Short and Sweet Trip to Ottawa COMPLETED About This Page:

[GoofyMom]

Who: Dan (DH) and myself
When: Oct 30 to Oct 31. Not even 24 hours
Where: Ottawa, Ontario

Background: Dan has worked very hard for the past 12 years doing a project in Churchill, Manitoba for his job with Public Works and Government Services Canada. He's cleaned up decades of pollution, garbage and other assorted abuses that mankind has managed to assault Canada's North with. In those 12 years he has had to deal with an awful lot of red tape; he's had to tread softly between various government and environmental interests; and sometimes he's had to do things that were well above-and-beyond anything remotely written in his job description due to resistance by various sectors. He's finally in the wind-down phase of the Churchill project and it has been deemed very successful. So what's this got to do with our trip to Ottawa? Well, his boss submitted a nomination to Ottawa (where basically anything to do with government is based out of) for what is called the Public Works and Government Services Canada Award of Excellence. I know. It's a mouthful. From here on I'll shorten his department to PWGSC. And the award shall just be known as the award.

Anyway. We knew that he had been nominated; however, this award is one of those things that it's truly an honour just to be nominated and you know that you'll never win it because PWGSC has about 60,000 employees and they only hand out 15-20 awards annually. One day, not too long ago, Dan got an email..... a congratulatory email inviting him and a guest to Ottawa to receive the award that he won! They were putting us up for the night at Downtown Ottawa Hotel - The Lord Elgin - Ontario Canada Luxury Hotels and Accommodations which is a pretty high-class joint. There was to be a banquet and awards ceremony held with the High Mucky Mucks on the evening of Oct. 30 at the Canadian War Museum. An interesting choice for an awards venue, but whatever.... free food is free food, right?

We left our house at 7 am on the 30th and flew to Toronto first. Our plane had to be de-iced in Winnipeg before we could take off, so we were a bit late. Which gave us 35 minutes in Toronto to get to our gate and find something to eat. We crossed our fingers that our suitcase would make the quick layover and be waiting for us in Ottawa since it had our fancy clothes in it.

We arrived in Ottawa about 2 pm.


Ottawa airport


Waiting to see if our luggage made it on the same plane we did.

Fortunately, we saw our bag slide onto the carousel, so Dan grabbed it and we were off to the taxi stand for a ride into the city. Ottawa's airport is just outside of the city, and you drive through a lovely forested area before you get there. I didn't get any pictures of it but I like that drive.

Anyway, we pulled up to the hotel and while Dan was paying the cab driver, a doorman opened the cab door for us and unloaded our suitcase from the trunk. We walked into the lobby and were greeted by:


Ha! I love Hallowe'en humour!!


Some of the "guests" - it's hard to read in the small version, but it's Mary Shelly & Dr. Frankenstein. They registered their vehicle so it wouldn't get towed: a Horse and Cart (white with blue trim) Their arrival time was "The Dead of Night"


Other registered guests included Medusa, Lucifer, and Norman Bates.

We checked in. Our room was 230, which turned out to be right at the front of the hotel.


It wasn't a large room by any means. Just a queen sized bed, an armoir for the TV, a desk and a chair. Plus a good-sized bathroom. It was more than adequate for the 2 of us and we weren't planning to stay in the room much.


The view of the park across the street from us, plus the overhang thingy (where you drive your car up under when you are checking in) that our room looked out over. We also had a lovely view of the flag pole.

We changed into our fancy clothes and headed to the lobby where we were meeting Dave, a neighbour of ours. Dave also works for PWGSC and by a crazy stroke of coincidence, also won an award. So he and his wife Leslie were also staying at the hotel. We were going to share a cab to the Canadian War Museum.


We grabbed a drink in the lobby bar while we were waiting for the others.


The two Award of Excellence recipients representing Western Canada. And we live 4 blocks apart.

Coming up.... The Awards Banquet

[chezp]

Great start Donna - I can't wait to read more. And congratulations to Dan!

[wheatenwalker]

Cant wait to read more aand see you all 'glammed up'. Way to go Dan!

