When the Sens Play

There's a special place in hell reserved for the geniuses who decided to put the Ottawa Senators home ice in Kanata. I hope when they get there they're forever stuck in traffic.

There are many reasons why the Sens are in Kanata. None of that matters to me. What matters is that when the Sens play a home game I spend an extra forty minutes battling traffic after work.

A friend of mine once worked in a downtown hotel. Whenever tourists asked where they could go to see a hockey game he'd have to tell them to get on a bus and head west to another town. Then, if they said they'd like to see a baseball game, they'd have to get on a bus and head east. Football? You're taking the bus south. But they could always walk to Lebreton Flats to see our war museum. Tourists don't want to see other countries war museums. If I go to Brazil I have no desire to see the Brazilian war museum. I'm going to a soccer game!

When you go to Toronto you can walk from the Air Canada Centre to the new aquarium, then on to the CN Tower, then to the Skydome (yes, I'll always call it the Skydome). Then there's great restaurants nearby. When you bus it out to the Palladium (Corel Centre, Scotiabank Place, Canadian Tire Centre, whatever) what's out there? Nothing. You're two shakes away from resorting to cannibalism waiting for the damn bus to take you back to civilization.

Ottawa would have been wise to develop Lebreton Flats as an entertainment centre. But that would have required foresight. So, instead of making Ottawa more accessible and exciting for tourists and the general public, they're building condos. Oh joy!