Friendly Spirit
We’ve had another visitor to stay. Sarah’s university friend Mark (he’s my friend too, it is just that Sarah met him at uni) had a business trip in Toronto and so took the opportunity to visit us afterwards. Mark likes sports so we were pleased that the local ice hockey team were doing well in the play-offs and were still playing and that we managed to get tickets. The team lost the game but we had a good time cheering them on.
Sarah did a good job as tour guide while I was at work and took Mark to some of the Tulip Festival sites. They went to Dow’s Lake and although the boating lake wasn’t supposed to open for another week, they told the attendant that Mark was only in town this week and he let them have a pedallo and they were the only ones on the lake. This was probably a good job as they spent most of time going round in circles getting nowhere fast.
Always wanting to show our guests a good time, on Friday night we took Mark on the Ghost and Gallows Haunted walk of Ottawa tour. Ottawa is a young city and hasn’t had a very turbulent past so the tour focussed mainly on the murder of Thomas Darcy McGee. McGee was a prominent politician in the mid 1800’s when Ottawa was in its infancy. He was reported well liked for a politician, though someone obviously took a dislike to him as he was shot dead in the doorway to his home. At the time of McGee’s murder, Canada was having a problem with an Irish contingent called the Fenians who planned to capture Canada and trade it with the British for Irish independence. The police fingered four Fenians for McGee’s murder, let three of them go and eventually pinned it all on a man called James Wheelan, despite there being very little evidence of his guilt and far more evidence of his innocence. He was then hung from the prison gallows and now supposedly haunts the gaol, which was shut down in the 1970s due to inhumane living conditions and is now a youth hostel. Incidentally, the gun that might have been used to kill Darcy McGee went for auction in Ottawa last week and was bought by a local museum in order to keep it in Canada.
Sarah did a good job as tour guide while I was at work and took Mark to some of the Tulip Festival sites. They went to Dow’s Lake and although the boating lake wasn’t supposed to open for another week, they told the attendant that Mark was only in town this week and he let them have a pedallo and they were the only ones on the lake. This was probably a good job as they spent most of time going round in circles getting nowhere fast.
Always wanting to show our guests a good time, on Friday night we took Mark on the Ghost and Gallows Haunted walk of Ottawa tour. Ottawa is a young city and hasn’t had a very turbulent past so the tour focussed mainly on the murder of Thomas Darcy McGee. McGee was a prominent politician in the mid 1800’s when Ottawa was in its infancy. He was reported well liked for a politician, though someone obviously took a dislike to him as he was shot dead in the doorway to his home. At the time of McGee’s murder, Canada was having a problem with an Irish contingent called the Fenians who planned to capture Canada and trade it with the British for Irish independence. The police fingered four Fenians for McGee’s murder, let three of them go and eventually pinned it all on a man called James Wheelan, despite there being very little evidence of his guilt and far more evidence of his innocence. He was then hung from the prison gallows and now supposedly haunts the gaol, which was shut down in the 1970s due to inhumane living conditions and is now a youth hostel. Incidentally, the gun that might have been used to kill Darcy McGee went for auction in Ottawa last week and was bought by a local museum in order to keep it in Canada.
posted by Ian @ 4:08 pm
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