A Winterlude in Ottawa.

My extra-extra-long weekend  in Ottawa, was full of ice sculptures, snow statues, ice slides, museum visits, sticky taffy, wobbly skating, and my wonderful family. 


My first stop was the Canadian Museum of Civilization located in Hull, Quebec, just across the river from the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.  

The Museum was designed by Canadian architect,  Douglas Cardinal.  Of  Métis and Blackfoot heritage, Cardinal is famous for designing flowing architecture marked with smooth lines, influenced by his Aboriginal heritage as well as European Expressionist architecture.

Regardless of with what's going on inside, the outside of this building is well-worth seeing.

Darrell (my brother) had brought me to see a fascinating exhibit on religion.  That exhibit deserves to be the full focus of its very own future post.


Instead, I'll show you something that I specifically sought out on this visit.


Here is a Canadian twenty dollar bill.    Depicted on our Canadian twenty dollar bill, is a sculpture called "The Spirit of Haida Gwaii" by artist Bill Reid.

Don't we have pretty money ?

Two bronze castings of the piece, one in black, and one in deep-green, are located, outside the Canadian Embassy in Washinton, D.C. and at Vancouver International Airport.  The original plaster mold from which the castings were made, is on display in the mail hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.  THAT was the piece I wanted to see.

• The Spirit of Haida Gwaii represents the Aboriginal heritage of the Haida Gwaii region, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands. It shows a traditional Haida cedar dugout canoe.  "Consistent with Haida tradition, the significance of the passengers is highly symbolic. The variety and interdependence of the canoe's occupants represents the natural environment on which the ancient Haida relied for their very survival: the passengers are diverse, and not always in harmony, yet they must depend on one another to live. The fact that the cunning trickster, Raven, holds the steering oar is likely symbolic of nature's unpredictability... "1.

Lemme think, "diverse, and not always in harmony, yet they must depend on one another to live."   Yep, that pretty much describes us.

Since "Winterlude" was going on, Darrell next took me to see the ice sculpture area.

This winter's milder temperatures and low amount of snow have not exactly made for good ice-sculpting conditions.  Apparently there were far more sculptures in past years.   Nevertheless, it was interesting to watch some of the teams, literally working against a countdown clock -- they had 22 hours left -- to make delicate sculptures out of massive, unwieldy, blocks of ice.

I was fascinated by a bowl of fruit that was frozen into a large ice block.

What would "Winterlude" be without poutine and fries ?  Poutine is gravy mixed with cheese curd, which some Canadians love to have poured over the top of their fries -- as if fries by themselves don't have enough calories !

Some of the ice sculptures showed signs of the damaging effect of the weather.  This octopus seemed to defy the odds as it had survived intact. 

This elaborate bar was one of the more involved pieces.

Stay tuned for tales of sticky toffee, snow forts and the world's longest skating rink.




1. snipped from Wikipedia


2. no idea why the spacing is so weird today.  Have any other Blogger folk had similar problems ?