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Ottawa is the Federal capital of
Canada. Bernard and Gillian live about 20 minutes drive
from the city centre. It is an attractive city with
“Houses of Parliament” on the English model, including a
version of ‘Big Ben’ There are many museums plus
theatres and a symphony orchestra with Pinchas Zuckerman
as conductor. Canada is bilingual and because of this
both Thomas and Benjamin went through “French immersion”
teaching, i.e. all of their lessons such as maths,
geography etc., were taught in French. Both survived and
graduated High School as “Ontario Scholars” The language
appears to be an advantage for Ben’s job, and will be
essential for Thomas if he works for the Canadian
government.
The government is the main source of employment in Ottawa with
numerous buildings dotted around the city. Possibly due
to the concentration of government labs, a high
technology industry has sprung up, encouraged at one
point by research grants. This hi-tech industry was
initially associated with defense activities but grew to
become one of the larger nuclei for hi-tech within North
America. As with a number of comparable sites, the
industry collapsed around 2002 but is now beginning to
grow again.
Bernard came to Canada to work for one of these expanding
companies as part of a career that has taken him to a
number of different parts of the world:
Canada through the Seasons
We discovered quite rapidly that the weather in
Canada was somewhat different to that in the UK. We
arrived in November and although it was possible to
stroll outside for the first couple of days, it soon
became uncomfortably cold. We had not realized that cold
weather could really be THAT cold. We have since got
more used to it. At -15ºC you may feel your nose hairs
freezing up, a quite novel experience. At -30ºC it is
generally too cold to walk more than a few yards.
Nevertheless, the first few winters were very full of
things to do. We learned to skate on Ottawa’s Rideau
Canal (5 miles of cultivated ice) and then started
downhill and cross country skiing. Our two sons skied on
Sundays and some evenings. Efficient snow clearance and
good car servicing is necessary to ensure mobility in
all weathers, for leisure and work. (We have our own
petrol driven snow-blower for clearing the drive. It is
a similar size to a lawnmower and eliminates
shovelling). All of the photos on the right reflect
the four seasons. Click on any photo to see a larger
image. Generally the snow builds up through the winter
until about the middle of April when the weather warms
up and the snow melts. I always feel that it is a bit
like a big switch as the transition from cold to hot is
very rapid. There is not much of a spring here: the snow
melts and it gets hot. Plants appear rapidly from
previously frozen ground. Summers
are often as hot as the winter is cold. In fact with
high humidity they can be uncomfortably hot. Many people
here have cottages by lakes etc (we don’t), where they
go for most weekends. We tend to stay at home and switch
on the air-conditioning. We do however have a pool, so
in the middle of summer can dash out of the cool house
for a swim, without staying around too much in the heat.
Strangely enough we do seem to get an autumn. At
least the leaves on the trees turn into a range of very
attractive colours before they fall.
In true British style, Gillian makes valiant attempts
to maintain a garden. Due to the extremes of climate,
this is more difficult than in England. Our garden backs
onto a wooded ravine. We see quite a few different
creatures, chipmunks, squirrels, ground hogs, rabbits,
raccoons plus the occasional skunk and fox. These
creatures treat our garden a bit like a large
delicatessen. We have vines but the raccoons usually get
the grapes. Chipmunks like raspberries and squirrels eat
apples. The tomatoes seem to survive. It must be that no
particular creature favours them, or maybe they are
sufficiently prolific that losses can be sustained.
Lawns are hard to maintain here. There are some grubs
that live in the roots of the grass. It is quite common
for a raccoon to come along during the night and peel
back the turf to get at the grubs. Re-turfing of lawns
is a common Summer chore.
We also see quite a variety of
birds. In the autumn (the time of writing this), there
are hundreds of Canadian Geese circling noisily around
and moving into V-shaped formations ready for the trek
south. We get humming birds in the summer, which can be
quite ferocious and may use their disproportional long
beak to ram into other much larger birds (such as the
oversized
Canadian version of robins) that may annoy them. They behave a bit
like small guided weapons, as they can hover and then
suddenly move rapidly forwards. In addition, one or more
pairs of beautiful “Red Cardinals” now seem to stay
around all winter. They have more than one brood each
year and can sometimes be seen frantically encouraging
the new offspring to move into the next tree. In
general Canada has been a good experience. Both England
and Canada have good points and bad. As a country,
though Canada is under-populated compared to England
which now feels quite crowded. Canada still has huge
scope for development. It is striking sitting on an
aircraft from Ottawa to Winnipeg at night, that you can
go a whole hour without seeing lights below. Although in
Ottawa we are actually further south than southern
England (at the latitude of Milan), there are no major
roads or population centers north of here. Lots of
trees.
We often miss England but we will
probably stay here in Canada. We get back in the UK
about twice a year. It has to be said that the pubs in
England are better than those here. There are however a
large variety of ethnic restaurants in Ottawa. We get
very good Chinese, Indian and French. Other ethnic
restaurants such as “East African” and “Afghan’ can
provide very original eating experiences but have not
been compelling enough for us to return.
A number of people have commented about a
trans-Atlantic syndrome: you work in North America and
take vacations in the UK. We have experienced some of
that especially with ageing parents but have managed to
travel around Canada and the US quite a bit Also the
Caribbean is relatively close and we have had some good
package breaks down there.
A warming trend seems to have been occurring over the
past few years. The winters are not quite as brutal.
Canada may be a net winner in the ‘global warming”
stakes. We have to wait and see.
Bernard's Career
At university I gained a BSc and a PhD in physics and
subsequently did Post Doctoral fellowships at the
University of Akron (Ohio) and University College of
North Wales (Bangor), in colloid and polymer science.
I decided to go into product development and was successful in
gaining a job with Rank Xerox as part of the Xerox
Research group in Welwyn Garden City. Here we were
engaged in developing new technologies for electrostatic
printing. This lasted about three years until the
research lab was closed down.
After the Xerox episode I was fortunate to gain a job with a
branch of Marconi also based in Hertfordshire that was
starting to develop towed array signal processing
systems to enable tracking of Russian submarines. The
work was quite mathematical and not at all like polymer
science but I managed to make the transition and ended
up running a group working on new sonar signal
processing implementations. Over the next eight years I
worked for both British Aerospace and branches of
Marconi on infra-red and sonar sensor systems for
military applications.
An opportunity came up to work on sonar systems in Canada, which
resulted in the family getting relocated. Since being
in Canada I have moved away from under-water systems and
have been working mainly on RF systems for radar,
communications and signal interception.
During the past five years we passed through a hi-Tech boom and
in common with a number of other people that I know over
here, succumbed to working for “start up” companies that
promised very good remuneration. (One company paid me a
lot to work in Winnipeg for a year). I did really well
on the up-side but in common with a number of colleagues
was out of work for about a year when the bubble burst.
Overall, I probably did slightly better than breaking
even. I also know people that made many millions and
others that lost their life’s savings.
About a year ago I was offered and took another job with
the company that brought us to Canada in the first
place, this time to work on the development of
communications intercept systems rather than sonar
systems. This is interesting work and I sleep slightly
better at night. |
