Pie Palace

Here’s a quick rundown of my experiences with the vendors I used for my wedding. These vendors are in Ottawa, and, for the most part, they did a decent job at a reasonable price.

Venue and catering: The Carleton Golf and Yacht Club hosted our wedding. We were looking for an all-in-one venue that would handle the ceremony, the reception, and the catering. The CGYC clocked in at about $60-$70 per guest. The cost was less than other locations we looked at (notably Strathmere), and the hall was nicer than either the Monterey Inn or Bearbrook Farms. Laurie O’Brien, the clubhouse manager, did a fantastic job at ensuring the reception hall was properly decorated and that everything went smoothly. She (and her staff) were fantastic. Highly recommended.

Transportation: Because our venue was out in the middle of nowhere, we chartered a school bus from Rideau Bus Lines. Their driver knew how to pacify a bunch of drunk wedding goers (turn out the light, natch), was friendly, and knew where he was going. Recommended.

Photographer: We went with Julie Young Photography. She (and her lovely assistant) did a great job at herding the wedding party and composing us into something that I hope is photogenic. We haven’t gotten the final pictures yet, so I’ll hold out on my assessment.

DJ: First Choice Entertainment (613-830-7009) satisfied our music and MC needs. The owner, Greg Fedor, was easily the most energetic vendor we hired. His posse had a good selection of music (even if they didn’t know a good track to foxtrot to), and good equipment. They provided music for the ceremony as well as the reception and dancing. Recommended.

Officiant: Lynne Langille of Exceptional Wedding Ceremonies in Ottawa presided over the ceremony. She did a good job, given the various hiccups we threw at her (collapsing chairs, wrong rings, and a giggling bride and groom). Recommended.

Limousine: We hired Elite Limousine to ferry us from our photo venue to reception/ceremony venue. The driver got lost en route, making us 20 minutes late for our own wedding. Disappointing.

Cake: We ordered cupcakes from the Buttercream Bakery. The cupcakes weren’t bad, but they didn’t have the richness I had hoped for. I can take part of the blame for that – I should have bailed when we did our tasting. Similarly, a cake we ordered for the cutting proved to be pretty bland. What’s worse, a day before the reception, we called them to make sure they had the right address for delivery. They didn’t. Recommended with reservations. If you go with these folks, call at the last minute to make sure they have the right address.

Rings: I tried various jewelery stores, but I didn’t see anything I liked until I went to Magpie. They had a wider selection in styles and materials than we found elsewhere. Their stuff has a bit of a hippy look, but some of us like that kind of thing. Recommended.

For those of you who enjoy your sweets to be both inexpensive and ethical: the Metro Central Y sells excellent Cocoa Camino hot chocolate for a measly $7, including tax. That’s 20% cheaper than Bridgehead! NOM NOM NOM NOM!

Against the recommendations of the Pie Palace legal staff, I am going to continue my habit of posting while tipsy. You have been warned.

Earlier this week, Public Transit in Ottawa ran a post about the proposed downtown tunnel in Ottawa’s new rail-based transit network, which implied that a downtown tunnel is both necessary and that there are no other options.¹

We have many, many options for transit: we could put dedicated transit routes down Carling, under the Canal, or along Wellington, which would solve downtown congestion without having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building and maintaining a tunnel. Similarly, we aren’t tied to the (diesel) rail solution that the city is proposing: we could use buses or electric streetcars. If we wanted to solve downtown congestion without spending hundreds of millions of dollars, we could close downtown (north of Laurier, say) to private vehicles during rush hour and set the traffic lights to a permanent east/west green.²

Simply put: we have options. But that is not how the transit debate is being framed. On the left, we have city councilor Clive Doucet saying that world class cities need rail transit. On the right, we have a mayor saying that Ottawa needs a tunnel. Neither of those things are true. I think it would be awesome if we had a rail network, and I think a downtown tunnel would be nifty, but we don’t need either of those things. We could solve our transit woes more cheaply, and maybe even more efficiently with other options.

I would argue that our quasi-debate is obscuring the larger issue: Ottawa’s burbs are built for cars, and no amount of dedicated transit will be useful to suburbanites. Until we increase suburban density to a point where it’s economical to lay track (or dig tunnels) out to Nepean, Orleans, and Barhaven, public transit will continue to be an expensive and unattractive way to move most of Ottawa’s population.

The four possibilities proposed by city staff in March of 2008 were essentially the same, differing only in where the train would leave off and pick up with buses. Now we’re being told that we can’t do without a downtown tunnel, again, without anything approaching the level of deliberation and consideration necessary before dropping hundreds of millions of dollars.

