dedicated to the memory of
Alexander Mutchmor (1834 to 1896)
Thomas Ahearn (1855 to 1938)
Charlotte Whitton (1896 to 1975)
Douglas Fullerton (1917 to 1996)
and many others who made a difference.
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX
1613-1763 Nouvelle France. 9
1763-1791 British Colony of Quebec. Tree cutting commences. 9
1783 Land purchase from Algonquins by Captain Crawford. 9
1792 Subdivision of Glebe into lots G, H, I, K. 12
1800 Frasers acquire Glebe lots excluding clergy reserve. 12
1826 Patterson acquires lot G. 14
1832 Canal routed around Glebe. 12
1836 Church of Scotland acquires lot H as a glebe. 14
1856 Canal transferred to Canada. 16
1866 Bank Street and Bridge built. Civil Servants arrive. 24, 29
1868 Ottawa Agricultural Society fairground created. 18
1870 Railroad forms northern edge of Glebe. 32
1871 Trotting Park and Hotels built. 20, 29
1875-1879 First Provincial Fairs at fairground. 20
1888 Central Canada Exhibition (CCE). 22
1889 Glebe Annexed by Ottawa. 22
1890 CCE becomes Lansdowne Park. 42
1891 Streetcars on Bank Street. 34
1894 Glebe Presbyterian Mission established. 34
1895 Mutchmor School built. First Bank Street Shops. 30, 36
1898 Aberdeen Pavilion built. 42, 60
1902 Clemow - Monkland Parkway begun. 38
1907 Completion of Canalside Parkways. 38
1914 Ottawa Ladies College built. 36
1919 Glebe Collegiate built. 38
1926 Canalside parkway completed. 38
1930 Fraserfield lumber yard sold and subdivided. 38
1939 Rough Riders win grey cup at Lansdowne Park. 44
1947 Ladies College becomes Carleton University. 36
1959 University moves to Rideau Campus. 36
1966 Frank Clare Stadium built at Lansdowne Park. 44
1974 Traffic Calming Plan effected. 54
1990 Lansdowne Park landscaped. 50, 52
This is a story of the Glebe, an inner, older, residential district of the Nation's
Capital. It is a story that is mostly history, an explanation of how the Glebe came
to be the way it is now. It may be an indicator for people in the future - that they
may be able to benefit from the successes of the Glebe and avoid some of the mistakes
of the past; maybe in this way it will also be useful and interesting to others in
other communities.
The photography for this book is by Marcelle Jubinville, a Franco - Ontarienne living
in the Glebe.
Much of the archival photography is from the historical postcard collection belonging
to Phil Dunning. The Glebe is a culturally diverse area with a population of many
different talents, so this book opens with a drawing by the Glebe artist Bhatt Boy
and continues with a Glebe poem by George Johnston. I am much indebted to the Glebe
Historical Society for their inspiration and collaboration, especially its coordinator
Ian McKercher; Bruce McCallan and his extensive research into Bank Street; Phil Dunning;
Christina Bates; Clyde and Penny Sanger; and John Kane, past President of the Glebe
Community Association.
Prologue
While serving as architect to the National Capital Commission during the early sixties,
I was writing about how the Glebe and Third Avenue in particular was a good place
to live, but how it could be better. A junior property manager with the Commission
who was at the time living somewhere in outer suburbia came to me one day, saying
that he had heard about my Glebe writings, but that he thought I should keep quiet.
The Glebe, he thought, was a bit of a slum, especially on the eastern older side,
and not an address to shout about. Maybe at that time he was correct - after nearly
thirty years of depression and war it was looking rather dejected. The fashionableness
of the Glebe has definitely risen since then to the financial advantage especially
of realtors and taxmen. Fortunately for them, it is not just home to socialists who
sport beards and long hair, practice yoga and take their ferrets, parrots and pet
pigs for Sunday walks. But at least in the Glebe one can do all of those things and
not be thought odd - that is one of its main virtues.
I was brought up in the outer suburbia of London, England, and I hated it for its
ordinariness, prickly respectability and lack of tolerance for the odd and unusual.
Later for my sins I would be a town planning inspector in an even newer outer suburb
of Montreal, while studying at McGill University, but somehow it did not suffer the
cloying respectability of my former English suburbia, saved maybe by being Québécois.
The Glebe was an outer suburb. It used to be beyond the city limits, but now it is
almost in the city centre. That says nothing to its quality of life. The quality
of life in any place in the world is a function of one’s immediate surroundings and
acquaintances. We had the good luck of finding the Glebe eminently compatible in
both senses from the very beginning. We were neighbours to the poet George Johnston
who had at that time, while he was on sabbatical, a Quaker Co-op resident in his
house. Across the road was a Buddhist Co-op which later became a women’s co-op. Further
down the block lived a husky football player who distinguished himself and our block
one night in the mid eighties by noisily beating the living daylights out of a thief
who was trying to break into his house at three in the morning. Nearby lived Mitchell
Sharp, the Minister for External Affairs, as well as Flora MacDonald, a leading Member
of the Opposition Conservatives, the owner of the satirical "Frank Magazine",
and the ambassador of ill fated El Salvador, a Baptist minister, a renowned ballerina,
some teachers and some architects. Our house we bought from the writer economist
Scott Gordon
just about the time that he was winning a philosophical battle against James Coyne,
the Governor of the Bank of Canada over how Canada’s finances should be run. Our
neighbour on the other side was Charlotte McEwen whose well publicised support for
the Palestinian cause made us wonder whether our house might not get blown up by
Mossad. She in turn was watched by the RCMP from a house across the street. Such
was and still is the diverse nature of the Glebe; much more important than the trendiness
that one hears so much of in the newspapers, especially during the time of the Great
Glebe Garage Sale which takes place every May - one of Ottawa’s major social and
retail events.
I think that maybe George Johnston’s poem "The Lily Pond" (1960) best illustrates
the Glebe:
“Down at the bottom of Third Avenue
Ottawa has a lily-pond on view,
Neat little stone-edged pond, just big enough
That a small wind will make its waters rough.
Down to it all the children come and play
So gleefully they seem to shut away
The old vehicular world that hurries by.
A willow tree leans out across the sky
And drops its hairy image in the pond
And on the benches round it and beyond
Old men sit, and pregnant mothers sit
Taking their time, making the most of it.”
Welcome to the Glebe.
John Leaning.
1. The Lily Pond, c. 1909, showing the Rideau Aquatic Club, a marina opposite the present Ritz Restaurant at the canalside that existed until the First World War, as well as the rustic gateway into Lansdowne Park. Over the pond is a wooden bridge which was later replaced by a stone bridge about 1912. (Collection Phil Dunning).
 |
2. The Lily Pond, 1999. (Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
3. Patterson’s Creek, 1999. Cedar Lodge has
gone, but the ugly O’Connor
Street bridge remains. (Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
4. Morris Street, 1999. A group of the
first 1890’s urban houses on the south side
of the Glebe.
(Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
5. The Great Glebe Garage Sale in 1999 at the heart of the Glebe. (Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
6. Capital Park during the Great Glebe Garage
Sale. A group of the
earliest urban houses.
(Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
7. Bank Street in 1999. Looking north from
Third Avenue across the
original St. Andrew’s Glebe.
(Bruce McCallan).
 |
8. The Great Glebe Garage Sale, 1999. Photo taken from Third Avenue. Behind the clown is new infill housing and a restaurant by Douglas Casey. (Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
Beginnings
The Glebe today is a successful neighbourhood, attractive to live in, with a diverse
population of all ages and lifestyles. It has not always been so. The built community
is just over a hundred years old. Most of the buildings one sees there now are the
first ever to be built on the land, but the land since the clearing of the primeval
forest well over two hundred years ago has been used for several purposes before
it became home to upwards of twelve thousand people. Covered now for about a fifth
of its area by concrete, asphalt and houses laid out in rigid rectangles, even with
its present day numerous trees and bushes, it is difficult to imagine that just over
two hundred years ago the Glebe was an indistinguishable part of the vast primeval
North American forest and swamplands or that only a hundred years ago it was still
only market gardens and bush.
Up to the 17th century the Glebe was used for hunting, but probably never inhabited,
by the Ottawa tribe of the Algonquin peoples who were subsequently dispossessed of
their lands by the English supported Iroquois. The Algonquins had controlled the
river trade from their Morrison Island fortress in Allumette Lake almost a hundred
kilometres up river from present day Ottawa. This fortress was destroyed by the Mohawks
(Iroquois) in 1642, for these were times of rivalry and conquest between the English
and French colonists and their aboriginal allies and this area was in the front line.
From about 1613 until 1763, the Ottawa area was part of Nouvelle France, but the
French never settled the area, only plying the fur trade. After the conquest of New
France by the British in 1759, the 1774 Quebec Act made the whole area part of the
British Colony of Quebec, but still largely under the occupancy of the Algonquin
peoples. Following upon the conclusion of the American War of Independence in 1783,
Governor Haldimand in Quebec City instructed Captain W.R.Crawford of his Indian Department
to purchase most of present Ontario east of the Trent River from the Council of Mississauga
Indians to provide land for loyalist settlers fleeing from the newly independent
United States and elsewhere. In 1791 the Constitution Act created Upper Canada (Ontario)
and John Stegman was appointed deputy surveyor responsible for the subdivision of
the new Nepean Township including the Glebe, within the County of Dundas.
By the end of the eighteenth century, cutting of the primeval forest still covering
the area had commenced. The present boundaries of the Glebe were not then evident,
except on the west side by the edge of Dow's Great Swamp. Originally a track from
the Chaudiere Falls at Wright’s Estate to the Billing’s Estate on the Rideau River
crossed the western part of the Glebe along the escarpment above Dow's Great Swamp.
In 1815 the first road was built through the Glebe along the line of that track but
it was abandoned in 1830 when the canal was cut through the "notch" between
Dow’s Lake and present day Bank Street. From 1830 there was to be no road in the
Glebe, except for the canal access road, until Bank Street was built in 1865.
The rest of the area eastward sloped gently downwards towards the Rideau River, intersected
by two creeks later called Patterson's and Brown's Creeks, and covered with forest
which took Stegman's men five days to cut through for the first survey lines. Patterson's
Creek was differently located before the arrival of the canal, beginning west of
St. Matthew’s Church, flowing through the present church site (as present congregations
know to their cost) and then northwards to the present termination of the inlet.
West of that point was a large swamp, an extension of Dow’s Great Swamp, draining
down towards Le Breton Flats. Unluckily the surveyor who was working on the Glebe
subdivision was probably drowned in the swamp. The early surveyors laid out the land
in the same way as was done for all land in Canada - that is regardless of topography.
It forms the basis of Ottawa's present day layout, although original Bytown was laid
out square as opposed to the parallelogram fashion of the adjacent townships. These
early surveyors certainly had no interest, or need to be imaginative. They simply
followed instructions. Thus we are stuck today with a rigid grid of roads and lot
lines that have little to do with the natural lie of the land, or the future social
needs of the community. The early surveyors used the rivers as the starting points
for their surveys. Thus the Glebe area was surveyed from the Rideau River to Concession
Street (Bronson Avenue). Each concession was 200 acres in extent; 1 1/4 miles by
1/4 mile, a size considered then to be adequate for an individual farm. The subdivision
of land was therefore based on rural requirements, not urban. Only Bytown, present
day Lowertown, was subdivided for urban purposes. Modern day Glebe is very much governed
by that rural subdivision, now demarcated by Isabella, Glebe, Fifth, and Broadway
Avenues, by Bronson Avenue in the West and Main Street in the east, before the arrival
of the canal.
In 1792 Nepean Township, then known as Township D, of about 60,000 acres, was granted
to George Hamilton who applied to settle the area on behalf of 143 prospective settlers.
However, by 1797 no one had taken up occupancy in the township, so Hamilton’s grant
was revoked. This singular lack of interest in the Glebe area as farming land was
to persist for almost a hundred years when it first became part of urban Ottawa,
possibly because of the poverty of the land which is mostly sand and glacial till.
In about 1800 loyalist Thomas Fraser of Fraserfield in Edwardsburgh took up the land
grant covering most of the Ottawa area. By 1812 the Glebe area grants were taken
up by Thomas Fraser's sons. Lot G (Chamberlain to Glebe Avenues) was taken up by
William Fraser. Lot H (Glebe to Fifth Avenues) was an unallocated clergy reserve
or glebe. Lot I (Fifth Avenue to Broadway Avenue) was taken up by Richard Fraser.
In 1814, Abraham Dow acquired land opposite Billingsbridge, a proportion of which
was swampland, which later came to be known as Dow's Great Swamp.
There were no recorded settlers in the area prior to the building of the canal. By
1822 there were still only 191 residents in the whole of Nepean Township , which
included the Glebe. Before 1824 no one in the township had received title, probably
because they had not fulfilled the conditions of settling, building and clearing.
9. Pre 1800 Glebe, before the cutting of the forest. The canal and settlement with the 1792 subdivisions shown. The dotted line shows the outline of the present Glebe. The area is a mixture of forest and swampland.
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1820 - 1868 The Canal and Agricultural Land
The Rideau Canal which with Dow's Lake was to determine the west, south and eastern
boundaries of the modern Glebe, was started in 1826 and completed in 1832. It had
been intended that the canal should be routed north through Dow’s Swamp, along Preston
Street, to meet the Ottawa River at the Chaudiére Falls but for the speculative
ventures of a Captain LeBreton in buying up the LeBreton Flats area. Lord Dalhousie
refused to pay the inflated price and anyway preferred the present route leading
directly to Bytown and the defensive works on Barrack (now Parliament) Hill. By act
of expropriation the colonial government had acquired the ordnance lands for the
purposes of the canal, and the defence of Canada in 1826. The purpose of the canal
was to provide access from Montreal to Kingston without having to pass the potentially
hostile American frontier. It would not have occurred to Colonel By that by rerouting
the canal around the present day Glebe he would be laying the grounds for a distinctive,
protected and identifiable residential district. The poor colonel was to suffer for
this change of plans and the increased cost of works that it implied. He was called
to court, partly at the instigation of Captain LeBreton, but exonerated, dying later
in England - a broken man.
In 1826 George Patterson, Chief of the Canal Commissariat, acquired lot G, now the
northernmost portion of the Glebe. He may have been the Glebe's first legitimate
settler. Patterson’s Creek was named after him, the Patterson’s building a house,
maybe the first permanent one in the Glebe, near the present bank of the Canal and
Patterson Avenue. In 1827 work on the canal began in earnest, immediately increasing
the number of residents of Nepean Township from 580 in 1827 to 2758 in 1828. In 1828
an American excavator, Walter Fenlon, received a contract for work at twenty cents
per cubic foot from the top of the Chateau Locks to Dow’s Great Swamp. However he
failed his contract and was replaced by another American, Philemon Wright, an entrepreneur
and lumber merchant, on November 30, 1828. Wright had settled north of the Chaudiére
Falls in 1800.
A deep cut for the canal was made through a notch in the ridge to the south of the
Glebe to where the present Bank Street Bridge is located. Dow’s Swamp was flooded
with the assistance of the St. Louis Dam, near Carling Avenue, named after its contractor,
Jean Baptiste St. Louis who also operated a sawmill at the Rideau Falls, and the
dam on the present alignment of Colonel By Drive to the south in 1832. A dam was
also erected along the east side of the canal along present Echo Drive causing the
flooding of Patterson's and Brown's Inlets, and of an inlet across the north east
side of Lansdowne Park from the Lily Pond to the Aberdeen Pavilion. At this same
time a road from Bytown to Long Island lock (in present day Manotick) was built over
the St. Louis Dam but bypassing the Glebe to the north west. In 1833 William Stewart
purchased lot F to the north of the present Queensway, which would later become Stewarton,
the southern edge of future Ottawa by the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, until
1865 and the building of Bank Street, the Glebe was to remain a backwater since the
main road southwards was on the other side of the canal
Until the 1840's, except for the Pattersons, there were no settlers in the Glebe
area. A number of French and Irish squatters had settled east of Dow's Lake but had
departed by 1870 when all squatter settlements were terminated.
In 1836, Lot H, bounded by Concession Street (Bronson Avenue), Main Street in Ottawa
East, Fifth Avenue (formerly Mutchmor Street) and Glebe Avenue (formerly Carling
Avenue), was granted as a glebe of 178 acres for the support of the Church of Scotland
at Bytown. This church later became St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church located at Wellington
and Kent Streets in Upper town. By 1878 the glebeland east of the canal (Spencerville,
now Ottawa East) was sold for $1278. The remaining land, west of the canal, became
known as the Glebe after the time of the first subdivision of those church lands,
which the church was allowed to lease up to 1875. Originally it was only the Church
of England that was granted these glebes, but after a lengthy sectarian battle in
the British Parliament at the end of the eighteenth century, some other churches
such as the Church of Scotland were granted glebes.
The word "glebe" is derived from the Latin "gleba" meaning clod
or soil, hardly what modern Ottawans mean when they refer to the Glebe as an enviably
trendy and rather expensive place to live. In the Middle Ages a glebe in both England
and France meant a portion of land going with a clergyman's benefice and providing
revenue. In England there are many glebes that are vicarage garden plots. The Glebe
in Ottawa never performed that function, anymore than it did anywhere else in Canada,
even though there were many clergy reserves. Glebes here were regarded as pieces
of real estate on which churches could earn money. St. Andrew’s Church for example
subdivided their remaining glebe into fourteen lots of ten acres each, anticipating
a sudden rise in land rents after the sudden influx of civil servants in 1865 and
the building of Bank Street. Thirty years were to elapse before that rise took place
mainly as a result of the arrival of the streetcar in 1891 and the private automobile
in 1901.
Prior to the housing development which started at the end of the century, the Glebe
was not valuable land, neither was it well farmed. St. Andrew’s Church was only able
to collect 19 pounds income from its glebe for the year of 1852. Most of the land
was used as garden lots for the adjacent urban population, on which their nightsoil
was spread. Patterson’s Creek was used for dumping offal. The Glebe at that time
was not a very attractive area.
10. The Glebe c. 1848. A map, by the Royal
Engineers, of the Canal
Ordnance Lands showing flooded land at
Patterson’s Creek, Brown’s Inlet and Lansdowne
Park. A later alteration shows the 1865
Bank Street Bridge.
(Public Archives NMC 0027912).
 |
11. The Glebe c.1870, showing Bank Street, the Canal Road, the first houses and the Ottawa Agricultural Society fairground.
 |
12. The Glebe c.1895, showing the first urban development and railroads.
 |
About the same time as the granting of the glebe lot H to the Church of Scotland
in 1836, the Mutchmor family acquired lot I to the south, but they did not stay for
long, moving to the United States in 1839, where economic opportunities, as is so
often the case, seemed to be better. In 1841 Upper and Lower Canada were united into
the Province of Canada, and in 1856 the canal was transferred to it, thus formally
ending its military history. Bytown became Ottawa, and was chosen as the Capital
of the new Province, later Dominion. The economy of the area was boosted by the arrival
of civil servants, the new Houses of Parliament being opened in 1866. However it
would not be until the 1890's that a substantial quantity of house building would
take place in the Glebe.
In 1863 the widow of Richard Duncan Fraser, whose family had received the original
grants of land throughout much of Ottawa, but sold them, gained control of Lot I
west of present Bronson Avenue, calling it Fraserfield. In 1870 the St. Louis Dam
north of Dow’s Lake was breached to flood the Preston Street area to protect Ottawa
from a forest fire to the west. Many of the simpler pre 1900 houses in the east and
south of the Glebe were wood clad before they were brick clad. Fire was to be a major
hazard in Ottawa until well into the twentieth century when better firefighting methods
were introduced and building bylaws demanded that buildings be brick or stone clad.
A short economic boom in the early 1870's persuaded landowners to try to subdivide
their land for housing, but they only sold a few garden lots before a depression
hit in the late seventies. In 1879 the remaining land west of Bronson Avenue was
acquired by John Kennedy who built the stone house at 6 Lakeview Terrace. Next door
a large stone tannery was built by May and Foster where the canal enters Dow’s Lake.
Fraserfield, the land west of Bronson Avenue, was purchased for the building of the
Booth Lumber and Railroad Yard as far south as just north of present Sunset Boulevard
and the Kennedy property. This use was thirty years later to frustrate the building
of the Ottawa Improvement Commission's Parkway along Clemow Avenue through the Glebe.
13. The Glebe Presbyterian Mission at 55 Third Avenue, near O’Connor Street, c.1895. (The First Fifty Years of the Glebe Church).
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1868 - 1888 The Ottawa Agricultural Society and Early Houses
In 1868 the nineteen acres of ordnance land east of Bank Street adjacent to the canal
was acquired by the Ottawa Agricultural Society for the purposes of a fairground.
The canal shoreline at that time was different, consisting of a peninsula on which
sat the house of a Mr. Craig, just opposite present day Pig (Hog) Island. This was
created by the flooding for the canal in 1832. The underlying limestone forming this
peninsula is visible today under the canal wall south of Fifth Avenue, where it had
been cut for the passage of the waterway. The inlet behind the peninsula extended
from present Fifth Avenue to the McElroy Building. The fairground at that time was
well beyond the city limits at McLeod Street in Centretown. Access was limited to
horse drawn vehicles, and later a twelve seat horse drawn bus, along the new Bank
Street, and paddle-steamers along the canal docking at the end of Fifth Avenue (then
Mutchmor Street).
In the later nineteenth century before urban housing arrived, the Glebe was the place
to go for sporting events. Apart from the Agricultural Fair, there was an occasional
circus tent at Renfrew and Percy. At the Metropolitan Athletic Grounds at O'Connor
and Strathcona Avenues, Buffalo Bill Cody put on his Wild West Show in 1893. The
Mutchmor Trotting Park and the Turf Hotel between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, started
by Ralph Mutchmor and E.C. Barber, was leased from St. Andrew’s in 1871. It was there
that the Queen’s Plate was run in 1872 and 1880. Also, unfortunately there were
less edifying uses of the Glebe. Capital Park was the site of a municipal dump. There
was a sandpit at Holmwood and Ralph Streets and for a while, a rail-track to carry
fill from a hill on the site of the future Glebe Collegiate to fill in the low area
at Second and Third Avenues at Bank Street. On the west side along Dow’s Lake, Booth
had acquired Fraserfield turning it into a lumber and railroad yard in 1870, which
remained there until the 1930’s.
14. The Ottawa Agricultural Society fairground with the Administration Building and boat dock. Pre 1880. (CCEA).
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By the 1870's, lot G north of the St. Andrew’s glebeland had been acquired by Hickey and Powell, the latter building the Grove Hotel just south of Patterson's Creek and east of Bank Street, in 1873. In 1875 John Hickey, whose family were market gardeners, attempted to market his land under the name of "Bloomingvale", east of Bank Street but failed. Powell was to have the greater influence on the building of the Glebe, his name being preserved in Powell Avenue to this day. In the 1870’s the short building boom collapsed due to economic depression in the United States and the slowing of demand for milled lumber. By 1888 there were still only forty three dwellings in the Glebe area. It was still a rural area, whose residents would object to a proposed annexation by Ottawa which however took place in 1889.
15. The Driveway and the new Bank Street
Bridge, c.1914. This form
of the bridge has recently been restored.
(Collection Phil Dunning).
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1888 The Central Canada Exhibition
The success of the three Provincial fairs prompted the expansion of the scope of
the fairground from an agricultural to an industrial and sporting exhibition. In
1888 the Central Canada Exhibition Association assumed the running of the Exhibition
grounds, opening with its first annual Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition on
September 24th of that year. The Association is an independent body, but is dependent
upon public funding in addition to fees for use. At that time it was composed of
appointees by Ottawa and the rural councils under provincial legislation and was
set up as a more sophisticated alternative to the purely agricultural fair at Richmond.
The re-opening was a great event with pantomime,
acrobatic events and other entertainments
and refreshments. Electricity was used for
the first time in Ottawa at the fairground,
promoted by the owner of the Ottawa Electric
Company, Thomas Ahearn. Its use proved
to be a major draw. The number of exhibition
entries was 3500, mainly agricultural,
the largest in Ottawa to date. Lord Stanley,
the Governor General, opened the exhibition
together with his Foot Guards of Honour.
The main entrance was via Elgin Street which
had been extended to Fifth Avenue in 1877.
A curious rustic wooden gateway was built
for this purpose at Fifth Avenue. The fine
Rideau Aquatic Club marina, later renamed
The Rideau Canoe Club, stood adjacent, just
in front of the present canal side restaurant.
Its foundations are still visible at low
water. Some concern had been expressed about
the ability of the muddy new Elgin Street
extension to stand up to the traffic, but
there was no problem. Thus the former agricultural
exhibition changed from being
a rural fair to one of urban, international
and cultural interest. In 1889 the Exhibition
gained considerable publicity by having Professor
Baptist Peynaud jump off a 150
foot high tower that he had himself provided
together with a safety net at the base.
His efforts were however much criticised
by the nearby St. Paul's Presbyterian Church
minister since it might overly encourage
young men to foolhardy actions. Nearly 20,000
people attended this show, an immense number
considering that the population of Ottawa
was only then 44,000.
16. Lansdowne Park, c.1900. Note the lake
to the north, the remains of a canal inlet,
and the new street cars on Bank Street. (CCEA).
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The History of Bank Street
Bank Street has been a primary force behind
the urban development of the Glebe, but its
history like its location, was determined
outside the Glebe. Bank Street may also have
gained its name from its having emerged from
the bank of the Ottawa River, although it
was for a time called Esther Street after
Colonel By's wife. Colonel By and the British
government had expropriated the Hill in 1826
for defensive purposes, calling it Barrack
Hill. The west side of the expropriated area
was bounded by Bank Street separating it
from Upper Bytown to the west. After 1848
a large piece of this land was returned to
Nicholas Sparks since it was no longer required
for defence, thereby allowing Uppertown and
Lowertown to be joined, in what we now call
Centretown. Bank Street thereafter became
one of the main commercial streets of Ottawa
heading southwards. By 1865 it had reached
the limits of the City at McLeod Street.
Commerce had pushed Bank Street to the edge
of the City, but real estate demand and speculation
pushed it further into rural Nepean and the
Glebe. William Powell, member of the Provincial
Parliament and owner of lot G in the northern
Glebe was the main instigator in setting
up the Ottawa and Gloucester MacAdamized
Road Company which was to build Bank Street
Road as a toll road from McLeod Street to
Farmers Bridge, now Billings Bridge, and
the Billings Estate. The Mutchmors who had
returned to lot I in the southern Glebe in
1861 also saw advantage in Bank Street and
donated land for the purpose. Alexander Mutchmor
was an entrepreneur more than he was a farmer.
His firm, Mutchmor Gordon and Co., was a
financial agency which traded in real estate
throughout Ottawa. By 1866 the street had
crossed Patterson’s Creek and the canal on
wooden bridges which were to remain until
1912.
17. New houses on Ralph Street at Browns
Inlet on land around the 1912 Baker House.
(Marcelle Jubinville).
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18. Bank Street at First Avenue. To the right
Dr. McElroy’s House. To the left are some
1928 buildings in front of the Avalon Theatre,
the Glebe’s first and only theatre. (Marcelle
Jubinville).
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By 1866 Ottawa had become the capital of
the United Province of Canada. The following
year, 1867, it would become the Capital of
Canada. Civil servants began to flow into
Ottawa and needed land to live on. Glebe
landowners Powell, Mutchmor and St. Andrew’s
Church began subdividing their lands in anticipation,
but severe economic recessions in the 1870’s
and 1880’s would delay the demand for land
until the prosperous 1890’s. Notwithstanding
financial difficulties forcing the mortgaging
of the new Bank Street Road, it was all completed
by the time of the arrival of the Ottawa
Agricultural Society's fairground in 1868,
with a horse drawn bus service to serve it.
One of the first building to be erected in
1869 along Bank Street in the Glebe was James
Meakin's Gate Hotel north west of the new
five arch Patterson's Creek Bridge, now a
dry embankment. The next hotel was the Turf
Hotel built in 1870 by Ralph Mutchmor, near
Fifth Avenue. About the same time Alexander
Mutchmor built his house "Abbotsford",
named after the birthplace of Sir Walter
Scott, the British author of romantic literature
of the time, south of Centre Street (Holmwood
Avenue). In 1878 upon moving to Kansas City
Mutchmor sold his house to Ottawa Mayor C.H.MacKintosh.
In 1889 MacKintosh sold Abbotsford to the
Protestant Home for the Aged.
In 1873, a third hotel, the Grove, was built
by Powell just south east of the Patterson's
Creek viaduct and north of Clemow Avenue.
It was a stone house quite delightfully located
by the waterside Electric Park which was
a bucolic destination for streetcar trippers
from the city. The Grove survived as a hotel
until 1891, then as a residence until 1907
when it was demolished. The site then remained
vacant until 1926 when a gas station was
built which in turn sat there until 1991
when it too was demolished. The site has
remained vacant since then. All of these
hotels have disappeared without trace. If
you want to stay in a hotel in the Glebe
today you do so in an eleven story structure
adjacent to the Queensway - far less peacefully.
It would do the Glebe a lot of good if the
Grove Hotel were to be rebuilt.
19. Browns Inlet from Bank Street Bridge showing reeds growing over the former location of the Canal Road. At low water it is marked by a large concrete drain. (Marcelle Jubinville).
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20. Fanciful 1910 row houses at 304 - 312 Queen Elizabeth Driveway with a 1970 highrise condominium by Wiliam Teron behind. (Marcelle Jubinville).
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23. Houses in the urban vernacular built
in the mid 1890’s, on Third Avenue near the
canal.
(Marcelle Jubinville).
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24. The 1870 stone Kennedy House at 6 Lakeview
Terrace overlooking Dow’s Lake.
