A Few More Things

If you head over to the 4th-Year Journalism Course Work page, you’ll notice there are a couple more items on the page. I’ve added links to my most recent work for Centretown News, as well as piece I produced for the current affairs show Midweek back in October.

I’ll have a few more updates as the semester. In the meantime, take a peek at other items I’ve done this year.

It’s Been a Very Busy Semester

Yes yes yes, it’s the end of the semester. As usual, I’m only getting around to updating this as everything winds down. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had time to catch you all up on what’s been going on. Here’s a quick list of everything I’ve been up to over the last three months (three months!)

I did a professional practice reporting and producing for ‘Midweek’. The show is a 90-minute current affairs program that airs on CKCU every Wednesday.

I’m currently taking a political reporting class as well. I’m focusing on foreign policy and international affairs, with a focus on Canada/U.S. relations.

In Journalism 4000, the required journalism course for 4th-year students, we’ve covered topics including ethics in journalism, reporting on the environment and reporting on aboriginal issues. The topics are vary from week to week. My presentation for the class focused on citizen journalism during the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto. It was composed entirely of photos and videos by citizen journalists.

In the coming days I’ll be adding content that I’ve produced for school as well as pieces produced outside the classroom.

Stay tuned!

I’m Back In the Saddle!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it’s true. I’m already half way through my first semester of my last year of journalism school and tackling the challenges that go right along with it head-on.

I’ve already produced a 5 minute radio documentary and done an on-air tape talk.  I’ve also hosted the hour-long current affairs show Midweek, where the previous two pieces aired. I’ve covered a major Sentate committee meeting and am in the process of investigating the implications of President Obama’s “Buy American” portion of the Jobs Act on the Canadian steel industry.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be posting some of the work I’ve done since school has started.

Until then,

-Christine

 

Third Year, Come and Gone

I don’t know how it happened, but I’m now a fourth year journalism student.

It’s one of those mind boggling things where you wake up one morning and, all of a sudden, you have to change your Twitter bio. It’s not all bad though.

This semester, I wrapped up my Analytical and News Reporting class. It was a tough slog (especially trying to get Health Canada to comment on their nutrition labeling standards), but I got through it relatively unharmed. Plus, I got to meet the man behind the CBC Radio hourly news, Laurence Wall. It’s hard to get excited about the course since it caused me a lot of worry, but my writing has definitely improved and I’ve gotten better at the whole pestering-people-for-a-comment thing.

My brief stint as a Reporter for Centretown News was pretty great. Just having the schlep behind me when I called someone was refreshing. I wasn’t just Christine Sirois, “a third-year journalism student at Carleton University”. Plus, it always feels cool to see your name in print.

Ethics was a bit tough for me to wrap my head around, but I think it more to do with the structure of the class, not the actual content. I really love analyzing the legal and ethical implications of journalism and journalistic integrity, but it was only a four week-long course. Everything felt a little rushed and I think I would have felt better versed in the content if I’d learned it over a long period of time.

And then there was Television.

I had been dreading t.v. all year. I was vehement in my loathing for the format and everything to do with it. Working with good friends (Ariel Hartman and Hilary Duff, whose blogs you can get to from the sidebar) and having an AWESOME teacher completely changed my mind about t.v. journalism. Scott Hannant was an amazing teacher and mentor, showing us the ropes and throwing in cool stories and tips along the way. I went from hating t.v. to seriously considering taking 25th Hour next year.

This year’s been a wacky one with a lot of ups and downs. All in all though, I’d say it was an enjoyable one. I’m just finding it hard to believe that I’ll be graduating this time next year. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, but I also feel like I have a lot to learn.

Maybe that’s just how it goes. You learn 70% of what you need to know to be a working journalist, then you learn the other 30% once you start working. Or maybe you’re never 100% ready to tackle the beast. Either way, I’m incredibly glad I stuck with the program because I really can’t see myself anywhere else at this point.

Here’s to one more year!

It’s the end of the semester. Do you know where your J-Schooler is?

 

Well, it’s that time of year again, ladies and gentlemen. A time for careful thought and introspection. Recollection. Pondering. Plotting. All those things that help you chart your course for the upcoming year.

Well, it would be if you had any degree of certainty in your “Fiver-Year Plan”.

