Kym Shumsky, our Awesome Fellow from January 2011, will be hosting a showing of her work from the 100 Strangers Project at Irene’s Pub on May 9th. The show will be up from April 29th to June 3rd so if you can’t make it out to the opening be sure to stop by while it’s up and get a copy of her book. Kym will be donating the proceeds from the book sales to Operation Rainbow Canada, a registered charity providing free reconstructive surgery to children in under-served countries. We are so happy that Kym was able to bring this project to fruition and look forward to seeing all the pictures!

This month’s Awesome grant winner is Hidden Harvest Ottawa! Within the city limits of Ottawa there are 42,000+ fruit and nut trees which go unharvested every year. This adds up to thousands of pounds of food going to waste. Meanwhile community organizations and agencies like the Food Bank struggle to feed their communities with fresh produce and the owners of the trees throw away the excess. Hidden Harvest Ottawa seeks to bridge the gap: to pick fruit, share it, and then plant more trees.

HHO will connect landowners with trees, tree owners with volunteer harvesters, and harvesters with community agencies. The harvest itself will follow a sustainable ¼ model: ¼ will go to the tree owner, ¼ to the volunteer harvesters, ¼ to the nearest community agency in need, and ¼ will return to HHO to generate funds to support the organization.

Jason and Katrina, the founders of HHO, are friends that met through wild food salvaging adventures around Ottawa. Jason is on the Board of Directors for Just Food and a member of the Ottawa Forest and Greenspace Advisory Committee. Katrina was Outreach and Communications Director at The Otesha Project (a local sustainability non-profit) from 2009-2011. With the awesome grant they plan to invest in two bike trailers that will carry the weight they need to tote the fruit from the harvest to local food agencies.

If you are interested in getting involved as a volunteer, landowner, or community group, please let us know or check out their Facebook page!

The game was started by some students at Middlebury College in Vermont in 2005 as an alternative to their regular games of bocce. Alexander Manshel was the first Quidditch Commissioner and he was the one to adapt the rules from the stories to a real life game. Alex Benepe took over that role and really took the game from just being intramurals played at Middlebury to the international sport it is today (he is still the Commissioner of the International Quidditch Association). By 2008, teams travelled from across the United States to compete in the Quidditch World Cup, including a single Canadian team, McGill University. Last year 96 teams competed on Randall’s Island in New York City.

The version of Quidditch played at uOttawa is extremely close to the version Harry Potter plays. Three Chasers on each side attempt to score on the opposing team’s hoops (of which there are 3) with the Quaffle (a slightly deflated volleyball). The hoops are guarded by a Keeper, who generally plays offensively as well. This part of the game is quite similar to rugby. The Beater position reflects the challenges a player would face on a broomstick. There are 2 Beaters on each side, and 3 Bludgers (dodgeballs); when a player gets hit by a Bludger, they must drop whatever they are holding and run back to their side of the field and touch the hoops before they remount their broom and rejoin the game; this is a time penalty that simulates falling off a broom.

A goal is worth 10 points, and a Snitch Snatch is worth 30. The game is full contact and co-ed (current gender rules stipulate that there must be 2 players of the opposite gender on the pitch at all times; soon, it will change to a ratio of 3:4). There are rules against back-tackling and illegal tackles, but the game can still get rough, and injuries (known as “quinjuries”) are common, as no protective gear is worn during play. Because there are 4 balls and 4 positions with different rules for each, there is a lot going on, and goal referees and bludger referees are often used.

In Clare’s words:

“My favourite adaptation is by far the Snitch. In Muggle Quidditch, the Snitch is a person. And just like the Snitch in the game, they are playful, unpredictable, and extremely difficult to catch: Snitches have a ballsock on the back of their shorts that must be caught by either team’s Seeker to end the game. Snitches are released at the beginning of the game and have full run of the area, although they must return to the pitch at a certain time. Amid all the running and wrestling (Snitches cannot be tackled, although they can tackle other players), Snitches like to entertain the crowd with acrobatics, climbing trees, throwing snowballs or water balloons, bullfighting, and general tomfoolery. All players except the Snitch (who has no broom) must be on their brooms at all times.”

There are about 600 registered Quidditch teams worldwide; uOttawa’s team plays year-round, although some teams have on- and off-seasons. While the World Cup is generally the only time that most Quidditch teams come together, there are numerous regional tournaments held throughout the year all over the world. uOttawa Quidditch is quite new in the scheme of things, at just over a year old, but they’ve already become well-known for their team spirit, gorgeous uniforms, and obnoxious cheering (accompanied by a signature snare drum and war dance).

Clare and team hope to use the funds to help students who are financially disadvantaged to accompany them to away tournaments and to host more tournaments in Ottawa to spread Canadian Quidditch culture.

“I’ve had an action-packed couple of weeks and thought I’d take the chance to share with you guys exactly what I’ve used your money for, and what we’ve already done. Here’s the very shiny computer (Lenovo) and camera (Sony Cybershot) that you guys funded.”

“With the help of my clever and patient boyfriend I was able to get such a good price that I could afford a heap of extra peripherals, including cases for both items, an SD card for the camera, a small USB backup drive and mouse for the computer and an English-Nepali dictionary to help with the work. The computer has a great battery life, which is important because in Kathmandu we’re currently without electricity for 14 hours a day!

I’ve deliberately set the computer up to make doing the work as easy as possible. As you can see from the screen shot, only the programs they need are on the front page. I’ve also tweaked it so that all the important files are saved via Dropbox – which means that whenever they connect the computer to the internet I’ll get an updated copy of the file. This will make it easier to work together when I go back to Australia.

For the last couple of months I’ve been cleaning up a database file (that’s the Toolbox program you see on the desktop). This file was made using the scanned copies of pages from an original 1970s dictionary, of which there are probably only one or two now, as they were manually typed up and copied. It was rather cool looking, but limited in its uses.”

“I got this dictionary scanned last time I was visiting and a friend managed to use a character reader to take the text and put it in the database. The database makes working with the data so much easier as we can work on one entry at a time. It also means that we can make prettier dictionaries.”

“This is the data from the old dictionary – from the database I only spend an hour formatting it to look like this – with a database behind you suddenly making a dictionary is a lot quicker!

Of course, although it looks pretty it’s still the old data and there are lots of problems with it. For starters, the Kagate people have their own alphabet, as does Nepali, so we have to put those in instead of the Latin alphabet. Also, many of the entries need more work – and some words are plain missing (for example, the numbers seven, eleven and nineteen – which is much easier to figure out when you have a database setup).”

“We’re already off to a good start. I’ve spent one training day with Pramod and will continue to work with him while here and when I get home. Pramod and his family are extremely grateful for your help. They asked me to pass on their thanks. This kind of work isn’t quick – but I’ll be sure to send you some updates as things progress!”

We were so excited to hear this news. Personally I was intrigued to see the word “liih”, used for place of emotions. Nothing really comes to mind for an English word to use instead. “Internet” perhaps? I guess that’s more like a series of tubes.

Photo by Ben Welland at Byfield~Pitman Photography

The team has started Apartment613 Community Initiatives and will host a series of lectures and discussions that will explore themes on how to make Ottawa a better place. Topics range from creating a public library that would be the envy of the country to engaging Ottawa’s youth through city-funded skate parks. They hope to host these lectures seasonally starting in February 2012 and will disseminate each session through www.apt613.ca and on CHUO FM. The grant from Awesome Ottawa will allow the team to rent the necessary equipment and space costs for at least four lectures, allowing them to host a full year of events. We are excited to have this initiative in Ottawa and eagerly look forward to being a part of it!