The Leitrim Fire Station

The Leitrim fire station is near the south west corner of Leitrim Road and Bank Street, facing south on Leitrim Road.

Making Slow Progress With My Writing

I am in the labyrinth of the finale of the novel I am currently writing. I think it's good but what do I know? That will be up to the book's audience, if there is one.

For two days I have not put any words on the page, yet I am in the process of writing. I have decided a few things about what happens next but there is more to work out. I have figured who will be featured and where. I need to provide a time filler to allow another event elsewhere to progress to a scene where there will be sufficient conflict, change and progress to the next event in the narrative.

A scene that is just time filler isn't good enough. There needs to be something there that advances the action with sufficient conflict and action on its own to provide entertainment to the reader.

I am visualizing the characters, the setting, the time of day, the weather, the smells, the noises around them, and fitting that into the overall story, in which, I have something like eight story arcs in progress. This is the kind of thing I have to do in order to get to a point where putting the words on the page will result in something worth reading from the page. At least, that's the hope.

This is somewhat like writing jokes when I was involved in writing sketch comedy. Back then it was all intuition and instinct. Despite the learning and discovery I have gone through with doing this, namely writing, I am still mostly relying on intuition and instinct. I may think something is funny but until it is being performed and an audience is laughing at it I really have no way of knowing.

Another problem with this is that it is in the vicinity of the "third act." This is where the story has to come to close in a way that seems to make sense and that satisfies the reader so they'll feel rewarded for working their way through the story to get to the end.

As to the eight or so story arcs, I am hoping to resolve about three of them. There will be loose ends hanging out all over the place. That's OK because I plan to write other stories in this story's world that will connect back to it.

I think my earlier life in public school would have been just ever so slightly easier if at least one of my teachers had known that the majority of the work involved with writing doesn't involve getting the words on the page but it is the process of working out what those words will be.

Fleet Street Pumping Station

I took a series of pictures on the way to and from the 2014 Canadian Firefighters Memorial Ceremony. The central feature of these pictures is the Fleet Street Pumping Station in Ottawa. I don't think I can classify it as a memorial, even though it has a plaque. So I'm posting the pictures here.

NATIONAL HISTORIC
CIVIL ENGINEERING
SITE

FLEET STREET PUMPING STATION

Originally constructed to provide a safe
water supply for public use and for fire
fighting purposes, this pumping station
remains a lasting tribute to the prominent
civil engineers responsible ffor its design and
construction. Due to their innovative use of
water power to drive the pumping equipment
and superb engineering skils, the Fleet Stree
Pumping Station continues to be a key
component of the City of Ottawa's water
supply system.

1874-75 Construction  Engineer  Thomas C. Keefer
1888 Expansion  City Engineer  Robert Surtees
1901 Expansion  City Engineer  Newton Ker

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering  2011

The Embrun Fire Hall

The Embrun Fire Hall, Poste de Pompiers, is on the northeast corner of Notre Dame Street and Dignard Street in Embrun.

The Russell Fire Hall

Russell is a municipal township just south east of Ottawa. The Russell Fire Hall is on South Russell Road south of the Castor River.

This nice object is located in a small garden plot just to the left of the fire hall's front door.

Canada Day in Greely: Fireworks

On the day after Canada Day my neighbour told me the firework display was the best one they'd ever had here. I got a fair number of pictures of the fireworks going off but it isn't easy doing it and I learned something. For fireworks, use a wide angle lens. I had put the long lens on my camera, which was great for getting close to the performers on stage, but not so great for getting the action in the sky.

The photographs show some of the set up for the fireworks display. The people working on them didn't want anyone coming close to their stuff and I didn't want to get close either, so I got the ground set up in progress from a distance.

The tubes inside the wooden frames are mortars. A firework goes into each tube from which it is launched to explode in the air making pretty pictures so everyone watching will go, "Ooh!" and "Ah!"

You can get an idea of the size of the mortars from the people setting them up. I don't know what the wrapped up stuff in the foreground is but I'm sure it's important.

To me the setup doesn't look like much, but the show lasted about twenty minutes and was totally awesome.

The first two firework pictures are of fireworks that were not part of the show. They were being set off privately a street or two away from the park while the singers were performing.

From here to the end are pictures I took within about the first five minutes of the show. The trick to getting a shot like the one here is to follow the feint trace of the firework as it rockets upward and then to snap the picture just as it explodes. This is definitely not easy with a long lens. Looking at them now, I think all the pictures of the fireworks turned out very well.

So there you have it, Canada Day in Greely. I hope everyone had a happy Canada Day in 2014.