My First Two Weeks in Ottawa

I am excited to be in Ottawa from May - September as a Parliamentary Guide! My job entails helping Canadians and international visitors better understand Canada's political system and history.

I moved here two weeks ago and just finished the extensive Guide Training Program yesterday. The training was bilingual and included all the content we need to know about the Parliament of Canada, team building, public speaking, and handling difficult situations. The topics we focused on were: people (important individuals in Canadian government), place (architecture and design), process (creation of legislation) and past (Canadian history). Some of the highlights of training included meeting the Governor General David Johnston at Rideau Hall and meeting the Speaker of the Senate, Noel Kinsella.

I will be working with a group of 39 other guides; we are all bilingual students from Canadian universities. As Parliamentary Guides, we are not given a script, rather, we design our own tours by combining the content we learned with our own passions. I will be spending some time this week creating my personalized tour and deciding what I would like to share with visitors. We offer public tours in both English and French (for up to 50 people) as well as reserved tours for smaller groups. I will be giving tours of the Centre Block of Parliament starting on Friday, it still feels surreal! The full tour route includes: the House of Commons Foyer, the House of Commons Chamber, the Library of Parliament, the Senate Foyer, and the Senate Chamber.

I have made a lot of new friends and am starting to get settled into my apartment. I love the location because it is central and I can walk to Parliament in 15 minutes. Now that training is over I will have some more time to explore Ottawa. This summer I am looking forward to watching Question Period in the House of Commons and the Senate, watching cases at the Supreme Court of Canada, visiting museums, hiking in Gatineau Park, going to the Nordik Spa, and visiting friends in Montreal and Toronto. 

Isabelle and I outside the Peace Tower on our day off!