It was a preview of Napoleon - The Immersive Saga, at the Museum of History in Gatineau. It’s a “virtual reality adventure,” wherein visitors don a VR headset and stand/wander around as Napoleon, and the city of Paris, rise above Europe.

“Travel through pivotal moments in Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, from the Battle of Austerlitz to his final days on Saint Helena,” say the exhibition notes. “Epic battles, strategic triumphs, bitter setbacks and personal reflections unfold around you through striking reconstructions and immersive storytelling.”

When they say “around you” they aren’t kidding. At one point, along with a dozen or so other real visitors, I’m standing in a VR grand salon after the walls and furnishings appear all around us. I can see other exhibition visitors, who are each outlined in a simple white line, just the head and torso, like spectral silhouettes. We are limbless in this ghostly life, though I can see everyone’s white, disembodied hands floating where the end of their arms would be. (The rational me supposes our hands are visible to help us maintain our balance in this challenging VR world. The cynical me suspects it’s perhaps so women, with their visibility of the real world constricted, can see where everyone’s hands are.)

Regardless, I hold my left hand right in front of my face and watch it flex. I feel like the cyborg in Terminator. I want to turn to one of the other spectres and in a robot-Austrian accent ask, “Are you Sarah Connor?”

The scenes around us change from interiors to exteriors, from grand chambers to grim battlefields, all of it in 3D and seemingly real and close enough to touch. At one point I notice that all the other white-line ghosts are looking my way, and I realize that Napoleon and his generals have a map of Europe spread on a table and are planning a campaign, while I stand directly in the middle of the table like a plump, inexplicable centrepiece. This could make it difficult for the generals to see the map — my white-line ghost is quite wide — though in this simulation they can see right through me. (Hardly the first.)

I gingerly move to my left to get out of the table, with the help of one of the thoughtfully provided walking sticks, though in this case I might call it a Not Falling Down Stick, or a Not Completely Embarrass Myself Stick.

Hardly have I moved aside when the room changes to a blustery battlefield, and I notice something in the distance coming my way. A dot, it seems, getting larger. Finally I see it’s a cannonball, and I stand there like a stunned bunny as it flies through my head. Clearly, I wouldn’t have lasted in the Grand Armée.

Lots of things go through you; at one point a whole cohort of soldiers on horseback run through me. I don’t feel a thing, which was surprising as I am allergic to hay. Seconds later I see a bullet approaching in slow motion. I hold up my hand again and watch as the bullet goes through it. I feel like Neo in The Matrix. “There is no spoon,” I want to say to someone.

The simulation is 30-minutes, and it trots apace through the Napoleonic era. I find myself standing on the shore at Austerlitz amid a French artillery crew that’s firing shells at those unwitting poor bastards out on the ice. Then it’s on to another illusion.

All this led to glory and riches for France and Napoleon, and, as European conquerers are wont to do, he set about making his capital city even more grand. Famous buildings that were built, or somehow elevated, by Napoleon rise up all around us — the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, and even Notre Dame, where he had himself crowned Emperor (and immortalized in a splendid painting by Jacques Louis David.)

One moment gets an audible and collective gasp from the ghosts; a massive column rises out of the ground at Place Vendôme, amid us. We all rise along with the column, and suddenly find ourselves ascending into the air to a height of 40 metres or so. We hang in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote, and we all know what happened to him. At this point I cheat and raise my headset for a quick, stabilizing peek at the real world, as I was what the experts would call “freaked out.”

The museum attendants had warned us about this feeling, this sense of hanging in “the void.” Staring into it, I wondered about the weight limit on my walking stick.

The adventure is not historically comprehensive, and doesn’t need to be to be effective. It’s also possible one could miss something while standing in the 360-degree projection. I never saw Napoleon’s great love Josephine, for example, but perhaps she was standing behind me at some point. Perhaps I trod on her toe and she thought, “Qui est cet imbécile?”

(The accompanying exhibition of art and information about Napoleon includes much of Josephine, and more context about what is seen in VR.)

At the end of the adventure we find ourselves standing on the deck of a ship that is taking Napoleon to his island exile of Saint Helena. I am standing at his shoulder, and I see his face as he stares out over the waves. His expression is a mix of pride and regret, or at least resignation. It was thrilling, even in virtual reality, to stand so close to such a giant of history.

It all leaves me so discombobulated that minutes later I go to the wrong level of the parking garage and wander about before I realize my mistake. Napoleon crossed the Alps, and I can’t find my own car.

