Tag Archives: History

Ottowa – Capital!

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Saturday 17 September 2022 – As promised in my last entry, I have spared you my ramblings for a whole day, so here’s a catch-up of what we got up to yesterday.  The train trip from Toronto to Ottawa the day before was almost entirely unremarkable and quite pleasant.  We were on Via Rail, travelling business class, which is something I would recommend, as it saves a lot of queuing – queues to show your ticket, then queues to get on the platform are the lot of hoi polloi in the bilges.  We were wafted on to a carriage with comfortable seats, free drink and lunch, power for our computers and a reliable WiFi that lent some purpose to having the computers with us.  There were several stops en route, and we arrived in Ottawa some 30 minutes late, but we weren’t in a hurry.  A short taxi ride then got us to our hotel, (yet) another monumental Fairmont slab of masonry

the Château Laurier.

Today’s formal content was a walking tour of Ottawa, billed as free, but with the expectation set that tips were expected. At the appointed hour we met our guide, Craig

who has a real job of teaching history, but who started doing the walking tours 17 years ago and now has a company employing about 15 guides.  I’m glad we got the boss – he is knowledgeable, entertaining and very well organised; he shepherded a group of 17 people around for two and a half hours without boring or losing any of us and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ottawa is a strange place, for a number of reasons.  For a start, it’s the home of the government of Canada, and so there are numerous Parliament buildings on, unsurprisingly, Parliament Hill: centre block, with the Peace Tower;

West block, the House of Commons, home of the MPs; and East block, where the senators have their offices. Behind the centre block is the Parliamentary Library, of which more later.

In most of my photos of government buildings, I apologise for the presence of cranes and other signs of construction, but these are impossible to avoid, as The Construction (referred to by locals with implicit capital letters and normally through gritted teeth) is something that has been ongoing for a long time, in some senses for over a century. In 1916, a fire started in the central block, and some bright, erm, spark, thought to close the massive doors between it and the Library.  So the library was saved, but the rest burned down and has been rebuilt.  The Central Block is now being refurbished, so is unused – the Senate debates at Union Station – a mini replica of the original Penn Station in New York – down the way

and the Commons is in the West Block.

The West Block, by the way, has been completely rebuilt, brick by brick.  When The Construction started refurbishing it, the mortar was so fragile that the walls started to collapse as they were being sandblasted, so it was taken apart, and all the bricks individually cleaned, numbered and then used to rebuild.  So it is a modern building

with a copper roof which is still copper-coloured. Look across to the East Block

and you can see what 150 years of weathering does to a building.

The Canadian political system, with its two houses, is similar to the UK’s and is basically adversarial.  In that sense, Ottawa is split.  In a strictly geographical sense it is also split almost exactly in half.  The Parliament buildings are in the Upper Town, which, in the early days of the city, was the Posh Bit, designed and built by largely English and Scottish Protestants.  As such, streets like Spark Street, leading away from Parliament Hill, display architecture that would be familiar in London or Edinburgh

(although the buildings may state that they are “Bank of Nova Scotia” or similar, the government basically owns all of Spark Street, so all of the buildings are government buildings; any shops are leased from it). Government is way, way the most important part of Ottawa’s business, about 60% of the population work directly for the government or its agencies; high tech is second, with many of the big IT names having their Canadian HQ in the city; and tourism is third.

Crossing the Rideau Canal

takes you into Lower Town, where the buildings display a basically French architecture; many would seem at home in Paris.

The Lower Town is home to the Byward Market district, which is the entertainment centre of the city.  So there are profusions of cafés and restaurants, some of which are in very French-style courtyards.

So, why the split?  It was a direct consequence of the creation of the Rideau Canal, a 202km waterway connecting Ottawa to Lake Ontario, dug entirely by hand (no machinery at all) and opened in 1832 as a precaution in case of war with the USA who might then assert control over the Great Lakes and their rivers.  The labourers – 40,000 of them – were almost entirely French or Irish (hence Catholic), and made their homes on the Lower Town side of the canal route, hence the architectural – and indeed cultural – divide.

By the way, the relations with the USA remained cordial, so there was never a need for the Rideau Canal, which remains open these days for pleasure boating from April to October, when the locks are in operation, as seen here when a bunch of Rangers were making their way through by the hotel.