(Marcelle Jubinville).
 |
An economic depression set in during the
early seventies so that little happened along
Bank Street until the turn of the century,
after the economic boom of the nineties,
when the Glebe started to be subdivided into
residential lots. Houses were built first
east of Bank Street in an area briefly known
as Spencerville, and then south of Fifth
Avenue on Mutchmor's land. The Ottawa Electric
Railway (streetcar) was built in 1891, to
serve Lansdowne Park and the new urban area,
replacing the horsedrawn streetcars that
had been there since 1868. The streetcars
were removed in 1959.
One of the earliest houses on the east side
of Bank Street, built in 1878, was that of
Robert Dewar. It still remains, behind a
single storey structure that was for many
years Mr.Wong's grocery, at 797 Bank Street.
There were about sixteen other similar simple
houses belonging mainly to market gardeners
built in the late seventies and mid eighties.
This section of Bank Street, in the original
glebe between Glebe and Fifth Avenues, has
always been the centre of the commercial
area since it started to develop in the mid
1890's. The first shops appeared sporadically,
sometimes built with apartments above. The
first grocery store was built in 1895 at
Fourth Avenue. By 1910 there were a number
of grocery and hardware stores not only in
the original glebe, but also north of Central
Park. Within the area of the present Fifth
Avenue Court the first grocery was built
by Moreland, at the corner of Bank Street
and Fourth Avenue, within which was a hall
which was renowned for providing the first
accommodation for four Glebe churches: Anglican,
Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist. Fifth
Avenue Court is thus carrying on the tradition
of being a gathering place for the community.
The Glebe has been fortunate in having such
gathering places in its midst.
The only houses of consequence to be built
along Bank Street after Abbotsford were that
of W.C.Gibson, biscuit manufacturer, at the
corner of Holmwood Avenue, in the present
location of Sylvia Holden Park in 1886, and
that of Dr.McElroy at First Avenue in 1910.
His house and Abbotsford are the only significant
houses that remain today on Bank Street.
In 1899, the first wooden Baptist Church
was built at Fourth Avenue, replaced by a
brick building in 1904. In 1928, the Ambassador
Court Apartments, designed by William Noffke,
were built on the site of the former Gate
Hotel and the Boat Works, north of Central
Park. In 1929 St.Giles Presbyterian Church
was erected at the corner of First Avenue,
replacing the former Glebe Presbyterian Church
on Lyon Street, which had become Glebe United
Church in 1925.
25. The Grove Hotel (1873) on Bank Street
east side. Behind it is the Electric Park
and a bandshell. The new Clemow Avenue Parkway
would be built to the right in 1902.
(W.J.Topley 1892, PA 027252).
 |
26 Patterson’s Creek from Bank Street just behind the Grove Hotel c. 1892. The stone steps down to the water still exist. (W.J.Topley PA 027263).
 |
The period 1910 to 1917 saw the development
of the Glebe as a truly urban area. The Bank
Street Bridge was rebuilt, in 1912, as a
concrete arched bridge, raised high over
the canal to allow free boat passage and
a future driveway. The bridge was also broadened.
Pretoria Lift Bridge connecting the Glebe
to Ottawa East was built in 1915-1917, replacing
the Argyle Street wooden swing bridge to
the north of the railroad.
The first Bank Street restaurant appeared
in 1914 at Bank Street and Holmwood Avenue.
Now there are twenty four, mainly in the
original Glebe area. In 1928, the Glebe's
first and only theatre, The Avalon, the first
in Ottawa to show sound film, was built between
First and Second Avenues. Probably defeated
by increasingly popular television it ceased
operation as a theatre in 1954, becoming
a garage, then a hardware store and offices.
In 1901 cars started to appear in the Glebe
which partly accounted for its sudden development
at the beginning of the twentieth century
with the first garages and gas stations being
built in 1915. The Samuel Rogers Oil Company
had storage sheds along the Canada Atlantic
Railway Company's line, now the Queensway,
from 1889 to 1906. The first garages were
built north of Glebe Avenue and south of
Fifth Avenue until by the mid twenties there
were about eleven. Fortunately, for the continuity
of the shopping centre, none ever appeared
in the original glebe. Since the mid seventies
all the gas stations on Bank Street have
disappeared and only one garage remains at
the corner of Fifth Avenue. The forecourts
remain however, partly because of residual
pollutants in the ground and these garages
have become restaurants and shops. The Glebe
has also been lucky in that the usual parking
lots behind shops separating the shops from
the community have not appeared. There was
a large empty parking area behind the shops
at Fifth Avenue Court during the sixties,
happily it was put underground when the Court
was built in the 1980's.
27. Central Park, c.1916. A great change has taken place. Clemow Avenue has been built damming the Creek which has been filled to create Central Park and its floral beds. The new First Avenue School (1898) and the O’Connor Street bridge are visible in the distance. (Collection Phil Dunning).
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The 1890's and the first urban development
In the St. Matthew’s Parish History 1898
to 1948 there is a description of how the
Glebe looked at the beginning of its urban
development about the turn of the century.
It tells of how the area now occupied by
the Queensway was a railway yard and that
Elgin Street which then crossed the tracks
at grade was often closed because of shunting.
There were a few houses at this corner of
the Glebe dominated by the former Patterson
House at site of the present intersection
of the Driveway with Pretoria Bridge. Elgin
Street continued south on the former alignment
of the old Canal Road as a dirt road crossing
the creek on a wooden bridge. Between Patterson
Avenue, the creek , Bank and Elgin Streets
were open fields, and O'Connor Street stopped
at Patterson Avenue. The Ottawa Electric
Railway had created Electric Park - a resort
for streetcar day trippers, between Bank
Street, the creek and Glebe Avenue. Adjacent
was the small Grove Hotel across future Clemow
Avenue. There were a few houses belonging
to truck farmers west of Bank Street between
Third Avenue and Holmwood. South of that
was a farm. The balance of the area westwards
to Bronson Avenue was second growth forest.
Bank Street was not paved until 1915 and
there were few cars on Bronson Avenue.
Three events sparked the first, long awaited
urban development of the Glebe: the building
of the Ottawa Electric Railway (streetcars)
along Bank Street in 1891; the subdivision
of the glebelands east of Bank Street in
the mid 1890's, and the building of the Parkways.
The streetcars were removed in the late 1950's.
The first development of the St. Andrew’s
glebe was accompanied by the building of
the Presbyterian Glebe Mission at 53-55 Third
Avenue near O'Connor Street in 1894. It was
built for the sum of $2000, first as a school,
later in 1896 becoming a church. This building
is now part of a double house set back from
the road. It was replaced by the present
Glebe United Church on Lyon Street in 1904,
designed by J.W.H.Watts,also the designer
of the first wooden St. Matthew’s Church.
The first Glebe church to be built was the
wooden Zion Congregational Church, of 1892,
later clad in brick. Located at 91a Fourth
Avenue, it became the Church of the Nazarene
in 1942, and finally the present Friends
Meeting House in 1966. In the 1980's the
Friends (Quakers) sold the original church
building, occupying the wing adjacent instead
and converting the balance into townhouses.
In 1898 the first St. Matthew’s Church was
built in wood gothic style, and named after
St. Matthew’s in Quebec City where the first
minister had served. This was replaced in
the mid 1920's by the present gothic masonry
building, and their site on Bank Street occupied
by Loblaws Grocery, now Phase Two, a clothing
store. St. Matthew’s with its tradition of
English choral music was to become a major
influence in the musical life of Ottawa.
The nationally famous chamber music group,
Thirteen Strings, was started at St. Matthew’s
Church.
28. Bank Street Bridge, c. 1910. This wooden
swing bridge was built in 1865. The 1909
Lansdowne Park grandstand is to the right.
The bridge was replaced with the present
high level bridge in 1912. Note the mud road
and the boarded sidewalk.
(collection Susan Hill CA5751).
 |
In 1895 the building of Mutchmor School at
Fifth Avenue would start a line of institutional
buildings along Lyon Street extending as
far north as Carling Avenue. These Lyon Street
buildings would mark the western edge of
the built up glebe at the turn of the century.
Mutchmor School was one of a series of fine
schools built at that time to accommodate
the children of the burgeoning population
of the south side of Ottawa. It was designed
by E.L.Horwood and built for $10,470. A second
school was built in 1898 at First Avenue
and O’Connor Street for $20,484 and designed
by Albert Ewart. In 1900 St. Matthew Separate
School was built at Lyon and Fourth Avenues
on the site of the present Corpus Christi
School. Its teachers were the Grey Nuns.
The 1904 Glebe Presbyterian Church at Carling
Avenue was the northernmost of the row of
institutional buildings. It was built there,
at a cost of about $20,000, because they
wanted to be at the centre of the future
Glebe adjacent to the Parkway on Carling
Avenue. Unfortunately for them the Parkway
would be moved further north to Clemow Avenue
and never fully realised anyway. In 1925
Glebe Presbyterian Church would become the
Glebe United Church. In 1929 , the Presbyterians
built their new St. Giles Presbyterian Church
at Bank Street and First Avenue. In 1924
St. Paul’s Methodist Church was completed.
They had to wait a long time for their church
which had been started in 1913 at the corner
of Second Avenue. In 1925, upon the occasion
of church union it became St. James United
Church. It was eventually amalgamated with
Glebe United Church, and be sold to the City
in 1974 and become the Glebe’s first Community
Centre.
Nearby in 1914 the Presbyterian ( later Ottawa)
Ladies College with its remarkable broad
eaves was built to the design of E.L.Horwood,
replacing the Ladies College in Centretown
founded in 1869. In 1942 the College was
expropriated for the purposes of a barracks
for the Womens Army Corps. In 1947, the building
was acquired for Carleton College, which
had already begun classes at the High School
of Commerce, and which became Carleton University
in 1957. It started to expand on the site
and might have covered most of the Glebe
if it had not been for the decision to move
to its present site by the Rideau River in
1959. It became the offices for the Ottawa
Board of Education instead, but in 1998 they
sold it to a developer who is converting
it to condominium housing together with the
vacant lots adjacent all in a style reminiscent
of Glebe architecture, by the Glebe architect
Barry Hobin.
By the 1920’s the Glebe had the benefit of
an unusually high proportion of churches
and schools relative to population. This
was to have a positive influence on the makeup
of the future population by its variety of
intellectual and cultural options. The Glebe
also benefitted from the wise decisions of
St. Andrew’s Church to delay development
of new land to the west until the easterly
portions were substantially built up, and
to put in an institutional area just one
block away from the commercial district along
Bank Street. In 1919 it was decided to build
Glebe Collegiate. Land was purchased between
Percy Street and Bronson Avenues for $74,000
and building commenced. The Collegiate, designed
by J.Albert Ewart, opened in September 1922.
In 1929 the High School of Commerce was added
to the west end of the Collegiate building,
moving away in 1967. Finally the last of
the educational buildings in the Glebe, Corpus
Christi School, was built on Lyon Street
in 1926, an addition being made in 1966.
The last area of Glebe houses to be built
were on Booth’s Fraserfield lumber yard west
of Bronson Avenue in the 1930’s, the streets
being named after Booth’s timber stands in
the Ottawa Valley: Kippewa. Opeongo and Madewaska.
It is sometimes nicknamed the Indian Village
for that reason. Thus the 1940’s saw the
completion of the of the development of the
Glebe. Its boundaries were moved further
west however in the late 1950’s when the
Federal District Commission built its driveway
200 feet into Dow’s Lake. Streetcars were
installed along Bronson Avenue from the 1920’s
to the 1950’s and the Kennedy lands to the
immediate south of Sunset Boulevard were
developed in the late 1920’s.
29. Rideau Canoe Club, c. 1906. Formerly the Rideau Aquatic Club and marina whose foundations are still visible at low water. (Collection Phil Dunning).
 |
Building of the Driveways
In 1899 the Dominion Government, perceiving
the need to improve the general environment
of the Nation's Capital, formed the Ottawa
Improvement Commission, the forerunner of
the National Capital Commission. They in
turn hired Frederick Todd, landscape architect
of Montreal, to recommend what should be
done. One of the main recommendations was
the building of a federal parkway from the
Parliament Buildings to the Experimental
Farm. However there were two major obstacles
in the Glebe area. The one was Landsdowne
Park which occupied the shoreline of the
canal with its ugly stables. The other was
the Fraserfield Lumber and Railway Yard alongside
Dow’s Lake. An impending visit by the Prince
of Wales prompted the Commission to start
to build two parkways at the same time, one
going through the middle of Lansdowne Park,
along the line of the old canal road and
then across Dow’s Lake on a causeway, the
foundation of which is still visible at low
water. The other, built in 1907, went across
the Glebe along Clemow and Monkland Avenues.
Originally this Parkway was to have gone
along Carling (previously Carleton, now Glebe)
Avenue but the Commission was frustrated
in its attempts to acquire the land. It was
also intended that this extension would continue
westward over the St. Louis Dam to the Experimental
Farm but this was never done because of the
intervening Booth’s Fraserfield Railway Yards.
Clemow Avenue was to become one of the most
attractive roads in Ottawa, even though as
a parkway it did not lead anywhere. American
Elms were planted, gracing the Glebe and
especially Clemow Avenue, until their destruction
by Dutch Elm Disease in the 1960s. Government
controls vested in the Ottawa Improvement
Commission, the forerunner of the Federal
District Commission and the National Capital
Commission, were placed upon developments
in the Clemow and Powell Estates as well
as along parts of the Driveway which encouraged
some remarkably good residential development
especially around Central Park. By 1907 the
layout of Central Park was complete along
with a rustic wooden folly on a man made
island on the alignment of Metcalfe Street.
This particular lodge was known as Cedar
Lodge and gave access to Cedar Lodge Walk
along the south side of the Creek. This folly
along with others along the parkways disappeared
during the depression of the late 1930's,
but the beautiful landscaping remains to
provide the Glebe with an elegant and bucolic
waterside setting.
The National Capital Commission had been
endeavouring to rid itself of its responsibilities
on Clemow and Monkland Avenues since they
could never become true parkways, but since
these responsibilities were vested in the
Ottawa Improvement Commission, through a
provincial Act of Parliament, they were not
successful until the 1990's. Certainly the
residents of the Glebe have not been anxious
for the Federal Government to dispose of
these roads, they have assisted the area
in attaining a visual and social status it
might not otherwise have had.
Had Clemow and Monkland Avenues become Parkways
they would have ultimately have induced a
great deal of extra traffic through the middle
of the Glebe. Fortunately quite the reverse
has happened. In the 1970's, Douglas Fullerton,
then Chairman of the National Capital Commission
, became enamoured of the author's proposals
for traffic calming in the Glebe, intended
to be an example to the nation. He promoted
the idea by having Clemow Avenue closed to
through traffic.
31. Lansdowne Park Entrance, and the Rideau
Canoe Club c. 1911. Looking north from Fifth
Avenue and the Driveway.
(Collection Phil Dunning).
 |
Lansdowne Park
In 1890 the Exhibition Grounds were renamed
Lansdowne Park after the Marquis of Lansdowne,
Governor General from 1883 to 1888. Even
then calling the exhibition ground a park
was a misnomer since it was only an indifferent
collection of quaint mainly wooden buildings
set in worn out grass with few trees except
in the north east corner together with a
small stagnant lake which was the remains
of the canal inlet. Many people questioned
the location of these grounds so far out
into the country - with the city only extending
as far as Stewarton, on the other side of
the railroad tracks, built in the 1870's
where the Queensway now runs, three quarters
of a mile away.
In 1892, Thomas Ahearn, founder of the Ottawa
Electric (streetcar) Company, unveiled his
exhibition of electronic devices at the Park.
He was a thoroughly modern man, promoter
of hydro- electricity and the development
of an electric car. He became the first chairman
of the Federal District Commission which
superseded the Ottawa Improvement Commission
in 1927. The advent of the streetcar and
the increased use of the new private automobile
rapidly changed the accessibility of the
park as well as the surrounding Glebe area,
which immediately started to develop as a
residential area, especially around the new
Lansdowne Park. The Glebe would be built
up within the next forty years. A part of
the earliest residential development was
actually on the site of the present Lansdowne
Park between the present Civic Centre and
Holmwood Avenue to the north. This was an
area known as Lansdowne Terrace, previously
a part of the Mutchmor Lands. There were
a number of houses there some of which were
moved westwards around Ella Street at the
time of the extension of the grounds.
In 1898, the Aberdeen Pavilion was built.
Although in 1902 it was renamed the Manufacturer's
Building, and latterly the Cattle Castle,
it was first named after the Earl of Aberdeen,
Governor General until 1898. One of its many
early uses, in 1902, was as an ice skating
and curling rink, a Stanley Cup Game being
played there. The occasion was the first
Winter Fair in Ottawa which was to be the
prelude to a long and successful career of
both amateur and professional curling and
hockey in the park.
Sport, both amateur but mostly spectator
professional, has always been a dominant
use of the Park. The umbrella organisation
for all the City's sporting activities had
originally been the Ottawa Amateur Athletic
Association, whose various outdoor sports
were played primarily at the Metropolitan
Grounds in the University of Ottawa, where
the Ottawa Football Club had its origins
in 1876. It adopted the name "Rough
Riders" in 1896 and began play at Lansdowne
Park in the early twentieth century earning
its first Grey Cup in 1939. It continued
at Lansdowne Park until its demise in 1996
due to management problems. The stadium built
over the Civic Centre and the South Bleachers
is named the Frank Clare Stadium after the
Head Coach of the Rough Riders from 1956
to 1969 during which time they won three
Grey Cups. After his retirement from coaching
Frank Clair became the Riders' General Manager.
Lansdowne Park has been the site of professional
baseball as far back as 1898. A team from
Rochester, N.Y., called the "Jingoes"
was transferred to Ottawa in June of that
season and remained there until the end of
their schedule. In 1912,the Canadian League
was formed and Ottawa became one of their
teams, remaining in the Park until 1916.
The Canadian American League came to the
Park under the name "Senators"
in 1939. In 1951 the Ottawa Giants were Ottawa's
representatives in the International League.
They stayed in Ottawa for one season when
the Philadelphia Athletics of the American
League moved its triple A franchise to the
Park, remaining part of the International
League until 1954.
The first professional hockey team in Ottawa
started with the Ottawa Hockey Club in 1883.
The Ottawa Silver Sevens started with the
Club, first playing at the Aberdeen Pavilion
in 1904 in the Stanley Cup Games. Junior
Hockey was the first tenant of the Civic
Centre in 1967. The Ottawa '67's began their
existence in that year and continue until
today. In 1976 an attempt to house the defunct
Denver Spurs in the Ottawa Civics Club lasted
only a couple of games when the club folded.
Finally after Ottawa Senators acquired a
franchise in the National Hockey League their
home games were played at the Civic Centre
from 1992 to 1996 when they moved to the
Corel Centre.
32. Lansdowne Park showing the 1898 Aberdeen Pavilion and the Main Pavilion to the left, c.1910. (Collection Phil Dunning).
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33.The Aberdeen Pavilion under construction
1898, from the canal.
(Collection Ian McKercher)
 |
From the earliest days of the Exhibition grounds there has been a racetrack, baseball diamonds, and a football field in the location of the present sports field. In 1961 the largest amateur curling rink in Canada was installed. After the second, 1909 grandstand was demolished in 1966 the Civic Centre with the Frank Clare Stadium above was built in 1967, with seating for 32,000, all designed by the Vancouver architect, Gerald Hamilton. The first permanent bleachers on the south side towards the canal were erected in 1962. In 1975 these bleachers were rebuilt and greatly enlarged upwards, but only after they were unsuccessfully challenged before the Ontario Municipal Board by the Glebe Community Association on the grounds that they constituted a vast and ugly intrusion into the parkway scenery and that there was not enough parking. Parking, although insufficient in quantity, was provided at a later date over the area previously used for amateur sports. With the near demise of spectator sports at the park the parking lot remains as a vast blot on the Glebe landscape. By the turn of the century however it is to be hoped that some other use will be found. Ever since the building of the canal in 1826 there have been roads both sides of the canal, where feasible, to assist in the building of the canal in the first place and then to service it. Thus the Glebe has had a road on its three sides, adjacent to the canal, except where flooded inlets occurred as at Lansdowne Park. When the Ottawa Agricultural Society first acquired its fairgrounds the canal road ran right through it to Bank Street, with wooden bridges at Patterson's Creek and Brown’s Inlet. The location of the bridge at Brown’s Inlet is still visible at low water in the winter, marked by a large drain pipe.
34. Patterson’s Creek, c. 1911.From the Driveway Bridge showing First Avenue School and the Cedar Lodge island folly which was removed in the late thirties.
 |
35. The island folly from the west, it was
demolished during the Second World War.
(Collection Phil Dunning).
 |
The waterside scenery in the Glebe at the
turn of the century was romantic with dense
groves of trees. It was this peaceful, bucolic
scenery which attracted the wealthy to build
their houses here. There were a number of
romantic follies and shelters which disappeared
without trace during the 1930’s Depression
and the War years. One of these was the charming
rustic gateway to the Park at Fifth Avenue
accompanied by the fine Rideau Aquatic (later
Canoe) Club. To the north of this the Ottawa
Improvement Commission (OIC) had created
the Lily Pond with a wooden bridge over it,
which was replaced later by a stone bridge
in turn demolished during the Depression.
Much was lost during the Depression and War
years: the bridge,The Canoe Club and Marina
and the rustic gateway to the Park. The marina
foundations can still however be seen at
low water just north of the new restaurant.
This area was spectacularly advertised in
1959 when the sewer pipe crossing here under
the canal blew up. The five foot diameter
steel pipe stuck up out of the water like
an enormous cannon obliging the canal to
be emptied and closed for a month while they
fixed it.
In 1913 when the Central Canada Exhibition
Association (CCEA) decided to build a new
Machinery Hall they did so on the east side
of the lake that had previously been an arm
of the canal, but allowed 140 feet of space
to build a future parkway alongside the canal.
But the OIC had to wait until 1926, before
the CCEA had removed its canal side sheds,
and 1990 before it was able to provide for
adequate landscape space along the parkway.
Even that has yet to be completed since the
south bleachers stand in the way. Thomas
Ahearn was a dominant force in pushing for
the building of the Driveway alongside the
canal from Fifth Avenue to Bank Street and
then around Dow’s Lake to the Central Experimental
Farm.The parkway was a singularly North American
idea centred on the use of the car. People
would be able to drive around the city oblivious
of its design failings. One of these failings
was to be the Exhibition Grounds and especially
the massive Frank Clair Stadium of 1966.
36. Looking north from the former Patterson’s Creek island folly along Metcalfe Street to the new National Museum c. 1912
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37. Central Park looking east along Clemow
Avenue towards Patterson’s Creek, the O’Connor
Street bridge and First Avenue School.
(Ottawa Improvement Commission Report 1912).
 |
In 1926, Lansdowne Park celebrated Ottawa's
centennial with a major celebration, however
this was the year that the new parkway was
built alongside the canal around the park,
severing free pedestrian and boat access
from the canal. At the time the severance
was much less noticeable than now since cars
travelled more slowly and in far less quantity,
for the Glebe was still at the edge of the
city. There was to be no stopping, no commercial
traffic and no improper behavior on this
two lane landscaped drive. In order to build
this road the stables along the canal edge
were demolished and a concrete embankment
built. The supposedly ugly Exhibition Grounds
were inadequately hidden from view by a row
of poplars.
In the 1930’s the City converted the north
east corner of the Park into a supervised
tourist camp where one could pitch one's
tent "beneath the shady trees of Lansdowne
Park, the Mecca of Motorists". This
use was to continue until the Second World
War, when Lansdowne Park, as in the First
World War, was again used as a military camp
and recruiting centre. After the Second World
War, Lansdowne Park recommenced its diversity
of events with greater ambition and size
than before. In 1947 for example it hosted
the Roman Catholic Marian Conference. With
100,000 attending it was the largest ever
religious conference in North America. In
1952 the first party for agricultural and
horticultural exhibitors was held, and American
horses were exhibited at the Park for the
first time. In 1957, the McElroy Building,
designed by James Strutt, was opened for
cultural, international and scientific events.
Attendance soared to 533,763, and 602,493
in 1963 (with tickets still only costing
50c.) In 1964 a Midway by Amusements of America
was introduced, and the Park truly became
a fairground, to the consternation of local
residents. There was talk by the late 1960's
of expanding the exhibition northwards to
Fifth Avenue which would have entailed the
removal of some 150 houses and shops on Bank
Street. This was quashed in 1975, the Glebe
Community Association asserting considerable
influence at City Council.
38. The Whyte House (1871) on the Driveway, c. 1911. Looking south from the canal. The Glebe’s finest house burnt down in 1989.
 |
39. The canal west of the Whyte House at
the notch, c. 1902. Looking from the west.
(Collection Phil Dunning)
 |
The late sixties saw a turning point in the
goals and ambitions of the Exhibition and
its surrounding communities, the Glebe and
Ottawa South. With the installation of the
vast new Midway as well as with the largest
ever football crowd of 21,200 in 1964, the
local community was becoming divided over
how much they wanted a vast entertainment
complex in their midst together with all
the traffic, noise and pollution it brought.
On the one hand many enjoyed the liveliness
it brought to an otherwise quiet residential
area, they also sometimes enjoyed the profit
from parking cars on their land. On the other
hand many complained bitterly about having
to live in the middle of an exhibition parking
lot all over the Glebe every summer, and
put up with the noise, rowdyism, and over
bright lights it all brought. As always it
was the spectator sports and events which
brought the most profit and the most disturbance.
No one has ever complained about participatory
sports. The surrounding areas, after the
exodus to the suburbs of the 1950's and the
1960's, started to attract people back again
in the late 1960's because of the convenience
of central area living. But these new people
were also interested in living in peace and
quiet; they were often older people, with
fewer children who were seeking a quality
of life which did not include a major entertainment
complex and its attendant traffic.
The successes of the 1967 centennial events,
the mammoth Jerry Lewis gathering of 1974,
and the Pink Floyd Show which included the
visit of an airplane and loudspeaker noise
which could be heard two miles away all confirmed
the local people in endeavouring to remove
the Exhibition, and its spectator events.
Finally the end of the 1980's brought a severe
and long lasting economic recession .On top
of that the Lynx (Jetform) baseball stadium
and the vast new Palladium (Corel Centre)
were built along the Queensway where accessibility
and parking were plentiful. City Council
even agreed on the removal of the Exhibition
in the early 1990's but that has never been
acted upon.
The Park has been under the administration
of the City since 1974. Since the mid 1990's
a positive attempt has been made to improve
Lansdowne Park visually. The Aberdeen Pavilion
was restored at the expense of the City and
the Federal Government. A proper children's
park with adjacent baseball diamonds for
amateurs was built at the north east corner,
and Sylvia Holden Park was created in the
north west corner at Bank Street. Holmwood
Avenue was restored to its fully residential
nature by the creation of a well treed area
along its length, and vehicular access to
the park restricted to Bank Street and two
entrances on the Driveway. The dilapidated
buildings along the Driveway were demolished
and a large area of land, originally canal
lands, was given back to the National Capital
Commission who installed a well treed park.
A near impossible access problem however
remains. The few access roads, Bank Street
and the Driveway, are operating at capacity
without any possibility of expansion, and
there are no available corridors of land
or the money or the political will to build
additional routes leading to the Park even
if they were wanted. In 1998, the City is
seeking alternative uses for the so called
park, to relieve itself of the financial
burden, as well as the spasms of traffic
the Parks releases.
40. The Dow’s Lake Causeway (1904). Looking from the Experimental Farm towards the Glebe showing the May and Foster Tannery to the right and the Kennedy House to its left. The foundations of the causeway may still be seen at low water.
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41. The Driveway from Bank Street looking
towards Brown’s Inlet and the Whyte House.
c.1911.
(Collection Phil Dunning).
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Traffic and the Glebe - a National First
The building of the canal around the Glebe
instead of along Preston Street to the west
has been a blessing. Only two major roads
bisect the area: Bank Street and Bronson
Avenue. Bank Street has always been a shopping
street in the Glebe, in fact it is now one
of the most successful shopping streets in
Ottawa. One of the reasons for this is that
it has few gaps in the retail frontage. Gas
stations which always cause bad gaps have
in the past been limited to north and south
ends of the main shopping area and now have
disappeared altogether, although unfortunately
their polluted forecourts remain. Housing
comes immediately to the rear of the shops
without intervening parking lots, so there
is a continuum between shops and housing.
Bronson Avenue however is less favoured.
Called Concession Street before 1900 it went
nowhere until a wooden swing bridge was put
across the canal in 1903 after which one
could get to the south canal road and the
new subdivision of Rideauville which is now
Ottawa South. But it was still a minor road
until the late 1950's when the Federal Government
at the suggestion of the French planner Jacques
Greber started to decentralise its buildings
into campuses around Ottawa. One of these
campuses was Confederation Heights to the
south and to the south of that was built
the new airport at Uplands. To service these
installations the Federal Government helped
plan and subsidise the extension of Bronson
Avenue. A massive bridge was built over the
canal allowing for the free passage of boats
and cars along the two canal parkways below.
They also helped build the Dunbar Bridge
to the south and the Airport Parkway later
in the 1960's. Later from the 1960's to the
present day this parkway was and is being
connected to other new southern suburbs at
the insistence of the Regional Government
which is dominated politically by suburban
voters. Only now in the late 1990's are efforts
being made to put in a rapid transit route
along the rail line to the west, a line which
should have been put in 1950 when streetcars
were removed and before people formed the
habit of driving cars downtown. Now the Glebe
and especially the people of the Dow’s Lake
Area to the west have the misfortune of having
one of the most intensely used roads in Ottawa
running right through their area complete
with high speed traffic.
42. Lansdowne Park from the air towards the east c.1950. Showing the 1909 grandstand; the old Driveway through the Park; the new canal Driveway bypassing it; as well as the market garden belonging to the Old Peoples’ Home, now the Glebe Centre, at the bottom. (CA 8107)
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The building of the Queensway, during the
1960’s along the former 1870’s railway track
to the north, has had a major effect on the
Glebe. Being raised on a seven metre high
embankment it forms a major visual barrier
and unprotected noise producer. It could
be an attractive barrier if landscaped with
trees. The Glebe derives benefit from the
easy accessibility that the Queensway gives
but suffers considerably from its noise and
air pollution.
