We seem to be in the clear so far, but there are always forces conspiring to sabotage the too-short summer in the nation’s capital.
Just last week, for example, we were still being tormented with the prospect of an election campaign, the sticky late July march to the polls compounded by weeks of pissy partisan ads and stuffy summer all-candidates’ meetings.
Thankfully, the politicos’ career survival instincts kicked in, and most of them have now fled the city to afflict — I must mean “consult” — their constituents back home. Here, the locals bid them a cheerful farewell, if not good riddance.
City hall is also taking it easy this summer, with city council planning to meet for the last time on July 8 and then spare us the interminable debates on development charges and other municipal minutiae until September, though the influence-peddling trial of Mayor Larry O’Brien is back in court Friday.
I spotted His Worship one evening just after his trial was adjourned, enjoying live music and drinks with friends on the patio of the Black Bear pub, amiably glad-handing and posing for pictures as required by his public. The ever-cheerful accused, on leave from the duties of office, is seemingly not about to let a little legal trouble cramp his style this summer.
Perhaps we should follow his example. Even as we begin our seasonal rituals of sucking the exhaust fumes of the tour buses that have begun their migration, dodging the multiplying mobs of tourists in the Market, and negotiating the infernal street excavations on Preston, Bank and elsewhere, we can always be thankful (as usual) that we are not Toronto.
T.O.’s typically humid summer is off to a fetid start with a strike by outdoor workers and garbage already starting to pile up. If our brothers and sisters in Universe Central are forced to face this disruption, and the stench and health hazards it will bring, for weeks on end, at least they can do so with a strong drink in hand.
After all, the greatest threat so far, an LCBO strike, and with it the prospect of a long, dry summer, seems to have been neutralized.
In Ottawa we’re only a bridge away from Quebec and the refuge of the SAQ, but transporting liquor across the provincial border is technically against the law. Anti-beverage roadblocks at the border, however, could have caused an uprising. I might have started it.
We remain ever-vigilant, but no obvious summer bummers loom to spoil Ottawa’s cherished non-snowy period this year. Cheers!
