September 19 - Volksmarch in Ottawa, Ontario

We liked Ottawa enough to try to do one of the other Volksmarches that had been recommended by the Voyageur walking club. The start point was in a shopping mall just a couple of blocks east from Parliament, but we had stopped by the previous day just to collect the directions for the walk, and that turned out handy. Knowing the route allowed us to park farther to the east along the route where the parking was free. First, though, we walked the second 4-kilometer loop from the walk we had signed up for the previous day.

That loop proceeded past the Basilica of Notre Dame, which had silvery towers that were just gleaming like beacons in the strong sunlight. Since it was Sunday, we saw people streaming out from morning mass, I presume, into the parking lot in back. We continued around to the front and I thought the church was overall very pretty and well proportioned.

Across from the Basilica was a very, very modern all glass building housing the Canadian Museum of Fine Art. It was probably very much worth a visit, but at that moment we didn't have the time. Nearby was the Canadian armed forces museum in yet another architectural style. It was a nice old, stone block building with a castle-like architecture, but apparently the museum was moving to a completely new building along the Ottawa River to the west, I think. A World War II tank was sitting outside as kind of a lonely sentinel for the museum, but since it had not been on our agenda as a "must see" item, we were not too disappointed.

On a traffic island just down the street we found a peace memorial that had statues of the peacekeepers stationed at hot spots around the world. It was nice to see a tribute to those soldiers, and I would have liked to see something similar in Washington, D.C. After all, we seemed to put up memorials for every war but not for the soldiers who spend years of their lives helping prevent wars or bloodshed, and surely that kind of a sacrifice also deserves some recognition.

Across the street was Major Hill Park where we found a statue of the aforementioned Lt. Colonel By who had built the Rideau lock system. That park was right on the edge of the bluff across from the hill with Parliament on it, and from the top of the bluff we had grand views of that, the Ottawa River, and the Rideau lock system below.

Curling back to the east we passed the U.S. Embassy, a huge, soulless block of glass walls and steel, very severe. It was located in an island of ugly concrete traffic barricades, the only place we saw such barricades in Ottawa, and had some kind of modern sculpture at one end. The sculpture looked like a lightning bolt or tree branches without leaves or something, but whatever it was it certainly didn't look friendly. I tried taking a picture and a guard came running out at me from somewhere, but this being Canada he at least wasn't armed with a submachine gun! He followed us until we left the area, but I didn't take any more pictures and he didn't make any overtly hostile moves, but it certainly didn't make us want to stop and linger.

The route back to complete the loop led through a street market that was spread over several blocks. We found a very nice pendant that I bought for Monika at one stall, but the idea of walking for a couple more hours deterred us from buying anything heavier! I assume that this type of market is a weekend or possibly Sunday only type of event, but you could buy several kinds of fruit and other things to eat, and at the very least it made for an interesting break in the walking.

Back at the truck, we started off in the middle of the 11-kilometer walk path. The route led north toward the Rideau River, which we crossed over a series of 3 graceful white bridges. The bridges were constructed of a framework of fairly light steel girders and the white coating gave them almost the appearance of steel lace floating over the water, a very pretty effect. As we walked across the bridges we saw the sun glittering off the Rideau River upstream from us, and that just added to the sense of an enchantingly beautiful place.

On the other side of the river we walked through an apparently upscale neighborhood reminding me of Washington's "Embassy Row" area. The neighborhood contained some of the foreign embassies like Kuwait and the Union of South Africa, both of which were surprisingly large and impressive mansions. On one edge of this neighborhood was a large park that contained the residence of the Governor General at one end. We thought that the Governor General represented Canada internationally in somewhat the same ceremonial capacity as the German President or the Queen of England, but we weren't sure. There was no doubt, however, that he had a huge mansion beautifully situated in a park that must have been at least several hundred acres.

Just outside the park I took a picture of #7 Rideau Gate, which our instructions had described as the house for the leader of the Loyal Opposition, and the Canadian guard at the gatepost came over to help us. He kind of chuckled at us and said that the house we were looking for was actually on a different street a couple of blocks away. To help clarify, he went into his guardhouse to get us a copy of the map of the area, which he gave to us along with directions to the right house. Would the guards at the White House in the U.S. be that open and helpful? To answer that question you might try to visit the White House on a Sunday morning and wave at President Bush and snap a photograph as he drives by to go to church, but don't say I didn't warn you! We thanked him and continued on, but I could not have imagined a more clear cut contrast with the suspicious hostility of the guards at the U.S. Embassy and at the White House than this friendly, helpful Canadian whose job, after all, was guarding the entrance to the Governor General's house and grounds, a Very Important Person in Canada.

We curled back past the Prime Minister's residence, but it was located behind a screen of trees that made it awfully difficult to photograph. The French Embassy, in contrast, was out in plain sight but unfortunately it was not nearly so photogenic. It is curious to me that the French manage to construct both some of the prettiest and some of the ugliest structures in the world.

But just beyond the French Embassy we were in for a surprise because we walked right over a major waterfall. This turned out to be Rideau Falls, and they were both large and breathtakingly beautiful. So surprising to have that type of thing in the middle of a major capital city, I guess, but in any case we were impressed. I even managed to capture the rainbow hovering out over the edge of the waterfall with a river touring boat in the background, which was something near a photographic triple bank shot, to mix another metaphor.

