La canicule qui n'a pas été

I could forgive you for mistaking this view from out my living room window as having been taken in April rather than in August.

When I first arrived back in May, I was told that about la canicule.

canicule (can-knee-k(y)ule) : heat wave 

Indeed, summer here feels hotter than in Vancouver because of the humidity. On Canada Day is was 30°C, but felt closer to 40°C with humidity. Despite the oppressive heat and humidity, which I think Anna and I's patriotism enabled us to survive, we were told that it gets hotter. 

But then in mid-July it cooled down and again this past week has been grey and rainy. It's been an unusually cold summer in Ottawa this year. Being accustomed to Vancouver's temperate and rainy climate, I've felt at quite at home. I've even jokingly teased my Ottawa compatriots about how they always say they want to live in Vancouver, well, this is what it's like in Vancouver.

In all honesty though, I worried a little when I spotted the first autumn leaves appearing on the trees outside my window yesterday. Although autumn in Ottawa is supposed to be beautiful, I didn't pack an autumn wardrobe and I hope summer isn't over by the time I get back to Vancouver!

Canada Day

Anna is one of my oldest, dearest friends. My best friend, you might say,  if that's not an immature label to use at 27 years old. We met in grade 8 and have been close ever since.

When we graduated from high school I started undergrad at UBC and she took a gap year and went to England. That summer after graduating high school was pretty great, pretty much as close to coming-of-age-movie-perfect as it could be. At the end of that summer I quit the part-time job I'd had for during high school--at the concession of the cinemaplex--and taken a new one at the mall. I remember I'd gotten that job, where I was making a whole 25¢ more than minimum wage, in order to save up to visit Anna in England.

I remember the excitement and anxiety of saving up--would I make enough to afford to go? Working maybe 12-16 hours a week at 25 cents more than minimum wage made it a challenge. In the end, I made my savings goal and booked my flight to London for the late afternoon following my last exam.

As I recalled in a travelogue post at the time:

As I began my exam on April 22nd, I was relieved to see that I knew something about everything asked of me on the exam, and as such began writing furiously. Such erratic scrawling got me discrete looks from my friend ... I finished my exam 20 minutes - half an hour early, and was off to the airport.

Nine hours later I was landing at Heathrow Airport in London, England.

I think I once heard that the island of Britain is either the same size or smaller than Vancouver Island. However, England makes itself big in part due to how difficult it is to travel within the country. Four hours after having landed, Anna and I arrived at her cottage in Oxfordshire, after having taken a supplemental bus from Heathrow to the Underground, the Underground to Paddington Station, a train to Oxford, a bus, and a taxi. Once we arrived, I was given fifteen minutes to shower and get ready for a dinner invitation at Anna's Irish coworker's cottage. 

Anna and I walking through some English ruins on our way to dinner at said Irish colleague's cottage.

So remembering that excitement I felt when I visited Anna in England, I was thrilled when she told me she was going to visit me here in Ottawa for Canada Day.

Anna was here for just three days, but we packed those three days. Anna had a wedding the weekend before Canada Day, so she took a red-eye flight and arrived in Ottawa Monday morning. After meeting at the airport we took a bus directly to my place and went for breakfast at the Baker Street Cafe in Westboro. Afterwards Anna had a nap, while I went to the grocery store; my fridge was bare and the grocery store was going to be closed for Canada Day.

That afternoon we visited the War Museum. I thought it was really well done; I recommend the temporary exhibit Witness, which features paintings by soldiers of World War I scenes. Afterwards we met up with her cousin-in-law, John, at watched the Germany prevail over Algeria in the World Cup. We concluded the evening by having a drink on a patio in the Byward Market.

For Canada Day, Anna and I had had the idea of getting matching Vancouver, Canada tourist t-shirts.

Anna is actually only 2 inches taller than me, but for some reason looks way taller in this photo.

We started Canada Day off with brunch at some intern colleague friends of mine. Downtown was bustling. By the time we made it to Parliament Hill, we actually only caught the last of Serena Ryder's act and then my room mate's boyfriend's swing dancing demo. We hadn't realized that there was nothing much happening on Parliament Hill between the noon show and the evening concert. So we spent the rest of Canada Day barbecue-hopping, hitting three in total.