In Winter the canal freezes, of course, which creates the world’s largest skating rink – 7.8km long, and used not only for a bit of fun skating but also by people commuting to work in the winter. It, and Dow’s Lake which it leads to, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We saw a lot of other interesting things as we wandered around Ottawa, both on Craig’s tour and our independent ramblings later: protests by the Parliament;

the Centennial Flame, lit in 1967 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, with sides geographically dedicated to each of the provinces and territories;

statuary;

(above imaginatively called “Bear Catching Fish)

(The above is called “Our Shepherds”.  The accompanying description says “The playful blue colour and simple, symmetrical structure of the sculpture acts as an enticement to consider deeper meanings. Our Shepherds speaks of those who take power and those who are led, inviting viewers to question who are the shepherds and who are the sheep.” This is a load of pretentious bollocks in my view.)

(A representation of The Stanley Cup, the Canadian ice-hockey trophy)

(Maman, outside the Arts Museum and across the road from Notre Dame)

street art;

(a cute advert for a bicycle rental establishment)

(York Street Steps)

and the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

There are nice views over the Ottawa River.


(above: The Canadian Museum of History, designed by an indigenous architect deliberately to have no right angles, as these are deemed to trap spirits)

The Lower Town has a nice vibe about it

(although not everywhere is sweetness and light).

We couldn’t get into the Notre Dame Basilica

because it’s closed at weekends.  We couldn’t get into any Parliament buildings to gawp at the richness of the décor because of closure due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II – and the normal light show on the Parliament buildings had also been suspended, but there was at least a mark of respect,

and we couldn’t get into St. Brigid’s Church (spotted in the distance by Jane as having an interesting spire)

because the last rabble to occupy it have been evicted and the locks changed – see here for details.

The Library, behind Parliament, is indeed an impressive building.

Having been saved by the heroics of Michael MacCormac from the fire of 1916, the Library has been considerably refurbished and its very foundations improved by a complex (and probably expensive) underpinning operation. Walking on the path behind it gives the great views, shown above, over the Ottawa River.

In Sparks Street, the old Post Office building is another flashback to English Victorian architecture

with lions guarding the doorway which are supposed to be welcoming but actually look rather like a cross between Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd having seen something rather beneath them.

Nearby is a statue of Oscar Petersen, the virtuoso jazz pianist, who was actually from Montréal, so I’m not quite sure why Ottawa has been selected as its site, but there it is, with music playing quietly in the background.

As you can infer from some of the pictures above, we also wandered about as dark fell, and a couple of buildings looked quite good when lit: the Library;

a nearby pavilion;

the Peace Tower (you’ve seen already); and Notre Dame Basilica

which was hosting a wedding.

Our crepuscular perambulations ended another varied day.  It was excellent to get such a detailed historical perspective on the development of the city on the walking tour; it was a shame that some of the highlights were not accessible, but we still got a lot of pleasure from our ramblings.

The weather outlook for the morrow was, frankly, gloomy, so we thought we’d see how the day evolved, rather than make any detailed plans.  So please come back in due course to see what actually happened.

 

Totem gesture

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Monday 15 August 2022 – Today, the Silver Muse visited Sitka for a brief sojourn; arriving at 0900 and leaving at 1600.  The ship was anchored out in the harbour, meaning a tender was the only way to get ashore.  (Even if we’d scored a land-based mooring, we’d have been in the cruise terminal, five miles out of town, so there was little practical difference.)  Our scheduled excursion when we booked it was a “Waterfall and Champagne Toast Hike”.  By this morning, it was called an “Exclusive Rainforest Waterfall Hike”. In any case, our instructions were to assemble in the Venetian Lounge (normally used for cabaret, presentations and films) at 0835 because we had a special early tender to take us ashore. As usual, I was concerned about the weather because I don’t like being rained on and rain is not good for my camera. The forecast was not optimistic, but then none of them have been, so that offered no practical clue.

We had a swift early breakfast, once again sitting out on the rear of the ship to help us judge the conditions.  It was a little cool, but not actually raining, and actually the view was rather nice – many, many fishing boats

against a backdrop of small islands, some of which had evidence of habitation.

