Beautiful Ottawa

My mom, sister, and I visited my grandma yesterday for lunch. It was nice, but kinda shocking to see her so, well, old. (We think she must have had a stroke. She's still walking around, and remembers who we all are, but she's pretty clueless about a whole lot things.)

After lunch we headed off to Carleton University to take in the butterfly exhibit. It was lovely! Every fall two greenhouses are taken over by exotic butterflies and opened to the public. After marvelling at the bugs and the great greenery, we took a walk along the edge of the river-side campus. So beautiful! Carleton is such a strange university. The buildings are of course rather ugly (compared to parts of U of T), since they were mosly built in the 1960s and 1970s. But the campus itself is set on lovely landscape. It's right on the Ottawa River and the trees are really colourful right now. Squirrels, birds, and chipmunks were out in full force. We also got to see the third-year architecture students' design projects, which were set up along the riverbank. It was a really nice afternoon visit to my alma mater, and the weather was great!

The plan for today is to relax some more and get ready for heading to the archives tomorrow. It turns out that the War Museum is super close to Library and Archives Canada, so I'm happy about that. But I'm unhappy about having to take a bus so early tomorrow morning. Sigh.