I think I finally found where Ottawa’s rebel youth is going to smoke pot and to talk about over­pow­er­ing the gov­ern­ment — at least, I like to think that if there is such a place, that’s where it is. Phew. I feel slightly relieved: at times, pretty Ottawa can seem a tad too pol­ished and clean.

Not so far from Par­lia­ment hill, the Prince of Wales bridge is an old rail bridge that joins Ontario to Québec. As rail trans­port even­tu­ally dimin­ished dur­ing the 20^th cen­tury, it was aban­doned. There are always talks of using it for a rail project that would con­nect to the exist­ing O-Train but so far, the bridge remains unused.

I often drive on the Ottawa River Park­way and kept on notic­ing this old bridge. Even­tu­ally, we decided to go have a look. It is offi­cially closed to the pub­lic but the door was open and frankly, I couldn’t care less about “dan­ger” signs when I want to take pictures.

Urban decay is some­thing I find fas­ci­nat­ing – blame my French artis­tic upbring­ing. On top of hav­ing nice lines to use for pho­tog­ra­phy, I love the colour­ful and some­what witty graf­fiti on the pil­lars of the bridge. This place had a soul.

You can see the whole Ottawa Spring set here.

Bridge Entrance

Spi­der Web

By The Water	Ter­rasse de la Chaudière
Across the Fence	Eat the Rich
Prince of Wales	Wise Advice
The Bridge	Draw­ing
What Ya say?	Train Tracks
Feng	Graf­fiti

Related arti­cles:

1. Town­ships of Head, Clara and Maria
2. The Rideau Neighborhood
3. Grey­ish November
4. Warm Weather Makes Headlines
5. Rapides-des-Joachims, Québec