Supporting Ottawa small business is #GoodIdeasOttawa

 ABOVE: Garrick Tiplady, Canadian Country Director for Meta, at the December 14 unveiling of #GoodIdeasOttawa. (OLM Staff) This year Ottawa residents want to buy local. According to Meta (formerly Facebook), the parent company that owns social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, eight out of ten residents plan to shop locally for the

Give rogue councillors the provincial boot

 If there is a metaphor for the dysfunction that plagued Ottawa City Hall during the 2018-2022 term, most would exclaim the LRT. But they would be wrong. The perfect analogy for the city government that literally can't get the trains to run on time is counsillor Rick Chiarelli. After last year's damning inquiries

Jim Watson at 30—the ups and downs of public service and his LRT legacy

 ABOVE: Former Ottawa Mayor Jacquelin (Jackie) Holzman, Jim Watson, and Brian McGarry after Waston’s win in 1997. (PHOTO: OLM FILE PHOTO) Jim Watson first ran for municipal office in 1991, becoming the councillor for the Capital Ward after successfully running on a platform of curbing city spending and freezing taxes. In 1997, at the

A month of free transit isn’t enough

 Everyone will be travelling fare-free on OC Transpo during the month of December. The action may appear like a well-deserved break for citizens’ pocketbooks but it is only a band-aid solution that scratches the surface of measures that city council should take to fix Ottawa’s broken transit system. The city’s transparency regarding their

Consultation participants don’t agree with Ottawa Police Service budget

 On November 9, the Police Services Board Finance and Audit Committee met to review the proposed budget for the Ottawa Police Service. The meeting was full of bureaucratic motions typical of most city Zoom meetings. The virtual conference, however, was significant. The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) is requesting an increase of 2.86

Local transit union scolds Rideau Transit Group O-Train failures

 Generally, when the city of Ottawa does a community infrastructure project, it works. The city’s public activities and recreational facilities are pretty good; the outdoor skating rinks and arenas, the outdoor pools and splash pads, the indoor recreational facilities are top-notch, and the city’s parks and trails are also great. The common

Ottawa Councillor Mathieu Fleury gets it right on e-scooters

 The core of Ottawa is a place where leaving your car at home is very easy to do. There is excellent bike infrastructure to help commuters get around but if you need to use a sidewalk, there is a problem. Councillor for Ward 12, Mathieu Fleury has rightfully pointed out

Canada embargoes Turkey arms and locks itself out of future defence procurements

 On April 12, 2021 Canadian, Foreign Minister Marc Garneau announced that the federal government was ending all arms sales to Turkey as a result of the last year’s conflict in the contested area of Nagorno-Karabakh. During the war, Turkish backed Azeri troops retook most of the contested region after a month

Mud Lake: connect with nature without leaving the city

 Photos by Mckenzie Donovan If you enjoy walking the trail that borders the Ottawa River but are looking for a "goose free" alternative (err. . .  and their droppings too!), head to Mud Lake. Located between the Ottawa River and Britannia Village, near the Britannia Yacht Club, it is a place to connect with nature without having to leave

Summit of Cooperation Council of Turkish Speaking States

 Above: Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev participates in the Summit of Cooperation of Turkish Speaking States. On March 31, 2021 Kazakhstan partook in an informal summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkish Speaking States. The meeting occurred online due Covid-19 and the inability to host an in-person conference. The council, founded in 2009, is

The Trudeau government is killing airsoft with Bill C21 for no apparent reason

 Most Canadians under 25 years old have played paintball at a birthday party or at a corporate team-building event at least once in their life. It is simply a fun day in the woods. Airsoft is a similar game with more realistic looking “markers” that has overtaken paintball as a recreational activity and

Ottawa author Conor McCarthy releases a book of short stories

 Title: Wanderings Author: Conor McCarthy ISBN: 978-1-7772754-0-2 If you are in the mood for captivating, elegantly written short stories that can be read in under 30 minutes, Wanderings may be just the book for you. The stories are comedic, heartening, and sometimes melancholy but never disengaging. Most of the stories pertain

The Republic of Kazakhstan 2019 election: Not our democracy but a democracy all the same

 People in the Western world really don’t know what repression is. It’s evident in our discourse on political issues when the words dictator and tyrant are used as low-brow insults directed at countries without much thought to the meaning these words carry. Few understand what real repression is, nor can