Pop Life and Poutine

I thought I would share a few photos of the boys enjoying pop art and local cuisine this Labour Day.

We started the day with a family trip to the National Gallery of Canada to see the Pop Life exhibit. John and I had both wanted to see this special exhibit before it ends on September 19th so we decided to make it a family affair. Max was very curious about the Gallery and seeing art. He started off his visit to the Gallery by getting up close and personal with Maman, the giant spider sculpture outside the Gallery. He loved her and was fascinated by the giant marble eggs in her belly.


The Pop Life exhibit was awesome, including works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami. Back in 1997, John and I had travelled to Toronto from Peterborough to see a Keith Haring exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario and I have been a fan ever since. Seeing a recreation of his Pop Shop was awesome. Leo also enjoyed it:


Max enjoyed watching Andy Warhol in old “The Love Boat” episodes, a unicorn encased in glass, and meeting The Twins (SO cool – a piece by Damien Hirst featuring live identical twins) but his absolute favourite was the Takashi Murakami video installation AKIHABARA MAJOKKO PRINCESS (which showed on a 103-inch plasma screen). For want of a better description, it is a music video starring Kirsten Dunst as a live-action anime princess. The images come at you a mile a minute. To say that Max loved this video would be an understatement. We literally had to drag him away from the screen and we still think he watched it at least a dozen times. Oh well. It gave John and I both a chance to go back into the exhibition to see the “Adults Only” rooms.


All in all, I think it was a successful first visit to the Gallery and I definitely think that we will be bringing the boys back as they get older.

After visiting the Gallery, we walked around the Byward Market for a bit and got some crèpes for lunch – magnifique! We made it back to the van just as the rain started to fall.

We had made plans to go to the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival in the early evening to check out the grand finale when all of the balloons take flight at the same time. We went last year and Max absolutely loved it. My best friend from high school J has recently moved back to Ottawa for the first time since high school so J and her partner T decided to join us. The weather was still crappy so we checked the Festival website to see what the status of balloons might be. The Balloonmeister (yes, a real word – they are sort of an air traffic control person for hot air balloons) uses a flag system (green, yellow, red, pink, blue) to determine the flying conditions.

Despite the still pounding rain, we thought we would head over to Gatineau to check out the Festival grounds and cross our fingers that some balloons would be flying. Alas, we saw the red flag flying so we abandoned our mission to watch balloons and set out on a new mission: to find poutine for J and T, who had been craving the treat since their return from the West. We drove around Gatineau for a few minutes before spotting a small sign for Bob Patate, a classic Quebecois fry place with an order counter inside and not much else. We ordered a few mediums to eat in the car and a “poutine familiale” to share at home. The adults thoroughly enjoyed the poutine but we weren’t sure about feeding it to the boys. Max decided that he likes his fries plain with no gravy or cheese. Leo on the other hand is a born poutine lover! He saw the giant Styrofoam container of poutine and dove right in with both hands and two forks:



What an awesome day!