Ottawa 1987-90, Mechanicsville

more grief notes

Ron and I moved into a one-bedroom apartment overlooking the Ottawa River in Mechanicsville in Ottawa. It was our first unfurnished apartment. I don’t recall buying furniture except for the futon, which we found at a store on Bank Street.

I was studying translation at the School of Translators and Interpreters at the University of Ottawa and Ron was working for the government. I can’t remember if he worked as a contractor or it was a term position, but it was for the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing in the Emerald Plaza.

We no longer were at the same place all day as we had been when we both studied at the University of Waterloo. Sometimes I took the bus to Emerald Plaza and met him for lunch. It was a long commute but I missed him.

I was really enjoying my translation program. We hung out with friends from my class. We enjoyed dim sum at Fuliwah and Yangze. I remember how when we first arrived in Ottawa, we looked through the yellow pages for dim sum and found Yangze. We were amazed at how big the restaurant was and how many dim sum dishes there were on the menu.

We brought our pinball game, Solar Ride, which we purchased in Waterloo, and it was in our living room where we played it well into the night and played a lot of music on a record player.

I did two work terms at Corrections Canada and a term at the RCMP. I also worked as a student researcher at the Canadian Bilingual Dictionary Project. At some point, Ron was hired by a small, engineering and scientific consulting firm and that was where he really got into radar, which became a passion for him.

At the end of my studies, we took an amazing trip to Portugal. We had a wonderful, but brief stop over in Lisbon, where we spent the day wandering the cobblestone streets and marvelling at the amazing architecture, especially the aqueduct. I was a nervous flyer and the fact that Ron insisted we could leave the airport and wander the city was intimidating to me, but he was right. We had a great time.

We went to back to the airport when it was time to get on a plane that would take us to Albufeira and then we would take a bus to Praia da Oura where we had rented a small, furnished apartment for two weeks. We were out on the tarmac when I saw the tiny plane we would be taking. I stopped in my tracks. I was a nervous flyer. I told Ron I could not get on the plane. He said it would be ok and so on we went, and it was. The co-pilot served us orange juice. It was a beautiful and sunny day.

Praia da Oura was lovely. We had a hammock on our balcony. We got pastries and made strong coffee in our room and had lovely breakfasts on the balcony before venturing out to the beach. It was too cold to swim but we dipped our feet in, spent hours on patios and listened to classic Portuguese guitar, which was beautiful. We got drunk on sangria. We ate prawns. It was lovely.

Eventually we decided to rent a car and travel to Capo Saint Vincent where we saw Henry the Navigator’s School. Henry was the explorer who learned to navigate by the stars. Ron was captivated by this. We sat at a roadside cafe and ate delicious food.

We went to a market where I saw a really cute puppy. I bought a hand-knit sweater that I still have.

Once we were home, we discovered the music of Carlos Parades. Ron and I talked about this trip back in June on FB when we had our last message exchange. We remembered the strong and delicious cafe au lait, the music and he said it was me who suggested we do a trip to Capo Saint Vincent and Sagres. I will never forget how skillfully he navigated those cliff-side roads and how much fun we had on that trip. How he talked me into adventures when I was so timid. One of the ways I honour Ron’s memory is through enjoying moments in the sun and taking little risks that I know he would applaud.

While we were gone, his younger brother stayed in our apartment. When we got home, the locks were changed. Apparently someone had tried to break in and our super chased him away, even leaping off the second floor garage to try to catch him. When Ron’s brother arrived, he couldn’t get in and had to talk to the super, who let him in. A strange thing for us to arrive home and not be able to get in to our apartment. Nothing was stolen and we were relieved.

Next I will share some of the memories of our time in Gloucester where we lived for the next ten years of our marriage.