However, by the time we boarded the tender, the weather had changed.  I didn’t find that the view I had of the driver offered much hope for a rain-free day.

When we got ashore, it was still raining and the outlook was gloomy.

However, Silversea’s efficiency meant we had a quarter of an hour to wait for a coach to take us to our hike’s starting point, and by the time we climbed on board, things had cleared considerably.

We were driven some seven miles along the coast, to Herring Cove, and when we set off for our hike, the rain had stopped.  Eric, our guide, gathered us round for some introductory remarks,

including such topics as: what to do when we get charged by a bear (let him handle it and don’t run away); avoid the plant called Devil’s Club

because leaves and stems have barbed spikes which will cause you real discomfort and which are very difficult to remove; and watch your step, because the locals are dog-loving, but, more importantly there might be banana slugs on the path – their slime, when it comes into contact with water (e.g. on the sole of your shoe) turns to glue, so it’s not wise to tread on them. We did see a couple, such as this one, which was sporting “chocolate chip cookie” colouring.

That said, Eric explained that the local, Tlingit, natives knew that Devil’s Club plant leaves could be made into a tea which was therapeutic treatment for lung problems, and roots, bark and stems also had medicinal value which is currently being scientifically investigated; and the banana slug’s slime, as it trailed along, trapped and dispersed seeds and pine cones which promoted further forest growth.  Not all bad, then.

Although it wasn’t actually raining, we were in rainforest, and Eric showed us what that meant for the local vegetation.  Much new growth comes from old stumps

and some trees that grow this way can throw roots round the stump they grow from and eventually overwhelm it.

To English eyes, it’s a weird woodscape

but there are many undeniably attractive sylvan scenes

and occasional glimpses of the sense of humour of the locals who maintain the tracks and look after the forest.

It’s clear that there’s a solid maintenance effort along the trail

though there are places where nature has made her own pathway for hikers as well.

The river which flowed alongside much of our walk is a delightful accompaniment.

In places the trail was quite steep

(you can spot Eric way up the trail)

but overall it wasn’t a hard as the Mount Roberts trail we’d done a couple of days ago – better maintained, less muddy and, most importantly, shorter; we climbed just 186m before we saw the Bear Mountain Falls

(sorry – difficult to do the view justice in a photo, but a lovely sight). At this point Eric produced the aforementioned champagne and we all drank a (very small) toast – can’t have drunken tourists stumbling about the rain forest!

We retraced our steps to the bottom of the hike and were taken back to downtown Sitka. Rather than take an immediate tender back to the ship, we decided to go for an amble, with the main objective being the Totem Park. The route took us through downtown Sitka

where the totem pole influence was difficult to miss.

Another key influence from history is clear to see, in the shape of the Russian Orthodox Church, St. Michael’s Cathedral, which is central in downtown Sitka.

The Russians first came as a consequence of Tsar Peter I’s Great Northern Expedition, which spilled over into Alaska.  The Russians wanted to exploit the area to expand the Siberian fur trade, but when they expanded to south east Alaska, the Tlingit resisted this expansion because they already had deals with America and Britain. It didn’t end well; in 1802 the Tlingit destroyed the Russian outpost north of modern day Sitka and in response the Russians returned in 1804 and fought to establish a new settlement, which was contested by the Tlingit for many years until a settlement was eventually reached in 1867.

On our stroll through the downtown area, we stopped off to get some reindeer dogs at a recommended place

and ate them sitting opposite a local ukelele band

who did their best, bless them, to overcome the ukelele’s fundamental drawbacks when harnessed as backing for popular songs.

There are some undeniably attractive buildings and some other quirks in Sitka

(let’s complete the set, here….)

(oh, the dolphin is in front of the Episcopalian Church and, in the competitive nature of these things, there’s a Catholic one close by).

There’s a very extensive marina

and even a local salmon ladder, part of the Science Centre Hatchery, which we watched a few fish try to climb; but somehow we didn’t find Sitka as attractive as we had found Skagway, I’m not quite sure why.  Sitka has the amenities and the facilities but somehow, it seemed to us, lacked the charm.

However, one thing it does have which is fairly unique is the Sitka National Historical Park, or the Totem Park for short.

