The oddly mean streets of Ottawa

On Monday, Canadians will head to the polls for yet another general election. On the right, Stephen Harper will try to hold on to his premiership and shuffle along for another tour of duty. In the middle, Michael Ignatieff will try to sway the nation with his Liberal charms and academic credentials. And to the left, Jack Layton will do what modern socialists do best – appeal to the overworked and undecided under his New Democratic Party banner. I tend not to follow Canadian politics that closely as my homeland is one of the most stable democracies in the world and there’s little in the way of dynamism to draw me in for a closer look.

Last Saturday afternoon I touched down in the nation’s capital to join my family for Easter dinner and as we journeyed in from the airport I attempted to do a random poll of placards pounded into thawing front lawns in suburban Ottawa.

At the hotel I switched on the TV to catch the headlines on public broadcaster CBC’s 24-hour news channel and joined a bulletin already in progress. From a studio in downtown Toronto, a presenter was rattling through the itineraries for the candidates and, in a bid to keep viewers tuned in a few minutes longer, the anchor flagged up a story about what each of the parties would be doing for families before making an awkward transition to a colleague who was going to explain why the Canadian family was no longer what it used to be and why the various parties needed to respond accordingly.

At this point I think I tuned out, started getting ready for dinner and flipped to newscasts on other bulletins to hear other snippets from the election trail: defence, aboriginal affairs, economic policy et al. A few minutes later I was out on the streets of downtown Ottawa for a little post-flight fresh air and was startled before I made it beyond the shadow of the hotel. The street was littered with soggy bits of rubbish; some shops were out of business; almost every office tower had a lease sign in the lobby window and it was eerily deserted. I walked a few blocks hoping the urban landscape would improve but the few retail outlets that were open felt tatty and tired, the streets were buckling and full of potholes and every other block was punctuated by a vacant property, an empty parking lot and restaurant closed for business, permanently. A few days before my departure my mother warned me that “Ottawa was looking pretty grim and isn’t at its best in early spring”. For a brief moment I was almost ready to forgive the layer of grime and general sleepiness and blame it all on the late thaw and Easter weekend. Was I being too hasty and harsh in my judgments? Perhaps I was just catching Ottawa in an off moment. Maybe I just needed a good coffee to sharpen my mood. Somewhere along Bank Street I spied a coffee shop that looked respectable enough and wandered in for jolt of espresso. As I crossed the threshold, the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly started to tingle and I had one of those panicky moments where I knew I should turn back but felt drawn in by the tableau in front of me. If I told you the café looked as if it were auditioning for a particularly bleak role in a Stieg Larsson novel I’d be underselling it. From front to back every table had a listless, lone occupant slumped in front of a laptop occasionally tapping at a keyboard and staring through the screen. Most were dressed in black, some had unsightly facial piercings, and there was a lot of sniffling and scratching.

As I placed my order I could feel dark eyes burning into my back and from the corner of my eye I caught a girl in pea-green sweatshirt flash a crazy smile at someone across the room and then clatter her nails across the keyboard, giggling to herself. Coffee in hand, I made for the door and the safety of the sunlight hitting the street. A few blocks along I turned on to a side street and, looping back towards the hotel, marvelled at how low-rise and loose the city felt; the lack of density making it feel barren and undeveloped. I wondered how I’d feel if I were an Australian diplomat posted from Rome to Ottawa on a three-year assignment. Or how a Brazilian defence attaché might sell Ottawa to his family before signing on to represent his nation. I concluded bad and badly.

Whoever ends up being the victor at the polls on Monday might want to take a more top-down approach and take a hard look at the national capital and get it in order first. While not a purely federal affair, the capital of one of the world’s biggest economies can surely put on a better show and set an example for the rest of the country. The raw ingredients are there: a decent little airport, ample green space, a pretty setting and the making of a proper urban core. What’s missing is some inspired leadership, a strategy on density and scale and a strict planning code to encourage better housing, commercial buildings and public spaces.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine

tyler.brule@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/brule