Ottawa the City: Perceptions of Bigness

I went to a market information session today at one of the non-profits trying to help people like me still looking for (steady/steadier) work. One of the people making presentations in connection with that session made a remark that's sticking with me right now:

"Ottawa is a small town pretending to be a big city."

I have an objection to that, if only because I've seen too much of the place over the past 35 years.

(35 years. I've lived in one city for that long. Yes.)

The Greenbelt encompassing the old core neighbourhoods can enable an illusion like that in the minds of many. The aggravation of there being neighbourhoods on the other side of the river-border Ontario shared with Québec also distorts reality somewhat, with all the side effects that the language laws of la belle province can provide. I accept that as a given. But Ottawa's big-city-ness is still more fact now than pretense.

JOBS: Lab Architecture

I don't know how long we've got before this vacancy gets filled, but it follows on from an earlier discussion of the topic. It does seem to be a real concern for at least one client of one temp company.

World Press Photography Exhibition

Some of us will want to see this. Others will want to avoid it.

https://ottawastart.com/world-press-photo-exhibition-returns-for-2019-to-canadian-war-museum-until-aug.-11/

RIP: Jeremy Kemp

It's weird that I should pay attention to this obituary, but I've seen two of his TV performances that I know of across the decades.

First being the role of Ernst Queller AKA Ernst Linden on the Space: 1999 episode "Voyager's Return". Queller's role was written as being akin to Von Braun and company acquired by NASA via Operation Paperclip, a man haunted by past sins real and/or perceived.

His second performance notable in my mind was as Robert Picard, Jean-Luc's brother, in the Next Generation episode "Family". "Family" being an epilogue of sorts to "The Best of Both Worlds", the epic first Borg War in which Jean-Luc was forcibly weaponized against the Federation and its Starfleet by the Borg in the form of Locutus.

He'd done other work across the decades, I know. These were the two performances that I best remember noticing with particular gratitude.