The Brown Knowser

It's one of Canada's oldest boating clubs. The home of the Ottawa New Edinburgh Club has been around since 1914 and at this time of year, it's hard to believe it's still in operation. Peeling paint, rusty bridge, boarded up windows, all showing that the building is past its prime. But it's the character of the aged structure that drew me to it. Typically, for Photo Friday , I focus on a single shot. But the mere size of this building warranted more. Perhaps when the snow disappears and the sailboats return, this century-old boathouse comes back to life. Happy Friday!  

The motto of the Ottawa Police Service, according to their public Web site, is A Trusted Partner in Community Safety . I don't believe a word of it. Yesterday, CBC News reported that members of the OPS have started wearing wrist bands that bear the badge number of one of their fellow officers, along with the words, United We Stand, Divided We Fall . The officer that the band represents is Const. Daniel Montsion, who is currently on trial, charged with manslaughter, aggravated assault, and assault with a weapon in the death of Abdirahman Abdi. Montsion is accused of striking Abdi multiple times while wearing assault gloves, which are manufactured with a strong carbon-fibre layer that is built into the knuckles. Striking an object with such gloves has been equated to hitting while wearing brass knuckles. They are deemed a weapon. Image via YouTube A witness to the video of the confrontation between between Abdi and police officers on the scene said that after Abdi was a...

Sometimes, I have an idea of where I want to go and what I want to photograph for my Photo of the Day (POTD) project. And on those days, I simply go out there and capture that image. On the first day of  the project, I sought a school bus that I knew was sitting out in a field between Barrhaven and Richmond. I had seen it many times on bike rides, be it alone, with DW, or in a group with the Ottawa Bicycle Club. I don't know what that bus is doing in that field, other than dying a slow, rusty death. I purposely set out to the abandoned house, near the Long Island Locks , to capture the gloomy old structure in a snow storm. I drove up to Wakefield, to capture the covered bridge over the Gatineau River . I've visited Hog's Back Falls during the spring runoff and pulled over along Colonel By Drive, not far from Ottawa University, to grab a collection of tower cranes over our growing city . Some shots come just by chance. Like, when I stopped in front of our mailbox ju...

I don't know what made me drive out there; especially, at night. I had only been there, once, and everything was different. Mid-summer, not early spring. Noon, not late evening. The last time I had passed the narrow, wooden bridge, I had travelled under it, not over it. I had been in a canoe, not a car. I didn't know the Kilmarnock Lockstation even existed before the family and I had paddled through it, during our long canoe trek in the summer of 2013. I knew that we would pass through a series of 29 sets of locks, but I hadn't memorized them all. I know them all now. In truth, when I set out in my car on Saturday evening to capture an image for my Photo of the Day project, I wanted to take some shots of the clear sky. I thought I would drive a little south of Ottawa, toward North Gower, to get away from the glow of the city lights. Once on the road, though, time seemed to slip away and it became more about the drive than the destination. I was comfortable in the d...

I almost called this post Golden Arches , but my distaste for the company that is associated with that term prevented me from going there. I also didn't want to mislead anyone who does a Google search for the fast-food chain and is brought to my blog. You're welcome. The Bank Street Bridge is one of my favourite Ottawa landmarks and there have been many times when I have been drawn to it, to add to my POTD project. Already, this year, I have stood on the frozen canal, dodging skaters, close to this bridge, to capture an image for my year-long project . But I've held off actually capturing it until this week. Perhaps, I may have to break my single-use rule, and shoot it again, in different lighting and at a different angle. Happy Friday!

I'm willing to wager that I wasn't walking back then. Or at the very least, teetering like a drunken sailor. Kind of like today, though when I walk these days, I move more like a 99-year-old, slowly and laboured, than like a seaman on shore leave. But that's not what this post is about. In my search to find my deep past , back when I lived in Montreal, I have found a photo of me, shot about 51 years ago, on the balcony of an apartment building, in some sort of rocking horse. Judging by my size and by the weather on the street below me, this was probably shot in the autumn of 1965. I have another photo of me, in the same rocker, on my first birthday, and I definitely have more hair, so this photo was shot before then. Being Montreal, the photo was definitely not shot during the winter months. I only learned about a week ago that my family lived in three apartments in Montreal, before we moved to Ottawa. Two of the apartments were in the borough of Verdun, on F...

