New Ottawa businesses head into holidays with cheer
By Allison McNeely and Micki Cowan A number of Ottawa boutique owners heading into their first Christmas season say they’re feeling optimistic about sales despite the opening of retail giants such as H&M and Target. “I’m pretty dialed into how people shop,” said Mandy Gosewich, owner of Stunning, a new fashion accessories store in ByWard Market. “At the end of the day what it all boils down to is assortment, what you bring into your store, and service.” Gosewich, a fourth generation ByWard market business owner, opened her accessories shop in May of this year. She said her shop has something for everyone, from $12 earring studs to statement necklaces selling for hundreds of dollars. Jill Wilkinson, assistant manager at Baby EnRoute, a baby store in Westboro, shares Gosewich’s commitment to excellent service and product selection. Wilkinson said the store offers a variety of European brands that are “not available at Target.” Sales have increased since the store opened in July, with many parents coming in looking for chariots, the all-terrain vehicle strollers that are robust enough for winter snow and aren’t available in-store elsewhere in Ottawa. BMO Financial Group released its holiday spending outlook in November and predicted Canadians will spend an average of $1,810 this year — up 12 per cent from $1,610 in 2012. Darren Clare, retail specialist at Avison Young, said Ottawa is a reliable place to open up shop. “Ottawa traditionally has a very strong retail market, especially with the government. There’s stability there,” Clare said. “The consumers get out there and they spend their money with confidence.” Clare said geographic location and store size have an impact on whether or not stores are in competition. He said big stores in malls are not competition for smaller boutiques downtown. “H&M being thousands of square feet and a mom-and-pop, somebody in the Glebe with 1,200 square feet, I’d be shocked if there was any impact,” Clare said. “Target’s competition is obviously Walmart.” However, it is getting more expensive to rent retail space in Ottawa’s upscale neighbourhoods. The Glebe currently rents for $50 to $55 per square foot, plus operating costs, due to the construction condos and the new CFL stadium, which drives up land prices in the area, Clare said Gosewich acknowledges that in an entrepreneur’s first year of business, it’s essential to do the work. “I’ll be here seven days per week until Dec. 24,” Gosewich said. She relies heavily on foot traffic through the Market and word-of-mouth, including social media, to get people into her shop. Knifewear, a shop in the Glebe selling high-end Japanese kitchen knives, has relied on the chef community...
Local craft beers spice up holidays
By Thomas Hall and Shannon Lough The holiday season has traditionally been a time for mulled wines, eggnog and cider. But some local beer makers are hopeful craft beers can make inroads on the holiday turf. “There’s a dramatic shift in the way the city views beer,” Patrick Fiori, Clocktower Brew Pub’s brew master said. “People who are willing to spend a little more on quality are craft beer drinkers.” Clocktower is tapping its festive holiday stout for the fifth year today. “It’s dark brown in colour and a little on the sweet side,” said Fiori. “We add nitrogen to it instead of CO2 to give it a creamy taste, similar to Guinness.” “It’s a nice beer after a long day of winter shopping, low in alcohol and creamy,” Fiori said. Across Ottawa a new player in the craft beer market, Beyond the Pale, has just released its first winter brew. “We have a number of different beers that we will put out every month or every other month. The Darkerness is one that we’ve just released, and will continue to put out throughout the winter,” said Robert McIsaac, a partner at Beyond the Pale. “The Darkerness is a 10.2 per cent oatmeal stout. It’s big, multi-flavoured and awesome. And if you drink too much of it, it may kill you,” McIsaac said with a grin. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has been working with Ontario’s craft brewers for about ten years, Heather MacGregor, a spokesperson for the LCBO, said. “We have a very good relationship with the Ontario Craft Brewers Association. It’s been mutually very beneficial,” said MacGregor. “It’s a huge category for us, and we work very closely with the Ontario Craft Brewers.” “In 2006 we sold 2.5 million bottles of craft beer, which was about $4.5 million in sales. By last year sales were up to $40 million,” MacGregor said. According to an LCBO fact sheet on craft beer, last year craft beer sales grew by 33 per cent, the highest growth rate for all beer segments in Ontario. “Only ten per cent of beer drinkers are currently drinking craft beers,” said McIsaac. “There is a lot of room for the market to grow as more people are exposed to new types of beer.” Here are three Beyond the Pale brews: Their best seller Pink Fizz, and two newer beers, including the holiday special the Darkerness. Craft Beers in Ottawa with Patrick Fiori, Clocktower Brew...
