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January 2001

Ottawa

David Aaronson
2005-09-25 18:56:24

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We flew into Buffalo a couple days before New Year's 2001, intending to circle Lake Ontario on our trip. The New York portion was relatively uninteresting - there isn't a whole lot to do upstate in the middle of winter. We arrived in Ottawa the next afternoon and went first off to the Parliament buildings. There are three buildings in the Canadian Parliament known creatively enough as the North, South and Centre blocks. This is the Centre block (1).

This is the south block (2). We drove around the buildings several times attempting to park. Eventually we came to the conclusion that all parking was government only so we stopped by a policeman and asked. He referred to us a 'friendly mountie' who was in fact quite friendly. He told us that: 1. parking is a problem, 2. just park anywhere because they aren't ticketing today and 3. I didn't tell you to do that. So we did.

Parliament sits on a bluff overlooking the Ottawa river and the city of Hull, Quebec. To the southeast, this impressive glass structure is part of the Canadian National Gallery which we visited the next morning (3). One entire floor of the gallery is Canadian native or related art. We can assure you that given the size of one floor of the museum, its plenty of Canadian art for one visit.

We did not take the tour of parliament because we arrived slightly too late and we were unable to find the visitor entrance in a reasonable amount of time. Instead we circled the building which is ringed with statues of famous Canadians who we know very little about. Later in Toronto we tried to find a good book on famous Canadians we know very little about but without any luck. This is behind the central parliament building (4). In front is a neat fountain with the shields of the ten provinces and the three territories but we had difficulty getting a good view of it due to the freezing Arabic tour group huddled around it for warmth ...