Happily, the City of Ottawa is revisiting the Comprehensive Five Year Plan that decides how our city should grow during the next half decade (and will be having public consultations at Ben Franklin place later this month). It remains to be seen whether city councilors and staff will use this opportunity to address the root cause of our problems, or will continue addressing the symptoms.

1. Peter, of Public Transit in Ottawa, posted a comment apologizing for his editorializing. Props to Peter. (back)
2. Please note that these solutions are just a few possibilities. They aren’t necessarily great, and I don’t endorse one over another. I’m just pointing out that there are other possibilities that haven’t been publicly floated. (back)

Observent readers of Blogawa will notice that I’ve added El Maks (of swapbox fame) to Blogawa. El Maks, (no relation to the awesomeness of Maki), is, well, awesome.

As always, suggestions for new blogs can be made to erigami@piepalace.ca.

Years ago, I contributed policy to the Green Party of Canada on media. In it, I stated (words to the effect of) “media is a business like no other, it has a responsibility to be profitable, but more importantly, it has the responsibility to hold our public offices to account.” The policy items were my rough attempt to discourage the rise of large media conglomerates, and to support regional media outlets.

Yesterday, one of CTV shut down evening newscasts in Ottawa, and did similar things in Barrie, London, and Victoria. In doing so, they have cost Ottawa yet another media outlet, and yet another avenue for paid journalists to keep our politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations honest. Coincidentally, kottke.org has linked to a story describing how the cuts to Baltimore’s daily newspaper has made the police force less accountable:

Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit — these are the wages of a world in which newspapers, their staffs eviscerated, no longer battle at the frontiers of public information. And in a city where officials routinely plead with citizens to trust the police, where witnesses have for years been vulnerable to retaliatory violence, we now have a once-proud department’s officers hiding behind anonymity that is not only arguably illegal under existing public information laws, but hypocritical as well.

And this isn’t just an American problem. As the Dziekanski enquiry is proving, Canadian police reports can sometimes differ dramatically from reality. Without an engaged, and well funded press, there will be no one to hold these officers to account.

What solutions do we have? A CRTC-mandated carriage fee for cable broadcasters? Preferential tax treatment for smaller news organization? Increased funding to public broadcasters? There are solutions, but we, as an electorate have to wake up to the fact these cuts don’t just cost jobs, they are a danger to our public institutions.

Telephone poles know the truth. This one, seen on Bank street, provides the 411 on who Jesus hates. The list is pretty long, but here are a few of the highlights:

- Christian rock, rap, techno (then again, who doesn’t?)
- catholics
- yoga and martial arts
- lotteries
- tolerence
- “dirty human rights commissions/tribunals”
- Canwest Media
- buddhists, scientologists, hindus, muslims, wiccans, etc.

(There’s the usual rants as well. We hear those often enough that I won’t bother repeating them)

It sounds like heaven is a pretty lonely place.

A Midwinter’s Dream Tale is a fantastic play. The plot is loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and A Winter’s Tale. Fairy king Oberon is horrified that his fairy queen Titania has borne him a child, and orders it taken away by a pair of bumbling mortals. The mortals make off with the child, and Titania follows after them. In that, you could kinda/sorta say that it has something to do with the original Shakespearean plays.

The two mortals: Pommes Frites (an oaf) and ‘Restes (an idiot) are a mix of Bob and Doug McKenzie and Inspector Clouseau. They stumble through the plot wonderfully, never quite understanding what’s going on, or what they should be doing. Coincidentally, they happen to be the core of the Company of Fools company, and some of the stronger actors.

A Midwinter’s Dream Tale isn’t Shakespeare redux. The dialog is fast, modern, and (kinda) witty; there are more dance numbers than soliloquies; the pacing is quick; and the characters are fun.

Go see this play. Pick up the phone, call the Gladstone Theatre (at 613.233.4523) and order tickets. Seriously. It’s only on until Saturday, and this is probably the best play that’s going to be produced in Ottawa this year.

According to the Citizen, bus ads stating “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” are being planned for Ottawa. You can donate to their purchase at atheistbus.ca or the Freethought Association of Canada websites.

The world’s most loved politician will be in Canada on February 19. If he’s coming to O-Town, I’m going to see him, come hell or high water.

I was going to post about the street social in support of Ottawa’s Gay Village, but Picasa ate the photo of the poster that I wanted to use. Why did it eat them? Because I saved them to C:\Documents and Settings\Erigami\My Documents\My Pictures\temp which happens to be the directory Picasa uses to temporarily store stuff to the local disk before copying it to the target directory. Doh.