Ottawa

Ottawa’s Ontario Provincial Police are reminding eastern Ontario residents to properly dispose of their cigarettes after a cigarette caused a small grass fire on Highway 416 on Saturday.

According to a statement on the social media site X, police officers and Ottawa firefighters responded to a small wildland fire on the highway near Roger Stevens Drive in southern end of Ottawa.

“A reminder from the OttawaOPP that even in spring time, flicking a cigarette out your car window can start a fire,” police wrote. 

Police say traffic in the area is unaffected.

What the actual fuck? We're in the middle of a healthcare crisis. Ottawa has a growing population. Wait times are terrible. And we're cutting staff?

He said the union expects more than 100 front-line staff, mainly nurses and personal support workers, will be affected, based on talks with the hospital.

Gauthier said the hospital should be adding, not reducing staff, and estimates 250 positions would need to be added per year to maintain current service levels.

A seedy looking dive above Barbarella's that I always made note of on the bus from the West End, but didn't check out before it was demolished.

Going down a rabbit hole after downloading all copies of the House of Targ zine I could (for reasons that are a complete mystery to me - might have wanted to compile the Quick Advice from Slo' Tom columns or something), saw a poster circa September 2014 for the Guggenheimer Quartet, web searches eventually took me to this video. Figured I'd share.

Next Generation 9-1-1, also known as NG9-1-1, is a behind-the-scenes upgrade to the core infrastructure of Canada’s 9-1-1 network. NG9-1-1 replaces the current, aging analog infrastructure with a modern digital platform that is more reliable, secure and better able to support enhanced location and data in the future.

With this upgrade, Ottawa’s 9-1-1 network joins jurisdictions across the country in improving how emergency calls can be routed, managed, and shared between services over time. NG9-1-1 also lays the groundwork for future features, such as real-time text and multimedia, which are not available yet.

In an emergency, continue to call 9-1-1. There is no change to how residents call 9-1-1 or how calls are handled. Visit the City’s When to call 9-1-1 and what to say page for more information.

Further details about NG9-1-1 are available on the CRTC’s Next Generation 9-1-1 page(link is external).

Ottawa households will be allowed to put out six garbage items on their scheduled garbage collection day between March 30 and April 24, as a new waste collection schedule means some households will go three weeks between collection days.

The City of Ottawa has sent a letter by Canada Post to residents outlining their waste collection day may be changing.

You can find out your garbage, recycling and green bin collection date on the city’s website at https://ottawa.ca/en/3-1-1/report-or-request/garbage-recycling-and-organic-waste/garbage-and-recycling-collection-calendar.

A freezing rain warning now covers a significant portion of eastern Ontario and southern Quebec, with Environment Canada saying a “prolonged period” of freezing rain, potentially lasting up to 24 hours, could affect the region this week.

An orange warning for freezing rain has been issued, which means a high level of impact.

Between 10 and 20 millimetres of freezing rain and ice buildup is expected, according to the weather warning.

“How you can prepare: Ensure your cell phones and power banks are fully charged. Check your emergency kit: Make sure you have flashlights, fresh batteries, and a 72-hour supply of water and non-perishable food.”

According to data shared by the force, all types of theft — $5,000 under and over and of a motor vehicle — rose by 28 per cent year-over-year. Officials noted that 2,700 reports have been filed as of Feb. 12, a large jump seen compared to the same period last year.

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Security footage, police detail, shows the woman walking through the store and filling a baby stroller with products, before she leaves the store without paying.

When store security approached her, she sprayed a noxious substance on the officer and another employee before running away. She is described as a white woman, 30 to 35 years old.

Canada’s first-ever hardware hackathon for high schoolers took place Saturday at the University of Ottawa.

Nearly 100 students from across Ottawa and Montreal had 12 hours to build physical hardware projects from scratch for the first time.

The event, known as Catalyst, hosted by Redshifted, encouraged students to get off screens and work with their hands to build innovative hardware projects.

Students got to take part in engaging hardware workshops for beginners and intermediate builders.

Organizers say hardware is one of those areas where there’s almost no community for young people.

The event was free, ensuring all students get to participate.

“The hardware costs a lot, which is why we’re excited to bring this to participants for free so that anybody without a financial barrier can join and build hardware projects,” Han added.

Featured guests include voice actors Anne Yatco, Griffin Burns, Paul Castro Jr., Risa Mei, and music group Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da.

From the program description:

In Spring 2026, the City will offer 2,400 free trees on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration will open in two stages to prioritize planting where it is needed most, based on the City’s Tree Equity Analysis.

• March 2: Registration opens for residents in wards that contain a Priority Area for Tree Planting. This includes Wards 7, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 24. Use this tool to find your Ward.
• March 9: Registration opens to residents from all wards across Ottawa.

It's incredible that this is still a problem after ten years.

Last month, employment in Ottawa-Gatineau fell 3.5 per cent from the year before, a drop of roughly 32,000 jobs.

