When the new school was built on York St., in 1921, it must have seemed like great progress. A large, brick, institution designed by architect W. C. Beattie in the Collegiate Gothic style, it amalgamated the student bodies of four smaller schools in the area. It was old enough to have sex-segregated entrances, which are now used for different grades.

The Lowertown of yore

East Lowertown was a very different neighbourhood in the 1920s. It was still very much integrated with its western half, the ByWard Market, even though the wide boulevard of King Edward Ave. bisected them as it had since the very beginning. But the middle of King Eddie had been transformed from a wretched drainage for the Rideau Canal to a lovely treed strip with a bridal path. Many of the cross-streets, like Clarence, still tied the neighbourhood together.

It was not a rich neighbourhood, but it was a community that had grown organically from its original population dominated by French Canadians and decendants of early Irish immigrants.

A couple of decades later, this was the old Lowertown memorialized by local author and York Street student Brian Doyle in books about his childhood in the ‘40s and ‘50s such as Angel Square.

But the forces of mid-century urban renewal would not be kind to Lowertown.

The Grebér Effect

It started in the 1930s, when Prime Minister Mackenzie King met French urban planner Jacques Gréber.

Before and after World War II, Gréber drew up plans to “beautify” Ottawa. Based on photos provided by Public Works Canada, Gréber and his boosters in Canada (including the City and what would become the NCC) drew up plans to bulldoze “slums” like those in Lowertown and build massive expressways to allow people to cut through urban Ottawa in their cars.

Today, King Edward Ave. is choked with commercial trucks, with only a couple of crossings for pedestrians, bicycles, and cars north of Rideau Street. The streets around York Street School, bereft of normal traffic, become dark, desolate, occasionally crime-ridden streets at night.

The much-needed non-market housing built decades ago is, sadly, ugly and run down. Although the more recent immigrant population in the neighbourhood means tantalizing aromas of Somali and other international cuisines waft from the townhouses that line York St.

And the school is still there. Its student body has changed over the years, and is now very diverse. As one of the few English Public Middle Schools in the area it brings in students from as far away as Vanier and Lindenlea. My son attended York Street for grades 7 and 8, and he made lifelong friends there.

But unless you have a kid attending the school, or a friend in the neighbourhood, you’ll probably never see York Street School. Like Lebreton Flats, this one-time working class neighbourhood was sacrificed at the altar of Ottawa’s white-collar-washing. The factory jobs in Vanier and elsewhere moved away. And so did most of the neighbourhood businesses. Severed from the rest of Lowertown by busy King Edward and “new” St. Patrick St. thoroughfares, it’s the neighbourhood nobody drives through.

Looking to the future

The Market is gentrifying. And some of the older homes in east Lowertown, that escaped the wrecking ball, are looking pretty good.

But what can be done with the part that I heard one teen resident on the bus refer to as “the projects”? The community housing in Lowertown needs renewal. (That’s difficult to achieve while people need to live there). And there’s some good community infrastructure, like a swimming pool and seasonal basketball courts/hockey rinks. However, much of the neighbourhood seems overlooked and neglected.

But York Street School is still there. I hope it will be there much longer, as Lowertown continues to change.

Where to find York Street School

Sources:

• Urbsite

• Historical Society of Ottawa

• OSDSB

• Ottawa. School Heritage

• Wikipedia

“Are you interested in the Lindenlea area?”

That’s what our real estate agent called to ask us, 21 years ago. We were renting a house apartment in the ByWard Market, but with a new baby we decided it was time to look for our first (and forever) family home.

He explained that it was between New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park, which is how I usually describe it to people who ask.

And they always ask where it is.

Lindenlea is a great place to live. As an urban residential neighbourhood, it’s walkable, with easy access to the green spaces of Rockcliffe, lots of stores and restaurants on Beechwood and elsewhere in Vanier, and is on major transit routes. I can even walk to The Market.

But when Lindenlea was first built, it was considered far from downtown Ottawa. It was “the ‘burbs.”

And when the name is first recorded, it wasn’t even part of Ottawa.

Old-Old Lindenlea

On September 10, 1880, a Dr. Bell put his father’s country property up for sale. It had been part of Thomas McKay’s massive estate, which had been broken up by his son-in-law into country lots in the 1860s.

It sounds like it was a pretty nice place:

Just a few years later, in 1887, the City of Ottawa annexed the Village of New Edinburgh. The new city limit swallowed up the mostly-undeveloped area north of Beechwood Avenue all the way to Butternut Avenue (now the lower part of Acacia Avenue).

For a long time, this peripheral part of Ottawa had only a few houses clustered along Beechwood and other major roads or, like Dr. Bell’s, on small farm and cottage lots.

New-Old Lindenlea

It wasn’t until almost 30 years later, in 1919, that the Housing Commission of the City of Ottawa purchased 22 acres, including the old Bell property, at $3,000 per acre, for a new, planned housing development for the growing Capital.

Rather than following the original lots surveyed when the original McKay estate was sold, the Commission hired renowned British architect Thomas Adams, a pioneering urban planner, to rearrange the new streets and lots to create an English-style “garden suburb.”

From The Journal of the Town Planning Institute of Canada (April, 1921):

The land is situated at a high ele­vation and surrounded, to a considerable extent, by open country. It was sufficiently undulating to give it character and interest without making it costly to develop, if carefully planned. A large part of it was covered by beautiful tree[s], most of which could be preserved without detriment to the building lots. The cost of the property was somewhat high, having regard to the fact that the object of the Commission was to erect small houses which could not bear to be saddled with a high cost for land.

The original plan for the new suburb included 168 small lots at $457 each, with open spaces for tennis courts, a bowling green, and a park with a children’s playground. The tennis courts and park are still there, but the lawn bowling didn’t last.

The new community was called “Lindenlea,” a name coined by Dr. Bell. Linden is a common name of American Basswood (Tilia americana) and the full name seems appropriate as the houses are protected from winter north winds on the lea of the hill that rises to Rockcliffe Park.

One problem encountered by the Commission was their inability to control the design of new houses, once homeowners had title to their properties. But more than a century later, what were once considered economical “barn houses” and other catalogue architecture have aged fairly well. Many of them are now regularly resold at well over $1,000,000 each.

New-New Lindenlea

Today, it can be hard to make out the original plan of Lindenlea. The name was eventually applied (likely encouraged by real estate agents) to the entire neighbourhood between Beechwood, Maple Lane, Springfield Road, and Acacia Avenue. It is now filled in with multi-unit apartment buildings, including one massive one that ruins the scale, as well as townhouses and semi-detached homes.

I live in one of the latter, so I can’t really complain about the high-end neighbourhood’s brand creep.

But I still have to explain where it is!

How to find Lindenlea

Sources:

• Old Ottawa and Bytown Pics (Facebook Group)

• Town and Crown

• Jane’s Walk

• Lindenlea Community Association

Yesterday, the USA celebrated the 250th anniversary of the signing of their Declaration of Independence. There was a party at Lornado, the official residence of the United States ambassador to Canada, to celebrate.

While the house is still technically on Canadian soil, by law it is granted inviolability and exemption from Canadian search, seizure, and taxation. It’s fortified by tight security.

Interestingly, Lornado was built by another American—at least by birth.

Warren Soper’s view of progress

Warren Young Soper was born on 9 March 1854, in Old Town, Penobscot, Maine.

At that time, Canada as we know it did not yet exist. Bytown was just a logging hub and military outpost in the British Province of Canada, itself a recent merger between the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada.

But at that time, before the American Civil War, people and goods moved rather freely across the border to the south, especially after the Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty removed US tariffs on timber, wheat, and other key exports.

The Soper family moved to Ottawa, a newly-renamed and now-booming Bytown, in 1856.

As a young adult, Warren learned his trade as a telegraph operator, becoming manager of the Ottawa office of the Dominion Telegraph Company. Living at a time when the Industrial Revolution was pushing the leading edge of technology ahead at a lighting pace, Warren saw great potential in the electrification of cities like Ottawa, by then the Capital of the Dominion of Canada.

Soper’s rise to the top

In 1881, Warren and another telegraph operator, Montréal’s Thomas Ahearn, founded Ahearn & Soper. At first, they specialized in communication technology, designing innovative telegraph and telephone devices and launching several patents. They would soon found and operate several companies that would light up and connect the capital, including Ottawa Light & Power Company, the Ottawa Telephone Company, and the Ottawa Electric Street Railway.

You could say they were on top of the world—at least in Ottawa terms.

So it’s not surprising that Warren Soper wanted a view to match.

As his electric street railway created new recreational and residential opportunities in the suburban Ottawa Village of Rockcliffe Park, Warren purchased property for his luxurious “cottage” at the very top of the hill, with spectacular vistas of the Gatineau across the Ottawa River, Ottawa to the west, and the streetcar line just below the hill where he had his own private stop.

Warren Soper liked this place so much, he decided to build his grand residence there.

Lornado, named after Victorian romance novel Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore, was built for the Sopers in 1908.

It wasn’t just a grand Edwardian mansion. The extensive grounds contained a miniature forest, a private lake, and other amenities including electric lighting and the ornate fountain that now sits in The Rockeries.

From Soper to Hoekstra

Warren Soper died on May 13, 1924, at age 77. His heirs eventually severed the Lornado property from their other holdings.

In 1935, the United States government purchased Lornado as a residence for its Ambassador to Canada.

The Americans spent three years making extensive changes to the house, including building new road access (as Soper’s electric railway was already in decline) and making stylistic changes to give it more of a Colonial American feel.

Generations of neighbo(u)rly relations

The events following July 4, 1776, have shaped Canada as much as they shaped their own history, including two border wars and the establishment of a country on our side of the lines that is part of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

There has been a lot of cross-border movement of people, money, and trade ever since. Some of my own ancestors were former British subjects in the American colonies who migrated north after US independence.

