La Machine

These photos are from July 28.  As part of the Canada 150 celebrations in Ottawa this summer, some street performance art called "La Machine" came to town from France.  Long Ma, a Dragon-Horse, and Kumo, a giant spider, are huge mechanized creatures that wandered and duelled in downtown Ottawa over the course of 4 days.  The backstory is that Kumo has stolen Long Ma's wings, and they both roam the streets of downtown, with Long Ma battling Kumo at intervals to try to get them back.  We went down on the Friday to see them encounter each other for the first time.

Ed took these first two of Kumo at rest:

Here is Long Ma at rest over lunch, the battle was scheduled for 2 pm:

This shows the machinery that operates Long Ma:

The crowd was really big, but well behaved.  This is as close as we got for the battle part, there is a spider way off in the distance waving its giant legs:

Ed took these next few with his zoom lens.  You can see Kumo's orchestra that follows behind her on raised platforms:

The dragon is not happy, and exhales some smoke to prove it:

Kumo takes off after Long Ma to start roaming the streets again:

We hate crowds and were at our quota of standing around, so we took off in the other direction.  It was cool to see it though, and then to watch the videos on Youtube from people who had had closer encounters with them.

MosaiCanada 150

I kind of got derailed about posting about Hawaii, but I will get back to it!  In the meantime, here are some photos of the MosaiCanada topiary displays that are in Parc Jacques-Cartier this summer.

Ed got to learn about a lot of sterotypical Canadian iconography on this outing.  Here he is with the Mountie, representing Saskatchewan:

The lobster fisherman, Nova Scotia:

The muskoxen (my favourites!) represent the Northwest Territories, and the inukshuk is for the northern lights (which are pictured on the other side so you can't see them from this angle):

The drum dancer is for Nunavut, and the polar bear behind him is for Manitoba:

The dragons are for Beijing, I guess they get an honourable mention on Canada's 150th, so we can't be accused of being too parochial.

The voyageur:

Bison grazing:

And a couple of Mother Earth:

I really liked this event, it was my favourite of the Canada's 150th birthday celebrations.