Ottawa Quality of Living

In a 2007 survey, MoneySense magazine ranked Ottawa-Gatineau first out of 122 communities in Canada as economically the best place to live. At the same time, Ottawa was ranked 18th in the world among cities with the best quality of life by a global survey published by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, placing it third in Canada, after Vancouver and Toronto.

City on the Grow

According to the 2006 Census, Ottawa is the fastest-growing G8 city with a population of 1,130,761 in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, putting us fourth behind Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver (with Calgary and Edmonton very close behind). In 2001, city officials predicted a growth rate of 11.5 percent, but by 2006, had seen only a five percent growth in that time.

Queer Ottawa

The first march for gay and lesbian rights on Parliament Hill on August 28, 1971 was far less violent than the infamous 1969 Stonewall riots in the US, but no less important. It marked the dawn of the modern gay and lesbian movement in Canada, and very specifically, in Ottawa. That day, about 100 gay men and lesbians walked through the rain to announce their demands to Parliament. Key players included the Gay Day Committee of Toronto Gay Action, who, a week before the march, presented the federal government with a brief called “We Demand,” which included calls to create uniform heterosexual and homosexual age of consent and allow gays to serve in the military.

In Gary Kinsmen’s book The Regulation of Desire, he talks about how the federal government worked very hard to regulate homosexuality through a series of national security campaigns conducted by the RCMP during the 1950s and 60s. According to Kinsmen, RCMP agents would set up camp in the basement tavern of the Lord Elgin Hotel, one of Ottawa’s oldest gay hangouts, and take photographs of gay men through holes cut in newspapers. Despite this, a large network of closeted men and women existed in the capital, congregating at private dinner parties and weekend cottage gatherings.

Ottawa’s first gay organization was formed in 1971, when seven men met at the home of Maurice Bélanger and Michael Black, calling themselves Gays of Ottawa. The group rented office space on the sixth floor of Pestalozzi College, a free-thinking institution located in an apartment building at Rideau and Chapel Streets.

During the 1970s, gay men in Ottawa were so besieged, their experience was referred to as the “Ottawa witch hunt,” but while police surveillance, harassment, and arrest of gays in local parks increased, many charges (of gross indecency) were thrown out of the courts. A number of those arrested—many who had not yet come out to friends, family, or co-workers—had the added devastation of having their names published by the media. This led one man, Warren Zufelt, to commit suicide in 1979 on the day his name was mentioned in local newspapers as one of 18 men arrested in an Ottawa “sex scandal.” NDP MLA for Ottawa Centre Michael Cassidy, reacting to Zufelt’s death, wrote to the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Labour to
protest police persecution of gays and called for the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the Ontario Human Rights Code; after years of debate, protests, and campaigns, it was finally included on December 2, 1986.

Canada’s First Gay Mayor?

According to Bruce Ricketts’ Mysteries of Canada website, Charlotte Whitton, mayor of Ottawa in the 1950s and early 1960s, and the first female mayor of a Canadian city, had “lived for 32 years with her companion, Margaret Grier, whom she had met at Queen’s University.” Was Whitton our first gay mayor, in the days before such things were discussed? Perhaps it never turned into an issue, because Margaret Grier died in 1947 at the age of 55 years, well before Whitton got into office. According to Ricketts, Whitton is also known for this infamous quote: “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”

Ottawa—Not the World’s Coldest

Despite Canada’s meteorological reputation, Ottawa is not the world’s coldest capital. Though it did reach -38.9°C (-38.0°F) on December 29, 1933, this is only the second coldest temperature recorded in a world capital, after Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, which has an average annual temperature of -1.3°C (29.6F°). Otherwise, Ottawa’s annual average of 5.5°C (41.9°F) ranks it the seventh coldest world capital city, but third by mean January temperature, after Ulaanbaatar and Astana, Kazakhstan. This is why I spend most of January and February indoors.

Ottawa Fitness

Champagne Bath and the Plant Bath—now known respectively as the Champagne Fitness Centre and Plant Recreation Centre—were both built in 1924 to improve the hygiene and well being of the city’s lower classes in the years before running water and bathing facilities were available in most homes. The Champagne Bath structure, which was originally home to a library, was designed by noted local architect Werner Ernst Noffke and named after Ottawa mayor Napoleon Champagne (1908, 1924). It became the City’s first municipal pool and one of the first indoor pools in Ottawa. It was unusual for its salt water, which meant it did not need to be chlorinated. Until 1967, the facility was segregated with separate ground-level entrances for men and women. For a while, there was talk of closing the pool after the newer Le Patro was completed in the 1980s, but after public protest, the Champagne Bath was instead renovated and reopened in 1990. The Plant Bath, named after Frank H. Plant, then mayor of Ottawa (1921-23, 1930), was closed in 1997 after a long period of disrepair, only three years after being designated a heritage property. The building underwent extensive renovations and expansions, and was reopened in 2004. It now holds a semi-Olympic-sized pool as well as a leisure pool and a fitness centre. It also offers swimming lessons, fitness programs, and a variety of indoor and outdoor recreation programs.

Champagne Fitness Centre: 321 King Edward Ave., 224-4402
Plant Recreation Centre, 930 Somerset St. W. at Preston St., 232-3000

Ottawa Inventors

Inspired by the CBC-TV program The Greatest Canadian Inventions, we thought we’d present a list of a few of the great concepts devised by some of Ottawa’s citizenry.

Green Genius

University of Ottawa professor and chemist Dr Abdelhamid Sayari and his research team spent three years developing a material that can absorb carbon dioxide contained in various industrial gases and prevent it from being released into the atmosphere, thus reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global climate change.

