No 2 resumes passage, further blockage expected

On July 29 Somerset Street was reopened under the new Chinatown Royal Arch, after a two month closure to vehicles. The No 2 bus route resumed passage through Chinatown.

The sidewalks have been relaid and provide a more comfortable and direct route for pedestrians again.

The scaffolding remains around the Arch for the use of the painters coming from China who will apply 17 coats of paint to the make the arch more colourful.

Meanwhile, just a few blocks further west on Somerset, construction has started for the new utilities and streetscaping. Major work will be completed this fall, but landscaping won't be completed until fall 2011. We can expect some further blockage of the street both this year and for about two months in 2011.

The east is red

Woodblocks with Chinese wishes on them, to be stamped into the red cement at the Chinatown Royal Arch.

Placing the imprint at the corners of red cement inserts beneath the arch.

Detail of the roof tiles.

The road detour at the Chinatown Arch comes off at the end  of this week.

Chinese artisans arrive next weekend for the next phase of the Arch project: installing 17 coats of paint on the arch.

For more frequent Arch pictures and news, go to http://www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/

Chinatown arch takes shape

The Ottawa Chinatown Royal Arch has taken a huge step towards its final form with the addition of ceramic roof tiles imported from China.

Suddenly, instead of a scaffolding-hidden pile of concrete and forms, the beauty of the future arch is emerging.

While crews work on the roofs, other crew members are preparing to lay curbs and new paving for the sidewalk and road under the arch. The arch is significantly ahead of schedule. No 2 bus users may get their Somerset route back before the end of July!

There are more details at http://www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/.

Chinese arch progress

Six sections of roof will be installed on the Chinese Arch on Thursday. Today, in preparation for that lifting, the pieces were moved out onto Somerset street below the arch.

For more details, subscribe to http://www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/

Square Boston

The squares above are just two of dozens embedded in the sidewalk piazza near the Chinatown Arch in Boston. Are they fossils? Rock carvings? Chinese characters?

The Boston sidewalk squares shown below are definitely Chinese. They were located on the sidewalk leading up to the Chinese arch. The centre portion was scribed granite block, surrounded by ordinary concrete pavers, set in the join of regular poured concrete sidewalk.

The Ottawa Chinatown BIA is considering something similar for the reconstruction of part of the Chinatown sidewalks in 2011.

Chinatown Arch gets own blog

Last week saw the official groundbreaking ceremony for the new Chinatown royal arch. In the photo above, Grace Xin of the Chinatown BIA puts incense into a holder. From left to right, Senator Vivian Po, John Baird, Bob Chiarelli, Yasir Naqvi, Chinese Ambassador, Councilors Holmes and Wilkinson.

Shown below are two of the first concrete castings made for the arch. The casting yard is on Cambridge, behind the Yangtze.

Stone lions, to guard the base of the arch, from China.

As a lot will be happening at this gateway site, I have set up a separate blog site to follow the Arch: http://www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/. It has a RSS button at the top of its page, so you can elect to have the new posts sent directly to you.

I anticipate there will be only one or two posts per week. At quiet times, there will be picture posts of arches in other world cities. I have found about 20 such pictures thus far.

You are unlikely to ever experience another royal arch construction in your lifetime, so be sure to pop over to Chinatown to inspect the progress, and follow the blog postings when you cannot be there. If you send me photos, I will try to use them: mailto:EricDarwin1@gmail%20(dot)%20com.

Chinatown arch

Preparatory work is well underway for the Chinatown Arch. The Ottawa Hydro trucks shown here have been working all week to relocate the wiring on the south side of Somerset between Cambridge and Bronson. The Chinatown arch groundbreaking will be in two weeks and the unaesthetic wiring needs to be out of the way. The cost of removing the wiring ... not cheap!... is being borne by the Chinatown BIA.

Somerset reconstruction zone expanded

The City and consultants held a well-attended (approx 125 persons) open house for the Somerset reconstruction project last week. The zone of reconstruction was from Bayswater (in the west)(which is where reconstruction left off last summer) up and over the viaduct over the Otrain, to Preston street.

 The above section of street was scheduled for this year, 2010. Then next year, the reconstruction process would move up Somerset, from Preston to Booth. These two long blocks will be finished in a new Chinatown look in 2011.

However, the Chinatown Arch (artists impression shown) is being constructed a few blocks further east in 2010, and some roadworks are required to accomodate that. So this week the city added in the block from Cambridge to Bronson to the 2010 streetscaping project. So residents will get one additional block of widened sidewalks, new streetlighting including ped lights, and trees. Great stuff! 

If you missed the Somerset streetscaping unveiling, you have an additional opportunity to see the plans, and those of other neighborhood projects, at the Dalhousie AGM being held at the Dal Centre (corner of Empress and Somerset) at 7pm April 13th. Please mark your calendars and drop in.

