Author: Paul Tomblin

BFCs

On the drive home from Ottawa, there is a field that you suddenly come across that has these gigantic crow sculptures in them. The first time you see them there is sort of a “oh crows…OH MY GOD HUGE FUCKING CROWS…oh they’re fake” moment. Yesterday, in spite of the pouring rain and fading light, I got out to take some pictures of them.

I need to sort though these pictures a bit more and maybe do some cleanup in Photoshop, but I was hoping the overcast and rain would make a more eeeerie effect, and it did. I need to come back with a manual focus camera, though, because a couple of times I wanted one crow framed by another, and the camera I was using tended to focus on the near one (or the grass growing under it) instead.

Taken aback

Trying to get back into my hotel room, I found several streets blocked off by police cars. I asked for and was given permission to go through to the parking lot of my hotel, no problem. But when Alyssa and I went out for lunch, we had to walk right past the road block, so I asked the policemen what was going on. “Oh”, he said, “police funeral”. I was so shocked I actually took a step backwards. “Don’t worry, we should be done soon.” He seemed remarkably … if not cheerful, at least unconcerned, about it.

I can’t find anything in the on-line Ottawa Citizen about it, so hopefully it was a death from natural causes. Cops dying in the line of duty has always been a pretty damn rare thing in Canada, and I hope like hell it’s not getting more common.