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Home » Snapshots

The Rideau Neighborhood

Written by on October 3, 2009 – 11:36 am14 Comments

The Rideau neigh­bor­hood in Ottawa is prob­a­bly the busiest, the most dodgy (by Cana­dian stan­dards!), the most pol­luted and the most cen­tral neigh­bor­hood in Ottawa.

Located down­town nearby the Byward Mar­ket, Par­lia­ment Hill and the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa, it’s basi­cally a three-levels indoor shop­ping mall stuck between Macken­zie King’s Bridge and Rideau Street. It’s above all a hub: when you go down­town, you go to Rideau. Since the city is basi­cally based on an East — West line, pretty much all buses tran­sit there, either on the bridge, either on Rideau street.

The Depart­ment of National Defense, a huge 1960s build­ing, is located right beside. It’s very com­mon to see employ­ees, dressed in mil­i­tary cam­ou­flage clothes or navy blue to hang around, going for lunch or on their way home.

Rideau is also home to a lot of pan­han­dlers and home­less peo­ple: the Mis­sion and the Sal­va­tion Army are located nearby. By night, it’s not so safe with a bit of drug deal­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion (although it’s a bit cold for the lat­ter, it seems).

The shop­ping cen­ter is a major hub, espe­cially dur­ing the win­ter since it’s indoor and has a foot­bridge to The Bay, a big depart­ment store located across.

From MacKenzie's King Bridge

From MacKenzie’s King Bridge

The Rideau Canada From The Bridge

The Rideau Canada From The Bridge

National Defense Building

National Defense Building

Crossing The Street...

Cross­ing The Street…

Caution: Traffic

Cau­tion: Traffic

Huge Buses Queue

Huge Buses Queue

Towards Rideau Street

Towards Rideau Street

Rideau Street

Rideau Street

Work In Progress

Work In Progress

School Bus On Rideau

School Bus On Rideau

Related posts:

  1. Warm Weather Makes Headlines
  2. Rideau Hall
  3. 1, Sus­sex Drive
  4. Skat­ing On The Rideau Canal
  5. The Peace Tower

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14 Comments »

  • Angela says:

    Wow, if I took a pic­ture of a ques­tion­able neigh­bor­hood in Paris, you’d see all the trash and nas­ti­ness, but this actu­ally looks really nice. I guess you have to be there to feel the ‘danger’.

  • richard says:

    Rideau isn’t that bad. You obvi­ously haven’t been head­ing out to parts of Vanier and Mechan­icsville.
    .-= richard´s last blog ..Man­i­festo of Apho­risms =-.

  • Margaret says:

    I used to go to high school right down­town, and catch the bus on the bridge behind the Rideau Cen­tre next to the Depart­ment of National Defence build­ing. I remem­ber that dur­ing Desert Storm (the war in Kuwait) they decided to put a few con­crete bar­ri­ers around the front entrance, because until that point it would have been pos­si­ble to drive a vehi­cle straight into the lobby. We high school stu­dents used to use the DND build­ing as a bridge from the Lau­rier St. bridge to the other other side — there was pub­lic access, you could just walk through the build­ing from one side to the other. That was our reg­u­lar route, through­out grade nine and ten. I remem­ber being VERY annoyed with Sad­dam Hus­sein when the DND even­tu­ally closed everyone’s access to the build­ing. Ok ok, I could see the graf­fiti with “Blood is thicker than oil!” and get it, but geez! They weren’t the ones who had to climb down and then up those damn spi­ral stairs to get across the canal and then back up again to get to the bus stop. With a French horn.

    I think my inter­est in pol­i­tics may have stemmed from that moment.…

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