Holiday '08

I went some places over the holidays! I took some photos!

The Canadian Museum of Nature, where I was awed by dinosaurs as a child, is undergoing massive renovations. Part of it is still open, and I revisited the giant skeletons, above. Also, my mom curated a nifty show there -- paintings by Barbara Gamble, juxtaposed with century-old plant specimens collected & pressed by Catharine Parr Traill (sister of Susanna Moodie).

Mom, Rene and I went to Montreal for the weekend, where we visited Rene's sister & went to the Canadian Centre for Architecture. There's a fantastic show on until April 19 called Actions: What You Can Do With the City. It's an encyclopedically thorough collection of urban interventions -- performance art, guerrilla gardening, parkour, anything you can think of in that vein -- from cities around the world.

Then we went to Rene's little house in Cornwall, which is stuffed with an eclectic collection of outsider (and insider) art and toys.



The next day, we toured a semi-derelict cotton mill, part of a complex where Rene dreams of creating a private museum, which would be like his house, but larger & open to the public.



Full photoset here.

Christmas in Ottawa

So, I went home to Ottawa for Christmas. It was pretty quiet. The biggest news was that the Giant Tiger nearly burned down. I may have mentioned Giant Tiger before: it's a chain of discount stores in Eastern Ontario. The branch near my mom's place has been there since I was in high school, and my mom does all, I mean ALL, of her shopping there. I was planning to stop in and stock up on socks and toiletries before heading back to Toronto, but then on Christmas Eve, my mom's partner Rene opened the Ottawa Citizen, and there, all over the top front half of the Local section, was a huge photo of the Giant Tiger with the windows all busted in and firefighters walking around inside. Biggest local news in Ottawa: FIRE AT THE HINTONBURG GIANT TIGER! OMG!!

Fortunately the fire, the result of some electrical problem, was contained to the basement. No-one was hurt, but there was smoke damage to much of the merchandise. A re-opening is planned for February, and my mom and her friends are already anticipating the fire sale.



On Christmas Day we went for a walk around the old neighbourhood, Hintonburg/Mechanicsville, which was very quiet. Have a look at my photos here.

Happy New Year, everyone!