Ottawans eager to know more about what their nightlife commish is doing, local influencer says

Marissa Galko

March 18, 2025

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Ottawa residents may feel a bit in the dark when it comes to the city’s new nightlife commissioner and what he is working on, says one local influencer who follows the entertainment scene. Jessica Traina, who runs social media pages under the name @jessicaexploring, said Ottawans were excited by the concept of someone responsible for improving nightlife in the city, but have perhaps felt let down by a lack of communication from his office. “I think we created the job in our heads and we didn’t necessarily see the job description … I just feel like they are not really communicating a lot with the public. Whether it be a requirement of the job or not, they aren’t taking advantage of that. There is massive interest in this job from the public and I just think that it’s such a secret weapon that they’re not using,” Traina told OBJ. Traina shared her thoughts on Mathieu Grondin’s recent appearance on the City of Ottawa’s new podcast, OttaTalk, where he spoke about his work as nightlife commissioner, misconceptions of his role and what his nightlife council aims to work on from now until 2026. As a content creator who has offered her views and opinions of the city’s nightlife scene since the announcement of the commissioner and his council last year, Traina’s social media platforms have become a space where Ottawa residents have made their feelings known. “Since opening up that conversation, I’m still continuously receiving messages from followers. It’s an outlet that I’ve unintentionally created where people feel as though they can vocalize their thoughts,” she said. The general consensus is that people feel in the dark about what the nightlife commissioner has been up to since his appointment in June, she said. “We’re approaching that one-year mark and a lot of us don’t really know if there’s been any changes. I think it’s just a lot of wonder as to, is this working?” she said. As someone who moved to the city in 2019, she said she is unsure how much Grondin, who is new to the Ottawa area, will be able to accomplish during his mandate. “Although I know that his resume is glowing, I do worry because it took myself five years to really feel as though I have a good hand on Ottawa as a city. It’s a very different city than any other city in Canada and if you don’t really know it inside and out it’s hard to kind of have that good hand on it,” Traina said. Grondin’s thoughts on a centralized listing of events resonated with Traina, who posts upcoming events to her social media pages every month. “We will be working on something to try and address this problem this year,” Grondin said on the podcast. “Mind you, I want to manage expectations. We’re not going to go back to 1998 when there were these cultural newspapers with the listings at the end and what to do this weekend. Everything was centralized. We live in a decentralized cultural economy.” Grondin added that information on social media platforms may strike a chord with a younger audience but miss the over-50 crowd. “In my personal experience, I found that kind of a unique point because my guide last month received around 70,000 views and my winter guide (got) over 100,000 views,” Traina said. “I released one in October that had almost 250,000 views so that’s almost a quarter of Ottawa’s population. “In my case, I have 40,000 followers and 20 per cent of those people are over 50 years old. I definitely disagree with that. I think (a centralized database) is a valuable tool,” she said. The nightlife council would benefit from having a content creator or someone who has their “ear to the ground" on what’s happening in the city, Traina said. “I’ve always thought that there would be great value in having an Ottawa-based influencer on that team because they’re basically walking concierges of the city.” In November, Traina spoke to OBJ about her plans to create a “creative-led council,” similar to the nightlife council. Traina applied but was not among the 12 at-large members chosen for the city’s nightlife council. In MONTH, Traina told OBJ that Grondin had reached out to her after reading about her views on Ottawa to speak about his plans for the council. Traina said hearing Grondin’s thoughts on the podcast solidified her vision of creating resources for people interested in experiencing what the city has to offer and focused on small businesses and the everyday person. “While I totally appreciate the directors and department heads with their wealth of knowledge and background, if I was coming to Ottawa as someone who’s never been here, I’m not looking on these sites and reaching out to directors. I’m going to a bar and asking the bartender that’s worked there for 15 years, ‘What do you think I should do for the night?’ It’s people like that that are actively in the nightlife community, whether they work in it or just consume it,” she said.