September 18 - Volksmarch in Orleans - Ottawa, Ontario

We had called the Point Of Contact for the walk and she gave us instructions on how to get to a church in Orleans, a small city just to the east of Ottawa, where the walk began. As it was a Saturday morning, the traffic was light and the drive through Ottawa to Orleans only took us a little over a half an hour. This walk was run in what I would consider a standard fashion, with a start point open from 8 to 9 a.m. and folks walked the route individually at their own pace. Although I was worried about getting lost (we do that very well indeed), I needn't have been. The trail was so well marked with red arrows or with chalk markings on the paved paths through the subdivisions that we were completely clear which way to go at each choice point.

The subdivisions we passed through seemed to be a planned community of some sort with asphalt trails in the parks and common areas between the houses. The houses seemed mostly to be of 1970s split levels and 1980s two story homes (lots of Palladian windows!). One section of mini-mansions appeared newer and could have been anywhere in the 1990s to present. But we saw no older homes at all. All of the homes were well kept and many sported the flowerbeds or gardens that seem to typify the English sections of Canada.

When we returned to the finish point, I just couldn't resist buying a Voyageur's sash for myself and Monika. These are a really colorful, long, knitted scarf-like thing that was wrapped around the waist like a belt and could serve as a wallet for small items as well as for decoration or, I expect, for warmth when necessary. We also bought some "Ottawa Voyageurs Club" pins and stuck those on our hats to go with the Sudbury club's "Nickel City Walkers" pin. Living in a trailer with very restricted space, it was quite fortunate that such small things made us happy!

We asked the friendly folks about their other walks while we were there, and they recommended both an 11 kilometer walk of the downtown area plus another 12 kilometer walk that you could take in 3 separate 4 kilometer sections. Well, after just completing 10 kilometers we were a little too tired to take on another 11 or 12 kilometers, but the thought of a 4 kilometer section seemed just about right. So we drove back west to downtown Ottawa and parked near an athletic center where we signed up for the 3 x 4 kilometer walk. Each of the 4 kilometer routes was different, of course, but we picked the one that lead over to the Canadian Parliament as we had seen that on a previous visit many years back with our boys and I remembered it as quite picturesque.

As we wandered from the starting point to the Parliament on Rideau Street, we stopped off in a Subway for lunch and I spent the time just watching the people crossing at the nearby intersection. After watching folks the better part of half an hour, admittedly a terribly biased sample, I concluded that obesity was not as severe a problem in Canada as in the U.S. Of the 100+ folks I watched, only 1 was obese and I saw no one who was morbidly wallowing in waves of fat while walking. The sample was, admittedly, biased toward the college age population of the nearby Ottawa University and the Yuppie segment living in downtown Ottawa, but I think at a similar intersection in Washington, D.C. near the universities I would see a higher frequency of morbidly obese Americans. I made a mental note to go down to Georgetown and do that some time to compare the results. After lunch we continued our westward march past a hotel with a beautifully intricate stone facade and across the Rideau Canal to the Parliament complex.

The architecture of the Parliament buildings was as nice as I remembered. It was a kind of a crenellated and turreted type of rough-hewn stone facade from maybe the Edwardian era that just looked interesting to me. The central tower of the main Parliament building came complete with a replica of Big Ben, and as we were walking by we heard it strike the hour with exactly the same "Westminster" chime series (at least that is what it was called on my Grandfather clock!). Very pretty, and no where did we see any overt signs of security measures, which made it a much more peaceful experience than visiting the U.S. Capitol with its ubiquitous armed guards, prohibited areas, and traffic incursion barriers everywhere you look. We both agreed that the Canadian Parliament reminded us of the way the U.S. Capitol used to be before the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was so relaxing to walk the Parliament grounds unhindered and take as many photographs as I wanted without wondering who was going to jump out of a guardhouse with a gun and threaten me in the name of national security. I suppose the Canadians take all that for granted, but they shouldn't because it is so easily and quickly lost, as the U.S. example shows.