Our neighbourly relations have been a bit strained, of late. But we’ve managed to be at peace for more than 200 years.

Today, Lornado is home to US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra.

Dutch by birth, Ambassador Hoekstra’s parents were saved from Nazi occupiers in April, 1945, when The 2nd Canadian Division liberated Groningen, Netherlands at a cost of 43 Canadian dead, as well as 166 wounded soldiers.

The Ambassador was born there eight years later, and his family emigrated to the US when he was three.

So, Lornado continues to give a wealthy American a commanding view of our Capital on our 200th birthday.

But I hope he also sees that we are not only “nice” neighbours, but strong and unyielding ones.

How to find Lornado

There’s no public access, but you can get a good view from the Rockcliffe Lookout.

Sources:

• The Historical Society of Ottawa

• Wikipedia

• ProVision WMS (a modern successor of Ahearn & Soper)

• Martha Edmond, Rockcliffe Park: A History of The Village (Friends of the Village of Rockcliffe Park Foundation, 2005)

Among western democracies, Canada is the only one the provides a government-funded residence for the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and their family, including expenses for staff, food, and other supplies.

It wasn’t always this way, and Stornoway has a fascinating history from its days as a private residence.

Built for a grocery magnate

The house was built in 1913, just before the First World War, by architect Alan Keefer of Keefer, Richards & Abra.

Alan Keefer left his own mark on the growing village, designing more than a dozen mansions in Rockcliffe Park. He was the grandson of Thomas Coltrin Keefer, inheritor of his father-in-law Thomas MacKay’s vast estate. And it was the elder Keefer who transformed the locale into the Rockcliffe Park suburb in the late 1800s.

The house that is now Stornoway was originally build for the Major family, who ran a large grocery wholesale business in the ByWard Market. After a few years of having to daily transport Mr. Major and the children to and from work and school by buggy and sleigh, the Major family reluctantly sold the house and moved into Ottawa. Their business eventually merged with others to launch National Grocers, now owned by Loblaws.

The Perley-Robertson Years

The second, and last, private family to own and occupy were Irvine Gale Perley-Robertson, Ethel Lesa Perley-Robertson, and their four children. Descended from lumber barons and political heavyweights, their name is still well-known in Ottawa, including a law firm and, on the Perley side, a long-term care home.

It was the Perley-Robertsons who named the house “Stornoway,” after their ancestral home on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.

The name would stick.

Refuge of Dutch Royalty

During World War II, when the Dutch Royal Family took refuge in Ottawa, their growing family found their temporary residence on Lansdowne Road too cramped.

Mrs. Perley-Robertson, now an empty-nester, offered Stornoway for the royal family’s use. When Princess Magriet was born at the Civic Hospital, this was was the house she would come home to.

After the Dutch royals moved back to The Netherlands in 1945, the house sat empty for a few years, suffering neglect. But the next chapter in its story was about to begin.

A Home for the Leader of the Official Opposition

In the 1940s, Canada’s Opposition leader lived in a rented apartment, as did many MPs.

Senator Grattan O’Leary, thinking this was not appropriate, began fundraising among Canada’s rich and famous in Ottawa, Montréal, and Toronto to purchase an official residence.

Hearing of this, the Perley-Robertsons offered Stornoway for the purpose. The deal was done in 1950, and the purchase price was $55,000. (That’s just under $760,000 in today’s money—a pretty good deal for a mansion in Rockcliffe!)

The official new owners of Stornoway were now the Royal Trust Company, and the first official resident was the Honourable George Drew.

The next three Oppos, William Earl Rowe, John Diefenbaker, and Louis St. Laurent, refused to live there . Mr. Rowe, because he never had a seat in the house, Mr. Diefenbaker because he (correctly) expected to be elected PM within a few months, and Mr. St. Laurent because he was an interim leader.

When the next full-time resident, Lester B. Pearson, moved in in 1958, the family was expected to furnish it and do ordinary maintenance like shovelling sidewalks.

Government Ownership

The next big change came in 1970, when Senator O’Leary convinced PM Pierre Trudeau that the Government of Canada should own and maintain Stornoway.

Apparently, the Trust was out of funds, and the Senator had been paying the property tax out-of-pocket. Stornoway was sold to the Department of Public Works for the nominal fee of $1 (an even better deal for Rockcliffe real estate!).

At that time, Robert Stanfield was the official resident. The next would be Joe Clark.

In 1978, during Mr. Clark’s first residency, the government owners insisted on tearing down Stornoway’s porte-cochére, a decorative covered coachway that was a defining element of the home’s design, over safety concerns.

Stornoway’s Future?

Stornoway has been maintained by the National Capital Commission, at public expense, since 1988. Today, the residence is allocated an operating budget of $221,110 per year, which includes staff, supplies, and regular maintenance. The NCC also estimates that they will need to find an additional $1.25 million over the next 10 years to address deferred maintenance.

Amid the public discussions about the fate of the PM’s decrepit and empty official residence at 24 Sussex, some have suggested that Canada end the unique funding of an Opposition residence and put the PM in Stornoway. However, since then PM Carney has affirmed that the residence of future PMs will be at 24.

I find it interesting that the government’s plan to solicit private donations for the refurbishment of 24 Sussex has raised loud concerns, when the 1950 purchase of Stornoway, and its maintenance for 20 years, was entirely funded by donors.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has supported an open petition to stop funding Stornoway entirely.

I don’t know about that, although it does seem like quite a large expense for a leader who is not the Prime Minister.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments below.

***

How to find Stornoway. (Note that there is no public access to the property.)

Further Reading:

• Canada’s Historic Places

• Canadian Encyclopedia

• Parks Canada

As with the 24 Sussex post, this one owes the greatest debt to Maureen McTeer’s excellent book, Residences (Prentice-Hall Canada, 1982) . If you see a copy at a book fair, as I did at the annual RPPS sale, you should pick it up.

Built in 1923, The Rockcliffe Lookout has been a scenic treasure for generations. It offers spectacular views of the Ottawa River, and the City of Gatineau on the Québec side.

But this week, it was almost the scene of a tragedy when a woman fell about six metres down the rock face below, suffering major injuries and requiring a complex rescue operation.

The History of The Lookout

But let’s start with some history. The Rockcliffe Lookout was built by the Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC), predecessor of the National Capital Commission. It was in a key location, right next to the Rockcliffe Park Station of the Ottawa Electric Railway (long demolished), and at the top of a road leading down to the newly-rebuilt Ottawa New Edinburgh Canoe Club (now closed to the public) For a while, it also gave access by ferry dock to Gatineau Point.

The site had previously been an ice cream and cold drink stand, operated by a man named Olivier Asselin. The Ottawa Citizen reported that “Mr. Asselin will be given another stand on the driveway.”

When the streetcar station and tracks were demolished in 1931, the lookout was spared. It would be integrated into the new expanded road that is now the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway.

The mysterious lower level

Strangely, for a public building that has been part of Ottawa’s landscape for more than a century, there’s not a whole lot of info online about the history of the Rockliffe Lookout. But it has some fascinating details.

If you go down the sketchy path to the right of the building, you can see that the lower part once had a door.

There are closed-in windows on the other two lower sides, and the remains of what looks like another door.

And the path, as treacherous as it is, seems to have been built with retaining walls.

What was the lower half of the building originally used for?

The Pavilion in Rockcliffe Park, built just six years earlier by the OIC, originally had washroom facilities in its lower level (now closed and replaced by a separate building).

It would make sense that there were also once public washrooms in the Lookout. The nearby streetcar station had a lower level that looked remarkably similar.

Now, about that incident…

There hasn’t been much released in the way of detail. Considering the distance she fell, the unfortunate woman is lucky to be in “serious, but stable” condition.

It happened in the middle of the night, around 1:45 am on June 24. Firefighters were dispatched, and in less than an hour the rescue team had her on the way to the hospital. But they had to lower her on a basket, with ropes, to the river’s edge to where they could get her.

Great work, Ottawa Fire Services!

And a cautionary tale about late-night visits to the Lookout.

How to find the Rockcliffe Lookout

Sources:

• Gloucester History (more than once)

• Newspapers.com

• Ottawa Fire Services (Twitter)

• City News

The grand old stone house is still there, perched above the Ottawa River.

In its 158 years, it’s seen everything from log booms, to grand fancy-dress parties, to visiting world leaders.

But today it is tired.

Oh, so tired.

Twenty-Four Sussex Drive is supposed to be the official residence of Canada’s Prime Minister.

But none has lived there since PM Stephen Harper lost the position to Justin Trudeau in 2015.

It’s a bit ironic that Trudeau The Younger was the first PM not to live at 24 Sussex since Louis St. Laurent (reluctantly) moved in to the place in 1951. After all, he grew up there when his father was PM.

But let’s go back to the beginning, when the house had American roots.

Originally a symbol of hope

The building, originally lamed Gorffwysfa (“a resting place” in Welsh) was completed in 1868 for lumber baron Joseph Currier, an early immigrant from Vermont.

It was designed in Gothic Revival style by Joseph’s brother, American Architect J.M. Currier, and intended as a wedding gift to the owner’s third wife, Hannah Wright.

Hannah was the granddaughter of another American immigrant, Philemon Wright, the founder of Wrightstown (later Hull, Québec and now Gatineau), just across the river.

At the time, the house also overlooked the log booms that filled the Ottawa River and represented Joseph’s—and Ottawa’s—main industry outside of the new federal government.

Joseph Currier’s life itself had been one tragedy after another. All but one of the children from his first wife, Christina, died young in 1855 of scarlet fever, one the diseases so prevalent in colonial Canada. Christina also died young, in 1858, purportedly of grief. Joseph was then a widower father of one.

