Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa woman chooses cats over a spot in shelter
It was a crisp Saturday morning, like many mornings over the past six weeks, when Honour Driscoll neatly placed five cat leashes on the ground at Confederation Park. The black and blue leashes are always parallel from one another and are placed in the...
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Residents of flooded building still face fallout from storm
Diane Welshman had planned to celebrate Canada Day on Parliament Hill — at least until she noticed the rain “going sideways.” “We ended up looking over the balcony, and that's when we seen the puddle of water,” she recalled Monday morning, standing...
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Plans for redevelopment spark `demoviction' fears
The tenants of 23 rent-controlled townhomes tucked in a corner of Old Ottawa South are reeling after learning their tight-knit community could be demolished as early as next spring. At the same time, their landlords say the property at 551 Riverdale...
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CHEF-LIFE BALANCE
Kat Ferries was a quickly rising chef, climbing the ladder at top Ottawa restaurants — until she made an unexpected turn — leaving her fine-dining job in favour of a butcher shop. She's not the only local chef who has made a similar career pivot in...
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IT'S PLAY TIME, DAD!
Max Cousins looks at his dad, Ottawa Senators forward Nick Cousins, and sister Harpur, while his mom Nina keeps an eye on things on the red carpet ahead of Thursday's home opener against Philadelphia. Game details are online at ottawacitizen.com.
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Ottawa research reverses autism symptoms in mice
Researchers in Ottawa have reversed some symptoms of autism by fixing a problem in the blood brain vessels of mice, paving the way for the first drug treatment of its kind. A team of researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa...
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Concerns over growth dominate campaign in Kitchissippi
In the eyes of the locals, Kitchissippi ward sometimes falls victim to its own popularity. The ward's extensive trail network offers easy access from its trendy neighbourhoods right downtown, while its stretch along the Ottawa River attracts swimmers,...
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Panda Game thrills stay in the stadium
Fans on each side of the TD Place stadium held their breath in the last three minutes of the 57th Panda Game on Sunday. But it was with one-and-a-half minutes left on the clock — before the University of Ottawa Gee-gees officially got the green light...
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WHEN IS IT OK FOR LEADERS TO SHED TEARS IN PUBLIC?
To cry, or not to cry? In the realm of politics, that is the question. And the answer, says one University of Toronto expert, largely depends on your sex. “If you're a woman in the public sphere, you cannot win in terms of the expression of emotion,”...
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YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE
Every day, Douglas Bird walks the corridors of his new home in long-term care. He's been at Perley Health on Russell Road for about a year and, at 80 years old, he gets out of his room as much as possible for changes of scenery. But the energy in the...
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City staff urged secrecy on fireworks
A week before the unannounced launch of unexploded Canada Day fireworks, members of the City of Ottawa's special events team received a “CONFIDENTIAL UPDATE” on plans for the live shells then lying dormant on Lemieux Island. Documents obtained by the...
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Park benches invite residents to interact with Indigenous art
For Algonquin Anishinaabe artist Jade Rogers-baptiste, one of the most rewarding aspects of her creative process is watching others interact with her art. And now she gets to watch people sit with her art. Quite literally. Rogers-baptiste and fellow...
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Residents surprised by new landlord announcement
There had been signs of a looming landlord shuffle in Mike Yearly's Craig Henry Drive neighbourhood. The large signs the Minto Group, his former landlord, had propped up around the area had the “Minto” erased from “Minto South Centrepointe rental...
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WHO'S IN CHARGE IF OTTAWA GIVES LRT TO THE PROVINCE?
The notion of handing Ottawa's beleaguered LRT over to the province seems too good to be true, right? I mean, we spent almost as much as NASA did to put a man on the moon, and for what? A transit system that can barely get a man from Orléans to...
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GREAT LAKES BIND U.S.-CANADA TRADE IMPERILLED BY TRUMP TARIFFS
The American Century often draws a crowd when the ship pulls into the Port of Duluth-superior to load Minnesota iron ore. Kids cheer when the captain blasts the fog horn. A voice on the loudspeaker retells the story of how the 305-metre-long bulk...
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THE UNTOLD STORY OF BYTOWN'S BIRTH
On Sept. 26, 1826, a backwoods outpost was selected as the location for the Rideau Canal to begin. But what about the days preceding that consequential decision? In this epic jaunt through national capital history, writer Randy Boswell rescues...
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Smiths Falls deaths inspire tributes
Like many Smiths Falls residents, Rob Carr is a member of a lively Facebook group focused on the homicide of Robbie Thomson and a string of other suspicious deaths in the area. Called “The Murdered Men of Smiths Falls and Other Ontario Cases,” the...
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A TRIBUTE TO LT.-COL. BY
Organizers of Ottawa's first Nuit Blanche in a decade say they're reviving the overnight event on a modest scale to leave room to grow. Most Nuit Blanche events elsewhere take over an entire city, explained executive producer Jose Bertrand, but in...
