I was off to the capital last weekend to cheer on my brother and friends in the Ottawa Race Weekend half marathon. I'm more of the short and fast type and had hoped to tear it up in the 5km race, but alas, I didn't register in time and the event sold out. My bad. Cheering on the team was still a big responsibility, however, and I'm happy to report that my efforts were successful! Jodie, Nicholas, and Jill all crossed the line with finishes that exceeded their expectations (1:48, 1:53, and 2:06). Congrats, team! Apart from some sore knees and Nicholas' Frankenstein-like shuffle for the next couple days, all is well on the recovery side.
From there we got down to the business of celebrating and hopped over to Hull, Québec to acquire the materials for our hotel room kegger. Feeling a little cloudy and regretting the drunk dials of the evening before -- my specialty, I might add -- we set out the next morning for a day on Parliament Hill.
I've been to Ottawa on a handful of occasions but I've never had time to do the touristy things. It's dorky, but I was actually a bit giddy with excitement. We even managed to score some seats in Question Period! As a Canadian politics junkie it was really fun to see. No surprises, really: Peter MacKay was hot and on it, Stockwell Day was a loser, and Michael Ignatieff carried the Liberals while Stéphane Dion was nowhere to be seen. For once though it was actually an exciting day in Canadian politics: right after the House finished sitting Stephen Harper fired Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier. It's about time. I do lament the loss of one of the Conservative cabinet's better-dressed ministers, though.
We also checked out Centre Block, the National Gallery and the Supreme Court. My friend Jill is being called to the Alberta bar in a few months and we're pretty sure that she'll be in that court some day.
I forgot how beautiful Ottawa is in the summer and it was great to finally see the insides of Parliament Hill. The buildings are stunning and full of so many lovely relics. I was up at the top of the Peace Tower at sunset and found this little gem from Bruce Hutchison's The Unknown Country mounted on the wall:
No Canadian can stand and look at this cluster of buildings [...] without feeling that somewhere on this Hill, perhaps by a happy accident, architects, masons, and stone carvers have managed to grasp and materialize the beauty of Canada, the vastness of its land, its loneliness, its youth and its hope.
