Serving the Glebe community since 1973 www.glebereport.ca ISSN 0702-7796 January 16, 2015 Vol. 43 No. 1 Issue no. 466 FREE N CUMMER O F D O ESY ESY T UR O PHOTO: C PHOTO: Ice sculpture of a kilted skater. Left to right, Jacob Cummer, Don Cummer (one of the kilt skate organizers) and ice sculptor Suguru Kanbayashi. The sculpture was displayed at the New Year’s Eve Hogmanay celebration at Lansdowne in honour of Sir John A’s Great Canadian Kilt Skate to be held on the canal on the morning of January 31. Wear your tartan and bring your skates! Celebrating Sir John A. with bare knees and ice By Don Cummer ers will take to the Confederation Park stage. The Scottish Society of Ottawa, which hosted Hogmanay at the Aberdeen On the morning of Saturday, January 31, hundreds of skaters will take to the ice Pavilion on New Year’s Eve, has helped other Scottish societies and community in Ottawa and other cities, braving the elements with bare knees as a special way organizations across Canada put together kilt skates to honour Sir John A. – includ- to celebrate the birthday of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. ing events in Montreal, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Calgary. In Ottawa, “Sir John A’s Great Canadian Kilt Skate” will be held in partnership The Ottawa event is expected to be the biggest, however, and not just because with Winterlude. The Scottish Society of Ottawa, which is organizing the event, we have a UNESCO World Heritage Site as the world’s largest skating rink. This will welcome skaters at their tent near the Fifth Avenue entrance to the canal. is a city that recognizes the tremendous achievements of Sir John A. Macdonald, Register for the skate and receive a memento. Register wearing a kilt, and you’ll who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on January 11, 1815 and came to Canada with get a special prize. his parents as a young boy. Mayor Jim Watson will officially launch the skate at 9 a.m. Skaters are encour- Come join us in your kilts. If you don’t have a kilt, sport something tartan or aged to make their way at their own pace from Fifth Avenue to the changing rooms other Scottish wear. And if you don’t have anything Scottish, come join us anyway! at the National Arts Centre end of the canal. Bring your boots along, because you’ll For further information, follow Scottish Society of Ottawa on Facebook, or see want to change and join in on the Scottish birthday celebrations for Sir John A. at www.thescottishsocietyofottawa.com. Confederation Park. There will be cake and hot chocolate and an opportunity to sign the giant birthday card. Don Cummer is one of the organizers of “Sir John A’s Great Canadian Kilt From 10:30 to 11:00 a.m., and again from 1:30 to 2:00 p.m., Scottish entertain- Skate.” He lives in Old Ottawa South. MARK YOUR CALENDARS WHAT’S INSIDE Jan. 4 Jennifer Staszewski art exhibit, GCC Art Gallery Abbotsford ............. 4 GNAG .................11 Jan. 21 “Vivaldi Gloria Redux” concert, Southminster United Church, noon Art . 22–23 Health .............28–29 Jan. 22 Taste in the Glebe, GCC, 5:30–8 p.m. Jan. 25 Atlantic Voices concert “Many Atlantic Voices” Babies .............18–19 History ................24 Centretown United Church, 3 p.m. Books ................5, 8 Letters ................ 7 Jan. 26 Topical Talks: Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Abbotsford House, 10 a.m. Business............16–17 Memoirs ............26–27 Jan. 27 GCA meeting, GCC, 7 p.m. Councillor’s Report........12 MP’s Report ............14 Jan. 31 Capital Ward Councillor’s Cup hockey game Film ..................25 Music ..............20–21 GCC/St. James Tennis Club Rink, 12:30–3:30 p.m. GACA ................. 9 Profile ...............2–3 Jan. 31 Sir John A.’s Great Canadian Kilt Skate Rideau Canal at Fifth Ave., 9 a.m–1 p.m. GCA ..................10 Schools ......... 13, 31–32 Feb. 10 GNAG registration for summer camps begins online Glebous & Comicus.. ......30 Skating................15 www.gnag.ca, 7 p.m. NEXT ISSUE: Friday, February 13, 2015 Feb. 14 Family Community Skating Party EDITORIAL DEADLINE: Friday, January 23, 2015 GNAG/St. James outdoor rink, 2–4 p.m. ADVERTISING DEADLINE: Wednesday, January 28, 2015 February is Valentine month! Home is where the heart is, How we met… how we fell in love – or almost didn’t. h so they say. Look for a special feature Send us your tales of romance, by January 23, and we’ll on the Glebe real estate scene in the h publish a selection in the February Glebe Report. H March Glebe Report. 