Given the crazy year 2021 has been, it’s probably no surprise that I completely forgot that I’d made a goofy little travel video about Eastern Ontario and beyond, way back in January.
Do you remember that briefly viral photo of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders—masked, mittened and clearly miffed—at President Biden’s inauguration? (Photographer Brendan Smialowski of Agence France-Presse captured that image and talks about its 15 minutes of fame in this New York Times article.)
And you remember an even more briefly viral website called Put Bernie Anywhere! (created by NYU grad student Nick Sawhney, who told his tale to 13NewsNow) that allowed anyone to paste that funny photo on top of just about any location?
Well, that’s basically what I did: I popped addresses of places around Ottawa, Eastern Ontario, the Outaouais and Montreal into the search box, then created silly photos of Bernie apparently touring some of our local landmarks—from the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in Smiths Falls and Mont Royal in Montreal to Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello and Kingston City Hall. Next, I uploaded some of the resulting photos into the Lumen5 video editing program and, voilà.
Since I rediscovered this video this morning, I thought I’d share it with you as a silly end-of-the-year surprise. It was a fun reminder to me of all the road trips from Ottawa that await us all, when weather and public health conditions allow. Plus, it’s less than three minutes long!
Not all of the photos I created made it into the video. The one of Vankleek Hill popped Bernie into the middle of a construction site, which didn’t show the town to its best advantage. Ditto the one from Renfrew, which saw him sitting in a somewhat desolate field with the Renfrew Fair waaaaay in the background.
And the photo at the top of this post is one I created (with my very limited photo editing skills) after making the video, using one of my own photos as background. I originally pasted Bernie onto the boardwalk at Mer Bleue, but then it just tickled my funny bone to have him floating up above the bog like some sort of grumpy hovercraft.
Please note that this post isn’t meant to be political in any way! It’s just meant to—I hope—make you chuckle.
If you’d like more details on a few of the places Bernie “visits” in the video, here are some posts to get you started.
- The complete guide to Almonte
- Why you need to visit Arnprior
- 10 things you didn’t know about Brockville
- 11 great reasons to get away to Gananoque and Chaffeys Locks
- A beginner’s guide to Gatineau Park
- Your day-tripping guide to Montebello
- St. Raphael’s Ruins in Glengarry County
- Wilno: A little slice of Poland in the Madawaska Valley
Looking for more ideas for things to see and do in and around Ottawa—from my perspective, not Bernie’s? ???? Please subscribe to my free weekly newsletter or buy a copy of my book, Ottawa Road Trips: Your 100-km Getaway Guide.
As the owner of Ottawa Road Trips, I acknowledge that I live on, work in and travel through the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be present on this land. Ottawa Road Trips supports Water First, a non-profit organization that helps address water challenges in Indigenous communities in Canada through education, training and meaningful collaboration.