"The Coldest Capital" Ottawa by mikey_e

After 2 and a half years, I finally had the opportunity to come back to Ottawa. I can now say that I have seen the city at its two extremes: baking in the heat of the August sun and buried under snow during a blizzard. I actually quite enjoyed my time in the city this visit, although was undoubtedly because I was staying in very nice accomodations, met some very nice people (albeit) in a rather stressful interview situation and had a few hours to do nothing but take pictures, have lots of coffee and buy some French-language reading material - which is rather hard to get in Toronto. Ottawa has a very different feel during the winter, and its not just the lingering threat of frostbite. When Parliament is in session the city has so many more important people in it, and it truly does feel like a capital city. Somehow it adds to the effect of Parliament Hill if the people going in and out of the buildings are in expensive suits and being wisked away in luxury sedans rather than a group of tourists or school kids being hurried around by a loud tour guide.

Mike in front of the National Gallery

It's hard to believe, given how very few pictures I have of the city, that I actually lived in Ottawa for four months. In the winter of 2003 I won what I thought was a prestigious scholarship - The Export Development Canada International Studies Scholarship, which was awarded to one student at each of Canada's top universities who specialized in international studies, business or development. I was promised a four-month internship at headquarters in Ottawa, a promise the company only made good on 15 months after awarding the scholarship. My memories of Ottawa are rather tainted by those four months of boredom and mental torture waged by an unhappy and hopelessly underqualified manager. EDC was somewhat like Ottawa itself - holding out the promise of international interests and the intricacies of federal government politics, only to disappoint everyone once they realized they were far, far from the excitement Canada's largest cities have to offer, trapped in a very provincial town with a higher than usual crime rate and sky-rocketing prices thanks to government largesse.

Mike in front of the Kuwaiti embassy

Ok, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh. I had to spend a night in Ottawa during the summer of 2005, in order to get things in order before moving to Spain, and I realized that this little city on the Ottawa River has a lot to offer - as a short holiday getaway. Bureaucratic culture and exhorbitant prices for inferior produce may enrage those who come to Ottawa to work, but the Byward Market, the National Gallery, the Rideau Canal and Parliament Hill are all quite impressive when you're only spending a few nights in the city. Ottawa undoubtedly has severe urban planning problems, but if you can ignore them it is quite enjoyable to partake of the abundance of Federally-funded culture that is supposed to make this the centre of Canadian consciousness. Also, Montréal is only an hour and a half away, a godsend for when boredom finally does set in...