Response to Xpress Cover Story "Ottawa Sucks"

It is high time that Ottawa stands up and take responsibility for what it really is: the cognitive surplus capital of Canada. A long-time advocate and performer, I was incensed by the Ottawa Xpress’ recent cover article, “Ottawa Sucks” and its summary of the so-called “debate” in the Ottawa Citizen and Globe and Mail about the lack of culture and support for it in the nation’s capital. A debate requires two sides; this article only represented one. The article itself, by Cormac Rea, was really about the SAW Gallery’s new exhibition, which attempts to (re)present what is a collective self-flagellation, while chanting in unison, “Ottawa Sucks”. Sadly, the core important message of the article – that there’s a new exciting exhibition in town - was drowned by all the self-hatred.

I find it impossible to continue to watch the media flagellate this city and its citizens for its “lack of arts and culture”. In my two short years as a co-producer and co-host of the Friday Special Blend on CKCU, a local arts radio show, there was never a shortage of events to attend or arts blogs, such as Apartment613 and Artengine to follow, many of them well-attended or sold out. Andrew Cohen and his ilk’s reprinted vitriol for this city not only perpetuates inaccuracies, but veils the media’s paradoxical role in promoting cultural activities while simultaneously slagging arts supporters for not doing enough. By publishing such blatant trash, you risk causing the very thing you sought to avoid, namely, public participation in artistic and cultural activities.

Cultural studies have long recognized the media’s role in politicization and socialization of individuals in the polis: if Ottawans are told consistently that they live in a city with no culture and that they don’t participate in what culture they have, they will believe this fallacy and cease participating altogether.The danger of this is that Ottawans, and the rest of Canada, will ignore the richness that resides here and opt for petulant comparisons with Toronto and Montreal that are factually distinct and based on oversimplifications and inaccuracies. Ottawa for its size is in a category of its own because of the cognitive surplus of its citizens.

First, the factual distinctions: Ottawa is smaller in population size than both Toronto and Montreal, but vastly larger geographically. It has also been a city for much less time and home to many transient diplomats, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs and academics. Its downtown core is smaller; it is a commuter city.  Because of its smaller population, it has a lower proportion of what I will call single-income professional artists.  Ottawa also receives less grant money comparatively with Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. Part of the burden of being the national capital is that no level of government (save for municipal) wants to appear as showing favouritism, especially in a fractious, regionalist federation like Canada. Although it may be smaller, its culture is rich and the crowds come out in the most unconventional of places.

What needs to be done is a longitudinal economic and sociological study about consumption and production habits of this city’s residents, professional and otherwise, to truly determine whether Ottawa’s so-called identity crisis and self-flagellation is warranted.  As an anthropologist, I would be interested in partnering in such a project.  One theory I have is that if incomes in Toronto and Montreal are higher than Ottawa’s, one could justify lower consumption of cultural goods based on disposable income levels, disparity and relative costs of living. And yet despite these hurdles, Ottawa thrives.

To say that Ottawans are not interested, passionate or supportive of arts and culture is patently false when new venues open their doors and the established venues are booked years in advance. It was thanks to more than 20 years of lobbying by community groups that the Shenkman centre has become the success it is in Orleans; and the same goes for the GCTC, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, Centrepointe Theatre and, although it has faced high profile financial difficulties lately, the Gladstone Theatre.

I consistently hear that “Ottawa is a great place to raise a family” and that “the government is a great place to work if you have a family.” Following a recent conversation with a former high-ranking bureaucrat at Heritage Canada who conducted a national study on the arts, I learned that parents are the single largest funders of the arts. If Ottawa attracts families and provides flexible work schedules, then it follows that parents likely have the incomes to put their children in after school programs geared at the arts, attend rehearsals and performances. I have been performing and advocating on behalf of the arts in this city since high school and my own parents have been behind me every step of the way. Ottawans are consuming and care about culture: they’re busy investing in tomorrow’s artists, artists who will eventually flock to Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver for studies and then return to their city to cultivate its culture, like the owners of the Gladstone Theatre, founders of Odyssey Theatre, Third Wall Theatre, Dance with Alana Studios.

 Secondly, I think a longitudinal survey of Ottawa’s arts scene would show that Ottawans instead of being only passive consumers, are active producers because of a cognitive surplus.  This city is full of productive artists with multi-faceted interests, like Professor Natasha Bakht, a renowned contemporary Indian dancer, Canada Dance Festival Board Member and most recently, co-founder of the Ottawa Dance Directive; musicians like Jill Zmud, who, in addition to recording an album and touring, is also leading an initiative to make university education accessible to Ottawa’s homeless. Artists like Professor Jim Davies, an American cognitive scientist who, while only an Ottawa resident for a few short years, has published poetry in ByWords Literary Journal, displayed art at the Atomic Rooster and Chinatown Remixed, had one of his plays produced by Sock ‘N Buskin Theatre, and could be found on stage every Sunday with Insensitivity Training, one of Ottawa’s five regularly performing professional improvisation comedy troupes (Bet you didn’t know there were five!). Artists like Jason Pelletier and Melanie Yugo, both of whom deal daily in health and culture policy respectively for the federal government, have hosted Spins and Needles for years and shown Ottawans  - and many others from Montreal to New York to London - that the capacity to create is literally in their own hands; or artists like Ritallin, a spoken word poet and activist who worked for a number of years as a labour policy analyst at HRSDC and who co-founded along with John Akpata, CHUO radio host and consistent candidate for Ottawa-Vanier in so many elections I have lost count, Ottawa’s spoken word scene. CapitalSlam sells out twice monthly in the Mercury Lounge. It is possibly the largest and most active spoken word scene in Canada. These artists are involved, aware and they draw a crowd.  So what are Andrew Cohen and his ilk whining about? Good question.

I haven’t even gotten to the people who tirelessly promote the arts in this city in addition to balancing jobs and life: the ubiquitous Jessica Ruano whose thumbs are in so many artsy pies I can’t list them all here and if I did they would be out of date because she’d be on to the next thing before this article was published. My co-host Sue Johnston, hosted the Friday Special Blend for 8 years while she worked full-time at Industry Canada, or David Yazbeck, Partner at Raven, Cameron, Ballantyne and Yazbeck, one of the top human rights and appellate firms in the city, who sits on the Board of the Ottawa Folk Festival and who recently represented artists in a dispute with the National Art Gallery, or Dr. Jill Taylor whose dental practice, the Tooth Gallery, draws a massive turnout at her monthly vernissages that feature up-and-coming visual artists. 


So Ottawans, get up and start taking credit for the cognitive surplus of talent in this city and the improvements it has made to the buffet of arts and culture available. This is your city; it’s time to stop beating it into the ground.