On the Road, Part 3

Over the past few days I've had a chance to see a lot of this city called Ottawa. If you've never been, you should know that it's a large city. Not by population, mind - in that regard, it is actually quite small, with fewer than a million residents in the city proper - but rather by area. Only in the downtown core will you find many buildings more than ten stories tall, and in many areas there are still fields and other remnants of farmland.

Forgive my digression. As I mentioned, I've had the chance to see a lot of this city in the past three days. On Thursday morning I was accompanying a singer in a lesson in Nepean, and that evening I was in Orleans for a choir rehearsal. Friday I found myself in the Barrhaven locale onstage accompanying at a gala, and this morning I was again playing in a lesson, this time in Kanata. As I compose this post on my BlackBerry, I am walking to a bus station in Alta Vista, where I just attended a concert.

I would like to say that all this roaming provided me with some great insights about modern city life, but let's be honest here: there's nothing terribly romantic about commuting for work. I will say, though, that when you spend half your day on a bus, you do start to think about what you are working for. For me, right now, the thing I am working for is an apartment. I am hoping to find a bachelor unit for August, and so I find myself tracking every last penny I earn in an effort to see what kind of apartment I can actually afford. Riveting stuff, I know.

But perhaps geography does have something to do with it, after all. I've noticed in the course of my recent excursions that each part of the city has its own distinctive architectural style. If you're envisioning quaint Victorian estates in one area and terraced brownstones in another, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that you can tell from the buildings and houses just how rich - or poor - the neighbourhood is. It's not rocket science, of course, but given my current preoccupation with living situations, it got me thinking. How much must some of these people work just to afford these houses? How much of your life do you have to give up, just to sleep in a fancier bed when you finally get home at night? And how any hours will I have to spend on the bus running from gig to gig just to make rent on my next apartment?

My father once told me a story from his early years in northern Ontario. When he was still quite young, he was visiting his uncle, who owned a farm. Seeing a farmer on a neighbouring property plowing the fields with a horse, he asked his uncle why the man didn't just get a tractor. His uncle asked, by way of reply, whether my father really thought it would be worth it for the farmer to invest in a machine that would break down, require constant refueling, and to which he would have no human connection. It suddenly seemed like less of a wise decision.

Of course we can't go back to the days of the horse, and nor should we. But at the same time, I am not so convinced these days that newer and bigger is always better.