The BreakFest Blog
News about Ottawa Festivals and our Member festivals, special events and fairs.
Community groups baffled, frustrated by decision to limit access to Archives space
Chris Cobb, The Ottawa Citizen
Leaders of Ottawa area community groups are baffled and frustrated with a federal government decision to effectively oust them from Library and Archives Canada in a move officials say is necessary to create more meeting space for federal bureaucrats.
“It’s a bizarre, absurd decision,” said Ottawa International Jazz Festival executive director Catherine O’Grady. “We are charities that use the space. We’re all doing what we do for the community and not for profit. What are they thinking? Why take that away from us?”
O’Grady, who, along with other group leaders, is scrambling to find alternate accommodation in a city where there is little space available, says she will mobilize the festival’s 10,000 subscribers to protest the decision.
“We have staged hundreds of concerts there over the years,” she said. “The space is absolutely perfect and vital for our education and outreach programs.
Ottawa’s only tourist centre to close
Budget considerations partly responsible
CBC News
Ottawa’s only tourist information centre will be closing this week, with tablet-toting information officers and a more modest kiosk set to take its place.
Staff at the Capital InfoCentre across from Parliament Hill have helped more than 325,000 people a year find their way and book hotel rooms.
Andy Rajagopalan is one tourist who found the info centre useful.
“We saw the info centre and thought it would be a good place to find our bearings,” said Rajagopalan, who was visiting with his wife from North Carolina.
“It was awesome, there’s a very nice map. You have a button you can push, and it shows you where the building you want to go is.”
But the National Capital Commission says finances and a need to modernize visitor services are forcing the closure of the information centre, effective Tuesday.
Read more on the CBC News website: Ottawa’s only tourist centre to close
Mark Sutcliffe: Serve well in tourism, and Ottawa can lead
Mark Sutcliffe, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — What makes Ottawa a great tourist destination? The sights are spectacular and there are many unique things to do. But ultimately it’s the people of this city that define whether or not visitors have great experiences and lasting positive memories that make them want to return.
And which people have the greatest interaction with visitors? Those who work in the tourism and hospitality industry and serve them throughout their visit.
It’s as simple as this: Terrible customer service can ruin a visit to the most beautiful destination on the planet. Excellent service can enhance a great vacation or even turn a nightmare into a positive memory that lasts decades.
That’s why the Stars of the City gala, at which I had the honour of presenting the awards on Wednesday, is one of the most important events in Ottawa. It doesn’t get as much attention as many other events, but it honours the people who go above and beyond the call of duty in the tourism sector.
Small, local wonders: Wine and food festival treats locavores with farm tours, special canapés
Laura Robin, The Ottawa Citizen
THE OTTAWA WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL
When: Nov. 11 to 13
Where: Ottawa Convention Centre
Cost: Advance tickets are $21 per day. At the door, admission is $28 on the Friday and Sunday, $35 on the Saturday.
More: ottawawineandfoodfestival.com
OTTAWA — Look at the evolution of The Ottawa Wine & Food Festival — the longest running show of its kind in Canada — and you get a taste of just how much the local food scene has changed.
When the show started 26 years ago, it seemed that the farther away a chef, a wine or a food came from, the more exotic — and more exciting — it was.
I remember having my first nibble of genuine, three-year-old Parmigiana Reggiano at one of the Ottawa shows a couple of decades ago and being wowed by how, well, authentically Italian it seemed.
Now people are being wowed by what’s growing and being raised in our own backyard.
For the last four years, Savour Ottawa has had a booth showcasing local products. This year, the distance between producer and consumer is really shrinking, with farmers coming to the show and show visitors going to farms.
“Twenty-six years ago, people didn’t think of Ottawa as a foodie destination,” says Sharon Holzman, who does public relations for the show. “It certainly is now.”
Take a stroll through literary Ottawa
From Parliament Hill to Poet’s Hill, it’s a city of letters
Peter Johansen, The Ottawa Citizen
What did you do?
I meandered through Ottawa searching for the city’s literary past.
What literary past?
The one stretching back to French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who wrote about the area in bestselling travelogues in the early 1600s. That tradition remains alive. Margaret Atwood was born here; Elizabeth Hay and Frances Itani still live here. But my literary sleuthing focused on the late 19th century, when many expected Ottawa to become a cultural hot spot.
How did you know where to go?
I didn’t. That’s why I called on Steven Artelle – by day, an analyst at Library and Archives Canada; the rest of the time, a student of local literary culture. He did his PhD on the subject and occasionally leads tours for groups such as literature classes and writing clubs. I joined his fascinating trek from Parliament Hill to Beechwood Cemetery, with a few stops in between.
Parliament Hill? The words there may be loud, but I never found them especially literary.
Perhaps. But Artelle says he begins all his tours there, to gaze upon the river where our earliest writers drew their inspiration. “In fact,” he says, “the Chaudière Falls were so inspiring that it was said even atheists found God there.” But Parliament Hill also signals early efforts to build Ottawa into a cultural capital.
Read more on the Ottawa Citizen website: Take a stroll through literary Ottawa
Ottawa Nuit Blanche push gathers steam
Peter Simpson, The Ottawa Citizen
The truest thing said at La Nouvelle Scène on Tuesday night was this: “Ottawa deserves a Nuit Blanche.”