Keeping Up the Pace

Dr John Alexander Hopps—originally from Winnipeg but a resident of Ottawa for many Years—is known internationally as the inventor of the world’s first heart pacemaker, introduced in 1951. In collaboration with Dr Wilfred Bigelow and Dr John Callaghan as part of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), he spent most of his career at the Montreal Road branch of the NRC. Their creation was first implanted in a human body in 1958. Poignantly, the very device Dr Hopps had developed was implanted in his own chest 30 years after its invention to correct his erratic heartbeat.

R-r-r-roll up the R-r-r-rim

After three years of developing a different invention, Ottawa inventor Paul Kind introduced his “Rimroller,” created to cleanly slice and unroll a Tim Hortons coffee cup rim in one motion, thus giving coffee drinkers easy access to the coffee chain’s promotional give-a-ways (the notifications are hidden under the cup rim, which can be difficult to unroll). Considering that Tim Hortons sells in the area of 300 million take-out cups of coffee a year, the invention is not nearly as foolish as it may seem. With the help of L-D Tool & Die in nearby Stittsville, the Rimroller became a reality in 2006 and is available at Lee Valley Tools, and at $1.95, is just a bit more than the price of a cup of coffee. This is not the only creation from the fertile mind of Mr Kind. He also invented the Handyfold, to perfectly fold letters to fit into envelopes, and the Bookhug, to hold your book open for you while you read.

Ottawa, Clothing-Optional

Founded in 2004 by two guys from Vancouver and Seattle respectively, the World Naked Bike Ride is an international event with participants from numerous activist groups—including the Work Less Party of British Columbia, THONG (Topless Humans Organized for Natural Genetics) of Chicago, and Seattle’s Naked Freedom Film Festival. WNBR’s mandate is summed up best on their website: “We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil and other forms of non-renewable energy.” Ottawa’s
annual version of this event began in June of 2005 with about nine participants (there were over 50 participants at the 2007 event). Here, the au naturel cyclists’ route leads them from the fountain in Confederation Park (where there’s body painting), then along Somerset Street West. Sometimes they’ll even stop for gelato and a swim in the Ottawa River along the way. If you participate, be aware that traffic laws must be obeyed—otherwise, the only required accoutrement is a helmet.

If the World Naked Bike Ride isn’t enough for you, unfortunately there really aren’t that many other places to get publicly naked in and around Ottawa (big surprise). Some options include: the relative privacy of the nude beach at beautiful Meech Lake in Gatineau Park, or the sketchier digs (not nearly as upscale as the first) nearby at the old mill falls. Maps and other information can be found by checking out the Federation of Canadian Naturists website (fcn.ca), or the Ottawa Naturists (onno.ca).

Ottawa Barber Shops

If you’re a devotee of traditional barbershops with the swirling barber poles and the old men swapping stories, check out either of the two locations of the Imperial Barber Shop (46½ Sparks St.; 275 Slater St.), or some of Ottawa’s other options, including Victoria Barber Shop (9 O’Connor St., 284-5465), the Glebe Barber Shop (201-738 Bank St., 231-3343), or Moderno Barber Shop (116 Preston St., 236-5677). Looking for a different kind of barbershop? You can always check out a performance of Ottawa’s own 85-plus chorus of the Capital City Chorus, which represented Ontario in the 2008 International Convention of the Barbershop Harmony Society in Nashville.

Christmas in Ottawa

With some 300,000 multi-coloured lights at roughly 70 sites along Confederation Boulevard, including Parliament Hill, the National Capital Commission’s Christmas Lights Across Canada program runs from early December to early January every year. Sure, the official lights on Parliament Hill are impressive, but there are also a number of other public buildings and private residences around Ottawa that present their own spectacular shows, which are well worth checking out. Some favourites include the trees outside the Museum of Nature (Metcalfe at McLeod Streets), the lights at Confederation Park on Elgin Street, 181 Clare Street (near Carling and Kirkwood Avenues), the housing development at the corner of Deschamps Street and the Vanier Parkway (one block north of Montreal Road), and the house at 2740 Kingwood Lane in Blossom Park, Gloucester, which is but one of many homes lit up on that stretch of street. At the house on 2455 Alta Vista Drive (one block north of Heron Road) you can let your kids have fun counting how many Santas there are in the display.

If you can’t wait for Christmas, check out the house at 158 Marier Avenue in Vanier, featuring Santa and his reindeer in a glass-enclosed nativity scene, and a working fish tank in the front during the summer months. Just west of downtown, another decorated house is at 9 Grant Street (just behind the Royal Bank on Wellington Street West in Hintonburg).

Ottawa Laundrymats

For a city that’s had more than its share of dirty laundry, here are numerous opportunities to come clean: Laundry Life (779 Bank St., 237-1483) and Centretown Laundry Co-op (153 Chapel St.,244-4524) are both good self-serves, while Tang Coin Laundry (609 Somerset St. W. 231-7468) and Market Laundry Room (286? Dalhousie St., 241-6222) both offer drop-off services. Rideau Coinwash (436 Rideau St., 789-4400) includes drop-off services as well as mending. If you’re a hockey history buff, go to Majestic Cleaners & Laundry (551 Gladstone Ave. at Percy St., 236-1356), where you can kill time waiting for your whites to dry by reading the plaque outside that tells about the ice rink that used to occupy the building’s lot. Some of the first Stanley Cup playoff games were played here nearly a century ago.

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