As was the manner of the time, Joseph soon remarried. But then his second wife, Ann Elizabeth, died a horrific death in 1861. In an unthinkable horror, her billowing Victorian dress got caught in the machinery during a demonstration at Joseph’s flour mill in Manotick.

Somehow, Joseph continued on. He got married again and served in a number of key public roles, including as a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, and later as an MP in the first Canadian Parliament.

Joseph died in 1884. After the much-younger Hannah died in 1901, the house at 24 Sussex was sold to William Edwards. He also served as an MP, the second to live unofficially at the future official residence. He was later a Senator.

When William died, in 1921, the house was passed through various members of the family, ending up in the hands of William’s nephew, Gordon.

Expropriation, abandonment, and radical renovation

After World War II, the Government of Canada decided that none of the homes overlooking the Ottawa River, across Sussex Drive from Rideau Hall, should be in private hands lest the owners try to “commercialize” the waterfront. What followed was a long and nasty expropriation process against Gordon Edwards, which ended just before Gordon’s death in 1946 with the Government of Canada owning a crumbling old house that was uninhabited for several years.

Sound familiar?

In 1950, the new government owners completely gutted 24 Sussex, removing many of the ornate Victorian features in preference for a more “modern” interior design that would suit an official residence for a 20th Century Prime Minister.

But when PM Louis St. Laurent was compelled to live there, he at first resisted then insisted on paying rent.

Various PMs made different alterations to the house, including PM Pierre Trudeau’s conversion of the kitchen into a more industrial operation, which was still operating to provide meals delivered to his son, PM Justin Trudeau, in 2018. (It’s now closed.)

24 Sussex had turned into a dump

By the time PM Stephen Harper moved in, when he won a minority in 2006, 24 Sussex was in dire need of another overhaul.

But PM Harper insisted on living there for the next nine years, despite reported rodent and mould problems. He was such a 24 fan that he named his hobby band the “Van Cats” ( a pun on the street number in French.)

When Justin Trudeau became PM in 2015, he agreed not to move in to 24, instead residing at Rideau Cottage on the grounds of Rideau Hall.

Justin Trudeau had spent many years at 24 Sussex as a child, when his father was PM from 1968-1979, and again from 1980-1984. As he knew the place intimately, I suspect he understood why it was no longer inhabitable as a world leader’s residence.

The year the Trudeaus didn’t live at 24 Sussex, PM Joe Clark and his family were there.

Maureen McTeer, Joe Clark’s spouse, doesn’t seem to have liked the state of the home at that time.

In her book Residences (Prentice-Hall Canada, 1982) Ms. McTeer describes features like “a stained and worn beige carpet” in the main foyer, and comments that the many attempts to modernize the house had obliterated many special features, like an ornate fireplace and the original grand staircase:

…1950 was the time when everything modern was in vogue. What we now preserve religiously as heritage homes were then considered old monstrosities. The best thing an architect could prescribe for old buildings was demolition or complete remodeling, even if this meant replacing carved wooden panels with flat, white dry-wall, or changing antique light fixtures to modern ones, “straightening” bay windows, or building a wall where a window had been. This was the age of bungalows in the suburbs; old houses near the heart of the city stood a great chance of being demolished and replaced by something new.

Nonetheless, she recounts fond memories of hosting world leaders in the house, and of her young daughter Catherine playing there.

Several more Prime Ministers lived in the residence over the next four decades. By the time PM Harper and his family vacated the house in 2015, it was many years past an urgent need for repairs and upgrades to electrical, plumbing, and more.

“Now asbestos and rodent-free”

In June, 2021, the National Capital Commission (NCC) who own and manage federal residences, reported, that 24 Sussex Drive was in “critical” condition, needing $36.6 million in renovations.

In 2022, the NCC officially closed the uninhabited residence for “health and safety reasons” and from 2023-2024 conducted a $4.3 million abatement and decommissioning project, including the removal of asbestos and obsolete mechanical, heating and electrical systems.

The NCC’s position on the property’s future is non-committal:

The NCC presented options for the future of the official residence of the prime minister of Canada to the government and is awaiting a government decision. The abatement and decommissioning had to be addressed regardless of any decision made about the future of the residence.

Hey, at least when they were done, the NCC was able to announce that 24 Sussex was “now asbestos and rodent-free.”

Is there a future for Twenty-Four?

This year, PM Mark Carney called the state of the home “an embarrassment,” but told CBC, “I would like to see my successors at 24 Sussex in some way, shape or form."

What exactly does that mean? It’s a bit of a change from PM Justin Trudeau’s recommendation that 24 Sussex be replaced or heavily renovated on the existing property, moved to a different location in Rockcliffe Park, or stay at an upgraded Rideau Cottage.

PM Carney seems to prefer that the residence be at the same address, but didn’t commit to preservation.

Katherine Spencer-Ross, president Heritage Ottawa thinks the shell of 24 Sussex can be saved, stating “One could absolutely restore the building, and if the prime minister’s requirements are to have more space, an addition is a possibility or a separate building.”

Not a bad idea. But today, the Tragedy of 24 is ongoing.

Update: June 26, 2026

This morning, PM Carney announced a plan for 24, which includes public fundraising and a design and build competition for Canadian architects to propose their visions for rebuilding and refurbishment.

He said, “Our institutions are how we carry forward what we were given, and how we pass it on, at least intact, ideally improved, to those who follow. 24 Sussex Drive is one of these institutions. And we will not let it crumble. We will set it right.”

How to find 24 Sussex.

(It’s closed and obscured from the street by bushes and trees; the best view now is from the Driveway in Rockcliffe Park.)

Sources

• National Capital Commission

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography

• CBC

• CTV

This post owes the greatest debt to Maureen McTeer’s excellent book, Residences (Prentice-Hall Canada, 1982) . If you see a copy at a book fair, as I did at the annual RPPS sale, you should pick it up.

You can’t walk around New Edinburgh or Rockcliffe without encountering the McKay name. It’s a street, it’s a lake, and it’s on signs all over the grounds of Rideau Hall.

Thomas McKay left many indelible marks on the modern City of Ottawa.

Born in Perth, Scotland, in 1792, McKay apprenticed as a stonemason before emigrating to Canada with his wife Ann in 1817. He first found work in Montréal, on the Lachine Canal and on military fortifications at L'île aux Noix, and gained a solid reputation.

When the buzz about the pending construction of the Rideau Canal reached him in 1826, the young mason and his business partner, John Redcloth, moved on to Bytown. Here, they built the eight entrance locks, as well as other canal works up to Hog’s Back. They also built St Andrew’s Presbyterian church, in Upper Bytown (now Ottawa’s Centretown) and other stone buildings which still stand.

The founding of New Edinburgh

Having become rich from his various businesses interests in Bytown and Montréal, and especially the Rideau Canal, in 1829 McKay began acquiring land to the east of Bytown, building a massive flour mill at Rideau Falls, as well as a distillery and a cloth factory with powered looms.

The area around his factories, he named New Edinburgh in celebration of his Scottish heritage (“Perth” was already taken). He laid out streets named after his family: His wife Ann McKay (née Crichton), and some of their 16 children (Thomas, John, Charles, Alexander).

McKay’s Castle

For his grand home, in 1834 McKay had an unknown architect design a Regency-style villa for him on his 65-acre estate at New Edinburgh.

The building was named Rideau Hall.

“McKay’s Castle” was a marvel in 1830s Upper Canada, with central heat, running hot and cold water, and a dumbwaiter. However, it lacked flushable toilets, which along with municipal sewers came to Ottawa in the later Victorian age. At Rideau Hall, in addition to traditional chamber pots for night use, the waste-elimination facilities were located outside, but accessed by covered walkways.

The Big Man of Bytown

Even though he lived in the suburbs, Thomas McKay had become the Big Man of Bytown. He was instrumental in bringing the first railroad to Bytown. He even served as a Member of Upper Canada’s House of Assembly for the riding of Russell.

But Thomas McKay’s life was not as great as one would have assumed.

Of the 16 children the McKays had, all the male heirs died as children or as young adults without issue. And the McKay fortune ran into debt when the family investments (including the Bytown & Prescott Railway) failed to deliver needed returns.

Thomas McKay died of stomach cancer at his home in Rideau Hall on October 9, 1855. He was first buried at a family plot on Pine Hill, but all of the family remains were later reinterred in nearby Beechwood Cemetery — which had once been part of his estate.

Although Ann would live until 1878, the McKay estate went to Thomas Coltrin Keefer, who had married surviving daughter Elizabeth McKay in 1848.

A builder and visionary in his own right, Keefer set out to sell off the McKay lands and assets to pay off debts, having residential lots surveyed in what is now New Edinburgh, Rockcliffe Park, Lindenlea, Manor Park, and Vanier. (I’ll write about him in a subsequent post.)

Rideau Hall eventually ended up in the hands of the new Dominion of Canada, first leased as a temporary residence for Canada’s first Governor General, Charles Monck, then purchased outright in 1868.

It’s been extensively expanded over the years. I’ll assume the GG was eventually provided indoor toilets!

Speaking of Vice-regents: This week our 31^st Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Louise Arbour, was sworn in and is presumably settling in to her new home at Government House, AKA Rideau Hall.

I hope the spirit of Thomas McKay is giving Her Excellency a warm welcome in his castle.

* English Spellings of Scottish clan names sometimes varied. So McKay might sometimes be “MacKay,” “Mackay",” or my favourite: M’Kay. Traditionally, it’s pronounced “mac-aye,” but in North America it’s often “Mc-eh.” Old Rockcliffites often use the former when talking about the street or lake.

