Ought We To Ottawa?

We took our exploratory trip to Ottawa this past weekend. It was productive; we got a sense of the town and found some viable neighborhoods if we decide to spend our next residency stint one province over.

We also finally met face-to-face with a Facebook friend I’ve been communicating with for months! She was not only delightful herself, but she gave us a stellar tour of Parliament Hill and surrounding sites of interest.

Why would we switch provinces, you ask? Especially since we’ve made local friends, have taken the trouble to learn French, and adore all the color, energy, and smart features of Montréal ?

Because being forced to have a doctor who can only speak French is the new normal for anglophones here, and this would endanger us in a medical emergency. Especially me, because of my various tricky issues and allergies and stuff.

(This is the fallout of Bill 96, which I’ve gone on about before. Suffice to say that Legault wishes to make Québec as hostile to anglophones as possible, and he’s done a really good job of it. Call me a whiny “angryphone,” but it’s one thing to require businesses to conduct activities in French so francophones are not disadvantaged at work, and another to interfere in medical care to the extent that you put people’s lives at risk. Monday was the province’s Election Day and Legault won a solid majority, even picking up a few seats, so he and his anti-immigrant and anti-anglophone agenda will rule the roost for a long while. These policies are very popular with his base, so no hope for a policy change/reprieve anytime soon.

Many people here think that’s just fine though. We kinda don’t. So though we love Montréal, we’re now also pondering Ottawa.)

Anyway, back to it: because travel costs are sky-high right now what with inflation and post-pandemic travel surges and all, to save a little money we stayed in a rather old but clean motor inn south of town (because we’re not proud, or Instagrammers). Once we aired the CarpetFresh®️ smell out of the room, it wasn’t bad.

H0wever, one thing that was GREAT about the place was the huge lawn out front with big trees sporting their fall colors. You don’t get that with a downtown hotel (or at our apartment in Montréal). It was truly a relief to take off the masks and enjoy the fresh Ottawa autumn air for a while.

After landing and chilling on the tree lawn Friday, we spent all day Saturday checking out neighborhoods. We have strict livability requirements: must be walkable because we’ll have no car, must be near transit for the same reason, and must have some social or natural interest so we don’t rot for lack of stimulation.

Based on notes we’d been gathering for weeks, we cruised around Westboro and Hintonburg, got detoured around a crush of GeeGees game traffic in The Glebe (not anticipated, so good to know), poked around a cute little local library and rebuilt sugar shack in Vanier, toodled through Byward Market, and took a breather in Strathcona Park.

It was a tiring day, but we found a few areas that might suit. We’ll delve deeper once we start looking at rental availability and pricing during The Great Long-Distance Canadian Apartment Hunt in 2023.

On Sunday we had brunch with Annette, a Facebook friend I met in a group for Americans in Canada. She has been incredibly helpful sharing her knowledge about life in Canada, and I had promised to buy her breakfast as a thank-you for all the intel. It was our first time meeting face-to-face and thankfully, it was a blast.

It was also a surprising relief to speak English without being glared at. After six months in Montréal it felt strange not to have to struggle along in bad French; I never really grokked until now how much energy is consumed when trying to communicate in a second language when you’re not fully fluent.

It’s also weird how quickly you normalize that language struggle, to the point where speaking your first language feels unaccustomed and slightly naughty.

(Note: being on the other side of the immigrant/language equation has been eye-opening in many ways, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Annette has been in the entertainment industry for years; we met in a restaurant that had been the location for a Christmas movie shoot she worked on in the dead of summer, fake snow and all. Her husband works at Ottawa’s National Arts Center, so she gave us a wonderful walking tour of the NAC and Parliament Hill, which is right across the street.

“The Hill,” as it is called, like most of Montréal, is going through renovations, not to be completed for another ten years. Parliament does its work in these beautiful historic buildings, but historic buildings need a lot of rehab to keep up with the needs of modern government. The indoor tours have been suspended for now, but we were able to walk around the buildings and take in the beautiful views of Gatineau across the Ottawa River.

Annette also pointed out the entrenchment points of the “Freedom Convoy,” the American-funded antimask/antivax and anti-government protesters who did everything they could to wreak havoc and block access to Parliament Hill earlier this year. Will the face of Parliament Hill be marred by new security enclosures as a result? Unclear. We were glad we got to see Parliament Hill with just a few cranes and no (obvious) extremists.

It was a warm and crystalline autumn day, a beautiful day to sightsee and hang out with a new friend, and a very pleasant end to our weekend. Thanks Annette! Maybe we’ll be neighbors soon.

Now that we’re back in MTL, we’re starting to pack and clean for our return to L.A. We’ll be overwintering in SoCal and then Canaderping again in spring 2023, if all goes to plan.

But since so little goes to plan anymore, we’re keeping our minds open–about locations, timelines, objectives. Anything could happen. We’ll keep you posted, of course.

I gotta say: this yo-yo lifestyle is pretty stressful and fatiguing, especially during a pandemic. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so we’re setting our course and surfing the waves as they arise. It’s all an adventure, and adventures are good for the soul, right?

(but please no adventures when we cross the border going home this month please please please)