I’m so glad to have you with us. Our plan here is to discover the people, events and ideas in our local communities that keep us connected. And have some fun too.

If you’ve been here before, thanks for coming back. :)

Here’s a potentially tough question for you: what local story over the last few weeks made you sigh the loudest? Like, one that made you say under your breath, “man, that’s really tough”?

Maybe it was a story you heard from a neighbour while you were both picking up the mail. Or an item you landed on as you scrolled your feeds. Whatever it was, it might have made you feel….small. Like, the problem is so much bigger than you. So big that you didn’t even know how to engage with it.

Now, what about a story that reached you but instead this time you felt a kind of tug. Like, “Hey, I think I know what that person needs. Wait: could I help?”

Which is what happened when Ottawa’s Robyn Agnew came across a post from Maya Auchincloss on Instagram last fall.

In her video, Auchincloss, a Mississauga-based circus artist, explains that she has made a seemingly terrifying decision: she has chosen to have her left foot amputated. Cancer treatments and surgeries in her ankle have meant that despite her oncology team’s best efforts, the constant, searing pain is just too much. She’d rather learn to live life as an amputee than live as she does now.

Elective amputation would be a last resort for anyone - let alone an aerial performer whose livelihood needs her entire body to help her dangle from the ceiling. Yet it’s the choice she’s made.

“I love my job,” she says. “And I want to get rid of this pain so that I can do my job and pursue my dreams.”

Leading up to her surgery this fall, Auchincloss shared her plan to tackle a bucket list - she calls it a “fuck-it list” - of things that scare her. Part of this includes fundraising for a special prosthetic that will allow her to continue to work. But the activities are also meant to work as both a distraction and a way to buck up her courage.

“l’ll try anything within the year to get my mind off the fact that I’m losing my foot next year,” she says.

Which includes, she explains in her video, “things like bouldering, or rock climbing, learning to skateboard, trying some dance lessons and even climbing the CN Tower.”

When Agnew saw the post, she didn’t hesitate long enough to feel or think anything. She heard the words “dance lessons” and she knew what to do. She’s taught dance all over the Ottawa for years.

And like Auchincloss, she’s an artist and a teacher who also lives with chronic illnesses. So she connected with her story on several fronts. Agnew’s health challenges, endometriosis and GI issues, affect her life and her career in daily and ongoing ways.

So she commented right away: “I will teach you (and bring you) ballroom and Latin dancing in Ottawa! Taught for a decade and had to leave myself for physical and health issues! Let’s connect!”

Auchincloss’s reply: “omg no way!!! I’d love to learn from you! 😍♥️

What happened next

A few days after the comments, the two women connected one on one. Initially, there was some gentle hesitation: offering to help can be tough, but it can be just as tough to accept it.

“I didn’t want to take advantage of anyone’s kindness,” Auchincloss says. The two didn’t know each other. “Would this be fair to Agnew?” she wondered. “But eventually, I was like, ‘hey, this is really nice. This would be so much fun. I would love this.’”

From Agnew’s perspective, she’s not new to helping. For example, every year she paints skateboards to be auctioned in support of Operation Come Home. She’s also a long-time coach with the improv games. “Everybody thinks that somebody else is going to do it,” Agnew says.

In this case, Agnew and her dance partner, Chris Drumm, would make the five-hour drive from Ottawa to Auchincloss’s circus studio in Mississauga.

It would be the first “fuck-it” list event of her year. And Auchincloss, who feels graceful when she’s hanging upside down in the air, would face her fear of dancing on the ground with a partner.

They chose Jan. 17: Auchincloss’s 25th birthday.

The dance party

For those of you out there who are regular ballroom dancers, perhaps what happened that night won’t surprise you.

But for a group of people who weren’t used to dancing in pairs or following prescribed steps, the memories of what happened in that studio are still fresh and glowy.

The evening didn’t start out that way, however. As 30 or so of Auchincloss’s family and friends gathered in the space, most of them were nervous.

They’d all come with a partner - Auchincloss brought along her best friend - and the expectation was that each duo would somehow learn to be graceful together. Or they’d stumble around awkwardly in front of a roomful of strangers.

Neither of those things, however, happened. Firstly, none of them would be dancing much with the one who’d brought them. And secondly, whether you started off knowing your neighbour or not, you’d soon be holding hands with them and working to stay off their toes.

Because when Agnew and Drumm teach people to dance in a class like this one, they’re all about the social. That means working on technique not choreography. They want to help people have fun, explains Agnew, but they also want them to learn more about others by how they move their bodies.

Then, when they attend weddings or events or parties with friends, partners can move around the room sharing dances. The room can become a collective, connected and joyful hive of movement.

But in order to get there, dancers need to learn how to pay attention to each other.

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For instance, Agnew explains, when she tries to dance with her mother - “who’s like 105 lbs soaking wet” - she gets so nervous that when her partner tries to lead or spin her, it’s next to impossible. “She holds on to me so tight I can barely move her,” Agnew says with a laugh.

At Auchincloss’s party, the instructors first had everyone pair off into “leads” and “follows.” Then they’d learn a few rumba or swing steps together. Partners would then bid each other goodbye and rotated to the next person. Each dancer would then learn from their new partner. Together, the whole group collectively grew more confident.

“I think it’s because all of us were outside of our comfort zones,” Auchincloss says.

This also meant that as the night went on, Auchincloss would look over and see moments like when her uncle was dancing with a best friend. They’d been strangers and now they were dancing and jokily “yelling at each other” she says about how to get the steps right.

Scenes like this made for an incredible night, she says. While the guests set out a donation box to help their instructors offset their costs, the memories they helped create would be tough to put a price on.

“It was just the best party,” says Lara King, Auchincloss’s mom. “It was the best 25th birthday you can ever imagine.”

For Agnew, the night was special too. It was a chance for her and Drumm to reconnect as it had been a while since they danced together. “There was no one else I would have rather have done this with,” she says. “We do like we bounce off of each other so well. It was a really good bonding moment for us too.”

The story today

Today, seven months later, the memories from Agnew and Drumm’s session are still on regular replay: Auchincloss’s little brother recorded the session so she and King often rewatch it and practise their steps in the house.

There’s a family wedding coming up in September and the hope is that they’ll be able to take their new skills to the dance floor.

And sometime this fall - mid-October or later - the reason this event happened at all will become a real date on the calendar. Auchincloss’s surgery will happen and her new life will begin.

Before that happens, she still has some bucket-list items to enjoy. One of them may feature a trip to Montreal, which will mean she hopes to connect once again with Agnew as she passes through Ottawa.

Beyond that, her post-surgery plan is rehabilitate and experience a life free of pain. She also plans to learn to dance again - on a new prosthetic foot. In fact, she’s now daydreaming about repeating all of the activities she’s done this year in her post-amputation life. (Beyond dancing, this includes being a mermaid, rollerskating and doing the CN Tower Edge Walk.)

She’ll take all of the lessons she’s learned - including the one’s from Agnew - with her too. “I’ve done so many things in less than a year than people get to do in a lifetime, which just crazy,” she says. “And a lot of it is because people reached out and just wanted to do something, which is so beautiful.”

As for Agnew, she’s continuing to care for her own health needs. She’s also building her vegan business, A Gutsy Vegan, and teaching dance locally whenever she can.

She will also continue to lead her life with kindness and compassion too, she says. Because opening our eyes and hearts to others’ experiences, she says means “we’ll have a more of a fulfilling life.”

For all of us to mull

Have you met someone who, like Agnew, has made a big leap to help a stranger? Maybe it’s you?

If so, I’d love to hear about it.

But I’m also going to mull, what my helpful “thing” might be. (It’s definitely not dancing, alas. Unless solo dancing in the kitchen with a tea towel counts?)

If your thing is driving, or visiting, or gardening or fixing stuff, maybe that could turn out to be a gift that gives both ways.

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Cast your net wide. Include those head nods with dog walkers, exchanges with fellow transit riders or small talk with the coffee shop clerk. They all count.

Is your list longer than “one?”

If so, excellent. You’re already on your way to better health. Because as we all know, these human interactions - no matter how tiny - all matter.

Which is why a magazine story I read this week, “A.I. is a member of the family,” might be of interest to you. It’s about how some teens are using ChatGPT to practise talking with other humans.

The reporter, Jessica Contrera, explains that the teens will ask: “Can I tell this person I’m mad at them without making them mad at me?” Or “How do I say, ‘Thanks but no thanks’, but nicer?”

Your reaction may be different than mine, but to me this either sounds innovative - “way to be creative with tech, Young Folks” - or deeply, heartbreakingly sad.

I’m really into talking with strangers. It’s essential to my work-life as a news creator. As a journalism professor I witness first hand how life changing it is when you teach the skill to new reporters. And as a human, these exchanges deeply enrich my life.

So, for everyone who willingly - or unwillingly - has had an exchange with me so far: thank you. I hope I’ve been able to offer you something in return.

But this also means I’m always on the lookout for local people, groups or resources that remind us about how strangers can improve our lives if we let them.

Imani Trusty knows this lesson well.

Trusty is the Ottawa-based content creator behind the local Instagram and TikTok account, Imani Explores and twice this summer she has hosted events called the Friend Zone Ottawa.

At her first meet-up earlier this summer, she brought together 20 or so women - all strangers - for an afternoon of matcha-making, games and chatting at a Richmond Road fitness space.

It was such a success that she did it again on Aug. 8. This time 28 new-to-each-other women gathered to play a game called padel - a social sport that is a mash-up of tennis and squash - in the east end.

The same laughing and conversation happened again.

“There aren’t a lot of spaces for people to go and connect,” she said. “ It’s harder for people to meet people.”

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Trusty had experienced this first hand. When she’d moved back to Ottawa from Toronto to work as a communications professional a while back, she experienced how hard it can be to build a new community.

In her case, creating local content on TikTok and Instagram played a part in helping her settle into Ottawa life.

But as she built her community, she also started hearing from other local young women who sought out her advice. They loved the places and events she featured - but they didn’t have anyone to enjoy them with. “Did she have any tips or tricks to offer them about how to meet people?” they’d ask her.

She wanted to support them. But it took her a few months to figure out how.

“I’m naturally an introverted person,” Trusty explains. “I think I just had a moment where the feeling wouldn’t go away. I researched ‘how can I get people together? Where can I get people together?’”’

The Friend Zone is the result.

So far, she’s already seen evidence that her efforts are working beyond the meet-ups.

“There was a group of women who actually left right after the event and they went up the street and had ice cream together,” she says about her first event. “I thought that was amazing.”

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How can we help support neighbourly connections too?

You don’t need to host a meet-up event or even attend a formal one in order to be friendly to local friend-making.

In fact, if you hang out with a Canadian researcher’s new book about the subject, you can energize your talking-with-strangers skills as you recline in your Muskoka chair.

While Once Upon a Stranger: the science of how ‘small’ talk can add up to a big life may not initially sound like a summertime page-turner, Dr. Gillian Sandstrom, a psychology of kindness professor at the University of Sussex, has given us a read we can all use.

Part-memoir, part how-to and part research-backed coaching session, Sandstrom’s book is friendly and fun.

For instance, in unpacking a concept for us called “the liking gap” - we never think people like us as much as we like them - she creates a character named “Sid.” (As in, “insidious.”) Sid is the voice in our heads who can get in the way of talking with others.

The book unpacks the “whys” of the ways stranger-talk can be pleasant or useful and helpfully for us, some great “how-tos” too.

As in, for the shy or reluctant types among us, she offers us her “QUICK” method. This is a handy methods for how we might make small talk happen more easily in our day-to-day lives.

It goes like this:

QU - Ask a question

Sandstrom’s go-to is “Whatcha doin’?” Me, I often go with “How’s your day going so far?” But whatever it is, your question should be light-and-bright or even playful. You’re just trying to convey that you’re curious. Because you are.

You might ask them about something they’re wearing or something they’re doing. Perhaps you might ask for a recommendation. Like, when you’re in the produce section try, “Do you think these tangerines look tasty? Should I bother putting them in my cart?”

(Why does this other person know the answer to this question? Who knows. But two heads can be better than one when selecting citrus?)

I C - This stands for “in common”

This is where Ottawa’s weather is most helpful: we share it and it’s generally… interesting. Same goes for where you and the other person are - on transit, at the pool, at the park etc.

Any question or comment that connects the two of you to this common thing is great small-talk material.

K - “Extend kindness”

This can be in something that is actionably nice. Say, offering a seat on the bus, thanking a volunteer for their service or offering a lost-looking person directions.

But it can also be, as Sandstrom’s dad will do, offering “a moment of lightness.” Or, bringing a bit of happiness into someone’s day. If you’re someone who can try a light joke, you could do that. Say, “Beautiful day!” - when it’s pouring rain.

While all of this might sound like ordinary stuff, time spent with this book is a lovely way to really bring these ideas front and centre this summer.

By supporting and seeding small talk, we can contribute to neighbourhoods - and lives - that are connected. And more fun?

I’m going to practise here now:

QU - Whatcha’ reading just now? (I’d love to know.)

IC - West-end Ottawa has had ALL the weather this summer. How’s your basement? (One of our big in-common questions just now.)

If you’ve been able to enjoy some down time, have you been able to do any nice things for yourself? (Do tell.)

K - I love recommendations of all kinds: books, coffee shops, thrift stores, hiking trails, events, etc. When I receive one from someone, it’s like a little present.

So I’m going to - presumptuously - give you the gift of my favourite summer reads so far:

• The Innocent Canadian by Ottawa writer

(A timely, thoughtful murder-mystery that you’ll be excited to share with friends when you’re done. Bill and Colette, the main characters based on historical figures, will stay with you long after the final page.)

• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

(Just try and put it down.)

• Whistler by Ann Patchett

(Happy? Sad? Fearful? Challenged by life? This book is the medicine you need.)

• One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune

(Confession: I’m not yet sure this is a favourite. But as I’m hopping into it now as a wrap-up to my summer holidays, I’m full of optimism. I’m wearing flip flops and looking for fun.)

If you’ve read any of them yet, I’d love to discuss.

Do you have recommendations for me? If so, thanks in advance for your kindness.

If you’ve spent some of your time off this summer facing up to a neglected closet or shed like me, you may have come across a broken object.

One that stirs something in you: it reminds you of its giver or it brings you to a moment when you loved it. Or maybe it’s just a really handy object that would be great to use again.

If only it were working.

You’ve intended to get it fixed “someday.” But how this fix might happen has you stumped. So the object sits where it sits and you, mostly, look away.

