The wages of bad street design is death

On May 11, 2019, our cat Georgia died. She was five years old. I hung up the laundry in the garden at lunchtime and she came and sat on the deck with me, her tail curled neatly around her paws. I did not see her alive again. In the early afternoon came a great pounding

Holy Mary, Mother of God — My kid is going to Catholic School

Secular Education in your Mother Tongue, or A Safe Route to School: Pick One Last week, I took Middle to his intake appointment at Immaculata High School here in Ottawa. The guidance counselor asked him why he wanted to go to Immaculata, and he summed it up nicely. It’s bikeable, he said, but my family

The utter, utter bliss of not owning a car

A phantom presence haunts most discussions of urban transportation in Ottawa and indeed most of North America. It is the unspoken dread of not owning a car. If the city puts in more protected infrastructure and devotes more space to active transportation, how will I drive there? The flip side of increasing modal share for

Zero Waste: The Loot Bottle

Or, confessions of a parent who hates children’s birthday parties. I am the oldest in a large family and I was burnt out from running children’s birthday parties before I left my teens. Time somehow seems to run backwards when I’m in the midst of one, and I find myself wishing it were all over.

#MeToo: Woman (and her child) on foot

To be a woman in public is to be subject to glances, comments, sometimes touches that are unwelcome. A threatening murmur, often barely audible, underlies most interactions. Sometimes that murmur becomes a terrifying shout. So it was a few weeks ago when I was walking home one morning. I had walked the spouse to work,

Barred owls

I’ve been married now for over 21 years and last spring I fell in love. My marriage is safe, however; the objects of my devotion live in Indiana and I’ve never seen them in real life. One day into my Twitter feed came a tweet about a barred owl camera, I clicked on it, and

Elgin Street: after millions of dollars spent, it will still be awful

Crap. Another day, another furious letter to the city about its wilful inability to achieve balance for road users. This one is about a recent report on the proposed reconstruction of Elgin Street. As it is now, (see above), it’s quite unattractive and uninviting. The proposed improvements will do little to change this, I fear.

I have no sword, so I’m fighting with my pen

  I wrote this letter to the Ontario Minister of Education today: Dear Minister Hunter, I am writing in response to recent statements you have made about school boards consulting with municipalities in their decisions to close local schools. These statements have particular relevance to us here in eastern Ontario, as many rural schools are

Canada 150 in the garden: celebrate!

My latest gardening column (slightly modified) in Nouvelles d’Overbrook News, our community newspaper. This year’s bulb and seed catalogues are pushing the idea of planting lots of red and white flowers to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.  I like red and white. I like it in Nordic knitting and I like it in the Canadian flag.

Car-free Family: O Bus, Where Art Thou?

We’re going to a party this weekend! If the weather is clear we will bike, since there has been a lot of snow melt recently and the roads are no longer choked with snow. The spouse has already told me that there is no way he is taking transit; the vagaries of OCTranspo are somehow compounded