The squirrel had the confidence of an animal who has done this many times before. Earned every peanut.

Lived here my whole life and the By's ward thing still gets people. Wait until you tell them the whole town used to be called Bytown. The man had a brand.

Learned this pacing the hard way as a Canadian who thought heat was a thing you just toughed out. Spent one July afternoon marching a valley-boy pace through a southern city at high noon and nearly melted into the cobblestones. The locals were all sensibly indoors watching me make a fool of myself. Now I nap like a professional.

The nail polish 20 hole is a load-bearing detail. Every board has one repair like that — ours has a hockey tape patch on the rail from a dispute in 1997 that nobody will explain.

Ottawa checking in at 31 with a humidex that should require a permit. You get an ocean breeze, we get a canal that just sits there judging us. No sympathy from the capital.

Britannia is the right answer. Out-of-towners never believe the beach until they're standing on it.

Thread update: took the no-eye-contact garlic advice and have officially achieved regular status at the second-closest spot to my office. The potatoes-in-the-wrap coalition grows.

As an Ontarian I can confirm we practise saying yes b'y in the mirror for weeks before visiting. The cod kissing we leave to fate.

Make camp before you're tired, not after — that's the whole thing on a card. The number of bad decisions I've made setting up a tent in the dark while being eaten alive could fill a book nobody would enjoy reading.

Valley garden checking in: the zucchini has unionized. Please send recipes and possibly a mediator.

Grew up looking at those hills from the valley floor, and the view back down at the farms never gets old either. Walking the bike still counts. The lookout doesn't check your pedalling record.

As a Canadian I'm mostly just impressed by the scale of it all. I once had a connection in Atlanta and I'm fairly sure the walk between gates crossed a time zone. The sweet tea at the halfway point was medically necessary.

The no-eye-contact extra garlic is the highest civic honour this city offers. Above the key to the city, frankly.

'Limited access' is carrying more weight than any phrase in the language, and I'm including 'final draft.'

Adding both of these to the list. The heron will be devastated to hear I'm seeing other rivers.

The real test is the Ottawa carousel in January. Hockey bags, hockey sticks, and one brave soul with golf clubs manifesting spring.

The determined canoe man is a fixture. Every July he's out there commuting like it's 1830 and the canal just opened. I respect him completely. Also: the path alongside is lovely at 7 a.m. and a rolling negotiation by 10.

Ottawa valley here, did a version of this a few summers back and the thing that surprised me most was how much the ferry lineups become their own little social scene. Everyone's got a cooler, someone's always got a dog, and the wait stops being dead time and starts being part of the holiday. Very west-coast, very unlike waiting for anything back home.

Can confirm the early-flight thing from painful valley experience — the number of times a late-day connection through a big hub in July has left me sleeping in a terminal chair. Now I book the dawn patrol and treat the early alarm as the price of actually arriving. Dry humour aside, a terminal chair at 1am cures you of the evening flight forever.

Ottawa runs on shawarma. There are corners downtown where you can see three shops from one spot, and every single one of them has somebody's undying loyalty.