In my case, this is where I’m at with my beloved backpack with a broken zipper. And my dad’s drill. And my 30-year-old bike, sitting idle because its gears and brakes are wonky.

I love them all. I can’t part with them. But I’m also stuck in the mud about how to move forward.

Do you have a broken object like this? Say, a power tool, a toy, an item of clothing, a laptop or a piece of jewelry. Something that haunts you, quietly, with its current state of non-functionality?

If so, you can continue to be alone with your broken, tucked-aside thing. Or you can put August 8 on your calendar and plan to bring it to the Ottawa Tool Library’s Repair Café at the Nepean Sportsplex from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Ottawa Tool Library hosts this event about 10 times a year at venues all over the city, but this is its first time coming to our west-end venue.

I spoke with Carmen Bohn last week about the Repair Café. Bohn has a multi-title role with the Ottawa Tool Library - strategic support, workshop coordination and business development - but her overall take on these events is a simple one: “they’re lovely.”

And they do far more than just help people find solutions for broken objects. Here are six surprising add-on benefits you can expect when you attend an event.

1. You’ll get an introduction to our local DIY community

While it’s called a Repair Café, its volunteer “fixers” and “menders” don’t want to just do the work for you.

They also want to teach you some skills - and get you excited about fixing things yourself someday.

“The idea behind these events is it’s not just that people are bringing us their broken stuff and then walking away and coming back for it later,” says Bohn. “ It’s that the people who are bringing their broken stuff are actually involved in the process of learning how to fix their stuff.”

If your object needs a particular part before it can be repaired, a fixer will explain that to you so you can go and source it. Then, they’ll encourage you to come back next time.

“Just the diagnosis tends to be helpful to people,” says Bohn.

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2. You’ll hang out neighbours while you wait your turn

Because some café events will see upwards of 250 people queue up with their item - one per person - the lineup can sometimes stretch to an hour or two.

But this isn’t a disadvantage as much as a feature. It’s an opportunity to chat with others about the object they’ve chosen to bring in. Attendees will swap advice and ask each other questions too.

And once you’re checked in by the volunteers at the registration desk, tea, coffee and doughnuts are on hand. And there’s lots to see and do, Bohn says.

“We have people fixing zippers that they can watch. We have people selling vintage tools. We have a ton of stuff going on, so we try to keep people interested in what we’re doing.”

For anyone who may be new to waiting in a line, they’ve got signage to help too. “It’s like, ‘please be kind,’” says Bohn. “And ‘Every person here is devoting their time as a volunteer today to help on the same mission’ and that sort of thing.”

3. You’ll cheer for a rescued item - with a clanging cowbell

When the cowbell rings out across the venue, it means a once-broken object has been fixed.

Once a participant has successfully worked with a mender or fixer, they get to step up for their turn at the bell. If they’re open to it, they can hold up the “fixed” sign, a photo is snapped and everyone cheers.

As we all know, so many items we buy these days don’t last as long as we’d hoped they would.

“It’s not just that people want to keep things out of landfill, but my gosh, we’re spending money on things that aren’t lasting as long as we had hoped that they would,” Bohn says.

The clanging bell collectively reminds the room of this victory.

4. You can hang onto your pennies with help from a talented support team

Money, as we all know, is tight these days. Repairing things instead of replacing them often isn’t optional.

Bohn says volunteers increasingly work with participants who need - not want - the their item to work.

Luckily, they’ve come to the right place. “The collective knowledge in the room is incredible,” Bohn says. Whether it’s a newer item or something from the 1960s, the fixers and menders can help.

“You can bet that there’s someone in the room that understands what it is and that indeed knows how to fix it.”

(Unless it’s a Dyson product. They’re on the please-don’t-bring list owing to the hours that would be needed to repair one.)

5. You’ll be among people who appreciate that objects can be meaningful

Whether the item is old or new, big or small, hugely expensive or it cost $5, the act of repairing any item has value. For all kinds of reasons.

No one laughs at anyone for wanting to repair an item.

“I have never seen anything but the utmost respect from our fixers and vendors for people’s items,” Bohn says. “Like, I can’t even imagine a moment where someone would be like, ‘Why did you bring that?’”

For instance, Bohn says, at a recent spring event, a woman with a broken Christmas sweater sought help.

It had Christmas lights in it and they didn’t light up anymore.

She said, “I know it seems ridiculous that I’m here with this ugly sweater, but this sweater means the world to me.” It was given to her by a loved one.

But volunteers didn’t consider her request ridiculous at all.

“So we got it fixed.”

The woman then rang the cowbell and hopped in a dark closet so they could all enjoy the mended sweater’s merry glow.

6. You get to watch the makers, menders and supporting volunteers doing what they love

Producing a Repair Café is like setting up a travelling circus: volunteers from the Ottawa Tool Library need to haul in all the tables, repair tools and supplies. They set it all up, run the show and tear it all down.

Each event requires about 40 volunteers: 20 to 30 fixers and menders, five to seven folks at registration and kitchen staff too.

(If helping out with this sounds exciting to you, you’ll need to reach out the Ottawa Tool Library and join another line: there’s a waiting list to volunteer.)

Some of the volunteers are quieter sorts with specialized skills. Some are retired folks or have extra time to share. And some just have niche skills.

Bohn says they have one young volunteer, for instance, who fixes sewing machines. “He is just a wiz,” she says. “You could bring in a sewing machine from the 1960s or a new one and he understands the mechanics of them. He’s just like a genius at it.”

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If you’re ready to go hang out with this community, they’re eager to see you.

But first, you’ve got to select a broken item to bring along.

In my case, I’m going to have trouble picking which one I want to start with first.

What about you? I’d love to know what object in your life you would love to be able to use again. Do tell?

And I have an ask: If you know of someone else who should know about this event, can you share this newsletter with them too?

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It’s still a frequent sight in 13 different neighbourhoods in College ward these days: groups of neighbours standing in a circle, arms crossed, heads shaking.

You’ll see them on Highgate Road between Iris and Baseline, on Queensline Drive in Qualicum-Graham Park, on Monterey Drive in Leslie Park and in many other spots. These gatherings are happening in Bay and Knoxdale-Merivale wards too. They’ll cluster around driveway dumpsters or beside piles of soggy basement debris.

It may be two weeks since the Canada Day rainstorm turned more than 5,800 west-end households upside down, but these impromptu mini gatherings are a long way from wrapping up. The digging out process means neighbours still need each other. Hugging and weary laughing is also often featured.

Without trying to put a smiley face on a lousy situation, there is indeed something that’s been showing up alongside all of this imperfection: let’s call it oversized neighbourliness.

As we all now know, on July 1, some west-end neighbourhoods saw up to 167 millimetres of rain fall in just a few hours. The water’s destruction made an uneven mess.

The downpour overwhelmed sewers, saturated the ground and sent water into basements through cracks, windows and doors. It took out furnaces, hot water tanks and washers and dryers. In the days that followed, entire rec rooms, keepsakes and basement treasures had to be hauled out, item by item, into growing piles at the curb.

But it didn’t do this evenly, however. Some parts of some streets were hit hard. Others were untouched.

So when neighbours gather on the streets and sidewalks to check in and chat, among them will be people who’ll call themselves “one of the lucky ones.” You’ll hear this repeated again and again.

“I only had two inches of water in my basement. We just got lucky.”

Or, as in my family’s case, we’re among the “very lucky” ones: we stayed dry while our next-door neighbour in Qualicum-Graham Park had to wade through ankle-deep water. Our neighbours down the street lost their entire basements.

There will continue to be lots to unpack about what might have been done differently on July 1. For instance, there will be lots to be learned about what role municipal infrastructure might have played. Practically, terrible battles with insurers will continue. Folks who’ll apply to the Disaster Recovery for Ontarian (DRAO) program will settle in for long waits. And plans and preparations will begin to prepare for next time.

But alongside all of this hard stuff, in our communities most humans are responding with grace.

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You see it in these little street gatherings. And you see it in the dozens and dozens of tradespeople and city crews moving around the neighbourhoods into the evenings and on the weekends. It’s hot, the call lists are long, the work is gruelling - and they’re dutifully plugging away.

So let’s pause and offer some kind words and thoughts for some of the ways epic neighbourliness has been showing up:

Through our devices

In the early hours of the rain event, the exchanges in the neighbourhood Facebook and WhatsApp groups and neighbour-text chains were quick and practical:

Does anyone have power? Is your basement taking on water? Who has a working pump?

Then, very quickly in the days that followed, those same spaces filled with offers.

“Come cool off here if you need AC.”

“We’ve got room in the freezer.”

“Can we run a power cord to your place?”

“Anyone want Bluesfest passes tonight? Might be a good break.”

A baker with a home-based business offered free chili to flood-affected neighbours.

Someone posted detailed instructions on where to take e-waste, complete with hours, directions and a reassuring note about the short wait times. People compared notes on cleaning products, shared insurance tips and passed along what they were learning in real time.

And then there were the smaller, quieter offers too. A teenager offered to babysit for free while families dealt with cleanup.

Neighbours opened up their laundry rooms so others could run a load or two.

Someone posted a standing invitation for AC-less neighbours to come for a cooling dip in their pool.

IRL Part 1: out on the streets, lawns and sidewalks

As driveways and front lawns started filling up with damp drywall, ruined furniture and the odd salvaged treasure, neighbours would take breaks from their hauling to check in on each other.

A frequently heard call-out: “How are you guys doing in there?”

Neighbours who’d been unaffected - or were lightly affected - helped haul out heavy, waterlogged items for those who were solo or unable or overwhelmed.

In Qualicum-Graham Park, members of the community association organized a movie night for kids. It was an hour or two of distraction so parents could keep working or simply catch their breath.

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In every neighbourhood, people made a point of waving at the crews moving steadily through the neighbourhoods: the sanitation workers, the tradespeople and the city staff. (My brother works in HVAC and can confirm: there’s been an uptick in much-appreciated cold drinks being shared.)

This past weekend, according to a Facebook post by Coun. Laine Johnson, there were 30 sanitation trucks doing special collections with pairs of drivers moving around College ward hauling debris. And so far they’ve done four full sweeps of hardest-hit areas.

So far, crews have gathered up 2,500 tonnes of storm waste bound for the Trail Road landfill.

There’s the door-knocking work too: Firefighters, volunteers from St. John Ambulance volunteers and community association members have all been going door to door in some areas, doing wellness checks.

Councillors Laine Johnson, Theresa Kavanagh and Sean Devine are all clearly working long days and have been visible in their respective communities. The three of them will also be bringing forward a motion during the July 15 council meeting to request a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood review of the hardest-hit communities.

Over the last few days, the city has been hosting community information sessions around the region to help residents make sense of next steps and what supports might be available.

They’ve set up a portal too, with essential resources.

While Ben Franklin place was damaged in the flood too, alas, libraries and community buildings became respite spots for some air conditioning and peace.

With our skilled professionals

And then there are the people whose work often fades into the background until moments like this: the sanitation crews, HVAC technicians, remediation workers, plumbers and city staff coordinating responses and fielding thousands of calls.

These are the folks who are doing the steady, essential work you don’t always notice until you really need them.

They’ve been putting in long days. The folks they’re trying to serve are tired, sad, angry, scared or frustrated. Maybe all of them. And yet they carry on.

Back in December, I wrote about these kinds of workers: the people who quietly keep things running for the rest of us. Over the past couple of weeks, the quiet work that they all do has been on full display.

Not that any of this erases what’s been lost.

For many households, the road ahead is still long, expensive and exhausting. There’s real grief in what’s been hauled to the curb. But the mess may also go on to create many new supportive relationships.

Like the connection a neighbour and I made while chatting on the banks of Graham Creek the morning of July 4.

We started out by marvelling together at the soggy mess of branches and debris piled all around us. Only three days before, the paved pathway under our feet was part of a soggy river bottom made by a rushing creek-turned-river.

Although we’d never met before that day, it didn’t take long for us to fall into a much deeper conversation about how she and her family were doing. Because it had been a rough few days for them.

They’d been out celebrating on July 1 when they skipped a trip for Canada-Day ice cream in order to head back home to check on the house. They arrived home to find one inch, then two, then four inches of water flooding into the basement.

Or, as she put it, “only” four inches.

“We were one of the lucky ones,” she said.

We parted with a plan to talk again soon.

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My question for you today: Were you affected by the rainstorm?

If so, who has helped you to feel supported just now?

If you’ve been unaffected, who or what has helped you most when you’ve met challenges outside of your control?

As always, I’d love to hear from you.

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You know that sensation you get at a concert when you and your fellow audience members are lost in belting out an amazing singable song together? Let’s say it’s Ahead by a Century.

You’re all there together. You’re loud. You sound fantastic. When you sing that “and I had a serious dream” line, you’re like one giant, interconnected crowd blob. And it feels like nothing else.

Concerts aren’t the only place where we can all get ourselves to this shared vibe. It can happen in our communities too. Which is great news for us all.

You’ve likely felt a version of this feeling when, say, you’ve joined a group stacking chairs in the school gym after a year-end event. Or you’ve added your freshly collected bag of trash to the pile when you’ve joined neighbours in a park clean-up.

Initially when the work starts, everyone is a bit awkward. You’re new to each other and the work. Then, as the group warms up - figuratively and literally - nods, chuckles and small talk start to mix in.

Then comes the sensation: a shared sense of accomplishment. Like, you know what you’re doing isn’t solving any big problems. Moving furniture or scooping garbage won’t fix the loneliness epidemic or environmental woes.

But you feel good. And your shared efforts - in that small corner of the world - are helping.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim called this sensation “shared effervescence.” In an essay titled “The Collective Effervescence of Messy Parks” in the 2025 book *Messy Cities: why we can’t plan everything, writer Jake Tobin Garrett quotes Adam Grant: It’s “the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose.”

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This is what happened at Inverness Park on Meadowlands Drive on Saturday afternoon.

Staff and volunteers with NROCRC, the East African Parents Association, high school students, community members and local kids all fell into an easy rhythm of hauling, sorting and distributing produce for 315 families with kids in Nepean.

Aya, a grade 10 student from St. Pius X, was a member of the team. She and fellow high school students from Brookfield and Franco-Ouest greeted families as they arrived for their fresh bundles of beets, peppers, oranges, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers and corn. As each neighbour stepped up to Aya’s table, she and her teen peers helped each person gently arrange the produce in their bags and wagons.

There was a lot of chatting and laughing too.

