Ottawa - the beginning

I took the Via rail to Ottawa. First off, Canadian rail is unimpressive compared to what I travelled on in Europe. It was late (ok, I am spoiled by Switzerland) and slow and expensive.

Anyway, from the train I saw one paper bee/wasp nest, two beaver lodges, two hunters sitting in a blind and a whole bunch of hawks. The train past Toronto goes through a lot brush.

Anyway, the weather in Ottawa is quite lovely but a little cold.

On my second day in Ottawa I went to the war museum. It was better than expected and I really enjoyed reading the displays. I spent about 6 hours in the museum and left with a headache and I kinda glossed over the later wars. However, I was glad to spend time on the world wars and the wars leading up to 1812.

However, one of the really cool things they had in the display was an E-meter. The description is fantastic:

Home Front Paranoia

Security officials used this device, the electropsycometer or E-meter), in the 1950's and 1960's to help ascertain people's sexual orientation, assuming that homosexuality made individuals more susceptible to blackmail by enemy agents. Data from the so-called 'fruit machine' cost more than 100 civil servants their jobs. The Church of Scientology still uses such machines to assess the mental state of its parishioners.

On Remembrance Day, I attended the official ceremony. It started out not too cold but by the end I was *freezing*! And apparently this year the weather was really nice!

Anyway, when it started, we had gotten there early enough that we had a decent view of the grounds. It was going to be pretty exciting because Harper and the Prince (Charles) were going to be there.


However, when all the parading was done, the cadets(?) in the big hats were standing in front of us and we could see nothing of the ceremony, we could only observe on the jumbotron, which you could watch from home and it would have been a lot warmer!


You can see in our view of the ceremony that there are some St. John's Ambulance people in the scene. The big hatted cadets were dropping like flies, and another (there were two in front of us) had passed out and had to be carried/escorted from the ceremony.

Later, when the crowds had thinned out after a few hours (we went home for lunch), I went back and placed Emily's poppy on the grave of the unknown soldier. I couldn't put my poppy on because I had already placed it on the grave of the unknown sidewalk block somewhere in downtown Ottawa (as had many other people like myself).


I checked out the wreaths. Man, amongst all the wreaths with the elaborate (and standard) gold letters on purple, there was Stephen Harper's (Prime Minister), his was printed on a piece of paper and stapled to the wreath.


Well, you can't blame the man, maybe they needed more time as they were too busy handing out large novelty checks or something.

Anyway, that was the remembrance day ceremony. They had a large gun salute (a piece of artillery) and a 'missing man formation' flyby of 4 fighter jets. And the trumpeter kacked on the the Last Post. Then we bicycled along the canal to the research farm.

Apparently at this farm, they no longer do research but they have educational school programs and a museum etc. It was free since it was winter and we checked out the animal barns. They had stallions and a large bull which I haven't seen too often. And they had a fully operational dairy barn where they milked about 40 cows and owned quota and everything. I was amazed at how close we could get, we just couldn't walk between the milking stalls, but you could walk along the fronts of the animals as they were in their pens. I learned that the bull stud book was referred to as the "Whose Your Daddy" book.

All in all, it has been an eventful week so far!