The next day I had to go into work, despite feeling a bit of the after effects of my patriotism. Anna met me for lunch and then visited the Canadian Museum of History. After I finished work, it was time to head back to the airport and see her off.

It was an amazing short, but sweet visit. Love that girl!

Il pleut à boire debout

Il pleut à boire debout (eel pluh ah bwar duh-boo) : it's pouring rain; it's raining cats and dogs

The literal translation is it's raining so as to be able to drink standing up. This has always been one of my favourite idioms because of the mental image it evokes. I've always imagined it raining so much that the puddles flood up to one's mouth. But in reality the idea is that it is raining so hard as to be able to drink by turning your head towards the sky.

As I work on the Quebec side of the National Capital Region, I have today off for la Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Mais il pleut à boire debout. While the seemingly endless months of grey rainy weather in Vancouver seem oppressive, I've discovered I quite enjoy the occasional Vancouver-style downpour in Ottawa. This is something I first realized about myself the morning after I got back from Toronto last spring and it was raining. It hadn't rained at all while I was in Toronto, so it seemed too dry.

Last week I did an Indigenous walking tour of Ottawa in the pouring rain. I hadn't anticipated the rain so I was caught without an umbrella. Despite the rain, I really enjoyed it. As I have been saying: I'm from Vancouver, if we waited for the rain to let up, we'd never do anything.

(photo of Paris in the rain by Rebecca Plotnick available as a print via Etsy)

The Yellow House

Last weekend I finished The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence by Martin Gayford. It had been on my list of books to read for a while, probably since hearing about it closer to its publication date, so I decided to bring it along as my reading on my flight to Ottawa.

The Yellow House is beautifully written. Gayford sweeps the reader away with his storytelling that one almost forgets the tragic ending that awaits. Even though I've long admired Van Gogh's art, after reading The Yellow House, I feel I understand him and his artistic mission better. He was trying to capture emotion in colour.

Despite the tragic end, Gayford doesn't leave his reader on a down note (something the Van Gogh Museum might improve on). Gayford discusses Van Gogh's posthumous success and recognition as a great artist, his mental health as it likely affected his art, and the fate of the Yellow House in Arles. Gayford leaves us with the impression that Van Gogh's brief stay in Arles was in medias res in the history of the town and art.

While in France, I had taken a brief trip to Arles to retrace Van Gogh's footsteps. The town of Arles actually has a "Van Gogh Trail" pamphlet that indicates a number of sites that the artists painted so you can compare the view. Like Les Alyscamps:

There are 10 sites marked on Van Gogh route, though we didn't visit them all. As I recall, it was a bit tricky to find some of them, or some were a bit on the outskirts of town. You can see the other sites here.

One thing I couldn't believe was that Van Gogh's Yellow House no longer existed. It had been bombed during the end of the war. Although there is a gallery dedicated to Van Gogh's time in Arles, la Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles, I am shocked that nobody has undertaken the task of building a replica of the yellow house to serve as a museum, akin to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.

(Van Gogh's paintings of the Yellow House and Les Alyscamps public domain via Wikipedia)

OttawAwesome

I've now been in Ottawa just over a month so I thought I'd share a few of observations about how it's been so far.

1. I didn't really have any preconceptions of what Ottawa would be like before arriving. I'd visited before -- once as a child and again on my way back from France in 2011 -- but both visits were only a couple of days. All I knew was that Ottawa is a government town.
2. But Ottawa is so much more than the obligatory snapshot of the Peace Tower.
3. In fact, I find it a lot like a larger version of Victoria in terms of architecture and vibe. 
4. I've managed to survive the heat and humidity--so far! When I first arrived at the beginning of May there was still a bit of a chill in the air; it was almost as if I had gone back in time season-wise. The following weekend, however, spring came in full force, lasted for about a week, and it's been summer ever since.
5. I'm liking the frequency of the lightning storms here. It's not a spectacle we often get in coastal Vancouver.
6. I live a 5 minute walk from a river-front beach that is just about as gorgeous as Vancouver beaches.
7. I've also enjoyed lake swims. In fact, I think I am discovering a love of lakeside beaches. I think I'll be spending more time in my bathing suit this summer than the previous several summers combined.
8. Compared to Vancouver, the cost of everything here seems way cheaper! It's almost become a running joke with my intern colleagues when I remark on how much cheaper something is in Ontario than Vancouver. Apparently that's just what things cost when you don't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
9. All of this has made me realize that there are other places in Canada in which I could live happily. 
10. I think this might be part of my long break-up with Vancouver, because wow is my home city getting me down these days.

