CANADA150 and the start of a great journey

Kids out of school and a long day of work…. Phew… Time to kick back and relax for the night before we begin our journey!?!….. Of course not!!! We make the call to just DO IT…. Get in the car and go…. And so in the spirit of spontaneity which we hope to make a theme of this journey.. We embarked on Day 1 at 9:30 PM on Friday June 30, 2017.  Ottawa here we come!

The drive to Ottawa was completely unusual. What is usually a calm and easy drive turned out into gridlock just on the outskirts of the GTA for hours!!  Multiple slowdowns with no accidents reported. The simple answer… VOLUME… and lots of it!. I’ve never seen such a giant line up for a service center in all my days of driving. People fed up with the gridlock were desperate to get off the highway for a break. We carried on and made it to our destination at 2 am. Lucky for us.. our friends who were gracious and generous hosts welcomed us in and we recharged for the night.

Day 2: OTTAWA – CANADA DAY 150 July 2017

Fully recharged we set out for the day early. Well…. Early-ish. The rain poured down early Canada Day morning so we waited until the heaviest rain subsided.  With a bus stop across the street, we couldn’t have asked for a more convenient trip downtown. As we got closer to downtown, the sight of red and white would become more and more obvious. Everyone was out to celebrate #Canada150. Our country’s sesquicentennial.

Parliament Hill?… well.. we saw a teeny glimpse…

Making it onto Parliament Hill was a no-go from the start. With predicted 3 hour waits to get through security to get onto Parliament Hill, we decided long before that we’d just try to get a glimpse of the parliament buildings and just absorb the festive spirit of the Canada Day revelers in and around downtown. We did manage to see the Royal Canadian Mounted Police escort His Royal Highness Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall’s carriage onto the hill and what a majestic sight it was.

Crowds are busy on a normal Canada Day in Ottawa and this year was no-exception. The lineup to get onto parliament hill was so long it snaked through the area and many times blocked regular pedestrian traffic flow so we made our way as best as we could.

Celebrations all around

Inspiration Village, Byward Market, buskers and a sea of red and white as far as you could see. The celebration on Parliament Hill was ongoing as we walked around and broadcast on giant screens and every TV in every restaurant and pub was airing the celebration so even though you weren’t on ‘the hill’ you felt like you were. A Fighter jet flying overhead certainly got everyone’s attention!  Speeches by our exuberant Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Governor General David Johnson, Prince Charles, among others began the festivities. And if everything wasn’t enough, Bono and The edge performed “One Love” live…. Awesome..

A few hours of mayhem downtown and we decided to head to our next destination. With buses at critical shortage and waiting an hour or more for ours, we decided to find alternates and quickly within minutes of leaving our bus stop we found an Uber.

Canada’s Biggest Playground

A legacy project of Canada 150 was ‘Canada’s Biggest Playground’. As part of the Giver TV show on TVO, the kids had seen glimpses of this playground built by kids and themed after Canada. Built in Mooney’s Bay Park the 4,600 sqft park sit on the water’s edge. Constructed in the shape of Canada, each province was themed separately like construction for Ontario and winter for Nunavut. Lots of climbing structures, slides, spinners and swings. The kiddos were in playground nirvana! It didn’t hurt that the entire thing was new and novel and they had seen it on tv. But it was nice to hit one of the kid’s highlights!

Observations:

Groundhogs – lots of them in Ottawa! It’s like squirrels back home. All along the park, numerous ground hogs!

Kids memories: My favorite part ‘ playing with Maddie’ and ‘Canada’s biggest playground’.

Lessons learns:

• Always do a second or third look around to make sure you have everything. We had to turnaround once and meet up with our friends to retrieve forgotten items. You’d think we never travelled before but we seemed to forget that this time around.
• Sometimes you just need a good night’s sleep instead of checking off yet another item on our list. We missed the fireworks on parliament hill but both big and little kids were wiped out from the day’s events and late night the night before.