Ontario high school students need to collect 40 volunteer hours before they can graduate. Aya, with two years left to go, already has 38. But she says she didn’t come out on Saturday to log hours anyway. It was far more than that.

“I like it,” she said about the work she was doing. “I live here. I’m helping my community.”

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So what was this event all about?

Lead by Khalsa Aid Canada, more than 300 volunteers came together and, in under six hours, sorted, repacked and distributed 115,000 pounds of food to 34 locations across Ottawa. It was the group’s fourth year running this summer food drive in support of kids and families in Ottawa.

Algonquin College’s parking lot served as the distribution depot and the event’s partners - Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, the Ottawa Food Bank, Ottawa Community Housing Foundation and the Odd Bunch - came together with trucks, humans and enormous piles of food.

Distributing organizations like NROCRC, Barrhaven Food Cupboard or Pinecrest Terrace - among many others - then received deliveries to share with community members.

“It truly felt like an emergency-response operation, with students, educators, community members, first responders, and partner organizations all working side by side toward a common goal,” said Karmin Perhar, senior project manager with Khalsa Aid Canada.

“My favourite moment was looking around and seeing hundreds of people from every corner of the community united by the same goal and purpose,” she said. “It was a powerful reminder of what can happen when a community comes together to support one another.”

Why and how did the students participate?

Most of us know the numbers. More than 1 in 4 households in Ottawa are facing food insecurity, and 37 per cent of all food bank visitors are children under the age of 18.

This is why the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board stepped in. “We participate primarily to bridge the summer gap, filling a critical need during the months when school nutrition programs pause and donations typically drop,” said Diane Pernari, general manager communications and public relations with OCDSB in an email. It also helps them to normalize classroom chats about food insecurity.

This year 31 schools and thousands of students and staff went beyond just collecting food. Before Saturday’s event, teachers engaged students in class discussions, they created educational displays and they decorated collection bags to help build enthusiasm.

“They are driven by the knowledge that their peer-to-peer impact is real,” said Pernari. “They are directly supporting their own classmates and community spaces, making the effort feel personal and meaningful, which matters far more to them than simply earning volunteer hours.”

On the day of the event, many of them - like Aya - fanned out across the city to help with one of the distributing organisations.

How can you get yourself to some shared effervescence?

Volunteering with a group can be a good way to get yourself to some. But you can also seek it out in the name of fun or in small, informal ways while going about your daily life.

The scale slides. As the sensation begets a desire for more of it, feeling connected to neighbours - however you do it - all feeds into the greater good. A few suggestions:

You could sign up for a short-term or seasonal volunteer stints like:

*Canada Day in Barrhaven: One of the largest Canada Day events in the region is powered by community groups and volunteers. Reach out for a way you can get in on the action.

*Silver Springs Garlic Project: As this volunteer-powered group says: “Many, many volunteers are needed to make everything happen.”

*Your local community association would love to see you over the summer. Manordale Woodvale, Tanglewood Hillside or Trend Arlington community associations - among many others - could use you for seasonal events and more. The folks with the General Burns and Craig Henry community associations are actively looking for volunteers.

You could look into longer volunteer commitments like:

*Lead adults on biweekly walks as a walking group coordinator

*Friends of the Ottawa Public Library (FOPLA) are on the lookout for book lovers who’d enjoy a “fulfilling” volunteer experience. You?

You could mix in some collective fun:

*Head downtown and dance on Sparks Street at the Drop the Beat outdoor DJ event.

*Cheer on some paddlers at the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival this weekend at Mooney’s Bay.

*Belt out some REO Speedwagon or Styx at an '80s Rock concert at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Whatever you opt for, I’d love to hear about it. Share and let me know?

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A scheduling note: Nepeanville will take a pause until mid-July. Enjoy early summer!

*Messy Cities is such a great book. Check it out if you can. OPL has five copies.

In the before-times - when travelling south across the border was something we could do for fun - my family and I visited Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory in Waterbury, Vermont.

If you’ve been, you know that there’s a space behind the factory called the “Flavor Graveyard,” where they commemorate ice creams that have moved on. They offer some speculation as to their causes of death too. Say, Chocolate Comfort (low-fat) or Dastardly Mash (raisins). Each flavour surely had its fans at one time. Someone who enjoyed it on a hot day and wiped its melty blobs off their chin.

In our case, as my kids, mom, partner and I wandered between the tombstones with our cones, we read the names of the departed flavours and paid our respects.

This week, the memory of that outing popped back up for me. Ice cream and cemeteries are among my favourite - and most comforting - things, after all.

Ice cream because, well, you get it: it’s a magical elixir. And cemeteries have their own enchantments too, no matter your mood. Feeling good: A quiet walk along their paths can help you think creative or expansive thoughts. Feeling gloomy? Take in a forested corner to remember or mourn.

And this week I needed some comfort.

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Monday was my first day back at the college where I teach after being away on a year-long sabbatical. My leave was a fantastic, professionally energizing experience. However, while I was away, my program was suspended. So while I’m returning to work with our current students until they graduate, no new faces will join us in the fall.

The program is done like…Coconutterly Fair. (Fairtrade).

We’d received the news about the cancellation back in February, so I thought I was done feeling lousy. I was wrong, alas. When well-meaning people looked at me this week with what my colleague calls “funeral face,” it hurt more than I’d expected.

So my thoughts turned to that visit to the ice cream cemetery. But in two comforting parts. One for me - and one for all of us:

Thought #1 (dark, funny, for me): How great might it be if my employer could learn from Ben & Jerry’s playful exhibit? Like, it could host a fallen-program site of its own out back where they dump the snow in winter: say, a “Journalism 2026” headstone standing beside others like “Radio Broadcasting and Podcasting 2025,” “Florist 2010,” etc.

Which, more than anything, just made me laugh.

Thought #2 (cheering, helpful, for us all): If we let them, cemeteries - non-ice-cream themed ones - can be helpful neighbours. They may be our quietest ones, but they have a lot to offer us.

So today’s newsletter is for anyone who, like me, needs a hit of pleasure with a twist of community just now. And because I’m currently trying to avoid ice cream due to too-tight shorts, we’re going to focus on the pleasure that can come from visiting Nepeanville’s cemeteries.

So, here are “people,” places and things for you to consider - or visit - this week.

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‘PEOPLE’: Take a walk with our most silent community members

Tucked alongside some of our busiest west-end communities are patches of greenspace occupied by residents who’ll offer wise guidance if you let them. They may be quiet - better listeners than chatters - but if you listen closely, they have stuff to say. (Note: not in a literal, connecting-to-those-in-the-great-beyond way.)

If you’re happy, stuck or in need of a mostly car-free road to walk along, our local cemeteries are hidden-in-plain-sight gems.

While we have several to choose from in the west end: Pinecrest Cemetery at Greenbank and Baseline, Bells Corners Union Cemetery or St. Patrick’s Fallowfield Cemetery in Barrhaven, for instance. If there’s not one within walking distance of your home, there’s likely one on your biking or driving route.

If you’ve not yet been, I’d recommend the four Merivale Road cemeteries: Merivale United Church Cemetery, St. John the Divine Anglican Cemetery, Holy Trinity Bukovynian Cemetery and the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral Cemetery.

I have an old car - my mechanic is nearby on Cleopatra Drive - so I spend a lot of time there.

And in these quiet places - of remembrance and stories - there is so much life happening both in and outside in properties.

For instance, when you walk the loop at Merivale United, you’ll smell bacon and eggs from the Merivale Station Restaurant in the mall next door. You’ll hear the sounds of machinery rumbling in the industrial park behind the site. The traffic from Merivale Road will grow fainter the deeper into the cemetery you go, but bird songs will pick up.

As you walk, you can imagine the names on the stones are like name badges at a conference. “What brought you here, Henry?” you can wonder. “What’s your biggest take away from the (life) event, Martha?”

Or, you can imagine what might happen if everyone memorialized along a row all stood up at once. Not, like, zombie-movie style. But more, as if they were arriving at a cocktail party.

“Who loved you most and why?” you could ask each one of them. “What did you love most?”

Cemeteries are also populated by our fellow oxygen-breathing neighbours too: mourners, fellow walkers, grounds’ people and, sometimes, wild turkeys. Pleasantries or nods might be exchanged. This is a community too, after all.

But everyone shares in being lost in their own reasons for being there.

For instance, these two people have their reasons: Last week a Toronto-woman wrote about why she takes walks in her local cemetery in the Globe and Mail. And, locally, writer Nickie Shobeiry wrote a wonderful story about an Ottawa illustrator who cleans the graves on her family’s property.

Do you visit a local cemetery too? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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PLACES: Open Doors Ottawa is on this weekend

If you’ve visited Nepeanville before, you’ll know I’m a fan of municipal buildings. But if you’re following the City of Ottawa’s infrastructure funding-gap situation, you’ll know that they join parks, pools and many other recreation facilities in being at risk just now.

(The Ottawa Lookout has a good overview piece this week to check out. In my hockey-loving household, the Belltown Dome is a structure that gets lots of love.)

This weekend’s Doors Open Ottawa event, June 6-7, is a great opportunity to consider local facilities - municipally run or otherwise - that we may walk, bike or drive past every day, but have yet to visit. If you want to stick around west-end Ottawa, here are five great options for your consideration:

Nepean Creative Arts Centre: Bells Corners

Nepean Sailing Club: Crystal Beach

Scouts Canada National Museum: Baseline Road

South Nepean Muslim Community: Woodroffe Avenue south of Longfields Drive

Fairfield House: Richmond Road

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THINGS: Would you enjoy neighbourhood merch too?

This week I spotted that the folks over at the Mainstreeter in Old Ottawa East have a fantastic community shop. This means neighbours over there are able to see their communities on mugs or calendars. Lucky!

When I visited Winnipeg a few weeks back, I stopped in a store that sold a huge selection of neighbourhood merch: mugs, coasters, t-shirts and key chains. I opted for this general city-themed mug, but there were others featuring Winnipeg neighbourhoods such as Transcona or the North End.

Maker House Company on Wellington Street has some great Ottawa-area merch, but I’m not seeing a lot of love for west-end Ottawa there so far.

But I’d love a…Leslie Park ball cap! A City View travel mug! A Stonebridge t-shirt?

If you’ve spotted items featuring Nepean or west-end neighbourhoods, can you let me know?

I’m a fan. And what a light-and-bright way to proudly wear our neighbourhoods, literally, on our sleeves as we move about the city at large. (Or beyond.)

Thoughts? What do you think about neighbourhood swag?

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Welcome to Nepeanville!

And welcome to our user’s guide.

If you want to see what goes on here and where we’ve been, you’re in the right spot.

If you’d like to subscribe, please do! I aim to publish every second Wednesday. (If I miss the mark, apologies in advance. Life, eh. ;)

This is a newsletter about our home here in west-end Ottawa - but it’s also about your community too, no matter where you live.

New here? Start with these 5

1. “I’m in love with a municipal building — and I bet you are too.” A love letter to public places that double as a civic anchors.

2. “Crafts can save the world - and your community.” Don’t underestimate the power of a “hobby” to cure all kinds of challenges in surprising ways.

3. “How Craig Henry’s recreational path can make you happier.” On walking, noticing, and belonging in your neighbourhood.

4. Ready to follow your entrepreneurial dream and help the planet too? “Coats of Many Colours” will introduce you to a neighbour with big dreams - and tips for you too.

5. “Have you been wrong about gardening too?” I thought people were just born with green thumbs. Nope: you just need to ask for help.

Here are a few of my favourite posts:

Why am doing this?

Ottawa can sometimes feel big, complicated and - somedays - frustrating. But there’s a whole lot of great stuff happening within the messiness. I’m a neighbour who believes small local stories and shared places can encourage local engagement and keep us hopeful. Nepeanville is my way of mapping that feeling and inviting you along.

What’s next?

Read and enjoy: Most essays are 4 to 6 minutes long and aim to leave you steadier, not spun up.

Ask questions or share ideas: Do you see someone seeking a solution we should know about? Or is there a problem in need of a solution I should explore? Please let me know.

Act locally. Posts often end with one small action. Say, visit a place, join a program or take a walk. Give one a try - and tell me about it?

Join the conversation. Thoughtful comments and local tips from you are part of the magic. A good place to peek: “When things don’t fall apart” (check the comments).

Share this with a neighbour. Forward one post to one community-loving friend who’d enjoy it.

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To learn more, check out my full About Page. You can also find Nepeanville on Instagram and Facebook.

“West wind, blow from your prairie nest,

Blow from the mountains, blow from the west

The sail is idle, the sailor too;

O! wind of the west, we wait for you.

Blow, blow!”

It was 8 a.m. and a spring wind - a fresh one - was indeed blowing from the west.

Which is perhaps why, as a member of the group, my eyes were locked on a middle-aged couple. As he read, they were wading into the frigid river for a swim.

No paddles for them.

“Apparently,” whispered a fellow group member as Glossop wrapped up, “these two head out even when the water ices over. They’ll swim all year.”

“Amazing,” I whispered back, adjusting my mittens.

This would not be the last great local tidbit I’d learn from a group member that morning. But it was a solid clue as to what was ahead of us that day: walking with a group of strangers comes with lessons you didn’t know you wanted to learn - but are super grateful when you do.

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We had all gathered there that morning to hike the first leg - the west-end half - of the 35-km Poet’s Pathway. Glossop, a long-time Poets’ Pathway member, would lead folks from the Ottawa Outdoor Club and the Rideau Trail Association along what he described as a “necklace” that strings together the city’s cultural heritage and the environment.

It’s a project that has been unfolding for about 20 years. And coming up in July, the Poets’ team will be launching a GPS-enabled website to help users better find their way.

The two groups in front of him that day were both more accustomed to forest trails than urban walking. They also hadn’t come together before. But here at Johnson’s plaque by the Ottawa River, the first of 14 of them scattered along the pathway’s winding route to Beechwood Cemetery, there was plenty of good cheer.

Over the next 4.5 hours or so, as we walked south and then east towards the Rideau River, we saw and heard a lot of beauty. But neither the poems nor the path were the trip’s best parts. (As great as they are.) It was the group itself.

While walking solo - for pleasure or for purpose - is essential, group walking is an activity one needs to seek out. On purpose.

You don’t need another item for your to-do list. But I’d like to persuade you that a stroll with strangers might be the in-city travel balm you didn’t know you needed.

Here’s why:

1. Surrendering to ‘group pace’ allows surprises to surface

We may daydream about moving around the city with ease. Setting our own pace. But group walking forces us to set this dream down for a sec.