On Sexism, Sexual Harassment, and Misogyny

I don't usually post political things as I do plenty of thinking and discussing about such things in my offline life, but I can't help but feel really disturbed as I read about the massacre that happened in California over the weekend.

Though I've told this story to friends and acquaintances in person, I have never written about this on this blog because I didn't want to speak ill of France and give a bad impression the town I was staying in, my friends there, and my experience, but now I feel compelled to share.

When I was living in Saint Étienne in 2010-2011, I experienced nearly daily sexual harassment and sexism by men and boys hanging out in the streets. There was the time I wore red-orange nylons at American Thanksgiving and was chased after down the street by an adolescent boy shouting «Madame! Madame! Vous avez des belles jambes!» There was the time I was on my way to the gare early in the morning when it was still dark out and a man asked me if I wanted to «sucer» him. There was also the time I was out for a walk with a friend wearing the blue shirt (pictured in my American Thanksgiving post) and another adolescent made sexual sounds at me. There were other times too, that were less memorable because it happened so frequently. The men were persistent and relentless. Often they would engage you under the pretense of asking you a benign question. You were damned if you answered them and you were damned if you ignored them. It got to the point that at one point I decided to change my birthstone ring to my left ring-finger, recalling something my room mate had said about travelling in West Africa. But it didn't matter, the men would just say that well, your fiancé isn't here, right? I remember that time I ran to the Méliès café and hid out from that one aggressor. 

It also got more violent. A friend of mine was grabbed in the crotch by a complete stranger. One of my room mates was mugged by two teen boys. One time, a group of four of us was walking home when one of our friends walking home with us who is gay was threatened to have his eyes and tongue cut out. It had never occurred to me until that point that they would be armed. It got to the point where I was afraid to go out after dark, even in spring time. My fear of being out after dark persisted for a while after I returned home to Vancouver. I was particularly afraid walking home in the dark from the seabus, which is less than a 10 minute walk. It took me a while to feel safe again. But I still often look over my shoulder when walking alone at night no matter where I am. 

I tried talking to my colleagues at school about it. They sympathized. One said that his girlfriend got it worse because she was of North African descent, so "one of them," so they held her to a higher standard.

It got to the point where walking to the train station to head to Paris for the marathon I thought to myself "I'm dressed like a slut," when I was only wearing a modest dress without any nylons because it was a heatwave. The heatwave lingered, during which time I felt the need to wear jeans and a sweater in sweltering heat in order to try and avoid the harassment and nearly gave myself heat stroke.

Me, in Paris, wearing the dress.

This is in part why I think France is over-romanticized. But this is nothing particular to France, as we can see from the massacre in California, or the hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, or the suicides of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, or the 1989 massacre at École Polytechnique in Montréal.

I'm really shaken. J'en ai marre.

The Great Glebe Garage Sale

Saturday was the Great Glebe Garage Sale. Every year the whole Glebe neighbourhood puts on this giant garage sale. I can't tell you how many square kilometers of garage sales it works out to be, but it's huge!

I had two missions for the garage sale. First, as I don't yet have a key chain for my Ottawa keys, I wanted to find the tackiest key chain ever. Second, for my book club that is happening in June in Vancouver (which I plan to Skype into), we're reading Fight Club. But as I've read it already, I wanted to find a second-hand copy.

