A recent fire in Ottawa left the apartment building in question looking not unlike a dollhouse, its backside exposed for all to see.  Perhaps this was the initial attraction: here one’s imagination could run free, dreaming of lives lived in the various rooms that now lay exposed to the elements and to the peering eyes of all passers-by.  Certainly my eyes were drawn to the sight, along with the camera at my side.  I fired off a series of images and later combined these to form the panoramic view below.

 

After the fire..

After the fire - detail

The images comprising this detail reveal much: the kitchen cupboard, its door swung open to expose the storage bins neatly stacked on top of one another; a vibrant bathroom with the electric shaver still resting in the wall socket; the entrance to an office, with its frame of family photos – memorabilia from a vacation, it would seem – still hanging, undamaged on the wall. Lives lived, now dismantled.

The images continue to capture my imagination, but they haunt me as well.  I have seen what I was not invited to see – the private lives of individuals who presumably lost much through no fault of their own.  And I am left to wonder if the resident of the office wished (s)he could climb over the fence that now barricaded the ruin to fetch the family photo…

It is Winterlude in Ottawa, Canada – an annual winter festival aimed at defeating the winter blues by embracing season itself.  (I’d still prefer a vacation away from the snow, myself, but I appreciate the sentiment.)  One of the great attractions is the Rideau Canal, which during the winter months is transformed into a rather long skating rink (some 7.8 kilometers of ice from end to end, to be exact).  Not surprising, the Canal fills with skaters; perhaps somewhat more surprising is the number of blade-less modes of transport that also work their way onto the ice: sleds, wagons, strollers, boots, and the odd motor vehicle or two.  The composite image below was created from a series of images taken, belly against the ice, over a period of a few minutes.  It only begins to speak to just how diverse a population Ottawa’s Canal-trekkers really are.

Trans navigating the Rideau Canal ice rink...

A composite of early morning skaters en route along the Rideau Canal, in celebration of the  start of Winterlude in Ottawa.