Which, if you’re like my brother, Eric, who I pulled along with me, may not initially sound appealing.

“Why would we walk this path with a group - at 8 a.m. - when we could do it, quietly, solo, any time?” he asked before we started. “And at our speed?”

All true. But surrendering to a non-brisk pace is the point here. A group walk requires that everyone move at the pace of its most modest-moving member.

Which - once speedier folks adjust - comes with its own pleasures: you see more and you see differently.

2. Group walks offer space to discuss spiky local issues.

If you’ve not seen Carling Avenue or the LRT construction heading into Algonquin Station from the Pinecrest Creek footpath lately, it’s worth a visit.

Ideally, see it with others too. It’ll give you all the time and space to yell at the sky about traffic along east-west arterials and grumble about transit woes.

But as the LRT’s build, for instance, is really coming along, there’s space for hopeful talk too.

“Imagine when all of this is working?” a fellow walker said.

3. Walking together makes people share weird and wonderful stuff

Maybe it’s the forward-facing side-by-side thing? No eyes to look into. Arms and legs swinging as both walkers move forward.

But it’s been two weeks since this event and I’m still thinking about things I learned from my walking mates: strategies for a continuous walk between Ottawa and Kingston, for instance. Or how a Costco feta bucket can be repurposed for all kinds of - ahem - surprising things on a camping trip.

When you walk with a new person, you often get straight to the good stuff. Small talk quickly dives into big talk.

So along with lunch-packing tips or TV show recommendations, a walking partner might share some life pain. Or a deep joy.

But then you jump to a chat about, “whoa, check out that wily squirrel up there!”

In other words, talk that would never happen if you crossed paths in the Shoppers Drug Mart or at the bus stop.

4. Moving as a pack - even a temporary one - can offer warm, fuzzy feelings

I’ve known group-walking in my past.

In my late 20s and through my 30s I ran with running groups. I worked as a Haunted Walk tour guide downtown for a stretch. I’ve been known to go on city walking tours while travelling. And, as an educator, herding groups of students on field trips is as much fun for me as it is for them.

There’s just something about the movement - everyone going in the same direction at once - that, as the walk continues, melds you into a kind of team. Maybe it’s the shared sense of purpose?

You’re en route to a destination. Together.

Whatever it is, it’s great for making you feel like anything is possible in your community.

The walk’s end

While Eric and I weren’t able to walk the path’s second leg with the group on the Sunday, we got word it was a success.

“We had a good walk,” wrote Rob Burnfield, president of the Ottawa Outdoor Club. “We skipped the last two plaques due to time. It was good, however, and I learned a lot more about the city’s trails.”

I’ll look forward to joining them again. Come along too?

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Some other upcoming local group-walking options to check out:

• Ottawa Outdoor Club is leading a walk on Monday, May 25 at 6 p.m. starting from the Supreme Court. For some forest time, a group will be hiking in Gatineau park on Sunday, May 31 at 9 a.m. Check out the schedule for details.

• For the Rideau Trail Association, non-members can use the trails. To see the group schedule, reach out to become a member.

• The Ottawa Rambling Club is leading a hike on Wednesday, May 27 at 9:15 a.m. setting out from Bate Island. Contact the group for details.

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While growing up this rink would often make him grumpy because it has a no-hockey-stick rule. But he’s still a big fan. We skated there as a family when he was just figuring out how to glide on the ice. It was among the first spots he and his brother could be dropped off at solo.

“They’re not getting rid of the rink are they?” he asked. “People love that place.”

They are not. “All’s well,” I said. “The equipment is just being upgraded.”

Or, more specifically here’s a bit of what Laine Johnson, councillor for College Ward, said on Facebook:

“Built in 1987, the refrigeration pipes have aged out, with increasing maintenance costs and system leaks. The new refrigeration system is expected to improve efficiency and might even lengthen the rink season!”

My son was relieved. And I didn’t give his rink reaction another thought until a day later when I had my own “mushiness about municipal infrastructure” moment.

Friday afternoon while working at the Nepean Centrepointe library, I spotted that it was Ben Franklin Place’s 38th birthday weekend. (The facility’s grand opening in 1988 was a three-day extravaganza: April 29 is the “official” big day.)

But rather than noting this discovery as a kind of “huh, neat,” historical fact, I instead felt something a bit weirder.

Like, genuine happiness?

“Awww, how lovely,” I thought. “Happy Birthday, building.”

Because it turns out that I too have strong emotions about this facility at 101 Centrepointe Drive. But more on that in a moment.*

Before we go any further, I’ll ask you to consider what your favourite municipal facility might be.

Maybe it’s a stand-alone rink like Howard Darwin Centennial Arena on Merivale Road. Or the Minto Recreation Complex because you love your weekly basketball game. Or the Pinecrest Recreation Complex because because of your weight-room friends. Or the Nepean Creative Arts Centre in Bells Corners.

Or someplace else in the world altogether. (Nepeanville is both a place and a space.)

Wherever it is, the place just needs to be communal and stir something in you. Like, if you sit with it, a memory might bubble up that makes you laugh. Or, it makes you think, “I like how I feel when I’m there. I like who I am when I’m there.”

Mostly, the place should feel like a home away from home. (One that happens to be tax-payer funded.)

Have you identified it?

Excellent, hang onto that thought as we continue.

What else happened on Ben Franklin Place’s birthday?

As many of you will know, May 1 was also the start of the campaign season for municipal elections across Ontario.

Beginning Friday and continuing until Aug. 21, candidates for mayor or council can file - or withdraw - nomination papers.

So between now and election day on Oct. 26, candidates in Ottawa’s 24 wards and those running for mayor will have plenty of campaign announcements for us.

They’ll address the most significant municipal issues on our collective minds just now: transit, the cost of living and housing challenges. We’ll hear talk about the quality and cost of essential services like garbage pick up, snow plowing, transit and road maintenance.

And, hopefully, in our immediate neighbourhoods, local candidates will address our specific community’s micro-challenges.

But as all of this happens over the next six months, here’s my proposal: what if each one of us “adopts” a municipal facility for the duration of the election campaign? Like, write its name on a sticky note and pop it on the wall. Tell a neighbour about what we’re doing. Ask them for their pick too. Spread the word?

(This to me seems like a great merch opportunity, btw, City of Ottawa: facility badges. Like, “I just got a new Walter Baker patch! I’m hoping to get my Nepean Museum one soon, etc.”)

Why adopt a municipal facility?

We like things to work. We’re frustrated when they don’t.

This resulting frustration can be great for social media engagement or, better, for sparking us into action.

On a good day, action includes tuning into local municipal coverage in the Ottawa Lookout or the Ottawa Citizen. Or prompting us to subscribe to City of Ottawa Politics, Random Acts of Urbanism, Ottawa 3 Speed, Improving Ottawa or Straight Outta Stittsville among other information sources. (The latter’s author, Councillor Glen Gower, isn’t running again.)

Frustration helps us attend municipal meetings. Or write letters to our local councillors.

But on a bad day, frustration can prompt us to just tune out altogether. Shrug. Yell at the sky and think, “I’m out.”

Last time around in 2022, Ottawa had one of the higher voter turnout rates in the province at 44 per cent. (In Toronto, only less than 30 per cent of the population voted.) But it’s tough to feel much swagger when more than half of us didn’t fill out a ballot.

So what if we also bring The Feels into the mix? Like - brace yourself, non-sentimental friends - we add a bit of “love” to our election-campaign period?

Alongside frustration, we add in authentic, positive feelings about a place that’s special to us. I propose it might motivate us differently.

As in:

“For You, Dear Municipal Facility That Means Something To Me, I pledge to stay engaged in the lead up to voting on Oct. 26.

I will learn what I can.

I will talk with my neighbours.

I stay engaged with the the bigger, broader issues because they’re essential on their own.

And I will do this because I’m quite fond of you, Local Place.”

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While you don’t have to go this far, I wrote the facility a little something:

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Or, as Paul Zammit, the gardening columnist on CBC’s Ontario Today defined it: “When you’ve got lemons, you make lemonade.”

As an idiom, it’s a stretchy one. But in verb form, “lemonading” may just be the kind of silly word we need just now. It’s not about ignoring challenges. It’s about rolling with them. Seeking some sweetness in unideal situations.

And it’s clearly portable beyond the garden too.

You can also use it, say, when you’re on the brink of losing your job (new adventure ahead?), you’re stuck in construction traffic (more podcast time?) or you’ve injured your knee doing exercises to prevent knee injuries (more time with your mom’s hand-made cold pack?)

(Sorry: those may just be my rebranding “opportunities.” ;)

In this case, the gardening marketers are basing it on research out of Oregon State University, which found when people are more playful, they’re more optimistic.

So when it comes to plants, no matter your growing space, your skill level or the leafy thing you’re tending, sticking your hands into dirt - for fun, without expectation - is good for you.

In last week’s newsletter, we learned that gardeners like to grow other gardeners. Today, in part two of our gardening series, we’re heading indoors. While indoor “plant-parenting” may have been a trend born out of the pandemic times, it’s no more solitary an activity than gardening outdoors.

Let’s meet two local green thumbs who are both rooted in plant communities and are - although they didn’t label themselves that way - avid lemonaders.

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Name: Emma Hyde

Favourite plant: a ZZ plant

How Hyde lemonades:

1. She works with the living space she has right now

The house that Emma Hyde rents with her partner is long, narrow and has limited nooks for their plants. “They’re mostly clumped into one window,” she says. Spreading them around the house any further risks denying them light, or worse: forgetting about them. (There have been some non-watering events that didn’t end well.)

“I already have too many plants, which I think is a little bit of a like renters issue,” she says. “You will have to move at some point, and those plants have got to come with you.”

2. When she’s too successful with a plant, she rolls with the fallout

Like for a lot of people, the pandemic beget Hyde’s indoor garden. “I was like, ‘we’re stuck inside all the time, right? Never around any trees,” she says. “People do have an intuitive desire for plants.”

As Hyde is originally from leafy Chelsea, living in “a little box in the city” made her feel cut off from nature. So her first aloe plant came home. Since then, that original plant has continued to sprout so much that they now take up more than half of her plant-fleet count.

“I have to just repot it and, like, separate,” she says with a laugh. “So I now have 10 different aloes, but it’s all from the same one years ago.”

3. She takes inspiration from other lemonaders

Hyde’s sister, Evelyn, is currently living with their parents and has had to get creative with how she gardens just now. “She has basically started a grow-op in their basement,” Hyde says with a laugh.

Evelyn would love to have her own garden, but that’s not possible at present. “She has all of the little, tiny saplings. She’s like, ‘I don’t have my own land, but I’m going to claim this room and have a bunch of lights.’ So that’s lemonading for sure.”

Bonus - Hyde’s community-building advice for plant newbies:

Becoming a plant-lover isn’t a big reach for anyone, she says. “I feel like most people are secretly plant people.” As in, let one potted plant into your life and watch your green thumb awaken.

And given that plant-lovers are “the nosiest people ever,” she says, they’ll be eager to help you out.

Her hot tip: go for the ZZ plant. “It’s nice, it’s green and you probably won’t kill it.”

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Name: Maggie Paquette

Favourite plant: Triostar

How Paquette lemonades:

1. When ‘outside’ isn’t available to her, she brings it inside

Maggie Paquette may primarily be an indoor gardener, but she’s also an avid stick-and-rock collector. “Pots like cool rocks,” she says. “And you just grab sticks if you need some kind of post to hold up your plant.”

Like many tenants, outdoor gardening space has been limited. This season, she and a downstairs neighbour, may take a run at growing a patch of sage and basil.

But she’s been bringing nature inside all along. “If feels good, when you’re, like, building something or nurturing with what you have to make your plants thrive.”

2. If a plant is struggling, she loves it harder

If Paquette finds that a plant is giving her grief, she’ll form a kind of partnership with it. She’ll play around with the watering routine or move it around the house to adjust the light.

For instance, her once-tiny Triostar had crispy leaves when she brought it home a year ago. “We tried different soil, different placement, different fertilizers,” she says. All the fussing paid off. The plant is now grown to seven times her original size.

“We made a deal together,” Paquette says with a laugh. “We have this mutual respect.”

3. Limited space for potted friends? She creates more

House-plant care isn’t Paquette’s only playful hobby. As she also crochets, she mashed the two together to solve a space problem.

“I crocheted a whole bunch of plant hangers so that I could hang all of the plants I needed,” she says. Now plants in pots can dangle from the ceiling too.

4. After ‘making it’ in the plant scene - she copes with the fallout

The hot “it” house plant just now is the Monstera and if you’ve visited #plantTok or social media at all, you know it well: it has large dramatic swiss-cheese leaves.

“I feel like it’s like the quintessential ‘you’ve made it as a house plant owner,’ if you own this specific plant,” she says. “Because everybody either has one or dreams of having one.”

However, while Paquette’s plant is thriving, it’s now huge. She inherited it from a neighbour and it needs to be hoisted into the bathtub for watering.

“It is overwhelming sometimes, but oh my god, it’s so amazing.”

Bonus - Paquette’s community-building advice for house-plant newbies:

“Everybody wants to help each other grow,” she says. “Bad pun intended, right?”

She too discovered plants during the Covid-times when she craved some greenery in her life. However, initially she was lost. After lurking on Reddit threads and surfing around to learn from the online community, she learned tricks and tips.

“And suddenly I have 45 plants,” she says with a laugh.

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Get more plant-play into your west-end Ottawa life - and beyond:

• Sip a Dalgona latte beside a pickle plant at Barrhaven’s flower cafe, Terra Flowers and Flavours.

• Play Plant Bingo in Cantley on Friday, April 24. Calling “Bingo!” could score you your own Monstera. You’re guaranteed to come home with at least one mini plant too.

• #Bloomscroll to #plantsmakepeoplehappy

• Read for inspiration: Shannon Proudfoot wrote about Mary Reid of Nepean’s Green Thumb Garden Centre in a Globe & Mail article from last June. Read it if you’ve got a creative project that’s driving you bananas; you might need a career-reset and/or you want to stop killing newbie plants.

• Take in some plant art: Faith Fyles, a botanist and an artist, was the first woman to work as a botanist at the Centre Experimental Farm. “In Full Bloom,” an exhibit about her life and work, is on at the Ottawa Art Gallery until September.

• Browse retail: The greenhouse at the giant Canadian Tire on Carling Avenue has resulted in approximately 62 million unplanned plant purchases across the region. While there’s still a chill in the air, it’s a great spot for a plant fix.

