Redound Spa in Ottawa has been issued a total of 86 health and safety violations since 2013, with a median of 8 infractions per inspection, according to an analysis of the City of Ottawa’s public health inspections data.

The spa, located on Bank Street in Centretown, has received the vast majority of its infractions for improperly sterilizing and cleaning equipment and the surrounding area (using linens for one customer only, ensuring surfaces are properly cleaned).

The three most common infractions were for using improperly sterilized or unsterilized equipment. As a spa and hair salon, there are two separate infractions for sterilizing and cleaning equipment, one for general equipment (hair scissors, brushes) and the other specific for manicure and pedicure equipment (cuticle cutters, foot scrubs).

The other most common infraction was for using equipment more than once that cannot be sterilized or disinfected. This is typically manicure and pedicure equipment. The regulations stipulate that such equipment must be single-use, meaning the spa employees were using the same tool for multiple clients.

These three types of infractions were each indicated in 9 of the 11 recorded inspections the city has publicly available for the spa.

Despite several phone calls, voicemails and in-person attempts, the owner of the spa was unavailable for comment.

Inspections are routine as part of the City of Ottawa’s regular check-ins for institutions like spas, tattoo parlours and hair salons to ensure they follow Ontario’s health and safety protocols.

According to a spokesperson from Ottawa Public Health, the health inspectors use “educational, procedural, and re-inspection measures to ensure compliance” with the regulations. The spokesperson said that the inspectors can “take action” with institutions that present health hazards, like forced shut down or removing the items the officer deems hazardous. What constitutes a health hazard is determined by the health officers.

While action notes from the inspections officer are not available in the data, re-inspection appears to be one method public health officers have taken in the past with Redound Spa. On August 12, 2015, the spa received six infractions, below their median count. Just one week later, on August 19, there was another inspection and the spa only received one infraction. According to the data, the interval between regular inspections is at least one month.

There was another instance where two inspections similarly took place a week or so apart, in 2013.

Katherine McMahon visited Redound Spa last month on a Groupon coupon, and she says she will never go there again. She says that while she was there for a manicure, the nail technician cut her finger with the cuticle cutters.

“She cut it bad,” said McMahon, who moved to Ottawa from France in June so was trying to find a new salon. “It was just bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.”

She said the spa employee tried several ways to stop the bleeding, including pouring the alcohol used for the manicures, dipping it in cold water, and she said the employee even tried using nail glue (to adhere fake nails) to hold the skin together.

She said that the employee did not apologize and continued using the same tools that had cut her finger.

“They could have managed it so differently which is why I left such a nasty review,” said McMahon.

Of course, accidents do happen and this may not constitute a health and safety infraction, however using the same tools after the finger was cut might raise some public health eyebrows.

The most recent available health inspection dates June 9 of this year, with a count of six infractions.

Featured image: Redound Spa in Ottawa receives an average of almost 8 infractions per health and safety inspection. [Photo © Rachel Levy-McLaughlin]

Three Centretown shawarma restaurants have violated the health code a combined 71 times since January 1, 2016, an analysis of data compiled by the City of Ottawa has revealed.

 

The three restaurants, Prince Gourmet Shawarma and Falafel, Shawarma Deluxe and Shawarma’s King Restaurant have a variety of violations of the provincial Health Protection and Promotion Act. The Act governs how the food is stored and prepared and regulates the cleanliness of facilities.

 

Shawarma Deluxe, located at 347 Dalhousie Street in the Byward Market and Prince Gourmet Shawarma and Falafel, located at 55 Byward Market, have both been inspected three times in 2017. According to an emailed statement from Ottawa Public Health “[f]ood premises are inspected once, twice or three times each year, depending on the risk classification of High, Moderate or Low.”

 

The City of Ottawa website states that a minimum of three inspections per year makes a restaurant a high-risk food establishment. Shawarma’s King Restaurant, at 395 Bank Street, has been inspected twice in 2017, making it a medium-risk food establishment.

When asked about health code violations at Shawarma Deluxe, co-owner Joseph –who only gave his last name as “Shawarma Deluxe”— said “so far we have [had] no complaint[s]” from the health inspectors. When asked to address the 22 health code violations that Shawarma Deluxe has accumulated since January 1, 2016, Joseph blamed the spite of some customers. “When you work in the public for a long time, you can’t please everybody,” he said.

 

He also said some complaints leveled against Shawarma Deluxe stem from drunk people coming into the restaurant and vomiting in the bathrooms. Joseph did not clarify how these complaints were related to the health code violations that regulate the food preparation area cleanliness.

