I’m in love with a municipal building - and I bet you are too
Your public pool. A rink. Your childhood library. Whatever it is, locate the feeling you have for this space and stay with it. It can be your anchor on the run up to the Oct. 26 election.
Driving past Ben Franklin Place on Centrepointe Drive the other day with my teenage son, he asked with genuine alarm: “Hey, what’s up with the construction fences around the rink?”
While growing up this rink would often make him grumpy because it has a no-hockey-stick rule. But he’s still a big fan. We skated there as a family when he was just figuring out how to glide on the ice. It was among the first spots he and his brother could be dropped off at solo.
“They’re not getting rid of the rink are they?” he asked. “People love that place.”
They are not. “All’s well,” I said. “The equipment is just being upgraded.”
Or, more specifically here’s a bit of what Laine Johnson, councillor for College Ward, said on Facebook:
“Built in 1987, the refrigeration pipes have aged out, with increasing maintenance costs and system leaks. The new refrigeration system is expected to improve efficiency and might even lengthen the rink season!”
My son was relieved. And I didn’t give his rink reaction another thought until a day later when I had my own “mushiness about municipal infrastructure” moment.
Friday afternoon while working at the Nepean Centrepointe library, I spotted that it was Ben Franklin Place’s 38th birthday weekend. (The facility’s grand opening in 1988 was a three-day extravaganza: April 29 is the “official” big day.)
But rather than noting this discovery as a kind of “huh, neat,” historical fact, I instead felt something a bit weirder.
Like, genuine happiness?
“Awww, how lovely,” I thought. “Happy Birthday, building.”
Because it turns out that I too have strong emotions about this facility at 101 Centrepointe Drive. But more on that in a moment.*
Before we go any further, I’ll ask you to consider what your favourite municipal facility might be.
Maybe it’s a stand-alone rink like Howard Darwin Centennial Arena on Merivale Road. Or the Minto Recreation Complex because you love your weekly basketball game. Or the Pinecrest Recreation Complex because because of your weight-room friends. Or the Nepean Creative Arts Centre in Bells Corners.
Or someplace else in the world altogether. (Nepeanville is both a place and a space.)
Wherever it is, the place just needs to be communal and stir something in you. Like, if you sit with it, a memory might bubble up that makes you laugh. Or, it makes you think, “I like how I feel when I’m there. I like who I am when I’m there.”
Mostly, the place should feel like a home away from home. (One that happens to be tax-payer funded.)
Have you identified it?
Excellent, hang onto that thought as we continue.
What else happened on Ben Franklin Place’s birthday?
As many of you will know, May 1 was also the start of the campaign season for municipal elections across Ontario.
Beginning Friday and continuing until Aug. 21, candidates for mayor or council can file - or withdraw - nomination papers.
So between now and election day on Oct. 26, candidates in Ottawa’s 24 wards and those running for mayor will have plenty of campaign announcements for us.
They’ll address the most significant municipal issues on our collective minds just now: transit, the cost of living and housing challenges. We’ll hear talk about the quality and cost of essential services like garbage pick up, snow plowing, transit and road maintenance.
And, hopefully, in our immediate neighbourhoods, local candidates will address our specific community’s micro-challenges.
But as all of this happens over the next six months, here’s my proposal: what if each one of us “adopts” a municipal facility for the duration of the election campaign? Like, write its name on a sticky note and pop it on the wall. Tell a neighbour about what we’re doing. Ask them for their pick too. Spread the word?
(This to me seems like a great merch opportunity, btw, City of Ottawa: facility badges. Like, “I just got a new Walter Baker patch! I’m hoping to get my Nepean Museum one soon, etc.”)
Why adopt a municipal facility?
We like things to work. We’re frustrated when they don’t.
This resulting frustration can be great for social media engagement or, better, for sparking us into action.
On a good day, action includes tuning into local municipal coverage in the Ottawa Lookout or the Ottawa Citizen. Or prompting us to subscribe to City of Ottawa Politics, Random Acts of Urbanism, Ottawa 3 Speed, Improving Ottawa or Straight Outta Stittsville among other information sources. (The latter’s author, Councillor Glen Gower, isn’t running again.)
Frustration helps us attend municipal meetings. Or write letters to our local councillors.
But on a bad day, frustration can prompt us to just tune out altogether. Shrug. Yell at the sky and think, “I’m out.”
Last time around in 2022, Ottawa had one of the higher voter turnout rates in the province at 44 per cent. (In Toronto, only less than 30 per cent of the population voted.) But it’s tough to feel much swagger when more than half of us didn’t fill out a ballot.
So what if we also bring The Feels into the mix? Like - brace yourself, non-sentimental friends - we add a bit of “love” to our election-campaign period?
Alongside frustration, we add in authentic, positive feelings about a place that’s special to us. I propose it might motivate us differently.
As in:
“For You, Dear Municipal Facility That Means Something To Me, I pledge to stay engaged in the lead up to voting on Oct. 26.
I will learn what I can.
I will talk with my neighbours.
I stay engaged with the the bigger, broader issues because they’re essential on their own.
And I will do this because I’m quite fond of you, Local Place.”
While you don’t have to go this far, I wrote the facility a little something:
*Dear Ben Franklin Place,
Hope you’re well. Just a quick note to thanks for being such an important part of my west-end life, both on the day-to-day and for milestone events. If I were making a scrap book featuring you, here are some of the memories that I’d capture:
Spending Friday nights on your rink with my leg-warmer-wearing teen pals, popping in and out of the shack to warm up.
Visiting my bosses in the then-City of Nepean parks and rec department when I worked as a camp counsellor.
Watching my oldest son graduate from high school in the theatre where his dad and I had our high school graduation.
Covering Nepean city council meetings for the Manotick Messenger as a newbie reporter in the council chambers.
Using the fountains in the atrium and out front as mini “destination vacations” for my water-loving kids when they were little.
Noting all of the firsts that happened there: my kids’ first library cards, their first solo bike-locking experiences, paying for my first parking ticket at the municipal offices, etc.
Attending events in the theatre and looking over the wall of Nepean-elected-faces during intermissions.
Stopping in on long runs to fill up my water bottle and use the washroom.
Attending memorable community events in the Chamber: For instance, on April 16 I attended the launch of Keith Egli’s book, Tenacious Little F*cker.
So, thank you for all of that. I look forward to 38 more years of fun.
Julie
P.S. You should know: I also have deep feelings for Pinecrest, Walter Baker, the Sportsplex and Minto. I’ve also been quite stirred by facilities in other municipalities. Sorry. But my heart is roomie. ;)
It seems libraries are particularly beloved! I love the one in my neighborhood, too.
Oddly, I also really admired the old underpass at U of O that went beneath the Transitway and Nicholas Street to connect the campus to the canal. It was a lovely little bit of infrastructure, with a looping bike ramp and a stairway surrounded by flowerbeds. It was removed during the O Train construction, I believe (I haven’t been to the campus in a while).
I am in L O V E with the Ruth E. Dickinson library in Barrhaven in the Walter Baker Recreation Centre.
Sadly it is being either closed or at least greatly reduced in size and scope, which is so sad to me because of all of the families, old and young, with and without children, who I see accessing this space regularly. While I appreciate a new - and presumably 'better' - space is being planned as part of the development of a large-scale community hub in the Marketplace area of the neighbourhood, the impending loss of this library/learning/gathering/communing space and its physical and human assets, is a blow to our Barrhaven West/Olde Barrhaven neighbourhood.