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Napoleon - the Immersive Saga continues at the Canadian Museum of History to Jan. 10, 2027.

Museum note: “This experience may cause dizziness for visitors that have balance issues or a history of dizziness (and) is not recommended for individuals with epilepsy, heart conditions, or those sensitive to flashing lights or motion effects.” Click here for more restrictions and other information.

Seventeen years later, Adilman and Goldman are touring the world as Choir! Choir! Choir! They’ve been on stage with superstars, including David Byrne and Patti Smith. They once rick-rolled themselves with Rick Astley, and they performed with Kermit the Frog at the Lincoln Centre. Their videos have millions of views on social media, and their video with Rufus Wainwright singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah has more than 15 million views on Youtube.

What began as a lark has become a career, and a leading role in bringing people out of their singing shells to raise their voices in harmony in public, without fear or anxiety.

At the time of this interview in June they were in Lexington, Kentucky, and on their way to Columbus, Ohio, and then onward to Athens, Greece, and then to the Montreal Jazz Festival.

They return to Ottawa to play Bluesfest on July 19 (1:40 p.m. on the Main Stage), and have dates across Canada and the United States through the year. They come back to Ottawa for two Christmas singalong shows at the NAC on Dec. 20.

For those who haven’t seen Choir! Choir! Choir!, it works like this: Daveed plays rhythm chords on an acoustic guitar, and Nobu acts as chorus master and conductor of the choir — which is made of all those people in the audience. Crowds can vary from a couple of hundred to a few thousand, so our 1 Question with Nobu is . . .

Q: What have you learned about getting people to open up and sing in public?

Nobu: Being at the centre of Choir! Choir! Choir! what I really learn is that people are looking for a place to belong, and a place to connect with people, even if it’s something they’re a little bit scared to do.

If the environment is right and you set the table in the best way they’ll walk in willingly — or maybe maybe take a second, but they’ll stay. And they’ll give so much of themselves to whatever that thing is. In our case it’s singing, it’s choir. If you create the right conditions, people will come and they’ll thrive, and they’ll give so much back and everyone will benefit from the experience.

Singing is a scary thing to do around other people. We made it really fun. We listened to people, we had fun with people. We treated people with respect and love.

It’s extraordinary. You don’t need fireworks, you don’t need pyrotechnics or special effects. You don’t need 30 people on stage. You need so little to achieve so much. We’re a guitar and a guy waving his arms around, but we go by our wits.

We listen. That’s another thing that I’ve learned along the way. I’ve really learned how to listen, because when you’re doing a live thing it’s very spontaneous and requires an interaction.

You’ve got to be listening to every single thing that’s happening in the room. And of course I miss probably 80 per cent, but the 20 I do catch, that’s gold, you know? Life can be simple and we pile on so much shit or we think we need everything, we need this gadget here, these shiny things leading us astray in every direction. But really, you know, you need a strong community around you. You need to feel safe, and then you can do whatever you want in these little moments, these pockets of time that open up.

It’s a glimpse for people, I think, this moment of joy that they can feel. Or they can settle into a moment of pain, whatever that emotion is, they can lean into it and know that they’ll be okay in that moment.

It’s different everywhere too, whether the north or the south of Europe, or North America, and you never really know what’s going to happen. In the U.K. you go to London and people are losing their minds, and you go to some smaller towns and they’re a little bit more reserved.

In Milan we’d be playing in a heavy metal club and all these people were a little bit older. They kind of matched the mood of the place, they kind of went nuts. They didn’t understand, you know, the subtleties of the humour but they got the vibe and they were willing to give us so much because of that.

I remember playing Saskatoon for the first time and thinking, oh God, these people hate us. And at the end of the show, the theatre manager was like, wow, never seen the crowd so excited. It taught me that every place has a baseline kind of where they’re at on their day-to-day of expression.

You start there and then you see where you go at the end of it, and it’s the space in between. That is the measurement.

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Click here for tour dates and more on Choir! Choir! Choir!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Christine Fitzgerald is a renowned Ottawa photographer with a deep love of the natural world. She’s a graduate of Acadia and Dalhousie universities, and of the School of Photographic Art Ottawa (SPAO). She has won numerous awards including the City of Ottawa Karsh Award, the 2016 International Fine Art Photographer of the Year from the Lucie Foundation and was a 2017 winner of the International Julia Margaret Cameron Award for women photographers. Her work is in many public and private collections.