How to get to Rideau Hall

Sources:

• Canadian Dictionary of Bibliography

• Wikipedia

• The Ottawa Citizen

• Ontario Heritage Trust

• Rideau Township History

• Martha Edmond, Rockcliffe Park: A History of The Village
  (Friends of the Village of Rockcliffe Park Foundation, 2005)

Just north of Montreal Road, in Vanier, stands a most remarkable wooden house. One-and-one-half storeys tall, it has a style reminiscent of grand Second Empire homes.

This was never a mansion, though. It was built by a working man named Nathaniel Gamman in the 1870s, in what was then a brand-new suburb of Ottawa. With its elegant details, it seems very aspirational.

The Village of Janeville

The community sat just east of the Rideau River and the railway tracks, on land that had been sparsely occupied since the 1820s. In 1873, local property owners and entrepreneurs Donald McArthur and Robert Cummings established a village they named after Donald’s wife, Jane.

The Gamman Family

Nathaniel, who was born across the Rideau River in Lower Town in 1848, as an adult worked as a brick maker, janitor and labourer. Some time in the mid-1870s, he and his wife, Mary Ann Gamman, (nee Mulligan, b. 1857) settled in to their new house on what was then called Third Avenue. They had seven children, five of whom lived into adulthood.

Nathaniel died in 1917, and Mary Ann lived in the house until 1921. She then went to stay with one of her daughters, and died in 1943 at the age of 86. Two of the Gamman children, born in the house in 1874 and 1886, were still alive in 1976. (I wish I could time travel back 50 years and talk to them!)

Even the yard is historic

While the home itself is modestly small, another interesting feature is that it still sits on a large lot of 65 x 100 feet (19.5 x 30 meters). Quite frankly, it’s amazing that subsequent owners didn’t subdivide it for in-fill housing as the community grew.

And grew it did! In 1908, the Government of Ontario merged Janeville with neighbouring communities Clarkstown and Clandeboye to form the village of Eastview. Nathaniel Gamman even served on the Village Council, briefly, in 1913. In 1969, Eastview was renamed Vanier, after Canada’s recently-deceased 19th Governor General Georges Vanier.

By this point, Vanier had developed its strong Franco-Ontarian character. But in the Nathaniel Gamman’s day, Janeville was more anglophone.

Gamman House grew as well. Over the decades, several additions were built on the back, only to be destroyed by fire sometime in the late 20th Century. But the main house survived, thanks to Vanier City Council who took ownership of the property and worked to establish a seniors club there in the 1990s.

In 2001, Vanier was amalgamated with Ottawa, and Gamman House was passed on to the larger municipality, which had it designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in March 2004 as party of the City of Ottawa Heritage Register.

Gamman House has survived for 150 years, still standing through fires, Rideau River floods, and relentless urban redevelopment. But right now, it is empty. The City maintains it, but it is in constant danger of arson and vandalism.

Now the City itself could be a threat

In November, 2025, Gamman House was one of five vacant properties under consideration for new affordable housing developments.

The Vanier Community Association and students of the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism at Carleton University are trying to work with the City for an adaptive reuse model that could include additions or renovations to the house, compatible housing built on the property, and a community garden. I haven’t seen any updates from any of the parties.

We definitely need more non-market housing in Ottawa. And this property cannot remain vacant. It needs to be used by someone.

But there are other empty and/or decrepit properties available for redevelopment that are not… you know… the oldest house in Janeville—and in all of Vanier—with its original building and lot intact.

To be fair, Ottawa has tried to repurpose Gamman House, first as a part of Ottawa Worker’s Heritage Centre, then as private studios for individual artists through the City’s Artist Studio Program.

Neither lasted. Perhaps the issue is the location, in what is now a fairly run-down part of Vanier. But as a designated heritage property, the house won’t be heavily altered or demolished without a lot of pushback.

At least I hope so.

But just in case, you may want to see this 150-year-old island of Victorian working-class domestic history before the pressures and needs of 21st Century Ottawa have their way.

Because the house does not always win.

Where to find Gamman House.

Sources:

• Canada’s Historic Places

• Vanier Community Association

• Historic Gloucester (PDF)

• Vanier Now

• Workers’ Heritage Centre

• French Life in the Capital

• CTV

There’s something special about old iron and steel bridges. They are a key part of our built landscape, monuments to the engineering and building advances of the industrial evolution.

The Minto Bridge (or “Minto Bridges,” as there are three spans) crosses the Rideau River from Union Street in New Edinburgh to Lowertown, hopping across Maple Island and Green Island. The northern and southern bridges, connected to the mainland, are single-span truss bridges, while the central one connecting the islands is a two-span truss bridge. Its use of rivets was an innovation at the time. But its white paint gives the whole thing a delicate, lacy, appearance in contrast with its heavy construction.

Visible from both shores of the Rideau, near Rideau Falls, the bridges have a rather regal appearance. Which seems appropriate, as they were built in 1900 and finished 1902 as part of a ceremonial route between Government House (AKA Rideau Hall), the residence of the Governor General, and the Parliament buildings on the other side of the Rideau Canal.

The name “Minto,” seen all over Ottawa on streets and buildings, was in honour of Canada’s Governor General Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto.

His Excellency only held the office 1898 to 1904, before being appointed Viceroy of India in 1905, but when the bridges were opened, they were to connect him with his elected government.

Like the Alexandria Bridge (1899-1900) and the Chaudière Bridge (1919), connecting Ontario and Québec across the Ottawa River, as well as the Porter Island Bridge (1894) also on the Rideau, the Minto was built by Montréal’s Dominion Bridge Company.

While these ancient bridges seem like perfect pedestrian and bicycle crossings, they are still used by cars. In fact, a refurbishment in the 2010s ensured that they were strong enough to be crossed by fire trucks!

Fortunately, there is not much vehicular traffic across them as the connections on the Lower Town side are complicated for non-emergency vehicles.

I’m glad the Minto is still here, especially since the NCC sadly plans to dismantle the Alexandria.

Sure, things change over time. But at least you can enjoy a real gem of Ottawa’s built heritage in this idyllic setting. It’s… riveting.

Where to find the Minto Bridge(s) — from the GG’s side.

Sources:

• Historic Bridges (.org)

• Wikipedia

• Ottawa Citizen

When my son was little, he always wanted to explore the neighbourhood. One of his favourite things to see was the “baby fountain” in The Rockeries.

Locally nicknamed “Soper’s Fountain,” this cute park feature has a story to tell.

And, as often happens here, it involves the Ottawa Electric Railway.

Warren Soper has entered the chat

Warren Soper, with his business partner Thomas Ahearn, brought electricity to Ottawa in the late 1880s, and soon replaced the city’s horse-drawn streetcars with electric ones. They both became quite wealthy on cutting-edge technology, like many Ottawa entrepreneurs to come.

Soper lived in the Village of Rockcliffe Park, where he built a grand estate at the top of the hill in 1908.

In 1912, Soper was in Paris attending the Salon. There, he saw a neo-Egyptian fountain, Enfants à la Fontaine, by René Bertrand Bouté, that had won the Prix de Paris.

He purchased it, and had it shipped home and installed on his grounds.

The artist: René Bertrand Bouté

Born in Maubeuge, France, in 1977, Bouté was a member of Society of French Artists. I can’t find much about his biography, except that he went on to work on claymation for films.

The fountain is a mishmash of ancient Mediterranean influences, with three putti (cherubic babies) frolicking around faux ruins decorated with… some approximation of hieroglyphics?

The “babies” move to Ottawa

After buying the fountain for an undisclosed amount, Warren Soper had it shipped to Ottawa (likely in pieces) and installed on his grand property.

Warren Soper died in 1924. In 1931, his heirs subdivided the Rockcliffe estate. The home he had built in 1908, Lornado, was purchased by the United States government for their Ambassador. The current one still lives there.

I don’t know where the fountain was in 1931, but the Soper family still owned it, as Soper’s daughter Eleanor (then known as Mrs. Wallace Creery) donated it to the National Capital Commission (NCC).

But this is not the same fountain that Soper bought

In this undated photo shared by the NCC, you can see the fountain’s original form. The actual font was sculpted, not masonry as now. And there were five putti! (One is partially obscured by the woman.)

This is how the sculpture appeared in that catalogue for the Paris Salon, as shared by Museo Art Nouveau & Art Déco at Casa Lis in Salamanca, Spain. All five putti are there.

That museum had a version of the putti in the centre of the sculpture, but they describe it as having a “biscuit” finish (probably a cast piece) and they imply that Soper’s Fountain is a copy.

It seems that Bouté’s work was reproduced a lot. A few years ago, there was a plaster copy of just the two putti in the centre being sold by a Dutch online shop for € 19.50.

Soper’s Fountain, which the NCC originally described as “carved stone” with “five cherubs” must have been an expensive piece to buy and transport.

But after it went to The Rockeries, it apparently suffered terribly in the elements.

In the Old Ottawa and Bytown Pics group on Facebook, member Mark Robillard posted photos of the fountain before and after a restoration in 1980-81.

In the “before,” the original base is there but one putto is missing. In the “after,” the base has been rebuilt and the lower putto has swapped sides.

It later disappeared as well. And a stock photo at Alamy, dated 2003, shows the fountain with just the two centre putti.

By 2009, when I took a photo of the fountain with my little guy, the upper “baby” was back in place.

So, what happened? Were the other bronzes beyond repair? Stolen? In storage for their own safety?

If anyone knows, please comment below.

Otherwise, I’ll see if anyone at the NCC can tell me.

Where to find Soper’s Fountain

Sources:

• Old Ottawa and Bytown Pics (Facebook)

• National Capital Commission (Facebook)

• Old Ottawa and Bytown Pics

• Rockcliffe Park: A History of The Village, by Martha Edmond
  (Friends of the Village of Rockcliffe Park Foundation, 2005)

For example, why are these row houses, at 327-333 Crichton St., so damn skinny?

Years ago, I went to a friend’s party in one of these houses and I was astounded how vertical the living space was. The whole place was compact like the inside of an RV.

