This is Ottawa

Keith Egli was at a dinner party complaining about a transit strike, when the person at the end of the table told him to stop whining and run for city council. So he did. And he was the councillor for Knoxdale-Merivale ward for 12 years. In the first of our four-part series “In Hindsight,” leading up to the municipal election, we explore the ups and downs of being an Ottawa city councillor – and the one thing Keith Egli wished he knew before becoming one.

Le Hibou is a place of near mythical status in the Ottawa music community. A tiny coffee house on Sussex Drive where the likes of Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen played. In this encore episode, Robyn Bresnahan hears memories from those who were there in its heyday and explores whether Le Hibou could ever rise again.

It’s like eBay - but run by the Canadian government. The GC Surplus site sells everything from ATVs used by the military to Air Jordan sneakers confiscated at the border. In this encore episode, Robyn Bresnahan gets a tour of the Ottawa warehouse - where she discovers the most gobsmacking item of all.

You can learn a lot about Ottawa through its street art - from protest movements to the histories of neighbourhoods. But graffiti and murals are often temporary. So a local software developer created a digital map - to archive the art. Robyn Bresnahan bikes the city with him, meeting street artists along the way.

Now that it’s been decided that 24 Sussex Drive will be restored rather than torn down - what else should change in the area? The authors of a new book on the Prime Minister’s official residence say this is a golden opportunity to not just reno the house - but the entire area around it.