This Monday’s CKCU show

Sat, 10 May 2008 15:27:25 -0400

Monday’s morning’s show (May 12 from 7 to 9 am, CKCU FM 93.1) will have a full slate of fresh interviews....

At around 7:15 we’ll hear about a new youth aviation camp being offered this summer. Flying may be the theme, but team work and personal development are part of the flight plan.

At 7:40 we’re talking long term energy sustainability with NRCan manager Ken Church. On Tuesday he’s giving a presentation on something called Community Energy Planning. He should know - he helped write a step-by-step guide to making it happen.

If you like buying your food locally then make sure to tune in at 8:10 when Heather Hossie from JustFood drops in to update us on their local food buying guide.

And when the little hand is between the 8 and the 9, and the big hand is at 9, Ecology Ottawa will tell us about their latest Greenprint - a simple two page policy paper identifying a concrete step Ottawa can take to build a more sustainable city. This Greenprint calls for a mandatory recycling by-law for business and institutional waste. That’s because as it stands businesses are NOT forced to recycle, and have to pay for it themselves if they want to recycle.

Hope you join us Monday morning, from 7 to 9 am on 93.1 FM, or listen live here.

Last Monday’s CKCU show

Thu, 8 May 2008 21:48:33 -0400

Just a few links related to last Monday’s show (May 5).

We spoke with Jill Sturdy, the National Outreach Co-ordinator with CPAWS, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Together with the outdoors company MEC, they’ve launched a social networking awareness program to advance wilderness protection in Canada. It’s called The Big Wild, and for the launch they paddled and hiked in downtown Ottawa on Monday. We spoke with Jill as she was hiking near the wild grazing plains known as Tunney’s Pasture...

Sarah Radovan explained how the community co-op Sustainable Ottawa works. You pay a small fee to join the co-op and in return you can purchase discounted sustainable products through select retailers. You can also receive help in installing the products and help in becoming more sustainable.

And finally Martin Canning invited us to join him and other volunteers for the annual cleanup of the Rideau River, organized by the Urban Rideau Conservationists. Anyone and everyone is welcomed to help out on Sunday May 11, rain or shine. Bring your boots. Everything else is provided.

Jane’s Walk in Old Ottawa South - updated

Tue, 6 May 2008 09:37:51 -0400

Saturday afternoon I joined a good number of people in Old Ottawa South for one of the weekend’s walking tours, part of the Jane’s Walk event. I’d estimate there were at least 70 of us, which seemed to catch even the organizers off guard.

Our guide Leo Doyle, himself a resident on Sunnyside, delivered a wonderful snapshot of the neighbourhood’s evolution. Turns out Old Ottawa South was one of the city’s first suburbs. With the construction of the Bank Street bridge and the arrival of the streetcar, it became more accessible to the less affluent, so the suburbs moved further out. Imagine that!

The highlight for me was when Leo took us back to 1971 and the widening of Sunnyside. Not only was this a civil engineering project, but inadvertently it resulted in social engineering. Large trees were cut down and sidewalks were narrowed, all in the name of traffic flow, but sadly at the expense of a neighbourhood's soul. Leo added some context by pointing out that 1971 was the same year Toronto cancelled plans for the Spadina expressway, illustrating the start of a reversal in Ontario’s “car first” philosophy. Just not soon enough for Sunnyside. This part of the tour took me to a dark place...a place where our welcome sign would read: “Ottawa: the city where yesterday’s mistakes are made today.”

For inspiration, look up: The Palladium, new car pool lanes on the Queensway, the Champlain Bridge widening, scenic car routes along both sides of the Rideau Canal and along the Ottawa River, tax freezes from 2000-2004, a promised tax freeze for 2007-2010, and King Edward Avenue.

Congratulations to the guides and organizers of Jane’s Walk. Here’s looking to next year’s weekend.

Update: Sabrina Bowman is an organizer of Jane’s Walk. She tells me they had 90 participants for Sunnyside and 680 overall for all the walks. Bravo!

Remembering Charles Caccia

Mon, 5 May 2008 11:07:15 -0400

Sad news over the weekend. The inspirational Charles Caccia passed away following a stroke last week. He was 78.

Long before sustainability and environmentalism were politically profitable, MP Charles Caccia was fighting for a cleaner planet.

I only met Charles about a year ago as I was starting to focus my CKCU work on sustainability. But in that short time he went out of his way to offer me support and assistance, and he was always generous with his time. On a couple of occasions he called me soon after a report of mine went to air, sometime to offer a correction, or to add some of his valuable insight. But he always encouraged me keep working on educating people about sustainability. I’m grateful for having known him, and for the encouragement he gave me.

