Halloween in Ottawa

Halloween is my favorite holiday.  I love everything about it – the décor, the weather, the dressing up (especially the dressing up!), and the excuse to wear black lipstick.  I’ve always been a Goth-at-Heart, so Halloween has been my socially-acceptable reason to get a little dark.  Exhibit A:

Halloween 2011, before my hair was actually black

This year, though, Halloween falls on a busy time, precariously close to the deadline for Chad’s thesis.  So I started to look for a little Halloween event that we could walk to that wouldn’t take a lot of time so that we could get Chad back to work shortly, while still enjoying the season.  After all – I insisted that we pack our Star Trek uniforms so that we could go somewhere this week, so it would be kind of sad not to.

The spooky Heritage Building

Online, I found a list of a ton of things to do in Ottawa for Halloween: a Zombie walk, vintage Halloween party, Trick-or-Treating in the malls, and pumpkin patches.  One event sounded great and close: the Mayor’s Halloween party!  It was within walking distance and featured a haunted house fit for children (tame enough for me – I get scared pretty easily), pumpkin decorating, “everyone’s favorite characters” with candy roaming around, and horse-drawn carriage rides.  Perfect.  Admission to the entire event was a donation to Ottawa’s Baby Food Bank.  So we planned on getting dressed up, grabbing some baby food at the grocery store, and heading to this party.

We got there after a chilly 18-minute walk, and I immediately realized what I should’ve read between the lines:  we are in a huge city, so it is going to be really really busy.  And it was.  We waited in line for the haunted house behind probably 200 people, most of which were small children. 

The wait wasn’t too bad, though I felt that it was a little bit of a waste, especially when my plan was to get Chad back to work as soon as possible.  The Haunted House was held in the “Heritage Building,” a section of City Hall that used to be an old school.  It was a pretty spooky building, and they had lit the façade with green lights and decorated the windows with Jack-O-Lanterns and ghosts.

Some of the older members of the line
recognized us as Star Trek officers

We gave our baby food to the volunteers (who commented that I would probably die in there, since I was wearing a red ensen’s uniform) and went through the house.  It was really tame, but still cute.  Chad even got a little spooked by a kid that jumped out at us, and I got some candy from Trick-or-Treat stations along the way.

The rest of the night was a lot of waiting.  We were ushered to a long line for…something, and waited patiently as young children complained and ran around and ate candy.  People in line commented on our costumes in creative complaints, “Hey, if you Star Trek guys can beam us to the front of the line, you’ll win the costume contest!”

We discovered that the line was simply a huge Trick-or-Treating queue, so we eventually skipped all the stations and went outside where the pumpkin decorating tables were set up.  We each grabbed a small pumpkin, I drew a face on mine, and we walked home; freezing.

My favorite part of the night happened on our walk home.  As we were crossing a street, there was an SUV waiting at the light.  The passengers all leaned out of the windows and slowly rose their arms with the “Live Long and Prosper” sign.  We burst out laughing – it proved to me that Star Trek was popular in Canada at one time, after all.

Notice the age of most of the people in the background:
That is pretty representative of our night

We got home in time to listen to the ISU vs. Baylor Homecoming game and warm up with spaghetti and hot cocoa.  It was good – Iowa State won and we were warm and cozy.  The party wasn’t great, and was definitely aimed toward small children, but it was nice that we got a little Halloween fix.  Next year, we’ll just have to have an extra-awesome Halloween to make up for it.