Jane's Walk, Sunday May 5, 2019

We will stand in front of Kilmorie, home of poet, William Wilfred Campbell, and hear about the struggle, (over two years now) of the Community, and us, to save this estate from development, and convert it into a park and cultural centre. Hear some poems, listen to a song, and stories, bring your own!

End the walk at the Nepean Museum, just around a few corners! It's supposed to be a sunny 19 degrees! Meet at 16 Withrow. Park at Elizabeth Wyn Wood School.

The chapbook, Poets' Pathway: The Lampman Challenge, containing the winning poems is now available!

Email: jcmoore@magma.ca, or you can find it in Octopus Books, Third Avenue, near Bank St., in Ottawa. The cost is $10.

Congratulations, Poets!

Join us at our Awards Celebration for the winners of the Poets' Pathway poetry competition. Come out Sunday, October 14, at 2 pm to the old firehall, Ottawa South Community Centre, 175 Sunnyside Avenue.

Come for the awards, the poets, the readings, the new chapbook, the treats, the music, the open mic, the fun!

Congratulations to all our winners!

Thank you to all the poets who entered, both for their poems and for supporting the Poets Pathway.

Epiphanelle by Adrienne Stevenson, Ottawa, Ontario

Dear Archie by Barbara Myers,Ottawa, Ontario

Expedition by Adrienne Stevenson, Ottawa, Ontario

Ice Storm by Colin Morton, Ottawa, Ontario

Winter on the Hill by Henry Beissel, Ottawa, Ontario
The frost that stings like fire along my cheek by Blaine Marchand, Ottawa, Ontario
Ottawa Winter by Gill Foss, Carp, Ontario
Gatineau Hills by Susan McMaster, Ottawa, Ontario
The Path Clear by Owen Wagg, Huntsville, Ontario
Haiku Trek by Bryan D. Cook, Orleans, Ontario
Winter@Uplands by A. Garnett Weiss, Ottawa,
Step Outside by Barbara Myers, Ottawa, Ontario
The Frost That Stings by Owen Wagg, Huntsville, Ontario

Special thanks to our judge, James Deahl, and to Ronnie R. Brown for her expert help and guidance

Susan McMaster, Words; John Gordon Armstrong, Guitar; Barbara Dyck, Piano

November 26th - 2:00 PM, GigSpace, Ottawa
FREE Admission - Tickets available on Eventbrite

Full details can be found here:Collaborations: Two Premieres

The Poets’ Pathway is asking for new poems about Ottawa, to bring together today’s poets and the poets of yesterday.

1st Prize $200,2nd Prize $150,3rd Prize $100 and up to Ten Honourable Mention Awards

Full details can be found here: Final Poetry Competition Rules

Our eleventh bronze plaque, Wilfred Campbell's "Indian Summer" will be unveiled on the Poets' Pathway on October 17th, 2015, at 4 pm. It will be unveiled on Hillsdale Road, Rockcliffe, beside the sumach, just in front of the entrance to McKay Lake.

Speakers will include poet Mary Lee Bragg, Councillor Tobi Nussbaum, and Brian Dickson, president of the Rockcliffe Park Recreation Association, in a ceremony of about half an hour. For all the details, please read the invitation. (pdf)

Everyone is welcome.

The Poets' Pathway is holding a Bike-Hike, October 17-18, led by Ben Glossop.

The Rideau Trail hosted this hike each of the last two years. The hikes were led by Bruce Henderson, who sadly passed away this summer. This year's walk will be in his memory, and will continue an important annual tradition for the Poets' Pathway. Each day will include a long relaxing bike ride along pavement (mostly multi-use bike paths), and a long hike (mostly through urban green space). We will stop to read the ten poems about the land along the trail. All are welcome. Please read the details on the invitation, and contact Ben with questions, or to sign up for part or all of the hike

Our tenth bronze plaque will be unveiled on the Poets' Pathway on October 31, at 2 pm, with lines from Wilfred Campbell's "A Wood Lyric. " The boulder is lovely too, a natural work of art itself, standing in front of the woods in Coronation Park, in Ottawa's Alta Vista neighbourhood.

Speakers include Dr. Steven Artelle, Michel Therien, Councillor Peter Hume and Karin Endemann, president of the Riverview Park Community Association. And, a first for our unveilings, Ben Glossop will sing a song he composed.

For all the details, please read the Coronation Park Unveiling Invitation (pdf)

Everyone is welcome.

For all the details, please read the Alta Vista Unveiling Invitation (pdf)

The Poets' Pathway announces an unveiling honouring Benjamin Sulte, a very important and prolific journalist, historian and poet of 19th Century Ottawa. The unveiling takes place along the Rideau River, off Prindiville Street, at 2 pm. on Monday, Oct 28.

