July 20, 2008 (Sunday) Ottawa to Dows Lake

After dinner we walked around the Parliament Buildings and found an interesting scene of five statues of women engaged in a conversation. One of them held a newspaper with headlines that proclaimed “Women are Persons”. On October 18th, 1929, a landmark decision changed the face of Canadian politics. Women were declared "persons" under the law and were granted the right to be appointed to the Senate. Their victory was the result of an arduous struggle by five Alberta women. The historical marker described the actions of these women, including Emily Murphy who was a judge, to launch an appeal to the Privy Court of England. They reversed the decision that Section 24 of the Canadian constitution which said you had be to a “Qualified Person” eliminated women from serving in the senate.

During breakfast this morning we heard a pounding drum beat accompanied by brass music. Our first thought was a high school band since we have a lot of experience with that! We dashed out on the back of the boat to see a Royal Canadian Regiment marching through the park on the other side of the canal. They wore bright red uniforms and marched with a very official step and arm motion in rhythm with the marching music. We think that they were marching to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to station the day’s guard there, but it was fun that they marched by our breakfast.

After breakfast, we climbed the spiral staircase up to the MacKensey King bridge to cross the canal. This morning we attended worship with First Baptist Church, Ottawa, who celebrated their 150 year anniversary last year. Their sanctuary had three beautiful stained glass windows in brilliant jeweled colors which reflected the history of the region. On the left facing the center was a lumberjack with his axe, on the right was a pilot man who steered logs in the river with his pick, and in the center was Jesus Christ portrayed as the carpenter. The contrast between this service and last Sunday was to the extreme. The music included mellow intonations from the pipe organ behind the dark wooden railing in the balcony. The service included traditional hymn singing (which I have missed) as well as a lovely vocal aria solo in Latin. The sermon was delivered by Rob Campbell a visiting minister and was a powerful, intellectual message from Genesis 28 entitled “In Your Dreams”. The point he presented was around God’s promise to Jacob in his dream (Jacob’s ladder) as contrasted by the idiomatic “In your dreams” comment when you don’t think something has any possibility of happening. His example was fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs (Canadian hockey team) thinking they would ever win the Stanley Cup. He talked about living a life with one foot on earth and the other in heaven and about the naiveté required to accept the grace of God. This was very different than the service led by the Chinese kid with spiked hair and the electric guitar and the young Chinese minister with her suitcase and shovel. But in both cases we were glad to celebrate and worship God with Christian believers reaching up to Him and out to their fellow man.

After church we walked up to the Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to watch the changing of the guard. We heard the bagpipe music in the distance as the replacement regiment neared the tomb. The guardsmen where dressed in traditional British wardrobe of black uniform pants, heavy red suit coat and the famous tall back furry headpiece.

We moved the boat a few miles up the canal beyond the Pretoria Bridge, which had to open for us. It opened in a very unique fashion with the entire roadway rising in a section. It was a beautiful bridge with low curved stone towers. When we pulled into Dow’s Lake Marina, I was delighted to see a very strong wireless internet signal, but it was encrypted. I asked the dock master about getting access, but unfortunately, since they flow their credit card transactions over the link, they do not allow any other access. Bummer.