[lauren-roxy]

Congrats to Dan!!!! Great start to your trip!!

[katspjs]

Yeah! A mini-trip report from Donna!

I didn't realize the award dinner was held at the War Museum. It's in a brand new facility that my DFIL did a lot of work getting funding from large corporations to get it built including a meeting with a high ranking member of Parliament (the equivalent of meeting a high ranking US Senator).

Can't wait for the next installment!

[Colexis Mom]

Great start Donna I was thinking of you guys today, USA Today (newspaper) had a big story on Churchill today with the polar bears Kept thinking about your trip up there earlier this year More please

[WDWfan]

Originally Posted by wheatenwalker

Cant wait to read more aand see you all 'glammed up'.

Yeah - Where are the Donna pictures??? Your hotel looks great - and Dan cleans up pretty good!

[Grammy Grumpy]

Congrats to Dan, his project and it's success is awesome!! Can't wait to see a picture of you in your fancy clothes. DH wants to know if they are similar to this dress?



Can't wait to hear more about the award recipient's celebration.

[iamgrumpy]

Great start!

[Sheila Gallant-Halloran]

Congrats on the award, and glad to hear you had a nice time in my current home! (Sorry, Ottawa is great, but as a Newfoundlander, it'll never really be home. Home is home - any Eastern Canadians hanging around here will know what I mean!)

[MickeyMAC]

Great start Donna, I love reading your trip reports about Canada. I always learn so much. Thanks

[GoofyMom]

Originally Posted by Grammy Grumpy

Congrats to Dan, his project and it's success is awesome!! Can't wait to see a picture of you in your fancy clothes. DH wants to know if they are similar to this dress?



Can't wait to hear more about the award recipient's celebration.

Oh my goodness, Barb! Blast from the past!

[GoofyMom]

Originally Posted by Sheila Gallant-Halloran

Congrats on the award, and glad to hear you had a nice time in my current home! (Sorry, Ottawa is great, but as a Newfoundlander, it'll never really be home. Home is home - any Eastern Canadians hanging around here will know what I mean!)

Ottawa is a really nice city. It's beautiful, it's multi-cultural, it's completely bilingual, and it's quite friendly. But I know what you mean. A Western Canadian will tell you the same thing about Ontario!

[GoofyMom]

The Awards Banquet

Ok. So it's 4:00. Registration was at 4:45, with Cocktails starting at 5:00. Dave & Leslie and Dan & I were all gussied up in our fancy clothes, so we grabbed a cab to drive to the Canadian War Museum. It's only 2.2 km (about 1½ miles) but we girls were in heels so we didn't really feel like hoofing it. Turns out, our cab driver decided to take us through a bunch of short little streets with lots and lots of traffic lights and gridlock and it honestly took just as long for the ride as it would have to walk. And the strangest thing -- our cab driver had a blue tooth thingy for his cell phone and he talked for the entire ride to somebody. I've never had a cab driver do that before

Finally we arrived and I looked back over the city. Ottawa really is pretty.





Like Deena (katspjs) said, it's a brand new facility. WarMuseum.ca - Canadian War Museum - Plan Your Visit It's quite modern in design - concrete and glass and a very interesting shape. And of course, that is the only photo I have of the exterior.

Despite our slow-pokey route, we arrived before the ladies at the Registration table were ready for us. Fortunately the museum was still open so we poked around there. They have a small art collection on loan, so we checked that out. A few of the paintings reallyjumped out at us so I took a couple photos:


Sacred Ground Zero


Canada's Reaction to War

After we had checked out the art and made a purchase in the gift shop, it was time to register. Dan announced us and they pinned a boutonniere on his lapel and told us we were at Table 2. Okey dokey - assigned seating. We were wondering who we would be sitting with and hoping like crazy that we wouldn't be the only 2 English speakers at the table. That's the thing about Ottawa (the government) -- being able to speak French is a definite asset. Je parle un peu francais. Enough to find a bathroom and maybe order a drink of water in a restaurant, you know? Not enough to carry on a conversation. And Dan speaks less than me. Well, good news! Dave and Leslie were also placed at Table 2, so we knew that if nothing else, we would definitely have conversation at dinner!