♥️ If you connected with this post, I’d love to know. It helps me know what you enjoy.

💬 Any thoughts to share? Please comment. I’d love to hear you on this one.

🔗 Is there a plant-fan - or a community-lover - in your life who’d enjoy this? Share it with them.

💫 For more Nepeanville, please subscribe. I’ll have lots more ideas about creating a feeling of home in your community to come.

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When I’m struggling to fall asleep, I’ll imagine the green, earthy smell of a tomato plant. One that I’ve planted in a patio pot or tucked into a bed, tied to a nice stake. I’ll think about its hopeful yellow pre-fruit flowers. And I’ll picture my basket at harvest time, filling up as I pluck tomatoes one by one.

But if any of this actually happens, it’ll only be in my dreams. Because I am usually a failed veggie gardener.

I’ve been gardening - badly - for 25 odd years now. My first attempt was in a scruffy patch of dirt behind the apartment I rented as a university graduate. “I’m a new grown-up,” I thought to myself. This is a task grown-ups do. How tough can this be?” But while the upstairs neighbours who gardened beside me saw their plants grow tall and bountiful, mine stayed spindly and fruitless.

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And this kicked off the gardening trend of my life so far: gardening - shabbily - immediately beside neighbours who had their acts together. I’ve watched a neighbour put on a headlamp and pluck slugs off her lupins into the evening hours. I’ve lived beside a former flower-shop owner who timed the planting so the garden’s colours would bloom in sequence. (Daffodils then coneflowers then asters.)

I’d compliment my neighbours’ successes, of course. My eyes appreciated what they grew. But did I seek out their advice? Did I swallow my wilted pride and ask for guidance? I did not. I borrowed library books - and kept hoping for the best.

“I guess my neighbours were all born with green thumbs and I wasn’t,” I’d say to myself, sighing Eeyore-ishly.

What changed?

In mid-March, I had a coffee meeting with Jack Wilson, president of the Nepean Horticultural Society. We’d been colleagues at Algonquin College before he retired and it was great to catch up. However, our chat also unexpectedly overturned the bucket of everything I thought I knew about gardening.

It was like the ghosts of all of the plants I’d accidentally murdered over the years all stood up at once and said, “Listen.”

The headline?: Gardening is a community activity and gardeners are generous neighbours. And therein sat my error: I thought you needed to have your act together before you could join the community.

Let’s unpack Wilson’s lessons. Here are seven facts about local plant-growers and their plant-growing activities that we can all put to use in our communities in the weeks ahead.

1. Gardeners love to grow other gardeners

“Gardening can be a very solitary experience,” Wilson said. “But at the same time, I’ve found gardeners to be very generous. It can be with advice or if you’re looking for something. For a plant or what have you. They’ll say, ‘well, come on over. We’ll divide a plant or give you some seeds.’”

2. Gardening groups aren’t just for pros or extroverts

Gardeners need each other - and like each other too. Community club members sign up to learn, but sharing happens too: ideas, seeds, tips and more. (You can also pop in as a guest: no commitment required.) For instance, the Nepean Horticultural Society hosts local garden field trips and special guests. Up next on April 16: Mary McDonald, a local master gardener, will talk about how to “paint with blooms.” The group cares for the gardens at the Nepean Museum too.

Online try #bloomscrolling, #gardentok and good ol’ Reddit (r/ottawaplants) for helpful, motivating content.

3. Gardeners are earthy problem-solvers

Gardeners, it turns out, may be the original solution-seekers for, well, every problem going. For example, researchers at the University of Alberta have found that community gardening can support social connection, mental health and well-being - along with a host of other good things.

4. Plant-loving means ongoing learning

Jack Wilson has been digging in the dirt since he was a kid growing up in Carleton Heights. In fact, before the now-retired professor began his long teaching career, he almost enrolled in the college’s horticulture program. Yet when it comes to plants, he’s always learning. Just this winter, for instance, the club hosted a session on the edible garden and Wilson learned that hosta leaves can be eaten. “There are any number of plants that from root to stem to leaf the flower petal you could eat as well. So amazing,” he says. “That was a very popular topic.”

5. Gardening changes with community need

The Nepean Horticultural Society started its life 69 years ago as the City View Horticultural Society. Its founders were folks from the neighbourhood who were working at the Experimental Farm and unhappy that the area didn’t have a lot of trees. So they got together as a group and started planting.

6. Gardening isn’t a must-do chore: it’s for joy

“People don’t enjoy gardening because they’re looking for more work,” explains Jack Wilson. “They do it because they can see life. They can see beauty. They can see nature at its best.”

7. The gardening path has many on-ramps

An issue for many younger would-be gardeners is that they’re often tenants, Wilson says. They therefore may not have access to land. But there’s still a lot of interest, he says. Seedy Saturday events, which are held around the province, are often popular with younger gardeners.

“It wasn’t surprising that during the pandemic, there was a real surge of interest in indoor plants by young people,” he says. “They could have access to gardening in the confines of their apartments and so forth.”

Which is why, next newsletter, we’re heading inside to talk about indoor gardening. (AKA house-plant parenting). You’ll love what the wise house-plant solution-finders we’ll meet have in store for us.

Now, your turn: where do you land on the gardening-enthusiasm spectrum? Are you eager to get out there? Do you garden with others? Are you a newbie thinking about giving it a go? (Tomato-growing advice would also be appreciated. ;)

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Calendar items for community-minded plant people

*Our wider neighbourhoods giant shared gardens? Help tidy one up by joining a Cleaning Up The Capital event between April 15 to April 22. Check out the map for an event near you.

*Want some free gardening advice before the seasons starts? Reach out to the folks at Master Gardeners of Ottawa.

*How about a plot of your own in a community garden? Check out the Nepean Allotment Garden Association. They have raised beds, annuals and perennial plots available.

*If you were born in Ottawa or visited as a small child, you likely have a picture of Younger-You with a patch of tulips? Why not recreate it - or create it - when the Canadian Tulip Festival starts in early May 8?

*As you mull your garden plan for the season - or consider your first plant pot for a balcony or porch - Ottawa Public Health has some handy tips on offer.

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Today’s newsletter is for anyone who may have an heightened urge to run from the news just now. (Just me?)

The untethering

On Good Friday afternoon I put on my grubbiest clothes and tackled three-months-worth of backyard neglect. My fellow dog owners: the less-perfect among you may know of the horrors I faced. (Yes, yes: responsible grown-ups should never let a fur-roomie hang out in an unclean yard. Sorry, Mabel the Yellow Lab: I’m flawed.)

Without being gross with the details, I’d missed the spring-collection sweet spot: kinda unthawed (thus not stuck to the snow) yet still kinda frozen (for easy, scent-free collection).

Instead, I’d landed right in the middle. It involved a lot of squish. And yet, as I stooped and scooped, I also had a ping moment: while the nature of my task was deeply yucky, I was…enjoying it? As in, I wasn’t thinking about anything else other than the next pile. And - crucially - my phone was in the house. I was thus fully present with the mess. This mess. Not the mad, wider-world mess.

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The backstory (a recap)

As Nepeanville readers may know, I seek out stories of solutions-seekers here in our community a) so we can all enjoy them and b) because there are so many hopeful stories going untold. And in the days we’re in, hope - like food and time - is not to be wasted.

But the other (quieter) reason for Nepeanville is that I - we - need to stay engaged with news and current events. Hide from it for too long and we may miss that our garbage day has moved. Or that there’s a Canadian looping around the moon. Or that there will be a municipal election this fall.

The urge to hide from the news of war and economic upheaval is real. Like, it’s hard to know which news issue to try and even wrap your head around just now. But this is where the actions of our hopeful neighbours come in. Learning a bit about what they are doing to help equips us - fortifies us! - to keep up the good news-consumption fight.

The reset

Now, post-Easter long weekend, I’ve gone back in. I have a newly cleaned yard, I’ve enjoyed too many chocolate eggs and I’ve laughed with family. I’ve lowered the drawbridge over the moat - picked up my phone - and engaged with my news apps.

These three solution-forward stories from our west-end Ottawa community - a Person, a Place and a Thing - are energizing me right now as I go. I thought you might enjoy them too.

Person

Libraries have always been Keith Egli’s happy place, he says. And last week, the folks at Ottawa Public Library had some great news for him: a copy of his newly published first book, Tenacious Little F*cker, will soon sit on its shelves. “I am pretty excited about that,” he said.

The story his book tells is his own and it’s not an easy one. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the former three-term city counsellor set out to write a book that, tonally, might feature dark parts, but would aspire to be helpful. Hopeful. And express gratitude. “I didn’t want to write a dark thing,” he said.

He also wanted the chance to thank all of the people who’d helped him over the years. “There were so many people along the way who didn’t even necessarily know they were helping me, but they were,” he says. (A great lesson to us all? We never know what our colleagues, neighbours - or that driver in front of us - are going through.)

The response he has received since first sharing his story in the Ottawa Citizen in April 2023 has shown him that there is a need in the community to have conversations in this space. “That’s the fuel for my engine,” he says. “It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do, but it does help folks. I think it helps me too.”

On April 16, Egli will launch his book at the Nepean Chamber in Ben Franklin Place and we’re all invited. Dylan Black will be the emcee, Sam Laprade will facilitate a Q&A session and Cynthia Bland from Voice Found will talk about what her organization is doing in the community to support survivors. “I have a platform,” he says. “I want to use it to the best of my ability.”

Place

In the coming weeks, community gardens all over the city - like this one off Holly Acres Road - will begin to be visited by neighbours daydreaming about their veggies-to-be.

If you’re community-garden curious, check out this helpful map from Open Ottawa to help you spot a patch near you. As the snow is falling as I write this, it’s a great time to start daydreaming: here’s a City of Ottawa link with info and resources.

Next week, Nepeanville will be all about solution-finding through gardening: the indoor and outdoor kind, for plants that are potted and plants with roomier spreads in beds. We’ll also hear about the folks at the Nepean Horticultural Society.

Can you help? I have a couple of gardening-related questions:

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Thing

A year ago the Ottawa Public Library launched a new digital resource called Examine+, that “offers offers unbiased, evidence-based health and nutrition information, empowering you with reliable insights.”

What’s it for? If you have questions about, say, the healthfulness of a fibre-and-sardines-only diet, you can check it out here. While your favourite Tiktok influencer may swear by it, nutrition researchers with up-to-date studies may have additional information for you to consider.

The resources summarize health topics and research in friendly ways so too so the reliable information is digestible too. For instance: “Make a table for me comparing the benefits and drawbacks of coffee and tea. Include citations.”

What grabbed me here, frankly, was the shelf tag. Many moons ago when I worked as a retail reporter, I was fascinated by store design and the ways merchandisers sought to “help” us spend our money.

Here, a tag placed in the health section’s shelves at the Ruth E. Dickinson branch whispered to me: “check me out.”

I’d not known about Examine+ and now I do. Sold.

When the women in Maryam Kreishan’s craft group gather together in a community space in Parkwood Hills or - new this week - in Craig Henry, they are solving problems.

To someone peeking into her room every week, it might look like 20 or so women sitting side by side sewing aprons or preparing food for a new recipe. Which they are indeed doing: strong sewers helping newbies, recipes from home being shared with new friends.

But the craft activities in their hands are so much more than just fabric or freshly prepared dishes. For these newcomers, the craft group is a place for them to get outside of the house among other women who understand the challenges of adapting to a new life. They may speak different languages, but using gestures, body language and their newly developing English, they share stories about their children and ask each other for advice. Someone learns how and where to buy a car. Some may make a new friend that they’ll meet up with outside of the craft group.

Kreishan, the program’s facilitator and an administrative assistant at NROCRC, says she’s heard many group members over the years say to her, “I don’t have family here. All of my family is in my country. But when I come here, I feel this is my family.”

And as this new family is made, they also make, say, oven mitts. It may have taken the group four weeks to get each member’s project completed. But something that didn’t exist in the world now does. And they created it together.

Because the thing about craft is that it’s not necessarily the outcome - the product - that matters most: it’s the journey. Crafts (the items) and crafting (the activity) can be gateways to community connections for everyone. This includes the work and contributions of professional craftspeople all the way through to newbies learning to work with fabric or wood or clay for the first time.

Jennifer Salahub, a professor emerita of art and craft history at Alberta University of the Arts, grew up in Ottawa and still spends time in the region in the summers. As someone who has dedicated her professional life to the study of craft, like Kreishan she too has witnessed how craft can make us happier and our communities stronger.

Together, Kreishan and Salahub have five lessons for all of us - craft participants, craft-sharers, craft-appreciators or even just craft-users - that we can put to use today.

Lesson 1: Don’t be good at crafts or crafting - be near them

Maryam Kreishan has been running the craft group for eight years and laughs when I asked her about her crafting skills or training. “My background is in information technology,” she says, which she studied at university in Jordan. “I don’t know how to sew.”

What she does know how to do is collaborate, facilitate and support women who do have training and skills. “I meet women who are very good,” she said. “So I’ll ask them, ‘please come and help us. You’ll be the teacher.” Then while she orders the supplies they’ll need for the project and facilitates the two-hour session, her on-site experts guide them through the project and they’ll all learn together.

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In ditching perfection and staying open to practising, learning and making mistakes we empower our community members who are willing to teach us.

Salahab has embraced this sentiment too. “I can do any stitch - I just can’t do a whole bunch of the same ones that look good,” she says with a laugh. So while she’s taken many art classes in order to understand the techniques, the art she practises is researching craft and writing about it.

She encourages us as newbies to get out there and actively play too.

“I’ve done clay,” she says. “I love the touching of it. It’s the handling I want. Because I can touch it and see how it’s made of love, right?”

Lesson 2: Respect for basket weaving - and basket weavers - is future-forward

You may remember the sourdough craze of 2020-2021? Or the sip-and-paint meet-ups we did over Zoom? During the pandemic when we were all trapped indoors, people found their way to crafts. If anyone had held any dismissive assumptions about crafting - it’s unserious or for people with too much time on their hands - it was suddenly forgotten.

Craft was a hero.

As it always was and will continue to be. In fact, in her new book “Art Cure: the science of how the arts save lives,” author Daisy Fancourt says that engaging in the arts is “the forgotten fifth pillar of health,” alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature. “And you don’t need to be any good at any of these things to reap the health benefits,” wrote Jancee Dunn in the New York Times last month. “All you have to do is take part.”

Today, however, some are back to throwing shade at the word, the act and its practitioners.

