The City’s Diversity and Inclusion Awards honouring staff who have had significant impacts in promoting inclusion for employees and residents were presented today at City Council by Mayor Jim Watson and City Manager Kent Kirkpatrick.  “These annual awards recognize individual City employees and teams that provide services promoting a positive and respectful work environment and a diverse and inclusive city,” said Mayor Watson. ...

Mayor Jim Watson, along with College Ward Councillor Rick Chiarelli, today presented the Mayor’s City Builder Award to Chris Taylor for his exemplary volunteerism providing educational presentations on computer-related topics as a member and current President of the Ottawa PC Users’ Group (OPCUG). ...

The City of Ottawa is advising residents with a history of frozen water pipes to take steps to keep their water pipes from freezing this winter.  Most water services in Ottawa are buried deep enough to protect them from cold temperatures. ...

_ (This blog post originally appeared on Green Living Ottawa .) _ There’s a cool new initiative to foster healthy, sustainable, prosperous and liveable cities. It’s called ** We Are Cities ** . We Are Cities is gathering ideas on how to improve and support cities, given the significance of urban centres to Canada. ...

** February 24, 2015, Ottawa — ** On March 24, United Way campaign co-chair Mark Sutcliffe will be running across Ottawa to raise funds for United Way’s Community Campaign. For every $1,000 received in pledges, Mark will run 1 kilometre up to 50 kilometres. ...

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), one of the world’s most respected film festivals, is seeking state-of-the-art, thoughtful, funny and provocative animated films to showcase at venues in the national capital region from September 16th through the 20th .  All animators are invited to submit their recent work into one of the Festival’s eight categories: ...

The Ottawa Police Services Board is pleased to welcome a new community member. The Lieutenant Governor of Ontario has appointed ** ** Suzanne Valiquet ** ** for a two-year term, effective 18 February 2015.  Fluently bilingual, Ms. Valiquet brings an impressive range of experience and skills to the Board. ...

[caption id=“attachment_10584” align=“aligncenter” width=“405”] Mr. Loaf by Andrew King[/caption]

New indie group, leMeow , has released their debut music video , revealing a sultry sound and image reminiscent of jazz greats like Peggy Lee and Dinah Washington. Distinctly vintage in style, the video successfully captures the essence of Evening Blues, the band’s first single off of their self-titled EP (available on iTunes). ...

Following up on last week’s dramatic video of snowclearing operations in the suburbs , here’s a slightly more subdued video showing night time snow clearing operations on St. Andrew Street in downtown Ottawa. Thanks to from W. Thomas Leroux for sending this along. ...