Ottawa / Ward 9 / Stage 2 West
The little rain cloud over Nepean is not a joke. It is the argument that makes staff act.
Al Capp put a storm over Joe Btfsplk’s head so readers would never mistake his luck for weather. West-end Ottawa is trying to do the same thing with a meteorologist, a washout at Moodie, and language loud enough to become a file.
In Li’l Abner, Joe Btfsplk walks through Dogpatch with a small black cloud parked above his hat. It rains on him. Disaster rains on whoever stands next to him. Al Capp introduced the character on 7 July 1940 and said the surname was not a word so much as a rude noise — lips closed, tongue out, a Bronx cheer. The cloud did the explaining. You did not need a caption that said “jinx.” You could see it.1
Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Sean Devine has been accused, in so many words, of talking like that cloud. After Canada Day 2026 he did not describe a freak storm. He described a pattern. Residents glued to the weather app. A red blob that keeps sweeping Nepean. “After a while it’s not bad luck.” College Coun. Laine Johnson put the bureaucratic version on paper: hire someone who actually knows mesoscale meteorology and urban climatology, and ask whether this part of the city is catching something the airport gauge does not.2
That phrasing is sensational on purpose. City staff do not redesign a rail bed or a storm trunk because a councillor had a feeling. They redesign when an incident becomes a documented pattern. Joe’s cloud is how you make the pattern visible before the PDF exists.
Joe Btfsplk, Li’l Abner
Well-meaning. Unlucky. A personal rainstorm that follows him from panel to panel. Capp used the cloud as comedy and as machinery: trap it in a jar and the story changes; open the jar and misfortune goes back to work. The image stuck because it is simpler than a climate briefing. The weather is attached to the person — or, here, to the place.
One washout is an act of God. A cloud is a design load.
On 1 July 2026 the unfinished Moodie O-Train station took a river. More than 300 metres of ballast left the track. Steel bent. Electrical troughs and cabling came out. OC Transpo GM Rick Leary now says he will not put “the exact type of system” back. Coun. Johnson walked the site and called it a disaster. Water had come downhill from Corkstown Yard; Stillwater Creek had been overwhelmed.34
That is already enough to lift the formation and give the water another path. It is not, by itself, enough for the rest of the machine. Staff can still write Moodie up as force majeure and the basements as a busy summer. Ward 9’s problem is the sequel: the same pockets after the 2018 tornado, the 2023 cellar flood, 167 millimetres on Canada Day, then an August windstorm, some households wet two and three times, people afraid of ordinary alerts.25
Devine’s line — infrastructure plus topography plus weather, a “perfect storm” — is the civic translation of Btfsplk. The cloud is not the councillor. The cloud is Nepean if the city keeps treating each cell as a stranger.
| If staff hear | They can file it as | If the cloud is on the record |
|---|---|---|
| A bad Canada Day | Repair ballast, rail, cable | Same grade, same ditch, new stone |
| “Residents are upset” | Casework and a newsletter | No change to design criteria |
| A named pattern plus a specialist | A load the next project must meet | “Put the same thing back” needs a defence |
Why the loud sentence comes first
Mesoscale meteorology will not trend. “Slaves to the weather app” will. So will Joe’s cloud. The sensational sentence is the delivery system for a dry ask: stop using citywide averages to size west-end kit. Johnson’s motion is the respectable twin of Capp’s ink blot. Devine’s quotes are the blot.
That is not an endorsement of a candidate. It is how a government building works. Capital, contract extras, and a refusal to clone a failed LRT section all need a reason that survives a lawyer and a budget analyst. “Pattern” is that reason. Without it, the mid-September Moodie list is a parts catalogue. With it, the parts catalogue has to answer where the water goes and how far above that path the rail will sit.
The risk is the same as every other study. Capp once had Joe trap the cloud in an anti-pollutant jar. Luck improved until the plot needed the jar opened. A climatology contract can be that jar: useful if it changes the grade of the guideway and the capacity of the creeks; empty if Moodie waits for the appendix while the 2027 slide stays on the wall.
Redirect the water. Rise above it. Keep the cartoon.
The washout already drew the station. Redirect the yard and Stillwater overflow so the railway is not the creek. Raise the running surface out of the scour zone — higher formation, slab instead of loose stone, a short structure if the 417 ramp allows nothing else. That work should not wait on a weather report.3
The cloud is for everything that is not yet a photograph of missing ballast: laterals that surcharge, maps that missed flooded streets, a terminus designed as if the next red blob will have manners. Hire the meteorologist. Print the pattern. Then do the unfashionable thing Joe never got to do — move the ground under the storm instead of walking around with it.
Capp’s joke was that the rain was personal. Ottawa’s version only works if the rain becomes municipal: attached to a place, on letterhead, expensive to ignore. Until then the little cloud is still the engineer.
References
- Joe Btfsplk in Al Capp’s Li’l Abner (debut 7 July 1940): world’s worst jinx; perpetual personal rain cloud; name described by Capp as a rude sound / Bronx cheer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Btfsplk.
- “Why does Nepean keep getting hit by crazy weather? City seeking meteorologist to help find out,” CBC News, August 2026. Johnson motion for mesoscale meteorology and urban climatology; Devine: “perfect storm,” weather-app “red blob,” “After a while it’s not bad luck. It’s a pattern.” Canada Day: 6,500+ basements, up to 167 mm, described as a 1-in-200-year event. cbc.ca.
- Guy Quenneville, “Moodie station will need ‘redesign’ due to storm damage: OC Transpo GM,” CBC News, 26 August 2026. Leary: will not put “the exact type of system back”; 300 m+ ballast, electrical systems, bent track. cbc.ca.
- Matthew Pearson, “Councillors ‘shocked’ by Moodie Station flood damage,” Ottawa Citizen, 11 August 2026; CTV News Ottawa, 5 August 2026, on Corkstown Yard runoff and Stillwater Creek. ottawacitizen.com.
- Devine public comments and ward correspondence on repeat basement flooding after 1 July, 10 August and 12 August 2026, and on extreme-weather infrastructure since the 2018 tornado and his own 2023 basement flood. See also Ottawa Citizen, 10 August 2023, “Councillors call for infrastructure suited to extreme weather.” ottawacitizen.com.
- City of Ottawa CSO log: 218,820 m³ overflow on 1 July 2026 from the same storm system. ottawa.ca.
No comments:
Post a Comment