Snow: New exhibit opening at Museum of Civilization
By Diana Matthews and Mara Selanders with Brett Throop We love it, we hate it, and we live with it. Snow. It is a vital part of Canadian identity and now the focus of an exhibit opening at the Museum of Civilization on Friday. Whether or not the white blanket leaves you cold is irrelevant, exhibit curator Bianca Gendreau said. The installation isn’t about changing popular opinion. “We don’t plan to change people’s minds,” she said. “People are invited to discover the cultural history of snow.” The exhibit will focus on adaptation, innovation and inspiration, three key cultural aspects of how snow is a part of our daily lives. The adaptation section will show the methods First Nations people and European settlers after them used to cope with winter . This section will feature items like snowshoes alongside excerpts from the travel diaries of explorers and merchants who recorded ways of coping with snow and learning to adapt to a snowy climate. These diaries illustrate pioneering ways of living with snow, innovations that form the basis of the middle section of the exhibit. “It’s really about transportation and snow clearing, and all of the different things that have been put forward, or adapted, or modified, by Canadians,” Gendreau said. Once Canadians learned to live with the snow, they also learned to have fun with it. The exhibit has a section on how Canadian Olympic athletes show their passion for winter. From passion comes inspiration, which is the theme of the third section, about some of Canada’s foremost artists and the work they have done on snow. Snow is also essential for Canadian agriculture, tourism and the economy. Chris Maxwell and Melissa Mourez, both fine arts students at the University of Ottawa, spent part of Tuesday rolling snowballs and tossing them to each other. Chris Maxwell talks about the exhibit. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41691394/Snow_Chris%20on%20Exhibit.mp3 “It would be interesting to see because our winters are a little different from the winters of some of the settlers that might’ve come over here at first,” Maxwell said. “To see the transition of how they would’ve adapted and gotten into the whole concept of snow – how they would’ve utilized it or how it would’ve treated them or how they would’ve seen it.” Chris Maxwell talks about how much he loves snow. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41691394/Snow_Chris.mp3 Melissa Mourez talks how snow makes her nervous. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41691394/Snow_Melissa2.mp3 The exhibit will run at the museum from Dec. 6, 2013 to Sept. 28,...
Ottawa food bank hopes holiday donations last through winter
By Brett Throop and Jordanna Tennebaum It’s the busiest time of year at the Ottawa Food Bank’s warehouse in Gloucester. As shelves fill, volunteers cross their fingers that the food being collected will last after the season of giving has passed. “The challenge is that we feed people every month, 12 months of the year,” said Michael Maidment, executive director of the Ottawa Food Bank. “It’s definitely more difficult to collect food after Christmas.” Ottawa Food Bank event coordinator Maggie Rose said those who work at the food bank joke about waiting for the snow to fall for donations to start flooding in. Luckily the snow came early this year, and donations came with it. Maidment said the holiday season is a big spur for people to donate. “People are feeling very charitable and they’re starting to get into that holiday spirit,” he said. Many families and corporations make collecting food and money donations part of their holiday events, Maidment said. But this still might not be enough food to last the winter. The Ottawa Food Bank estimates that it receives almost half of its annual donations during the holidays. Maidment expects the food being collected now will last until about mid-February. Donations plummet in January and February, “so we need to make sure that the inventory that we have in the warehouse can sustain families into that time as well,” Maidment said. Adding their share to stock the food bank’s shelves on Tuesday were eight members of the local charity GoodGuysTri, who unloaded 1300 kilograms of donated goods collected during a month-long food drive. “At this time of year the Ottawa Food Bank is on a number of people’s minds, because it is the holiday season, whether it be Eid, Hannukah, Christmas or whatnot,” said Mike Herzog, founder of GoodGuysTri. Heightened awareness doesn’t necessarily result in the donation of healthy, balanced foods, however. For that reason, the Ottawa Food Bank is asking for donations from a list of healthy items they currently lack. Maidment said canned meat and fish, peanut butter, rice and whole wheat breakfast cereals are most needed right now. The food bank also fundraises money for perishable foods like fresh fruits and vegetables that food drives aren’t able to collect. In fact, the food bank’s activities reach well beyond the traditional food drive. It runs a breakfast and after school snack program for children, a baby supply cupboard and donation programs for chicken, vegetables and other perishable goods. Ottawa Public Health bolsters the food bank’s programs by helping those who access the donated goods meet their nutritional needs. “The reality for those who access food...
