My new story for May 17th

Hi there loyal followers (tee hee),

My new story in the May 17th issue of the Kitchissippi Times is about the Ottawa Race Weekend cheering section being run in front the Hintonburg Community Centre  by the Hintonburg Community Association’s Jeff Leiper along with Elmdale House Tavern’s Nat Myles and the Hintonburg BIA’s Annie Hillis. The marathon/half-marathon (and thus of course the cheering station) is being held on the May 27. They were judged  last year by the Race Weekend’s organizers to be the 2nd-best cheering station in all of Ottawa, so if you love running and  it’s a great opportunity

The marathon starts on 7 am that day, and the half-marathon starts at 9. If you wish to find out more, email Jeff at info@hintonburg.com, and be sure to check out the May 17 Kitchissippi Times edition, which is all about the Race Weekend! Here’s a photo from my story to leave you with!

 

Jeff Leiper, one of the coorganizers of the Hintonburg Community Association’s Race Weekend cheering station.

(The Ottawa Race Weekend cheering station listing is here)

Stephen

About the Hintonburg Fabric Flea Market

I wrote this piece about the Hintonburg Fabric Flea Market being held on May 5th from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Hintonburg Community Centre. Unfortunately I didn’t get the story published but I still wanted to share it with you, because its being run by two lovely women mentioned in the story and I feel the cause is worth supporting. You can visit the listing for the event here if you’re interested or visit their Facebook page to find out more details. The story is below- Stephen

 

The Salvation Army’s Grace Manor residence, located on Wellington St., probably requires a lot of fabric items to run itself as a long-term care facility for seniors, which costs a lot of money.

But the efforts of two women, Kathleen Traeger and Tracey Shipman, are acting to help cover this, as they are planning to hold a flea market for businesses and individuals to sell fabric and sewing items on May 5 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., all to help benefit the Manor.

The two women who “stitched together” this event, Parkdale Avenue’s Tracey Shipman and Champlain Park’s Kathleen Traeger, are inviting over 40 vendors to sell their wares that day, and their motivations to do so were Shipman’s personal connection to her grandmother and the care she received from the Manor, as well as their shared love for sewing. “My grandmother spent the last years of her life there, they’re so good at the Grace Manor, and we thought it was a great organization to support.” Traeger adds that the organization being a local and financially needy one helped the decision. “We wanted to choose a local charity that could benefit from some financial injection. The Salvation Army is very grassroots and a very needy organization that does great work with seniors,” she said.

Both women are into sewing, and Traeger said the idea for the event came from their observations of there not being an event like it in Hintonburg, unlike other areas of Ottawa. “The origin was I was trying to get a table at the Glebe’s fabric flea market and they’ve been so busy I was unable to get a table to sell my fabric. That was the brainchild of us doing our own event here,” Traeger said. For Shipman the idea was inspired by the fact to her, sewing being is often passed from generation to generation, as it was in her case. “My mother always sewed and she was always making us clothes when we were kids, and I’ve always been into some craft or another,I got more into sewing as I got older,” she said.

The event required nine months of set-up and planning (helped by Shipman’s background in project management), but both say the response has been fantastic to their efforts. “It’s been great, people have been tweeting about it which is unusual (for us), it really shows you what social media does these days for events,” Shipman said happily. As well, Traeger has given shout-outs to the Hintonburg Business Association, Darryl Thomas Textiles as well as other local shops in helping ensure the event’s success, in addition to staff at the Community Centre for their help in finding a time for the event.

The event costs $2 to get into, and those who are interested in booking a table or finding out more can contact the duo at fabricfleamarket@hotmail.com or can visit their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/HFFM0505 for more details.  The Grace Manor says it uses donations to fund and ensure “extra programs, staffing and provide equipment that enhance the quality of life for our residents.” In addition to through the fabric flea market, those who want to make donations can do so by credit card by phoning 1-800-SAL-ARMY and specifying “The Ottawa Grace Manor” or by visiting http://www.salvationarmy.ca/ for more details.

My stories for the week of April 19

This week I did two assignments for the Kitchissippi Times, both of which were interesting and engaging and will be published in the March 19th issue, so pick it up if you see it and want to read my work.

My first assignment was shooting photos of a local musician, Paul “Jonesey” Johanis, who is writing songs about the Hintonburg/Old Ottawa West area for a new album releasing on May 27 called Living in the Old West End. I did photos with him on Wellington Street West in Ottawa, including some in front of the Elmdale House Tavern, where he will be holding his CD release party on the 27th at 5 p.m. (its at 1084 Wellington Street West for those who are interested). But the one I’ve decided to put here as one of my two photos of the week is one I did with him in front of St. Francois church on that same street (where he says he got married and baptized, cool eh?). You can check out his MySpace page here.

Rock on, Jonesey!

The second assignment I did was about a team of women and families in the Champlain Park community who banded together to hold a fundraiser bake sale to support a group of four boys who recently lost their mother and sole caregiver, Kadra Koulmiye, to cancer and now have to fend on their own. One of these women was Nancy Elias, who worked with her family(Amika and Sacha) and husband (Detlef Hess) as well as Eloise Collison, Lydia Holland, Carole and Nadia St. Pierre, and members of each of their families to put together these fundraisers. The bake sale and raffle were held/finished on April 14 at Ms. Elias’ house, but you can still donate to this worthy cause by visiting this website. You can find out more about what Koulmaye’s boys (Taib, Tyler,  Bilal, and Jamal)will face in the Ottawa Citizen article here, but I strongly implore you to read my article in the March 19th Kitchissippi Times as well to find out more about the community’s valiant efforts to help them.

A great woman who helped do a great thing for Kadra Koulmiye's four boys, in the face of their loss.

Until then, that’s all for now. I hope you’ll continue to read my stuff, and I look forward to covering it.

-Stephen

In this blog, I hope to highlight my latest work with each post, which includes my latest stories and anything relevant to journalism I do. I also want to use it as a way to post and share my latest photography (both of the hobbyist and journalistic type), since while not all my photography has been shot for newspapers, I still feel a lot of the ones which weren’t showcase my skills (and let’s face it, they’re nice shots).

For my first post, I’d like to highlight stories I did which are in the latest edition of the Kitchissippi Times. One story I did (“Freelancer lands fiction win”) is about Kitchissippi short story author Tudor Robins finishing third in the Creative Keyboards contest, Ms. Robins even posted that she was impressed with my efforts here. You can check out her site at www.tudorrobins.ca. I must say, she was fun to interview as well. It’s in the March 22nd issue, if you wish to check it out you’ll have to pick up the Kitchissippi Times on newsstands, as I cannot seem to find the story online.

The other story to look out for is a Catch-Up I did for the March 28th issue on the Writer’s Room event held in benefit of the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama. The event involved four authors (including local blogger Andrea Tomkins, her blog is here) coming to the school and reading excerpts from stories and books they’d written, and it was a fun time also to cover. If you wish to support the OSSD and were not able to attend, you can do so at http://www.ossd.com/public_html/html/support/support.html.

In conclusion, I’d like to leave you with a photo I shot on vacation in Orlando in March, at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I hope you will check out my articles!

Regards,

Stephen

Welcome to my site

Hi there,

Welcome to my website. I am an aspiring  journalist with an interest in online social media(Twitter, Facebook etc.) and photography. You can take a look at my portfolio of stories and photos, or use the info here to follow and contact me on Twitter and other places. Enjoy!