2 Glebe Report January 16, 2015 prOfile Glebe grad and author Sean Michaels talks about Ottawa By Jane Butler Sean Michaels is a music journalist to Chinatown for a meal. It and blogger based in Montreal. He felt very human-sized. Grow- recently won the prestigious Scotia- ing up in a big city, I imagine, bank Giller Prize for his debut novel, would be really exciting for Us Conductors. A fictionalized tale other reasons but you are just of the life and passions of Leon Ther- this tiny grain of sand in a emin, inventor of the theremin, a much, much more ambivalent, mysterious musical instrument con- larger city. trolled without physical contact by the player, Us Conductors is a major JB: Do you visit often? accomplishment for the 32-year-old Glebe Collegiate Institute graduate. I SM: Well, my parents still spoke with Sean in early December. live in Ottawa so I try to visit but I don’t get there often JB: Sean, your book is wonderful! enough. It is always interest- You write beautifully, like someone NO ing, when I do come, to see DO with much more experience, yet with N what changes and what stays LO a real freshness. Which is obviously N the same. A week or two ago why you won the Giller! I took the Greyhound Bus to Ottawa and it was the same SM: Well, thanks. You are very JOH PHOTO: old Greyhound, pretty much kind. Sean Michaels, winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Gil- the same old bus station. But ler prize for his debut novel Us Conductors then I went from there to the JB: I want to talk with you about and Glebe Collegiate grad Governor General’s residence, your connections to Ottawa and the Rideau Hall, for the Governor Glebe. I understand you were a student ers) Skip Riddell and Sheila Meggs. aspire to it but never quite put in the General’s Literary Awards. It at Glebe Collegiate Institute. At Glebe I was starting to write short effort! was a mixture of “oh, I am just taking stories that I hoped could get printed the bus to my home town,” and “here SM: Yes, I didn’t live in the area but in magazines. SM: (Laughing) Well, yes, the big- I am, going off to a black tie dinner at because of the vagaries of the school gest challenge is the persistence, the the Governor General’s.” So that was system, I ended up at Glebe. JB: Had you decided by then that perseverance of it. a bit different! you wanted to be a writer? JB: You’ve mentioned Robert JB: So how did this book come to JB: Now that we have a sense of why Godwin (English and media stud- SM: I don’t know if I had actually be? Did you just flat-out write it or you enjoyed growing up in Ottawa, are ies teacher) as being an influential decided but it was certainly my dream. were you working on other things? there things you would change? teacher. For as long as I can remember, it was the thing I wanted to do. SM: Both. I had been working on SM: Without speaking ill of the SM: Yes, he was certainly one of my own, on articles and other long fic- place, I do think Ottawa lacks some them but there were others who have JB: You’re doing rather well at it! tion projects for quite a while. I had courage in the cultural sphere. I also since moved on, like (English teach- Compared to people like me who only recently been able to support think that … well, I moved to Mont- myself as a music journalist, essen- real in my 20s, as a young artist, trying tially a full-time freelance music to find an arts scene … Ottawa seems journalist, and every day I was doing to have a habit of everyone going to other writing. But the time came bed, tucking into their homes early in when I said to myself, OK, enough, the evening. It’s not that I needed a it’s time to start a novel. It took some nightclub-party scene but just to feel time for my ideas to coalesce but they that there are people to run into, that did and then I said to myself, it’s time there is a kind of creative energy to Mike Hooper Jeff Hooper Derek Hooper to write this theremin book. But of tap into. It’s not something I found BROKERS course, with fiction writing, you write in Ottawa but I am sure it does exist the whole book before you even talk there, for some people. to someone about selling it. So there were many years of trying to fit my JB: What about upcoming projects? novel writing around my other paid Will Ottawa make an appearance in LISTED LISTED assignments.