From the Parliament grounds we crossed Wellington Street to a string of memorial parks that stretched back to the new Ottawa City Hall. The guide for this particular walk explained about each of the military memorials and monuments along our route, and there were a lot of them. The first monument was a huge stone gate with bronze figures of soldiers struggling to pull an artillery piece. Although originally designed to commemorate soldiers fallen in World War I (called "The Great War" in Canada) and dedicated in 1939, the dates for World War II and Korea have been added to the monument. Most poignant of all to me personally was the tomb of the unknown soldier that was right in front of the war memorial. To me it symbolized all the soldiers who were never coming back and whose names and identities have so quickly faded from the memories of we the living. There is really no way we can make it up to them, and I suppose that is one reason that I consider war to be a last resort rather than a first resort for international policy. I am not a pacifist, but for any war I want to have sufficient justification that I personally would be able to stand in front of a grieving widow and orphaned children and say that their sacrifice was worth it. I cannot say that for Viet Nam where a fair number of my compatriots in the Army probably died, and perhaps due in part to that it is a litmus test for whether I personally will support a war.

Canadians were also involved in some rather obscure wars that I had very little knowledge of and I wondered if Canadians thought all the wars that they had been involved in would pass that type of litmus test. We saw statues commemorating some kind of rebellion in the Northwest territories in 1885 as well as the Boer War of 1899-1901, little known wars to us in the U.S. But we also saw a very impressive statue to the aboriginal soldiers who have fought and died in the Canadian armed forces. The symbolism of the warrior surmounted by a warlike eagle ready to strike seemed somehow very appropriate to me from what very little I know about native American cultures.

A very pretty little fountain in the middle of the park commemorated the builder of Ottawa, Lt. Colonel John By. He constructed the Rideau canal, which apparently resulted in the city being founded and appeared to be still in use when we walked over it later. At the very least, it had water in it and seemed to have operational locks of some kind. It led back into the heart of the city, reflecting the sky like a blue arrow into the middle of town, but I really don't know what canals or rivers it connected to. On the lighter side, I saw some Canadians in extremely colorful native costumes wandering around the streets. But they turned out to be clowns for the Shriner's parade that was starting at 2:00 p.m., so the costumes really did not reflect any particular First, Second, or Third Nation.

As we walked past City Hall, we suddenly heard some weird music that was coordinated to our walking somehow. We noticed four speakers mounted in stone spires and camera in what looked for all the world like the head of some dragon or sea serpent. Apparently that camera took images of passers by and converted them to combinations of musical tones. Monika took great delight in moving this way and that way to see what sounds she could elicit from the "animal", and I tried moving different parts of my body with the result that indeed different sounds came out of the speakers. It was a set up that should delight school children (as well as us), and I can only conclude that someone, somewhere in the Ottawa city government has a sense of humor.

On our way back to the finish point we passed the National Defense Headquarters that seemed to be the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Pentagon, and that was the only place I saw car barriers and a guardhouse. But as we are walking by I spotted some kind of small propeller aircraft circling overhead directly over us, and I'm certain that would have never been allowed anywhere near the Pentagon in the U.S. We walked back toward the starting point on Besserer, only one block south of Rideau but much less commercialized. Our feet were getting tired by this point, so we rather gratefully climbed back into the truck and worked our way back west toward camp.

That was easier said than done, since from our parking spot in a side street we first had to head north towards Quebec. I thought, nothing easier, just make a U-turn at the next corner. However, all next corners had "No U-Turn" signs and before we knew we were headed for the bridge to Hull in Quebec. Suddenly, it looked like we were in a different country because in Quebec all signs are in only one language, French. It seems that the Quebec folks think bilingualism is great when it comes to Ontario posting signs in both languages, but completely unnecessary when it comes to signs for English drivers in Quebec. I turned off at the first street and luckily Monika still had the map from our Volksmarch so that she could find out where we were and route us back to another bridge that led us back to Ottawa. Right after the bridge we found a street along the banks of the Ottawa River that led back west to our campground. The first part of the drive was full of construction for new roadways and some kind of a new center or sports arena, but after that the drive along the river was very pretty indeed. I decided we would take one day during our visit to do some biking along the river just to enjoy that aspect of the city.

Back at camp we had a glass of wine and settled in for a few hours with the computers before collapsing in bed for a nap. After a light supper of soup and crackers we built another campfire for the evening. Unlike the previous evening, the wind was boxing the compass and we were regularly dosed with smoke, but it was still fun. We had one particular hunk of wood that literally produced showers of sparks that were whipped everywhere by the wind, and that was as fun to watch as fireworks. Fortunately it was cool and still pretty damp from the last rains, so the fire danger was pretty low and we just kept an eye on where all those sparks went. We read a few more chapters in "Angels & Demons" to round out our evening and turned in for the night.