As Ottawa gets set to welcome U.S. President George Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, security is, understandably, highly visible and omnipresent. But it can get a bit absurd. I’ve just returned from the U.S. Embassy on Sussex Drive in downtown Ottawa. It’s a highly visible building just down the street from Canada’s National Art Gallery. Today, with the leaders in town, there are lots of fences and barricades surrounding the building with many police officers standing behind those barricades.
But, at 11 a.m. this morning, there was no sign of protests and both pedestrian and vehicular traffic was lighter than usual.
Nonetheless, we set up our news cameras on the sidewalk near the Embassy just to take some pictures of the scene at the time.
A private sector security guard was quickly upon us.
“No pictures of the building,” the young man said sternly from behind his dark sunglasses.
“We can’t take a picture of the building?,” I asked. “That seems odd. Why is that?”
“Security reasons.”
I neglected to inform that we had already taken pictures of the U.S. Embassy before he had arrived and — I don’t think I’m spilling any secrets when I say this — we have plenty of “file pictures” of the U.S. Embassy back here in our bureau.
We packed up our camera gear and hustled back to our studio with these new top-secret pictures of one of Ottawa’s most visible buildings. Keep watching CTV Newsnet — we might try to sneak them on air!