Hotel dining is rarely special in Ottawa, and — depending on your personal opinion and tastes — fails to impress in the great majority of hotels in Canada. The Fairmont Chateau Laurier is taking a big swing with Akira Back, the newest dining option in the historic building.
It’s the latest outlet in the restaurant group headed by its titular chef, Akira Back. Back has previously won a Michelin star (for a restaurant in Seoul, Korea) and his group now has a couple of dozen dining rooms around the world, most under the same name as in Ottawa.
I was invited to a pre-opening dinner last week and our table of four enjoyed it immensely. Here are a few of the dishes we especially enjoyed, along with Japanese beer and sake (and rather a bit of wine).
Our meal began with tuna and eringi mushroom “pizzas.” These were wafer thin but somehow maintained their shape when picked up. Each pizza had umami aioli, micro shiso and white truffle oil. They were fresh and delicate, and unlike anything I’ve eaten before. (Thanks to the hotel for this photograph.)
Possibly the most delicious tartar I’ve ever tasted. Waygu beef so brimming with fat that it almost melts in your mouth, with dashi aioli and herb oil, and light-as-air rice crisps. (Photo Peter Simpson)
A cucumber salad was just the thing to lighten the palate about an hour in to the meal. Paper-thin swirls with roasted sesame seeds and amazu. Another dish unlike anything in my experience for technique and delicacy. (Photo Peter Simpson)
Salmon tataki with mustard su-miso. Another dish that did not last long on our table of four. (Photo Peter Simpson)
The dinner stepped between beef and seafood, such as seared sea bass with soy beurre blanc that was both crispy and flaky. (Photo Peter Simpson)
Wagyu picanha with kizami wasabi butter. The perfection of the cook on this beef was another testament to the collective skills in Back’s kitchen. (Photo Peter Simpson)
Dessert courses began with an AB cigar, with miso caramel ice cream and cocoa nibs. The attention to detail throughout the evening was extraordinary. (Photo Peter Simpson
The evening concluded with apple haruma, with cinamon cream cheese, vanilla gelato and caramelized apple. Our table of four left not a crumb behind. (Photo Peter Simpson)
I found a glorious work of art the other day, and it left me breathless, as great art should. It left me feeling somehow cleansed. I felt its physical power, its deeply satisfying blend of technologies both ancient and cutting edge. It is called, simply, Data Bells, and it will be a feature installation at Ottawa Nuit Blanche 2026 in September.
Data Bells was created by Rich Loen and his team at his eccentrically brilliant garage studio, Salon des bananes, on Carling Avenue. Data Bells uses 99 individual bells, each controlled by its own computer motherboard and custom programming. This is a lot of connections to keep operational. (I can’t resist saying it: He’s got 99 bells, but a glitch ain’t one.)
Data Bells in Salon des bananes on Carling Avenue. The magnificent installation will return for Nuit Blanche Ottawa in September. (Photo Peter Simpson)
The bells are arranged on curved tables around the room. Floor-to-ceiling black gauze screens all from the busy traffic just outside. The room is in twilight. This all helps to create an intimacy with the installation.
Each bell is unique — some are antique, some decorative, some digital — and each strikes on its own schedule to signify, well, something. Each has a small screen in front of it to signify what it measures. A few examples . . .
An antique brass bell, like might be seen on a hotel front desk, is struck by a silicone hand affixed above it, and its screen says, “New star is born.” It rings 411 times per day and each ring represents 1,000,000 new stars.
A small glass bell rings 15 times per minute, each ring representing 10,000 “female orgasms.”
Other bells measure litres of “blood cleaned by kidneys” (1.2 rings per minute), or “videos viewed on TikTok (seven rings per minute, 100,000 views per ring). There are 99 such measures — newspapers circulated, escalator trips taken, Starbucks coffees sold, and many other imaginative and at times whimsical things. A large silver bell measures “Farts in this room” when filled by 100 people. Each ring is one fart. It rings 2,500 times per day. And you thought the car exhaust outside was the problem. (Another bell measures that car exhaust, see photo below.)
Each of 99 bells in the installation is different, with some made of glass, ceramic, steel or brass and others entirely digital. (Photo by Peter Simpson)
This may all sound cacophonous, like walking into a Pink Floyd album, but it is not. Loen programmed the system to randomly assign some rings to create a backing beat, which forms a solid base that makes the unsynchronized ringing of the other bells strangely melodic. It’s as if the vast, randomness of our planet and universe is all in harmony — which, of course, it is, in the sense that we could not otherwise survive on Earth.
What took all of this to another level was when Loen explained that every time they reset the installation the backing beat is randomly different, and the bell assignments are randomly redistributed, so that each of 99 bells measures a different one of 99 topics each time the system is reset. With infinite combinations, every reset is in effect a wholly new combination of rings and notes and, as Loen put it, “The song we’re hearing now has never been heard before and will never be heard again.”
