When I told my barber I was moving to Ottawa, he proceeded to name off and describe the three strip clubs in the Ottawa area. ‘They have the most polite strippers I have ever met,’ he said. ‘And when we wanted a really crazy night, we went to Hull.’ This guy knew his stuff. Instant street cred. I was immediately more excited to be returning to my hometown.
My law school classmates were much less impressed. ‘There is no nightlife.’ ‘It’s too goddamn cold.’ ‘You know Tom Green is from there, right?’ My mood darkened…
My first few nights in the National Capital lived up to my most horrible expectations. Unable to find a bar where I could boo the Miami Heat (it was after 5pm), I resigned to the local shawarma pit. In walked a Justin Trudeau look-alike who proceeded to tell me this was the worst shawarma pit in the area and I would get sick from eating the food. Are you kidding me, JT? Do you actually have any personal experience? Of course he didn’t.
An hour later, as I keeled over in shawarma-induced stomach pains, I looked across the street to see two crack addicts fighting (a surprisingly commonplace occurrence, I soon learned – Ottawa has three homeless shelters and a needle depository in the exact same area as the student bars. This is not a joke).
Then work started. The law firm used Microsoft Word 1997. ‘How am I supposed to get anything done in these conditions!!’ I bellowed.
‘It doesn’t matter if you get anything done. Just do your best,’ my colleague told me. Of course, I thought, it’s because our client is a federal government union. I imagined my old economics supervisor turning over in his grave. What kind of dystopian nightmare had I walked into?
Sloth set in. I showed up later and later each morning. First I stopped shaving, then I stopped wearing a suit jacket, then a tie… And you know what? No one cared. People just pleasantly went about their business, smiling at me in the halls even when I broke the coffee machine for the third time. At lunch time, many lawyers and support staff cleared out to mass yoga sessions on Parliament Hill.
One afternoon after work, I visited Barefax. The scantily-clad woman handed me a beer: ‘Here you go, sir. Just let me know if there is anything else I can get for you.’ The barber was right – extremely polite.
Later, on my walk home, people in Senators jerseys were heading to the pubs to watch the playoff game. Wait, you mean it’s May and the local NHL team is still playing hockey games?
Turns out there are lots of good reasons to work in Ottawa. The work atmosphere is more laid-back, the law students are bright and friendly and you can escape to Gatineau Park in 20 minutes. In the end, I realized that with the right attitude I could probably be happy working pretty much anywhere.
But I had to come back to Toronto. Ottawa is too goddamn cold.