Her book Requiem is “a visual testament to nature’s fragile beauty and a warning for what we stand to lose.” It is focused on birds and their eggs and nests, as seen in artifacts in natural history museums. Requiem is now part of the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Canadian Museum of Nature.

1QW: Why birds and eggs?

Christine Fitzgerald: It actually started with eggs, and then it moved to nests, and then it moved to birds. But it started with eggs, and the biggest collection of bird eggs is in the world. It is in England, at the Natural History Museum. They have about a million bird eggs, and that represents like 95% of species in the world. The Brits were obsessed about collecting bird eggs.

I wanted to find a metaphor for the fragility of life and ecosystems and what’s going on in the world today, and the best thing I could think of were bird eggs that are so fragile and perfect. A bird egg is a perfect object.

I contacted the Natural History Museum, it took about eight months before they approved my visit. I spent a month there. I went in every morning and left at supper time, and the curator in charge of bird eggs and nests was simply outstanding. His name is Douglas Russell. That whole experience I found transformative, you know, in terms of my practice.

If you want to find out what’s going on in the world, like Margaret Atwood said, you look at what’s going on with birds. They’re a barometer for the health of the planet and in the last, you know, 50, 60 years we’ve lost 30 per cent of birds on the planet. I wanted to do an artistic inquiry on the fragility of our ecosystems. Birds were a good place to start, and bird eggs especially given their fragility.

What a fascinating experience. I held the emperor penguin eggs that were brought back from the Scott expedition to Antarctica. I went to Cambridge, there’s a (Scott) institute for research on Antarctica. I actually had these eggs in my hand, and it was just the feeling that you get when you look at something like that, and you touch it. It’s hard to describe. You know, when I saw my first great Auk at the museum, I literally started crying.

I had done all this research for about two years, and I had done the exhibition at the Karsh-Masson gallery in Ottawa and it was called Requiem. I decided that I should pull it all together and put it in a book. The book kind of pulls everything together. It’s an intersection between my personal interest in historical collections, history, photography and the environment.

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Fitzgerald’s answer to our 1QW has been edited for clarity and length.

Requiem is available to purchase in Ottawa at the National Gallery, the Ottawa Art Gallery and Books on Beechwood. In Toronto at University of Toronto Press, the Magenta Foundation and Contact Photobook Lab. It can be ordered from Fitzgerald’s website by clicking here.

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The event was organized by Calgary-based Honens and a small group of dedicated volunteers and patrons in Ottawa. A key part of the team at its Calgary main office is its president and CEO, Amanda Smith. We met Amanda at the recital and I later wrote a short piece about her for Queen’s Alumni Review. Click here to read it now, and click here for more on Honens.

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A few words about Sinéad O’Connor’s memoir Rememberings, and Miriam Toews’ memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace.

It was coincidental and fitting that I read these books back to back, as both are visceral memoirs from famous women writers (of different kinds) who have endured enormous loss. Suicide tears through both families, taking O’Connor’s son and Toews’ father and sister. The word “raw” only begins to describe the pain found in these stories. And yet there is joy and gratitude in both, which, I feel after reading the books, are essential to surviving such family traumas.

Both books are fragmentary in whole (O’Connor) or in part (Toews). The title of O’Connor’s book, Rememberings, alludes to the necessarily anecdotal feel of the story she shares. “I can’t remember any more than I have given my publisher,” she writes. “Except for that which is private or that I wish to forget. The totality indeed of what I do not recall would fill ten thousand libraries, so it’s probably just as well I don’t remember.”

O’Connor was bipolar, and her book especially is a whiplash between grateful highs and gutting lows. Her most infamous public episode was, of course, when she tore a photograph of the pope while performing on Saturday Night Live in 1992. I remember watching the episode of SNL and thinking, “What just happened?”

O’Connor more or less had the same thought, as the outsized reaction from an America that was not yet strong enough to even acknowledge, much less confront, the abuses of children by the Catholic church. O’Connor would be vindicated by later revelations. I don’t what to share here what she says about the life-changing and career-derailing affair, but it may surprise you.

Toews book is at times fragmentary, in the sense that fragments of fact and memory are used to great effect.

The book is at times epistle and at times prose, at times journal, and elsewhere narration of moments in Toews’ life as she lives them.

