Practice, practice, practice
With a week to go before my flight to Toulouse, I'm getting in some rehearsal time, playing tourist in the Canadian capital.
I’ve been spending some time in Ottawa with my friend Paul Sutcliffe, who I have known since Grade 4. Buddies right through to high school and beyond, we have lost touch from time to time, sometimes as long as a decade, but it’s the kind of friendship that bounces back to a comfortable and familiar beat within the first few seconds of reconnecting.
Paul is retired but admits it took him a while to acknowledge it. Suffice to say that his schedule is flexible when he’s not playing tennis or cycling or swimming. So last Sunday we drove up to Meech Lake in Gatineau Park with his partner Sara and did some kayaking and paddle boarding close to Justin Trudeau’s summer residence at Harrington Lake. Paul kept scouring the beaches for a back way to Harrington that he was convinced by studying some online maps was just around the next outcrop.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to test the efficiency of the Prime Minister’s RCMP security detail. (Even if we did run into him, I’m sure Justin would have turned it into a photo op.) Instead, the only excitement was when we got back to the boat-launch beach and Paul couldn’t find the car keys.
Today, we went on a 30k bike ride to Hull and back. Sorry, to Gatineau. Only us old-timers still use that reference (and make those old jokes). Ottawa is a very bike-friendly city and, apart from a few construction detours, it was a smooth and scenic ride along both banks of the Ottawa River, up to Hog’sBack Falls, pick up a veggie Poke bowl at Pomelo Hat and then back to Paul’s place for a dip in the pool.
At one point on the trajectory, I spotted a familiar building. It was the offices of VFS Global, the Visa Application Centre that had caused me so much unnecessary anguish and expense. I won’t bore you with the details — I already did that in an earlier column, lol. But I had to mark the occasion with a photo expressing my opinion of their automated, inaccessible and infuriating “customer service.”
But our first stop of the morning was the Service Canada office on Allumettières in Gatineau. In contrast with VFS, Paul’s experience in applying for a new passport here was quick and painless. They even CALLED him when there was a problem with his photo, which is why we popped by on our little bike tour. In and out in 15 minutes. How post-pandemic.
Next stop was Chief William Commanda Bridge, a repurposed railroad span over the Ottawa River now open to cyclists, runner and walkers. But not swimmers, as evidenced by the signage. Not sure how many cyclists it takes to exceed the weight capacity. Not wanting to risk it with my couch-potato physique, we stuck to the Gatineau side for another few kilometres.
Crossing over the Champlain Bridge (yes, they have one here too!), we entered the Remic Rapids Park, where “rock sculptor” John Felice Ceprano each spring and summer assembles dozens of carefully balanced sculptures from locally-sourced (so eco-conscious!) rocks — then takes it all down every fall! The roped off section of his “gallery” even attracts emulators of every age who assemble their own creations in the surrounding area. Art imitating art, eh what?
Speaking of art, Paul’s a big collector and even has an original Zilon he recovered and bought from a warehouse after the Bar Business changed it’s decor, which consisted of numerous Zilon originals on heavy metal panels. I had to break the news today that Zilon had died in late July, but that there would be a “célébration magistrale” of his art, coincidentally, in Montréal the next day at Place des Festivals. Serendipitously, Paul just happened to be driving to Montréal Thursday to pick up his son. So Paul is on a lucky streak and I’m hoping mine starts soon, because my third stress event of the week happened when I got back to my sister’s place and discovered that the new headphones I had bought for the trip were now, apparently, being worn by some random woman who stole the Amazon package off the front stoop and tossed the empty box in front of the staff at the Merry Dairy.
Anyway, as my friend Rebecca Fleming suggested the other day, bad luck supposedly comes in threes. Did I mention that Rebecca’s a federal scientist, a mom and a stand-up comic? No, that’s not the bad luck run of three. She enjoys all her “professions” (two of which don’t pay), but trying to hone your stage skills while driving your kids to sports and yourself crazy is a tough gig. Nevertheless, she made it to the second round of a comedy competition being hosted by the Ottawa West Yuk Yuk’s!
Perfect timing (maybe my luck is changing), the face-off was tonight, and I got to see Rebecca do an amazing job. The only woman in a nine-comic line-up, her sardonic observations about narcissism feeding self-loathing hit a chord with many in the room — but not enough to win, unfortunately.
Oh god, I hope I haven’t paid it forward. 😨
Kidding. Women in comedy still face a lot of hurdles that their male colleagues don’t. If they don’t adopt the same kind of aggressive self-promotion as the guys, if they aren’t out working the clubs at every opportunity, they are perceived as less committed, not aspirational enough for the limelight of better gigs (unless they laugh at the booker’s jokes or smile at his lewd invitations). The fact that they are home feeding their kids while their competitors are fine-tuning their latest masturbation joke doesn’t factor in. The women who “make it” in comedy, like in many other fields of life, have to work twice as hard, even when they are twice as funny.
As feminist and former Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton observed, “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”
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Have a good week, I’m taking a break until next Wednesday, likely filing from the Dorval airport as I get ready to board the next big leap in my life. Thanks for coming along for the ride!