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AXE-throwing in Ottawa is not for the faint-hearted.
A bit like darts for lumberjacks, you take it in turns to hurl lethal tools at painted targets on a wooden board 15ft away. Then you cross your fingers and hope they get somewhere near the bullseye.
This eccentric pastime is great fun and, like a lot of things in the Canadian capital, spectacularly larger than life.
Take the towering totem poles – apparently the world’s largest indoor collection – in the city’s Museum of History.
Carved from whole tree trunks and each telling stories of the country’s indigenous “First People”, several are 65ft high. They’re the tallest they could squeeze into the building.
We are on what is billed as a “Sip, Axe and Relax” tour, organised by an outfit called Brew Donkey.
A yellow school bus with a sign saying “Be nice to the driver” takes us to Stray Dog, one of the new craft breweries springing up serving British-style ales.
Then, after a glass of the naughtysounding Shaggin’ Wagon beer, we head for the Battle Axe Throwing League HQ.
Perhaps drinking first is not a good idea. But a green-haired woman called Finn takes us through a stringent safety drill before showing us how to hold the chopper with two hands, dangle it behind our backs and then sling it over our heads as hard as we can.
It’s not as easy as it looks. But when the blade does embed itself into the target, it makes a satisfying thud, sending wooden splinters flying.
Cool
Exhausted by all that physical effort, we clamber aboard the Brew Donkey bus to the nearby Vimy brewery for yet more craft ale.
Oddly for a capital city, Ottawa never seems to have drawn the same number of tourists as some other Canadian destinations.
But after celebrating the country’s 150th anniversary last year, it’s making a valiant attempt to catch up.
And with a wide range of attractions – from the National Gallery with its indigenous art collections, to the mountainous Gatineau Park wilderness and then back to the cool bars and restaurants of Byward Market – it’s worth checking out.
We stayed at the extremely comfortable, centrallysituated Westin Hotel, looking out over Parliament Hill and the House of Commons, which appears remarkably like ours back home.
Down the road are the National Gallery and the Canadian Museum of Nature, where even the dinosaurs are dwarfed by a 65ft skeleton of a blue whale