My colleagues and I just went out for lunch in the Byward Market, a now-fashionable area of Ottawa just hotching with up-scale restaurants. Five years ago, Before The Ban, the room would have been grey and reeking with smoke. Today, we walked into a heavenly aroma of delicious food that piqued the appetite and made us all eat considerably more enthusiastically than we expected to. Like every other restaurant in the Byward Market, our restaurant was jammed.

The only bars and restaurants in Ottawa that lost business After The Ban were the ones that catered to those sad folks who spend their afternoons and evenings chainsmoking while nursing a lager and gazing at the ceiling-mounted television. I always suspected they went out because they couldn't stand to pollute their own space, and the taverns and greasy spoons couldn't make them stop!