This features, unsurprisingly, many totem poles along a forest trail. But before we got there, a chap engaged us in conversation, which often is a heartsink moment. However, this chap turned out to be Edward Milan, a Tlingit Indian who had actually carved the pole in the foreground here (and has written books on the subject, it turns out), with whom we (mainly Jane, I was taking photos) had a gentle conversation about the history and the modern practice of creating totem poles.

We also found the workshop where poles are being carved.

Just entering on the right above is Tommy Joseph, who showed us some of the tools he works with and helps create for his students.

Our claim to fame, then, is that we have talked to the man who created the Blue Peter Totem Pole.  He is justifiably proud that he got a Blue Peter Badge for it.

We walked a trail through the park.  There are several totem poles along it, collected from various south eastern Alaskan villages by Alaska Governor John Brady and erected in this special park after the poles had been displayed at two world fairs in an attempt to attract newcomers to the area. In many cases the older ones have been refurbished and/or re-carved by Tommy Joseph who has also created new poles addressing modern life.

Totem poles originally stood in villages near the ocean where travellers could see them, advertising the wealth of the village and/or commemorating important people, events and legends.  Often the modern world doesn’t even know what the symbols originally meant. Here’s a montage of some of the things we saw.

We then hastened back to one of Sitka’s landmarks and useful navigational aids – the bridge

where we awaited the tender to take us back to the ship.

For some reason, I find the head poking out of the top of it amusing – it’s the chap who’s driving the thing.  Anyway, aside from a small collision with Silver Muse, we got safely back, having had an engaging conversation on the way with a father-and-son combo – Dad from Virginia, son from San Francisco.

And that ends the story of the day – yet another fairly full-on one.  We treated ourselves to in-suite dining whilst I cobbled these words together, and now it’s time to get our heads down before our next and final Alaskan port of call – Ketchikan.  We’re booked on a “photo safari”, which I hope I will find interesting, but during which I can imagine Jane will be quietly rolling her eyes on occasions.  Come back tomorrow and see whether I got the “iconic images” that the blurb promises!

Up Ship Creek in Anchorage

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Wednesday 10 August 2022 – Long Read Alert!

Anchorage!  Such a lot packed into a single day! I recommend you get yourself a stiff drink and settle in for a long session if you want to read this at a single sitting.

The main task for the day was to take a Covid test as a pre-requisite for being allowed to join the cruise that starts tomorrow.  We’d tried to pre-empt it yesterday by going to the Egan Congress Center in the optimistic hope that the testing facility might be open.  It wasn’t – we’d arrived too late – but at least we now knew where the testing facility was.  Optimism ruled our hearts once again as we headed there just after 8am today hoping that it might be open.  Again, the Congress Centre appeared to be still closed, so we retired to the hotel for breakfast before trying again just after 9am, by which time it had opened its doors. The testing process was efficient – a QR code to register on-site, test kits ready to hand out, a promise of results by e-mail within 20 minutes and contactless payment to relieve you of the fee – $89 per person, which is a scandalous amount, but if it gets us on to the boat, then that’s a win.

By the time we’d walked the two blocks back to the hotel and got a coffee from the lobby café, the results were in, and we were officially declared free of the Dreaded Lurgy, which should make the blog entries for the next few days a little more interesting than they might otherwise have been.  To add further to our joy, the sun had come out and the day was warming up nicely. We had decided to take a Trolleybus Tour to give us some idea of what Anchorage had to offer, so we wandered off in the general direction of the Visitor Center to see what the deal was.

The Visitor Center features a log cabin, which is quite fetching, particularly when viewed through the Spirit Bridge, a 1985 sculpture by Roger Barr.

You can also see our hotel in the background.  Nearby the Visitor Center is a hot dog stand with some interesting wares.

Had we not just had breakfast, the spicy reindeer dog would have exerted a strong draw, I think. Also by the centre is a statue along a rather common theme in these here parts.

Wherever you look, it seems there are references to bears.  Our hotel’s bar/restaurant is called Bruins, for example, and just outside its doors is the reason why.