For the Ontario side of the capital region alone, it was the fourth straight month in which annual job growth shrank by more than 5 per cent. This makes it the deepest slump outside of the early pandemic period since records began in 2011, including the drop that occurred in 2013 when the former Harper government slashed 15,000 federal civil-service jobs as part of its deficit-reduction plan.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ottawa-has-the-worst-job-market-in-canada-faring-worse-than-cities/

So I’ve been following some FOSS/linux software groups around the world like GPUL in Galicia and Chaos Computer Club & Modal Collective in Germany and I’m a little jealous of what they’ve been able to build in their associated cities/regions. For example GPUL is organizing GUADEC (The GNOME community’s annual conference) this year in A Coruña, and they regularly run workshops to get people into FOSS software development at their local university UDC. They’ve also organized (or helped organize) previous events like XDC (The X.Org developers conference for wayland/x11/mesa and related technologies).

Likewise the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) promotes open source software and runs similar events including the annual Chaos Communication Conference. What they put together seems like a great "CS Club" but outside of a university and open to the public. The Modal Collective in Berlin hosts a regular (every 3-4 months) un-conference + hackathon event (called Boiling the Ocean) working on a few different open source projects like GNOME, Postmarket OS & p2panda.

I'd love for something similar to exist in Ottawa. I've followed some groups here like OCLUG (Ottawa-Canada Linux user group), and Ottawa Systems (https://ottawasystems.xyz/) and they meet some similar goals but not exactly what I'm thinking. (I have some notes below on those events)

To me it would be awesome if we could have something like the Boiling the Ocean events in Ottawa. A semi regular event where there is presentations about FOSS tech and a hackathon to contribute to the related projects. I'd love to know if there are more people in Ottawa that would be interested in similar events. Perhaps if there is enough of us we can try to organize something. Ideally there are some people in Ottawa already familiar with some of these technologies. I spoke with some of the organizers of Boiling the Ocean and they told me the original group started with ~5 people who were already GNOME, PMOS, and Linux contributors but now they have a regular group of ~15-20 people.

For some additional context, I professional work on Mesa3D (https://mesa3d.org/) on a few different graphics drivers like turnip, anv, broadcom, lavapipe/llvmpipe. I would be happy to try and introduce people to working on graphics drivers (in fact I tried to do a little bit of that at Ottawa Systems with my own presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohdT2ic39HA). I'd also like to learn more about Linux kernel development, I'm really interested in the new "Mobile Linux" stuff like Postmarket OS. I think it would be fun to work on getting Linux running on mobile phones and making the Mobile Phone experience on Linux better. I'm also a regular GNOME user and would be interested in contributing to some of the software I use regularly.

Besides people who might be working on FOSS on their own I know we have a few companies (big or small) working on stuff that touches FOSS like:

• Ciena runs Linux on a lot of their networking hardware
• QNX runs Linux on top of their hypervisor and have been contributing to the linux graphics stack to support virtualisation in this setup
• WindRiver has their own Linux distro
• Xilinx/AMD does linux work in Ottawa (I think mainly on the kernel side for xilinx HW, not for AMD GPUs / CPUs)
• There is Credil (https://credil.org/) in Gatineau who seem to be an open source consultancy
• Shopify to my knowledge works on a few open source projects related to their frontend and backend
• like mentioned above we have people from Anubis and Mozilla in the city
• Also from OCLUG know we have people from Redhat and Lenovo who work on Linux

Maybe you already work on FOSS, you work at one of these places, or you know someone who does he might also be interested in this idea :)

About the other groups: OCLUG from what I've seen focuses more on the Linux user side not really on the developer side. They also used to be a larger but seems to be shrinking now (from an outsiders perspective). The group runs a monthly meeting that centres around a presentation and discussion, typically on more Linux user like topics.

Ottawa Systems is a little closer to the other groups I've mentioned, running a semi-regular event. But its just presentations and its not strictly focused on FOSS. The event has been great for meeting people in the developer community in Ottawa though, like I found out the developer of Anubis (https://anubis.techaro.lol/) is from the Ottawa region here, and we also have Mozilla developer here too!

I also saw hack613 runs some events at the maker space that could be similar to what i'm suggesting here but the schedule seems pretty sparse right now.

Perhaps there is some existing groups in the city that are closer to what I'm thinking about.

I put together a sign up sheet to try and organize a hackfest style event where we would come together to work on a FOSS project together. Please sign up if you're interested! https://cloud.fryzekconcepts.com/index.php/s/tyWLFqb2JQPHoH5

A few councilors are pushing the idea of refunding OC Transpo riders for cancelled or delayed trips. What do you think of the idea?

Patients at The Ottawa Hospital who crave ginger ale to settle their stomachs are being told it's no longer on the menu. The hospital says it's dumping the sugary, carbonated drink because it has "limited nutritional value."

Hospital says sugary, carbonated ginger ale has 'limited nutritional value'

Who the heck is actually for this aside from OC transpo exec, and downtown business owners?

Drives me crazy reading comments where people complain that it's about time these lazy workers go back to the office.

The crab in a bucket mentality is pathetic.

For the record I am not directly affected by this, aside from being a victim of the increase in traffic.

The Ottawa Police Service is reminding drivers that telling an officer “I thought I was doing 150” will not overturn a stunt driving charge on Highway 417.

The police Road Safety and District Traffic Unit said an officer observed a driver going 164 km/h on Highway 417 at Carp Road on Monday.