Jane’s Walk this weekend

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:18:47 -0400

On this past Monday’s Special Blend show we learned about an event this weekend called Jane’s Walk. These are organized educational walking tours held in honour of the late Jane Jacobs, urban planner and activist who said that to understand how cities work, you have to get out and walk.

They were held for the first time last year in Toronto and New York, two cities she once called home. This year the event spreads to 7 other Canadian cities, including Ottawa.

The walks will be led by a variety of people from the community, from a police officer on the beat in Hintonburg, to historians, to homeless advocate Jane Scharf.

Not only is this a good way to get out and learn something about the city, but it could be a great way to connect with other citizens who care about their neighbourhoods.

Swedish modelling

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:11:16 -0400

Fortunately for Ottawans, Earth Day 2008 did offer some ray of hope, but as I reported earlier it wasn’t at City Hall.

Sweden’s ambassador to Canada, Ingrid Iremark, gave a presentation at the Ottawa Library on how her country has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, while still growing its economy.

I had a chance to interview Ambassador Iremark leading up to her presentation, which you can listen to here. The presentation was pretty straight forward and given the diplomatic position she holds, it stayed away from controversy. Basically Sweden doesn’t have oil, so when the oil crisis hit in the 70s they had to find another way to operate. Helping was the fact that Swedes love nature, a trait the Ambassador pointed out on several occasions as something our countries share, or at least our citizens do. The result for them is a priority on sustainability that crosses the political spectrum. Even their right-of-centre leader who admits he doesn’t like taxes says that their carbon tax, which has been around for many years, is a good way to alter people’s consumption behaviour. Of course Sweden’s experience would probably be very different if they made money from oil.

The lesson for me is there is a way for a country to be more sustainable, but that what’s needed is a major breakdown people feel in their everyday life. Otherwise most people won’t buy in.

Update: OK, so my last statement still shows a residual pessimism left over from Earth Day at City Hall. Maybe a breakdown isn’t needed. Maybe people who have it “good” now can be convinced that we can do better.....actually, in Ottawa I think a breakdown is needed, so that war can also be declared on un-sustainability.

Earth Day at City Hall

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:10:52 -0400

A week has passed, but the pain is still fresh from attending the Earth Day “celebration” at Ottawa City Hall. The invitation said:

Mayor Larry O’Brien and Councillor Peter Hume will celebrate Earth Day by showing how the City, residents and businesses are doing their part in preserving our environment through waste diversion and recycling. It will also include a special presentation by Rod Bryden, Plasco Inc., to the Mayor for an ongoing community environmental/beautification project.

Rob Bryden was a no-show. The special presentation was handled by former MPP Richard Patten (now a Plasco PR man) and consisted of a $5,000 cheque to beautify a park. Good intentions for sure, but at a time when sustainability is the issue it is, is that the best the city can come up with?

I can understand they wanted to highlight a new technology (Plasco’s trash to energy plant), which could put Ottawa on the forefront of waste energy. But it’s sad that the City of Ottawa doesn’t have anything better to show-off than a plan developed and initiated by a private company, and which was first announced in February 2006. Not surprising perhaps given that this is the same city which ranks way behind other Ontario municipalities in waste diversion, took almost a decade to approve a green box organics program, took several votes to approve a basic anti-idling by-law, by it’s own calculations is way over it’s target for residential greenhouse gas emissions, and can’t decide on an expansion for its public transit system. But it’s OK folks because we have the Plasco plant...and Earth Hour of course. So the questions had to be asked: Where’s the initiative? Where’s the leadership?

Larry O’Brien said he felt council was doing a good job. In a refreshing move, Councillor Peter Hume was less optimistic. He was rather blunt and said not enough was being done, called some past council decisions (and in-decisions) disgraceful, and vowed that one year from now the city will have something better to say for Earth Day 2009.

He also promised to take a personal responsibility in making it happen (he’s the Chair of Ottawa’s Environment and Planning Committee). He also challenged his colleagues to not only give direction to staff, but to follow through and make sure sustainability initiatives are carried out.

We shall see.

Focussed Steps to Sustainability

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:53:18 -0400

The gang at Ecology Ottawa have started publishing Greenprints - simple two page policy papers to identify concrete steps Ottawa can take to build a more sustainable city. The papers highlight ideas being used in forward looking cities.

This has some definite potential.

There’s certainly a demand for this when it comes to sustainability (and everything of course comes down to sustainability, right?). I think many would agree that Ottawa is too easily paralysed by the “fear” of the unknown. Cases in point:
many years of dithering on a green box organic waste program;
dithering on buying hybrid transit buses while we studied, and re-studied, compressed natural gas at the suggestion of, wait for it, the CNG lobby;
initial rejection of an anti-idling bylaw on the grounds that it would be too hard to enforce, and that government shouldn’t tell people how to behave in their cars.