Speakers and guests include historian Jean Yves Pelletier, poet Michel A. Thérien, Councillor Mathieu Fleury, and Adele Keyes, a winner in the Poets' Pathway poetry contest.

For all the details, please read the Vanier Sulte Unveiling Invitation (pdf)

We are excited!
See http://www.rideautrail.org/ottawa.html

The walk begins at 8 am., at the stone pier in Britannia Park, and the plaque of Pauline Johnson’s “The Song My Paddle Sings”, and it ends in Beechwood National Cemetery, where you can find Poet’s Hill, and its plaque, and the poem by Archibald Lampman, “ In Beechwood Cemetery.” (Also in Beechwood Cemetery are the plots of Archibald Lampman and his little son, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott and many other poets.)
There are 5 other plaques along the way.

(You can arrange to do only part of the walk.)
Join Ben!

The OMA Choir invites you to celebrate Summer in songs at their annual concert.
Admission is free.

Saturday, June 22, 2 pm.
Korean Community Church
384 Arlington Avenue, Ottawa (at the corner of Bell St.)

This beautiful choir, The OMAC, sang as part of the Poet’s Pathway concert, It’s About Time, June15, 2013.
Here is some audience reaction:
“The only word is “frisson!” “The choir was the best part…” “They lifted me off the earth, I was in the air!”

A light snack will be served after the concert.
Free-will donations to Rogers House will be much appreciated.

The Poets' Pathway presents It's About Time, Il est Grand Temps, (see poster) a concert of music and poetry, Saturday, June 15, at 4 pm., in beautiful New Edinburgh at MacKay United Church, 39 Dufferin Road.

Performing are Ronnie R . Brown, Ben Glossop, Joanne Tait and the Ottawa McGill Alumni Choir with accompanist Ellen Fry, Michel A. Thérien, and Nicolas Tremblay. Jim McNabb is Master of Ceremonies.

The poetry contest winners of the first Poets' Pathway Poetry Contest will be awarded their prizes during the concert.

Refreshments - to see you until supper- will be available after the show!

This concert is our main fundraiser this year. We are planning to put poetry plaques up in the remaining seven walks of the pathway by 2017, Canada's Sesquicentennial Anniversary of Confederation.

Come on out, enjoy something beautiful, and help us put up a second plaque this year!

As a second fundraiser, we are partnering with the Phoenix Players, selling tickets to their comedy, The Last of Jane Austen, at the Gladstone in November of this year, http://www.phoenixplayers.ca/the-last-of-jane-austen/ We will have those tickets available too,at intermission and after the concert. The play tickets are $18. and $15.

We are very grateful to the City of Ottawa’s Heritage Department for a grant we received this spring. Thank you!

Ben Glossop leads a one-hour Jane’s Walk in lovely historic and literary New Edinburgh, this Sunday, May 5, at 10 am. This walk talks about literature in New Edinburgh in the 19th century, and includes the sad story of Bessie Blair, a look at the one-time home of William Wilfred Campbell, and poems about the Rideau River by Campbell, Lampman and Garneau. Meet at 38 Charles Street. Join us! Bring your own stories of this lovely area, and your own poems too, if you wish!

We have a concert of music and poetry on June 15, 2013, at 4 pm. at Memorial Hall, McKay United Church. 39 Dufferin Street in New Edinburgh. Details to come, but put us on your calendar!

Congratulations to the winners of our first poetry contest for high schools! In alphabetical order, the winners are: Abigail Carleton, Adele Keyes, Emma McGinnis, Emilly Renaud, Elliot Setzer and Alexandra Thomas.

Prizes will be awarded during the concert June 15. Thank you to our oh-so experienced judge, poet Ronnie R Brown, for her judging and her guidance! Thank you to the poets who donated their books and to the Ottawa Public Library. And a big thank you to all the people who sent us poems, or otherwise supported us or the students who entered.

The Poets' Pathway is unveiling two plaques in Stanley Park, New Edinburgh, Nov. 17, 2012, at 10:30 am. We are unveiling poems to the rivers, To the Ottawa by Archibald Lampman and La rivière by Alfred Garneau.

Councillor Peter Clark, literary historian Dr. Steven Artelle, and poets Michel A. Thérien and Ronnie R. Brown are special guests.

There is a catered lunch reception at 11:30 am. in New Edinburgh House, at 255 McKay Street. Please reply by Nov. 13 (by calling Jane at 613 723 6196), to let us know numbers, if you plan to come to the reception.

We will meet in the park, just beyond the field house at 10:30 for the unveiling. See PDF invitation for map and details.

