A Wonderfull Ending

This week I had may last ever experience as a Carleton University student. This final bid experience was supposed to be my final exam on Monday and this was a bitter sweet experience because I was extremely glad to have finished all my exams and to not have to study anymore but I was also really sad that I would never really be back to work at this wonderful university again.

 

However as I said this is what I though my last activity as a Carleton student would be instead I was invited by my lecturer in the exam if I wanted to come on a field trip on Thursday. Of course there is only one answer to the question do you want to have a free trip into the countryside to play with rocks and GPS and that is yes! This unfortunately did mean that on my first day of what was essentially my summer holidays I had to get up at 7am drive two and a half hours to play in the mud. It was brilliant. We arrived to a hillside just outside a tiny town with nothing much but a convenience store, a gas station and a few houses. We drove bumpily along a narrow forestry trail until we couldn’t get any further in the van because beavers had built a dam across the road. I was pretty excited to see the dam whereas everyone else was just annoyed at the inconvenience. To Canadians a beaver dam is irritating but to me it is crazy new and exciting. The dam was surprisingly sturdy looking and holding back allot of water that sat a foot and a half deep on the other side. All around trees were gnawed into pointed stumps where the beavers had chewed through them in ways I thought was purely the invention of cartoonists.

 

We spent a pleasant day mainly surveying the site to help make base maps for the second year field camp and spent our time scrambling through the overgrown forest, climbing hills and wading knee deep into the bogs to get the exact location of all the buildings and mine pits in the areas. It was a beautiful day as summer seems to have arrived and we are having hot clear sunny days. We sat on the crest of one of the hills to eat lunch overlooking the panoramic view of the incredibly vast country side. Bellow us stretching out for what seemed like forever were trees and fields and rivers, scattered with the odd building and criss-crossed by the winding maze of roads.

 

On the way back tired and muddy we stopped for ice cream at a tiny roadside diner off highway 7. The sun was setting over the horizon stretching out before me casting an orange glow over the scenery. As we sat laughing and talking in the cooling evening sun I realised that it was a beautiful and perfect way to end my time at Carleton University.

Sping has arrived

So spring is has finally reached the fine country of Canada and it’s about time! If I had had a choice it would have been here about a month ago. Anyway the snow although still lying all over every available surface has definitely stopped falling from the sky and started to melt away exposing the brown and muddy grass that was first hidden over four months ago. Unfortunately the melting snow had also reviled the huge amount of rubbish that has been dropped onto the streets over the winter. So now instead of wading through knee deep snow I now find myself battling my way through discarded sprite bottles and crisp packets. Despite this rather unfortunate downside there are a lot of wonderful things that come with the warming weather. I can walk outside without first having to put on my entire wardrobe and then rushing to find the nearest shelter before my fingers fall off. The air is cool and fresh and the wind a gentle warm breeze. The first brave flowers have started to sprout out of the patched of expose muddy grass opening their petals to the week sun that shines for longer and longer everyday. The Canada geese are returning from their winter migration spots further south and all this gives the world a sudden feeling of life. Our flat has also been filled with renewed excitement as our sole Canadian flatmate has been accepted into a study abroad program in the UK and will be living in London for a semester next year. The prospect of this and our knowledge that she wont be too far from us again soon is creating a lighter atmosphere as we head into our finial few weeks at Carleton. It is nice to know that at the end of term when we say goodbye it will not be forever.

 

With this new fresh feel the city has once again come alive to me. I find myself with renewed excitement for exploring where I live, whether that is the streets of downtown or the footpaths surrounding the canal. It seams that everyone if in the same joyful mindset as the sun shines down bringing life and energy to us all after a cold dark winter. Unfortunately this beautiful and glorious spring has arrived at a fairly inopportune time with everyone’s exams fast approaching. With the end of term barely behind us and the pressure of essays only just over it is now time to worry about final exams. I have three next week and then one more after that and with so much work to do it is hard to justify time out in the beautiful sunshine. However they will soon be over and I will be free to bask in the wonder of the beautiful weather. Although knowing my luck the spring rain showers will have started by them and I will be face with the prospect of grey skies and soggy shoes to celebrate the end of term.

Snow

Now I know that I have bolgged about snow to an almost ridicules extent in the past few months but like any good Brit (and any good Canadian for that matter) I can talk endlessly about the weather.

 

This weekend saw the arrival of Ottawa’s biggest winter storm of the season with 50cm of snow falling on Saturday night, pushing the totally snowfall for this winter well over the 4m mark. This is means that Ottawa is only 30cm short of having its snowiest winter on record.

 

This ridicules snowfall also means that the snow outside has now reached the height of my window and that I couldn’t get out the building on Sunday as drifts were reaching up to 8m high. Even if I could have got outside it would have been very difficult to get anywhere. Even id I didn’t get swept off my feet or buried in snow and managed to struggle my way to the bus stop there would have been no busses. Most public transport ground to a halt on Sunday as busses could no longer navigate the snow clogged roads. On campus no roads got ploughed until Monday morning so most shops and sports facilities closed as their staff couldn’t get to work. This was the pattern through out the city as snow fell faster than ploughs could move it and even when snow was being moved they have run out of places to push it.

