On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Here's two alternatives to choose between for for OCDBS Zone 8.

Donna Dickson. She first found herself drafted into activism by way of her son's murder some five years ago, but has been finding reasons to keep working for the better.

There's one other alternative to the "Unwoke" person also running for that school board seat: Shannon Kramer.

I'm leaning towards Dickson at the moment. If the seat could be legally shared, though...?

Two anger-inducing things I encountered this morning while out for my walk:

1) the school board candidate profiled by AntiHate.ca as a Problematic person has her first campaign signs up, one of them at a prominent intersection near me.

2) At that intersection, I passed a person who greeted me with that now-infamous "white power" hand gesture along with more innocuous words.

Right here in Orléans, east of downtown Ottawa.

I know of the Convoy Crowd encampments at St. Brigid's in Lowertown and the Bikers' Church in Vanier. Where are they gathering here, unwatched, in Orléans? How do we make them understand that they've worn out their welcome?

Natural Food Pantry
Canadian Tire Gas+

And the local Metro grocery seems to be improving their conduct. I hope.

Hoping that trend further improves...and I expect to talk about other stuff as the day passes.

(If you're wondering about local weather, there's rain...but it's barely even there. Wind, yes. Grey skies, yes. Not even enough rain to be called "drizzle".)

Got some pix of the construction of one of the new O-Train stations, doubling as the renovation of one of the old Transitway stations here in eastern Ottawa.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dwight_ew/albums/72177720297478784

Also, got some laundry done this morning before I went out for my day's shopping errands.

Rain day, too. Not the worst rain we've had, just enough to keep the spring melt moving along.

Oh, and I got a haircut last week. The CPAP machine mask harness was part of the impetus, the new job search was another reason. Although some people seem pleased with it regardless of the motives.

The Orléans Star and L'Orléanais.

http://www.orleansonline.ca/

http://www.orleansonline.ca/Orleanais/index.htm

I'd like to see them get through this on a continuing basis.

I went to the Shenkman Arts Centre last night. City Hall had announced a public briefing/Q&A session to discuss the plans for leveraging redevelopment goals from OC Transpo's "Phase 2" plans to expand O-Train service from Blair Station into Orléans itself, and I wanted to see what's going on with that. The plans are collectively referred to at City Hall's website as "the Orléans Transportation Corridor".



Briefly, I'd say that the session was informative, and while there was a preoccupation among many of my fellow attendees with the consequences of the O-Train for their driving, with needs for supporting infrastructure...the city representatives, including Orléans Ward councillor Matt Luloff, managed to get the word out about the wider ambitions of this plan.



Particular attention went to St. Joseph's Boulevard. If you've been able to visit that original "main street" of Orléans in recent days, you'll understand why City Hall might want to see some changes in the look of it. Many businesses are housed in facilities set well back from the sidewalk, with wide swathes of parking lot making pedestrian access to those buildings and the businesses they house more difficult than it's needed to be. Some of the more recent buildings added to St. Joseph - the new facilities for Shoppers Drug Mart, the Royal Bank, Farm Boy, etc. in particular - were built to accomodate this goal through specific incentive programs jointed referred to as a "Community Improvement Plan".

(The attendance was high enough to require the attendees to split into simultaneously-briefed sessions on the first and second floors. I attended the second-floor session in full, but managed to catch a glimpse of the ground-floor session towards its end on my way home.)



Ideally, the goal is to steer St. Joseph Boulevard to more closely resemble the Wellington West and ByWard Market "main street" areas.



(Making a note to add photographic detail for the neighbourhoods I'm referring to later in the day!)

Taken earlier this afternoon.

The food court at the Place finally moved from second floor to ground floor this past week. The old seating has been fenced off, and some lights were still on yesterday in some of the places being abandoned. This one, for example:

For your curiosity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orl%C3%A9ans_(electoral_district)

It's where I've lived, generally speaking, since moving to Ottawa in 1985 with my parents right after I escaped high school. We note that the local Liberal riding association has finally selected their candidate, one Marie-France Lalonde, who worked as Kathleen Wynne's Community Safety and Correctional Services minister and Francophone Services minister, and that Wikipedia's volunteer editor corps has not caught up with that fact about the riding in the 2019 federal election as I write this. And apparently, there was a bit of chaos involved, judging by the CBC News report linked above.

Ahem.

There's a lot more detail I could probably go into about Orléans at the moment, but that can wait.

At the corner of St. Jean and St. Joseph in Orléans: