Robert Smythe A stark contrast between new and old drew the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s planners to Bay and Gloucester in 1971.The CMHC pictured a modern office building rising above this collection of doomed housing. 1. This is the…
by Robert Smythe The Medical Arts Building on Metcalfe Street is under wraps for a façadectomy. When the bandages are removed two of its historic walls will re-emerge, attached to the bottom of a 27-storey hotel-condo tower. The project’s commencement…
by Robert Smythe The former bottling works of Coca-Cola Co. of Canada on Queen Street is no more. Recently, it was reduced to a mound of rubble for a future multi-towered condo development, to be known as “Moon.” After Coke’s…
by Robert Smythe With two public open houses held last month, the City of Ottawa launched its latest Centretown Heritage Study — the first major examination of the neighbourhood’s built heritage in over 20 years. It’s a piece of unfinished…
This year Knox celebrates 175 years of ministry. It’s also the 145th anniversary of Knox’s previous church—an immense edifice that is gone but not forgotten. by Robert Smythe On November 10, 1844, a group of Free Church Presbyterians met for…
by Robert Smythe The promoters advertised Ottawa’s Canadian National Winter Carnival of 1922 as “A Week Without a Worry.” It was an act of civic boosterism intended to encourage tourism and profit local businesses. The carnival turned out to be…
by Robert Smythe There is a yellow brick structure anchoring the corner of Bank and Laurier that once played a distinctive role in Ottawa’s commercial development. That building is now about to turn 100 years old. Here is a centennial…
The tangled story of the Somerset House disaster has taken another turn, with the City promising more action to provoke the building’s owner into completing his plans to redevelop it. They also intend to order the stabilization of the surviving…
As Ottawa Community Housing begins to demolish this social housing landmark, here is the story of its origins. by Robert Smythe Ottawa Community Housing (OCH), whose proposed $34 million development in the Gladstone, Rochester and Balsam block is still not…
by Robert Smythe To herald its long-awaited makeover, this summer the Sparks Street Mall’s management furnished the blocks with hammocks and bean bag chairs. More importantly, they’ve installed anti-vehicle bollards to barricade the mall from the cars and trucks that…
by Robert Smythe For generations, one of Ottawa’s most powerful marvels has been hidden from public view, only visible in the distance when squinting through the steel girders in the noisy traffic on the wrong side of the Chaudière Bridge.…
by Robert Smythe Do you know where Neville’s Creek, Neville’s Point, and Neville Street were? Today we might call this area the tip of the Golden Triangle. Previous generations would have called it the bend in the Deep Cut. It…
by Stephen Thirlwall At 94, WWII veteran William (Bill) McLachlan is a clear thinker. He vividly remembers the past but is not trapped in it. He has retained an optimism and a path of action looking forward. As a result,…
by Robert Smythe On a bitterly cold morning in early January 1968, a bare-kneed piper led a column of 450 students bundling books down the few short blocks from their old school building to their new one. It was the…
by Stephen Thirlwall The year 2017 is an important one for all Canadians, being the year of Canada’s 150th anniversary. For the Bahá’ís of Ottawa and the worldwide Bahá’í community, it is also a special bicentennial celebration of the birth…
by Carol Sissons If you lace up your skates and head down to the Plouffe Park outdoor rink at Preston and Somerset this winter, and if your family has lived in the neighbourhood a long time, you could be repeating…
by Robert Smythe The first St. Jean Baptiste Church was constructed in 1872 on Queen Street West in LeBreton Flats. Originally, its parish extended westward to Britannia Bay and ultimately encompassed close to 5,000 souls. As the size of the…
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