The three of us are all back this week so tune in to listen to the new and improved Tuesday Morning Special Blend Line-up. With that kind of tag line how could we not be the #1 morning show in Ottawa? Disregarding commercial cliches at 7:30 Adam will be talking with Councilor Clive Doucet regarding his latest proposal involving Lansdowne and the NCC. As per usual we air on 93.1 CKCU FM in Ottawa and at www.ckcufm.com for everyone else.
This morning, I had the pleasure of talking with Ottawa’s own Jill Zmud about her new album, coming to writing music past the “Britney years”, and the nature of musical collaboration in town. She had her guitar, and also treated us to live acoustic versions of “East of the Line” and “Wish”.
She plays in Memphis in the near future, for those heading to Tennessee. She plays Ottawa again later in March.
This morning, Adam had a chance to chat with Peter Raaymakers of Public Transit in Ottawa about their new Journal on, of all things, public transit it Ottawa. The journal is free, online, and has a neat community-reviewed structure, and deserves to be checked out.
Last week, Josh had the opportunity to talk with members of Wide Mouth Mason about life returning to the road, what they’ve been up to in the last few years, and revisiting past concerts to make a live album.
They played Maverick’s last week, so ignore the pushing of the show. At times the phone was a bit spotty, so I do apologize if their are audio hiccups.
Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cooooold out there today.
Forgive me: you only host a radio show on Groundhog’s day so often.
We have an exciting show lined up for this week: After 6 weeks away travelling the world and landing at AZNAC beach a century too late, Adam returns. If we’re lucky; he’ll regale with stories from the road. If he’s lucky, we won’t make him run up Dunton Tower while doing it.
At 7:30, we’ll be joined by Ottawa songstress Jill Zmud. At 8, we’ll chat with Darryl Boyce, Assistant Vice-President (Facilities Management and Planning) at Carleton, about the University’s new campus master plan. At 8:30, we’ll speak with Peter Raaymakers from Public Transit in Ottawa about their new Journal of Public Transit in Ottawa.
Also, apart from a series of terrible Groundhog puns, we’ll touch on the some of the following:
Ottawa’s growingneed for a Springfield-esque coyote patrol.
Well, with rain like that I guess I have seen all that January weather can offer, at least short of an ice storm. I’m comfortable with that. Anyway, January showers bring February flowers. Join josh and me at 8:30 where we will be joined by Shawn and Safwan of Wide Mouth Mason, who play Mavericks Wednesday night.
We’ll also touch on the following:
Prorogation protests! 20,000 people in almost 50 cities rallied against Parliament shutting down on Saturday. Josh was there. I was at Ikea.
This morning, I had the chance to chat with George Dark, who is heading up the Lansdowne Strategic Design Review and Advisory Panel. To bring people up to speed, as part of moving forward with the Lansdowne Live plan, the city opted to appoint a design panel to help sort out what the whole thing is actually going to look like.
I was already generally supportive of the Lansdowne Live plan, mostly because I was pretty sure that we were going to let hopes of the BEST PLAN EVER get in the way of something that we can all use and enjoy, but this makes me a lot more hopeful. Coming from this, I think its a lot clearer that much of what we’ve already seen is largely a first draft, that we sorta know what the pieces that are going to be used are, but not actually what exact form they’ll take. That’s a good sign.
There is also room for optimism in that it sounds like there is going to be, or is at least an option for, public consultation in the early design phase. So, bidding companies will be encouraged to actually come and talk to the people that live here to help shape their proposal. That’s a good thing for a project that, rightly or wrongly, has left a nasty feeling of being imposed. We should all get uppity and make sure that happens.
This morning, Josh and I had a chance to chat with Ottawa mayoral candidate Jim Watson. We talked about why he was looking to come back to municipal politics, the challenges of a 10-month campaign (especially with the burden of a “front-runner” moniker), and talked specifically about transit and Lansdowne.
Watson clarified his comments from last week a bit, but still used some the phrasing that frustrated Reevely so last week (”Cut the suit to fit the cloth”, etc.) We pushed a bit on the transit issue, but he’s still pretty vague as to what something being affordable means. That said, he was pretty clear that it’s important to move forward on these files, and it doesn’t sound like he is going to look to change decisions that have already been made should he be elected. That’s a good thing.
Anyway, Watson is going to be an interesting force over the next year: he’s pretty clearly the front runner, and suspect that he’s going to be pretty tough to beat over the course of it. That means that, as we decide on these big issues, his opinion should have some affect amongst the public, even if he doesn’t get an actual vote at council.
This is the second of our conversations with mayoral candidates, having previously spoken with Alex Cullen. We’ll keep plugging away as time and circumstances permit, and will endeavour to speak with people again as things actually start to happen. We also won’t limit ourselves to the city-wide race, and will likely start turning our eyes to some choice council seats closer to the date.
We’ve got a pretty exciting show lined up for tomorrow: at 7:30, we’ll be joined by mayoral hopeful Jim Watson; at 8:30, we’ll talk with George Dark, who is heading up the Lansdowne Strategic Design Review and Advisory Panel.
This morning, Josh spoke with Andrew Nikiforuk on Wiebo Ludwig’s recent arrest and release in relation to a series of pipeline bombings in BC. Josh has a pretty good outline of the situation, and I suspect that we are going to hear more about this now that the search warrant is complete, but Nikiforuk makes a really neat comparison between this sort of situation and a divide between urban and rural Canada. Essentially, urban folk take for granted where our energy comes from, despite its extraction often having a pretty terrible effect on some rural communities way of life- effect’s that we would not brook ourselves.
Now, after the show Josh and I kicked ourselves for not leading out with Corb Lund’s “This is my prairie”, which more or less exactly mirrors the sort of sentiments that Nikiforuk talks about (and that have surrounded Ludwig for the last decade or more.) So, to make up for it, here it is on some other radio show on some other station, who happen to have video cameras rolling for making radio. Crazy.
Fellow Travellers 
