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    An Ottawa Album: Glimpses of the Way We Were
    An Ottawa Album: Glimpses of the Way We Were
    An Ottawa Album: Glimpses of the Way We Were
    Ebook199 pages53 minutes

    An Ottawa Album: Glimpses of the Way We Were

    By Marion Van de Wetering

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    About this ebook

    This illustrated history of Ottawa traces the city’s development from the days when Bytown was a lumber village to its emergence as Canada’s capital and fourth-largest urban area. From the earliest photographs of the original Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, through the VE-Day and VJ-Day celebrations at the end of World War II and beyond, this beautiful book of superb black-and-white photographs and informative text offers a charming glimpse of the evolving city.

    The photographs have been chosen both for their historical importance and their quality as visual art. They show a cross-section of life in the developing capital from the formality of Rideau Hall to working people selling wood and straw in Byward Market. This art, among the best from Canada’s early photographers, has been culled from major collections in the National Archives of Canada and Ottawa’s city archives. Many of the photographs have never been published before.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDundurn
    Release dateOct 1, 1997
    ISBN9781554880751
    An Ottawa Album: Glimpses of the Way We Were
    Author

    Marion Van de Wetering

    Born in Powell River, BC, Marion Van de Wetering is a graduate of the University of Guelph. She has written articles for the Toronto Star and is a parttime graduate student at the University of Ottawa. Marion and her husband, writer Mark Bourrie, live in Ottawa.

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      Book preview

      An Ottawa Album - Marion Van de Wetering

      enthusiasm.

      Introduction

      I’ve always wanted to know why. As a child I wanted to know why things are the way they are. As I grew up, I found the natural world very mysterious. I wanted to know not just why the sky was blue, but why the grass was green, and why birds flew.

      On the other hand, I pretty much took my urban environment for granted. Growing up in a city so new, with the history of the country so far removed from everyday life, made the past seem a subject of little personal concern. Compared to the miracles of nature, where the answers are often coded into genetic fragments, molecular structures, and similar microscopic particles, the plodding methodology of civic bureaucrats seemed exceedingly dull.

      This changed abruptly as I began, first to move to different Canadian cities, then to travel to Europe and Asia. Why is this town, this street, this building here? Why is the architecture so different from one period to another? Seeing a modern steel and glass skyscraper juxtaposed with an ancient Shinto temple in Japan, visiting the soaring heights of Chartres Cathedral in France with its ancient underground caves, and moving to Ontario where the history of Canada surrounds you, have sparked the desire to know the whys of Ottawa.

      In my quest to know, I’ve found that cities grow the way they do through myriad decisions of thousands of people. These decisions, based in part on existing geography and the habits of indigenous people, lay the foundations for subsequent development.

      The geologic history of the area has done as much to shape the development of the city as anything else. The junction of the Rideau and Gatineau rivers with the mighty Ottawa, gateway to the west, provided transportation for the earliest explorers, as well as a route for the pelts so highly prized in Europe. Later, the river would be used to transport timber down river to Montreal, and even later it would be filled with pleasure boats.

      Early European settlers generally chose the best place they could find to start a new life. A bend in the river, a deep harbour, and fertile land were all good reasons to choose one spot over another. One of the reasons the junction of these rivers proved attractive was the lack of contention by the area’s earliest inhabitants. When the settlers’ right to the land was questioned by the nearest tribes, a quick trip to Montreal to verify the validity of the settlers’ claims quelled the objections.

      Later colonists added to these original decisions. Roads, bridges, and wharves were built to allow access to places both more settled and more remote. Furs came down river on their way to Europe. The trappings of civilisation came upriver to the inhabitants of a fledgling village.

      The plans of individual families blended with those of government to shape a growing town. The placement of homes and businesses, and the excavation of the canal with its concomitant draining of swamps and creation of lakes, provided the framework for further growth.

      The proliferation of rail lines, the paving of major thoroughfares, and the need for an airport each shaped the emerging capital. Each of these changes reflected the wishes of individuals or of corporations to grow in the direction of each unique vision. This pulled the city in a thousand different directions at once and fragmented the city into many different neighbourhoods, criss-crossed by rail lines and roadways which twisted every which way, with little rhyme or reason.

      Finally, in the last half of the twentieth century, the city implemented a coherent plan, removing some of the chaos, providing green space, and protecting much of the city’s heritage through the preservation of historic buildings.

      It is this city, integrated and firm in its place as Canada’s capital, which visitors see today. But it is the growing pains, the early decisions of a thousand inhabitants, which are explored in these pages. In visiting the Ottawa of the past, we see the birth of the present, and the growth of the future.

      Timber rafts on the Ottawa River, before 1903

      Ottawa City Archives #CA-0083

      Log Jam on the Gatineau River

      National Archives of Canada #8919

      Lumbermen on a timber raft of the J.R. Booth Company, c. 1880

      Ottawa City Archives #CA-0076

      The Ottawa-Hull region was built on the back of the lumber trade. The region’s first lumber baron — and its first European — was Philemon Wright, who arrived in Hull in March, 1800 with five families and twenty-five additional men. Although these settlers planted potatoes and hemp for local use and export, the need for additional cash to keep the settlement going led Wright to build a lumber mill on the banks of the Chaudière Falls in 1802. The first trees for export were felled in the fall

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