This is a bit of a reminiscence of memories of my hometown Ottawa that have somehow seeped up from the brain, in no particular order, for no particular reason.

The number 61 Elmvale Acres bus.  It was the 61 Bayshore until it got the other end of city, when it became the 61 Elmvale.  It took almost two hours for the bus to do the whole loop through the downtown core, east to Elmvale Shopping Centre, back around Urbandale Acres, through Elmvale again, to downtown, then out to the wilds of the West End:  Westgate Shopping Centre, Carlingwood and eventually a loop of Bayshore Drive, before there was a Bayshore Shopping Centre.  You could see almost the whole city for 50 cents.

Tiny Tom Donuts in the Pure Food building at the Ex.  Every year mystery people would bring a convoluted machine that would poop out tiny donuts by the hundreds at the Central Canada Exhibition.  They would be hot, greasy and lightly sprinkled with white sugar and if you paid extra, cinnamon and sugar.  There were also Shopsy Hot Dogs, Pizza, and Back Bacon on a Bun.  Why it was called the Pure Food building, I’ll never know, as the only thing that was ‘Pure” in there was the grease.

Hobbyland.  Downtown for a thousand years.  As all the small buildings downtown were bought up, then razed to make way for huge office buildings, Hobbyland survived.  If you needed Testor’s Candy Apple Red and some new brushes for your Eldon slot car, Hobbyland had it in stock.

The Capitol Theatre was a monster classic cinema and theatre originally built in 1920 with Thomas W. Lamb as the architect.  The Capitol was an old-fashioned movie palace that sat 2530 patrons in luxury.  The stage hosted everyone from Nelson Eddy to Jimi Hendrix over its’ fifty-year life.

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