Tag: news

Another movement has recently joined the fight against discrimination. The grassroots initiative #BlackLabsMatter has teamed up with local Canine Union 783 to bring awareness regarding discrimination against darker-hair breed dogs. Organizers say Black Labs and similar colored and sized canines are disproportionately ticketed for being off-leash even though studies indicate that all species of dogs go off-leash at roughly identical rates.

A local group of black labs has claimed they have been repeatedly refused access to Ottawa’s most prominent park in the New Edinburgh area, citing poor conditions for larger dogs. This, all while larger breeds such as Golden Retrievers and Yellow Labs played freely in the designated area.

In response to the city’s new discriminatory policies against large, dark-haired dogs, the #BlackLabsMatter protesters have organized a “shit-in” in front of city hall.  The movement has obtained a pair of Mayor Jim Watson’s slippers, and will each take a turn defecating on the slippers as an act of civil disobedience.

Ouain Stunchien, a chocolate lab from Vanier, says “It’s about time something was done to bring awareness to the issue. It’s really nice to see the support we’ve been getting from the rest of the community, especially that of our human life companions.  Dog racism is not dead, so we continue our fight for equality every day.”

Mayor Watson could not be reached to comment on this matter.

This week, a permit to build noise-reducing walls around Lansdowne was filed by Glebe resident Colin Frost, backed by a petition with more than 5,000 signatures. Frost, the originator of the petition, was annoyed by all the noise coming from the surrounding area, specifically the Lansdowne area near which he lives.

“My neighbours and I submit thousands of noise complaints every year to the city and nothing gets done. We tried being polite, but no progress was made so the neighbourhood decided to start making some noise of our own,” says Frost. “We gathered enough signatures, I believe 5,000 qualifies as ‘enough’, and I submitted a building permit request to the city to create noise-reducing walls around Lansdowne.”

Their problem is gaining some traction with local start-ups as well. Sound Off, an Ottawa start-up that creates noise cancelling walls has offered their services to many residents in the Glebe neighbourhood.

“We actually started our business because of the noise problem in that neighbourhood,” says Artur Bukowski, founder and CEO of Sound Off. “My friends and I were living there while attending Carleton University to study engineering and we had a hard time focussing on our studies during literally any event going on at Lansdowne, or any event happening anywhere within a seven block radius of the Glebe,” explained Bukowski. “Something about the acoustics of the area amplifies noise. We decided to create Sound Off to solve this problem.”

Sound Off uses solar powered noise-cancelling walls, which feature a thin membrane to capture sound, some complicated electronics to invert it, and then another thin membrane to play the sound out of the other end. The end result is reduced noise, working in the same way as noise cancelling headphones, which is what inspired Bukowski in the first place. “Since marketing specifically in the Glebe, we’ve become millionaires.”

Colin Frost has considered partnering with Sound Off to build the walls, but only if the permit gets approved.

The Hole Family, a local cult that celebrates Ottawa’s construction season, is calling out to all of its members to prepare for the upcoming work. The Ritual of the Falling Sinkhole is set for April 29th. It is a celebration of the sinkhole that took place by University of Ottawa on Waller Street in 2014.

The group is lead by cult leader Burt Washington, a retired construction worker who sustained an injury during the Waller Sinkhole incident. While Washington was not on site at the time of the sinkhole, he claims to have sustained “almost first degree burns” due to a faulty Tim Horton’s lid that day. He also noted that construction lasted unusually long that year. The two events happening at the same time inspired him to devote his life to sinkholes .

“I thought, maybe the sinkhole was the reason construction lasted so long. The boys were working until late October, some of them mid-November. I decided to bring The Hole Family together to worship and appreciate the sinkhole as a good omen for construction workers,” said Washington. “If there’s a sinkhole this year, we’ll have an extra long season, probably eight or nine months. If there’s no sinkhole, it just means six more months of construction.”

The participants in the ritual encircle the perimeter of the location of the sinkhole on Waller Street, sporting traditional garb: yellow hard hats and reflective vests. The ritual begins with the ringing of a bell twelve times to signify the opening of the twelve-meter-wide sinkhole. It is then followed by a moment of silence, almost 120 seconds. The timing is specific, as it commemorates the twelve meters of the hole, and the almost ten months that construction season was open for in 2014. After the moment of silence, the circle disperses into groups of six, still around the sinkhole. One member in the group recites the press release from the day of the sinkhole, and then asks for a long construction season while the others stand and watch. The closing of the ritual is signified by ringing of the bell another twelve times, and then all members of the cult take the rest of the day off.