(Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)

My previous post talked about our trip to the Supreme Court of Canada, but that wasn’t the only national site we visited on December 29.  We also braved the snows to take a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint.

The Royal Canadian Mint actually has two locations now.  The original facility in Ottawa now produces only special commemorative and investment coins, while the newer facility in Winnipeg now handles the minting of the standard everyday coinage.   The upside of this is that you get to see some seriously valuable metal in Ottawa, as virtually everything is made of silver or gold.  It also produces specialty items, such as the medals awarded during the 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2015 Pan-Am Games.

After the tour, we were able to lift a gold bar worth about $680,000.00.  It is securely attached and under the watchful eyes of two security guards; it is also a lot heavier than you’d expect!  The tour is not long but it is also not that expensive; however, you do need to sign up in advance so that you are able to go through the guard post at the entrance to the facility.  Unfortunately, no photographs are permitted during the tour itself.

As we had both previously been on tours of the Parliament Buildings, we weren’t too disappointed to find out that the day’s tours were already fully booked by the time we got there.  You can only get tickets on the day of the tour; as a result, there are often line-ups first thing in the morning and all of the day’s tickets were gone by 10:30 a.m.  If the timing works for us, we will try to take one of these tours the next time we are in Ottawa.

That evening, we went to a family-run Persian restaurant called “Saffron” in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood.  It was not fancy but we really enjoyed the food.  They were very accommodating and even suggested that my wife order something that was not on the menu.

The previous day, we spent an entire afternoon at the Canadian War Museum.  It is huge:  there are 4 separate halls plus a large temporary exhibit area:  we were there for about three hours and only saw the “Cold War” hall and the temporary exhibit on Women in War.

The Cold War hall focused naturally on the period between World War II and the early 1990s.  It is strange to walk through a museum and see things that you actually remember being part of your own life:  for us, seeing the small display of “Cold War music videos from the 1980s” was especially poignant as we remember when these songs and videos first came out.

I spent some time at the Cold War Simulator, watching the two “best guesses” of how a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact might have unfolded.  Even though these were only simulations, it was still very scary to see a desperate, last-ditch use of chemical weapons followed by a single retaliatory nuclear strike.

My next major trip is now less than 2 months away; I’ve been very busy with finalizing those arrangements and doing the “macro planning” for this summer’s southern hemisphere journey.  Stay tuned for more on those trips and some more travel flashbacks!

(Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)

One of the fun experiences during our December getaway to Ottawa was a guided tour of the Supreme Court of Canada. As a lawyer, of course, this was the ultimate career-related tour for me.  Other than a visit to the Federal Court of Appeal (housed in the same building) twenty years ago as a law student with one of my professors, I had never been to the Supreme Court.

You cannot just show up for guided Supreme Court tours but it is possible to book them online.  Perhaps because of the raging and long-awaited blizzard on December 29, our tour consisted of just the two of us and our guide. I think he enjoyed providing a bit more detail than he would normally provide to non-lawyers.

The building looks very severe from the outside (see snowy photo at the top of this blog – it’s also a colour photograph!), reflecting the rationality that is necessarily part of the Supreme Court’s role.   Despite a huge foyer and impressive staircases, the Supreme Court courtroom is actually not that large.  I have been in larger local courtrooms, although not quite as plush.  Of course, the Supreme Court does not require space for jurors or witnesses:  proceedings here are appeals from lower courts and do not require new testimony.  The appeals are relatively technical and free from the unpredictability of live witnesses.

Even in front of one judge, presenting legal arguments can be somewhat intimidating.  Imagine presenting to a panel of 9 judges!  I stood at the lectern and was surprised by how close the judges would be in “real life”.   While some hearings are handled by “only” 5 or 7 judges, a lawyer at the Supreme Court is still trying to make very precise and subtle arguments to a lot of very brilliant minds.  Their time is very valuable and you cannot waste it with irrelevancies.  Not only that, but they are also able to communicate with each other during the course of the hearing.  Yes, they have “chat” capability on their computers!  This allows them to focus even more on the most important issues.

We also spent some time in the Federal Court of Appeal, where a panel is typically composed of three judges.  This portion of the tour is a little more informal and tour participants can even be photographed on the judges’ bench wearing supplied “judge robes” (which were, in this case, identical to my own legal robes).  We decided to take advantage of the opportunity!

You do not need to be on a guided tour to observe proceedings in the Federal Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court of Canada.  It is possible to just show up and watch:  even these highest levels of our court system are open to the public, subject to spectator capacity, security checks and respectful behaviour.   Hearings are also streamed over the Internet.  However, unlike trials with live witnesses, the Supreme Court drama lies in the intellectual challenge and the broader impacts of the decisions on society.

My next blog entry will have more on our wintry trip to Ottawa!