Ottawa: An Experience

As some of you know, I attended a school for the deaf from grade seven to grade twelve in 2002, the year I graduated. I hold a lot of good memories from these years at the school along with some not-so-great memories. It’s just how life balances it out. Ernest C. Drury, a school for the deaf in Milton, Ontario of Canada. It’s a provincial school and they did have some major problems with how they handled the deaf education. That’s another story.

As you can see, that’s a truckload of chickens. It’s safe to assume the place they’re going to isn’t going to be a paradise. Maybe that was in bad taste, but you know it’s true. Nothing we can do about that. At least they taste good. This truck passed our bus on the way to Ottawa. What a year that was. It was back in 2000 when I was in the tenth grade. Wow, 6 years has passed by, has it really been that long? Time fly by quite fast, life is short. Especially when you hold these memories as if you experienced them the day before.

The person “mediating” is Kevin Small, a former classmate of mine. I’m not sure if I recall where I took this picture but I believe it was at a park we stopped at to have lunch. It was quite a long trip. It took us around six hours to reach Ottawa from Milton. Ottawa is the capital city of Canada and they have a lot of beautiful buildings and a rich history. They also have an awesome war museum. We stayed at a university dorm building for 4 nights; we had a blast over there even though we had some faculty members keeping their eyes on us. Some students got to perform pranks onto each other that week including one particular incident during a shower. Somebody nearly lost a liver as a result.

The blue-tongued girl is Katie Fisher, another former classmate of mine. She was on a sugar high at the time I took her picture. She was quite a bright girl; she had a talent for writing, something we shared in common. We’re still keeping in contact after these years; I do that with a lot of my former classmates. If it wasn’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have been able to keep in contact with a lot of ex-classmates. Just one of the many reasons why to not take the Internet for granted.

Oh yes, this is priceless. The group of faculty members you see here were victims of a plan we had came up with to get our curfew extended. We bought this particular flag representing the city of Ottawa to honour the faculty members for their dedication and hard work on organizing our Ottawa trip. Or that was what we wanted them to believe and hope that they’ll extend our curfew by a couple hours. We were only able to get it extended by a half-hour or a bit longer. At least we got something out of it and the teacher holding the flag mounted it onto a wall in his classroom. Every single time I looked at that flag for two grades after that year, I thought of how we had came up with such a plan to extend the curfew by using the faculty members. I don’t condone using people to your advantage because it’s plainly wrong. It’s true, I was involved and I did regret it to a certain degree because we were deceiving a few people in order to gain from it. Well, we learn from our mistakes.

Yes, that is a car that once belonged to the evil dictator, Adolf Hitler. This was at a war museum that I went to in Ottawa. It was quite an amazing museum with an extraordinary exhibit on several wars Canadians were involved with. The car had a smashed window; I suspect it was done decades before it was brought to Ottawa. I can understand why somebody would smash Hitler’s car. To me, it was a piece of history and I have no respect for Hitler, but I do believe that some objects should be preserved and well protected and put onto display for people to look at. For me, it meant something to see Hitler’s car in person because it was a way of connecting with the past. People often find that by seeing or touching an object linked to an important event in history to be enlightening and an experience never to be forgotten.

I wouldn’t mind visiting Ottawa again someday; it is quite a beautiful city to visit. The city has a rich history and the federal parliament building is quite a beauty. Looking at the pictures isn’t enough, you have to be there to believe and be in awe. There are a large amount of historical buildings in Ottawa and they are nothing to scoff at. If you were to make a trip to Ottawa, you will never believe your eyes once you set your eyes on some of the buildings. If you think the exteriors are quite something, wait till you see the interiors of some of these buildings.

I’m glad that I live in a great country, which is Canada.