A recent example: Ontario’s premier told students in February not to choose “basket weaving courses” in response to cuts to OSAP. As in “basket weaving” is shorthand for areas of study that couldn’t possibly contribute to “jobs of the future.” Or that it doesn’t matter.

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When she was in the classroom full-time Salahub used to send her students out to ask community members, “what do you think when you hear the word ‘craft’?” As her students were in art school, she says, they imagined everyone they spoke with would understand the beauty and importance of what they were studying.

Their person-on-the-street chats, however, showed them that, alas, not everyone saw what they saw. “In the real world, people just think they’re out there doing nothing,” she says. As in, craft is something people do in their leisure time. For fun. It’s not serious or important. (And, it goes without saying, as it is also associated with “women’s work,” it’s a non-serious activity.)

Disrespect for craft isn’t anything new - but supporters of craft are done with it. In response to Premier Ford’s basket-weaving jab, the chair of Toronto Guild of Weavers and Spinners had this to say: “A lot of the arts, including basket weaving, involve a level of mathematics, planning and engineering,” she said. In other words, all pretty useful activities in lots of very modern ways.

Lesson 3: Solo crafting - or craft fandom - helps us all too

Since the late 1980s, every time Salahub had her heart broken or felt annoyed, she’d pull out her friend’s recipe for broken-hearted cookies printed on a much-loved recipe card and get down to baking.

The recipe features the best quality cocoa you can get your hands, a hint of cayenne pepper and fresh-ground pepper. It also required her to punch out heart shapes with her cookie cutter and then jaggedly divide them in two by hand.

When your heart is hurting, the act of producing, sharing or enjoying something human-made is a bit like a warm, crunchy cookie: medicinal.

“Craft is comfort, right?” she says. “Whether you’re making it or whether you’ve found, say, the perfect cup that you can hold, somebody has made it. It fits in your hand.”

A specific example from her own life: “I have glasses that I buy at the [Alberta] Craft Council that have got some of these indentations on them, kind of dimpled. And that means that even though my hands are getting more arthritis, I can pick up a glass without having to worry about dropping it.”

Even though she’s just sipping water - or splitting cookie hearts into two - the tactile experience of doing, creating or appreciating a hand-made item becomes a pleasurable one.

When she shares what she’s made - or just brings the good vibes they produce - into the wider world, everyone benefits.

Lesson 4: When you ‘make do and mend’ it makes you generous

Whether it’s being driven by environmental reasons, financial ones or creative ones, thrifting or fixing up worn clothing has moved beyond a trend into an everyday norm.

In the weeks ahead as we start to peel off our heavy winter coats, keep your eyes open for neighbours who’ve, say, brightened up an old cardigan with cheery thread or who’ve stitched some beads onto a tired t-shirt. Tap them on the shoulder and give them a compliment. Or seek their advice about how to spruce up some of your own well-worn sweaters.

Salahub reminds us about history’s “make do and mend” movement during World War II in Britain and beyond. “You make do with what you’ve got or you mend what you have,” she says. Today, she says, this shows up in the elaborate mending that people are stitching onto blouses and sweaters that are meant to be shown off.

“My friend is merrily sewing gorgeous patches on the elbows of her sweaters,” she says. “And it looks so cool.”

Here in west-end Ottawa, Maker Savvy has sewing classes for beginners and the Beaverbrook branch of the Ottawa Public Library has monthly knitting classes. Browsing the aisles of a local thrift shop for finds that spark fun thoughts can be a good starting place too.

Lesson 5: Host a mini craft show-and-tell with your neighbours

If I ask you, “what’s your favourite hand-made craft item in your day-to-day life?” what would you say?

Don’t overthink it. Maybe it was a gift? Maybe you made it yourself? Perhaps your grandma or your little nephew gifted it to you? Or perhaps you bought it from a professional potter or fabric artist or glassblower?

My prediction is that when you’re asked to stop and think about it, you’ll have a tough time picking just one. For instance, from where I’m sitting here at my desk I can see a hand-drawn birthday card from my son, a clay butterfly bowl from a potter at a craft show and a pink wooly scarf my friend Kathryn knitted for me years ago. They’re all contenders.

When we pause to consider them, these items - which, really, are so much more than “stuff” - enrich our day to day lives in so many quiet, essential ways. They’re often deeply meaningful - and yet we take them for granted.

Salahub suggests we stop doing this. She advises us to talk with others - deliberately - about our craft items. For instance, she suggests we host a mini craft show-and-tell event with our neighbours, friends or community groups. It doesn’t need to be a fussy affair. It can happen in the driveway. On a neighbour’s porch.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Invite everyone to bring along one craft item that’s meaningful to them. Encourage them not to overthink it. “They can bring something their mom made,” she says. “Something that’s interesting or handmade. It could be an Indigenous work. It could be a piece of soapstone that someone gave them. It could even be a cool rock that they like.”

Step 2: Everyone takes a turn to present their selected item.

Step 3: See what happens next. Mini fairs like this call out crafts’ powers.

Back to our craft group

At this week’s meet up in Parkwood Hills, Kreishan’s group each brought a favourite dish from home to share. Afghani dishes were joyfully compared to Moroccan ones, Nigerian rice discussed next to a Syrian version.

And over at the Craig Henry group’s location, they’ve stocked the kitchen with baking and cooking supplies and bags of useful craft items have started to arrive. But the plan for their first project - or celebratory meal - awaits.

It’s a decision the group members will make together.

April west-end Ottawa craft-and-crafting recommendations:

• Don’t just paint and sip a landscape or a vase of flowers: Loboba Milk Tea house in Barrhaven is hosting a “Paint your person” event on April 24.

• Strum beautiful music for your neighbours at Mort’s Pub in Bells Corners every Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m. Their acoustic open mic night wants your version of “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” by the Barenaked Ladies.

• Trivia can be a creative act when you’re playing with a team. Stop into Cassette Listening Bar at Baseline and Greenbank Roads on April 8 for “Trivia Throwback” night. Public Relations students at Algonquin College are hosting the fundraiser in support of Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization.

• Some board game players can get pretty crafty? Knox United in Woodvale will be hosting cards, refreshments and conversation on April 13 and 27 from 2 to 4 p.m.

• Sign up for a course at the Nepean Visual Arts Centre at the Nepean Sportsplex. There’s a hand building course beginning in April, for instance, that still has room. (Want to join me? We can try our hands at a vase or little flower pots together?)

Every Monday morning this month, a second-floor community room in the NROCRC offices in Emerald Plaza on Merivale Road has been home to a group of women who each have an idea - or ideas - for new businesses they’d love to call their own.

But first, they need some entrepreneurial basics.

Safa would love to open a home-based baking business with a focus on cupcakes. Nzinga wants to start a hand-and-foot forward spa business where she’d visit clients in their homes. And Esther would like to launch a graphic t-shirt business. Or maybe do bookkeeping. She’s still settling on her favourite idea. (Surnames have been removed for privacy.)

Each of their business ideas, past jobs, lived experiences, strengths and challenges are all very different. But they’re all ready to learn from their instructor and the course’s developer, Reham El-Sayed. They learn from each other too.

Three or four times a year, groups of women like this one participate in this three-year old program called iNSPIRE. It’s offered free of charge by iSisters Technology Mentoring and, in this case, in partnership with NROCRC. (Its full-name version: the Nepean Rideau Osgoode Community Resource Centre.)

Over eight-weeks group members are introduced to entrepreneurial mindsets, market research, financial principles and so much more. The participation criteria? Some basic technology skills, a business idea seed, the willingness to learn - and a need.

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‘Find the help you need’

It was this “need” part that caused me to snag on the program’s brochure when I saw it embedded in the Craig Henry Community Association’s email newsletter in early March. Its title, “Turning Ideas Into Income” and the cheery ChatGPT-generated cartoon snagged my scroll.

“Wait: I know a lot of women who could really use a program like this right now,” I thought. For instance:

-Seniors with pinched budgets but an abundance of craft-talents

-Underemployed new grads who need a side hustle

-Neighbours facing layoffs who’ve lost their confidence in the employment market

-Women with business ideas, but light on practical entrepreneurship skills

My list grew.

“Could this program be for them?” I wondered.

Esther, a volunteer in Tanglewood who’d spotted the poster hanging on her community centre’s wall, had asked the same question. As a newly retired accountant looking for her next chapter could this program be for her?

Esther took the leap and signed up. In my case, I joined the group for the morning to learn more.

The short answer to the question for both of us: yes and yes.

What the robots can do

For anyone who’s spent time in a classroom - most of you - Monday’s session would have looked and sounded familiar. Tables were dragged together so everyone could face each other. Slides presenting content stood up front. Questions were asked. Discussions rolled along.

While sometimes the group’s conversations were packed with brainstorming and laughter, other times there were more serious topics to tackle. Such as learning how and why to register for a business number. Or getting a handle on how the City of Ottawa’s municipal licensing process works.

“I know this is kind of boring, but it’s stuff that you need to know,” El-Sayed said with a laugh.

But the session also had a very modern element too: each exercise featured a step on how to weave in support from an AI tool.

For instance, as the group discussed what kinds of licences Nzinga might need for her spa business, El-Sayed suggested: “We could ask ChatGPT?”

Or, as they discussed how to create a short promotional video for Safa’s cupcake business, they learned how to create the best video output with OpenAI’s Sora2 by using the strongest prompt possible from Anthropic’s AI Claude.

If AI-talk like this still goes over your head, no fear. It happened in the classroom too. If someone had to ask, say, “What is a prompt again?” El-Sayed would return to gently unpacking the concept and its importance.

Her biggest lesson to the would-be entrepreneurs: AI is only a tool. “Don’t let ChatGPT lead the way,” she says. “You have your own instincts. It can only offer ideas.”

The backstory

The four Ottawa teachers who had the idea for launching iSisters Technology Mentoring in 2001 did so because they’d spotted a need: women in the region were falling behind in technical and computer skills. So the group set out to try and help.

Today, iSisters partners with 19 different community organizations to offer free courses that range from basic computer skills and online safety all the way up to this small-business program. These partnerships are essential for connecting the programming they offer with different communities who need it. Say, young moms connected with Youville Centre or women newly arrived to Canada connected with Immigrant Women Services Ottawa.

The problem of digital inequity, however, is a persistent one. “Twenty five years later,” says Erin Keeley-Messier, executive director of iSisters, “in some ways it’s worse.” Today, the gap between those who have the skills to work in many modern jobs or even to navigate day-to-day life and those who don’t, is growing, she explains.

The issue touches women from all backgrounds too. It’s most visible for women facing financial or personal hardships. For instance, tech gear and connectivity cost money. “If sometimes people have to choose between wifi or rent, wifi or food,” she said, “wifi is not going to win in that.”

But increasingly, there is a need for training among women for whom hardship may not initially be as obvious. “We work with women with degrees and women who have had long careers,” Keeley-Messier said. The pace of change, as we all know well, can feel relentless for many people. “That’s the truly infuriating thing, right?”

Not surprisingly, among iSisters’ most popular offerings right now are their courses featuring AI and online safety.

Estel Lita Russo, iSisters program manager, says given how pervasive technology is now, this makes sense. “We love using AI,” she said. “We need it. But we should be careful. We explain all of these things.”

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The future

Five weeks from now, the group will join 443 other women who’ve completed an iSisters program over the last year or so. In May they’ll also have a graduation ceremony featuring food, entertainment and tables to promote the new businesses. As it is also iSister’s 25th anniversary, past program members will join in the fun too.

But for iNSPIRE grads, success afterwards is far from guaranteed. For most of the women who participate, getting a business idea into a launch state is a challenge. A start-up business needs money.

And then there are logistics to consider. Safa, for instance, needs to figure out how she might make her home-based baking work in her small apartment kitchen with her two teens and a toddler at home. She’s been learning about the food preparation course she’ll need to take. And she’s worrying about the extra sink her business will need.

Will she actually be able to make it happen? She’s not sure yet. But she does know that she’s very much enjoying learning about how to take the first steps.

For now, as today’s class wraps up, El-Sayed has a homework assignment for them.

In support of their marketing plans, she’d like them to go out and do a “mystery shop” at a business that might be a competitor. She also encourages them to talk with would-be customers and ask them lots of questions.

These steps, she says, are important for declaring to themselves that they’re really doing this. They’re taking their business concepts seriously.

“Why not try to put it out there?”

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If you were to check out the text logs on many Canadians’ phones from the afternoon of Jan. 30, there would be a lot of weepy-face emojis. You’d see notes like, “Oh nooo!” and “I can’t believe it!” and “This is just so very sad,” pinged between friends and family groups.

My most-used gif has long been Moira Rose raising her fist in the air and saying, “Courage!” So that’s the one I forwarded to my loveys that day. Catherine O’Hara’s death was, for many of us, one of those sadness-out-of-a-blue-sky events that collectively knocks a person down when they least expect it.

Was there anything any one of us could say that would make someone else feel less lousy? Not really? But there was at least a sensation that we weren’t alone with our feelings. We were all stunned and unmoored together.

Most of us didn’t know O’Hara outside of the characters she played on our screens. (If you did meet her or see her live on a stage, I’m sure we’d all love to hear about it.) So we’re all sharing our collective mourning from afar.

However, when news of a death - or the possibility of impending death - shows up, the share-urge is real and important. The crying, yelling, head-shaking or resisting we do can’t happen effectively without our communities. We need our fellow hive members.

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Over the last few months, far too many Ottawans have had practice reaching out to each other about extinction-level events in their lives. Not news about loss of life - although my sincere condolences if you have indeed experienced that kind of loss - but about the loss of jobs, departmental teams and potentially careers.

At the moment, 24,000 public servants have been told their jobs may be cut. Then there are the 59 personal support workers, housingkeeping and kitchen staff at the Perley Health long term care home on Russell Road who have been notified that they’re being laid off. Over at the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum, dozens of positions are being axed. And more.

At Algonquin College, 30 programs are being put forward for closure to the board of governors at their Feb. 23 meeting. Last year they voted to shutter 37 other programs. These cuts don’t just come with job losses at the college, they affect employment sectors who hire grads, would-be students, graduates and the wider community’s ecosystem.

[Full disclosure: the program I co-coordinate at the college, journalism, is also on the recommended shut-down list. You can read about our situation in the Ottawa Citizen on Jan. 30.]

Whether you’re a worker in one of these affected areas or you’re a friend, family member or colleague of an affected human, being included in a distress-text thread means you’ve got a ring-side seat to some big emotions. For many of us, the sensations of disbelief, sadness and anger can be overwhelming at times.