Take the Vanier Parkway to Beechwood Avenue; cross or turn down Crichton Street, turn left on Dufferin, turn right on Stanley. The park is on your left.

Sept 28, 2012 at 6pm

On Poet’s Hill, in Beechwood Cemetery - The hill is on the left, close to the entrance at 280 Beechwood Avenue. Followed by a gathering for chat, and something to eat, at The Clock Tower Brew Pub, 422 McKay Street at Beechwood

The public meeting about proposed development on Beechwood Avenue is to take place in the library of the École élémentaire publique Le Trillium, at 135 Alice St., on March 19th at 6:30 pm.

You can read the rationale for the development, including what it says about the "view corridor" here.

Note that the city has not endorsed these plans.

An email from Councillor Fleury's office says:

We have invited the applicant, along with the project manager and the architect to present the proposed design and answer any questions the community might have. We will also have the city planner on the file present to answer any questions you might have about process.

Do come out if you can.

• We have just received a grant for 2012 from Ottawa’s Heritage Department. Thank you, City of Ottawa!

• We welcome Ken Denison who has joined our committee.

• We are worried that proposed development near Beechwood Cemetery may impinge on our protected viewshed from Poet’s Hill to the Parliament Buildings. The meeting with councillors Fleury and Clark and the communities involved has been postponed from March 7. Please keep an ear out for a new date. The protection of this view was hard won in 2006, and is very important to us and to Beechwood Cemetery.

• Congratulations, félicitations to Andree Lacelle, well-known poet, who read at our Colonnade unveiling in November. She has won the Prix littéraire LeDroit – Poésie 2012, for her book, demain l’enfance.

• Ben will be leading another walk on the pathway as part of Jane’s Walk, at 10 am, Saturday, May 5.

Join us for signs of spring on the trail! We are still choosing the location.

You can find more details about the walk at http://www.janeswalkottawa.ca/

(Jane's Walks began in Toronto in 2007. Jane Jacobs was an urbanist who believed strongly in communities and making cities livable.)

• We participated at Lakeside’s Winter Garden Party on February 24, amidst sleigh rides, maple taffy, chili dogs, the Capital City Chorus, miniature collies, fiddlers, children everywhere and oh, so much more! Carolyn Malchy did story telling in the stage show, and you can see her here (thanks to Ken Denison): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwmnJoS-b-E
• We are beginning to fundraise for the year. We are selling fair-trade coffee again, decaffeinated, and three other kinds, at 17.75 a bag. We need to sell 80 bags to complete our end of the deal with Francesco’s.

  Please call Chris at 613 792 4288 to order, or fill out the form in the current newsletter.

The Poets’ Pathway, Le Parcours des poètes, is now incorporated as Not for Profit.

Mary Anderson Hardy, designer and developer of this website, passed away unexpectedly on June 15, 2011. We thank her for her creativity, her hundreds of hours of work, and for this site, a labour of love. Heartfelt sympathy to her family.

The Pathway Post newsletter, August 2011 is out.

The first Poets’ Pathway Bike Ride of the full pathway begins at Britannia, August 27, at 10 am., and ends at Poet’s Hill, Beechwood Cemetery, at 5:00 pm. Details are in the August newsletter. Ride with us, for a little way or all of it.

The Ottawa Eco-Fair is at Carleton University’s Field House, Sept 17, 2011 http://www.ottawaecofair.ca/

Two Poets’ Pathway plaques are going up this fall on Colonnade Road in Ottawa: Le Croquis by Alfred Garneau, and Down the Merivale Road by W.W. Campbell. Check back soon for the date and time.

Much gratitude to Ron Rancourt for offering to help with this website now.

George Wilson, co-chair of the Poets’ Pathway 2007-2009, passed away Wednesday, April 13, 2011. We will miss his laughter and caring spirit. We send our heart-felt condolences to George’s family, Jen, Anna and Ben.

In celebration of George, there will be a Memorial Service at the First Unitarian Congregation, (30 Cleary Avenue, Ottawa), on Saturday, April 23 at 7pm.
Donations to Myeloma Canada are appreciated.

Sweet hope, eternal, holds the human heart,
And love laughs down the desolate dusks of death.

by William Wilfred Campbell

The February 2011 Newsletter is now available online.

A big thank you to Ottawa's Arts and Heritage department for a 2011 grant for the Poets' Pathway!

The Poets' Pathway is joining Jane's Walk, and leading an hour's walk at Britannia Park on May 8.
The walk begins at 10 am. and starts at the plaque near the pier and goes to Mud Lake. Join us for a walk over this lovely land, and for a little of Ottawa's history and poetry.
You can find more details about the walk at http://www.janeswalkottawa.ca/