I could go on, but it would be too depressing for such a sunny day.

It’s not that we don’t trust our staff and politicians - they don’t trust us. They’re operating in an atmosphere where risk is rarely rewarded, but failure is almost always punishable.

Donna Dubreuil was on today’s show to promote the Eco-Stewardship fair this weekend. She said it best: “...governments don’t lead, they follow.”

Ecology Ottawa’s first Greenprint tackles parking policies for retail stores. In case you weren’t aware Ottawa has a bylaw which obligates retail stores in certain zones to include parking spaces. In the old Ottawa and Vanier areas a store could buy their way out of it using the infamous “cash-in-lieu-of” parking scheme. Imagine opening a bicycle store promoting sustainable living, and you’re legally obligated to include parking spaces.

The Greenprint doesn’t address minimum parking spaces, but instead calls for a maximum. It mentions Portland, Oregon, which has a maximum on parking spaces, and which takes into account the store’s proximity to transit.

Ottawa city staff have included a maximum parking space bylaw in the draft Comprehensive Zoning By-law Project which brings together the zoning bylaws of our 11 former municipalities. For comparison, here is Portland’s (pdf) by-laws for minimum and maximum parking.

I’ve had a preliminary look and I have to tell you, I have a new found admiration for city staff who have to write these things! But a couple of things stand out:
Portland imposes a maximum at all times of 125% of the minimum; Ottawa’s proposed update does not;
Portland imposes a stricter maximum when transit bus stops are less than 400 meters away, and/or rapid transit is less than 800 meters away; Ottawa’s only takes into account rapid transit that is less than 600 metres away - no mention of the proximity of bus stops. Seems to me the issue shouldn’t just be rapidity, but also frequency.

It’s worth some serious consideration. I’m looking forward to more Greenprints.

Ripples...

Tue, 1 Apr 2008 15:29:41 -0400

I’m not sure who first called it the ripple effect..
The photo is of Margaret and her son at their home near Fort Portal in south western Uganda. A friend of mine heard I was planning a trip to east Africa back in 2006 and asked if I could “swing by” and deliver some toys to her friend Margaret. I did, and gladly discovered this fascinating young woman running, among other things, a craft making co-op. I wrote about the visit on this site.

Then a filmmaker living in New York City named Brenda stumbled upon my site in preparation for her own trip to Uganda. News of Margaret’s co-op caught her eye. She asked for more information, and now has produced a wonderful short film on the community’s project, prominently featuring Margaret of course.

This also opened my eyes to Current TV, a peer-to-peer news and information site. A search of Ottawa film makers doesn’t yield much new stuff, unless you like hockey fights.

The Other Lansdowne Issue

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:26:40 -0400

Building upon my post yesterday about the new conditional CFL team...

There’s also the big issue of parking. The new owners would want it (maybe even demand it), and that will be a huge problem for those who want a better use of the area. That would include me, even though I was a regular Renegades tailgater, having even roasted an entire chicken on a beer can for a Thanksgiving Day game.

There are now 2,200 spots at Lansdowne. That’s not that many for a 25,000+ outdoor stadium, so really it’s premium parking for very few (chicken roasters that is).

The parking is more relevant for 67s games and trade shows. But should people reasonably expect to be able to drive right up to the stadium and park? It doesn’t happen at most downtown stadiums, so unless they put it underground, I can’t see the owners convincing everyone to keep parking at Lansdowne. So that means a significant cut in their revenue streams.

If however a deal is structured to take that loss into account, surely the new owners could adjust? Especially since the city would (ideally) be investing in making everything around Frank Clair Stadium more attractive and thereby drawing more people to the area for concerts and shows at Frank Clair/Civic Centre, which if they’re leasing and running, means more money for them (see previous post).

As for people’s complaint about parking, I think we managed pretty well with the FIFA tournament when no stadium parking was available. OC buses from transit stations could work, but please, please, don’t try to force a special bus down Bank Street or Sunnyside. They need to make better use of the Queen Elizabeth Parkway, like they did for Grey Cup 2004.

Carleton University isn’t very far away and its parking lots are empty most summer days, weekends, and evenings year round. With the proper use of Queen Elizabeth Parkway you can shuttle people on OC buses from Carleton to Frank Clair. There are probably other, maybe even better ways to mitigate the parking issues. But will people keep an open mind?

Welcome Back CFL?

