A small photo montage I took today at Centennial Park in Canmore. First time I have seen the park empty on a Saturday.
A small photo montage I took today at Centennial Park in Canmore. First time I have seen the park empty on a Saturday.
All over the world Chinese communities are celebrating the 15 day festival of New Years 2012. Here in Ottawa, Chinatown ushered in the Year of the Dragon on Saturday with a parade of dancing and music.
Multimedia piece by Maria Church and Portia Baladad reported for Centretown News, January 2011.
The National Capital Commission is in full prep mode getting the city ready to host the 34th annual Winterlude festival.
Construction workers and mascots alike pitched in to make snow in Jacques-Cartier Park last week. The park is being transformed into Snowflake Kingdom, a central hub of snowy activity during the two week festival starting February 2.
People and cars are running smoothly again today in the Glebe community.
The section of Bank Street opened yesterday for the first time since construction blocked off traffic in late May.
After rerouting traffic and bus routes through small community streets in the Glebe, drivers and bus riders are both saying they are happy things are back to normal.
And for businesses in Bank, they are breathing a sigh of relief that customers are drifting back to their stores.
Jordan is the assistant manager at PomPom clothing boutique in the Glebe. She says in the beginning people were supportive but once they street became dirty and dusty from the construction, they stopped coming.
“Business definitely started to die down, but now that the street is finished and everything is nice and clean, everyone is really curious to come out and see what it looks like,” she says, “I definitely think business has picked up a little bit and will pick up a lot more in the future.”
But not everyone is quite as relieved. Some residents of the Glebe say they enjoyed the peace that settled on the usually busy bank street.
“We loved it being closed because you could just walk freely and even in the evening, walking just felt so unique on such a busy street,” says Claudia Vanwick, a resident of the Glebe. “But of course it is much better now that it is open and life is a little bit back to normal.”
Vanwick says she is excited to see the street decorated for Christmas.
And this Christmas season will be business as usual for the Glebe but the traffic flow will only last so long. The next section of the Bank construction is set to begin this upcoming spring.
This story was reported for Midweek on CKCU 93.1, broadcast noon Wednesday, November 16. http://www4.carleton.ca/jmc/midweek/
The department of Veterans Affairs has a new funding request coming at them this year, but it is not the usual request – these guys are barking.
Local members of the project Courageous Companions brought their service dogs with them to appeal for funding last week.
They are asking the government to help pay for canine rehabilitation for veterans.
Courageous Companions was a six month pilot project training canines to assist Canadian veterans with disabilities. Similar to a guide dog program, the service dogs are trained specificly for each veterans needs.
Jessica O’Neill is one of the programs creators. She says it can cost between 25,000 and 40,000 dollars to train one service dog.
Once the pilot project’s limited government funding ran out early last year, the program continued with support from the veterans themselves, as well as the volunteer’s personal pockets.
“It’s been a really big struggle to maintain the program,” says O’Neill, “but everyone who has participated in this, volunteers and members alike, will explain to you the unbelievable benefits.”
O’Neill explains that canine rehabilitation is accepted alternative treatment in the United States. Courageous Companions was actually modelled after an American program.
Patriot PAWS is just one of the many American programs. Run by Lori Stevens, Patriot PAWS has been operating for five years.
Stevens says that a service dog can make a world of a difference to a veteran.
“It lets them still feel like a man or a woman that use to defend our country for us and use to take care of others. It is really hard for them to ask for help.”
She says the dogs can be trained to remind a veteran to eat or to drop down and pick up something if the veteran is not able to reach it.
In one case, Stevens said the service dog was able to encourage a veteran to leave a situation where his Post Traumatic Stress was very high.
It is because of these anecdotal stories about canine rehabilitation that NDP MP and Veteran Affairs Critic Peter Stoffer says the government should be funding programs like Courageous Companions.
He says the funding is already there. “If you can afford to buy pharmaceuticals for a veteran in order to ease their psychological problems then you can easily afford to look at an alternative instead of drugs to help a veteran.”
Stoffer says he will be supporting a coordinated effort to appeal for government funding for Courageous Companions.
The Umbrella Organisation that represents Courageous Companions is the Canadian Foundation for Animal Support Services.