At Prince Gourmet Shawarma and Falafel, Ahmed Al-Bawaadh, an employee and brother of the owner, claimed not to be aware of any violations. When the 20 health code violations were mentioned another employee ended the interview saying that they were busy during the lunch rush. At the time, a few minutes before noon, the Prince Gourmet Shawarma was largely empty as there were four other people in the restaurant. All had already ordered and been served their food.

Fadel El-Hussein, a co-owner of Shawarma’s King Restaurant, the sign and website for which reads Shawarma King Restaurant or Shawarma Kin respectively, said that the 29 health code violations that it has accumulated are largely the fault of the previous owner.

 

“A lot of that was from the old management. We inherited old equipment, the whole building was old to begin with, so we did a lot of renovation,” he said. El-Hussein said that he and his business partner purchased Shawarma’s King two years ago and that the entire front food preparation area was renovated in the past month and a half. The last inspection of Shawarma’s King Restaurant took place approximately two months ago.

 

Ottawa Public Health refused to comment on their inspection process or on the effects or consequences of what repeated violations of the same health code violations entails. An emailed statement said that “[t]here are different levels of deficiencies, from non-critical to a health hazard. Non-critical deficiencies (ex. lack of environmental cleaning) can be corrected at the time of the inspection or shortly after, where a re-inspection would be required.” The statement went on to say that an inspector is able to issue a closure order where there is an immediate risk to the safety of the public’s health.

(Caption: Ottawa’s bylaw department has received a record number of coyote related calls in 2017. Source: Christopher Bruno [CC BY-SA 3.0])

The number of reported coyote sightings in Ottawa has already hit a record high this year, according to an analysis of 311 call data.

203 sightings were reported to the city’s bylaw department in the first eight months of 2017. That’s a 45 per cent increase over last year’s total and more than any year going back to 2013, the last year of available data.

River Ward, a suburban ward that straddles the Ottawa River just south of downtown, made up nearly a quarter of the calls made so far in 2017.

The ward’s councillor Riley Brockington said he understands why some residents may be wary, but he doesn’t think it’s a cause for concern.

“This is coyote habitat, it’s Eastern Ontario,” he said. “Some people are surprised to see them in an urban setting, but it’s not out of the ordinary.”

The only risk is to pets and livestock, Brockington said. A fatal attack on a small dog in the McCarthy Woods, an area of green space in the southern part of the ward maintained by the National Capital Commission, was reported last October.

Brockington called for warnings signs to be placed at entrances to the park, but the results of a review by the NCC found there was not,  “a natural, compelling need,” spokesperson Jean Wolff told Ottawa Community News.

The number of coyotes in the Ottawa area and across eastern Ontario has remained stable or declined slightly over the past several years, according to Brent Patterson, a research scientist with the Ministry of Natural Resources.

It then makes it hard to explain why Ottawa is seeing the jump in sightings, Patterson said.

With higher than average snowfall in late winter this year, coyotes living close to the city that hunt smaller animals like squirrels and rabbits might have found it hard to find food.

“Snow and deep snow certainly interferes with their hunting behaviour,” Patterson said.

Coyotes have a diverse diet, eating anything from deer to berries to compost, so they might have moved towards human-related food sources to make up for a lack of prey.

Another theory Patterson offered was that as coyote populations decline, they tend to move closer to urban areas. “We don’t have the hard data for Ottawa,” Patterson said, “but we have some evidence of that sort of thing happening around the burrows in [Toronto].”

What is more likely is that multiple people are reporting the same coyote, he said. The city groups sightings by ward, but other cities like Toronto have taken to recording specific locations to help clarify the number of calls.

Other reports have suggested the presence of so-called “coywolves”, a hybrid between wolf and coyote, around Ottawa are to blame for spikes in sightings, such as those recorded in 2015 . Patterson dismissed the idea, saying nearly every coyote in eastern Ontario carries some wolf DNA.

“Genetically, the coyote you see in a rural area outside Ottawa in 2017 is the same coyote that used to live there in 1950,” he said.

Until there is a clear explanation for the rise in sightings, Brockington said it’s up to councillors to “take the temperature” of residents and make sure the community is well-informed.

Brockington will hold a coyote information meeting with his constituents on January 8.

“Coyotes have every right to live in this environment than humans do,” he said. “So, it’s about having a better understanding of how to coexist in the same community, in the same environment.”