Trolleybus tour operators proselytise tirelessly outside the center, happy to explain what was on offer, and they proved as efficient at parting us wirelessly from our dollars as was the Covid Test site. The deal we settled on was the Luxury version of the tour, distinguished from the standard version by occasional stops with the opportunity to get off and take photos. That started at midday and it was just 10.30 when we bought the tickets, so we had an hour and a half to kill. This we did by our normal tactic of Going Off For A Wander.  We had a vague idea of a direction to go in, as we’d seen some pleasant-looking timber houses on the taxi ride in from the airport. Jane accordingly navigated us in the general direction that we thought we might have seen them.

On the way, we passed some quirky street art touches,

the local take on Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, the Sacred Family Cathedral of Anchorage

and the Veterans Memorial

before reaching the area we’d sought, which did indeed have a very nice selection of timber buildings.

By this stage we were at Delaney Park, a long stretch of green space between 9th and 10th Avenues, which was originally cleared in the early 20th century as a firebreak to stop the wildfires that are part of the warp and weft of life in Alaska from destroying the developing city. From the park, you can see distant mountains.

We passed the First Presbyterian Church

and “556”, an S-160 class steam locomotive built in 1943, one of 2,300 built for the American army and missing the typical steam engine domes because many were used for the war in Europe and Africa, where tunnels and bridges were lower than in the USA.

(Very creative use of rolling stock wheels for seating purposes, I thought.)

Around here, we met a Friendly Native (there seem to be plenty of them hereabouts – it’s a very amiable place) who suggested a couple of things we should have seen, so we tucked them away for future use after we’d finished our trolleybus tour.  As we worked our way back towards the tour meeting place, we passed some striking murals.

The Trolleybus tour was delightfully led by a lady called Donna who was a mine of interesting information, leavened by very good humour.

One of the strongest threads running through her commentary concerned a major event, not only for Alaskans, but with global impact – the 1964 Earthquake. This was absolutely massive – 9.2 on the Richter scale, thus the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history, and the second most powerful earthquake recorded in world history. Six hundred miles of fault ruptured at once and moved up to 60 ft. Post-quake tsunamis severely affected Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan communities, as well as people and property in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. Tsunamis also caused damage in Hawaii and Japan. Evidence of motion directly related to the earthquake was also reported from Florida and Texas. The repercussions even caused church bells in Johannesburg to ring. It is a candidate to be the third most massive shock to the planet after the Chicxulub meteorite which did for the dinosaurs 66 million years ago and the meteorite which exploded over Antarctica 430,000 years ago.

The incredible thing about the Alaskan earthquake is that although property damage was huge, very few people in Anchorage were killed, because it happened on Good Friday – schools and businesses were closed and the areas affected were largely deserted.

The tour route took us to the James Cook monument, where Donna gave a summary of the huge (but not quite earth-shaking) impact that Cook had had on our knowledge of the world in the 18th century;

he discovered and mapped Alaska as he searched for the fabled North Western Passage that, were it found, would open up trade to Asia. The monument site offers views across the water to distant mountains

and to the “Sleeping Lady”, Mount Susitna, which has an Athabascan mythical story attached to it.

From there, we went to Earthquake Park, where the Pacific and American tectonic plates meet, enabling someone to stand with a foot on each.

A short walk into the woods reveals the waves that were caused as the surface moved up and down during the earthquake.

Shortly afterwards we came to the point on the coast which enables a view back over downtown Anchorage

as well as two significant mountains over the water – Denali, also known as Mount McKinley, on the right in this picture

and Mount Foraker on the left.  Denali, at over 20,000 feet, is the highest mountain peak in North America, as well as the third most prominent and third most isolated peak on Earth, after Everest and Aconcagua (in Argentina).

The route back to town took us past Lake Spenard (named for Joe Spenard, a significant player in the development of Alaska in the early 20th century) and the site of a vast number of “float planes”.

Aeroplanes are hugely important in Alaska, as they are often the only way to reach places because building roads is made difficult by the permafrost which is often only feet below the surface in the state. Trying to develop on such land is challenging as the permafrost melts, meaning you’re now trying to build on water.