The book is intensely successful at putting the reader into the mind of the writer, as Toews’ allows us to be in her mind with what seems unfettered access. When she shares letters she wrote from Europe to her sister in the 1980s, or when she walks through her Toronto neighbourhood with a grandchild many years later, everything is so real and vivid — every snowflake, every busy street, every empty cemetery.

The book is also very funny at times, as expected by anyone who has read Toews’ novels, with their flashes of humour amid explosions of drama (or at times the slow burn of drama). An apt example demonstrates the strength and humour of Toews’ own mother, who remains remarkably strong through what are by any measure crushing losses.

When a young Toews is away from home her mother writes: “I bumped into Susan M. on the street and mentioned to her that you were working as a chambermaid in a hotel in Russell Square and that you had recently discovered, in one of the twelve rooms per day you’re expected to clean, a large turd in the exact middle of the bed. Her response; Twelve rooms!?”

By times I felt voyeuristic reading these stories, but these inspired writers were compelled to share them and I hope they both got something good out of the release. I hope they found relief. I hope they felt changed by the stories. As a reader, I certainly did.

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Looks like a great weekend for a walk or drive to the Canadian Museum of History to see the charming exhibition of impressionist paintings, River of Dreams.

The river is the mighty St. Lawrence, and here it is seen through the work of artists such as Maurice Cullen, Ozias Leduc, Henrietta Mabel May, James Wilson Morrice, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté and others.

The exhibition starts in Montreal and follows the river almost to its end. It’s an insightful way to appreciate impressionism, which in my perhaps impatient opinion has been somewhat overexposed in public exhibitions in recent decades. Following the river along its course, from downtown Montreal to north of Quebec City, gives the art a framework of historical and social reference. It reminds me of the National Gallery of Canada’s 2015 exhibition Monet: A Bridge to Modernity, which memorably offered what at first seemed a curious case of conceptualization. Both exhibition have the familiar seen in a new way.

River of Dreams begins with scenes of Montreal both industrial (Suzor-Coté’s Smog, Port of Montreal, 1914) and intimate (Cullen’s Winter Evening on Craig Street, 1912).

This is Canadian impressionism, but the foundation of European influence is seen, of course, and nowhere more noticeably than in May’s Knitting (1915), with five young ladies in white or pastel dresses crafting by what seems a bucolic bank on the vast river.

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Other influences rise as well, and I see curiously many in the paintings of Ozias Leduc. The Hayfield (1901), brings to mind Constable, as does, later in the exhibition, William Brymner’s Haying Near Quebec, Beaupré (1907). Landscape at Dusk (1910) has the cinematic twilight of Caspar David Friedrich, and Open Window (around 1900) hints of a quiet interior by Vermeer, or by Vilhelm Hammershoi. I almost expect to see dust motes floating in the air, and I idly think of Hamlet’s dying words, “The rest is silence.”

The river tour moves northeast, with Suzor-Coté’s Northern Lights of the Arthabaska Hills (1923), and Morrice’s Ferry Boat at Quebec (around 1898). There are paintings of that ferry by various artists, and whatever wide appeal it had to them is the viewer’s to discern among a variety of styles and seasons to contrast and compare. You may realize that some affect you more than others, and the next viewer will have a different view. Such is one of the great thrills of art.

The tour ends with Brymner’s magnificent Early Moonrise in September (1899), with the fresh, bright moon peeking through large deciduous trees over a flock of contentedly grazing sheep. The precise location isn’t clear, but the scene is tranquil and pleasing. Nature and humanity seem in harmony. Such is not always the way, and in this moment it is precious.

River of Dreams continues to Aug. 30, 2026. Click here for more from the museum.

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That he asked me to be an advice columnist was crazy and without logic, which is why he did it. I said yes, in an endearing display of our shared bad judgement. I’m pretty sure Michael made up the questions, so I — and the two other writers who were also invited to dispense advice — made up answers. Here’s the link to the page where this advice column originally appeared, and below is the question from that issue and my “advice” in response.

As I said, do not follow my advice, except when I advise you to continue reading.

Question: My husband, who is 46 years old, calls his parents mommy and daddy. For instance, on the phone he might say, “What’s daddy up to?” or “Could you ask mommy to send me the invoice?” I cannot stand this. What can I do?

My advice:

Dear mommy fearest,

You should sit before I reveal what will surely come to you as a shock: I believe your husband is Rogers Waters, the famously enigmatic rock star and leader of the band Pink Floyd.