It was time for cocktails and we headed down a long hallway to a very large room called LeBreton Gallery. It was a very curious place to be holding a dinner. There were tanks, personnel carriers and other assorted vehicles used in war and peacekeeping missions.



I was kind of creeped out eating by this vehicle -- it's a light utility vehicle (Iltis) that was attacked by snipers in Croatia in 1994. 2 Canadian peacekeepers were inside; they were shot and injured, but managed to drive to safety and both survived. However, I thought it was a little gruesome for a dinnertime atmosphere.

We grabbed our cocktails and some cheese and crackers and headed to find our table. WOW! Front and centre. We have no idea how Dan and Dave scored such a great seating assignment, other than the fact that they were two of the very few individual recipients. Most of the recipients were groups.



We were curious about who else would be sitting with us. So we checked the other place cards. And then we saw it. Uh oh.


Um, Dan.... isn't that one of the High Mucky Mucks? Francois Guimont, the Deputy Minister of PWGSC. As we sat down, a woman from the committee came up to us and told us "This table has to behave. This is the Head Table". Oh boy. Now for those of you who have read a few of our WDW Trip Reports, Dan and Dave together are kind of like Mark and Steve and Bill together. Yeah. You're just asking for trouble. She also told us we were going to have 2 glasses of wine each for dinner. However, she must have not told the servers that, because every time I took a sip from my wineglass, a server was behind me immediately and refilled it. By the end of the evening, none of us were feeling any pain!


All the awards lined up, ready to be handed out. The flags behind the tables are all the Provincial Flags of Canada, plus obviously the good ol' Maple Leaf on the end there.

Ok. Here it is. The photo of us all gussied up:


They started the Awards Ceremony and as is common in Canada, there were two Masters of Ceremony. One English, one French. So you know how long the thing took. Yep. Twice as long. Because one would say their blurb in English and then it would be repeated en francais. Fortunately, after they got through the 20 minute introductory part of the evening, they switched to alternating between English and French instead of doing both. Dan was really lucky because they announced him in English, but poor Dave got the French announcement. And he understands about as much French as Dan does. He told us later that he just got up to accept his award when the applause died down and he figured it was safe to go.

There were 17 awards presented. Most of them were group awards, so it didn't actually take very long because they would announce the group and the group would assemble for their presentation. The individual awards were treated with a bit more pomp and circumstance - they were allowed to pose for a few seconds while they were receiving their awards and a professional photographer snapped a couple shots. Dan and Dave were the token Westerners representing Western Canada (which is pretty much anything west of Toronto); the rest of the recipients were from the Ottawa area. And some of the reasons the Ottawa area groups won awards for were kind of lame. No Maritimers were represented at all, which disappointed me a bit. I know they work hard out there too. What's the point of having a National Award, if they aren't going to give them out all across Canada -- and especially if they are going to hand out lame awards to people who did not go above and beyond what their jobs were. That was my one beef about the evening - some people got awards for just doing what was in their job description; while others, like Dan got an award because he truly deserved it. But that's a disparity between the regions I guess, and it gets a bit political, so I'm not going to elaborate on that. Annnnnyway...


This is Dan receiving his award from the High Mucky Mucks.


And this is Dan's award. It was crafted by a Canadian artisan. It's supposed to represent the recipients overcoming the mountain of obstacles that stood in the way of attaining their goals. Ok. Immediately we started wondering how we were going to get the thing home without breaking it! At the end of the evening we stopped at the Registration Table where they bubble wrapped it and placed it in a lovely Government of Canada paper bag. Plus they were also given their cash prize at that time, which was briefly mentioned in the opening remarks but for which no actual amount was mentioned. Which leads me to believe that they had varying dollar values. Dan's cheque was nice, better than a kick in the teeth with a frozen boot, but it barely covered our expenses in Ottawa.


I'm behaving myself. See?


Dave, M. Guimont, and Dan

We actually ended up having a wonderful evening with Monsieur Guimont. I was a bit nervous at firs