This week’s news you can use includes the scoop on VIA Rail’s new train cars, tips on fall camping in the Outaouais and a TV story about a hyper-Canadian shop in Perth. You’ll also find out when to get tickets to a fiddle festival, and how to save money on Hertz rental cars and Stratford tickets. And as if all that weren’t enough, I have a hot tip about a pie subscription.
Cover photo: Members of the company in Something Rotten! Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
Events
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.
If you’re sad that you missed your chance to get a weekend pass to the Gatineau Hills Fiddle Festival (October 22 to 25), get to your computer at 10am on Wednesday, September 9. That’s when single tickets to the popular event will go on sale.
You can sign up now for the Race to End Homelessness, a fundraising event featuring 1K, 5K and 10K runs, on Sunday, September 27. All routes will take runners through Ottawa’s Pine View Golf Course.
Alternatively on September 27, you could do the Ovarian Cancer Canada Walk of Hope, which will see fundraisers doing 1.5K and 5K walks in Britannia Park.
Tickets are available now for the Blue Door Gala, which raises money for the Ottawa Mission’s Food Services Training Program. It’s taking place on Thursday, November 12, at the Infinity Convention Centre in Ottawa.
The exhibition Marion Wagschal: Cyclops and Other Tales opens on Friday, September 11, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The retrospective showcases six decades of the Montreal-based painter’s work.
The Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough is currently exhibiting what is believed to be the largest existing collection of Canadian canoe-themed art. Canadian Geographic has an interview with the collectors.
Discounts and deals
Members of the company in Something Rotten! Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
The Stratford Festival has extended the runs of its two big musicals this season, Something Rotten! and Guys and Dolls. Each has been extended by two weeks, so Guys and Dolls now closes on November 14 and Something Rotten! on November 15. And if you buy tickets to those added performances before September 15, you’ll save up to 30 percent. (My husband and I saw Something Rotten! last week and enjoyed it immensely. I can also highly recommend the festival’s productions of Death of a Salesman, Othello and The Tao of the World.)
This week’s VIA Rail discount isn’t huge—but, hey, every little bit helps these days! Book by midnight on Tuesday, September 8, to save $15 on select trains.
CTV News recently profiled Perth General Store, where 95 percent of the stock is Canadian. See the video above. (P.S.: The store is one of many listed in my huge list of places to shop for local products.)
Wondering where to enjoy fall camping in West Quebec? Tourisme Outaouais has lots of ideas, in Ange-Gardien, Petite-Nation and elsewhere.
As reported by Stittsville Central, the Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust (MMLT) recently acquired a 93-acre property on Clyde Lake in Lanark Highlands, which will become the Clyde Lake Nature Reserve. The purchase will help the MMLT to safeguard the habitat of several species at risk.
In more good conservation news, The Pointer reports that Ontario Nature recently added roughly 18 acres to its Lost Bay Nature Reserve in the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands. (Scroll down in the linked article, past the graphic about biodiversity, to see the news.)
Tour operator G Adventures recently reported a 250-percent, year-over-year increase in the number of Canadians booking trips to Canadian destinations.
VIA Rail recently announced it is buying 313 new rail cars, which Alstom Canada will manufacture in Thunder Bay. That news will likely elicit a big “hooray” from anyone who has spent time recently in VIA’s bumpy older carriages.
If you have something to say about the proposal to build a new east-end bridge over the Ottawa River, which would link Highway 417 in Ottawa to Autoroute 50 in Gatineau, you have until October 9 to provide your comments.
Skinny Birch Pie Co. has set up a pop-up pie wagon in Alexandria where you can get a pie subscription. Yes, you read that right. That’s my kind of continuing commitment.
As the owner of Ottawa Road Trips, I acknowledge that I live on, work in and travel through the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be present on this land. Ottawa Road Trips supports Water First, a non-profit organization that helps address water challenges in Indigenous communities in Canada through education, training and meaningful collaboration.