Aloha Chinatown Honalulu (ii)

Chinatown in Honalulu has a large reputation preceeding it, one that I felt on my visit wasn't totally warranted. Pictured above is their Chinatown gate -- pedestrian archway on a slightly arched bridge that crosses a canal waterway. Note also the small plaques mounted along the bridge.

Much of Chinatown H has a uniform architecture. That was because of a fire in the early twentieth century. A fire that has been attributed to several causes: burning down the neighborhood as it was the centre of a plague sweeping the island; or it was an accident; or it was designed to set-back the chinese merchants to the advantage of other merchant groups. Whichever cause, the neighborhood was wiped clean and then rebuilt with nice low rise buildings around traditional chinese courtyards which served as workshops, storage areas, and bits of transplanted chinese cities. Many of these buildings have uniform wood-framed metal-roofed awnings that cover blocks of street sidewalk to protect merchandise from the sun and daily showers. A red awning is shown in the background ... I think some where green or other colours.

Also in the area was this memorial tablet:

For comparison, the Chinese Royal Arch being installed in Ottawa this summer is huge, as shown below: 33' high, 300 ton arch, spaning two and half lanes of traffic (the photoshop pix erroniously shows it spanning four lanes). The lions at the foot of each pillar have already been carved from stone and are en-route to Ottawa now, as are many of the molds for concrete superstructure and the roof tiles. Somerset will be closed to all traffic for about two months during the construction period.

Aloha Chinese Architecture

This is a modern building in Honalulu with an otherwise non-descript exterior. Typically, the bottom few floors are parking garage, apartments above. The front porch however has this generous canopy that celebrates chinese culture and influence. It was not located in Chinatown per se, but along one of the main streets in Wikiki Beach area. I do not recall what the tile mosaic above it on the wall of the garage was portraying.

I did think this was a nice touch on a building, particularly if it was located in the Chinatown area. In Ottawa's chinatown, there is one newish building that has Chinese tile elements on it that offer a restrained element of the orient without being garish.

I also saw this high rise with a decorative hat on it that to me suggested an oriental influence.

Aloha Chinatown Honalulu

I had heard and read a lot about the Chinatown in Honalulu. Large, bustling, exotic ... instead I found it not-so-large, very decrepit, and unfortunately co-existing with the flophouse/druggie scene reminiscient of Vancouver's lower east side. The streets were strangely empty for a workday at 4.30. As visible in the picture, the downtown core is barely a block away. Two sides of the Chinatown were surrounded by enormous high rise blocks (40 stories) of condos and student residences but they seemed to somehow ignore the Chinatown area.

As part of urban renewal or some such scheme, a newish structure is shown in the pictures. I think it is a parking garage. The top band of the structure is decorated with reliefs showing the various animals of the chinese zodiac. I thought it a subtle chinese element; the building itself reminded me of the By Ward Market building here in Ottawa, with parking garage above shops.

In the next post, there will be more conspicuously Chinese/oriental touches on some new buildings in Honalulu.

Chinatown arch

click to enlarge to see gold detailing

Construction of the Chinatown Royal Arch begins in April. The whole structure will be precast concrete. The precasting of features may be done in a tented workshop behind Yangtze Restaurant using handcarved wooden molds, then put on the concrete main frame. It will take two months to cast, then painting will take two months, altogether five to six months.


The lowest point of the arch will be 16’ above the street; the top point will be about 33’ above the street. The arch spanning the street will weigh 100 tons, when the decorative elements are added, 130 tons altogether. In preparation for the project, a gas main has to be moved; hydro lines on the south side must be relocated or buried. The photoshop arch picture is not totally correct, as the piers supporting the arch will be located on bulb outs that will replace 2 parking spaces.

The arch will be completed for unveiling on October 13, the 40th anniversary of the modern Canada-China relationship so it is a tight deadline.   The construction process should itself be a tourist attraction of considerable interest and well worth documenting.

The CBIA has hired a lighting consultant. Current plans are to add floodlights to the existing Chinatown light fixtures and two more light poles using the existing design. There is also a move to upgrade the block from Cambridge to Bronson (perhaps as part of the Bronson reconstruction process) to the new Chinatown streetscaping design being developed this spring as part of the Somerset reconstruction process underway from Preston up to Booth.

The CBIA is also heading up a search process for the teams of workers from China who will build the arch. They are looking for accommodation for 16 to 46 workers at a time.

Chinatown Arch

double click to enlarge

The seriously-ornate royal arch to be constructed over Somerset Street near Cambridge in Ottawa's Chinatown district. Fundraising is going well, and a crew will be coming from China in Spring 2010 to install the arch.