The obvious answer is that these houses were built on an unusually-narrow piece of land.

By why was it so narrow?

Toot! Toot! Coming through!

This is why. Before those houses were built, before New Edinburgh was part of Ottawa, and before this city was even called Ottawa, trains passed this way.

And they continued to rumble through for more than a century.

The locomotive arrives in Ottawa

The Bytown & Prescott Railway, Ottawa’s first rail connection with the rest of the continent, opened on Christmas Day, 1854.

It must have seemed like a triumph of Victorian industry. Three hours from Bytown, then a rough lumber town, to Prescott, a transhipment port on the St. Lawrence with access to Canadian and American markets on the Great Lakes. Prescott was also conveniently located on a planned east-west line of what would become the Grand Trunk Railway.

On its way south, the Bytown & Prescott mostly followed the path of what is now Highway 416. At the time, it was difficult terrain to survey and clear. But the 1800s were an era of grand industrial visions backed by unfettered capitalism.

At the Bytown end of the line, the train would originally start at the Sussex Station in Lowertown, then it crossed a bridge on the Lower Rideau River to pass through New Edinburgh and Eastview (now Vanier) on its way south.

A century of rail

In 1855, when our city was renamed, the Bytown & Prescott was rebranded Ottawa & Prescott.

Funded by private investors, the early railway struggled to compete with contemporary enterprises, including the Brockville & Ottawa Railway (“B&O”) that had a parallel connection between the logging industry in the Ottawa Valley and ships on the St. Lawrence River.

After a bankruptcy, the Ottawa & Prescott was relaunched as the St. Lawrence & Ottawa. In 1884, the Canadian Pacific Railway purchased the line and attached it to its trans-continental system.

Trains continued to run along the tracks until 1966, after which the rails were torn up and the bridge (mostly) demolished.

Where the trains once went, cyclist and dog walkers now go.

With the noise, grime, and danger of the trains fading into memory, the railway lands on the east bank of the Rideau River in were turned into parkland. The Vanier Parkway would also use its right-of-way.

New Edinburgh certainly benefitted from the disappearance of the trains, with property values lifting off when the neighbourhood was greened. The railway may have ultimately helped the community, by cutting off residential and commercial development along the river. Everyone can now enjoy Stanley Park.

However, the river environment suffered greatly from associated industrial contaminants and other waste. It’s being remediated now.

Next time you’re walking or cycling along the east side of the Lower Rideau, you may now notice those narrow houses on Crichton, or even ‘splain to someone what those stone structures poking out of the water are.

They’re our history. Good and bad, it’s what made our community what it is today.

Personal anecdote time…

Coincidentally, I have a few familiar connections with Canada’s old railroads. My Great-Great-Grandfather worked for a time on the Brockville end of the B&O. My Great-Grandfather worked for the Grand Trunk Railway in Prescott. And my Grandfather worked at a lumber mill in Prescott, beside the train tracks, in a local wood industry supplied by the Bytown & Prescott and its successors.

To walk this path, start here.

Sources:

• Historical Society of Ottawa

• Ottawa Life

• Colin Churcher’s Railway Pages

• Capital Gems

• Vanier Now

• Wikipedia

Related:

• Last train passing through Eastview/Vanier (YouTube video)

On September 23, 1901, the Duke and Duchess of York were having quite an adventure in Ottawa. They rode a log raft down a timber slide, watched a lacrosse match, observed a “war canoe race” on the Ottawa River, took in some competitive birling, and rode an modern electric streetcar fitted out just for them.

The Royal Tour of 1901

Queen Victoria died in January of 1901, with Edward VII acceding to the Throne. His second son, George Frederick Ernest Albert, was already Duke of York and added the additional title of Duke of Cornwall. George’s elder brother had died just a few years before, putting him in the direct line of succession. He would be made Prince of Wales when he returned from the tour.

The Duke and Duchess’ Commonwealth trip was the biggest royal tour ever undertaken. They travelled almost 50,000 miles (~80,500 km) over nine months, visiting Malta, Aden, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Singapore, Australia, Mauritius, Southern Africa, New Zealand.. and Canada.

Here, they travelled the entire breadth of the Dominion by train, determined to see all that their Canadian subjects and the many Indigenous nations had to offer.

A lumberjack lunch in Rockcliffe

The royal visit to Canada’s capital included a demonstration of the lumber trade that was so essential to the Ottawa Valley.

For this, their streetcar would take them to Pine Hill. It’s a treed park just across the road from Rideau Hall, home of their hosts, Governor General Gilbert John Murray-Kynynmound Eliot, Viscount Melgund and 4th Earl of Minto and the Countess of Minto. Other dignitaries in the party included Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Lady Laurier, and Ottawa Mayor William Dowler Morris.

In preparation for the visit, the “lumbermen’s committee” had constructed a log shanty (an anglicization of French chantier) for the entertainment of the royals in the conveniently-located forest on the hill.

When the royal party arrived, they were first treated to a “shantymen’s lunch” of pork and beans, prunes, donuts, and apple sauce.

Apparently, the royals were quite charismatic and down-to-earth. Author and illustrator C.W. Jeffries, who was at the event, wrote, “Their Royal Highnesses were first and foremost, sympathetic, friendly and understanding human beings. They carried their royalty easily, and more than once they brushed aside the screen of official etiquette to reach a closer touch with people, sometimes to the perturbation of fussy functionarie.”

He also shared a colourful (if patronizing) anecdote: “One of the French-Canadian lumber-jacks outside the shanty, said to us, choking with merriment, Dey in dere wit’ de boys, eatin’ pork an’ beans. Ge, won’t dey ‘ave de belly-ache!”

In more polite terms, Historic Gloucester notes, “many of the royal party tasted the shanty fare with pleasure.” But afterwards, they were also served a “dainty lunch” of salmon, beef, duck, caviar and champagne.

Then the show began:

Following lunch, 130 lumbermen attired in red shirts, blue overalls, black ties, blue canvas shoes and black hats danced to traditional music as two large trees were cut down with axes and saws, branches lopped off, and the wood sawn and piled on a sleigh.

At the end of the afternoon, William Whistle, foreman for W.C. Edwards & Company spoke of his life and career, first in French and then in broken English to the great pleasure of the Duke, who spoke to him at fair length afterwards.

The next day, the Ottawa Journal included a quote from the Duke.

The shanty’s short life afterwards

Purpose-built for the visit, the royal shanty was left standing for a few decades.

Easily accessed along the Ottawa Electric Railway, the building became a tourist attraction for a few years before World War I disrupted leisure travel. Afterwards, Ottawans increasingly drove to more distant sites by automobile, making quaint old local attractions like a log cabin in Rockcliffe less exciting.

In 1920, the old building was repurposed as a meeting hall for local Scouts. In 1927, when the nearby streetcar storage barn burned down, it almost spread to the forest uphill.

The shanty survived the 1927 fire, only to be burned down on July 29, 1931, due to a careless visitor or perhaps an arsonist. Firefighters were dispatched, but there was no hydrant anywhere close to it. (The streetcar barn fire required hoses to run all the way from Rideau Hall.) The shanty would never host another bean party.

I believe the shanty is visible in this 1928 aerial photo of Pine Hill, straight above the just-rebuilt Rockcliffe streetcar barn (the biggest building) and to the left of the quarry near the top:

The shanty site today

Having a general idea of where the royal shanty was, I dropped a pin on Google Maps and walked to the site.

I have no idea if the streetcar stop shelter was there at the time, but this path is likely the one they took up the hill.

Following my pinned location took me to an area between two modern paths, where the terrain seemed level enough to support the shanty and related activities.

Unsurprisingly, after 125 years, and a fire, there’s nothing left of the wooden structure. But there are several piles of stones that may have been cleared for the shanty and the royal tents.

Some local kids, however, have constructed a royal stick fort should Prince William and Princess Catherine decide to come and relive the past. Your beans await!

Shanty Life: No Talking. No Farting.

I’ll close with a personal anecdote about lumbermen and their winter accommodations. My wife’s Great-Grampie worked the lumber camps of New Brunswick as a teamster—then a term of a person who managed teams of horses. Her uncle has told us some pretty wild tales passed down from those times.

The most memorable was about the camp’s cook, who was the boss of the operation since you only had food by his rules. And to keep the woodsmen from fighting while cramped together for meals, Rule #1 was “No Talking” and Rule #2 was “No Farting.”

The latter must have been an effort while subsisting on pork and beans. With prunes!

History doesn’t tell us if the Duke and Duchess of York and Cornwall, who would in 1910 become King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor and Empress of India, were able to comply with Rule #2.

Maybe King Charles III has heard stories about his Great-Grampie…

How to get to Pine Hill

Sources:

• Historic Gloucester

• Linda Seccaspina’s blog

• Canadian Encyclopedia

• Today in Ottawa’s History

• Royal Collection Trust

• Recollections of the Royal Tour of 1901, C.W. Jeffries

• Old Ottawa and Bytown Pics (Facebook)

• Special thanks to Library and Archives Canada.
  (Public archive images are used for research and education.)

Considering old Bytown was laid out as a military and lumber town, we’re lucky that the main thoroughfares left lots of room for the city to grow.

But in Lower Town, there’s another story, to been seen in the boulevard design of York Street, and King Edward Avenue. That’s because they used to have a mini canal running down the middle.

When the Rideau Canal was designed, in the 1820s, its main purpose was to provide a strategic detour between Lake Ontario and Montréal around the narrows of the St. Lawrence, which could be vulnerable to American attack. This would be made obsolete by the decades of peace that followed, and eventually the arrival of rail in the 1840s and ‘50s.

But it allowed the movement of direct commercial and passenger travel between the port of Kingston, on the Great Lakes, and the growing settlement at Bytown.

