Robert Smythe
If the block of Somerset Street that eventually became Dundonald Park was developed as originally intended, this sector of Centretown would look substantially different.
Because the property stands on the highest point of land around, the City of Ottawa Waterworks Committee purchased the block in the mid-1890s for future use as a reservoir site to feed local water mains. This never came to pass, and the plot of land soon turned into an informal dump, an eyesore in this burgeoning residential community.
Nearby home-owners grew restless. In August 1901, the Waterworks Committee received a petition from a Mr. T.A. Beament of MacLaren Street on behalf of the ratepayers in the neighbourhood asking that the reservoir lots be converted into a public park.
The city’s official response was dismissive: “Your Board after having discussed the Petition could not entertain the request and would recommend that the Police Commissioners be requested to see that no horses or cows be allowed to pasture or graze on the Somerset Street grounds and that the City Engineer be instructed to have grass cut as requested.”
A vision for parks in Ottawa
Within a year, however, the Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC) ‒ forerunner of the NCC ‒ would dramatically alter the reservoir lots’ fate by retaining the professional services of Frederick Todd, an aspiring young landscape architect and an acolyte of Frederick Law Olmsted.
Todd’s 1903 report, which is now seen as the grandaddy to the later Gréber Report, recommended that the block of Somerset between Lyon and Bay, and nine other undeveloped lots scattered about Ottawa, be acquired by the OIC and transformed into small city parks.
“A place of rest and recreation”
His report pointed out that, “These small squares and breathing places situated at various intervals throughout the crowded portions of the city are of great importance. They do not remind one of the country to the same extent as the suburban parks, for they are intended to fulfill an entire different mission, their object being rather to provide a place of rest and recreation for the people in their immediate neighbourhood, and to make the city as a whole more beautiful and attractive.
“Somerset Street Square [Todd’s suggested name], although presenting a much more difficult problem, has greater possibilities than any of your small squares. The expense involved would necessarily be greater, but the fact that it is far from being level, should make possible a square of more than ordinary interest.”
The following year the government of Canada took out 15-year leases on two city properties, the proposed Somerset Street Square and what would become Strathcona Park in Sandy Hill. This was one of the few recommendations in the Todd report that was actually implemented.
Tories choose the park name
It was the commemorative naming of Dundonald Park that became hugely controversial. Why would the Liberal-dominated Ottawa Improvement Commission title its first city park after the government’s bitterest enemy – the Earl of Dundonald, Canada’s last foreign-born commander of the Canadian Militia, who had just been summarily dismissed and ordered back to England for insubordination and, according to the Times of London, “political agitation against the Government of Canada”?
The answer is that they didn’t. In a fiery meeting held on July 19, 1904, the Conservative-dominated Ottawa City Council, with the support of half the country, passed a resolution dedicating the park in honour of Dundonald, likely as a means of vexing the federal government.
The OIC stubbornly refused to recognize the name of its new park until the Laurier Liberals were thrown out of office in 1911. A new Conservative government promptly reinstated the name Dundonald and it has stuck ever since.
The naming debacle had its consequences. While the commission proceeded with the implementation of their elaborate plans for Strathcona Park, Dundonald was left as a lunar wasteland for a further two years.
Political retribution
There were repeated charges in Parliament that the delay was retribution for the park’s naming.
A front-page photo and editorial in the Ottawa Journal of June 6, 1905 summed up the situation. “Dundonald Park, Somerset Street, was taken over from the city by the Improvement Commission in June, 1904. When the Commission took the park over the residents of the locality began to expect great things. The people who live immediately around the park began to see visions of beautiful flower beds and gravelled walks and the whole park a thing of joy – if not forever at least during the summer months.
“Over a year has elapsed and the Improvement Commission has done nothing towards making anything of the park except to dump a lot of dirt on it. The earth was mostly carted there early this spring. The picture which is from a photo taken by Mr. A.G. Pittaway, photographer, shows what the park looks like today. The photo was taken from the corner of MacLaren and Lyon Street.
“A resident of the locality suggested to the Journal to-day that when the children of Percy Street School return to work they can be brought down and be taught geography, the square being used as a relief map.”
When Dundonald’s landscaping was finally completed in late 1906, the final result was deemed disappointing. The terrain was simply leveled, with a ring of trees around the perimeter, some crushed gravel pathways, and a red concrete fountain in the centre. This was heavily criticized five years later by the newly reconstituted Tory-dominated improvement commission.
A meaningless layout
The OIC wrote in a subsequent summary of the work that, “Dundonald Park’s steep slope was spoken as being a difficult problem with great possibilities and having more than ordinary interest. This park has been laid out in a meaningless manner and among other alleged ornaments are artificial flower beds made of cement and coloured stones.”
That opinion was echoed by the Ontario Association of Architects.
“The Association, after a careful inspection of the work that has already been executed, feels that much which has been done will have to be undone, as it neither meets the demands of the situation in design or execution.”
Nevertheless, Dundonald Park was to remain in this configuration for a further 110 years.
There is much more to say about the park: a deep well was sunk in 1913 at the Bay Street end to provide western Centretown with safe drinking water after a typhoid epidemic; the park was short-listed as a site for a new city hall building which persisted between 1931 and 1955; and a large pagoda feature was promised in the 1980s to harmonize with Chinatown.
But these are events for subsequent chapters in this story!