My colleague at the college, Colin Mills, knows these sensations all too well. In fact, when Mills received the email on Jan. 22 informing him that the Music Industry Arts program was up for suspension, “it was the heartbreak of my life,” he says.

As the program’s coordinator and founder, Mills has given himself over to its success for almost 20 years. “I love everything I do,” he says. “I love the stupid, boring admin work. I love interacting with the registrar’s office and the admin people that I talk to on a daily basis. Other faculty, I love. There’s not one part of my job I don’t like. I thought I would be carried out of here in a box.”

What’s helping him along just now is the incredibly supportive response the program has received from the wider Ottawa community. The Ottawa Music Industry Coalition has published an open letter to the Board of Governors setting out the program’s economic and cultural imperative to the region. Community members are meeting, gathering research and data and speaking about the program’s essential value. Current students have started a petition that had 2,295 signatures at last count.

“I really think if that wasn’t happening, I would have probably shut down,” he says. “But it’s really sort of given me some hope, and it sort of kept me alive. Even if it’s not successful, I know that those people are there and that they’ve done everything that they can, and the support was there.”

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For anyone else facing a loss just now, at the college or around town, Mills suggests that people reach out to the folks around them. The instinct to turtle may be real. But not one of us is alone. “You don’t know that that community is there until you need them,” he says.

In my case, I experienced this lousy lesson early, alas. My very first workplace extinction event happened in 1994 when I was a 19-year-old camp counsellor working out a sleepaway camp in Dunrobin. Enrollment was down for the last few weeks of the summer, so management announced they were wrapping up the show early.

My co-workers and I yelled at the sky together. We cried, we argued our case to our bosses (unsuccessfully) and we dreamed up new camps we’d someday run together. Our youthful hearts imagined that no one could possibly feel the deep, profound sorrow that we all felt. How could the powers-that-be have made such a cruel, community-destroying call?

Then we all went on a road trip to Wonderland. We were young adults, after all - death of any kind was new to us all. And within a few weeks we returned to our normal, non-camp post-secondary lives.

But the lesson I took from all of this - and the one I’m taking from where I am just now - isn’t the futility of the effort. Or a cynicism that nothing can change. But that feeling miserable, mad, numb and then hopeful with other humans in the face of an end, has value.

It turns out that 1994 was, coincidentally, also the year that Catherine O’Hara herself gave us all some excellent advice for trying times. In her eulogy for her friend John Candy at his memorial service she set out what he’d meant to each of them. “Privately we have our own memories, and together we have so much else,” she said.

❤️

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When Brahm Lewandowski, museum administrator with the City of Ottawa, was with his team at the Nepean Museum a few weeks back, the space was filled with the sound of a visiting tween clacking away on an old-school typewriter in the Maker Studio. The enthusiastic session lasted more than an hour.

For modern ears who’ve grown up used to quiet computer keyboards, the sound of sustained, manual typing was a new experience. “It was a bit of a racket,” Lewandowski says with a laugh. “But at the same time, it was heartwarming to see people using it in that way and getting exposed to these technologies that they can’t easily do on a daily basis.”

Which is, of course, a key mission of any local history museum anywhere. These spaces invite us to spend time with our communities’ past. Not so we can think, “ah, things were better back then.” But to pause for a bit and reflect on the journey our neighbours have travelled. And, hopefully, to take note of history’s messy, flawed, innovative paths.

Which is why visiting a local museum - any museum - can be a hopeful activity.

They invite us to slow down and take in displays and artifacts, but they also prompt us to look up and around our present-day communities with fresh eyes. Increasingly, they also offer us opportunities to mix it up with neighbours. Or, if solo time is your thing, to enjoy a reflective or educational out-of-home experience.

There’s inspiration to be drawn from the Nepean Museum’s story and the team who run it. After all, when you’re literally housed in history, ideas for how to keep your space supporting the community can be as clear as a committed typist.

Here’s how they do it:

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1. The building is once again a place to mix it up

Once upon a time, what’s now the Nepean Museum was once the Nepean Township public library. In this role, the building was a spot where folks gathered, learned and lingered.

This old mission is increasingly a present-day objective too.

The building sits beside Doug Frobel Park on Rowley Avenue in City View. (Historical note: Frobel was a Nepean-born Major League Baseball player.) Because of this location, kids have always stopped into the museum to use the washroom. But staff spotted that their visits would end there: the exhibitions didn’t call to them.

Here, the museum team spotted an opportunity. Post-pandemic the exhibit at the front of the museum needed a refresh. Why not create an active space up front that would encourage community members to hang out and linger? So they created a Maker’s Studio in that zone. So instead of a glass cased filled with artifacts, there are now tables and chairs, books, resources and craft supplies.

“We’ve given more of an opportunity for kids to come in and feel welcome and engaged with the space,” Lewandowski says. Kids and their families too. “We wanted to create more of a space for people to come and sit down and spend time together.”

The museum also hosts events, such as the “You Can’t Do that at the Museum” one on Feb. 7. (Historical note: This event series is based on the CJOH-TV kids series shot on at the studio on Merivale Road. Yes, it often does feature slime.) Outside of the event time, visitors are also welcome to hang.

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2. They ensure it’s easy to enjoy the museum

City View, Lewandowski explains, got its name because of the area’s elevation: you were once able to look out across the Experimental Farm and see the city.

Today, as the museum is located near busy Merivale Road and Meadowlands Drive, the view is a denser, more human-packed one. What it has lost in scenic views, however, it has gained in location. It’s near retail and services, Algonquin College, Ben Franklin Place, office buildings and several residential areas.

“We know that there are families who go and do their weekend shopping, and they stop in at the museum for something for the kids to do quickly, while they’re out and about,” says Lewandowski.

Two other facts that support visitors: the museum is open year-round and it has a pay-what-you-can fee structure.

“We do tend to see more people for whom affordability is important,” says Lewandowski. Without cost as a barrier, visitors can pop in for shorter visits. They’re also freer to use it as a community hub.

3. They put it all out there: the museum’s treasures are all on display

The Nepean Museum is the only one of the City of Ottawa’s five museum facilities that has the majority of its artifact collection on site.

While you can’t see inside all of the storage boxes and shelves, on the museum’s far wall is a window that overlooks the collection. This is handy for staff, as they’re able to go back there regularly and draw inspiration for their work from what’s there.

And the community can benefit too. “Once in a while, we will offer tours back there,” says Lewandowski. “And then sometimes you can see the staff working on it through that window. And we try to change out what’s in that window every couple of months as well.”

4. There’s a road show: the Sportsplex has a mini satellite exhibit

An appreciation of local history doesn’t happen in a museum alone.

South of the museum at the Nepean Sportsplex, staff have mounted the Game On! exhibition near the reception desk. (Parents will know this as the zone where we wait for our hockey players and skaters to trudge up the ramp post game or ice time.)

If that’s not enough history for you, on the lower level near the curling area, Sportsplex staff have set up display cases of their own. One of them features City of Nepean merch such as ballcaps, badges and mini flags. (As a summer-time City of Nepean employee in my university days, all of that Nepean green stirs my nostalgic heart the way Pogs make other people smile. ;)

5. Nostalgia - and recent history - are being embraced

Recently, museum staff were going through their supply cupboards when someone found a flip phone. “We were like, well, let’s not throw this out,” says Lewandowski. “We can put it beside a phone that plugged into a wall. Or we can use an even older phone from our collection and really show that evolutionary piece.”

While showcasing the history of Nepean - and thus, greater Ottawa - is indeed part of museum’s mandate, the team has been moving into more recent history too. “Time is moving right? If we always focus on that more distant path, then we worry about losing relevance to some of the other audiences,” Lewandowski says.

This means that items that the parents of young kids might recognize have been making their way into the collection: say, Pogs, video games and action figures. “One of our more popular events is what we call retro Christmas. And so that’s actually focusing our time period is like ’70s, ’80s, ’90s."

“Nostalgia is such an emotional tool. And we really want to tap into that emotional piece to encourage people to socialize while they’re here, encourage them to share their stories.”

6. The older crowd will soon have some fun served up too

While families and kids have been the focus of most events so far, the museum team wants to better support older adults. This spring, they’re rolling out activities for folks to get out and mix it up with others. The events will have a historical theme, but they’ll also be rooted in neighbourhoods or professions.

Because historical experts live among us right now in our communities. If they’re game to come in and share what they know, everyone benefits.

“When you’ve got somebody who’s lived in a neighbourhood for 50 plus years, they can tell us so much more than our staff can,” Lewandowski says. “It’s a great opportunity for people to demonstrate their expertise in something, and then we can learn from them as well. We’ll take what they’ve shared and apply it to our future programs.”

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Almost daily on my morning dog walks this fall I’d cross paths with Off-Leash-Dog Guy. (a.k.a. Reserved-Ear-Bud guy.) His fur pal - a fluffy retriever - roamed lawns, but mostly trotted respectfully alongside him. Neither one of them, however, acknowledged Mabel the yellow Lab or me.

As we’d just moved to the neighbourhood, I couldn’t help but take this personally. In those first first few weeks after our move I’d see every nod or “good morning” from a fellow walker as a validation: “you are welcome here.” But every look-away or non-engagement felt like, “Maybe we don’t belong here.” Despite being an actual grown up who’s moved nine times or so, I’d sometimes drift into a scaredy-cat or new-kid-in-class mode.

Then one gusty day, as I rounded the corner, I spotted dog-guy frantically grabbing up recyclables blowing down the street. He then re-righted our neighbour’s blue bin and started to replace the pop cans and plastic containers. He stood her garbage cans back up too.

I stopped in my tracks. “Wait: this guy is a good egg? He’s…neighbourly.” He then waved at me. I waved back. Our respective walks continued. Ah. So maybe it had always been me - not him. Maybe I’d been emitting chilly stand-off-ish vibes? Or maybe the guy just wanted to enjoy his podcast and his walk.

But what my new neighbour reminded me about that day is that neighbouring is also a verb: we all play a role in making safe, healthy communities happen. Our neighbours don’t need to be our best friends. They don’t even need to be overly friendly. But we need to open the door to them. Because when the wind blows, each one of us - regardless of our mood or temperament - needs to spring into action.

Here at the top of 2026, my first January in our new community, I have neighbours on my mind. Part of this is nostalgia: looking back on the lovely people I’ve lived alongside here in Nepeanville, greater Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, I’m feeling grateful to have known them. Part of it is curiosity: while we’ve met a few of our new neighbours so far, I’m eager to engage with the people who shovel their walkways around us.

But the biggest reason neighbours are on my mind just now is a practical one: connecting with the humans who tuck into homes every night beside, above or below us is simply prudent. When the wider world feels especially fraught and frightening, looking local - like, micro- neighbourhood-level local - is a good idea.

It might be scary out there internationally or economically, but the small talk you exchange with the couple next door? With the woman walking her poodle in doggie snow boots? With the new mom pushing her stroller through the slush? These exchanges can be acts that increase our collective feelings of safety. These tiny relationships improve our mental health. And they remind us of the ties that might be available to us should times get tough.

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Reminder #1: Sometimes the lights go out

For the 14 years before I moved, I’d enjoy watching the seasons change through the habits and hobbies of our immediate neighbours in Craig Henry. As soon as the spring thaw was underway, Peter would be out on the traffic island in front of our semi-detached homes collecting the trash that had settled in over the winter. In the summer, Beryl’s driveway across the street was a party of comings-and-goings as her family would visit from out west. Fall saw Alla next door cut back her gardens.

These folks - and many others - were also the ones we connected with during the 2018 tornado and the 2022 derecho. When the storms had blown over, we all stumbled outside, checked on each other and shared stunned observations. We checked over the exteriors of each others’ homes. With the derecho, we helped each other haul hunks of roof tiles into piles. We compared notes and kept in touch. In both cases, those of us with power helped charge phones and boil water for those who did not.

Today, neighbours in Manordale are coping with frequent power outages due to their area’s aging infrastructure. Resident Brittany Lauzon explained in an Ottawa Citizen story in December that community members have turned to each other for support. “We just have a system in our neighbourhood because we have so many outages,” she said.

“Often, [Lauzon] says, it’s a community-wide effort,” writes reporter Natasha Baldwin. “Her neighbour lets her hook her fridge up to his generator. She turns on her smaller gas-powered generator to keep her fish tanks and other household necessities running. Everyone knows to turn their generators off at night to minimize noise…Any time the power flickers out, Lauzon said, her neighbours start playing a game of broken telephone to figure out why it happened or how long it’ll last.”

These folks in Manordale have developed a system we can all learn from.

Reminder #2: If the worst happens, neighbours really matter

A year ago this month, entire communities in California were destroyed by wildfires. In many cases it was neighbours who were crucial to each other in the lead up, the evacuations and in the aftermath. Ali Rachel Pearl of Making a Neighborhood, lived through it and writes:

“When I think about how to help prepare people for the ever-impending intersections of disaster in our American lives—wildfire, floods, hurricanes, ICE raids, pandemics, the gutting of our social systems—the loudest thought I hear in my own head is Know Your Neighbors. It is the first and most important instruction I could give anyone bracing for whatever circumstance might throw at them.”

This is excellent advice for non-Americans too.

As many Nepeanville residents know all too well from the last few years, wild weather can and does happen here. And for our friends, families and colleagues in communities beyond our areas, they’ve lived the unexpected and the unthinkable too.

This isn’t meant to be doom-and-gloomy, however. Only that it’s helpful to pause to remember the role the humans around us can play should we need a helping hand.

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Reminder #3: Neighbouring doesn’t need to be hard

In fact, it turns out you only need to connect with six of your neighbours to experience a bump in your mood and your sense of connection, according to researchers. If you’re not yet at that number on your floor, block or street, why not join me this year in my efforts to get there?

So far, I’ve met a couple down the street who picked up a pile of moving boxes we’d offered on the community’s Facebook page. And we’ve exchanged names and numbers with the folks immediately beside us. Mabel - who smiles at everyone on our walks - is doing her best to serve as a matchmaker.

Other, actionable ideas we can try: Offering a “good morning” in a shared space like the mailbox zone. Slowing down to wave from the car window as we roll by. (It counts?) Knocking on a neighbour’s door to offer them some of the garden’s bounty. (In my past experiences: So. Much. Zucchini.) We can even nod hello at the transit riders at the bus stop nearby. While they wait there, they’re neighbours too.

