HOLIDAY INTERLUDE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21251, 3 August 1932, Page 11

HOLIDAY INTERLUDE

DELEGATES 11ELAX ALLUREMENTS OF OTTAWA SOME PICTURESQUE SCENES By Telegraph—Press Asuocintion—Copyright OTTAWA. Aug. 1 The delegates to the Economic Conference are taking advantage of the holiday to-day, and also of (he glorious sunshine which prevails, to visit some of Ottawa's conveniently situated picnic places. It is expected that the conference, when it resumes to-morrow, will continue to make rapid progress, but no vital issues can reach decision in this short week, which will clo.se on Thursday. Ottawa is revealing herself to the delegates during the interval in their labours as a beautiful city. The wide sweeping river, which becomes a great frozen sleigh thoroughfare in the winter months now carries busy traffic of river boats, barges, pleasure launches and canoes. The housc-s of several canoe clubs are dotted along the banks and their fashionable membership throngs to them. These resorts are popular also for tennis and dancing. Some of the visitors liavo yielded to tho allurements of tho French quarter of tho city named Hull, just across the river in Quebec Province, where liquor-restrictions are relaxed, and there is brighter night life. Chateau Laurier, one of tho best hotels in North America, is luxuriously apixsinled and proportionately expensive, but tho official delegates are guests of the Canadian Government. Parliament House stands majestically en Parliament Hill behind the Chateau Laurier, five minutes' walk over the Rideau Canal, which joins the Rideau and Ottawa Rivers. Here crowds watch stumpy canal boats going through the series of six locks similar to those on the Rivers Thames and Murray. Some of the delegates were amused at hearing a mother calling to her children, "Come and see a steamer going downstairs." The spacious Parliament grounds with their wide terraces provided an ideal setTing for the pageantry of the opening ceremony, and now red-coated Royal Cana-, dian Mounted policemen, revolver holsters in belts, continuously pace the paths. Delegates and journalists are required to present cards of admission to the building, the £OO rooms in which' have been vacated by meihbers of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate, and are entirely occupied by conference delegates and the numerous staffs. Mr. R. J. Manion, Minister of Railways, who is of Irish descent and has a characteristically breezy manner, presides at the press interviews twice a day. He 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 shortly will contain some news.