Who I Am and Why I’m Here – Meet Rob

Even from my perspective, this is kind of a strange thing for me to write and put in a community newsletter, but I do hope you choose to read it and hopefully take something away from it. I’ve just finished writing about what I’ve learned about the community in my 6 months involved in the community association here. On the heels of that, it feels important to introduce myself and give you all a glimpse into my history and what I hope to do for the community.

Who I Am

First of all, my name is Rob Attrell. I’m a board member of the Convent Glen Orleans Wood (CGOW) Community Association (CA), and I’m also the secretary, website and newsletter editor, and webmaster for the Association. In the fall, I founded an Outreach Committee for the Association, which sort of just allowed me to bundle all the things I was already trying to do under one umbrella.

I am a father of three, who has recently rediscovered a love I didn’t even realize I had for good urbanism from an early age. I moved to the suburbs in 2019 for the first time in my life, thinking at the time that a house and yard and a lawn were the fundamentals of ‘growing up’. At the time, I pegged my/our difficulty in meeting new people to just being in a new neighbourhood. We had a young daughter, and didn’t have a lot of extra time for socializing anyhow. In 2020, and through the next several years, literally everybody felt isolated due to the pandemic, so being stuck at home feeling like there is nothing to do was just a universal sentiment for a while.

As COVID shifted to an endemic disease and people resumed relatively normal levels of interpersonal activity, something still felt wrong to me. We were able to leave the house and go places again, but every trip seemed like a big production, like we were packing for a long journey every time we wanted to leave the house. It was around this time that I started to get more interested in media about urbanism and active transportation, helped along by urbanist YouTube channels and books on my reading list at the time.

With this new knowledge under my belt, I committed to getting more informed about the specifics of our community from an urbanism perspective. I grew up in Calgary about 15-20 minutes by bus or bike to downtown and have lived in Ottawa since I came here for university. I grew up and went to school getting around entirely on foot, by bike, or by bus, and famously didn’t get a driver’s license until my mid-20s. For my entire adult life, until that point, I had been committed to getting around the city without driving. The places I needed to get regularly were by definition relatively close by, and my friends all lived within a few kilometres of me. If I committed to an apartment, or an intramural sport or job, I had better be able to carpool or else get there without a car.

In the suburbs, in Convent Glen, that was all very different. To get nearly anywhere, especially with a family, you need to pile into a vehicle, or get ready for a very long walk, potentially dangerous bike, or Schrödinger’s bus ride. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a person who favours transportation methods that don’t involve personal motor vehicles. I’d love to be able to live in a place where you can walk to a diverse selection of restaurants, a grocery store, gym, corner store, cafe, bakery, bike shop, mechanic, salon, bank, etc., etc., etc. Integrating places like these, and an actual indoor public space for the community north of the 174 would give us all the opportunity to get to know each other better.

From a psychological perspective, there is no alternative to regular, in-person, social gatherings. It’s no surprise the community doesn’t have a shared spirit or sense of cohesion, because it’s nearly impossible to develop this without places in the community to call our own (not individual homes that host events).

Why I’m Here

My main goal in joining the Community Association and then setting up the Outreach Committee is trying to put effort into spreading the word about the great work the CA does. Ideally, we could then try to leverage that increased visibility into a renewed sense of community spirit and culture. I am not a particularly outgoing person, but one of my strengths is building robust and well-thought-out, flexible systems to allow people to connect with one another.

I am basically done with just sitting at home with kids every evening and weekend as we try to prevent them from going stir-crazy. Shuttling them to and from heavily structured activities to break up the monotony they feel can only do so much. We see the neighbourhood is full of kids, because we see them all at school, but at the end of the day everyone goes home, never to be seen again until the following morning at drop-off.

I would love to see multiple options for group activities organized and run locally for all age groups, happening on a regular basis. The community association can absolutely help facilitate this and help to organize these kinds of events, but it’s not obvious how to even start in a place like this community, and we’d need places in the community to host this kind of thing, especially for indoor activities.

Other Community Work

It’s hard to get to know someone without also knowing what they do, so here is that aspect.

In terms of other community groups, I’m also involved with the Ottawa chapter of an advocacy group called Strong Towns. This organization promotes ways to grow more economically and socially resilient communities through sound urban development practices. These include broadening access to mixed-use zoning in cities, removing parking minimums, and stop relying on overbuilt road infrastructure at the expense of other transportation infrastructure.

Strong Towns talks a lot about what they call ‘Local Conversations’, which basically just means getting out and talking with your friends and neighbours about the kinds of things you’d like to see in your community. We hope to host conversations like this starting this spring.

Another group I am a part of is Bike Ottawa. Cycling was an extremely important part of my life from the time I learned to ride until I moved to Ottawa, and after a few years where I sort of forgot this in a new city (I didn’t have a bike), I picked right back up where I left off about 5 years later in my last year of university. I personally am very comfortable biking anywhere from the quietest neighbourhood street all the way to Innes Road or St Joseph Blvd. However, I think that it is in our best interest as a community and city to make sure our most vulnerable road users feel as comfortable taking a bike down main transportation corridors like St Joseph as I do. This requires separated and protected bike infrastructure, and changes to our car infrastructure to keep traffic moving but not at the expense of others moving through the environment.

Bikes operate in this goldilocks zone of incredible energy efficiency in movement, they are perfect tools for navigating urban landscapes quickly and efficiently. Modern manufacturing techniques have also enabled a massive variety of well-built and versatile bikes on the market, some electric, with lots of cargo capacity, making them perfect for school drop-off or a grocery run. I plan to do my very best to strengthen the cycling culture in Orleans, especially when it comes to transportation and not just leisure or athletics.

Another thing I’ve been doing for nearly a year now is a website I write for when the occasion calles for it, lesscar.ca. I *almost* hesitate to even bring it up here, since I know car is king in Orleans, but the site is called ‘Less Car’ for a reason. It’s not ‘No Cars’ or ‘Cars Are Bad’ or ‘Boo Cars’, because that’s not how I feel. I do think we should all be using cars less, and I think there should be less car (fewer cars) in the city and in the world. I also do think there is a lot about car culture that is due for a rethink, especially when it comes to car dependence like we have now.

Above, I’ve suggested investments we should pursue in community places and changes to zoning to allow mixed use buildings in our community. In addition to this, I think we would be well served as a community if we continue to make investments in active transportation like safe and efficient walking and cycling routes through our communities. The path network is a great example of this, and making sure it’s clear in the winter and connects to useful amenities along with other bike infrastructure is critical to encouraging active transportation. The 174 highway is a massive blockade to residents in our community accessing amenities that are on the other side. Making it possible to get across the highway by all matter of transportation modes should be a top priority as the community matures with the LRT coming online in the next year.

Wrapping This Up

Hopefully, this serves as a pretty good introduction to me. I hope to meet lots of residents and get to know your gripes and passions over my time on the board of the community association. We may feel differently in how we see this community and how we may want it to change (or not) into the future, but even passionate arguments mean that we all just consider our places very important to us.