The lake is near to Anchorage’s international airport, and one can see huge warehouses in the area, which belong to logistics giants such as Fedex and UPS. This comes about because Anchorage has a critical role to play in the air freight business.  Since it’s a maximum of 9 air hours away from the majority of the planet’s major cities, going via Anchorage is often the most efficient way to move cargo.  It’s notable that the airport was at its busiest during the pandemic as delivery operations became more and more important to people who were in lockdown.

And that was our trolleybus tour – fascinating and entertaining.

We’d learned so much – and it was only lunchtime! We headed to the Glacier Brewhouse, a recommendation from the hotel receptionist, which served us a very agreeable lunch, and then, in order to take advantage of the superb weather, went out and about again.

Going along with the recommendations from our Friendly Native, we headed back down to  Delaney Park and struck out west towards the water’s edge.  We’d already seen one Interesting Church (the Presbyterian one) and we soon passed another, the First Baptist Church.

I wonder if there’s a link between being in the far north and building interesting churches – we’d seen a plethora in Iceland also.

We worked our way along the length of the park (which is 14 blocks from end to end) and came to the water.  We’d planned to take a path back along beside the water but there was the inconvenient matter of a railway between us and it.  So we zig-zagged our way back up towards the city in search of the place where the path crosses the track so we could join it. There was a steady stream of interesting and attractive buildings.

Outside the one shown just above, we noticed that the trees are encircled by metal. This is to protect them from moose, which would otherwise simply eat them.

Moose play a more important role in Alaskan life than simply being a road hazard in the winter. They wander quite freely and whilst they’ll eat practically any vegetation, they have a special relationship with willow; not the weeping willow that’s familiar in the UK, but feltleaf or diamond willow.  And there’s a link with the original firebreak role for Delaney Park.  It’s an interesting, but complicated story.

Willow trees shed their leaves every year, and the leaf mould is gradually compacted over the years by the snow, eventually forming a thick layer of a substance called duff, which prevents further growth. When the duff dries out in summer, lightning strikes can cause it to burn, giving rise to the wildfires which are common all over the state.  These clear the duff, allowing for new willow growth which is food for moose, which, in turn are food for the apex predators – wolves and bears. Moose are unusual in that they can eat the bark as well as the leaves of willow, which is why it plays such  a key role as a foodstuff.  But protection round trees is a common sight, as mooses’ appetites aren’t limited just to willow.

Another botanical nugget concerns “fireweed” – what we’d call rosebay willowherb. This can be found growing all over

and according to local lore, each year the height it grows to predicts the depth of the snows in the coming winter.  (Our guide Donna’s family did a project over 15 years of monitoring this, and she asserted that this was true each year they measured it to within an inch or two.)

The final chapter of this extraordinarily content-filled day concerned salmon, a high-profile industry in Alaska. The salmon harvest in Alaska is the largest in North America and represents about 80% of the total wild-caught catch, with harvests from Canada and the Pacific Northwest representing the remainder.  You can see salmon all over the place as artwork

but, more to the point, this is the time of year where they run upriver to spawn and Donna had told us about a place where we could maybe see them in action – the Ship Creek Overlook Park. This was the final stop on our walkabout.  We made our way to the bridge which offered the best viewing possibilities and, sure enough, there they were, in profusion.


But, accompanying this was the (very laid-back) cabaret of people fishing for salmon in the river. There were lots of them

and indeed watching them appears to be a spectator sport, too.

There’s a restaurant built on a bridge over the river

and, just to the side, a place which is famous for its superb fish processing knives

(Ulu is derived from an indigenous people’s word for knife, apparently).

And this completed the walkabout for the day.  We’d covered around nine miles as well as going on the bus tour and our brains were full of all the things we’d learned and the sights we’d seen. For such a small town, Anchorage had given us a marvellous and varied day out, enhanced by some lovely weather.

I’ve just taken a look at the forecast for Seward, which is where we will board our cruise, some 120 miles south of Anchorage.  It looks like it will be raining there, not only when we arrive, but for the whole week, which emphasises how fortunate we have been today.

Tomorrow, then, will be taken up by the transit to Silver Muse and the concomitant fuss about boarding, and getting to know the layout of the ship (particularly where we can find gin). So it will be a couple of days before I report anything, and, given the length of this entry, I should think you’re quite relieved about that.  Anyway, do come back in a couple of days to see how we’ve got on, won’t you?