And it does. Ottawa is all grown up now when it comes to visual arts, not as grown up as New York City or Paris or Florence, admittedly, but grown up nonetheless. It has a base of national institutions – the National Gallery, the Museum of Civilization, the War Museum and the National Portrait Gallery (ha! Just kidding, Stephen Harper, go back to your cutting).
Ottawa has a determined if ill-housed city art gallery, and – this perhaps most significant – it now has at least three clearly defined art districts, those clusters of smaller, private galleries that have popped up organically wherever the growing conditions are best, specifically the By-Ward Market, Hintonburg-Wellington-Westboro and Bank Street in Centretown.
Ottawa also has established, annual events that draw attention to visual arts of various types, most notably Festival X, the photography biennial. There are smaller events, such as Chinatown Remixed, the weekend of art installations in that neighbourhood, or the monthly First Thursdays gallery hop in West Wellington, or the formerly named Art in the Park in the Glebe (a neighbourhood that, despite its affluence and education, has seen all of its art galleries/shops close in the past two years).
Read more on the Ottawa Citizen website: Ottawa Nuit Blanche push gathers steam
Big Beat: EBA studio tour shows off everything from a wall of waxed bricks to plastic-bag dresses
Peter Simpson, The Ottawa Citizen
Enriched Bread Artists open house
When: Oct. 21-23, Oct. 28-30 (6 to 9 p.m. Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays). Vernissage: 6 to 9 p.m. Oct. 20
Where: EBA studios, 951 Gladstone Ave.
More: See more photos and a video tour of the EBA open house at www.ottawacitizen.com/bigbeat
OTTAWA — Was the terrible wind of July 17 — the same one that ravaged Bluesfest — being creative when it got over to Gladstone Avenue?
Was it making an artistic statement when it blew the roof off the building that houses the studios of Enriched Bread Artists? Something about deconstruction, perhaps, or was it just an attempt at irony? The wind did blow bricks off the roof of the one-time bakery and onto a woodworking shop trailer below, so it was brick-crushes-wood, like a cosmic game of rock-paper-scissors.
Sometimes you just don’t know why the bricks start to fly, but that’s not the case inside the re-roofed EBA studios, where at least one artist is making bricks of another sort: wax.
And a Nuit Blanche for Ottawa is born . . .
Peter Simpson, The Ottawa Citizen
The truest thing said at La Nouvelle Scene on Tuesday night was this: “Ottawa deserves a Nuit Blanche.”
And it does. Ottawa is all grown up now when it comes to visual arts, not as grown up as New York City or Paris or Florence, admittedly, but grown up nonetheless. It has a base of national institutions – the National Gallery, the Museum of Civilization, the War Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery (ha! Just kidding, Stephen Harper, go back to your cutting).
Ottawa has a determined if ill-housed city art gallery, and – this perhaps most significant – it now has at least three clearly defined art districts, those cluster of smaller, private galleries that have popped up organically wherever the growing conditions are best; the Byward Market, Wellington-Westboro, and Bank Street in Centretown.
Ottawa also has established, annual events that draw attention to visual arts of various types, most notably Festival X, the photography biennial. There are smaller events, such as Chinatown Remixed, the weekend of art installations in that neighbourhood, or the monthly “First Thursdays” gallery hop in Wellington West, or the formerly named Art in the Park in the Glebe (a neighbourhood that, despite all its affluence and education, has seen all of its art galleries/shops close in the past two years).
Read more on the Ottawa Citizen website: And a Nuit Blanche for Ottawa is born…
Dining from Noir to Blanc
After huge success of Harvest Noir, Diner en Blanc organizers announce they’re bringing phenomenon here
The announcement from Diner en Blanc came close on the heels of a similar successful Harvest Noir Oct. 15 where 750 participants converged with only four hours’ notice outside the Canadian Museum of Civilization for an elegant picnic and dance that continued well into the evening. The turnout and the enthusiasm of participants far exceeded expectations, and the event is likely to reverberate through staid Ottawa’s social scene.
Diner en Blanc publicist Geneviève Blouin said there is no intention by the Quebec based group to undermine the locally organized Harvest Noir.
“The official Diner en Blanc is going to be announced in the new year,” Blouin said in a telephone interview from Montreal.
“Harvest Noir is sort of a counter-event. There’s no harm in them doing it. There’s no issue and it’s not like rivalry or anything like that. Diner en Blanc is Diner en Blanc.”
Five Ottawa-area activities added to Signature Experiences Collection
OttawaStart
The Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) has named five Ottawa Tourism member organizations to the prestigious Signature Experiences Collection:
- Stimulating the Senses! – National Gallery of Canada
- Aboriginal Voyageur – Aboriginal Experiences
- Exploring Canada’s flavours in a unique culinary destination – Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa
- Lost Ships of the 1000 Islands Cruise – Gananoque Boat Line Ltd.
- The Grand Hall Tour – Canadian Museum of Civilization
The Signature Experiences Collection currently lists 115 activities that are authentic, that represent Canada’s nature, people and/or culture and that are immersive and engage a variety of senses. The Collection is used by the CTC to promote travel to Canada from its key foreign markets, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea, China, the United States, Mexico, Brazil and India. The next round of applications will begin November 15 and end December 15, 2011.
Read more on the OttawaStart website: Five Ottawa-area activities added to Signature Experience Collection
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