I imagine the capital city of any nation is where quite a few citizens are employed by the government and are fairly well off. Ottawa is one of these. Civil servants tend to be well paid, their employment well protected in stable democracies. When we first moved to this city fifty years ago from our original home in Toronto neither city had many visible minorities. There was a lot of immigrant stock in Toronto, not so many in Ottawa, but all that has changed enormously.

 

It's been said that Toronto, the country's largest city, and Vancouver as well, though one imagines most cities in the country too, are populated by people who have arrived as immigrants or refugees from all countries of the world. When I was  young, I thought it odd to hear foreign languages on the street, now people who have arrived from places as diverse as Vietnam and Italy, China and Lebanon, Somalia and Syria, speak those 'exotic' languages, along with English.

 

On the street we live on alone -- not a very long street -- there are families from France, Russia, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Egypt, Britain and Bangladesh. This is a middle-class neighbourhood, but nearby in the greater community there are large areas of subsidized housing for lower-middle-class families. There is wealth here and there is poverty. The wealth is visible, the poverty is not.

There have been area food banks collecting non-perishable foodstuffs for distribution to those who qualify for community assistance as long as I can remember. In the last decade, however, demand for the services of the food bank has increased enormously. When we first began contributing to the food banks there weren't many people making deposits in the large holding cages held in the vestibule areas of local supermarkets to be collected for food bank distribution to those in need. Now, and particularly since the pandemic arrived, those holding areas are so full of offerings, I have difficulty finding a place to leave my own food selections.

 

Forty years ago I might spend $5 of my weekly shopping on food for the food bank. Now, it's closer to $20 weekly.  We did our weekly shopping today and I always keep a bag set apart to fill with products that go through the cash register and are left for the food bank. Today I chose four boxes of macaroni-and-cheese dinner, four cans of vegetable soup, two of chicken-noodle soup, four cans of tuna, and four of sardines. And then struggled to find a place to put my bag among the gathered food products others had contributed.

 

It was -10C this morning, a little less icy than yesterday morning. The temperature rose eventually to -1.5C under sunny skies. But there was a bitter wind that made the day seem infinitely colder than what it actually was. We debated between us whether to give the ravine another bypass, knowing that the ice that packed the forest trails would have hardened with the drop in temperature these past few days. Balance had already been compromised when the temperature was above freezing, by the snow melting during the day then firming up to hard, slick ice overnight as temperatures fell again.

But we reasoned we couldn't possibly miss getting Jackie and Jillie out for a romp through the ravine three days running. So, off we went. In some areas, particularly on the hillsides, more of the forest floor can be seen revealed. But the ice on the trails remains wide, deep and solid, covering the entire width of the trails, and the give of the previous days was gone.  Hard, solid ice was left. Still, we were wearing cleats, and decided to meet the challenge of descending into the ravine over a long hillside trail of unrelenting ice.

 

Our cleated boots bit into the ice just enough for stability in the descent, and did the same on the various ascents we also negotiated. We took our time, being careful to scope out areas that looked more promising than others, mindful of nasty falls we've taken in the past, some of which resulted in enough physical damage that we paid for it in pain and discomfort lasting years.

We weren't surprised at not coming across the presence of others. We admit to ourselves we're slightly lunatic to take these chances, and more reasonable, danger-averse people won't. When we finished our circuit and were just heading back up the first hill we start out on in descending into the forest, along came a six-month old golden retriever puppy named Sully, beside himself with joy and anticipation of being given cookies.

Some time later his human caught up while Sully busied himself with cookies and racing at Jackie and Jillie. Whose reciprocations were fairly grumpy. The young man who had introduced himself to us months ago, as someone who had once, years earlier, lived on the street adjacent ours as a teen, and now moved back as a young married adult, kept sliding backward as he attempted to mount a side trail that had once given me grief and that we now religiously avoid...

When we arrived back home I prepared a small bread dough. For something a little lighter for dinner tonight. Pizza. Last night's dinner was a little more on what we call the heavy side. I had roasted a Cornish game hen, made an egg-noodle pudding to go with it, along with asparagus.