5 minute read
GLEBOUS & COMICUS
Glebe to host winter games for seniors
By Bob Irvine
In February 2023, the Glebe will host special urban winter games for seniors. The Seniors Urban Winter Games (SUWG for short) will feature exciting competitions drawing hundreds of over-65s from across the globe. The goal of SUWG is to showcase how seniors can cope with – indeed triumph over – the challenges of winter in cities like Ottawa.
The Glebe Report recently had an exclusive interview with the key people behind our successful bid to host SUWG 23: long-time community activist Ima Keener and Glebe-based philanthropist Sonny Waize. Keener and Waize presented their surprise guest for the occasion, Sven Svensen, president of the International Seniors Urban Games Committee. Still spry at age 112, Svensen won 44 Olympic gold medals for Sweden in cross-country skiing over a five-decade career ending at age 75. On a final pre-Games tour, Svensen spoke about what he saw first-hand in the Glebe.
“I marvel at how your road graders and sidewalk plows work so closely together to create huge windrows and piles of snow and ice along Bank Street sidewalks,” Svensen exclaimed with enthusiasm. Svensen then explained how their precision is critical to the premier event of the Games.
Called Parking on Bank Street After a
Glebe streets offer endless opportunities for the Seniors Urban Winter Games
organizers. PHOTO: BOB IRVINE
Blizzard, the event is a mixed-doubles competition featuring a man (“the husband”) as the driver and a woman (“the wife”) as the front-seat passenger. After finding a parking spot on Bank Street, the husband grabs a shovel from the trunk and attempts to make a safe passageway for them to the curb, which is typically two metres away. At the same time, the wife kicks repeatedly at her door to push the snow far enough back for her to exit the car. The two then move quickly on their path to the nearest parking machine. Now an element of chance affects their path to victory – after all their efforts, will the City’s parking machine accept their loonie?
“The judges are assessing the couple’s speed but also their style. For example, does the husband handle his shovel with flair? Jumbotrons being installed at Second Avenue will show all the action from both inside and outside the car,” explained Waize.
Keener then highlighted some of the other competitions being held during the Games: • barbershop-quartet singing by teams of men in costume shovelling out driveways. (Keener encourages Glebe Report readers to watch for the US team, which plans to sing Gospel tunes while dressed as a chain gang from
Alabama.) • men in suits and women in dress slacks walking from Bronson Avenue to Bank Street while attempting to avoid sending their clothes soon after to the dry cleaners • a broad jump competition across the huge puddle on the west side of Bank Street at Second Avenue.
Svensen interjected at this point.
“Puddles that huge don’t just happen! I understand that Bank Street was reconstructed a few years ago. Road engineers and sidewalk designers must have worked carefully together to create a water hazard that large,” Svensen exclaimed.
Svensen then described a special side-event awaiting Glebe residents at the Games – gold-medal-winning, Russian female pole-vaulter Gunna Nokyursoxoff will attempt to pole vault the entire block between First and Second Avenue to avoid stepping in puddles.
Glebe Report readers interested in serving as volunteers at the Games are invited to come to the Glebe Report office on the morning of April l, if they still have not realized that this is Bob’s latest April Fool’s spoof.
The Glebe
according to Zeus
A GUINEA PIG’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE GLEBE
Guinea pigs speechless, postprotest?!?
In an unprecedented space-time singularity, the inherently garrulous Glebe guinea pigs have gone eerily silent. Theories abound as to the source of this disturbing oddity. Environmental factors? Psychological trauma? We talked to the experts to find out.
“We suspect environmental factors,” stated Rachel Johnny Carson, rodent biologist and environmentalist. “The incessant honking, diesel and bouncy castles disrupted the natural flow of the city’s environment, confusing the pigs. With their sensitive hearing, the guinea pigs now also have what’s called Direct Defence Tinnitus (DDT), a natural evolutionary defence mechanism that blocks out general unpleasantness, such as criticism or, in this case, loud noises.”
Renowned rodentologist Matthew Rippeyoung agrees with Carson but claims her theory does not go far enough. “The psychological factors must be considered. A guinea pig’s natural instinct is to “freeze” and become silent in the face of fear. The potential disruption to the food chain would have sent shock waves through the guinea pig community, exacerbating pre-existing winter fears about the supply of romaine lettuce from California. Then add the bouncy castles. It’s well documented that guinea pigs suffer acute Bouncy Castle Phobia (BCP) – I treat hundreds for BCP each year. It’s their worst nightmare, being caught flailing around in a bouncy castle.”
However, some argue the answer is neither environmental nor psychological. According to a local blogger, Awoman, the guinea pigs simply misunderstood Zexi Li’s honking injunction. “The little fur balls probably misheard the chatter about the injunction and thought they were no longer allowed to “taunt.” As we all saw, they had been enthusiastically taunting the protestors with invective tirades for quite some time, to the delight of the anti-protestors,” smiled Awoman.
While the current silence is disturbing, experts agreed that donations of imported Italian parsley from Nicastro, Erling’s gift certificates and complimentary parsleyccinos at Morala will get the pigs through it just fine.
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