 

Stories have been trickling in all week about crazy disruptions caused by this epic storm. The o-train got suck in a drift and passengers had to hike back to roads. There were hundreds of abandoned cars on unploughed streets were not being moved because the tow-trucks also got stuck and then the ploughs couldn’t clear the street. Ambulances couldn’t reach thousands of destinations and were parking on ploughed streets and snowshoeing to accidents. The police patrols had changed from cars to skidoos to allow them reach most areas of the city. All fights to and from the airport were cancelled and many others just scheduled to pass over eastern Ontario were forced to land. Therefore thousands of people were trapped in the airport and forced to spend Saturday night sleeping in the terminal. This was not the only case of people being trapped as thousands of shop and office workers elected to sleep at work rather than brave the weather home.

 

Despite all this mayhem and getting a little trapped I really do hope that Ottawa gets that final 30cm of snow before the spring thaw. To be in the city during its snowiest winter ever would be an exciting experience but even is this doesn’t happen I still will have experienced the snowiest winter season in 60 years.

 

So anther blog on snow and I hope that I have something new to talk about next week or that we will have broken that record and I’ll have more now to talk about.

Looking Back

This week has been quite compared to the last and has slipped past surprisingly quickly in a blur of exams and studying and work. It worries me that there have been many weeks when I have felt this happening and I start to wonder if I have wasted my time here in Canada. In light of this disconcerting feeling I have tried to sum up my feelings and experiences of the country (so far) in my blog this week.

 

When my plane first touched down on Canadian soil it was still summer and Canada was a land of mystery and wonder to me. The sun was shining from the bright blue sky over wide streets in a city made of sky scrapers. Summer was the season of new experiences the sunny weather reflecting my mood of excitement. I explored the city of Ottawa finding all the best places to eat drink and hang out in the city. I spent hours exploring the city’s parks from the Rideau Canal for Gatineau Park and hours more finding good places for live music. I was in love with my new city and never wanted my time there to end.

 

Summer turned into autumn and the trees turned into every glorious share of red and orange imaginable. As the leaves fell and crumpled from the trees, even as the world became a beautiful paint pallet I felt that feeling of wonder leave with it and as the brisk October wind blew after thanksgiving weekend I started missing home. The city so full of wonder still felt too strange and I longed for the familiar streets of Edinburgh.

 

November brought the end of autumn as the now bare trees were blanketed in snow and winter began in full force. Perhaps it was simply the passage of time or maybe the snow which brought about my change in mood but either way winter brought with it a sense of contentment. It could be simply that I no longer feel slightly lost as I have to fully concentrate on where I’m going far too much to enjoy shopping but in any case Ottawa became home. Of course it could just as likely be that the joy I feel in the snow and the beauty in Canada’s frozen landscape has once again captivated. I re-explored all the places I found when I first arrived and returning to them drew me back into the wondrous mindset I was in when I first arrived in Canada.

 

Now in March as the days finally start to become warmer, even only slightly I look towards spring and the exciting new adventures it will bring, in Ottawa and as much of Canada I can squeeze in before I return home. As I read back over what I have read in this blog I have realised that I have basically describe ‘the three steps of living in a new country’ written in the university handbook. This are ‘honeymoon’, ‘home sickness’ and ‘a new home’ I think my way sounds more exciting.

Winterlude

This week Ottawa is in the middle of the Winterlude festival. This tradition is a tradition celebrated in many Canadian cities and is the Canadian winter festival. In Ottawa these festivities are centred on the Rideau Canal as it freezes in the winter to become the longest skate way in the world.

 

This week marked my first venture out onto this historic ice rink and it was eventful to say the least. I have purchased a pair of budget hockey skates on the recommendation of my Canadian friends with the assurance that I will love skating and they will be a major improvement on the rentals. My skating experience consists of a few trips to indoor rinks as a kid and the usual trip to the temporary rinks in Glasgow or Edinburgh every Christmas. Therefore my skills on the ice are pretty non- excitant. We stumbled out onto the canal in the early evening just as the sun was setting over and casting a pinkish glow over the scenery and just as the snow began to spiral from the sky. We rushed piles of snow off the benched placed on the ice of the canal to change into out skates and we were ready. I rose unsteadily to my feet and scraped my skates tentatively over the bumpy surface. Skating on the canal is more difficult to master than skating anywhere else I have been as the surface is much rougher than the artificial rinks I have skated on before now. However I found skating with more confidence and a little more speed as well as pretending that the ice was flat helped a little and soon I was managing to propel myself in a forward direction, not with any style but at least I was skating and not falling too much. Skating on the canal is a beautiful experience when we arrived it was quiet and calm and I felt like I was visiting another world as the snow spiralled around us and the sun slowly set.

 

The peace and magic of our ice skate was broken by a yell from one of my friends and I turned to see her lying on the ice clutching her knee and yelling “It popped out!” It looked gross and very painful. We called 911 and tried to describe exactly where we were exactly on the ice and then described how to get there. Eventually after some detailed descriptions and 30 minuets of confusion they eventually arrived and whisked her off to French speaking hospital for even more confusion and more pain as they popped it back in!

 

Despite this slightly unfortunate start to my Canadian ice skating I have returned again to skating on the canal to perfect my technique. Ok- so my technique is a long way from being perfect but it was improved as well as being enjoyable and definitely less eventful than the first trip.

 

The other festivities associated with Winterlude include a snow sculpture competition, a snow slide park and a multitude of outdoor concerts. I’m still trying to figure out why in this freezing cold country Canadians feel it is logical to celebrate winter with outdoor entertainment. Therefore these events are scattered throughout the various parks and open spaces thought the city. So it has been another week celebrating the winter and I have to say I’m looking forward to the sun in San Francisco.