If you see and hear Data Bells it will be different from when I experienced it, and it will be different from what every other person who sees it at another time will see and hear. What all viewers can share is the magnificence of the thing, the feeling of being surrounded and embraced by the thing. It is thoughtful, uplifting and highly entertaining. Fine art can be, and occasionally is, all of those things.
It’s perhaps too late to see Data Bells at Loen’s studio, which is usually open to the public only by appointment, but the relocated installation will be open to all on Sept. 26, when Nuit Blanche returns to take over the ByWard Market and area for one overnight festival of innovative art.
The Canadian Museum of History’s exhibition on popular music from decades ago is nearing its end — or to put it another way, this blast from the past won’t last.
The exhibition, Retro — Popular Music in Canada from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, closes Jan. 18. I visited with a friend recently and felt “the rush of nostalgia” promised by exhibition notes. I saw the identical model of a stereo that I blared in my teenage bedroom, instruments played by (and made for) some of Canada’s most internationally known musicians, and a lot of other sights, sounds, photographs, gear, merch and more.
Here are a few of my favourite things from the show . . .
The sentimental stereo: There’s plenty of cool technology here, from shoulder-straining boom boxes to the Electrohome Circa 711 “Stereo Sound System,” with its “futuristic design (that) echoed public interest in space exploration during the 1960s and ’70s.”
A view of the Retro exhibition, with the Electrohome stereo and speakers seen at right. Photo courtesy Canadian Museum of History.
You’ve probably seen this model of stereo in a vintage shop, with its brushed aluminum base and graceful neck leading up to a round platform for the turntable, all of it covered by a smoked black dome of plexiglass. Two little round speakers sit next to this mother ship of sound. The system was designed by Gordon Duern and Keith McQuarrie, according to the website of the Royal Ontario Museum, which has the same system in its personal collection.
Oh, what memories I have of blaring Dance the Night Away (from Van Halen II) and Blitzkrieg Bop (from Ramones) in my bedroom at our cottage. “Pete,” my dad would suggest, “you could probably turn that down a bit.” I would just roll my eyes, because I was 15 and smarter than everyone.
The fantastic/absurd guitar: When I saw Geddy Lee’s doubleneck electric guitar/bass I couldn’t decide if it was best left in the 1970s, when this Rickenbacker 4080 was made. It does seem a bit Spinal Tap. Regardless, the young Geddy was infatuated with Rickenbackers but “could only dream of one day owning one,” he says in his own compendium, Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of Bass.
Geddy Lee’s doubleneck electric guitar/bass, at right, and Alex Lifeson’s doubleneck Gibson guitar. The display includes Rush drummer Neil Peart’s drumhead from the 1970s. (Gifts of the artists, Rush Collection. Photos Canadian Museum of History, Rush Collection.)
Not long after Rush signed its first record deal in 1974 he custom ordered his first mammoth axe. This black model (perhaps the same black example among several doublenecks featured in his book) was played on much of Rush’s music in the late 1970s, including the fan-favourite Xanadu. Neatly, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson’s doubleneck Gibson guitar, also played on Xanadu, hangs next to Lee’s Rickenbacker. That’s a lot of necks.
Not that Habs’ jersey: Many costumes are featured in the exhibition, from Anne Murray’s hand-beaded jogging suit, to Mitsou’s black leather “Bye by mon cowboy” outfit, to Céline Dion’s Eurovision dress (with a waist thinner than your neck), to the borrowed wedding dress that k.d. lang wore to accept her first Juno award in 1985.
Robert Charlebois’s Montreal Canadiens jersey, designed by Gilles Gagné. (Loan, photo courtesy of Robert Charlebois.)
Speaking of the Junos, at one point while strolling through the displays I thought I saw in the distance that glittery little Montreal Canadiens’ get-up that Shania Twain wore while hosting the Juno Awards in Ottawa in 2003. (If you know the get-up I’m talking about, you know the get-up I’m talking about. Ahem.) I made a beeline to the case in which this particular Habs’ jersey was held and there I discovered, to my considerable dismay, that it was not Twain’s get-up. It was another sequinned Habs’ jersey that had been worn by singer Robert Charlebois in the 1960s.
Once I recovered from my shock, I could admire Charlebois’s jersey as another brilliant homage to his home team.
I particularly enjoyed writing about Piero Vistali’s photograph of a snowball fight near his childhood home in northern Italy. Everything about it, from the action to the facial expressions, reminds me of winter days from my own childhood in eastern Canada. To get through an entire winter day without throwing — or getting hit by — a snowball would be rare. Click here to read the article in the National Gallery of Canada’s magazine . . .