We continued back down Sussex to the Elephant and Castle in the Rideau shopping center, and that allowed us to retrieve the Volksmarch box, pay our fee, and stamp our books. In line with our principle of "patronize our Volksmarch patrons", we also decided to have lunch there. I had a Shepherd's pie entree and Monika had beef burgundy with Yorkshire pudding. I ended up, as usual, eating part of Monika's entree, and we discussed exactly which part of the ensemble was the Yorkshire Pudding. The best we could figure was that the pudding was a layer of bread of some kind between the mashed potatoes and the beef, but that's really just a guess based on a process of elimination since I don't think "Yorkshire Pudding" refers to either mashed potatoes or the beef. But both entrees were absolutely great, so I can safely recommend it as a place to eat saving only the fact that our tab came to over $34 Canadian with tip. To be fair, that was partly due to Monika's draft beer at $5, but Ye Olde Value Added Tax was also playing its usual irritating role.

We were honor bound, of course, to finish up the 11-kilometer walk as directed, so we again headed down the street toward Parliament. This time, however, I was sufficiently intrigued by the Canadian Museum of Modern Photography that we stopped in to check out their galleries. While we saw some very nice photographs, we were on the whole unimpressed by the exhibitions. For one thing, this modern practice of putting text directly on the photograph to make sure that you get exactly the point that the photographer intended is getting completely out of hand. Many nice photographs were, in my opinion, defaced by having complete paragraphs of exposition splashed across the photograph in some garish color of ink. I first saw this new photographic method in a museum in Hamburg during Wanderung 5, and I was very disappointed that it seemed to be spreading. Let me be frank about this; in my opinion an artistic photograph should, like a good painting, speak for itself without anything other than the title or a sentence or two off to the side. Clobbering the viewer over the head with text to direct his or her thoughts just suppresses any natural process of interpretation or even illumination, and these seem to me to be an essential part of the artistic experience.

Getting down from my soapbox (yet again), we took the elevator back to street level and continued down Wellington Street to revisit the Parliament grounds. I just could not stop myself from taking one more picture of the Canadian Parliament building against the backdrop of the clear blue sky. It was just one of those picture perfect postcard type of compositions and we do, after all, need pictures like that for printing home made calendars for my kids as Christmas gifts. (Are we cheap or what?) I was also intrigued by the iron grillwork on a gate at the west end of the Parliament complex because it made such an intricate pattern of shadow on the concrete driveway.

The next building down Wellington Street was the absolutely huge Confederation Building, built in a similar stone and architectural style to the Parliament complex. The really funny thing about this building was that it was so huge that you could not get a decent look at it from the street right beside it; basically, you were just too close to get it all in view. However, the large block shaped building across the street was one of those "glass box" buildings that was providentially equipped with all mirrored panes of glass, so we could get a good view of the Confederation Building in the reflection! It was quite peculiar to get a view of a building on our right by looking at the reflections in the building to our left across the street, but it worked. Admittedly, it was a bit tricky to compose a picture that way, but that kind of challenge is always fun for me.

On this loop we also passed the Canadian Supreme Court, Department of Justice, and National Archives, all of which were pretty buildings. It was good to see the architecture cleanly without the chains, warning signs, barricades, and guardhouses that obscure the same buildings in Washington. The U.S. Department of Justice, in particular, is surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and with the guard posts it looks like nothing so much as some kind of surrealistic concentration camp. It was nice to be able to see the Canadian versions of these venerable institutions. That pretty much wrapped up the row of government buildings along Wellington Street, and we turned south one block to Sparks street to wend our way back.

Sparks street, it turned out, had been converted to a 5 or 6 block long pedestrian mall area, which made the walking very pleasant. We ultimately recrossed the Rideau River on another bridge, giving us a nice view back up the river, and then walked through the shopping center to close the 11-kilometer Volksmarch route. That left us with a bit of a trek back down Rideau Street to the side street where we had parked our truck. By the time we dropped wearily into our seats for the drive back to the campsite, we had been walking (and eating, of course) for a total of 4.5 hours. We were dog tired, but we felt that all our walking had really given us a much better feel for downtown Ottawa. We both found it to be a clean, pretty city with interesting architecture in the public buildings and natural beauty to boot in the Rideau and Ottawa rivers and Rideau Falls. We toured the Parliament building as well as some of the museums in the area on a previous visit, and we can highly recommend the city to anyone who wants to see this part of Canada.

The Gentle Reader may ask which of the two walks we preferred in case he or she does not have the luxury of doing both of them. To this imaginary question I would opine that the 11 kilometer walk from the Elephant and Castle would be the best single walk to see the various government buildings, bridges, Rideau Falls, the Sparks street mall, and the like. But if you are at all interested in military history or monuments, then the 3-segment walk from the recreation center would be a better bet. There are, in fact, yet other walks that cover that area; we met 2 women on our walk that were doing a different Volksmarch that covered some of the same ground, so I'm not sure what the absolute best one is. But really you can't go wrong if you do any of these walks since Ottawa is such a nice city with so many beautiful features.

Back at camp we had just enough energy to shower before turning in for yet another nap. Since it was really quite cool in the mornings and we had to face the walk from our campsite to the washrooms to shower, we decided that showering in the relatively warmer afternoons would be preferable. The nap revived us enough for Monika to make pancakes for dinner, and afterwards we just each worked on our computer for several hours. I was trying to capture our impressions of Ottawa for the journal while Monika downloaded, turned, and selected pictures. We finally called a halt to the work for the evening a little after 8:00 p.m. and shifted over to reading in bed, a relaxing way to end a very pleasant day.