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Take that, Mayor Larry

I spent a frosty lunch hour at City Hall today, at a rally to support the striking OC Transpo bus drivers and mechanics.

I don’t even care if the City’s offer was fair. No trade unionist with any sense of what it means to be a trade unionist could possibly, in good conscience, have voted […]

Bank Street Bully

I arrived at the corner of Bank and MacLaren this afternoon as three police officers were trying to put an unconscious, handcuffed woman into the back of a van. She looked like a rag doll.

Then they changed their minds and laid her out on the sidewalk and sent for an ambulance. The female officer slid […]

How to find stuff to do

People have been asking me lately how I find all these interesting and quirky things to do in such a boring city.

1. Email Lists

(a): I subscribe to Artengine, and it sends me notices about all kinds of art-related events. There are a LOT of art-related events going on in Ottawa. For example, on Friday night […]

So we got the drug treatment facility

As you’ve probably heard, the funding for two residential drug treatment centres for youth was announced Tuesday – a 15-bed facility for English-speaking kids, and a 5-bed facility for French-speaking kids.

Better than nothing, I suppose. But I predict the effects will be negligible. Most of the addicts I see would not qualify for treatment […]

Crackheads, crackpots, police and politics

Ottawa’s drug problem has been getting a fresh surge of attention lately. Between the W-FIVE piece last week entitled Capital Shame, the controversy about expanding the harm reduction programs, and our Medical Officer of Health, David Salisbury, resigning, we’re in the spotlight.

I went to a public meeting at City Hall about the drug problem […]

Crack in the media

Sunday morning, like most Sunday mornings, the Ottawa Sun was blowing all over the neighbourhood. They’ve been giving newspapers away on Sundays by tossing them onto everybody’s stoop, where the wind immediately separates them into individual sheets and blows them into gardens and gutters. I took a picture and emailed it to the Sun.

But […]

The Crack Kit Community Forum: Part Two

Part Two was the Open Mic – questions and comments from people in the audience. It was actually pretty interesting, because there was a real mix of attitudes and opinions. Until this point, I got the sense this was one of those “preaching to the choir” things, since everybody seemed to agree with each other.

There […]

The Crack Kit Community Forum: Part One

I’d estimate the turnout at about 200 or so. Even though it was held in Council Chambers, as far as I could tell there weren’t any councillors there.

My note-taking skills are rusty. I’d try to write something down verbatim because it was so interesting or eloquently stated, but by the time I’d faithfully recorded […]

Blizzard’s still blowin’

I think Ottawa must have struck a nerve with Christina Blizzard, given that she felt it necessary to write a second column defending her right to write the first column.

Apparently she got ‘countless’ e-mails from people who agreed with her. (This on the heels of having witnessed ‘countless’ people sitting around downtown Ottawa smoking crack […]

Field trip to Ottawa’s rotting core

After reading Christina Blizzard’s assessment of Ottawa as a city rotting at its core, it occurred to me that perhaps I don’t get out enough.

According to Blizzard, you can eat lunch on the patio of a posh downtown restaurant while watching literally dozens of drug deals and countless people sitting around smoking crack in […]