The Canal was (and is) a complex water management system, with several locks to manage the elevation up to the watershed at Big Rideau Lake, and then down again towards Kingston. To prevent flooding, there were several “by-wash” sluices where excess water could be released.

The Bytown (Ottawa) end of the Canal once had one of these, to allow water to be released into the Rideau River. To do that, it had to cross through Lower Town.

From the founding of our city to the early 1870s, Lower Town’s ByWard Market had an excavated mini-canal running through it. The water ran from the wide turning basin (now filled in) through where the Rideau Centre now stands. It went under a bridge on Rideau Street, and between commercial lots to George Street, another busy commercial street.

From there, the by-wash went to the east end of York Street, down the middle of what is now a grassy median. There are still waterworks beneath it, as evidenced by the manhole cover.

From there, the by-wash turned north, and ran down the middle of King Street, now King Edward Avenue. (It also extended south to meet Rideau Street again at a dead end, for some reason.)

It then took an angular route to meet up with a creek that eventually drained into the Rideau River at Bordeleau Park.

While this mini-canal would be interesting to see today, it had its issues.

The waterway provided opportunities for the residents of the ByWard Market, who tended to be the poorer residents of Bytown to wash their clothes, move heavy goods through the streets, water their cattle, or even go fishing. However, like other urban canals in Venice, Amsterdam or Milan, the by-wash was soon a disgusting open sewer where people dumped their waste—including the carcasses of dead animals.

The wash also required wooden plank bridges so people and horses could get across.

As Bytown became Ottawa, and was selected for Canada’s national capital, the city grew. The by-wash became a public health concern. In 1972, the City petitioned the federal government, who had and have jurisdiction over the canal, to cover the waterway through the Market.

Aside from maps, there aren’t verified images of the by-wash in its day, neither sketched nor photographed.

There is one photo from the City of Ottawa archives that was labeled By Wash that used to run down the middle of King Edward Street.

This glass slide was likely mislabeled. First of all, it is dated “188-?,” a decade or so after the by-wash was covered. When Lost Ottawa shared the image on Facebook, group members pointed out that it didn’t look like what was then King Street, and the electrical power lines that wouldn’t appear in Ottawa until the 1880s.

The by-wash is long gone, but it left its mark on the streets of Ottawa’s historic Lower Town (or Lower By Town, as it was originally known).

And in Ottawa’s bicentennial year, it makes a pretty good walk.

Sources:

• CBC

• Historical Society of Ottawa

• Ottawa Citizen

• Bytown: The Early Days of Ottawa (1982) by Nick and Helma Mika

In Canada, our maps tell a story about who was here first, who came later, and who had the privilege of putting names in writing.

In the early 1600s, French explorers were mapping a new-to-them world, in what is now Canada. They were initially concerned with resources, trade and expanding geographical knowledge. The conquest (or “purchase”) and settlement of other sovereign nations’ lands came later.

In 1535, Jacques Cartier was the first European to catch a distant glimpse of the great river that emptied into the St. Lawrence just west of Mount Royal.

By 1608, when the first French settlements on the St. Lawrence were attempted, a young man from France named Étienne Brûlé was enjoying a cultural immersion with the indigenous Wendat (Huron) and later Algonquin peoples, learning their languages and customs, and acting as an unofficial ambassador.

Brûlé’s story deserves its own telling. Suffice it to say that the famous French explorer Samuel de Champlain trusted the lad to improve relations between his people and the First Nations, as well as to provide geographical intelligence.

Champlain and his royal bosses in Europe were dealing with a problem that Columbus had failed to solve more than a century earlier: How to sail straight from Europe to Asia. By the 1600s, Europeans were aware that the seemingly-massive landmass on North America was in the way. They tried passing to the north, but couldn’t pass the ice. So they hoped there would be a river passage from the Atlantic to the legendary ocean beyond

Brûlé used his local skills and connections to understand and explore some of the possible passages, including the lower Great Lakes and several rivers including the Ottawa.

Indigenous peoples knew the lay of their own lands, as well as those of their adjacent allies and enemies. They could describe and draw fairly accurate maps of what they had seen in person, or heard about firsthand.

But although their trade networks stretched across the continent, few travelled very far. So distant geography got blurred in the telling, and repeated translation. They would often describe big waters (salt or fresh) and the end of long river and lake systems. When the Europeans heard descriptions of what was likely Hudson’s Bay, Lake Superior, Lake Nipissing and other large bodies of water connected to the rivers, they always hoped it would lead to the fabled passage to the east.

Another French settler who spent time with the Algonquin was Nicolas de Vignau, who informed Champlain with great certainty that the Ottawa River, which the French knew as La Grande Rivière (a direct translation of Algonquin Kichi Sìbì), connected to a navigable port in Hudson’s Bay, recently mapped by the English.

In May of 1613 Champlain, with Vignau as interpreter, a couple other Frenchmen, and an unnamed Algonquin guide, took two canoes up La Grande Rivière from Montréal. After some difficult detours, in which Champlain lost his astrolabe, the group only made it to the Upper Ottawa Valley.

But along the way, in June, he passed close by to where I’m writing this now: What would eventually be the City of Ottawa.

Just before reaching the sacred rapids of La Chaudière (another literal translation of Akikodjiwan, or “cauldron”) Champlain witnessed an impressive waterfall where a tributary met the Ottawa.

He either didn’t ask, or was unable to get, the local name of this feature. Or perhaps he couldn’t pronounce its local name, Pasāpikahigani Zībī. Most modern sources will tell you he’s the one who named it “Les Chutes Rideau”—Curtain Falls—because he or someone on board thought it looked like a curtain of water.

There’s a slight problem with this story, however. The name “Rideau” didn’t appear in Champlain’s own book or maps. His own words were, “At its mouth, there is another that comes from the South..,. at its entrance there is an admirable waterfall: for it falls with such force from a height of 20 or 25 fathoms, that it forms an arch, nearly 400 paces wide. The natives pass beneath it for pleasure, getting wet only from the spray of the said water.”

Whether the name was something that was passed along by other means, or was coined by a later explorer, Champlain is the one who generally gets the credit. The earliest evidence of the name is on a 1688 map made by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin decades after Champlain’s death.

Regardless, the name stuck. As others mapped the area, the tributary took on the name of the falls. It’s still known as the Rideau River.

Now let’s jump ahead a couple of centuries.

In the 1820s, with this area now in the hands of the English, the Crown sent Colonel By to survey and build a canal to bypass the narrows of the St. Lawrence River to protect military passage between Kingston and Montréal in case of another war with the young United States.

That canal, which was to connect the Rideau River with the Cataraqui, at the junction of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, also took the name “Rideau.” As did three lakes at the watershed of the two river systems, and a town along the way. The name now stretched from the Ottawa River to the Great Lakes.

By’s main settlement, Bytown (Ottawa), named Rideau Street as one of its main thoroughfares.

One of the canal builders, Ottawa entrepreneur Thomas McKay, built himself a mansion on his massive properties to the east of the city (now Rockcliffe Park) and named it “Rideau Hall.”

When the Canadian government purchased it to house our Governor General it was supposed to be called Government House. To this day, we use the Rideau name.

Rideau was already a well-established local brand before Confederation. In 1865, Ottawa’s elite established The Rideau Club as a place to meet.

Today, I can walk across the Rideau River to Rideau Street and see the Rideau Canal. On the way, I can go shopping at the Rideau Centre, or go underground to the Rideau stop on the O-Train. In a car, I can drive for an hour and see the Township of Rideau Lakes, between Perth and Kingston.

That “curtain” now stretches from the north to the south of Eastern Ontario.

And now for the curtain call…

How to get to Rideau Falls.

Sources:

• The Canadian Encyclopedia

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography

• Library and Archives Canada Blog

• Canadian Museum of History

• le Droit

• Ottawa Rewind

• Champlain’s Dream (2008) - David Hackett Fischer

If you’re going for a stroll in The Rockeries, a National Capital Commission (NCC) park in Rockcliffe, you might suddenly feel as if you’ve been teleported to ancient ruins in Europe.

These architectural remains are from a building that stood in Centretown, at the corner of Laurier Avenue and Metcalfe Street. But they’re in the east end now, so they qualify here in my east-of-the-Canal mandate.

OK, so let’s go back 120 years, to the spring of 1906. American industrialist, philanthropist, and prototype Bond villain Andrew Carnegie came to town.

He was here to open a grand public library that he had donated $100,000 to build. (The City of Ottawa was responsible for providing the land and the upkeep.) It was quite the to-do, with Carnegie being welcomed by Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and United States Consul General in Canada John G. Foster, and Sir Sandford Fleming. Governor General Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, even had Carnegie sleep over at Rideau Hall like a visiting head of state.

The library was indeed a stately thing, with fancy Corinthian columns out front, and massive windows to let in reading light.

The inside was even fancier: Italian marble walls, oak flooring, more columns, and the kind of staircase you’d love to make a grand entrance on.

Carnegie would fund the construction of about 3,000 libraries in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Serbia, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and Fiji.

Libraries, originally known as mechanics’ institutes, were considered a great sign of progress. They democratized books when public education made literacy near-universal, and they gave people without the money to own large book collections access to a vast wealth of published education, culture, and science.

Eventually, there would be 125 Carnegie Libraries in Canada alone, with the majority built in Ontario. Toronto got eight of them. Ottawa got two, but the main branch was the big one.

Times change. Much of it is good. But not all. There came a time, in the last half of the 20th Century, when old buildings were out-of-step with the brave new world of tomorrow.

From The Historical Society of Ottawa:

By the 1960s, the downtown Carnegie library was showing signs of age. Serious cracks had opened up in its walls and ceilings under the weight of the books it contained. In a time when little thought was given to heritage considerations, the beautiful, classic structure was demolished in 1971, a year after the gracious Capitol Theatre also succumbed to the wrecking ball. It was replaced by the current, Brutalist style, concrete building that was completed in 1974.

