FAILED OTTAWA: The Town That Fun Didn’t Forget

Published 04/27/2023 · Updated 04/27/2023

A Failed Ottawa is a multi-part series looking at how the municipal government has failed this city. Parts 1 and 2 look at the foundation of this community and its growth by meeting the needs of a country and its capital.

Ottawa … “the town that fun forgot.” Who cares.

It doesn’t matter. People who care about this don’t matter. Is that all you have to talk about? Pathetic.

I’ve had fun in Ottawa. More fun than people should be allowed to have … anywhere … not just in Ottawa. There’s fun here … honest.

Look, I know towns that aren’t fun. I grew up in London, Ont. … WASPish, prudish, agrarian, honest, sturdy but not much fun. People in London not only don’t like to dance, they don’t like to be around people who dance. In fact, they don’t like to know people who know people who like to dance. I don’t dance.

Fun is not a state of geography. It is a state of mind. If you’re with the right people (and yes fun is people), you can have fun in Timmins or Moosonee or even Toronto.

A FAILED OTTAWA: A Formula For Success Lost

So trash the Ottawa line about the lack of fun. There’s enough fun here … at least for me … or most anywhere but I’m from southwestern Ontario. I might be the wrong person to ask.

When our confused and misguided former mayor Jim Watson took one of his initial rides in our ill-fated new train, he said it was world-class and it would make Ottawa world-class. If trains made cities world-class, Winnipeg would be Paris. It’s not but you can have fun there. But Winnipeg knows its limitations. Ottawa and Toronto do not.

Nevertheless, Ottawa is not world class (whatever that is) and it will never be world class despite all the hissy-fits journalist Andrew Cohen throws. Ottawa is Ottawa and that’s good enough. In fact, more than good enough. We have a very smart and well-educated people, wonderful institutions and we accomplish great and small things. If your ticker went a bit wonky, would you rather be at Parkdale and Carling near the brilliant heart institute or Times Square? If you were about to die anyway, Times Square. If you wanted to live, Parkdale and Carling.

Toronto desperately wants to be world class and New York and it never will be. Why? Because it is Toronto and not New York. Toronto has been so emasculated by New York that it built as its symbol the world’s highest free-standing phallic symbol. Why it is upstanding is hard to know. I mean, it’s Toronto. What’s so sexy about that?

Comedian Mike Myers relates a story of having dinner in Manhattan with his mentor and godfather of Saturday Night Live Lorne Michaels, who is apparently not very much fun. He and Myers are both ex-Torontonians.

Myers told Michaels about an Italian dinner he had in Toronto that was world class, just like as if you were in New York.

To which Michaels responded in his droll way: “That’s something you don’t hear here.”

And that’s the point. A city must know its limitations, like people. New York never says it is world class (childish an expression as that is) because that never crosses its mind. It just is world class … like Paris and Rome. If you’re doing it, what’s the use of saying it. It’s just repetition. And that’s why Toronto won’t be world class and neither will Ottawa. It’s because they use the term “world class.” If they were world class, they wouldn’t have to say it. And other people would know it.

A FAILED OTTAWA: The Forgotten Origins

Did Babe Ruth say he was world class? No. He just went out and hit home runs. It ain’t braggin’ if yer doin’ it.

The “town that fun forgot” was penned by journalist Allan Fotheringham. He also called Ottawa “yesterday’s city, tomorrow.” Vancouver was the “Narcissus of the West Coast.” Brian Mulroney was “the jaw that walked like a man.” Fotheringham was an equal opportunity slagger.

He was just a journalist so he spelled good. Journalism is not that difficult as you can see by reading this. If it were complicated, I wouldn’t be doing it.

And as for fun, what would Fotheringham know about it? He was on that old CBC chestnut Front Page Challenge which was the show that fun forgot. Who needed Sominex when you had Front Page Challenge?

No, Fotheringham didn’t create Shopify like Ottawa did. Or organize Canada’s war effort against Hitler in 1939. Or create a type of wheat that made the Prairies the breadbasket to the world like the Central Experimental Farm did. Ottawa did those things. Fotheringham did not. He wrote funny words.

Anyone who believes Dr. Foth’s words about Ottawa means they take that phrase seriously, which also means they have peas for brains and not quite enough to fill a small container of humus.

Furthermore, Fotheringham is dead. How much fun is that?

Which brings us to the Ottawa Nightlife Economy Action Plan which has a very similar name as the Ottawa LRT Public Inquiry Inaction Plan and will probably be as active as the 25 average people in this city to oversee it. Our councillors wouldn’t know what to do if fun fell in their lap.

These are councillors who don’t know this city’s limitations and actually expect this inaction plan to be any more successful than the LRT inaction plan.

Once again, the municipality should stick to what it knows and when they find out, they should do it. One of those things is not light rail or yesterday’s super future library that is wildly over-budget. City council in this community is so out of things that it will follow the failure that is Lansdowne 1.0 with the failure that will be Lansdowne 2.0. When Watson discovered that the northside stands at Lansdowne had to be rebuilt like the southside were already, he said presciently that maybe they should have rebuilt both sides at once.

And you wonder why the LRT doesn’t work …

Look, if you want to go drinking, and realize afterwards you have a footprint on your tongue and the only thing you can remember from the night before is the colour of the bartender’s socks, you should go to Crescent Street.

But if you want to go to a jazz festival where the leader of the band with a rather ferocious downbeat calls for the audience to clap and it doesn’t, you should go to Confederation Park in June. It’s a nice quiet evening.

It’s all about your conception of fun, usefulness and fulfilment. It’s about your limitations and not getting in over your head.

Which is what our municipal government has done horrifically at Lansdowne or with light rail or with yesterday’s pile of bricks and mortar that is our new super library.

The City of Ottawa is way in over its head and doesn’t realize its limitations.

Which will bring us to the next part of this series.

Ken Gray

Leslie Nielsen Interview on the Front Page Challenge, 1992