Quote:
Originally Posted by bikegypsy
Civil servants make up less than 10% of the total population in Ottawa and no, being a civil servant doesn't make you conservative. There is, however, a trend to underdress in Ottawa or to be more outdoorsy in style then places such as Montreal and Toronto. There's nothing wrong with that and it is a city very well connected to the outdoors. Being in the design and arts community, I tend to dress as I wish and have always done so, and never felt out of place in Ottawa. For one who as has spent an equal amount of time in both Ottawa and Montreal, I always felt the amount of anonymity to be the same. What there is more of in Ottawa are people who think the city is more conservative then the rest of Canada... It is Canada which is conservative in both style and behaviour, not Ottawa. After all, being "nice" is notoriously canadian. Canada, the boring heaven.
|
I have a number of family members who are longtime employees of the federal government in Ottawa, and when I lived there my girlfriend, who moved there with me, got a job with them as well, and as a result a lot of our friends through her also worked for the feds, so I have some firsthand experience with this question. None of my family members grew up in Ottawa, btw. Many cities in Canada suffer from civil servant-itis, as we call it. Regina, a government town, is more conservative/reserved than Saskatoon, for example, but nowhere has it like Ottawa. But that’s understandable. 10% of the total population sounds about right, but that would be about 15% of the working population, and a much higher percentage than that of the people who make above average wages. If you’re in a store shopping look around. One out of every four or five people you see shopping probably works for the federal government. Even your entry level CR-7s make a comfortable starting wage, not extravagant by any means, but certainly more than the guy behind the counter at the 7-11. W.r.t. anonymity, if you live and work in Ottawa then you are much more anonymous in Montreal or Toronto. Not everyone in Ottawa is conservative in this way, of course, but overall Ottawa is
much more conservative than most Canadian cities.
As a side note, I would agree that Ottawa is more outdoorsy than Montreal, but it’s not very outdoorsy in the greater Canadian context, although there people there who do take pains to be outdoorsy. The civil servant thing to do is to rent a cottage in the Gatineau somewhere, which is great, but still quite civilized. Hiking in the Gatineau hills is also very nice, but again not exactly in the same league as people who hike in the mountains, or the wilds of Newfoundland, etc. There are a number of people who go canoeing in Algonquin, and that’s getting more outdoorsy, but again it’s not like canoeing on the Churchill in northern Saskatchewan, for example. In Algonquin there are specific camp sites that you have to use, and you have to make reservations in advance, and there are quite a few other people around. I’ve been on canoe trips in northern Saskatchewan where we didn’t see anyone else for days, and we made our own campsites wherever we saw an appropriate place.