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Feds haven't added property to account for increased RTO
The federal government has yet to add any net new office space since it announced its latest return-to-office policy in February despite a shortage of workspace for public servants. However, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) — the...
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Snowbirds give Canadians one final show in iconic jets
The heart and mind can be at odds with many realities of life. For Stacey Mccue, the Snowbirds' Tutor jets being retired was an almost irreconcilable fact. “I understand why they're not able to fly them anymore,” Mccue said, pointing at the aging...
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Trump birthright citizenship law costs Canadians chance for baby
Renee and her husband had endured a decade of exhausting efforts to start a family, including multiple fruitless treatments and medical issues that seemed to make pregnancy impossible. Then this April the Toronto couple's ordeal seemed finally to be...
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HONOURING THE FALLEN
The search is on for relatives of fallen soldiers of Manotick from the First and Second World Wars identified by researchers for a project to add their names to a village cenotaph. Barbara Usher's father, Sgt. Edward Menzie, was one of them.
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Parking crunch hampering workers returning to offices
As return-to-office changes ramp up this fall, many federal public servants will be commuting into a downtown core with thousands fewer parking spots than it had a decade ago. The City of Ottawa doesn't keep an annual inventory of parking spots, but...
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SEEKING TOP NATO POST
NATO'S chiefs of defence will meet Sept. 18 in Denmark to discuss ways to further strengthen the alliance, deal with new and emerging military technologies and boost support for Ukraine. But on Sept. 19 the defence chiefs from the 32 nations in the...
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RICHEST SENATOR
Ottawa Senators winger Drake Batherson signed an eight-year, $86-million contract extension with the NHL club on Wednesday. The contract, which includes $30 million in bonuses, is the richest in team history.
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Rising cost of aluminum cans squeezing microbreweries
Twenty-eight days from grain to glass. It's a common phrase in the homebrewing circles Marc Plante and his now business partner, Justin Macneill, used to frequent. “That's what we call it,” Marc Plante, co-owner of Stray Dog Brewing Company, says....
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LOST DIAMOND HIDDEN FROM NAZIS HAS BEEN IN QUEBEC ALL ALONG
When Karl von Habsburg first placed in his hand the Florentine Diamond — a champagne-yellow gem the size of a peach pit, thought lost but actually safe in a Quebec bank vault for more than 80 years — he was not quite sure what to make of it. “Can I...
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SIGNS OF AN ELECTION
Volunteers install election signs for Bay ward candidate Theresa Kavanagh on Friday morning. Yard signs and other campaign advertisements started popping up overnight, with candidates doing a signage blitz shortly after midnight.
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Weekend Bikedays breath of fresh air, new study shows
A recent Carleton University study has found that closing Queen Elizabeth Driveway to vehicles reduces particulate air pollution by 60 per cent and noise by 50 per cent. The research was overseen by Liam O'brien, a professor of civil and environmental...
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Glebe rolls out accessibility upgrades
At Irene's Pub, a sign with the bar's phone number is plastered on the window. The poster lets customers know the neighbourhood pub is accessible to wheelchair users despite the step at the front entrance. “If anybody is out there, the bar is busy...
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Ottawa shoppers look to buy Canadian amid trade dispute
A patriotic resolve influenced the purchasing decisions of many shoppers in downtown Ottawa on Labour Day as Canadians braced themselves for a new round of counter-tariffs in the U.S. trade war. Whether they were looking to exercise their...
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Mayoral candidate vows to remove paid on-street parking across city
Mayoral candidate Alex Lawson is pledging to make paid on-street parking a thing of the past in Ottawa if he's elected in the fall. After watching local businesses lose out on revenue due to evolving street-parking regulations across the city over the...
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Ottawa 200: What did a day on Rideau Street look like decades ago?
Throughout time, storefronts have been a window into what a community or city can offer, according to Bytown Museum's exhibition and collections manager, Chloe Dennis. Dennis and a team at the Ottawa Art Gallery spent countless hours flipping through...
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Ottawa artist cancels Boston exhibit after U.S. applies 50% tariff on work
An Ottawa artist was forced to cancel an upcoming exhibit in the United States after the latest escalation of the trade war expanded to include tariffs on Canadian artwork. Michael Harrington, an Ottawa-based visual artist, recently announced he had...
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Living standards sink further behind U.S.
Canada's economic performance has fallen further behind that of the United States over the past quarter century, with the gap in gross domestic product per person more than doubling and the Americans pulling ahead on income, employment, investment and...
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NO RAIN ON THIS PARADE
Ottawa's downtown core was packed Sunday as members of the LGBTQ+ community, public figures and supporters attended the Capital Pride Parade. The parade started just after 1 p.m. at the intersection of Wellington and Booth streets. The parade...
