Articles in Snapshots
The Wall Live
On the stage, half a wall was built with white bricks.
Roger Waters came on scene at 8 pm sharp. Fireworks lit up the place and he began singing. “So ya
Thought ya/ Might like to go to the show/ To feel the warm thrill of confusion and/ That space cadet glow”.
Fall Rhapsody
The weather was better this week and the light was perfect. We first drove to Hampton Park in Westboro, close to Island Park Drive and its huge mansions. There was a nice mix of trees and leaves of different colors, green, yellow, orange… I even spotted two teddy bear buried under piles of fallen leaves. I felt like a CSI agent when I took pictures of the “bodies”!
Fall in Gatineau Park
After relaxing by the Meech Lake, we headed to our favorite viewpoint, atop the Eardley Escarpment. From the Champlain lookout, perched 335 meters above sea level, you get to have offers a bird’s-eye view from the Gatineau Hills over the Ottawa Valley.
Meech Lake
Meech Lake is nested within Gatineau Park, the huge 400 km² park North of Ottawa, in the province of Québec. Many Canadians associated it with the 1987 Meech Lake Accord, when the then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney tried to persuade the the Province of Quebec to endorse the 1982 Canadian Constitution (yep, didn’t work). But for a lot of residents in the National Capital Region, Meech Lake is a nice sandy beach and a popular swimming spot during these hot and humid summer days.
Changing Sky
The weather is very unreliable these days. It changes back and forth, one second it’s hot and humid, the next one it’s cold and stormy. It’s warm when we go to bed and we wake up shivering because the temperature dropped during the night. Or we snuggled under layers of blankets and get rid of them during the night because the temperature went up again. Crazy.
Inside CBC Ottawa
Of all the free activities scheduled in Ottawa for Culture Days, I chose to visit CBC Ottawa, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s local T.V station. I worked on Sparks Street for a year, one block from the CBC Ottawa Broadcast Centre. I saw the flurry of journalists and T.V crews every day, and I have always wanted to see what the headquarter looked like inside.
Deep River, Ontario
During our Labour Day Week-End trip to rural Ontario, we spent a couple of night in Deep River, a small community located on Highway 17, between Pembroke and Matawa, opposite the Laurentian Mountains. The population is only about 4,000, and most residents work in the nearby Chalk River Nuclear Research Laboratory, 10 km away. But it is still a small Canadian town, with a few dirt roads, dense patches of forest and wild animals.
Deux-Rivières and Matawa
Upon arriving in Deux-Rivières, a small community located in Renfrew County, Highway 17 narrowed and seemed to plunged right into the Ottawa River. The River was pretty wide and we felt like on a small island. Except for a seasonal ferry access to Québec and an abandoned gas station/ convenience store, there wasn’t much. The scenery was beautiful though: the grey asphalt matched the dark stormy sky, but contrasted with the deep blue of the River.