Right now, I’m trying to figure out if I’m closer to the Rock or the Hard Place and, truth be told, I can’t tell. But, what I can tell you is that 2010 has been a year of exponential knowledge acquisition, learning (which is not the same thing) and experience-gaining.

At the beginning of this year, I feared Excel spreadsheets, loathed transcribing interviews and couldn’t tell you what a Nut-Graf was, let alone write one.

Now, I can multi-track audio, produce an audio slide-show, write an analytical piece and churn out a solid 500-word story on deadline. Heck, I even produced a 10 minute radio news segment!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, with each passing day, your humble journalism student is starting to look and feel more like a “real journalist”. But I suppose that’s the normal course of things since, by this time next year, I will have one semester of school left, my law school applications will be submitted and I’ll be charting my path for world domination. Uh, I mean, world exploration.

So what then of this entry? To this I say, I don’t really know.

I just know that it will be funny to look back in a year’s time and read it again.

Full steam ahead!

-Christine

 

Midnight Snacks at Zak’s Diner

On October 23rd, I spent a couple of hours at Zak’s Diner to see what an overnight shift is like. Zak’s is one of the only places in the market open after last-call.

Click on the photo to watch the show.

Thanks to Kate Rutledge and the overnight staff at Zak’s.

Curiosity Killed The Cat: Urban Exploring In The Byward Market

The Fairmont Chateau Laurier at night as captured by Flickr user Asif A. Ali

The Byward Market is one of the busiest tourist sites in Ottawa. And while the majority of people keep their exploration at street level, a handful of bold residents have dared to explore the heights of a building that teeters on the edge of the Market itself.

Urban explorers investigate normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas and buildings. Most people limit themselves to abandoned homes or warehouses but there are some who dare to venture into occupied territory.

And while curiosity may have killed the cat, Catharine Tunney explains how her snooping landed her on the roof of the Chateau Laurier hotel.

Catharine Tunney explains how she got onto the roof of the Chateau Laurier hotel.

Tunney says that for her, it was a mixture of nosiness and safety in numbers that led to her to follow through on the claims of the abandoned floor.

“I went with a bunch of friends who are in a band and were only here for the night. I felt like I was in a movie. We were just sticking it to the man!”

Tunney says that she knows that she was trespassing but says that she doesn’t really care. For her, it is the knowledge that you’re not supposed to be there and that you’re stepping outside what’s acceptable that makes the experience so exciting.

“I remember sitting up there and this breeze came over me,” recalls Tunney. “I just thought ‘Dammit, I’m 20. Here I am having this cigarette with these attractive guys who are in a kick-ass band. They’re all attractive and well dressed and here I am. I can see the whole city and it’s mine.”

However those hoping to follow in Tunney’s footsteps, be forewarned: Laurier staff are up on the game.

“I tried to go back with a friend, but the door [on the sixth floor] was locked.”

As their website says, the hotel has hosted “almost every star of stage, screen or music that has performed in Ottawa.” It is surprising then that the security remained so lax since the CBC radio moved to the main broadcast centre on Queen Street in the 1990s.

While there are other off-limits places in the hotel to explore (rumours about open delivery doors and entrances to the kitchen and basement abound), the parts that are open to the public are interesting in and of themselves. However for those in need of an excuse to do a little sneaking around, the bathrooms off the lobby are a handsome alternative to the ones in the Rideau Centre.

Not all urban explorers bust onto rooftops or into abandoned warehouses, but there is something to be said for questioning the boundaries of a city’s core.

“If someone told me another good spot to go to, I’d be totally down,” says Tunney of her willingness to discover the city’s crannies.

“I am definitely open to the possibility of more trespassing.”

 

Byward Market Billingualism: An Epiphany In Three Parts

i.

As a kid, my parents always joked that, with a last name like ‘Sirois’, I had better learn French. Phonetically, it is pronounced “Seer-wah” however growing up in Toronto, my surname was butchered seven ways to Sunday by teachers, announcers at gymnastics competitions and graduations from kindergarten through to highschool. As a French Immersion student, it baffled me that people could not wrap their heads around that silly double vowel at the end. Somehow though, when I moved to Ottawa to start university, name mangling subsided.

ii.

