Opportunities To Ignite Your Mind
An Anecdotal History of Ottawa
With Phil Jenkins
3 Wednesdays 1:30-3:30pm
Nov.6-20th
Hillside Church
$55
Ottawa; an endlessly fascinating character, hiding her colourful if somewhat muddy skirts under a grey three piece suit. Historian, singer and raconteur Phil Jenkins pulls out all the stops to reveal the true character of our neighbour to the east in this three part series. The depth of Jenkins knowledge, gleaned from years of research, creates a ballet-like pin ball game as he slides seamlessly from one story to the next, connecting the dots between characters, the built environment, decisions and their impacts through generations.
Session One: Bytown Beginnings, Session Two: Post Confederation Ottawa, Session Three: The 20th Century
Phil Jenkins was born in London, England in 1951, but within six months he was on his first adventure ship, a luxury liner bound for Canada. Even as a young boy living in freshly built suburbs on the edge of Ottawa, he was a wanderer, often to be found in the adjacent farm fields. A decade later his family returned to Liverpool, but he came back to Ottawa in 1978 and embarked on a career as a writer and a performing songwriter.
Phil’s adventures in writing and music ran parallel. His musical career, both as a solo artist and a founder of the quartet Riverbend, has played on over forty years, from busking in the Byward Market in Ottawa, Ontario to playing onboard for Adventure Canada guests .
In the writing trade, he became an author in 1991, when he published Fields of Vision: A Journey to Canada's Family Farms, a project that took him from the farm furthest east in Canada—just outside St. John’s, Newfoundland—all the way to the farm furthest west, a dozen kilometres north of Dawson City, Yukon. Three best sellers came after that as well as over 800 columns for the Ottawa Citizen. All of these endeavours brought Phil adventure and a passion for the history of this country which translate into courses that he has presented widely.