
7 Posts Challenge – Day 2 #7for7
5 Things I Miss About Ottawa
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Family and friends are by far the biggest thing (er- people) I miss from Ottawa. Being in Saskatoon has been great – we are overall closer to all family here and old friends, but we made some pretty righteous relations with people in ‘central’ Canada (notice the quotes? I don’t buy this ‘central’ thing, Ottawa and Toronto. You are EAST. But not EAST EAST. They speak funny out there.) I miss our family and friends.
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Photo credit: http://ottawafoodies.com/food/21
Food. Really great food. Varieties of food. Cheeses. Authentic cheese curds (I still am saddened by St. Albert Cheese’s fire!) Street food vendors. Toscas. Food. I miss the food. Perogies just don’t quite cut the variety I could get in Ottawa (even the homemade ones). I miss Ottawa foods.
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Proximity to cool places. Montreal – 2 hours. Maritimes – 1 (long) day. Cincinnati – 3 days (with 8 month old). Niagara – 6 hours. Saskatchewan has nothing. Sorry Edmonton, Calgary, and … Winnipeg (though I don’t know if you’d normally make that cut): you guys are nothing to the east’s proximity. I miss Ottawa’s cool proximity.
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Midwives. It’s an odd item to make this list, but at this point in my young life, I’m really aware of how lucky I was to have easy access to midwifery care compared to here (where it’s next to impossible). I’m saddened by this and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it. I cannot make more women choose to be midwives and stay in this province. I cannot change the province’s government to support (through funds, materials, education, etc) midwifery more, though I do add my voice to other women who ask the same as I. I miss access to midwives (whom are apparently now a stone’s throw from we used to live *curses*).
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Transit. Ottawa’s transit is super stellar, especially compared to nearly every other city in Canada. The only rivals are likely to be Vancouver and Toronto. While the people in Ottawa love to complain an amazing amount about it, the system works very well. And people are willing to squish to fit more on. I do find it a little boggling when the bus here is ‘full’, which just means that people refuse to move back more where there are even empty seats available. That’s hardly a concept in transit in Ottawa (which is called OC [Ottawa-Carleton] Transpo). And I could get from one end of the city to the other – 36 km – in non-rush hour traffic in an hour. Here to get 15 km it takes 1 hr or more. I miss the transit.
5 Things I Don’t Miss About Ottawa
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Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_me_souviens
The QC drivers. It would never fail – whenever there was an erratic and dangerous driver on the road (very stand-out style), it would be a Quebec license plate. I guess they’re just driving what is normal in Quebec (Montreal is mucho scary driving for a non-Quebecker), but it would always stand out as nearly-fatal in Ottawa. I don’t miss the QC drivers.
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The rush hour. Which would be hours. Stop-stop-stop-stop-GO-OR-I’LL-BUMP-YOUR-FENDER! attitude that comes with that type of rush hour. I don’t miss it at all, though here is also far from perfect. If you’ve driven with me you know exactly what I think of the driving experience I’m currently in, wherever that may be. Believe me – I am attempting to work on my *ahem* commentary. But I don’t miss the rush hour.
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Living on the 8th floor of a building with no in-suite A/C and on the corner that faces both south and west (read: sun -all- day). We bought an air conditioner and stuck it in our bedroom window. It should have been able to cool off our whole apartment, but many days it could hardly keep our room cool enough to sleep. No desire to ever repeat that. I don’t miss the 8th floor.
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Humidity. Though we get humidity here, there was nothing like Ottawa humidity (though I hear Greater Toronto Area is worse). Nothing feels worse than taking a nice cool shower only to step out and be drenched in sweat within 2 minutes. And somehow the humidity scale which Environment Canada uses seems to be waaaaay different depending on where you live. 100% in SK is really only about 50% in Ottawa (based on our experience). I don’t know how they figure that works. I don’t miss the humidity.
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I’m at a loss. Everything else was miiiiinor. No cop-out, just non-existent. Apparently I only have 4 things that I don’t miss about Ottawa.
Coming later this week: 5 things I love/don’t love about Saskatoon!


2 Comments
hawaii52
Speaking of proximity, did you know that the average distance to the earths centre is approximately 6,371 km or 3,959 miles. In other words, if you could dig a hole 6,371 km, you’d reach the centre of the Earth. At this point you’d be in the Earth’s liquid metal core.
Anyway we are all approximately the same distance from it at any point in time! It’s not very cool there however unlike cool places like Montreal or Niagara. Just sayin…
jane
It’s true – it certainly wouldn’t be cool…on a couple different levels 🙂