I didn't find any satisfactory key chains nor a copy of the book Fight Club (though I did find a VHS copy). I nevertheless had a great time snapping pictures of odd finds (not pictured: a giant ziplock bag of daily contacts), and witnessing Simon (pictured above-right with a retro citrus juicer he scored) haggle for lower prices. He got my roommate, Flynn, a tie for her boyfriend for a fraction of the original cost, from $3.00 down to 25-cents.

The weirdest find, however, was probably this:

Nobody in our group bought this curious object, but I wonder if it found a home with someone else.

There was food, music, and many of the garage sales were advertising that they were donating the proceeds of the day to charity. I actually had so much fun, I think I might end up becoming an extreme garage-saler when I get back to Vancouver.

Charles Edenshaw

Museums in Ottawa are free on Thursdays after four o'clock. I plan to take full advantage of this throughout my summer here. Today I was fortunate enough to be able to catch the Charles Edenshaw exhibit at the National Gallery before it closes on Sunday.

Having grown up in British Columbia, I am familiar with the art of BC coastal First Nations, but don't know anything about it from an art history. That's why I thought the National Gallery's Charles Edenshaw exhibit was so fantastic, because it had plenty of explanatory texts. (I'm sorry I didn't make it to the exhibit when it was at the Vancouver Art Gallery this past winter as it looks like it included more pieces.) The UBC Museum of Anthropology, which I visited just before leaving for Ottawa, has an extensive collection of BC First Nations artifacts but relatively few interpretive panels so I found it overwhelming. 

I especially liked Charles Edenshaw's Elephant Cane Handle, which the exhibit explained was inspired by circus publicity that Edenshaw saw in a newspaper. Too often I feel that mainstream society sees First Nations as solely historical. What I like about the Elephant Cane is that it is evidence of Edenshaw responding to European influence and thus the dynamism of his (and maybe more broadly Haida and First Nations') art.

(Photo of Charles Edenshaw's Elephant Cane Handle via Vancouver Art Gallery)

Ottawa Odyssey

I've been in Ottawa just over a week now. Today I ventured out with my friend Hannah to Gatineau Park for a hike. It was super awesome, but getting to and from there was a bit of a transit odyssey.

Until now, I've found transit in Ottawa to be super awesome. I live just off the transit express way so it takes me maybe all of 15 minutes to get to work in the morning. Today being Sunday, though, I failed to anticipate reduced service. This wasn't too bad on the Ottawa side. The 8 was only running every half hour across the Chaudière bridge so I walked. But this meant I missed my STO bus connection. After waiting un quart d'heure and trying to text for the bus, I figured an alternate route using the STO's mobile site (which is actually pretty good). Not entirely knowing where I was going because Google Maps doesn't know STO bus routes, I watched my blue dot approach my destination.

Hannah and I hiked partway to Pink Lake before turning around and deciding Lac des fées was more attainable (Pink Lake is a 16km round trip).

On the way back I met an awesome woman d'un certain âge waiting for the bus. Her name, I later found out, was Jocelyne and is able to say "hello" in seven different languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and Yugoslav. She also seemed to be an expert on the Ottawa-Gatineau bus system so she took it upon herself to be my guide. She chatted with me about all sort of things, including la charte de laïcité right up front, Ottawa's history, as well as more personal subjects including how the ambassador of South Africa came to be her coffee buddy. It was un plaisir to chat with her and certainly made for a more interesting ride. She seems to be a figure in the city. She said she knows many of the bus drivers and that many of them call her ma tante. I hope to run into her again later this summer to catch up!

Spring!

The first flower in my balcony garden was this daffodil that bloomed March 8th (three weeks behind last year).












Spring has been in the air for a few weeks now, though today is the official first day. Last week it even felt warm enough to walk to the grocery store without a coat. It's interesting to think how warm even just 10°C feels now, when in in six months 10°C will feel cold. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for that. 

My favourite thing about spring is the freshness. A few weeks ago I was down on myself for having let breakfast salad because I haven't been in the mood for it (this is a great blog post about why it's okay not to want to eat salad in winter), so I'm really excited to be craving fresh vegetables again.