When I was in grade school, I spoke French in class. Everything else was all-English, all the time. Occasionally I would hear people chatting on the street and get all excited on the inside knowing what they were talking about.

I was quite an adept speaker and could hold my own in conversations at summer camp where I would befriend kids from Québec by translating instructions for games and emergency procedures.

“Where are you from?” they would ask.

“Toronto!” I’d reply.

That question followed me wherever I went, waving my little Francophone Flag at conferences, job interviews and the occasional bar-room chat. Taken aback by my answer they would say, “Toronto? But you speak so well!”

I had no idea why they were surprised, but just kept chugging along as if nothing was the matter. But again, all of that changed when I got to Ottawa.

iii.

After spending so much time in the Byward Market over the last few weeks, I am starting to understand what it means to be bilingual. Most of the vendors at the Farmers’ Market are francophone and greet customers as such. Many reply with orders in French, moving into conversations about the weather or crops as carrots or beans are shoveled into a bag.

Strolling down the sidewalks between Dalhousie St. and Sussex Dr., it is not surprising to hear children chirping to parents ‘en Français’. Elsewhere in the city, it does not seem as prevalent. Sure, in Centretown and Old Ottawa South there are still French speakers, but not in the same numbers. The sheer volume of French is what forced this revelation.

The pervasiveness of French in day-to-day life may seem normal for a local, but for this francophone, native English speaker of French-Canadian heritage from Toronto, it is pretty darn exciting. Especially now that, for the most part, my last name is pronounced correctly.

Standing On Reputation: Gallerie La Petite Mort Hosts Deviant Photography By Exilentia Exiff

Photo by Exilentia Exiff.

Gallerie La Petite Mort on the edge of the Byward Market for showcasing subversive and often sexually charged artwork from both local and international artists. ‘Lost Femininities’ is one such collection by Berlin-based artist Exilentia Exiff.

Fascinated by norms connected with gender and age, Exiff explores the boundaries of beauty and age in terms of sexuality by asking why a young female naked body is acceptable and a picture of an old woman in a sexual pose violates the standards of society. She frames the exhibition with the question: What is self-dignity?

“My first impression of the pieces was of slight shock,” says Ben Derksen, a third-year history and political science student at Carleton University. Working on an assignment for his History of Sexuality class, Derksen says that although he had read about the art before going to the gallery, “reading the description and seeing it in person are two very different things.”

With his assignment first and foremost on his mind, Derksen was more analytical with his analysis of the works than most. Applying the works of social critics like Michel Foucault and Jeffrey Weeks the photos at Petite Mort, Derksen says that the definition of sexuality is narrow-minded.

“I think people have a very clean cut idea of what sexuality is.”

Derksen says that within a traditional, North American mindset, “the elderly, larger men [in the photographs], especially those in makeup…are seen as either asexual or sexual deviants.”

Since choosing to engage or appear to engage in sexual acts depicted in the photos might be offensive to someone who is not all that open-minded, Derksen says that the gallery’s reputation for scandalous still stands.

“After the initial shock subsided, I settled in to the viewing experience. That said, I come from an entire generation that is pretty hard to shock.”

Eugene Haslam: Club Owner. City Councilor?

Eugene Haslam may have found success in the entertainment industry, but just what qualifies the owner of Zaphod Beeblebrox to sit on city council?

The owner of the famous Byward Market club entered the race on September 10^th, running against six others to represent Ward 17 -Capital on council. With incumbent councilor Clive Doucet running for mayor, the seat is essentially ripe for the taking by any of the candidates.

Moving to Canada from Calcutta, India when he was 16, Haslam studied psychology at York University and business at the University of Waterloo. He worked as a banker until opening Zaphod’s in 1985. Now a voted board member of the Byward Market Business Improvement Area, Haslam is prepared to use his over 20 years of business experience and 14 years of residency in the ward as the cornerstone of his campaign.

According to an interview with The Ottawa Citizen, Haslam has been considering running for city council for a few years and finally decided that it was up to him to secure a stable future for his daughter. In the same interview Haslam said: “I live here, my daughter’s going to be here for a long time,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to stick your neck out and do what you think has to be done.”

Haslam credits the success of Zaphod’s to his resilience and “chutzpah” and, if his growing number of supporters are any indication, political success may have the same recipe as success in business.