Fortunately the balance of the residential
area has had a traffic calming scheme in
effect since the early seventies which dissuades
motorists from using the Glebe as a short
cut. This was one of the first calming schemes
to be installed in Canada, intended to be
an example to the rest of the Nation. It
was therefore promoted by the National Capital
Commission when the chairman, Douglas Fullerton,
asked the author to prepare proposals in
1970 which were subsequently but only partially
carried out by the City in concert with the
NCC. Prior to that, Carling Avenue used to
extend across the Glebe encouraging large
volumes of traffic to O'Connor Street.
In the mid sixties, the City’s Traffic Engineering
Department whose main aim in life was the
easy and rapid movement of cars, proposed
extending Carling Avenue eastward through
Central Park and across the canal. That proposal
galvanised the people of the Glebe into actions
to save their neighbourhood from traffic
damage. A big meeting was held at First Avenue
School, through which the road would have
passed. As a result the road proposal was
dropped and the Glebe Community Association
was born in September 1967.
As a result of the Traffic Plan originated
by the author in the late sixties and with
the encouragement of former Mayor Charlotte
Whitton, a resident of the Glebe, Carling
Avenue was restricted at Bronson Avenue and
renamed Glebe Avenue within the Glebe itself.
Likewise O'Connor Street was stopped off
at Isabella Street. Traffic was in future
to be routed around rather than through the
area. Parallel with the Carling Avenue alteration
was the abandonment of the construction of
secondary arterial routes either side of
the Queensway which would have destroyed
much of the northern Glebe as well as Centretown.
The Centretown Plan, for which the author
was also responsible, as well as the restoration
of the 1912 Pretoria Lift Bridge, stemmed
from this process during the 1970's.
43. Traffic Calming Plan, 1969. Prepared for the National Capital Commission by John Leaning showing how streets could be people places. (Extract).
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The Glebe itself has had a slightly declining
population of around 12,000 since the 1940's
when it achieved its maximum of about 16,000.
This decline is notwithstanding the rise
in the number of housing units .This has
been partly due to infill and partly due
to people restoring houses to single family
units. Many houses had been subdivided during
the Depression and the War. Fortunately there
is a strong community spirit which has endeavoured
since then to make sure that overdevelopment
of the area does not take place. The most
threatened area in the early seventies was
on the east side where it was allowed until
then to build highrise dwellings along the
Driveway in what was the poorest and oldest
section. This was all changed after three
such buildings, up to thirteen stories high
were erected along the canal, over furious
public objection which subsequently changed
the zoning bylaw. Pat Zolf and her broadcaster
husband were prime movers in all this. She
was a formidable character who lived in the
Glebe during the earlier seventies. The end
result of all this community effort has meant
that one can still live in the area without
being overshadowed by enormous highrises.
The redevelopment that has taken place since
the seventies has been mostly sympathetic
infill and upgrading of older homes, prominently
visible on Third Avenue near Bank Street,
near the former Ladies College ,and especially
adjacent to Patterson’s Creek, and Brown’s
Inlet.
The car, here and every where else, is having
an increasingly negative effect on the livability
of inner residential areas. It is the necessary
evil of modern times. It pollutes, it is
ugly, dangerous, life threatening, and expensive
both personally and communally. These facts
are not generally understood. For example,
in 1974 when the people of the Glebe were
asked whether they wanted a traffic calming
scheme put in their area, nearly half the
people voted against it. When it was suggested
that streets should be landscaped, communal
places for everyone to enjoy, many were of
the opinion that streets were only for cars.
These opinions were exacerbated by the facts
of the straight and unnecessarily wide road
allowances of the late nineteenth century
surveyors whose primary thoughts were to
provide for the new car. Fortunately mayors
Charlotte Whitton and Marion Dewar and Douglas
Fullerton, Chairman of the National Capital
Commission in the early 1970’s saw otherwise,
enthusiastically putting their support behind
traffic calming schemes throughout the region.
Douglas Fullerton also was responsible for
the cancellation of the building of further
parkways and instead supporting the construction
of bicycle tracks and footpaths.
44. Charlotte Whitton, (1896-1975). Ottawa’s and Canada’s first woman mayor, resident of the Glebe until 1975. (CA 19128).
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The Architecture of the Glebe
The architecture of the Glebe is as eclectic
and varied as its population. While we do
not have any palaces, temples or national
shrines, we do have a lot of architecture
that in a singularly Canadian fashion is
derived from New England, old England, the
Mid West, and California. The many little
framed houses that cluster together on the
older eastern side are typical of smaller
Ontario and Quebec towns of the turn of the
century. People bought individual lots, hired
a local contractor who built according to
designs from American and English Pattern
books. The Glebe has been fortunate in that
it was mostly built in an era of relative
prosperity from 1890 to the late 1920's and
that most of its built environment survived
the destructive modernisation of the 1960's,
1970's and 1980’s when so many houses in
the central area were destroyed to make way
for highrise buildings and parking lots.
Glebe people have preferred to look upon
their houses as places to live in rather
than speculate upon.
The areas most prestigious houses were built
in the 1870's, and the most prestigious of
those was the Whyte House facing the Canal
to the south, sadly destroyed by fire in
1989, whilst it was awaiting redevelopment
as luxury housing. The site is still waiting.
The house was built by James Galleti Whyte,
an Ottawa merchant after whom the village
of Galleta west of Ottawa is named. It was
a stone French Second Empire style building
three floors high standing on the highest
location in the Glebe, surrounded by a beautiful
garden. It was acquired by the Apostolic
Delegate around the turn of the century.
In the 1960's, concerned by the cost of upkeep
they planned to have it demolished and replaced
by a modern, single storey, split level building.
They were overruled by the National Capital
Commission since the house faced onto their
Driveway. It was then sold to a Catholic
order who by the 1980's found it too expensive
to maintain and sold it to a developer.
The second finest house was, and fortunately
still is, the 1867 Alexander Mutchmor House,
Abbotsford, on Bank Street, a neo gothic
style typical farmhouse of stone. Saved by
becoming, in 1889, the Protestant Home for
the Aged, it is now part of the Glebe Centre.
For a brief while in the 1970's it too was
threatened with demolition because of cost
of maintenance. In 1974 upon becoming the
Glebe Centre, a high rise addition was built
providing much needed accommodation. A further
two storey addition for nursing care was
added in the former residents kitchen garden
to the south in the mid 1990’s.
A third much altered stone house of the same
vintage still stands at 6 Lakeview Terrace,
probably built by the Kennedy's in 1879.
It was neighbour to a large stone Tannery
to the south until the turn of the century.
A few brick dwellings in the late Victorian
style of the 1880's also remain in the Glebe,
mixed in with the development of the 1890's.
There is Ralph Cottage, a Second Empire style
villa at Ralph and Fifth; and the farmhouse
built by Joseph Foster, owner of the tannery
at the Bronson Bridge. At the end of Clarey
Street there is also a 1870 brick farmhouse.
All of these houses sat in the middle of
farmland until 1890 after which rapid urban
development took place.
45. The Panet House, c. 1950, at 237-239 Clemow Avenue between Lyon and Percy Streets. It burnt down in 1957 (Photo R.W.Evans).
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46. Abbotsford House, c. 1878. Looking from
the south. Built 1867 by Alexander Mutchmor,
it’s now part of the Glebe Centre. (PA. 26512).
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House architecture of the 1890's was largely
inspired by American Pattern Books which
were readily available. The first smaller
houses were simple balloon framed, clapboarded
houses with their ornamental gables facing
the street. Many of these delightful houses
still stand, their worth architecturally
now more appreciated. Two significant groups
of these vernacular houses are at the eastern
end of Third Avenue and on Morris Street.
In 1898, by far the finest and the largest
building in the Glebe, the Aberdeen Pavilion,
designed by Ottawa architect, Moses Edey,
was built in Lansdowne Park. It is quite
unique in North America being probably the
largest single span, prefabricated steel
structure, decorated in a fanciful Baroque
manner, having a remarkable system of roof
ventilators, and a large dome at the crossing
like a classical cathedral. It too could
have disappeared in the 1980's but for the
perseverance of heritage buffs and some Government
financing. Alongside the Pavilion is the
second most architecturally important building
in the Park, the Horticultural Building.
It was built in 1915 and designed by Frank
Sullivan, an Ottawa Architect who was a pupil
of the great American architect Frank Lloyd
Wright. It is a Prairie style building with
great wide eaves like so many similarly inspired
1910 - 1930 houses in the Glebe.
One of the last of the high Victorian style
dwellings, built about 1910, is the magnificent,
ornately towered row at 304 - 312 Driveway
at First Avenue, designed by a New York architect
for a grocer who had his store in what is
now Confederation Square. These too were
intended for demolition by a developer in
the 1970's and replacement by a high rise
apartment building until the bylaw was changed
in 1974. Happily they are now carefully preserved
as a heritage building.
About 1902, the Clemow, Monkland and Powell
Estates were developed. Houses of late Victorian
and Edwardian eclectic design appeared in
numbers along these parklike streets between
1904 and 1920. The finest of the Victorians
was probably the Panet House on Clemow Avenue,
standing midway between Lyon and Percy Streets
and having a magnificent classical portico.
It was destroyed by fire in the late fifties.
From 1904 onwards the Ottawa architect W.E.Noffke
designed a number of fine wide-eaved California
and eclectic style houses around Patterson's
Creek, all then roofed in spanish tile, once
one of the distinguishing features of the
Glebe but now sadly mostly replaced by asphalt
shingles, for reasons of cost and maintenance.
Especially fine is the Powell House (1913)
on Glebe Avenue, and the Baker House (1912)
on Brown’s Inlet which since the 1980’s has
been restored and is now surrounded by very
well designed row houses by Wolfe Mohaupt.
Concurrent with these architect designed
houses, simpler dwellings, many having gambrel
roofs that originated in rural Holland, have
appeared throughout the older east and south
Glebe, almost all of wood frame covered with
red brick.