Joanne Moss heads the organisation. She says funding can be possible through donation. Moss says the latest initiative of the organisation is to set up the Lewis Mackenzie Fund.
The project’s patron is retired Major General Lewis Mackenzie, a Canadian who commanded the UN protection force in former Yugoslavia.
Moss explains, “he has very willingly come on board and recognizes the need for services to help, as he calls it, his soldiers.”
By donation or by government funding, O’Neill stresses the importance of keeping this program alive so that Courageous Companions can continue training service dogs for veterans.
“The biggest point is that even if they save just one life, it is worth it.”
A new international study came out today in the journal Nature questioning Canadians eating habits.
McGill’s University’s Navin Ramankutty is one of the lead researchers of the study, which looks into problems of global food distribution and environmental impact from production.
One recommendation — eat less meat.
I spoke with farmers around Ottawa, an expert in agricultural economics as well as Navin Ramankutty. Here is a mini documentary which broadcast on Midweek yesterday.
A Carleton professor is revamping the study of political economy by creating a comic book of the Communist Manifesto.
George Rigakos, an associate professor of law at Carleton, has published a graphic novel illustrating the famous work of Karl Marx.
As head of the political science department at Carleton, Randall Germain said he thinks the comic book is a great idea.
Germain said, while he has not heard about it before, he knows Carleton University would welcome the comic book as a teaching tool in lectures.
The original Communist Manifesto turns one hundred and sixty three on February twenty first.
Even if you are not looking for consistency in the streetscapes of Old Ottawa South, it is hard to miss this one. For residents of the area, front porches are not simply a decorative design feature, they are a culture. A defining element of the homes here since the neighbourhood was built, the front porch acts like a huge welcome sign in front of each house.
So when infill developers completed several projects in the last year, it became increasingly obvious to neighbours the newly built houses were not meshing with the front porch culture.
For Candice Bernes the matter became personal when a developer bought the property beside her home of 13 years. Bernes said the house plans are for a front facing garage sticking out eight feet beyond her own porch and casting a looming shadow on her front yard. But Bernes said it’s not just the lack of sunlight that is an issue.
“When we step out onto the porch, we look down the street, wave to the neighbour,” said Bernes about the culture of porches. With the new development her view down the street will be blocked to one side.
Bernes said the sense of community is important to her, expressing it as the feeling of a small village within a city. “It’s one of the reasons I live here! You get that communal sense that your neighbours are an extension of your own life.”
“It’s almost a sense of betrayal if the development is so inconsiderate to the lifestyle that people here are already living,” said Bernes.
For many residents in the area, the last straw was a development for 71 Hopewell Avenue brought up earlier this year. The proposed triplex will be a massive structure with three garage doors built to face the street.
The community response was swift and a petition was soon given to city planners with over 400 signatures pressuring the city to change its zoning bylaws.
Attacking the “big box” of zoning bylaws
To the disadvantage of residents like Bernes, the current zoning bylaws mean developers can choose to ignore complaints about inappropriate building design.
“Zoning is kind of like a big box sitting over a property, and as long as you stay inside that box you can pretty much do whatever you want,” explained OSWatch co-chair Brendan McCoy.
But with the added pressure Hopewell has stirred up from residents in the surrounding community, McCoy is optimistic the snowball effect from complaints around the city could lead to changes in the zoning bylaws.
While McCoy said he is not sure if anything can be done in the immediate future to prevent Hopewell from developing as planned, he remains hopeful.
“City staff recognizes there is problem,” he said, “my experience is that changes from the city are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Typically, real change that is going to stick takes time and effort by a whole bunch of people.”
McCoy will be speaking for the community on Nov. 16, 2010 at the application hearing for the 71 Hopewell development. Many residents of Old Ottawa South are expected to attend.
Candice Bernes speaks to the infill in her neighbourhood bellow:
This is a photo slideshow about a brand new business on Bank Street in Old Ottawa South. Life of Pie, a locally run bakery, uses whole ingredients to produce what could only be described as “homemade” pies. I would like to thank the store’s owner, Kerry Duffy, for allowing me into their aromatic abode to shoot these pictures for a multimedia journalism class.
Introducing: Life of Pie.