Rideau

In a televised news conference outside his residence at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa, Trudeau asked Canadians to resist the temptation to let their guard down after 10 months of making sacrifices.

At the end of last month, May of 2014, Bratislav, of Croatian descent, had left the Lulu Island neighbourhood, he having bought a new house and abandoning his slender townhouse. One of our last meetings in the neighbourhood was at the Rideau School field. We discussed plenty. Russia and China had been "State Capitalist" regimes and not "Communist" as they claimed to be. There was an alien "spacecraft" hovering invisibly above the grassy field; oh no, it was some kind of "portal"; oh no, it was an "incorporeal being." Many East Asian logograms, or "Sinograms," had a categorizing radical along with a hinting phonetic radical; they were not all pictographic. Daoists, I said, liked to be like a simple driftwood. There were aliens aplenty, Bratislav repeated. That day on the field last month, the thousands of dandelions were abundant with cloudy tufts of their soon-to-fly seeds.

On the 22nd of March of 2022, I went to the pizzeria twice, in the morning and in the afternoon. I went to the cafe to have Strawberry Coconut Drink in the crowded afternoon. Sitting at different, but proximate tables, were Don, a white man with glasses, and Chen, a stocky Chinese. They were talking. Don was about the same age group as my younger brother Paolo; both went to Rideau Elementary School, whilst I went to Errington Elementary School. I remembered that the Rideau school field was just mounds of dirt with an impromptu mountain bike circulating racetrack. There were red poppies growing. I imagined Star Wars' Jawas lurking in the mounds. It was the late 1970s.

I deem myself lucky that in my childhood, there was always some kind of wilderness to explore. In the Philippines, there was the Martianesque red-soil vastness of Don José Heights in Quezon City. In BC, there were the dirt mounds on the unbuilt school grounds of Rideau Park on Lulu Island. Red poppies grew in the brown earth. It was then the debut of the Star Wars franchise; I imagined Jawas might have lurked in the mounds. There were impromptu mountain bike tracks in the mounds.

A judgment may be formed of the weakness of the place, either by the facility found in making the approaches, or by establishing the magazines in the rear of the trenches, taking advantage of some rideau, or hollow way, whereby the right and left of the trenches are better supported. In order to judge of the facility of making the approaches, observe whether there are in the neighbourhood of the place any ditches, hollow ways, rideaus, houses, hedges, behind which the enemy may advance, and place their guards of horse and foot under cover from the fire of the place ; [...]

Rideau. A small rising ground or eminence, commanding a plain, which is sometimes near parallel to the works of a place. It is a great disadvantage to have Rideaus near a fortification, especially when they shoot from far, and terminate on counterscarp; for they not only command the place, but likewise facilitate the enemy's approaches.

At the end of a three hours' cannonade, few if any of the Danish block-ships, prames, or rideaus, had ceased firing ; […]

In less than an hour we arrived at the side of a small covert overhanging a rideau (or bank) of considerable extent : […]

About the 24th proposal was made for taking the enemy's vessels, three of which were at anchor a little below the fort, and some of their rideaus likewise.

Leaving only a rideau of troops on the left bank of the James, Grant sent Sheridan and the greater part of the army to the Potomac […]