We’re celebrating local business all month with our second annual Support Local Month. Last month’s Creative Mornings lecture with Katie and Regine from Victoire Boutique captured so much of our motivation for this project that we asked the team at Creative Morning if we could share the video here. Katie and Regine are amazing local business leaders and we have so much respect for what they do. If you’re interested in what it takes to succeed as a shop owner here in Ottawa, take a few minutes to let them... | Continue reading article

The little boy in front of me is stunned as he stares at the beautiful butterfly that is mere inches from his face. Perched on an orange in the boy’s hand, the colourful insect eagerly sucks the nectar from the citrus fruit, as the shouts of other excited children ricochet off the greenhouse walls. The boy’s fear, however, quickly turns to curiosity and then amazement, as he observes the butterfly’s proboscis dig deeper into the orange. For ten days, countless scenes like this one were repeated in the Nesbitt Biology... | Continue reading article

Given Apartment613′s focus on arts and culture, some fascinating parts of city life can get overlooked. I was thinking about this recently while reading a math-related novel. While I am no number whiz, I appreciate math’s inherent beauty, and strongly believe that mathematical ideas can be as captivating as a beautiful painting or catchy song. In fact, I came to realize that mathematical concepts manifest themselves in the city’s art and cultural life in some unexpected ways. To uncover Ottawa’s hidden math scene, I chatted with Prof. Brett Stevens from Carleton University,... | Continue reading article

Listen here, or on iTunes. Note: the Paper Kindle Club is this Sunday, not Saturday as is reported in this podcast.  This week on Apt613 Live, Jared hosts the entire show by himself! In addition to his unreasonably strange antics, we were able to snag two interviews this week. The first is with Gerry Paquette, Professor of Game Development at Algonquin College. In addition to other disciplines, Paquette teaches Algonquin game dev students about board games, something we are Apt613 are generally fairly enthusiastic about (though Katie often proclaims her annoyance with... | Continue reading article

Last Sunday I found myself atop the rooftop garden of the Rideau Centre to participate in the newest addition to Heritage Ottawa’s long list of city walking tours. I was there for the tour of the Roof Gardens of the Rideau Centre and NAC, which is led by the Vice-President of the organization, David Jeanes, and offers a fresh perspective on the history of surrounding buildings and sites that we all think we know so well. Alongside me were roughly forty keen local heritage enthusiasts, whose impressive turnout on the roof made nearby pot-smokers... | Continue reading article

It’s another sunny one ahead, friends. And while our coverage of all things local at Bluesfest continues (did you know Kelly from the Claytones can do an awesome Cher impression? Or that The Flats want to head to Pluto? We’ve got the inside scoop, folks), there’s more than just music happening this weekend. First of all, grab a summery novel and head down to the canal downtown to check out the Capital Reading Garden, a popup space that’s perfect for bookworms. Shakespeare fans should head to Prescott for their annual... | Continue reading article

Canada Day and cottages: that sums up many an Ottawan’s weekend plans. Of course, for those of you staying the city this long weekend, the first option will be hard to miss. The usual craziness will take place around Parliament Hill, with Feist, Simple Plan and many more giving free shows. Major Hill and Jacques-Cartier parks will also be hopping, as well as several museums (click here for a full list) . You can also catch some free shows as part of JazzFest. There’ll also be a Canada Day event for almost every community... | Continue reading article

Apartment613 is pleased to announce our latest project in a never-ending quest for world domination… Apartment613 Talks! We’re planning a series of lectures that will highlight themes and ideas that you’ve come to expect from Apartment613 – except we’ll be discussing them in real life (or IRL). For our first event on May 16 we’re taking on the creative capital. How close are we to being a truly creative Capital? This panel brings together three of Ottawa’s top designers and leaders of Ottawa-based design firms to talk about their experiences... | Continue reading article

We all have memories we’d like to banish from the kingdom of our minds. If you can’t think of a special one right now, don’t worry, soon a certain scent will waft through the air, a genteel fingertip will brush by an earlobe or someone will snarl behind the bulge of a maple-cream donut and one of those memories will storm out unapologetically and obtrusively. Then you might think about how nice it would be to erase this memory from your mind forever, to eradicate it, to eternal-sunshine it. But,... | Continue reading article

Canadian dissent: passionate and vivacious or feeble and dormant? For Rick Salutin, a man who’s famous for brandishing a combative spur in the melee of pertinent issues, there’s a little of column A and little of column B; “There’s good news and bad news.” On Saturday afternoon, in the Main Branch of the Public Library, Rick Salutin, in front of a room of about a hundred, including local MP Paul Dewar, first took a few moments to remind or inform the audience of the rather stagnant aura of dissent in... | Continue reading article