call­ing them in Can­tonese, Man­darin, Viet­namese, and even­tu­ally in English.

Som­er­set aka the flam­ma­ble dis­trict. Two days ear­lier, a 5-storey build­ing burned to the ground. The build­ing was being smashed down while for­mer res­i­dents were sift­ing through the remains for per­sonal pos­ses­sions.
I picked up a cou­ple of Coconut Bread and a Coke at the Kowloon mar­ket and drove home.
The sun­set is much ear­lier now… I drove by The Par­lia­ment and the river and looked at the sky.

Related posts:

1. Ottawa At Dusk
2. The Ottawa Locks
3. The Rideau Canal
4. The Locks At Dusk
5. Pic­ture of the Week: The Canal Drained