Chinatown Mystery

This info from Capital Crime Writers about a workshop being held in Chinatown at Sushi 88, between Bronson and Cambridge.

**Next Sunday's workshop has limited enrollment, so if you are interested get your tickets soon!


The The Dusty Owl Workshop Series Presents Bare Bones of Mystery Writing with Barbara Fradkin

Sunday 29 November 2009

1pm to 4pm

Sushi 88


690 Somerset Street West, Ottawa

$15 -- tickets available at Sushi 88!

For more information: www.dustyowl.com

This informal, interactive workshop will examine the enduring power of the mystery novel, in all its guises. There are four magical ingredients of writing crime fiction that thrills, provokes and inspires the reader — good writing, vivid characters, exciting plot and perfect setting. Examples and exercises for each will be discussed, as well as tips on how to create engaging sleuths and credible villains, how to develop tension, conflict and pacing, and how to interweave subplots, plant clues and sprinkle red herrings. Questions about markets and publishers will also be addressed.

Barbara Fradkin is the author of the award-winning detective series featuring the quixotic, exasperating Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, whose passion for justice and love of the hunt often interfere with family, friends and police protocol. There are currently seven novels in the series, including the newly released This Thing of Darkness, as well as Honour Among Men and Fifth Son, both of which won Arthur Ellis Best Novel Awards from Crime Writers of Canada. She has also been nominated four times for the Arthur Ellis Award for her dark, compelling short stores, which haunt numerous magazines and anthologies such as the Ladies Killing Circle series.

Mini Garden in Chinatown

This brick planter replaces a rickety wooden one at the corner of Upper Lorne Place and Somerset Street in Chinatown. It is simple, inexpensive, attractive. The Chinatown / Somerset landscape could use more such pocket gardens to soften the landscape and generally improve the look of the area, which tends to look a bit bedraggled, especially with the number of vacant storefronts.

Baird on the Ottawa Transit Tunnell

Last evening there was a banquet in Chinatown. It had several purposes. It was a birthday celebration for the 60th Anniversary of the current ruling regime in China, and the Chinese ambassador was present. It was a fundraiser for the new archway that will grace Somerset St at Cambridge later this year, and for that welcoming beacon and sign of the Chinese-Asian presence in the Dalhousie neighborhood of Ottawa, significant funds were raised. The final arch design was revealled: it is a royal arch, because Ottawa is a capital city, as is Beijing, which is contributing to the archway here. It will be the only royal arch in a Canadian Chinatown (hello Toronto, Vancouver ...). It also launched the weekend Festival Asia. There was drumming and three ornate dragons danced through the crowded tables of attendees.

Of course there were politicans present: John Baird, Jim Watson, Larry OBrien, Diane Holmes, and (ex-politican) Richard Patton, all seeming glad to be in each other's presence. Their mutual delight radiated throughout the room. With politicians, there are speeches.

Jim Watson told of his mayoral visit to Beijing. John Baird related his visit to a number of Chinese cities this summer past, particularly focussing on the number of transit projects he saw underway. Light rail, heavy rail, urban and interurban, he recited an impressive list of transit projects, their lengths, and time frames for construction, all from memory. He then commented that it made an interesting contrast to all the fuss about Ottawa's short tunnel and initial few kilometers of rail.

There was no way it could be interpreted as negative about the Ottawa project's funding or feasibility. It sure did not sound like he was about to pull the plug.

Chinatown Arch Unveiled

The Ottawa Chinatown Gateway project aims to construct a Chinese archway over Somerset Street at Cambridge, in the heart of the Asian district, just west of Bronson. See photoshop picture at the top.

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There are already Chinatown archways in many North American cities, including one just opened in Toronto. However, Ottawa's will be the only one with status of a Royal Archway, suitable for an Emperor to pass under. Ottawa is twinned with Beijing, which has supplied the design of the archway and the materials.

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Gathered together this morning to announce the construction and design were politicians (Mayor OBrien, Diane Holmes, Royal Galipeau, John Baird, Yasir Naqvi) all smiling at one another and shaking hands, the Ambassador of China, and others. The Feds and the Prov each gave $125,000 for the project, the City gave no money, but donated a parking space on each side of Somerset St for the bulb outs where the piers will be located (surely the foregone revenue from those meters will be significant...). There will be a ground breaking ceremony in October, when the politicians will gather in pleasant summit once again.

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Larry OBrien was the only speaker to utter a few words in Chinese.

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The microphone did not work well, which served to clearly identify the professional politicians from the ordinary folk: even without a microphone, you could hear the politicians loud and clear through their big smiles. Even louder were our democratic representatives when pounding the ceremonial chinese drum supplied for the event in the low-cielinged downstairs room at the Yangtze.