Tanis Browning-Shelp
As The Mainstreeter’s Art Beat Editor, I was part of a small team involved in getting Tim Hunt’s Old Ottawa East 2023/2024 Calendar produced. The calendar features Tim’s fantastic urban sketches of buildings and other scenes from around our neighbourhood, most of which were published in The Mainstreeter as part of Tim’s “Main Street Sketches” column. Since the new year began, I have enjoyed reading stories in The Mainstreeter about how Tim’s calendar has touched peoples’ lives and revived old memories. Recently, I learned of another such story, this time from a young community member’s perspective.
Zane Shepherd (right) and one of this housemates, Muiz Mustafa, pose in front of The Emporium furniture store with Tim Hunt’s urban sketch. Housemate Samuel Tam, not pictured, is working in Montreal this summer. The young engineering students have been curious about the store and whether or not they might find something for their household inside. Photo by Zane Shepherd
Twenty-one-year-old Zane Shepherd moved to Old Ottawa East (OOE) at age two along with his older sister Keili, his mom, Jennifer Shepherd, and his dad, Colin Rennie. The kids grew up living on Drummond Street. Zane is now a mechanical engineering student at uOttawa living on Hawthorne Avenue with two fellow engineering students Muiz Mustafa and Samuel Tan. All three of them just completed their third year of the mechanical engineering program.
Zane’s mom Jen wanted to give both her kids a Tim Hunt calendar for Christmas, but by the time she got to Singing Pebble Books it had already sold out. Since I am a family friend and had helped with the calendar project, I was able to give Jen a prototype of the calendar, an earlier version with a spiral binding, to give to Zane shortly after Christmas.
Initially, the calendar served purely a practical purpose for Zane’s household. “We genuinely needed a calendar in the house for scheduling things, especially house cleaning!” Zane says chuckling. “But later, I realized that many of the sketches were of places we walk past every day. They pointed to one sketch and exclaimed: “We’ve been to that pizza place!” Soon after that, Zane and his housemates began identifying the places Tim has captured and included in the calendar.
Muiz is originally from Nigeria. He moved to Toronto when he was seven and came to Ottawa to attend university. Samuel is from Toronto. “I soon realized that using the sketches in the calendar, I could introduce Muiz and Samuel to the cool parts of our neighbourhood,” Zane says. “I remember flipping through the calendar and showing them the Brantwood Park field house and telling them about how I used to work there and about the Brantwood Park rink and how people pitch in to flood it. The calendar has started up conversations about the neighbourhood and it makes me realize that I’m a part of the neighbourhood.”
Over the years, Zane has participated in the Main Farmers Market Photographic Challenge; he has volunteered at The Main Event and for the Community Activity Group’s (CAG) after-school programs and summer camps; he has worked for the same programs/camps; he has coached CAG’s Learn to Play Soccer program; and he has taught skating through CAG. He has also flooded the rink at Brantwood Park and even won “Hoser of the Year” in 2019.
In my role as Art Beat Editor, it is lovely to see a local artist inspiring a young, long-time resident of OOE to truly feel a part of his neighbourhood and take pride in both his neighbourhood and his own part within it. It also feels great, as a resident of OOE, to learn more about our extraordinary young people in The Mainstreeter.