In the same spirit of community-building and improvement, the Toronto Star has been running a “One Great Idea” series where they asked Torontonians for ideas about how to improve their city. Writer Bronwen Keyes-Bevan’s suggested that “the city should hold regular ‘Porch Days.’” The idea would be that “neighbours would sit out on their front stoops, lawns, or communal apartment spaces to inspire community interactions.”

This turns out to be a divisive idea, however: an equal amount of folks voted “no” to it as voted “yes.”

Could this be because while some folks are happy to help, they don’t crave the direct interaction of a porch-like visit? Or, say, unnecessary interactions on a morning dog walk? If so, I get it. I’m good now. A neighbourhood is a roomy space. There’s plenty of room for each one of us to interact in our own way.

If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

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By late summer of this year, the recipe app on my phone had become far more delicious than any of my many news ones. “We think you’ll love us, Julie,” said the queue of sheet pan recipes. “Read us. We’ll soothe you.” The crossword and the Spelling Bee tucked inside other apps were just as loud. “Play me,” they’d coo.

When I did tap on a news brand, reluctantly, I’d scroll quickly past the top headlines. Sometimes I’d keep one eye shut until I landed (safely) in local news. Or, better, a first-person story. One human’s zoomed-in experience in a world gone mad? Yes, please. Otherwise I’d check out a nice book review.

Normally, as a journalism professor, this would be a problem. But as I’m on sabbatical from Algonquin College for the academic year, I’m not participating in post-news-quiz discussions with smart new reporters and I’m not working with the Algonquin Times news team every day on stories.

Sure, my habits had drifted away from the normal news-consumption routine I’d followed up to that point: Grind my coffee beans, read some headlines. Wait to plunge the coffee press, read some headlines. Talk with my partner about the headlines over the coffee. Forward a story to a friend or colleague: “to discuss.” Listen to news in the car or walk to work with a news podcast. Pop into news sites a few times a day. Consume long-form stuff at night. And repeat.

But the events of 2025, as we’ve all experienced, have featured some next-level bad news on the provincial, national, southern and global fronts. Norms, we kept hearing, were changing all over the world. It wasn’t business as usual. At the start of the year I couldn’t read enough about it. By summer’s end, I only wanted to look away.

Which was, weirdly, also 2025’s gift to me: although the year’s news made me an anxiety monster - growing my recipe-box folders and bettering my word-game scores - it also set me on the path to build some new, healthier habits.

I don’t think I was alone.

“In its 2025 digital news report, the folks at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that news avoidance - among people who are generally big news consumers - has increased again,” I wrote in my very first Nepeanville post in late September. (Note: The report was based on 2024 numbers. We’ll need to wait until spring for the 2025 results. I’m going to make the leap that the downward trend may continue.) “When it comes to protecting your head, heart and nerves, looking away can sometimes feel like the only sane call.”

In my case, my call to sanity was starting this newsletter.

This is what I wrote when I introduced my loose plan:

“My proposed solution: let’s look local to feel hopeful.

Because if we let them, the neighbourhoods where we live, work and hang out can offer us essential “news” that informs us too. It’s a smaller, older-school kind of news. But it can also be a crucial provider of hope.

I live here in *Nepeanville, so I’m going to train my eyes on the people and groups who are doing things and trying things, big and small, here in our west-end Ottawa neighbourhoods.

But what I’m seeing here can likely be spotted in your own “Nepeanville,” wherever you are in the world.

These efforts don’t have to be big. And they definitely don’t need to be perfect. Most problems are complicated and erasing them is tough.

But solution-seeking is inherently deeply hopeful. And the results, I hope, will help us look at the wider world from a sturdier, cheer-powered place.”

Three months later, I’m happy to report the whole project has been like a hot cup of Earl Grey in a maker-made mug: warming, caffeinating and inspiring. In sharing locally derived hope stories, I’m in better shape to spend time with the tougher, broader stuff.

It’s also, frankly, super fun. Talking with the optimistic, action-focused and solution-seeking community members I’ve met so far has been a pleasure. Receiving feedback and ideas from friends, family and readers as I’ve stumbled along, fills me with gratitude. If anything discourages me now it’s that I’m not a faster reporter and writer: what’s quickly become clear is that there is no shortage of would-be Nepeanville stories out there.

So that’s my “thank you” to 2025.

Now, let’s talk about 2026. I also have two resolutions for 2026 that I hope will support our Nepeanville community. They both are meant to both fortify us as news consumers while the acknowledging solution-seeking power of our home regions. They’ll even be fun.

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On a practical note, going forward I’m going to try out a biweekly publishing rhythm in an effort to produce richer reporting and research.

Resolution #1: Hold to hopescrolling

I read about this term in the Saturday Evening Post and am going to give it a go. The author had her students share hopeful stories all term and the results were extremely cheering. Thus, I’m going to try it too. Here’s how:

-Hopescrolling on Substack: the writers I follow are solutions-forward, thoughtful, fun and informed. I’m going to restack, cite and share them more.

-Read at least one longer, contextual piece a day. “You can do anything, but you can do everything,” says the little plaque beside my kettle. I’ll apply this to news consumption too. I subscribe to several legacy media news outlets, but also to smaller and independent media outlets. (If you’re looking for ideas, try Low Down to Hull and Back, Canadaland, The Tyee, The Discourse or The Green Line, among others.)

-Keep up with the Solution’s Journalism Story Tracker. Note: It’s a bit light on Canadian content, alas. But there are communities just like ours - and like yours - all over the world facing similar challenges and trying new things.

-Scroll local: Ottawa Lookout, Ottawa Citizen, OBJ, CBC, CTV, Algonquin Times, Capital Current, all. But I’m also going to scroll more inclusively. I have a lot of time for thoughtful, careful “citizen journalists.” The work being done by neighbourhood Facebook administrators, content producers, letter writers and bloggers augments and supports the work being done by journalists trained in verification and reporting methods. And with the legacy industry’s ongoing challenges, collaboration is increasingly a solution to grow.

-Set clear news-consumption times: 15 minutes in the morning, an end-of-day check in. No more all-day news drip for me. And I’ll tuck the recipes in between.

Resolution #2: Keep having living-local adventures

While I know you have to-do lists of your own - thanks for listening to mine ;) - I’m happy to share a task. Join me? Here goes:

-Continue to seek out optimistic, action-y, solution-seeking neighbours

-Talk with more strangers

-Continue to walk, bus and bike new loops around our communities

-Date some trees (I’ve “met” my five and we’ve started hanging out. More on this to come in the weeks ahead.)

-Become a night owl. I don’t need the night mayor to remind me to get out there. I am indeed an early-bedtime softie, but I’m done missing out on our communities’ after-dark stories

-Video! It’s a thing. It’s time. I need to get on it.

-Use municipal facilities beyond the arena spectator stands, libraries and common areas. As in: I need to swim, sweat and try out some fitness classes.

Will I get to them all? Maybe not. And new goals will pop up too. But I’m going to hold to Jane Goodall’s wise words: “Hope isn’t just wishful thinking,” said Jane Goodall. “We’ve got to roll up our sleeves.”

While I take a week off to eat gingerbread and sweep up the pine needles from my fast-balding tree, I thought I’d gift you a few hopeful reads from communities in the region and beyond.

If you’ve already spotted them, apologies: feel free to pass them along and regift to others.

The first is a piece by Arty Sarkisian, a Nunatsiaq News reporter based in Iqaluit.

While Nepeanville looks local to feel hopeful, taking a year-end visit to Kugluktuk, the westernmost community in Nunavut, is well worth your time.

The people you’ll meet in “The world needs more Kuglutuk” will energize you.

While the community is facing challenges, Sarkisian introduces us to solution seekers.

Take Rita Pigaluk, for instance. She teaches Inuinnaqtun, an Inuit language of the Central Arctic, which is critically endangered. She, however, doesn’t believe her language is doomed.

“It’s not gone, you’re speaking it right now,” she tells her students. “You just said a sentence. It’s alive right now.”

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I’ll also recommend you take a field trip to Cornwall, Ont. where earlier this month Rose Durley was celebrated for her 50-year career as a crossing guard.

Durley, 83, has guided generations of kids across Third Street East and Sydney Street, explains CTV reporter Tyler Fleming in his piece from Dec. 3.

One of her granddaughters, now grown, remembers being guided by her years ago.

“I used to come here after school and hang out with my Nana,” she says. “We would go back home and she made me her famous poutine.”

Why has she done what she does for so long? She loves it. And she has no plans to retire.

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Closer to home, pop into the micro-community at the Ottawa courthouse to learn about the therapy dog program run by Canadian Therapy Dogs Support Services.

CTV reporter Leah Larocque explains how a dozen dogs or so use their powers to support folks facing difficult experiences.

Defence Lawyer Kate Irwin knows how powerful a dog’s presence can be.

“The anxiety of having to talk about a period of your life, that was probably some of the worst moments of your life, that can be hard on a good day,” Irwin says.

She says that a dog can help give her client something else to focus on.

Have you come across a news story this month that’s brought you some good cheer?

One that reminds you of Jane Goodall’s wise words to Catrin Einhorn, a New York Times journalist, in September 2024, a year before she died.

“Hope isn’t just wishful thinking,” she said, telling us to imagine a long dark tunnel with a little star at the end representing hope.

“There’s no good sitting at the mouth of the tunnel and wishing that hope would come to us,” she said. “We’ve got to roll up our sleeves. The Bible says, gird your loins. I love that. I’m not quite sure what it means, but let’s gird our loins. And we’ve got to climb over, crawl under, work around the obstacles that lie between us and that star.”

As the year rolls to a close, reading about people doing some of this climbing on behalf of their communities isn’t just hope-inducing: it can prompt us to take action.

So if you have a story recommendation, please feel free to share.

Like a little hope-gift exchange?

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope you can get yourself to some laughing, fun or rest over the coming days. (Ideally all of them?)

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Nicole Priatel knows that the 20 coats tucked into the giant suitcase beside her in the College Square Starbucks have all lived good lives as quilts. They’ve been spread out on beds, washed a hundred times and warmly snuggled by their previous owners.

Today, in their new forms as duster-coats, “they feel like a hug,” says Priatel.

The coats like the ones in this suitcase - with names like “Chaos in the Rainbow Connection” or “Babcia’s Perogies” - are en route to would-be owners at holiday markets here in Ottawa. They’ll join their siblings who’ve been sold at local markets and shops in Montreal and Toronto.

At the heart of this Ottawa-based designer’s business is the same motivation that propels quilters everywhere: to stitch together a patchwork of bits in order to produce something with a purpose. So if Kimonoir, her six-month-old sustainable fashion brand, was a quilt, it might include squares for Priatel’s love of colour, fabrics and stories. There might also be a couple of big ones for her desires to help and make people happy.

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In her other role as a professor in the project management program at Algonquin College Priatel is accustomed to guiding her students through lessons on marketing and business fundamentals. Now, as a new entrepreneur, her experiences offer us several lessons that could be great local and larger-scale problem solvers.

Lesson 1: Hand-made items, created with care, connect us with our ancestors’ lives

Last year when Priatel visited her favourite market just outside of Paris, she met a vendor selling glass eyes bought from an oddities shop that had gone out of business. One of the eyes was almost exactly the same colour as her own.

“That really caused me to stop and think,” she says. “This was a glass eye that used to live in somebody’s head.”

More significantly, she was drawn in by the vendor’s story of the eye’s maker. They would have been a skilled craftsperson who’d go town to town with a cart seeking out war veterans who’d lost eyes. They’d take sketches and make a match for them out of glass.

The bespokeness of this amazing trade was Priatel’s spark. “It just broke my heart, because we don’t do things like this anymore,” she says. “We don’t make baskets. We don’t make quilts like we do. Well, you know that ‘one person’ who makes a quilt, but it’s one person, right? But it’s not that everybody has an amazing trade.”

But perhaps she could start?

Priatel bought the glass eye - for 55 euros - and got to work launching Kimonoir.

Lesson 2: When a “thing” has a purpose and a story, and it can bring comfort, happiness or more

When Priatel’s dad died last fall, she sewed his neckties into a purse to support her mom. “She carries it everywhere because she feels like he’s with her,” Priatel says. This act - creating a helpful, hand-made item that contained both previously loved materials and a story - was also another push to make her business idea a reality.

Stories are also tucked into each one of her quilt-coat creations. Aside from being practical items that wrap about a human’s body, Priatel introduces each coat with a story that threads its personality into its padded stitches.

For instance, this is how we are introduced to the coat named, “Chaos in the Rainbow Connection”:

“She doesn’t walk into a room. She bursts in, like a confetti cannon with opinions. Like a disco ball with a grudge. Like someone who definitely brought the best snack and the wildest story.”

Lesson 3: Helping the earth can be stitched in with our own passions

Priatel jokes that launching her business happened in part because she needed a way to harness her “crippling thrift addiction.” But she scours thrift stores for gems, in great part, because she’s consumed with the idea of saving “the forgotten” from landfills. She wants to help fabrics - particularly quilts - live on and serve new wearers.

In her role teaching at the college she offers lessons in sustainability. Her business aims to support United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #12 to ensure responsible consumption and production.

“We buy things, we use them up, we dispose of them,” she says. Her coats, which use buttons salvaged from her own family’s collection along with market finds, don’t.

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Lesson 4: Local talent is all around us and willing to be employed

While Priatel designs each coat, she employs five Ottawa-based seamstresses - three of them here in Nepeanville - to bring each one to life. They do the work on their own time in their own homes for fair pay.

Contributing to our local economic ecosystem by employing talented women in the community who can sew is a shared win.

Lesson 5: Putting beauty into the world invites people to connect

When Priatel made her first coat and started wearing it around, she knew she was on to something. The attention she got from that first coat was energizing.

A supportive friend who had long been encouraging her to turn her talents into a business would say: “You know, you’re the only person I know who ever gets people to stop them on the street to ask where they got their coat.”

This is what has happened. With each coat she sets free into the world, the stories roll back in. People are getting stopped on the street, while shopping, in restaurants, on cruises and concerts.

Inevitably, the stopper and the coat’s wearer also have a great chat too. “I love the thought that something I’ve made has made someone else feel so good,” she says. “Because I know how good it feels to be stopped and told how cool you look.”

Lesson 6: Pockets are fantastic

If you put large pockets on clothing, people will - gratefully - fill them.

Need to pop to the grocery store but you’ve forgotten your cloth bag? Pockets!

“They’ve got pockets big enough that you can get half a load of groceries in there,” she says with a laugh. She’s personally popped some chicken in one pocket and a head of broccoli in the other.

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