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BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
For decades, Canadian governments both Conservative and Liberal sought greater economic integration with the United States, the world's spendiest buyer of imports, including Canadian energy, machinery, lumber and wheat. But now, as U.S. President...
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STUCK IN BUREAUCRATIC LIMBO
Melana Paronyan-iasinsnka's family came to Canada from Ukraine in 2022. She wants to study architecture, but Carleton University, closest to her Barrhaven home, considers her an international student. Unless she gains permanent resident status, tuition...
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`Crowd sleuthing' website suggests Sutcliffe's social posts celebrate NCC
Mark Sutcliffe often gets knocked by critics for maintaining a tightly scripted public profile. The blue button-down, a politician's haircut, the unmodulated delivery of a prepared speech — this is the mayor Ottawa has come to know from Sutcliffe's...
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Exhibit explores decades of drag and queer history
When Morgan Mercury looks at photographs of queer people in Ottawa from decades ago, the faces may be different and the clothes belong to another era, but something feels familiar. “This would have been us,” the local drag performer said. “It's us...
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AN UNLIKELY TRUMP CARD
Jim Hedges started a barrel-making company in the 1990s, inspired to revive a lost art. Now, at this particular geopolitical moment, small Canadian craft distillers from Vancouver Island to Eastern Ontario ask: Could barrels made from Canadian oak be...
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A PROUD DANCER'S NEW PERSPECTIVE
Artin Avaznia brings his Underground Pride show, with its critique of the movement's commercialization, inclusions and exclusions, and treatment of the queer BIPOC community, to Club SAW.
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Sharp rise in youths seeking support for mental health
When Orléans resident Raissa Amany was struggling with anxiety and depression as a high school student, getting help was not always straightforward. Amany, who now serves on Kids Help Phone's national youth council, remembers trying to navigate mental...
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New phone, same bad cell service
One of the surest signs of camaraderie in Angela Savard's Riverside South neighbourhood isn't a smile or a wave. Friendship is measured by immediate Wi-fi connectivity, she says. “If you walk in their house and your phone connects to Wi-fi...
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Byward Market authority fires its executive director
The Byward Market District Authority (BMDA) says it has terminated the employment of executive director Victoria Williston. “The Board of Directors of the Byward Market District Authority (BMDA) has decided to move in a new direction, which will...
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THE BOOZE BATTLE OVER HANS ISLAND HOLDS LESSON
Battered by fresh U.S. threats of tariffs and annexation, Canada is turning toward Europe, with speculation among some that we might one day even join the European Union. After all, Canada does share a land border with an EU country. This is the...
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WHO OWNS THIS ROAD?
New cottage neighbours arrived. Then they closed the only right of way. Hundreds of pages of court filings, all over a dirt road barely wide enough for a single car, unravel what constitutes “private property.”
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Jittery residents mopping up again after back-to-back major floods
For Adrienne ten Cate, every rainy day now comes with the unwelcome ritual of running down to the basement to make sure more water hasn't managed to find its way in. After around 50 centimetres of water poured into her basement during the massive July...
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Abandoned Syrian Embassy continues slide into disrepair
A couple of years have passed since Golden Triangle resident David Turnbull walked by the former Syrian Embassy and noticed some unexpected signs of life within the 100-year-old heritage building. The building had been vacated in May 2012, when...
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Glitchy locker app frustrates cyclists
When Hintonburg resident Eric Warren needs to leave his bike downtown, he knows exactly where he wants to park it. Instead of locking it to a bike rack on the street, Warren uses one of Ottawa's secure public bike lockers. He considers himself one of...
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Byward vendors face eviction threat
Long-standing businesses in Ottawa's Byward Market Building received notice letters from their landlord after they put up posters that the Byward Market District Authority claimed were in breach of their tenancy agreements. The posters were put up...
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A WORLD ON FIRE
Toronto and New York choked under orange and white skies. Madrid and Bordeaux had flames licking at their doorsteps. Vast forests, rural communities and ranchlands full of livestock in Western Canada and the U.S. have burned — and all in the month of...
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VENDORS BOXED IN
Sales have been poor and customer traffic low at Rahimullah Samandar's stall in the Byward Market's new Vendor Village. Frustrated merchants renting the converted shipping containers say the market authority hasn't done enough to support the...
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Flypast was `requested' by U.S.
The Canadian Forces says it wasn't its idea to conduct a flypast over the U.S. ambassador's residence in Ottawa on July 4 and it was only responding to a request from the Americans. Two Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 fighter jets and two U.S. F-35s...
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Safety of ride-sharing questioned
When moving around Ottawa, Astara van der Jagt says, it's very common for women and gender-diverse people to plan their routes primarily around what makes them feel safest. That could mean choosing to walk on well-lit streets, even if it adds 10...