It must be so because it is inexplicable that a sane 46-year-old man would call his parents “mommy” and “daddy” for any reason other than art or entertainment. There are many examples of this, such as Christina Crawford’s scandalous book Mommy Dearest, or the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy, or Sylvia Plath’s poem,“There’s a stake in your fat black heart/ And the villagers never liked you/ They are dancing and stamping on you/ They always knew it was you/ Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” In the present case, consider Pink Floyd’s epic concept album The Wall, written by Roger Waters.

The Wall tells the sad tale of a disillusioned rock star who has a crippling closeness with his mother. “Hush now, baby, don’t you cry,” she reassures him, over a melody of acoustic strings and apron strings. “Mama’s gonna keep you right here under her wing/ she won’t let you fly but she might let you sing/ mama will keep baby cosy and warm.”

Now, “mama” isn’t quite “mommy,” but it’s awkward enough coming from the mouth of a grown man. And his mama is all over The Wall, including in the climactic trial before the Lord Judge Worm, where she pleads, “M’lud I never wanted him to get in any trouble/ Why’d he ever have to leave me?/ Worm, your honour, let me take him home.”

At one point we hear a boy’s voice saying, “Look, mummy, there’s an airplane up in the sky.” We also hear a phone call from “Mr. Floyd” trying to call home, and when there’s no answer he gets so upset that everything goes wrong, and even “love turns grey, like the skin of a dying man.” You need an inordinate dependence on your mother to despair so when she doesn’t pick up the phone.

Another sign that your husband is Roger Waters is him flying a large, inflatable pig over the house, or if marches about while chanting, “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!”

You may argue that Roger Waters, born in 1943, is 79 years old, and not 46, but if your husband lies to you about being a famous rock star, why not shave a few years off his age? Mommy would approve.

Like Lord Judge Worm, I believe “the evidence before the court is incontrovertible,” and I rule that you’re justified in dumping your husband. Though I must note that rock stars tend to be very rich, and as your husband once wrote, “Money, it’s a gas/ grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.”

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P.S. RIP, Michael.

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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).

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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.)

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.)

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.

More on that to follow . . .

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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.”

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.

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.

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.

Retro closes Jan. 18 and it really is a lot of fun. Below is the cheeky warning sign displayed outside the space. See more on the museum’s page by clicking here.

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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

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Non-fiction

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Not all of the new works are necessarily included in the annual show, and as there is no theme to the exhibition beyond having been recently acquired, it is always an eclectic display, with many styles and media.

The official opening is 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 18. It’s after office hours, so enter city hall via the Laurier Avenue entrance. Speeches are at 6 p.m. This is open to the public and admission is free.

Below you can see a few of the new works …

I’m a great admirer of the work of Meryl McMaster. Her works are beautiful and evocative. (We have one on our living room wall.) The city’s latest acquisition of McMaster is a digital video, nipēhtēnān kiteh | We Can Hear Your Heartbeat, 2023, 10:31 min.

Nevisandeh, 2021, digital print on paper, 21 x 28 cm, by Shahla Bahrami.

Fatherly Love, 2024, digital print on paper, 91 x 61 cm, by the artist Oladimeg.

Ăn Nắng (Eating Sunlight), 2023, oil on canvas, 91 x 91 cm, by Martin Vuong.

Réappropriation 2, 2024, oil on canvas, 91 x 76 cm, by Heritier Bilaka. If you’ve been to the Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton, N.B. this may remind you of Santiago El Grande, the massive and magnificent painting there by Salvador Dali. Though the subject matter and scale are different, Bilaka’s painting is reminiscent of Dali’s verticality and blue sky background and almost overwhelming sense of dramatic power. (See the Dali painting by clicking here.)

Here’s the complete list of artists whose works were acquired by the City of Ottawa in 2025. Some of the artists will be finding their place in the city collection for the first time.

Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman
Sarah Anderson
Shahla Bahrami
Julie Beauchemin
Heritier Bilaka
Pixie Cram
Tony Fouhse
Jean Christian Furaha Ishimwe
Mark Garland
Martin Golland
James Hewitt
Greg A. Hill
Noah Greyson Holub
Jason Bruges Studio
Jennifer Anne Kelly
Peter Kohut
Don Kwan
Barb Lougheed
Natasha Mazurka
Penny McCann
Meryl McMaster
Lauren Mercer-Smail
Shawn Moreton
Judy Nakagawa
Linh VH Nguyen
Kate Oakley
Ramona Ramlochand
Michael Ricco
Erin Robertson
Sally Lee Sheeks
Jane Spencer
Ruth Steinberg
Erin Szturm
Katherine Takpannie
Amy Thompson
Cara Tierney
Sarah Tompkins
Yvon Villarceau
Martin Vuong
Jian Zhang

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I’m not writing restaurant reviews these days, but I like to give a boost to the chef et al when we have a superlative meal, and Perch inspires many superlatives.

