Day 5 - Democracy in Action

December, and there’s still no snow on the ground here. And, unlike the day before, it’s not raining!!!! Today would be a day of blindly wandering through the streets of Ottawa and finally, FINALLY, getting in to see Question Period, which was by far exactly what I anticipated it would be.

I woke up with the express idea to walk to the Greyhound bus terminal in order to purchase my bus ticket down to Toronto. With the help of Google Maps(I bow before you, oh mighty Google), I got a route in my head and trudged off. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s managing to look at a map once and memorizing a turn by turn route in my head. Problem is, I usually only memorize that particular route, so if I stray, I tend to wander aimlessly for a bit.

One of the best things about wandering though, is that you run into places that you wouldn’t really have thought about looking(geocaching helps with that too). Case in point, walking down York Street towards Sussex and stumbling upon the little bakery shop that President Obama famously stopped in at for a cookie.  Gotta remember to stop in on my way back, I thought.

The walk was pretty nice though. I passed by the war memorial, where the annual Rememberance Day services are held. It’s an amazing monument. Really hard to describe in words.  Going from the financial center of Ottawa, through into residential complexes. I was quite glad to finally get to the bus depot. Certainly not in a centralized place like it is in Saskatoon, but it still is in that kind of neighborhood you would expect to find bus depots.

Once I had my ticket, I took a different route back up towards the Parliament buildings. I stopped briefly to watch some of the giant squirrels in someones yard. The squirrels here are huge compared with those back home. And some of them are black. Some are bigger than my cats back home. 

After a quick walk across to Quebec to visit an Earthcache showcasing some Ordovician fossils, it was off to the Centre Block and Question Period.

It wasn’t really a surprise the amount of security I had to go through to watch Question Period. They took everything. No pens, paper, cameras, etc. were allowed in. The screaming match and the yelling was more than I could’ve dreamed it would be. No Harper or Ignatieff though. They were all off doing other business. Harper’s right hand man though, John Baird, held his own. And although, because of where I was, I couldn’t see Duceppe, one Conservative MPs comments about Duceppe taking the side of the Taliban apparantly had Duceppe sputtering and shaking with anger. All in all, Question Period was awesome!

The rest of the day went by rather fast. I enjoyed a (rather expensive) Obama cookie, walked through Rideau Centre and enjoyed roasting marshmellows on Parliament Hill with my friend Chris, then got taken around Ottawa on a driving tour with Nick and Tim. It was great way to end my last night in Ottawa.