Ontario testing needle-free flu vaccine for children
By Thomas Hall and Shannon Lough Ottawa Public Health wrapped up its biggest flu shot campaign ever this weekend but researchers are still looking for a more effective way to prevent the flu in children. Some say the answer is FluMist, a vaccination that is sprayed into your nose and not shot through a needle. The FluMist vaccination has been publicly funded for children by B.C., Alberta, Quebec, PEI, and the three territories. Currently, Public Health Ontario is studying the nasal spray vaccination in schools to determine whether this vaccine is the best option for children between the ages of two and eight. Good news for those scared of needles. “The goal of the flu vaccination campaign is to vaccinate everyone, especially those most at risk for complications from the flu, including children from six months to five years of age, seniors and the chronically ill,” said Dr. Jennifer Pereira of Public Health Ontario. Making vaccines more efficient is critical for success, said Earl Brown, a professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa who specializes in vaccination. Unlike other viruses, the flu changes every year, so people need to get vaccinated annually. But technology is allowing for more effective flu shots, said Brown. And scientists are better able than ever to pinpoint strains of the virus, and predict which strains will hit hardest come flu season. Unfortunately, those who need the flu shot most, seniors and the very young, can be the hardest to vaccinate, said Brown. A few years ago Canada introduced Adjuvant to its vaccines, which acts like a booster making the vaccines more effective for seniors. Public Health Ontario is hoping FluMist can do the same for children. The new vaccine consists of Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine (LAIV), a weakened influenza virus that has been found to be more effective than the traditional flu shot for children aged two to 17 years, said Pereira. The trick, explained Brown, is that the virus has been weakened so it can’t survive in the lungs. The virus lasts long enough to create antibodies, and then dies. “No one ever died from a runny nose,” joked Brown, but the risk is serious when the flu gets into the lungs. The flu is the most likely respiratory infection to send someone to the hospital, Brown said. And its symptoms, sore muscles, nausea, and fever are not to be taken lightly. Studies on FluMist, the brand name for the LAIV nasal spray vaccine produced by AstraZeneca, have shown positive results, but it has only been approved for Canadians between the ages of two to 59. A pilot study is being conducted at 10...
Road salt use in Ottawa still climbing
By Micki Cowan and Allison McNeely City hall initiatives to reduce salt use on Ottawa’s snowy roads seem to have melted away. Ottawa has a salt management plan which aims to reduce salt use over the long term. The 2014 transportation budget allocates new funding to support salt reduction techniques such as wetting the salt in advance so that it can be spread in liquid form. Another innovation uses GPS to track where trucks are spreading to avoid duplication. But the city’s program manager for operational research, Maxwell Miner, said the city isn’t actually using less salt than in previous years and there are no new initiatives proposed to directly reduce salt use. “City council approved a pretty rich set of quality standards. It calls for a lot of salting, meaning a lot of the road networks need to be bare or centre-bare,” Miner said. This means it is difficult to meet salt reduction goals. The city’s road salt usage varies depending on the amount of snowfall, but more than 181,0oo tonnes of salt were used on Ottawa’s roads in 2012, according to data provided by the city. That’s roughly the weight of 30,000 elephants who, if lined end to end, would reach from here to Montreal. That amount is also the highest the city has seen since 2008. A report on salt use says the city aims to clear snow down to bare pavement within four hours on high priority roads, most arterials, and most major collector roads near schools, transit or bike lanes. But clearer roads mean more salt. Coun. David Chernushenko said while he doesn’t know of any new initiatives to reduce road salt, the increased funding in the budget for ongoing salt reduction programs means the city is already more economical with its salt use. “In some cases we want to just carry on what we’re doing,” said Chernushenko. In 2011, the city agreed to do a pilot project with Earth Innovations, a company that makes an environmentally friendly salt alternative called EcoTraction. But Earth Innovations CEO Mark Watson said the pilot project never went forward. “We’re absolutely interested in doing a pilot project. We always have been,” Watson said. “To this day I still don’t understand why they cancelled the initiative.” Chernushenko said the city cancelled the project because the product is more expensive than the salt currently used in Ottawa. Environment Canada developed a risk management plan for handling road salts in 2001, after finding it is toxic and harms groundwater, soil and plants. The city voluntarily signed on to the proposal and it forms the basis of its salt management plans. This...