Urbanism
Every now and then it’s good to shake off the bugs and clear the rhetorical sinuses with a column that exorcises the crap out of your system. Call it a writer’s defrag. This week I decided to say something good about a police initiative and the success e-scooter
Politics
In the Ottawa Citizen this week I talk about food insecurity and how extraordinarily incomprehensible it is for a society so rich and advanced that it can catch freaking rockets with giant chopsticks to have so many hungry people. It’s one in four households in Ottawa suffering from food
Urbanism
A shorter update this week as I juggle a few big projects and associated looming deadlines. I will be able to share a few of those projects soon. They’re fun, I promise. My Ottawa Citizen column this week is about skating — in Ottawa and in Huntsville, Alabama. Well, mostly
Politics
I like to joke that there’s only one man I put a helmet on for, and that’s true enough. I don’t do any ring fighting anyone, except with one friend who’s earned the privilege through grit, discipline and good cheer. In 2015 I was a second-degree
Urbanism
When the colossally stupid three-days-in-the-office federal policy came into effect in September I occasionally saw in my various social media feeds complaints from people who couldn’t find parking downtown. I thought it was weird. Difficult to believe, even. Aren’t there six thousand gazillion places where one can temporarily
Urbanism
In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I discuss the Point in Time Count — a national exercise to get a reasonably accurate picture of homelessness in Canada. I agree we need solid data. It’s important to know how people end up unhoused, or in precarious housing. It’s also
Urbanism
Five years ago I wrote a series on “Healthy Ottawa” that included a column on reusable containers. It was before the pandemic and a few stores allowed customers to bring their own clean-and-empty containers like mason jars to buy certain items like bulk noodles or coffee beans or spices. The
Culture
Some weeks writing a column is fun and some weeks it’s even funner. This week I got to talk with Canadian comedian Ron James, live from his Toronto condo. He’s coming to Ottawa for a show at the Meridian next week (buy tickets!) and what better opportunity to
Urbanism
Not to show my age or my dirty mind or anything, but when I hear the word sponge I immediately think of Elaine in episode #119 of Seinfeld. But today I am interested in even better sponges than that — the ones that turn urban parks into extraordinarily useful green infrastructure
Gerald Butts is a very smart man, a clear writer and a fine thinker. So when he writes something eloquent about a subject on which I know a lot, I pay attention. But I also want to offer a slightly less panicky take on all the things. By way of
Urbanism
There are weeks when it seems there are no limits to the number of zany ideas people come up with, including (in no particular order), digging a tunnel under the 401 in Toronto to add lanes of traffic because there’s no way the existing 20 or so are enough,
Français
This one is just in French, because the platform to which I am referring is 100% in that language. It is a new initiative by the Assotiation des auteur.e.s de l’Ontario français to promote the work of its members, francophone literature in Ontario as well as help