An ESI contest: Name the Bridge!
posted by The Independent Observer
The Rideau Canal pedestrian bridge has been open since September but still has no name.
Sure, there have been at least a couple of ideas: The Corktown Bridge, in honour of the Irish workers who helped build the Rideau Canal, and the Nelson Mandela Bridge, a tip of the tuque to the inspirational South African who visited our fair ville in 1990. But neither name seems ready to be uttered in the same breath as Arts Tower, Beavertail or Gloucester Sunrise.
Well, we can remedy this situation by soliciting suggestions. Let's come up with a worthy shortlist of proposed monikers. Then, at a future Emergency Meeting, we'll settle on one we can submit to the City of Ottawa for consideration.
Let the naming begin ...
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11 comments:
Will there be prizes, IO?
Indeed. The person who suggests the name of choice is entitled to a piece of fine ESI merchandise (get going on that, 4D), as well as unlimited free use of the bridge.
I'm sorry, Indy, I'd have a conflict of interest. I want the prize.
My entry, in honour of the bilingual nature of our City and the University that is reached by this traverse:
Le Pont Bridge
Perhaps Aggie could make one of her dessert confections as a prize.
I actually learned about corktown because of this bridge! I think The Corktown Bridge is probably gonna be the victor, but my lame but pragmatic suggestion is:
The Somerset Foot Bridge
It is what it is!
Pont Ifical...?
Inspiration Pont?
In quasi-bilingual honour of our national critter, and Canal beavertails (with an obscure nod to all of the U of O English Lit majors who walk over the thing every day): Castor Bridge
In honour(?) of, variously, the ever popular NCC, parliamentarians just up the canal, and of Ottawa city councillors, a mere two blocks away:
Pont of Order, Talking Pont or, uh, Pont of Insanity. (Especially after all those years of pontless quibbling...)
And in honour of Jimi Hendrix, who once may have boffed Joni Mitchell in Ottawa, after her gig at Le Hibou:
Rainbow Bridge.
How much more iconic can ya get?
Better step it up, Short Guy, or someone else's fangs will be sinkin' into that deelushious Dolly Parton Dump Cake...
What about the By-ped Bridge?
Could we call it the Music Bridge, in recognition of all the musical references to the word "bridge"? Simon and Garfunkel liked it so much they wrote more than one song using the word in the title: 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) and Bridge over Troubled Waters, which may be apropos when the Canal starts to smell a bit by mid-summer.
The lovely Fergie recently released
London Bridge, not to be confused with the children's nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down, which I hope is not something that will happen to Ottawa's new bridge. Generally speaking, a bridge in song structure is transitional from verse to chorus, and the bridge of a stringed instrument transfers vibration to create sound.
Too bad this bridge doesn't vibrate to allow walkers a more easy transition from one side of the Canal to the other. Now that would be soothing. Not to mention groovy.
The Justin Trudeau Bridge? (funny in its irreverence, and as a satirical comment on modern Canada? A tribute to someone who has done little other than be his father's son, and yet an explicit acknowledgement that that mere act might be enough for us to raise him up as our leader? A pre-emptive statement about the hollowness of Ottawa's political life, where emptiness and nonsensical adoration are exemplified in our pop-culture? An existential gesture belying the old dream that hard work and determination is all you need to get ahead (such a 20th century philosophy), mixed in with a respect for our more glorious past? The past and the future meet, walking, over the canal steeped in Canadian history? In Ottawa's capital, a bridge that joins the youth to the city's older core.
Fitting, I think.
CS, after your insightful comment the only name that comes to mind would be Demarcation Pont.
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