Two More Ottawa Walks

1. When I’m in a city with a Mountain Equipment Coop store, I like to take a look around, see what’s new. Shopping online just isn’t the same. Not that I spend much money–I’ve already got all the gear I need and then some–but you never know if something might catch your eye.

Google Maps told me it was 13 kilometres from Kanata to the MEC store, so I decided to walk there on Friday morning and then take the bus to my sister’s place for the afternoon. The day before, she’d shown me a map of the city’s recreational pathways and I had, or thought I had, a better sense of where I’d gotten off track when I walked to their apartment the day before. I walked through the Greenbelt along the Watts Creek pathway, past drifts of trilliums and other spring flowers, to Moodie Drive, where the Ottawa River pathway begins. Then I walked up to Carling Avenue, past an old Nortel campus, and followed Carling all the way to Richmond Road.

The walk along the sidewalk was long and hot and straight and unrelenting. Suburban walking can be difficult; the roads are designed with cars in mind, not pedestrians, and what’s interesting (or at least functional) at 60 kilometres per hour is quite dull at 5 kilometres per hour. Things got a little more interesting when I finally got to Richmond Road, where there are more stores and people to look at. I finally arrived at MEC and checked my GPS. It wasn’t a 13 kilometre walk; it was 19 kilometres. No wonder it’d taken so long. I bought a couple of small things and then caught a bus that took me through neighbourhoods where I’d lived when I was a student–ah, sweet nostalgia!–and transferred to another that took me into Vanier, where Cindy and Drew live. 

2. Yesterday I decided to walk to Vanier again. This time, with what I’d learned from experience and maps, I thought I could follow a more direct route, avoiding detours and dead ends. I won’t have to walk as far, I thought. I was wrong. I saved all of half a kilometre.

 I followed the Watts Creek path to the Ottawa River path, which I took as far as the Portage bridge at Victoria Island. Then I climbed the stairs up onto Wellington Street to see the Parliament Buildings and the tourists. It’s early in the season but the sidewalks were thronged with visitors. 

I was walking quickly and easily. I felt great, almost as if I was in one of the flow states that Mihaly Czentszmihalyi talks about. I fell in with a group of women out for their Saturday morning walk and used their pace to set my own. It was wonderful. Then, at the 20 kilometre mark, I felt the blister that had been growing on the sole of my foot all morning pop. Ouch! I walked more slowly and carefully for the rest of the day. No more flow.

These multiuse pathways are complicated. There are so many different kinds of people using them, from pelotons of cyclists dreaming about the Tour de France to mothers trying to get their toddlers to put their shoes back on. I’m surprised there aren’t more collisions. 


By the railway bridge I saw a polished wooden chair. A guerilla art installation? Who knows?

On Wellington, I stopped to take pictures of a bed of tulips in the park where the previous government wanted to put a memorial to victims of Communism. I’m glad that didn’t go ahead: the park is better than the ugly monument they were planning to shoehorn into it. I also took pictures of a stand of elm trees between the Supreme Court and the Finance Department building–trees that somehow escaped the scourge of Dutch Elm Disease. 

Then Parliament and the tourists and along Rideau Street to Montreal Road. In all, I walked 29 and a half kilometres. That puts my total for the past three days at almost 80. I feel more confident about my upcoming walk, even though I’m still getting blisters. I’ll have to keep working on a solution to that problem.