Ever since I received my fitness (smart) watch, I've tried to make myself better. I've climbed stairs even when I wasn't going anywhere, I've tried to be active for at least 10 minutes a day, and I've paid attention to how much (or little) water I consume. I know: these are low fitness goals, but when I consider how sedentary my life was before this device was strapped around my wrist, my levels of activity were relatively non-existent.  One of the most-noticable activities I've performed over the past couple of months is walking, and considering the deterioration in the condition of my feet, that's no small task. Every day, I have tried to walk as close to 6,000 steps in the office. If I can accomplish this number before I go home for the day, any extra steps are gravy.But walking in my office is no great accomplishment, if I simply walk from my desk to the kitchen, to grab a cup of coffee, or head to the washroom. In a straight line, it takes me ex...

My eldest child turned 16, yesterday. I still remember holding her in my arms, when she was only a few seconds old, of how tiny she was and how terrified I was, carrying her, afraid that I would drop her or slip on the floor while I wore the hospital slippers over my running shoes. This weekend, we signed her up for driver's ed, and a new fear gripped me. Of how she would soon be behind the wheel of a heavy piece of machinery, how she would be responsible for safely moving herself down the road, mindful of the other drivers on the road. It scares me, but then I remembered how I was once her age, how I had to learn how to drive. I did, however, learn how to drive at an earlier age. As early as eight, my father had me sit on his lap, steering our car, using the turn signals. When we had a manual transmission, he would operate the pedals while I would move the stick into the different slots, would at the very least learn how to smoothly move the stick through the various gears. ...

Tea. Earl Grey. Dry. Happy Friday!

A couple of weeks ago, for a Throwback Thursday post, I shared a photo that was taken of my sister and me , in 1968, lounging by an inflatable pool outside our apartment building. This was the last place that we lived in, in Montreal, before my family moved to Ottawa. In that post, I said that I wanted to seek out this apartment building, that in doing so I was hoping to stir some memories. I found it. The building is in Dorval, where I suspected it was: across Highway 20 from the airport. I have no memories of airplanes flying low, on approach or takeoff, and in the time that I spent walking around this building, on the corner of Avenues Carson and Roy, while I could faintly hear the distant rumble of traffic on the highway, I had to strain my ears to hear any activity at P.E. Trudeau International Airport. Focusing on taking photos, I couldn't hear anything further than the few cars that moved along Carson Avenue. I pulled up on Roy, at the far end of the apartm...

You would think that I would be the extra-cautious one. In March of 1999, before we returned to Canada to restart our lives, DW and I travelled throughout South-East Asia, visiting Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, before returning one last time to South Korea and then, onward to home. We were in George Town, on the island of Penang, Malaysia, having travelled, by night train, from Kuala Lumpur, and taken a ferry across the channel, from Butterworth. We were staying in a highly recommended, two-story hotel from the colonial period, in an old area of the town. The room had large French doors that opened onto a balcony and looked out into a small square, where a traffic circle directed t he flow of cars, trucks, and mopeds . I'll never forget the miniature black-and-white tile that covered the floor. The room was spacious and clean—or so I thought. It was a hot night, and a ceiling fan circulated the air and made it more bearable. Having arrived in George Town at ...

I've always been interested in the falls, not on the buildings that are next to them. Sure, there's the Embassy of France, and the Global Affairs building (which, at one time, served as Ottawa's city hall). But the structures that butt right against the Rideau Falls have never held my interest. A couple of weeks ago, as I was shooting photos of the falls, looking for a photo of the day, I noticed a reflection of a Canadian flag in a window on the closest structure to the falls, as I shot the reflection, I noticed the blueness of the sky and the strong contrast that our flag made atop the adjoining building, and I thought, that would make a great Where In Ottawa location. Thus we had the photo for this month's challenge . That flag was atop the building that has largely been vacant these past couple of years, but I noticed that it was now housing some sort of exhibit, and I noticed that the building also had a name. The International Pavilion . Congratu...