Canada’s Capitol

We head up the Ottawa River for about 3 hours and arrive in the Capitol of Canada, Ottawa. The entrance is a stack of 8 locks in a row, very tiring and quite the tourist attraction, we should have charged Parks Canada. Lots and lots of tourists watching and videoing us (and all the other boats in with us).

We tie up on the wall right in downtown just steps from office buildings, Parliament, the Fairmont Chateau Laurier and the Bywater market and restaurant district. The Captain has gotten very good at parallel docking the boat, slipping Irish Eyes in between two already tied up boats where there is one last spot that has electricity. While it is cool being right downtown there is some anxiety about the homeless/mentally disturbed population that come down to the benches here along the greenway. During the day there are hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists lots of loopers who all watch out for each other. We did hear some yelling one evening about 3am but it passed on by and nothing came of it.

We enjoyed tours of both the House of Commons and the Senate, learned how they are chosen, the Prime Minister, the Governor General (representing the monarch) and some interesting tidbits. The Senate is in red and the House in green as it is in England. This has surprised me how much they follow the Commonwealth as I have always thought they were more like the U.S.- very friendly with Great Britain but only nominally attached. Their neo gothic architecture truly reflects their British heritage. In Quebec province they consider French culture and continue to introduce more legislation to protect the language. Locals we have met feel this has gone too far and has led many businesses to relocate to Toronto, thus hurting Quebec.

We did the usual tourist stuff, biked the greenway, visited the National Gallery of Art, another Notre Dame Cathedral and ate at some good restaurants. The U.S. Embassy looks rather unwelcoming.

Enough of the city! We continue up the Rideau Canal for the next week and a half. Here are a few examples of what that is looking like.