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Craig Henry park stabbing raises fears of increasing Islamophobia in the area
Though a man was stabbed in Nepean's Craig Henry Park on July 23 when intervening in an argument between young girls, Deidre Guy isn't worried about her neighbourhood's safety. What concerns the Craig Henry neighbourhood resident most after the...
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Ironman athletes and supporters don't let soggy weather stop them
It was a long day in the rain for the Ironman athletes. As if swimming almost four kilometres, cycling more than 180 km and then capping it all with a 42.2 km run wasn't ridiculous enough, participants in Sunday's Ironman Canada-ottawa sloshed through...
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CHELSEA'S MIDAS TOUCH
When Manuela Teixeira bought the Chelsea Pub almost two decades ago, it needed a big makeover. It was about time. For that matter, that heritage building on Old Chelsea Road had undergone multiple transformations during the previous 130 or so years....
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Ottawa emergency services transition to Next Generation 9-1-1 network
Most Ottawa residents won't notice anything different the next time they call 911. Operators will still answer the phone, ask where the emergency is and dispatch first responders, as they always have. But behind the scenes Ottawa has joined...
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With no central terminal in Ottawa anymore, are we missing the bus on intercity travel?
When Charles Anderson and his son Matthew decided to take the bus from Ottawa to Montreal recently, they first got a lift from their homes in Pakenham to Laurier Avenue and Waller Street, where Charles expected to find a proper bus station. Instead,...
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Volunteers dig in for battle against invasive plants in city's parks, forests
The Clyde Bee and Butterfly Patch is a labour of love for volunteers like Sharon Boddy and Nora Lee. Up to three times a week, they tend to the 2,000 square-foot garden alongside a small group of volunteers, removing invasive plants and replacing them...
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THOM'S GOLD MEDAL SHINES AGAIN IN PARK
When I sat with Linda Thom in the Old Ottawa South park that honours her last May, the mood was hardly celebratory. The replica medal commemorating Thom's Olympic gold in women's pistol shooting at the 1984 Los Angeles Games had seen far better days —...
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CBSA PLANS REVIEW AFTER $13.2M COCAINE CASE TOSSED
Canada's border agency says it is considering policy changes after a Windsor, Ont., judge dismissed a $13.2-million cocaine-smuggling case over what she called “egregious” violations of a truck driver's Charter rights. The ruling found border officers...
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MAKING YOUR MEDICINE
Renu Pillay is owner and pharmacist at a compounding pharmacy in the Glebe that can prepare patient-specific medications based on a doctor's prescription. As Ontario faces drug shortages, advocates say facilities like Pillay's can help fill the gap....
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How can Ottawa resolve construction season chaos?
It often seems like you can't walk 10 steps in Ottawa during the summer without stumbling across large orange and black pylons encircling a construction site. The city says it manages about 700 municipally funded infrastructure projects each year,...
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City testing street closures around schools at peak times
During drop-off and pickup, the road in front of École élémentaire catholique Des Voyageurs is a chaotic place, according to Rob Attrell, whose three kids attend the Orléans school. He remembers one day in January 2026, when, just after a snowfall,...
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Meet the new CEO of the Ottawa Food Bank, who faces challenge of unprecedented demand
As the devastating derecho ripped through Ottawa in May 2022, Natalie Spooner wasn't watching the storm. She was watching Hydro Ottawa's outage map. Spooner wasn't concerned about the lights in her own home. As the Ottawa Food Bank's director of...
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That's a wrap on Bluesfest 2026
In a year when festivals around the world are paring down or going under, Ottawa Bluesfest has just wrapped up one of the most successful editions in its 32-year history. “Every night has been very successful,” said Bluesfest CEO and co-founder Mark...
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INTERNAL TRADE BARRIERS STILL COSTING CANADA: CFIB
A leading business group is giving some provinces and the federal government good grades for trying to break down Canada's costly internal trade obstacles, even as those barriers continue to cost Canadians billions of dollars a year. In its annual...
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ANSWERING THE CALL
The DJS are spinning tucked away at Bluesfest along the river somewhere between the RBC Main Stage and the River stage in a self-described “Big Chill” zone, but the vibes through the night could get anything but chill. The Sleepwell Big Chill is an...
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Bluesfest fans sing along and squeal for Conan Gray's whimsy-filled show
Bluesfest resumed Wednesday after a two-day break, rising back to life with a slice of emotional pop fare headlined by Conan Gray, a 27-year-old musician who's already an icon to his devoted following. The thousands of fans in the crowd sang, bounced...
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Ottawa colon cancer survivor applauds province's earlier screening as lifesaver
For Michael Groves, what began as stomach pain turned into a diagnosis that changed his life. The then-49-year-old thought he might have appendicitis when he went to the emergency room in early 2021. A scan ruled that out, and after the pain subsided,...
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