Two giant monsters will be roaming the City of Ottawa this weekend.
La Machine makes its North American debut tonight as part of Canada's 150th birthday celebrations. There will be four days of performances for the public through the downtown, ByWard Market and Lowertown, along with road closures and traffic disruptions.
The show is entitled "The Spirit of the Dragon-Horse, With Stolen Wings." It features LongMa, a 12-metres high, five metres wide part-dragon and part-horse, and Kumo, a spider that's 20 metres long when fully outstretched.*
The show begins at 8 p.m. tonight when Kumo awakens near the National Gallery of Canada.
LongMa will awaken Friday morning at City Hall at 10 a.m., and start walking around at 10:30.
After roaming the downtown streets for four days, the two creatures will both end up at the Canadian War Museum Sunday night. Roughly 100,000 people are expected over the four day event.
"You will be able to almost touch the machines and feel the breathing of the dragon, the spray coming out of the spider," says Guy LaFlamme, the Director of Ottawa 2017. "We will be staging different scenes in different locations."
LaFlamme says the Ottawa 2017 event will be more than just a parade. He says members of the public will be active participants in the performance that will take place throughout the downtown core.
People heading to work in the core, or coming downtown to see La Machine, are being urged to take public transit, walk, bike or carpool. The City of Ottawa says parts of downtown and the ByWard Market will be turned into temporary pedestrian only zones over the weekend. A list of the traffic impacts is available on the City of Ottawa's website.