The Missus and I recently spent an evening enjoying the menu of chef/co-owner Justin Champagne-Lagarde, all the many courses of it.

I recently wrote a piece for Edible Ottawa magazine about Champagne-Lagarde’s new cookbook, which looks into how exacting in practice he is, and how committed to using and re-using every thing possible, e.g., the soap in the washrooms is made in-house with espresso grinds (for grit) and used oil.

Click here to read the article in Edible magazine.

Here are photos of our dishes, taken by me, otherwise known as not a professional photographer.

To start we had house-made seed bread with Canadian balsamic (from B.C.) and Canadian sunflower oil. No non-Canadian ingredients to be found at Perch, so, for example, there’s no olive oil (unless there’s been a good olive crop for one producer on Salt Spring Island.

First up (post-bread) was smoked Atlantic sustainable sturgeon from the St. John River with kohlrabi, roasted sturgeon marrow, sturgeon XO, yuzu and sumac. TBH, I’ve not previously enjoyed sturgeon meat but I enjoyed this sturgeon fest, and the kohlrabi was the key for me, I believe, as it balanced the sea-ness of the fish.

Second was a pair of mustard macarons, one with Atlantic Bay scallop mousse and one with beet mousse, and both with ground cherry, borage and violas.

Next was cured and smoked Arctic char with marinated roe and a nori (seaweed) tuile on sake Kasu velouté. That tuile was a delicate and admirable thing; I asked if they had someone whose entire job was to spend the day making those tuiles.

Plate 4 was actually a small and mysterious jar, which when opened revealed snow crab with squash, dulse, mustard and poultry broth. (If you’re counting, that’s two types of seaweed so far — actually three, but more about that later.)

Five was two parts, firstly a succulent brined quail breast in a vidalia onion sauce, and two cured and confit quail leg beignets, one with quail fudge beneath and the other with a treacle BBQ sauce. Yes, I said “quail fudge.” Who knew?

Following that was unagi-sauce marinated black cod with chickpea miso, lacto-koji butter sauce, charred green beans and a little cucumber roll.

Then we moved back to the land for a pair of small crispy cones layered with koi-aged venison, Matane shrimp, garum, crême fraîche and Acadian sturgeon caviar. I’ve never had anything like this before. (I kept saying that all night long.)

Our final savoury course was shio-koji duck breast with sea lettuce, celeriac, pearl onions, maitake mushroom and black current. That ribbon you see meandering through the veg is a single slice of roasted celeriac coated with seaweed-infused sunflower oil and dusted with smoked maitake powder.

We were three hours in, and nearing the end.

And, wait, that’s a fourth showing for seaweed.

We finished with cortland apple, camelina seeds and oil, balsamic, bee pollen, buckwheat and mugolio.

Everything was world class, in my reasonably well-travelled opinion, and everything was Canadian — every drop on every plate, even the one appearance of citrus (which was the yuzu, from Quebec).

As for the third appearance of seaweed, to which I alluded earlier, it was, actually, the first appearance, and it was in a cocktail that was as Maritime-Canadian as a cocktail could be.

The evening began with a Selkie’s Breakfast, which is basically a martini with three ingredients — “oyster shell gin” (made in-house), tomato oil and seaweed vermouth. At first I felt like one of our cats when it tastes something and it’s not quite sure what to think. Now, I’m wishing I had another one on the desk in front of me right now. I am certain it would undo the seasonal angst I feel about the outrageously cold temperature outside.

Perch, btw, is on Preston Street, where Gray Jay used to be. To contact Perch, click here.

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I was pleased to be asked by The National Gallery of Canada to write a short piece about poppies as seen in a select few pieces from the permanent collection. It was published by the gallery on Remembrance Day, and it allowed me to allude to memories of a visit that Jenn and I had made to Commonwealth war cemeteries in France, as we searched for own relatives who had died during the First World War.

Here’s a link if you want to take a few moments and read the piece . . .

Poppies in art . . .