The ‘70s version of the library is also going to meet its fate, as soon as the next one is completed—in a less central location.

But parts of the old building were saved. The stained-glass window—featuring portraits of Charles Dickens, Archibald Lampman, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare and Thomas Moore—was carefully removed and built into in the new Brutalist library. It will eventually be installed in the new main branch.

Some of the dismantled columns ended up in an NCC storage lot. The four Corinthian capitals from the entrance were put in Rockcliffe’s Village Green (no relation to The Kinks’ song) by urban planner Humphrey Carver in the ‘70s.

They’re to be found in the little hedged Jubilee Garden, past the later installation of upcycled Victorian iron gates of Rockcliffe’s oldest house. (Stupidly demolished 1991, but that’s another story.)

Another few pieces went to the Rockeries, where they were installed in 1998.

Those are the ones with which people are most familiar.

There are also a few pieces randomly installed nearby along the Promenade Sir-George-Étienne-Cartier, but I dare you to spot them while you’re driving by.

And what about that other Carnegie Library? It’s in Hintonburg. Built in 1918, it’s a bit less impressive than the main branch. But it’s still operating as a public library!

OK, the additions are a little weird. But perhaps there’s hope yet in Ottawa for the people’s university.

Where to find the ruins:

The Rockeries

Village Green

And randomly, here.

Sources:

• Ottawa Public Library

• Historical Society of Ottawa

• Virtual Museum of Architecture

• Urbsite

• Capital Gems

• Wikipedia

Between St. Patrick Street and Porter Island is a long-closed bridge that is worth talking about.

It’s an old steel truss, built by Dominion Bridge Company in 1894.

It looks like a railway bridge, but it’s too narrow. It’s for pedestrians.

But why would Porter Island, a tiny piece of land on the Rideau River, need such infrastructure? Because Porter Island was an important (but scary) place where people went to, but often didn’t return from.

It was an island for the afflicted.

In the past, before many infectious diseases were contained by vaccines and other interventions, typhoid, smallpox, and other infections were often death sentences. As there was an increasing understanding of how germs spread, the afflicted would be consigned to isolation hospitals to contain the outbreak.

They were often tended to by nuns. In Ottawa’s early days as Bytown, the “fever sheds” were in the Market, near where the Grey Sisters lived. But the city grew too big for sick people in such a central location. In 1893, during a smallpox epidemic, Ottawa City Council decided that Porter Island would be a safer place to warehouse the sick.

The first isolation “cottage hospital” was a disaster, never completed and not adequate for the needs of patients or medical staff. The bridge was commissioned for $5,000, which was a pretty big sum.

A second, proper, hospital was built in 1910, during a new smallpox epidemic.

But you still didn’t want to go there. If you caught smallpox before the 1940s, when the disease was eradicated in Canada by medical science, you had a 70% chance of survival. That’s not good. And if you were sick enough to be sent to Porter Island, your chance of returning to normal life was not great.

Understandably, there are accounts of people doing everything they could to avoid being sent to the island.

From Capital Gems:

A newspaper account from January 1912 tells of one resident, Mrs. Couvilion, who refused to allow two public health officers into her Langevin Avenue home, just a half dozen blocks away, only acquiescing once they returned with a police officer. But when they returned again with an ambulance to take her to Porter’s Island, she had barricaded her door. The matter was settled when she was taken by force by the police.

It’s almost Pythonesque.

The hospital is long gone. The bridge remains. But with rotting boards and unofficial encampments underneath, it was closed to pedestrian traffic years ago.

And that’s a shame. The more modern bridge for cars to Porter Island—now home to high-end seniors’ residences—is under extensive renovations. Vehicles are detoured and constricted to cross it, and it doesn’t seem to have pedestrian access. I have no idea why this bridge is left in such disrepair.

Hopefully, the old bridge is not going anywhere. As a pin-connected truss bridge with multiple spans, it’s an important piece of Ottawa’s industrial revolution history.

Not to mention our difficult relationship with infectious diseases.

Where to find the bridge. (It’s not very accessible right now)

Sources:

• Historical Society of Ottawa

• historicbridges.org

• capitalgems.ca

• atlasobscura.com

It all started on March 19, 1968, when The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed at Ottawa’s Capitol Theatre.

He noted in his diary, “Arrived in Ottawa. Beautiful hotel...Strange people...”

The band played two sets, a second show added last-minute to satisfy demand. But while Jimi was checked in to the Chateau Laurier, like a proper rock star, he didn’t spend much time there to rest up after the show.

In fact, he had plans to record a new artist he’d taken an interest in.

From his tour diary: Talked with Joni Mitchell on the phone...I think I’ll record her tonight with my excellent tape recorder (knock on wood) Hmm...can’t find any wood...everything’s plastic. Beautiful view. Marvelous sound on first show. Good on 2nd. Good recording. Went down to the little club to see Joni - fantastic girl with heaven words.

That “little club” was Le Hibou, a coffee house in the ByWard Market that featured folk performers. Joni was doing a short residency there.

Joni, a Canadian who was an emerging music legend herself, had recently been signed to a major label and would soon release her first album, Song To A Seagull, which had been produced by David Crosby.

Talented, witty, and stunningly beautiful, Joni Mitchell caught the attention of both musician colleagues and fans.

Jimi Hendrix was both.

He arrived at Le Hibou after his gig, and without much fanfare he introduced himself:

“My name is Jimi Hendrix and I was just signed to Reprise, the same label that you’re on. Could I tape your show?”

And that he did, crouching at the corner of the stage while Joni sang.

Afterwards, the musicians and their friends went to party. Not at the luxury hotel Jimi’s road manager had booked, nor the room Joni apparently rented in Sandy Hill with some other musicians. The entourage was driven just out of town, along the Trans-Canada Highway to the separate municipality of Eastview.

Eastview, which would be renamed Vanier the very next year, was a Franco-Ontarian enclave, not yet amalgamated into Ottawa. Being outside of the city, with different rules and a small local police force, it was a place where you could stay up late and drink and dance at a motel disco. Apparently, the revellers also rented two adjoining rooms for the after party.

In Jimi’s words, “We all got to party... listen to tape and smoked up at hotel.”

Details are fuzzy after that, including from people who were there. The account from Joni’s official site says they were kicked out by security while listening to Jimi’s tape of his own show. Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell (no relation), added, “They didn’t like the idea of three hippies sitting around, especially one black, alone in the room in this conservative hotel.”

That sounds more like the Chateau Laurier. Although the Motel de Ville did put on airs…

No matter where they ended up, Joni and Jimi seemed to have spent the whole night together in Ottawa. Jimi wrapped up his diary entry saying that he kissed Joni goodbye then headed out on the road.

But what about those tapes? Mitch Mitchell recalled that they were stolen, along with the expensive tape recorder, from a parked car. It’s unclear whether that happened at the Motel de Ville, or at the Chateau. But since they used the equipment for an overnight listening session, it may have gone missing when they were loading up to leave the latter after having very little sleep.

So the tapes disappeared. But not forever.

In 2002, Ian McLeish, an Ottawa performer, was digitizing a hoard of old concert tapes kept by his friend Richard Patterson, formerly the drummer for a once-well-known Ottawa band called The Esquires. One of them turned out to be Joni’s 1968 performance. Eventually, he offered a copy to Joni’s people, and the whole concert was released in 2021 on a box set of archival materials.

Here’s one of the songs Jimi taped:

An interesting tidbit is that Richard Patterson, the person who took the only known photograph of Jimi recording Joni, was likely at the after party. Nobody has accused him of being the one who took the machine and tapes, and I sincerely doubt he would have done that to fellow musicians. But he was a well-known collector of rarities, and he may have found (or been offered) the tape years later without realizing it was “hot.”

We’ll never know. Richard died in 2011, at age 66, after suffering from dementia in the years prior.

Jimi Hendrix died much younger, at 27, from an apparent drug mishap in 1970.

Joni Mitchell is still with us, at age 82, enjoying somewhat of a comeback after re-emerging from a retirement due to medical issues.

Joni has also outlived Motel de Ville. As the years went by, it was heavily renovated and the name changed to Motel Concorde. In recent years, with Vanier now part of an amalgamated Ottawa, the motel had become a long-term temporary residence for people experiencing hard times. Parts of it had become an off-track betting joint and a Salvation Army thrift store. For a while, there was a pop-up evangelical church as well.

More recently, the motel shut down. The rooms are boarded up. The Salvation Army has plans to tear it all down and build a shelter there for the unhoused, but the plans have been delayed by community concerns.

The Capital and Le Hibou are gone.

And soon the place where two music legends partied the night away will also fade quietly into history.

Where to find (the remains of) the motel.

Sources:

• Joni Mitchell Library

• jimihendrix.com

• Ottawa Rewind

• The Record Centre (Facebook)

As I’ve mentioned before, Ottawa’s wealthy neighbourhood of Rockcliffe owes its development to the Ottawa Electric Railway. At a time when you could ride a streetcar to a county picnic, a ski jump, or rifle practice, urban rapid transit access also opened up a whole new leafy suburb for the well-to-do.

That access no longer exists. One OC Transpo bus goes past the old borders of RockCliffe Park Village, across Maple Lane and down Acacia Avenue, but neither tram nor bus has ventured into the enclave for more than seven decades.

More than a century ago, things were different. The Rockcliffe streetcar route, which originated deep in the city at Preston Street, went across the Rideau Canal and the Rideau River, through New Edinburgh, and would enter Rockcliffe just north of Rideau Hall.

And that’s where we’ll start. All aboard the phantom streetcar!

