Dave Blaikie wins 2021 Don Gutteridge Poetry Prize
By John Chenier
Journalist and writer David Blaikie’s book of poetry, A Season in Lowertown, was awarded the 2021 Don Gutteridge Poetry Prize. Blaikie’s poems vividly portray his personal experience during a year living in Lowertown in the 1970s. Through his words, one can experience the sights and sounds of that era. His descriptions evoke many memories for those, such as I, who knew Lowertown back then and paint a picture for those who did not.
Here is how Blaikie describes A Season in Lowertown
Life can break like a wave at times, and flood newness upon us. I felt that way half a century ago when I arrived in Ottawa, young and eager but not at all sure of what lay ahead.
“To every thing there is a season … “
My season was in Lowertown in the 1970s, one of the oldest districts of Ottawa, just east of Parliament Hill and the Chateau Laurier Hotel, where the Rideau Canal tumbles through ancient locks to the Ottawa River – the neighbourhood where French and Irish immigrants drank and fought and made the capital of Canada to rise from the northern wilderness.
“A time to be born … “
I was new to Ottawa, having moved to Ontario from the Maritimes only a couple of years before, and was just out of a marriage I’d gotten into too young. I wanted nothing more than to lose myself and Lowertown was perfect, unpretty and undomestic, before the developers arrived and created the ByWard Market of today.
In those days, Lowertown still had the feel of early Canada, its founders and its scoundrels, loggers who danced and drowned on log booms, nuns and prime ministers who tramped its streets, and the ghost of Colonel John By, the sadistic genius who built the entire canal system in six short years – at the cost of a thousand dead labourers.
“A time to break down … “
Across the river from Lowertown lay the Quebec side and the city of Hull (known today as Gatineau), an enclave of wild night life, thanks to liquor laws that let bars stay open until three a.m., three hours later than the Ontario side. And a little further east sprawled the working-class neighbourhood of Vanier, formerly Eastview, which also teemed with night life. I embraced it all, the grit and grime, the French and Victorian architecture, the bars, the taverns, the all-night diners and hotels with creaking beds.
“A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones … “
I wept in Lowertown, I danced there. It exists within me still. These poems recount that season.
A season in Lowertown is available at Wetinkbooks and through Amazon Canada.