The weekend before last the team at Apartment613 spent the day live-blogging some of the sessions at ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009. We were pretty overwhelmed after the event – there were lots of great ideas and motivating folks there. We’ve taken some time to digest the content from the event and have tried to synthesize some the key themes here for our readers. If anyone has any thoughts on the ChangeCamp discussion (as I bet there were some of you there) we’d love to get your thoughts in the comment section.... | Continue reading article

While Governor General Michaelle Jean  has been at the heart of mini-international controversy for  defending the Canadian seal hunt following the European Parliament’s “hypocritical ban of seal products“, a number of Ottawa restaurants have found themselves in the midst of another animal-related controversy: offering foie gras. The Ottawa Animal Defense League successfully made Ottawa-famous restauranteur Stephen Beckta remove the dish from his menu. He did clarify, however, that he did this because of personal reasons and not business reasons.  According to the Wellington Oracle, the ADL has moved its protest... | Continue reading article

Last week, over 3600 of the 6000 LCBO employees across the provinces voted on whether or not to strike this summer. The response was rather clear: 93% of the 3672 union members voted in favour of strike action. The LCBO employees have been without a contract since the end march. There are still negotiations planned this week and a strike could be averted. The main issues of contention are the elimination of full-time positions to be replaced by casual workers, hours of work, wages and benefits the union said. The... | Continue reading article

This post by Justin Beach of NXEW.ca is reproduced with permission under a Creative Commons license agreement. Make sure to check North by East West, it’s an awesome Canadian music blog. I (heart) Music is based out of Ottawa, they put on great shows and we want to see them continue to exist and grow. This why I am sharing this with you. It would appear that, through tremendous support from readers, musicians, bloggers and others that I (Heart) Music will continue. Through a combination of donations of money and... | Continue reading article

I’m Peter Henderson, and I’m one half of the team behind Audio Visual, a weekly arts and culture radio show that plays Wednesdays from 12-1pm on CHUO FM 89.1, the University of Ottawa’s community radio station. A weekly podcast (with archives) is now being hosted here at Apartment613, and our latest show will be updated every Wednesday at 3pm. My wonderful co-host Tina Hassannia and I are excited to be a part of the team here. We’ll be keeping you aurally satiated with the latest cultural news and writing occasional... | Continue reading article

Our little stand at the corner of O’Connor and Second Avenue raised $215 Saturday. We say “raised” because the money is going to our bandwidth fund. We met lots of friendly people and our apartments are now slightly less crowded. We worked our sales pitches: “buy a knife, settle your domestic disputes;” “support Stéphane Dion, buy a ‘green shift’ baseball cap;” and of course, our 613 pitches. Among the highlights of our sale: our waffle iron was purchased (no more brunches for us); got rid of StarWars figurines (but no... | Continue reading article

If you’ve ever lived in Vancouver — or met a Vancouverite — you’ve probably heard a lot about the great “quality of life” in that city. You’re probably also aware that some international organization somewhere at one point ranked Vancouver as the #1 city  to live in, worldwide. Vancouverites love to remind you about these international plaudits. As an erstwhile Vancouverite myself, I’ve always found this a little unseemly. No self-confident population should feel the need to broadcast this kind of external affirmation. It’s the kind of cringeworthy insecurity that... | Continue reading article

While everyone was out enjoying the tulips this week, what was going on in and around Ottawa? Well, one of the stories that made a lot of noise was of the car pursuit near Papineauville which resulted in the car flying off the road and into the Ottawa river and one of its occupants drowning. Like most of you, I wonder what made the two passengers in the car so scared as to risk their own lives. Terry Kilrea was cross-examined in the Larry O’brien trial. And from all accounts,... | Continue reading article

This post by Justin Beach of NXEW.ca is reproduced with permission under a Creative Commons license agreement. Make sure to check North by East West, it’s an awesome Canadian music blog. I (heart) Music is based out of Ottawa, they put on great shows and we want to see them continue to exist and grow. This why I am sharing this with you. Sometimes, ok most of the time, I think that SOCAN exists for the good of SOCAN and not for the good of music, musicians or songwriters. The... | Continue reading article

Scary news this past week: two homicides in down town Ottawa. A man was found dead in his Lowertown apartment last Tuesday. Two men were charged in relation to the homicide. The other incident took place inside Bar 56 in the market where a man was shot while another was left wounded. It highlights that Ottawa’s gang violence problems have certainly not disappeared. “We are seeing more guns,” said Staff Sgt. Chris Renwick, talking about the market shooting. “It’s happening across the country and it’s just a matter of time... | Continue reading article