(Photo: Bruno Bobak, A Field of Poppies, c.1960. Pastel on wove paper, 48.2 x 63.6 cm. Purchased 1962. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Estate of Bruno Bobak Photo: NGC)

This influx of immigration has transformed an island food scene that had long been reliably traditional (lots of delicious seafood) but otherwise pedestrian (lots of hot-hamburger sandwiches and fast food). Now there’s a world of cuisine on PEI, and the island is the better for it.

Below are my five favourites from this summer. It pays no heed to location. For scenery you can try Finn in Tracadie, where I had excellent, crispy fried fish, though the chips with it were ordinary. Or try the Chowder House in Point Prim, where The Missus and I had a mostly lovely plate of fried fish with fresh local potatoes and beans, though the fish on both our plates was regrettably overcooked. (Several friends have told me they’ve had the same plate on other days and their fish was nicely cooked.)

There are other delicious dishes I’ve had on the island this summer — a lobster roll at Vicinato served in a soft, pita-like pizza dough comes to mind, as do a small but crispy plate of fried clams during a boozy, late-evening visit to the Claddagh Oyster House, and fresh dumplings at Jane’s Dumplings — but the five below are the ones I’ll want to have again before I leave PEI at summer’s end. I’ve included a couple of phone photos that I snapped between mouthfuls.

In no particular order.

Sumaq

220 Kent St.

Sumaq is perhaps the first Peruvian restaurant in PEI? It opened recently in downtown Charlottetown. I had their Arroz con Pollo, a classic Peruvian dish of sautéd onion, garlic and spices slowly cooked, then boosted in colour and flavour and aroma with fresh cilantro. The chicken is cooked in the stew, then mixed with the green rice and veg and served with what I believe were pickled red onions. The owner told me it’s “a whole lot of Peru in every bite.”

Gallants and Co. Island Food to Go

18 Superior Cres.

It’s a catering company with a small dining room. It’s not a fancy part of town but the food shines.

Whereas po boy sandwiches are, in my experience, too often greasy, Gallants’ fried oyster sandwich is light and fresh. The oysters are shucked to order, lightly dredged in flour and corn starch and fried, then served on a house-made sesame seed bun that — and this is a lesson that too many sandwich shops need to learn — is not so huge that everything inside is overwhelmed.

Easily one of the very best seafood sandwiches I’ve ever had.

Devlin

30 Exhibition Dr.

I’ve been going to Devlin for a couple of years. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, tucked behind a gas station by the race track, but I had a bahn mi that was delicious. (I borrowed this small photo from Devlin’s web page.)

The fresh bun is served with pate, sliced char siu pork & Vietnamese meat ball, with pickled veg and fresh cilantro.

Bahn mi is probably my favourite type of sandwich, as it’s so full of distinct flavours and textures. It’s a real treat.

Azteca

88 Kent St.

Mole is a pillar of Mexican cuisine, more than 4,000 years old. I’ve never been to Mexico but I say without reservation that the mole at Azteca is the best I’ve ever had. The chef’s family recipe is from Michoacán, and passed through generations. It has more than 20 ingredients — including walnuts, almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds and just a little bit of chocolate.

I had the enchilada mole, with chicken tucked into lightly fried tortillas and covered in this deep, dark sauce. Most mole in Canada, at least, is too sweet. Azteca mole is intensely savoury, with a great depth of flavour. I scooped in all my rice to soak up as much of that perfect sauce as possible.

Shaddy’s

144 Great George St.

Shaddys has been around for years, and I’m a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t been until this summer.

The Missus and I went for lunch recently on our 27th wedding anniversary. We had kibbie (spiced minced meat with onions and pine nuts in a shell made from bulgar wheat) tabouli (parsley salad with bulgar, mint, tomato, onion, lemon) and their Beirut hummus, which is fresh, smooth hummus with a layer of well-seasoned ground beef on top. Scoop it up with a piece of pita and marvel at the complexity of such a seemingly simple dish.

It’s also so nice to sit out back in their covered and vined seating area. It’s like a private garden right downtown.

If you want to read more about food down east, follow Edible Maritimes magazine, as I’ll be writing features on Gallants and Sumaq for upcoming issues.

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Harold Edgerton, Bullet (.30 caliber) Piercing an Apple, c. 1964, printed 1977. Dye-transfer print, 24.7 x 30.2 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Harold Edgerton/MIT, courtesy Palm Press, Inc. Photo: NGC

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Please click here to read my spotlight in the NGC magazine.