Maman

Another lovely day here in Ottawa - our last before we head for Toronto tomorrow to spend time with the family there (fear not, fans of our Granddog Oona, there's bound to be blips of her in the next couple of weeks!).

It was too nice to spend much time indoors, but we did spend 45 minutes this morning at the Canadian government's "Immersive Parliament Experience" where, after an initial period reading some info and looking at models of the various parliament buildings, you go into a big "immersive" room with 360 degree projections on the walls with changing videos and photos of various rooms etc in the "real" buildings. The extra shows one of the scenes and gives an idea of the scale of it. Unlike the "Immersive Dali Experience" I went to in London last year  it was free to enter, although you had to book a timeslot in advance.

After that we spent most of the rest of the day walking round, seeing the sights, taking in the Notre Dame Cathedral and generally enjoying the sunshine. The main blip shows an interesting sculpture outside the National Gallery of Canada (where we had lunch) - it's called Maman (Mother). There's lots of information about it on Wikipedia here - there are several bronze casts around the world which are copies of the original steel version first displayed in the Tate Modern in London in 1999. Seemingly it alludes to the character of the mother of the artist Louise Bourgeois.