Articles Tagged ‘New Edinburgh’

GREAT SPACE: The spectacular reinvention of a 1920s-era former butcher shop in New Edinburgh

Originally built in the 1920s as a butcher shop, the squat New Edinburgh dwelling, which for years had been divided into apartments, was in serious need of an upgrade. That’s when owner Shalindhi Perera teamed up with architect Andrew Reeves for a full-scale reno that honours the building’s heritage 

By Sarah Brown; Photography by DoubleSpace Photography. 

It was 1988 when Shalindhi Perera’s mother, Ranji, first set eyes on the quirky little duplex for sale in New Edinburgh. She was looking for an investment property, and her daughter was looking for a place to live. It certainly wasn’t much to look at — squat and a bit tired-looking from the outside, dark and cave-like on the inside. A former butcher shop, the building had been renovated on the fly over the years and was now a mishmash of styles and small rooms.

STREET VIEW: A view from the street of the square building that was once a butcher shop. The owner and architect agreed that they wanted a modern renovation but were equally dedicated to a reinvention that would not make waves with the neighbours. Photography by Doublespace Photography

 

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  |  November 23, 2012 at 1:00 pm

COMEDIC TIMING: Linden House’s Janet Uren talks about this year’s theatre production and what it takes to succeed

Linden House is growing up. Over the past six years, it has been lovingly nurtured, developing from one woman’s brainchild into a mature theatre company with a production team of 10. Ottawa Magazine’s Emma Paling caught up with mother-of-the-operation Janet Uren ahead of this year’s production, George Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell.

You Never Can Tell runs Oct. 23 to 27, 28, 31, and Nov. 1 to 3. $25. Elmwood Theatre, 261 Buena Vista Rd., 613-842-4913, www.lindenpro.ca.

Janet Uren is an "advanced" woman, while Danny McLeod is an impoverished dentist who has the bad luck to fall in love with her daughter in the October production of "You Never Can Tell" by George Bernard Shaw. Photo by Mike Heffernan.

Why did you start Linden House?
The most important reason was that an opportunity arose to perform on a stage — community, and even professional, theatre in Ottawa faces a shortage of stages.

I’m an alumna of Elmwood School, and they have a lovely auditorium and stage [that we could use], so I had a venue. I’d also encountered George Stonyk while working on another production, and he became our director, while I covered the business side and acted in the productions.

Another reason for starting Linden House is that I had a yen to do a particular type of comedy — the comedy of wit, an intelligent kind of humour. That tends to be British — American and Canadian humour is usually different.

How do you choose which plays to produce?
It’s agonizing! George and I both read plays and submit them to each other as possibilities. Then we blow each other out of the water and start again. We do just one play each season, though this year we also did a one-night reading in September. We don’t look for just a good play, but for a play with roles suited to the actors we have in our circle from Ottawa’s theatre community. We look for plays that are interesting, but also happy. It’s a difficult process that takes a long time. It’s a bit frightening too, because a good play is the first ingredient to success.

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  |  October 12, 2012 at 9:26 am

20 Best Neighbourhoods: Appealing to the DINKs

By Laura Byrne Paquet | Photograph by Dwayne Brown | Statistical graphics
by Aesthetic Intelligence

Best Neighbourhoods: DINKs

ByWard Market: If you dream of living in a city that never sleeps, this is as close as you’ll get in O-town

DINKs were possibly the hardest group to classify. For every couple sans kids that fits the yuppie paradigm — lattes, yoga, art galleries, and posh restaurants — there are countless others who would rather be hiking, woodworking, or watching the complete works of Jim Carrey on DVD than at the symphony. For the purposes of this article, I focused on central neighbourhoods where DINKs’ extra disposable income could buy easy access to urban pleasures — even if they rarely take advantage of them.

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  |  May 28, 2012 at 10:10 am

HOMES: A New Edinburgh gem throws open its doors for a historic house tour

A fine old New Edinburgh house throws open its doors on June 11 to help mark two historic anniversaries in Ottawa history By Janet Uren

Front hall and living area of Henrietta Southam's New Edinburgh house

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  |  May 17, 2011 at 9:15 am

GARDENS: Get inspired! Four great New Edinburgh gardens to study

Hattie Klotz creates her own mini garden tour of New Edinburgh, discovering four striking front gardens, knocking on the door, and interviewing the homeowners to discover the inspiration behind their great green spaces By Hattie Klotz

Take a tour of the gardens »

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  |  April 29, 2011 at 8:00 am

REASON TO LOVE OTTAWA #1: Because only an Ottawa native could love New Edinburgh for being gritty

Because only an Ottawa native could love New Edinburgh for being gritty.

Although I grew up in Manor Park, I’ve always loved New Edinburgh. It seemed urban, almost gritty in comparison. The houses — as mismatched as laundry hanging from a back-alley lane — are all scrunched together, giving the neighbourhood an authentic, unplanned feeling. It wasn’t developed in an architect’s office, but was built from the ground up, by emergent necessity. It’s an old area, one where fussy heritage types seeking to preserve each house and the eccentric accretions they’ve accumulated through ages of do-it-yourself homeownership blossom amid a scattering of itinerant renters.

The houses, like those who live inside them, are imperfect and have the tendency to shape the lives within, rather than the other way around. Unlike Rockcliffe, where you can build a glittering palace to your vanity, you can’t always get exactly what you want in New Edinburgh, but sometimes have to live without a garage. You’re still rich, of course, but you get to have an everyday complaint or two so that you can feel connected when you head down to Beechwood, the main artery that serves as the de facto line between Vanier and not Vanier.

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  |  April 4, 2011 at 1:00 pm

WEEKLY LUNCH PICK: thin-crust pizza with the works at Zazaza

The Place: All the recent buzz surrounding Hintonburg’s new pizza joint got me thinking about where else we might find a fine thin-crust pie. It’s a quest that took me to New Edinburgh and the nearly one-year-old ZaZaZa. It’s the latest food business to incubate in the quirky corner shack that was home to the original Fraser Café as well as the first location of The Works Gourmet Burger Bistro. There, Ion Aimers, the founder of said burger empire (which he sold last September for a reported $10 million) has created an off-beat pizza joint that — quelle surprise! — focuses on one item capped with a cavalcade of toppings.

The Deal: With its avant-garde approach to pizza adornment, ZaZaZa sets itself apart from both the traditional Ottawa-style and the nouveau Neapolitan-inspired pizzerias.

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  |  February 7, 2011 at 9:15 am

FROM THE PRINT EDITION: October Design Calendar

Festivals, shows, tours, and talks for those craving big ideas, beautiful objects, and inspiration

Oct. 15 – Nov. 7

Window Shopping by Eryn O’Neill is based on the act of searching for inspiration by “window shopping” for source material, and features oil-on-canvas paintings of restaurants, stores, and other places around town you might find familiar. Dale Smith Gallery, 137 Beechwood Ave., 613-321-0101,
www.dalesmithgallery.com

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  |  October 8, 2010 at 4:24 pm

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