Our self-cleaning public washroom nightmare becomes a reality in Nîmes

Our self-cleaning public washroom nightmare becomes a reality in Nîmes

I just learned that our new home town of Ottawa, Ontario, is implementing a worthy project to provide public washrooms throughout the city core, including at least two self-cleaning facilities.

2025 City of Ottawa budget includes $1 million for two public washrooms in Centretown | CTV News

For some time now, the wonderfully named GottaGo! Campaign has been calling on City Hall to create a network of clean and accessible public toilets in Ottawa, pushing the city to take urgent action.

Yesterday, the GottaGo! Campaign organized a demonstration to mark World Toilet Day by highlighting the critical importance of safe, clean, and accessible public toilets as essential public health infrastructure.

World Toilet Day | United Nations

Who could help but laud such a strenuous push?

At various points in our lives, Anne and I have lived in France where strategically located, self-cleaning public toilets, Les Sanisette, are sprinkled liberally throughout major towns and cities.

One day, while visiting Nîmes, a lovely city in the Occitanie region of southern France, we felt the urge to use the self-cleaning facilities in the downtown public market.

Nîmes – Wikipedia

Entering the claustrophobic confines of this digital WC together, quaking with trepidation and shuddering with a nameless dread, we quickly terminated the number-one business at hand.

Before unlocking the door to the inner sanctum, I rashly pressed what I took to be a flush button. This foolhardy act set off a thunderous roar. The walls and ceiling of the sanitation cubbyhole began to shimmy and shake with ferocious violence, and a pre-apocalyptic hiss presaged a thorough dowsing that was soon to follow. It was like being trapped in a car wash in Hades, the stuff of the most hideous nightmares.

We began pounding wildly on the door, which had automatically bolted shut like a maximum security prison cell while the tumultuous self-cleaning procedure inexorably unfolded, an unfettered beast with a mind of its own.

“Au secours! Au secours,” we bellowed, screaming for assistance while already spattered with the first flurry of chemically enhanced suds.

Just as the diabolical privy began to unleash its heavy artillery, a Good Samaritan denizen of the market managed to wrench open the evil outer aperture and out we staggered, liberally sprinkled but not thoroughly dowsed.