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:15:05 -0400

Here we go again. The CFL is poised to return to Ottawa. And me, the broken hearted sucker, will probably be among the other south-siders, willing to give our hearts away yet again, with the hope that this time, things will be different.

Fortunately, this ownership group has not only deep pockets, it also has local roots. Plus they have Jeff Hunt running things, a man who seems to understand that beaded necklaces and breasts are not things with which you build a fan base (in Ottawa that is).

But there’s always a catch. This time it’s Frank Clair Stadium. With the south side stands facing demolition, it’s hard to see how the city can afford to fix up its own stadium. Let’s assume it can’t, so then what? It could sell it (along with the Civic Centre) to Hunt and company, and walk away. But that would be a shame to lose a stake in something so valuable.

So how about a lease, for something like 25 years. Maybe we can sell the stadium but only lease the land. We would keep some form of ownership or stake. They invest in fixing up the stadium and pay to maintain it. In return they get to book their own events and shows and milk it for revenue (ie keep the concessions). Under the right conditions, I think it could work.

The key of course would be what controls the city maintains over the stadium’s use. But I think it’s also worth pointing out that the football stadium and hockey arena aren’t being maximized fully now.

A huge issue will be how a lease deal treats community sports. Judging from the Glebe Community Association’s meeting in December, many residents want the stadium and arena to be available for community sports. That of course, is probably not possible. I don’t think people near Scotiabank Place look to it as a place for community sports, ditto for most professional sport stadiums. Nearby are Brewer Park and Carleton University. Can they cover those concerns?

Life in the Safer Bike Lane

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:54:59 -0400

Copenhagen has some and and people there seem to like them. Montreal has started adding some. Cycling activists in New York City are pushing to have some built. They’re called physically separated bike lanes and unless I’m mistaken Ottawa doesn’t have any.

The city is now finalizing the Ottawa Cycling Plan (OCP). In the plan’s Executive Summary, I can’t find any mention of adding separated bike lanes on busy streets, although perhaps it’s not something you’d find in an executive summary. This isn’t something that works for every situation, but I could see something like this on Laurier, going from Sandy Hill, through downtown, to Bronson then connecting to paths on Lebreton Flats. Or on O’Connor for north-south commutes.

We’ve got some good paths in Ottawa, especially along waterways. But they’re not that practical for many. The focus here is not just recreational, it’s also about offering an alternative, and safe mode of transportation.

More on the Ottawa Cycling Plan from the city, and Ottawa’s Citizens for Safe Cycling. There you find that the plan was started in 2003! It should be at Transportation Committee this spring. A bit sad considering we’ve been able to develop a couple of mass-transit plans in that time.

This video from the people at StreetFilms explains physically separated bike lanes in a push to have some built in NYC, but it applies to a lot of cities.

Podcast updates

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:51:16 -0400

Yes, it’s been a little while. Blame it on the snow.
(Update: Actually, we should blame my addiction to Rock Band, quite possibly the greatest video game ever. But on the flip side, I can now nail the lead guitar for Mississippi Queen on medium level)

I’ve posted two new podcasts from the CKCU show. The first is an interview with the President of Heritage Ottawa, David Flemming. He argues we have the rules we need, but too often it seems minor variances are applied for, and issued. Flemming highlights how owners will sometimes try to justify tearing down a building because it isn’t salvageable, but often the building’s deplorable condition is a result of their own negligence.

Also, a lot of developers in the city core argue that in order to make a profit, they need to build higher than allowed, usually at least 8 stories high. Is this true? I can’t answer that yet, but Flemming says some smaller developers do build within the restrictions (4 to 5 stories high), and they appear to be doing fine.

The other podcast is a talk about carbon taxes with Prof. Stephan Schott, who teaches about the environment and the economy at Carleton University. Could Ontario do what BC is doing? If you ask our premier, the answer is no, because Ontario is pursuing a different strategy. Huhh? I respectively suggest that we deserve a better answer than that.

Otesha: Sustainability in Action

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:18:29 -0500

I’ve wanted for some time now to bring an Otesha organizer on the show. It finally came together a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn’t disappointed (here’s the interview). The Ottawa based organization offers a means to easily experience a sustainable lifestyle for a couple of months. They don’t come to you, and you don’t exactly go to them. Rather, you all travel together, on a bike tour, along some of the most scenic routes in Canada.

Want to challenge your perception of what you want with what you actually need? Try packing everything you want on a bike, then hauling it 40 kms a day, for a couple of months. Then you’ll discover what you really need. All the while you’re shown how to live a more sustainable life. And as a bonus you and the team of cyclists deliver educational plays to groups along the way.

The timing of the interview is great, as Otesha has just announced their 2008 bike tour schedule.