LIFE AT OTTAWA

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 28, 2 August 1932, Page 7

LIFE AT OTTAWA

A BEAUTIFUL CITY

APPEAL TO DELEGATES

(Received 2nd August, 11 a.m.)

OTTAWA, Ist August. Ottawa is revealing herself to the delegates during the interval in their labours as a beautiful city. Its wide sweeping river, which becomes a great frozen sleigh thoroughfare in the winter months, now carries a busy traffic of Tiver boats, barges, pleasure launches, and canoes. Several: canoe clubs dotted on the banks have a fashionable membership. These resorts are popular also for tennis and dancing. The delegates have yielded to the allurements of the French quarter of the city, named Hull, just across the river in the Quebec Province, where liquor restrictions are relaxed and there is' a brighter night life. The Chateau Laurier is one of the best hotels in North America, luxuriously appointed and proportionately expensive, but the official delegates are guests of the Canadian Government. Parliament House stands' majestically on Parliament Hill behind theuhateau, five minutes' walk over Bideau Canal, joining the Eideau and Ottawa Eivers. Here crowds watch stumpy canal boats going through a series of six locks, similar to those on tho Thames and Murray. A party of delegates was amused at hearing a mother calling to her chiiaren, "Come and see tho steamer going down the stairs."

The spacious Parliament; ground^

with wide terraces, make an ideal setting for the pageantry of the opening ceremony. Now red-coated Eoyal Canadian Mounted Policemen, Revolver holsters in their belts, continuously pace the paths. Delegates and pressmen are Tequired to present theiV cards on admission to the building, whose 500 rooms, vacated by members of the House of Commons and Senate, are entirely occupied by Conference delegates with the numerous staffis.

Dr. ilanion, Minister of Eailways, of Irish descent and a breezy manner, presides at the Press interview twice daily and endeavours dutifully to make bricks out of strawless communiques. This studied official silence is inevitably responsible for columns of newspaper articles based on lobby gossip, but it is expected that the communiques will shortly contain some news.