Cultural Diversity, Ottawa

4 more images

During the welcome dinner of the working meeting which I attended in Ottawa, the organisers invited a famous local Indian dancer which performed a very nice traditional dance using hops (see photographs). During the dance, he used the hops to tie around his body and formed various shapes e.g. birds. This was a memorable occasion for me.

This is Ottawa downtown with many people and many cars on the road. Ottawa is a metropolitan city and this is visible in downtown. You can see many tall office buildings and hotels, tons of cars and all sort of people. Sometimes all you have to do is sit-down on a bench and just look at the people coming and going. Parking can be difficult and expensive from Monday to Friday. Downtown Ottawa is flooded with office workers and most of them drive. The large majority of these folks are form the other side of the river, and they just work in Ottawa, but on the weekends it is nice and quiet and you can see more tourists around the city.

Any visitors to Ottawa always visits the Museum of Civlisation, even if it just driving past to see Cardinal's architectural masterpeice.

I spent a few hours enjoying the skills of Algonquins from Maniwaki who were buidling ~ demontsrating the use of Mother Natures original materials to make the most incredible little canoe for kids

Avoid publicly expressing excessive enthusiasm or joy, pain or grief in Ottawa. The cultural norm for public behaviour runs a more moderate range from pleasant to mild, controlled frustration. Always be polite. Seek out compatible sub-cultures if you must emote -- they do exist and make Ottawa a pretty cool place once you find them.

insights

Birchbark
White Cedar for the gunwales and ribs
Watap - the root of the spruce tree
Spruce resin