My list of favourite books read in 2025 is too late for Christmas giving, but just in time for Christmas returning.
You may, for whatever reasons, have books to take back to the bookstore to exchange, and every book on this list is worth exchanging for.
The list has 11 works of fiction and four of non-fiction, a proportion that fairly mirrors what my reading was in the past year. They were not necessarily published in 2025 but were encountered by me in 2025, and I recommend all of them, even the one that you will be unlikely to find anywhere but a second-hand bookstore.
In no particular order, here are my recommendations . . .
Fiction
What We Can Know - by Ian McEwan: This ranks among McEwan’s best. He spans two worlds from two centuries and fills both with intrigue. It also posits that young people 100 years from now will be very, very upset that we didn’t stop corporate growth and climate change. No surprise there.
Pearly Everlasting - by Tammy Armstrong: I’m baffled as to why this gem didn’t get more attention, especially in the Maritimes. The titular girl grows up on logging camps in the deep forests of New Brunswick early in the 20th century. I wouldn’t call it magic realism, but it is a fantastic and gothic tale.
Convenience Store Woman - by Sayaka Murata: Keiko is 36 and works at a convenience store. Family and friends ask why she’s in a “dead-end” job and unmarried. What happens next says a lot about how we present ourselves to the world, and the rigidity of the world’s expectations.
The Guest - by Emma Cline: Twenty-something Alex gets kicked out of her much older and richer boyfriend’s home and begins a five-day journey through the wealthy enclave of his neighbours. It’s uncomfortable to follow the young woman’s spiral, but it’s also irresistible.
Bury the Lead, or Widows and Orphans - by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti: Canadian crime fiction. I mention both books by these well-known journalists because both books are entertaining and cosy mysteries. Like so many mystery settings, a small-town near Toronto sees murders with alarming frequency.
Back Channel - by Ron Corbett: More Canadian crime fiction, from another well-known journalist and writer. The fifth book in the series about Frank Yakabuski, a hardened cop in a northern Ontario city, is well-plotted, and makes brilliantly descriptive use of the woods and rivers as practically their own character. Corbett has spent a lot of time paddling through the landscape, and it shows.
Gabriel’s Moon - by William Boyd: Another of England’s great contemporary novelists launched a new trilogy with this book. A rather guileless travel writer gets embroiled in Cold War-era espionage. The second book in the series, The Predicament, has been recently published and I look forward to reading it soon.
The Impossible Thing - by Belinda Bauer: I see Bauer as a bridge between toothsome mysteries and Booker Prize-worthy literature. Her latest spans a century and follows the curse-like misfortunes that befall those involved with a rare and beautiful bird’s egg.
Bunny - by Mona Awad: Weird. There’s no other word to start with. I don’t want to say too much, so suffice to say that going to college goes very wrong for a group of young women. This is where magic realism is definitely an appropriate descriptor. A sequel was published in 2025 and is working its way to the top of my to-read pile.
The Last Murder at the End of the World - by Stuart Turton: What starts as a murder mystery becomes science fiction becomes meditation on freedom and corporate tech control. Brilliant.
The Queen of Dirt Island - by Donal Ryan: I read four books by Ryan this year, thanks to a recommendation from my friend Mike. I’ll recommend his most recent as a sterling example of Ryan’s Irish gothic. Tough and often tragically unlucky people living hardscrabble lives. Sometimes they win, sometimes they survive, sometimes they do not.
Non-fiction
The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook - by Hampton Sides: Cook sailed around the world three times, and this tale of the third is both exhilarating in its powers of story-telling and frustrating in the brutal end that can be seen coming.
Yamamoto: The Man Who Planned Pearl Harbor - by Edwin P. Hoyt: This one is hard to find, but I encourage you to try. I rank this among the greatest biographies I’ve read (e.g. Peter The Great, by Robert K. Massie, and Last Train To Memphis/ Careless Love, Peter Guralnick’s two-volumes on Elvis Presley.) As admiral of the Combined Fleets, Isoruko Yamamoto was tasked to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, after he’d spent the previous years advising the Japanese government of the suicidal folly of such an act. For me, Yamamoto is one of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century.
Five Equations That Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics - by Michael Guillen: You don’t have to be a math nerd to enjoy this approachable look at how great equations leapt from the blackboard and into every corner of daily life.
The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City by Stephen Dando-Collins: Nero is surrounded by myth, starting with the nonsense about how he “fiddled” as Rome burned, although the fiddle/violin wouldn’t be invented for another 1,500 years. Not that he was without fault for the misfortunes that befell the empire during his reign. It’s shocking how many rich Romans chose to kill themselves at his mere behest. I was even embarrassed for the emperor who scandalized society by having entered singing contests, and who believed he had won every single contest by merit — even the singing contest in which he didn’t actually sing.
