Thursday 18 August 2011

Ottawa habits

Ottawa is since 1867 by Royal decree from Queen Victoria the Capital of the Dominion of Canada and it can be said that since then the population of Ottawa has fought the notion that it was a Capital of a nation.
Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston and Toronto have all been at one point the Capital of Canada, even Aylmer which sits across the Outaouais river from Ottawa almost became the Capital.

The city by its own Mayor's admission has been stuck in small town thinking, parochial pursuits, unable to think big like other world capitals. Politicians come to Ottawa because Parliament is here but they do not live here, their families and interest are elsewhere. Even those politicians from the region are often from rural stock and take little interest in the city itself. Ottawa remains a sleepy town, expensive to live in but firmly stuck with its blinkers on.

People will tell you that it is a great town to raise a family in or that it is an interesting place or that its great for winter sports, they mean the skating on the Canal or cross country skiing in the Gatineau park across the river. But it you press them to explain further, you will find the conversation will drift and then turn to the weather, in fact the weather in Ottawa is one of those topics which is discussed with passion.

The mayor today in an interview said that he had changed his thinking, he use to be prudent and hesitant to make any decision on any topic, this by his own admission. City Council dithered about everything including garbage collection and snow removal. But now that the city stands at one million people it was time to think big and go for risk taking, though the mayor re-asserted that he still would be prudent, no revolution in thinking here. He is hoping for massive Federal Government funding for projects which have been debated for the last 40 years and have never gotten off the ground. He seems to think that this is about to change. How or why, he does not say, obviously the mayor has not read the plans of the Federal Government who is about to slash budgets overall. Like many politicos in town this sort of talk is cheap and easy, if nothing comes of your great plans you can always blame someone else.

People in Ottawa are said to be on the whole friendly, but there is a core attitude of very unfriendly even rude behaviour about town. You will find that a lot of people have difficulty saying good morning when they come to work or meet people or show any kind of interest in people around them.  These are the same people who work or live right next to you, but cannot bring themselves to the simple courtesies of life. They will say, I am not a morning person or I need my gallon of coffee before I can be social. It seems that the attitude can be described as, it is better to ignore people than to acknowledge them, sort of zoning out everyone, I don't want to be here mentality. Recently I even heard several people say that emails are not even answered let alone acknowledged, it's the I am too busy attitude or the sender cannot help or benefit me so I will just ignore him or her. Everyone wants to live in their own little space and just ignore everything around them.

I always found Ottawa to be a very cold and impersonal city despite official efforts to present it otherwise in touristic brochures. If you removed the Parliament buildings and the handful of museums there would be very little to speak of beside urban sprawl, which is Ottawa is now greater than Toronto a city of 5 million people. Would Ottawa fit in Dante's Divine Comedy, probably.

1 comment:

  1. Dear me!
    This is not a positive portrait at all.
    Canadians aren't supposed to be like nasty Yanks, although I met many in Toronto this week. Canada is becoming more and more like USA all the time, it seems. Alas.

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