The last area of the original glebe to be
developed was west of Lyon Street, and south
of Glebe Collegiate. It remained a market
and students vegetable garden until the late
twenties, when many houses in the Arts and
Crafts and English Cottage traditions were
built as late as the forties. Especially
noticeable in this area are the well built
houses by David Younghusband. The Fraserfield
area just west of Bronson Avenue was built
with houses of a similar tradition after
the removal of the railway and lumber yards
in the early thirties, a remarkable and pleasing
transformation.
47. The 1913 Powell House from Pattersons Creek; the site of former Electric Park and the 1873 Grove Hotel (see p. 31), all set in a landscape developed by the Ottawa Improvement Commission in 1907.
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The 1870 Kennedy house at Lakeview Terrace, now gutted but hopefully being restored. The dormers and the garage are recent additions (Marcelle Jubinville)
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The churches of the Glebe are generally neo
gothic in style with the notable exception
of St. James, on Lyon Street at Second Avenue,
which is Palladian classical. Its architectural
ancestor is the Villa Rotunda in Vicenza,
Italy, designed by Palladio in the mid Renaissance
period. In 1974 St. James became the Glebe
Community Centre, a purpose which better
fitted its secular origin architecture. The
finest of all the neo gothic churches is
that of the Blessed Sacrament at Percy Street
and Fourth Avenue, which is in Perpendicular
Gothic style externally, designed by Toronto
architect M.J.Gibb Morton and built in 1931
for the sum of $225,000. Architecturally,
there might also have been a remarkable transition
in the little Grace and Truth Chapel built
by the Plymouth Brethren on Clarey Street
during the 1920's. It was sold to the Orthodox
Church in 1965, becoming the Cathedral Church
of the Annunciation and St. Nicholas. Had
the Cathedral had the resources to install
the highly ornamental Byzantine architecture
traditional to their faith, externally as
well as internally, Clarey Street would have
become one of Ottawa's more exotic streets.
One of the last major churches to be built
was the Gospel Tabernacle at Bank Street
and Rosebery Avenue in 1924. It is now the
Chinese United Church.
St. Matthew’s Church, on Glebe Avenue near
Bank Street, has undergone some considerable
architectural transitions. Originally a fine
wooden Gothic building designed by J.W.H.Watts,
it was replaced by Jefferson Church Hall
and the present stone church designed by
Cecil Burgess in 1929. The corner site on
Bank Street was sold for commercial use.
Jefferson Hall and the church parking lot
at the back was sold to a Glebe developer,
Douglas Casey in 1997, who removed them and
built some remarkably successful townhouses
which match the adjacent church architecture
well. He was also partly responsible for
the very good infill development along Patterson’s
Creek, along the south side in the late eighties.
In the mid seventies the three highrises
along the canal driveway to the east were
built. The most successful of these is the
highrise together with rowhouses at Patterson’s
Creek by William Teron. Notwithstanding the
variety of urban profile that these three
buildings have brought, it is fortunate that
the Glebe community has resisted further
highrise construction and massive development
which would have destroyed the livability
of the area.
49. Douglas Fullerton (1917-1996), Chairman of the National Capital Commission from 1969 to 1972, instigator of the world’s longest skating rink, and resident of Clemow Avenue until his death in 1996. (Collection M. Fullerton).
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Postscript
The Glebe could have had many names in its
two hundred year history. To begin with it
might have been called Stegman’s Horror as
that early surveyor and his crew cut their
way through its jungle of bush and mosquito
infested swamp. Or later it might have been
called LeBreton’s Folly, Colonel By’s Grief
or later still Mutchmor’s Venture. At one
point Thomas Ahearn might have liked the
whole place to have been called Electricville.
When market gardener Hickey was thinking
of developing the northernmost lot he called
it Bloomingvale. When St. Andrew’s Church
first subdivided and sold their glebe east
of Bank Street it was known briefly as Spencerville.
At the same time some people referred to
the Glebe immediately north of the fairground
as Lansdowne Terrace. The Glebe has come
to be what people made of it and the people
were many and various. The first urban inhabitants
of the Glebe were more often English speaking
protestants because the original glebe was
Presbyterian land, and as often as not Scotch
and Irish. These people were first of all
thrifty by nature, then they became socially
activist and attracted like minded people
to the area.
An example is the McKeen family, some of
whom were Plymouth Brethren, who started
the chapel on Clarey Street and their first
Grocery at Bank Street in the 1920's. Later
they were to be the founders of McKeen's
IGA store, the main grocery store on Bank
Street, and later, by another branch of the
family, the adjacent Glebe Apothecary. The
Badali brothers, the Newlands, and the Morelands
were others that founded long lasting and
considerable grocery and hardware stores.
At the beginning of the second millennium
the Glebe is more genuine than just trendy
or fashionable. It has become a pluralistic,
non sectarian society. One can, for example
attend religious services in English, Chinese,
French, Ukrainian, Spanish, Korean and Sign.
In its shops one can buy goods from most
parts of the world. You can learn Yoga and
Ti Chi in Glebe ashrams and you could have
your hands painted Hindu fashion in a shop
on Fifth Avenue.
Ottawa's and Canada’s first woman Mayor,
the redoubtable and sometimes ferocious,
but publicly spirited, Charlotte Whitton,
was a Glebe resident on Renfrew Avenue at
Central Park, from 1963 until her death in
1975. Assisted by Douglas Fullerton, she
was politically instrumental in getting the
Glebe Traffic Plan under way in the early
1970's. Likewise Sylvia Holden and Lionel
Britton, after whom two local parks adjacent
to Lansdowne Park are named, were well known
social and sports activists during the sixties
and seventies. Earlier in the century
Moreland the grocer built Moreland’s Hall
where Flippers Restaurant now is at the corner
of Bank Street and Fourth Avenue. Four of
the Glebe's churches had their first services
there. Now that location is part of Minto's
Fifth Avenue Court which presently serves
as a large and pleasant covered public courtyard
where public concerts are occasionally to
be heard. Fifth Avenue Court had troubled
beginnings. Originally there were houses
at the back of the Bank Street shops, but
during the sixties these were replaced by
a gravel parking area for a number of years.
In 1979 a developer acquired the site with
the intention to have shops around an open
courtyard at the rear. When he started, without
a building permit, to enclose the courtyard,
work was stopped because it was contrary
to the zoning bylaw. It was most unfortunate
since the developer had the best intentions,
so the site stood empty over a winter and
he went bankrupt. Shortly afterwards Minto
Construction, founded by Glebe resident Irving
Greenberg, acquired the site, the bylaw was
changed and the work was finished, moving
the main entrance to the corner at Fifth
Avenue, providing the Glebe with a valuable
covered public space and gaining a design
award in the process.
The Glebe's Bank Street shops are an indicator
of the variety of life in the area. One can
buy or eat food of almost any ethnic description
in the grocery shops and restaurants along
Bank Street. One can buy travel tickets to
any part of the world, or buy clothing of
almost any ethnic description. There are
music shops, a liquor store, a beer store,
a witchcraft shop, a bead shop, several bookstores,
a launderette where you can eat while you
wait, a dance studio, a printing shop, a
post office - in short you need not leave
the Glebe for want of materials or services.
A while ago I was asked by the Big Brothers
Association if I would act as a mentor for
any child needing a friend or having behavioral
difficulties. I agreed provided it was within
the Glebe area, near home. After a lengthy
search they phoned me up to apologize for
the fact that they could not find any such
child in the Glebe. Upon reflection that
seemed to say something very positive about
life in the Glebe.
Acknowledgements
This story has been written from information
received over a period of nearly forty years.
Thus the following are only the most recent
acknowledgements:
National Archives City of Ottawa Archives Ottawa Room, Ottawa Public Library St. Matthew’s Parish History History of Glebe United Church The City Beyond by Bruce Elliott Glebe Historical Society |
Bank Street Record - Bruce McCallan National Capital Commission Ottawa Citizen Central Canada Exhibition Association Jim McAulay, sports journalist Ian McKercher - Glebe Timeline. A Church in the Glebe - David Farr |
The publication of this book would not have been possible without the generous support of the following whose funding has been handled by the Glebe Neighbourhood Activities Group.
| Special gift and grant Millennium Bureau of Canada Barry Hobin Associates Harold Jones Trillium Foundation Patrons Councillor Inez Berg Ted Britton Charlesfort Development Corporation - Douglas Casey Regional Councillor Clive Doucet Glebe Community Association Glebe Report Association Home Hardware - Amelia and Chuck Hillock Loeb Glebe - Christine and Jim McKeen Pharmasave Apothecary - Claudia and Doug McKeen Routeburn Urban Development - Robin Fyfe and Bill Metz Sponsors Alison Dingle Innis Pharmacy - Roland Innis Royal Bank of Canada Murray Young |
Supporters Christina Bates Mrs. Lily Bates Dr. Robert Bernstein Birder’s Corner Nature Store - Lynn Smyth Linda Butcher and Wayne Cole Gordon Cullingham Dilemme - Bob Trotter and Danielle Plouffe Phil Dunning David Farr Nino and Peggy Gualtieri Pat and George Hiemstra Trevor Hodge Douglas T. Humphries Kamals Nick and Sandy Ketchum Randal Marlin Christy Oliver and Bruce Holwell Barry Padolsky Eileen Scotton George Wright |
WWW layout for this book: Andre Vellino (andre@ncf.ca)
About the Author
John Leaning, whose family has lived in the
Glebe since 1957, is an architect, planner,
author and artist who practiced in London,
Paris, and Stockholm before coming to Canada
and later becoming the National Capital Commission’s
first Chief Architect in 1966. He was author
for "The Revitalisation of Older Residential
Districts" which became the inspiration
for the Glebe Plan and the Centretown Redevelopment
Plan. As an architect he was responsible
for the 1965 rehabilitation of Sussex Drive,
the 1973 restoration of the Academie de la
Salle and the East Block of Parliament in
1975. He is author of "Our Architectural
Ancestry". He was a founding member
of the Glebe Community Association in the
early sixties.
The Glebe Historical Society is a voluntary
group dedicated to the preservation and recording
of the History of the Glebe. It is the inspiration
of Ian McKercher who is its coordinator.
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