I transplanted here from New York in July 2012 and I have a confession to make. In my first few months in Ottawa I dragged my partner into various random places (often on Elgin St.) for a drink, and then complained that, “no one in this town knows how to make a proper Negroni!”  He would simply roll his eyes and tell me not to say that too loudly. Yes, I know it sounds a little pretentious and obnoxious, but it seemed to be the sad, honest truth.  Part of... | Continue reading article

Former Ottawa resident Gloria Song is a lawyer practicing in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. She also keeps a blog about life in the far north.  Even though Nunavut is a Canadian territory, living in the Arctic can feel like a foreign country or another planet. Soon after my partner and I got married, we left Ottawa to start up a new life in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Since then, one of the things that I’ve fallen in love with here is the local arts culture. Even though all of the communities in... | Continue reading article

Every year Apartment613 works with Jane’s Walk Ottawa - a festival of free neighbourhood walking tours - to give a tour of an area where we love to hang. We pull together some of the business owners we know (and some we want to know better) and ask them the sorts of questions we’d ask if we were interviewing them for the blog. We lead a group of walkers door-to-door to listen in on the conversation. It’s a neat opportunity to see a neighborhood close-up and meet some of the people that we think are... | Continue reading article

Many Ottawa residents know Clive Doucet as a former municipal politician, the principled city councillor who served for four terms at City Hall and who ran unsuccessfully for Mayor in 2010. What some local residents may not be aware of, however, is his remarkable literary career that has seen Doucet publish numerous books and several plays. “The reality is that I have always been an artist and a writer,” Doucet tells me in a phone interview.  ”This is my lifetime’s work.” While his involvement in city politics from 1997 to... | Continue reading article

Think you are up to date about local happenings? Test your knowledge with our local news quiz, five questions designed to test whether you’ve been paying attention. How to score: 5 out of 5: News stud! I hear The Citizen is hiring… 4 out of 5: Cheater! You work at City Hall. 3 out of 5: Not bad, but you may want to check your #ottcity Twitter feed a little more often. 2 out of 5: Newspapers are dying, but you should still try to pick one up once in... | Continue reading article

Listen here or in iTunes. Hey loyal Apt613 readers! This week we’re trying out something new on the Apartment613 Live post. Now you can listen to each individual show segment by using the handy Soundcloud widget below each description. Let us know if you like this in the comments. If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes. This week’s show was about eating and dancing, but not about eating while dancing, which would probably be uncomfortable and wouldn’t turn out well for anyone. Ryan and Karen... | Continue reading article

A nice tune and cute video by Ottawa’s Little Stella, a Folk/Rock/Pop/Electronic group with hints of country. What started as a high school act in Manotick (what’s in the water over there, some kind of nuclear waste that turns all their kids into musicians?) The song is from their 2012 self-titled EP.

The Ottawa blogosphere is filled with blogging chefs who post their culinary secrets online.  To showcase this celebration of cuisine, this week’s column will focus on local cooking blogs.  Sites that primarily contain restaurant reviews and/or discuss culinary subjects in general will be covered in a future story. Before proceeding, however, I would like to give a shout-out to foodiePrints, who compiled this great list of almost 150 food-related blogs.  While some of these sites are dormant, most are active and provided me with a strong starting point for this... | Continue reading article

It’s not very often that a church is packed on a Tuesday morning, but that was the case this past week at St. Andrew’s Church in the Glebe. It was a full house as audience members came to see four notable cellists (Julian Armour, Denise Djokic, Paul Marleyn, and Stéphane Tétreault) perform both classical and modern pieces. Before the show, as the audience waited in line to find their seats, I couldn’t help but notice I was one of the few to represent my own age demographic. While the time slot for... | Continue reading article