These tracks are not original. They were installed to mark where the Ottawa Electric Railway (O.E.R.) once had its Rockcliffe Car Barn. Here, at the foot of Pine Hill, they would store cars not in use. The barn burned down twice, and was eventually demolished.

From there, the track went north between Pine Hill and the woods of Rockcliffe Park, along what is now the Ottawa River Pathway. There’s a streetcar shelter on the side of the Pine Hill.

In the 1890s, the next and final stop was Buena Vista Station, at the entrance to the park. I wrote quite a bit about that attraction in a previous post.

As the Village of Rockcliffe Park grew, the service expanded and luxury homes popped up along the route. By 1900, the track extended north beside Lisgar Road.

You can still see the concrete bases of the electrical poles beside the pathway.

Reaching the heights above the rOttawa River, the car turned east. The first stop was downhill from the home of one of the O.E.R.’s owners, Warren Soper.

Mr. Soper had bought a cottage lot with a commanding view of the Ottawa River and built his mansion, Lornado. It’s now the residence of the U.S. Ambassador.

The route continued beside a section of the the Dominion Driveway, later the Rockcliffe Parkway and now the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway. At first, the streetcar would have horses and carts as company on the parallel road. Soon the automobiles would come.

Next was another station, surprisingly named “Rockcliffe Station.” It stood overlooking the river.

There are three more stops along this route, each with steps leading to a group of mansions on the hill above. Most are diplomatic residences today.

The Swedish Ambassador’s, at the top of Acacia Avenue, is particularly stunning.

Here, the tracks turned south, into a private right-of way that accessed stops for more wealthy families (like the Southams) on the right, and the Ottawa Canoe Club (later the The Ottawa New Edinburgh Club) down some stairs to the left.

This area is now known as The Rockeries.

Reaching the top of Cloverdale Road, at its greatest extent the tracks had an occasional “jigger” service to the northeast, through what is now a dog park and then across a (now long-gone) bridge across the creek to Sandridge Road. Here you would exiting Rockcliffe on its way to the Dominion Rifle Range, which had recently been relocated from Sandy Hill.

Then it would turn around and do the whole route the other way into Ottawa.

So why did it end? The short answer is: The Automobile. But it was also political.

Until 2001, Rockcliffe Park Village was not part of The City of Ottawa. They shared infrastructure and some services. The streetcars became public transit in 1950, when The City of Ottawa purchased the Ottawa Electric Railway company and its assets. But streetcar ridership was already is sharp decline, as Rockcliffe residents drove where they needed to go, and Rockcliffe’s parks and other amenities fell out of fashion for visitors. The Rockcliffe part of the line, already greatly shortened, was shut down completely in 1953. The City tried to run a few buses through the neighbourhood, but that ended in a few months.

The Village would never again have its own mass transit. The best you can do is take the #6 OC Transpo bus to Ashbury College and walk.

How to walk the old O.E.R. route:

1. Start here, at the roundabout.

2. Follow the Ottawa River Pathway to Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway

3. Turn right and follow the path to the top of Acacia Ave.

4. Turn right down the walkway to The Rockeries.

5. Just before Cloverdale Road, turn left on the wide path through the dog park.

6. (There’s no more to see once you get to the ravine.)

Sources:

Library and Archives Canada (Search)

Historical Society of Ottawa

OC Transpo

To the east of Acacia Avenue, in Rockcliffe, there is an adorable little lake. It was originally known as Hemlock Lake, but today it is more commonly called McKay Lake after the old owner of the entire neighbourhood. (Longtime locals sometimes pronounce it “Mac-Eye.”)

Don’t try to go swimming or canoeing there, though, unless you’re one of the handful of Rockcliffites who have private access from their properties. There is no public place in which to dip your toes.

It wasn’t always like this. Decades ago, the lake was a popular swimming and fishing hole, as well as a place to water cattle.

The lake is interesting in other ways as well. It is meromictic, meaning that it has virtually no water circulation or seasonal turnover. That means that the sediment in the bottom is rarely disturbed, and it has been used to test accumulated pollution (including radioactive particles!) from the past and present.

It was formed long after the last ice age, as the turbulent meltwaters carved out a hole in the soft clay underlying the area. The lake was much larger then, a remnant of the Champlain Sea. There is even a marker up the hill showing where its shore once was.

The lake is apparently replenished from an underground spring. Until sometime in the 20th Century, it flowed out to the Ottawa River through a creek under this bridge. (It was covered over when the Village installed a “sanitary sewer” to dump literal crap downstream.)

Now, the lake is also connected to “The Pond,” an adjacent lakette that was once an open-pit sand and gravel mine. The area was first dug for white marl, the soft clay that caused the lake to form in the first place. In the late 1800s, it was valuable for making white bricks as well as whitewash for the shiny new suburban houses being built in the neighbourhood. As that resource depleted, other excavators dug out the sand and gravel underneath. Eventually, by the middle of the 20th century, the whole thing had flooded.

There is a single, tiny, public beach on The Pond, open only from 7 am to 2 pm in the summer. Kids (including mine) used to fish there, but now that is banned. The City of Ottawa actually hires lifeguards to stop anyone from using the pond improperly.

The reason for all these rules is that the tiny strip of woodland on the shore of McKay Lake and The Pond has been a conservation area since the ‘80s. Especially for water birds. (I just saw a green heron there yesterday!)

By the way, McKay Lake wasn’t always so pristine either.

In addition to heavy resource extraction and manufacturing on its shores, the lake was for some years a literal dump. In the ‘60s and early, developer Bruce Davis owned a piece of the shore, and would dump the fill from his Vainer builds in the lake, planning to create a new neighbourhood. Since parts of Vanier sit on old industrial and waste disposal land, he wasn’t just dumping “clean fill.” There was broken concrete, garbage, and other contaminants mixed in. The gooey lake bottom is still considered un-wadable in the shallows.

Horrified, the neighbours lobbied to have the provincial government intervene. They invoked the Environmental Protection Act, but it was successfully appealed. In the late ‘70s, after Davis had died, the Village Council ended up making a land swap, getting control of the whole lakeshore by trading some property to the east to Davis’ successors for condo development. When Rockcliffe was absorbed by Ottawa in 2001, it became City land. So at least you can still visit the storied McKay Lake.

From behind a fence.

How to find McKay Lake.

Sources:

• Wikipedia

• CBC

• geocaching.com

• Rockcliffe Park: A History of the Village, by Martha Edmond

A century ago, the National Capital Commission (NCC) park now known as “The Rockeries” was a streetcar line.

The Ottawa Electric Railway had been extended from Rockcliffe Park, and for a little while went all the way to the Dominion Rifle Range (where the RCMP stables are now, out by the Canada Aviation and Space Museum).

At this time, the line went past the homes of several wealthy and prominent citizens, including Wilson Southam and his brother, Harry Southam. They were the publishers of The Ottawa Citizen, and part of a family newspaper empire that lasted for generations.

Wilson and Harry’s father, William Southam, worked his way up from the streets. His father, William Sr., had died nine years after immigrating from England with his wife, Mercy, and their four daughters. Mercy bore William in Lachine, Québec, after landing in Canada. They settled in London, Ontario.

Fatherless at nine, at the age of twelve William Jr. left school to help support his family. He took a job as a newspaper boy for The London Free Press. The boy impressed the newspaper’s publishers, and he worked his way up to part-owner of the newspaper. More acquisitions followed, including The Hamilton Spectator, The Ottawa Citizen, The Calgary Herald, The Edmonton Journal, The Winnipeg Tribune, The Windsor Star, and The Montreal Gazette.

He sent his adult sons Wilson and Harry to Ottawa to run his paper here, and they built mansions in the Village of Rockcliffe Park.

Wilson’s house was known as Lindelm. Today is it the residence of the Spanish Ambassador.

Harry lived next door, in a home named Casa Loma. Now the Austrian Ambassador lives there.

The brothers both had a great view of the Ottawa River, and had their own stop on the streetcar line, with concrete steps going down from their houses.

In 1927, the Federal District Commission, predecessor of the NCC, operated a tree nursery on the other side of the tracks. To beautify their side, the Southam families built the terraced rock garden that is still there today.

The family also bought more adjoining land, and resold it at cost to the Commission with the stipulation that there would be no tall trees grown there to block their river view.

The Southams had wanted the Commission to expand the rock garden, but it never happened. After Wilson’s death in 1947, the family donated the rest of their parkland to the FDC. Harry died a few years later, in 1954.

At this point, there were no more streetcars running below the Southam homes. The tracks had been torn up in 1937 and turned into a pedestrian and horse riding path. Now there are no more horses allowed, but The Rockeries is a popular setting for picnics, dog walking, and the occasional wedding photo session. In the spring, it’s another place where you can enjoy Ottawa’s Tulip Festival.

After Wilson and Harry were gone, the Southam newspaper chain continued to grow. By the late ‘80s, it was Canada’s largest. But it wouldn’t last. In 1996, Southam, Inc. was bought by Hollinger Inc., then Canwest. In 2003, after 99 years of the Southam brand, Canwest retired it. Today, most of its former papers (that haven’t been shut down) are owned by Postmedia.

But looking back to the 1980s, among Southam, Inc.’s latter acquisitions was The Kingston Whig-Standard in my hometown. I recall that some people in Kingston disliked the change in direction that Southam ownership brought, with more wire content from their national network and a greater focus on advertising—including advertorial (today known as “native advertising” or “sponsored content”).

Not me, though. In 1990, at age 20, I was a history student at Queen’s University and I scored my first regular freelance copywriting gig writing those advertorials, even though I had no advertising or journalism background. In some ways, I owe my career to the Southam family.

So when I walk this path, I think of the Brothers Southam.

Where to find The Rockeries

Sources:

• Rockcliffe Park: A History of the Village, by Martha Edmond

• National Capital Commission

• Wikipedia

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography