Ottawa, Sept 5th-8th: A Town of Diplomats, A City of Past and Present

Public disclosure:

Ottawa is a place of many diplomats, where many of the Canadian politicians live, and is also a place of rich history. This city pairs well with the majesty of Montreal, which also contains a strong historical European influence. I visited both together shortly after finishing middle school and found them really enjoyable. It was excellent to return to Ottawa and document my time there; and I want to do the same with Montreal!

It goes without saying that this Ottawa trip was incredibly exciting for me. I got the chance to meet people in the Fulbright program -- staff, students, and scholars (who come as postdoctoral scholars)-- and revisit Ottawa.

So I hope this post is enjoyable to read and view!

For starters, I flew from Edmonton to Winnipeg to Ottawa, which was more indirect than I would have liked. But this travel (both ways) was far smoother than my trip from Oregon to Alberta! For that I am deeply grateful, as this time I did not have my parents to guide me. These photos and insights in this post are through my personal lens as both a single traveller and as a Fulbright student.

Winnipeg Airport (on way to Ottawa)
Just a nice modern and not too busy airport. Pleasant place to transit through!

We spent a LOT of time in the Lord Elgin hotel; I arrived Thursday evening before the rest of the group....and utterly famished. I took some photos before leaving because I knew that's what my parents would want!

Lord Elgin Hotel Lobby:

My Room:For those curious, that is a mobility scooter I loaned while in Ottawa; this greatly simplified my air travel. (Mobility scooters go as cargo in an airplane, and that means extended wait times to check in and retrieve the scooter.)

 Downtown Ottawa Nando'sAs I mentioned, I touched down THursday evening and was hungry -- I had little but various drinks (including water), almonds, and some cookies on the way there. So I had a craving for Nando's famous peri-peri chicken. Its existence was flagged to me when I passed it by in a taxi on my way to the hotel for the first time. It is just a few minutes walk up the hill from the hotel, which worked for my purposes!

Unfortunately, I only got a 'Hot' level spicy dish, but it turns out this Nando's has a reasonable understanding of spiciness! So the 'Very Hot', which I tried out with some of the mashed potatoes, was actually fairly mouth-warming! All in all, it's a delightful surprise.

I got a chance to sleep and rest before the events started in full on Friday at 11 AM.

Fulbright Canada orientation in Lord Elgin Hotel
We meet in the lobby and then headed upstairs. As you can see below, we were given goodies!

  

We got a good amount of food upon arrival as we listened to Fulbright Canada people explain the program to us! We met in this room often, giving us a sense of 'home' during the few days in Ottawa.

After lunch and speeches, we had three panels followed by roundtable discussions -- on Gender, Identity, and Education.

After getting settled, we visited the Supreme Court of Canada next! This may not be obvious from the photos I took, but the building is hyperfocused around symmetry, even without practical purpose sometimes!

I have to admit: the Supreme Court was excellent, especially with our insightful guide who told us how the US and Canadian systems differ. Ontario and Quebec get the most judges -- 3 each, something like that -- as they have the largest bulk of Canadian population! This brought to my mind a concern that indigenous peoples, some of whom may consider themselves nations, are not represented here or in the US on the highest courts of the land.

There was a more pressing concern for me though...the Supreme Court, being an old building, had no accessible entrance except at the back. This was on a day that Ottawa decided to rain down on me too! Then one had to take a steep ramp with a tight turn to enter the building. This did feel like a failing to me, even if the experience was largely positive.

After that it was time to once again take many photos of Ottawa.

Various photos of Ottawa splendor!

We made our way back from the Supreme Court of Canada to the Lord Elgin once more. We were given a few moments to rest before heading to our big dinner event.

Friday evening we headed to the Rideau club which *required* us to dress formally!

This is a sight we saw in the building that holds the Rideau club.

The Rideau club was actually at the 15th floor or so, and it gave us a first hint at the connections that Fulbright Canada has!

Salmon and potatoes below were surprisingly good~

 Followed by desssert

On Saturday we had a few major events. First, in the morning after breakfast, was the second round of panels and roundtable discussions on the subjects: Environmental Sustainability, Public Health (the panel I lead!), and Discourse in Media (haha it's twitter). If you really need to hear more about this, just ask me! I took good notes for once. But one could mention that my panel asked about how Black Lives Matter intersects with public health -- it was an exciting question!

After this we had the indigenous walking tour which showed us even more of the beauty of Ottawa. But we much better understood the indigenous histories that are obscured by oppression in Canada. Our guide was clearly passionate, delivering us key knowledge while showing us a new side of Ottawa. Without this walking tour, the trip would have felt very incomplete!

Indigenous Walking Tour

Saturday was a rather busy day as I've pointed out! After the panels and the walking tours, we walked across the interprovincial bridge from Ottawa (in Ontario) to Gatineau (in Quebec; the town bordering Ottawa on Quebec side). The bridge itself is cool!

 But our real attraction was on the other side of the bridge. No, not the below image.

It is *this* below image! This is from the Canadian Museum of History, where I mainly hung around the indigenous art exhibitions and took pictures.

After this, I was feeling incredibly hungry -- like I said Saturday was an immense day! We ate breakfast at 8 am and by the time I went through the exhibits it was....probably 1:30 pm or so. So I ate at one of the cafes in the museum -- just a burger and a soda. It's almost as if I didn't leave the US! But it was an interesting experience being in Quebec if not for the simple fact that French is the main language. I considered ordering in French...but realized I might have to switch back to English anyways.

Someday I'll make my way back to Quebec (proper)! Looking for that excuse to attend a conference or something in Montreal, which I have a personal connection to.

With that, we walked back across.

 We were given a chance to rest before ice skating, which was truly...a chilling experience. The ice rink was kept very cold, even if you were not on the ice yourself! I myself dreaded skating but decided to venture forth....in two attempts. In my first attempt, I skated just an eighth or so of the ice rink (which takes up most of the room) before giving up....the soreness in my feet, especially the middle of my feet, was too much to bear.

But then someone pointed out that I had my skates on wrong! That bolstered my confidence to go for a second attempt and begin skating around the rink. My first attempt had established a "no fall" record and I wanted to keep that. Living with a neuromuscular condition makes this activity inherently fraught with risk, especially as I could strain my muscles, and that made this more exciting. Though ordinarily I might frown on calling it an achievement of mine -- I had help from very kind people who held my hand as I moved alongside the wall. But this felt like a tremendous display of strength for me!

Afterwards, feeling exhausted, I grabbed some hot chocolate (provided by Tim Hortons of course) and played a game of Canadian trivia. I successfully identified Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion (both of whom I had seen earlier this summer when I went to Las Vegas) and even the Tragically Hip. Listing Quebec City as the oldest fortified city in North America north of Mexico was easy! But many of the questions, like what do you call the $1 and $2 CAD coins, tripped me up.

To finish the day on a strong note, we had a farewell dinner of pizza. Unfortunately, the pizza tended to be pork (which I do not eat), but the two cheese slices I had were quite good! This gave us the food necessary to feel alive after such an intense day.

That night I went to sleep and rose the following morning feeling refreshed. On Sunday, we were given the opportunity to eat at a breakfast buffet in Grill 41 in the hotel! ("41" refers to the Lord Elgin Hotel being founded in 1941.) Many of us left EARLY in the morning on Sunday, like 4 am early, but there were still enough people left for company.

Then a newly made friend and I went to investigate Ottawa on a walking tour of our own. He was waiting for a Parliament tour and I was waiting  before my 4pm flight (which felt incredibly late in the day).

First are some ducks!

But the great sight we saw was the water control system that allowed a ferry to leave this canal from the  Ottawa harbor and go out into the sea! Truly impressive -- it definitely seems like such an 18th century invention, but it remains such a clever work of engineering. My friend and I were both very astounded and decided to walk alongside the length of this canal.

And then I returned to my Canadian home of Alberta. Going to the airport was made less stressful by heading with someone else from the Fulbright orientation!

Ottawa Airport Shots

This shot is over...Winnipeg I think?

This shot is from the skies on the way to Edmonton

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but when I got home I was hungry. I took the public transportation path home from the airport (when I landed around 8:30). Just to get on the bus from the airport, I had to rush to a Tim Hortons and get change so I could pay the $5 CAD to the bus driver.

Then I transferred to light rail to head back to the uni and in the process met a kind person who helped guide me through the process. We actually talked for the remainder of my time on the transit. They were also heading my direction too!

The rest of the way was smoother but the University Station, where I got off, was far larger than I ever expected. Not being with my scooter meant that I had to walk that distance with my backpack and rollon.

So I was truly tired and hungry when I got home. I ate the last of my pre-made noodles (Malaysian rice noodles) to sustain me and then I went to sleep. As you can tell this was quite the experience!