The Origins of Scouting in Ottawa

27 April 1909

On 27 April 1909, the Ottawa Journal published a small article announcing that Mr. C.C. Campbell of 193 Gloucester Street, was organizing an Ottawa company of boy scouts. Campbell had recently returned from Britain where he had been the scout master of the 1^st Whitehead troop and the Secretary of the North Irish Division Council of boy scouts. Reportedly, he had been trained under the “eye” of General Baden-Powell. Boys aged between 12 and 18 interested in joining the scouts were urged to contact Mr. Campbell at his home address.

^{Lord Baden-Powell, c. 1910-1920, Wikipedia.}

The boy scouts were a new youth organization at the time. Its founder, General Robert Stephenson Baden-Powell, had launched the movement just two years earlier in Britain. Baden-Powell was British officer and former military scout in several colonial wars in South Africa in the late 19^th century. In 1900, he became famous as the “Hero of Mafeking” during the Second Boer War. Then a colonel, Baden-Powell had commanded the town’s garrison that had held off Boer attackers during a 217-day siege. While accounts suggest that Baden-Powell’s military prowess was overstated, the successful defence of Mafeking catapulted him to fame. The siege captured public attention, particularly as both the son of the British prime minister and the daughter of the Duke of Marlborough (the aunt of Winston Churchill) were living in the besieged town.

Following the relief of Mafeking, Baden-Powell, now a national hero, was promoted to Major-General. In 1903, he was appointed Inspector General of the Cavalry. He was promoted again to Lieutenant General in 1907. That year, he began to focus his attention on the development of the boy scout movement. He retired from the British Army in 1910.  

Drawing on an earlier scouting publication that he had written while serving in Africa called Aids to Scouting for N.C.O.s and Men, Baden-Powell published in 1908 six pamphlets entitled Scouting for Boys. The pamphlets were extremely popular and provided the blueprint for the boy scout movement.

In the first pamphlet, Baden-Powell described how boys were organized during the siege of Mafeking into a cadet corps, and the useful role they played in delivering messages, keeping a look-out and acting as orderlies, thus freeing up men to fight. Taking inspiration from that, Baden-Powell wrote that boys did not have to wait for war to be a scout but they instead could become a “peace scout” requiring the same skills. He cited “frontiersmen in all parts of the Empire,” including the ‘trappers of North America,’ and the ‘constabulary of North-West Canada’ among others. He also invoked a romantic and sometimes mythological version of British history, citing as scout role models King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Sir Francis Drake, Lord Clive of India and Captain Cook, many of whom contributed to the founding of the world-girdling British Empire.

^{First of six pamphlets by General Baden-Powell on Scouting, 1907.}

Baden-Powell was also influenced by his friend Ernest Thompson Seaton, a writer, who had founded in 1902 the “Woodcraft Indians” in the United States a program that taught non-Indigenous children how to live in the woods based on stereotypical native skills. Seaton, who was born in Britain, had emigrated to Toronto in the 1860s with his parents, before moving to Manitoba and subsequently the United States. He, along with Daniel Beard, helped form the Boy Scouts of America in 1910 with the support of Baden-Powell.

The romanticized view of Indigenous North American culture subsequently became a significant feature of the scouting movement in both Canada and the United States. Indeed, as early as 1909, on hearing that a local company of scouts was being formed in Ottawa, the Ottawa Journal opined that “The dreams of many of Ottawa’s boys who wish to follow in the footsteps of the immortal “Hawkeye” will soon be realized. Hawkeye was the fictional protagonist of The Last of the Mohicans and other novels by James Fenimore Cooper, a popular nineteenth century American author. (In October 2023, Scouts Canada apologized to First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples for its participation in programs that collaborated with the residential and day school systems aimed at assimilating Indigenous youth while at the same time romanticizing their cultures and appropriating them for its own use.)

Baden-Powell’s aim was to inculcate youth into a philosophy and way of life that he believed would make them good citizens, both in times of peace and, if necessary, in times of war. The attributes he wanted to instill included patriotism, self-reliance, chivalry, courage, and endurance. He contended that the fall of the Roman Empire had been due to a decline in good citizenship, something that he did not want to happen to the British Empire.

He stressed that the new youth organization, with its motto “Be Prepared,” was not in competition with other organizations such as cadet corps. Although boy scouts would do some drilling, their focus would be on scouting. Items of instruction would include learning how to live off of the land, knowing the ways of animals, how to read forest signs, follow trails and track animals and people.

To become a second-class scout, a boy would have to tie five different knots (Bowline, Fisherman’s bend, Reef, Clove hitch and Sheet bend), each in thirty seconds. He would also have to track a spoor for ¼ mile in fifteen minutes, know scout laws and signs, and understand the composition of the Union Jack and the right way up of flying it.

To become a first-class scout, a boy must also demonstrate thrift by opening a bank account, be able to lay a fire, and cook a pound of flour and two potatoes without cooking utensils.

While Baden-Powell’s scouting movement was initially directed at boys, he also felt that girls “may well learn scouting when they are young, and so be able to do useful work in the world as they grow older.” He pointed to several role models for girls, such as Florence Nightingale who nursed soldiers during the Crimea War. At his request, Baden-Powell’s sister, Agnes Baden-Powell, formed in 1910 the Girl Guides Association in Britain.

The boy scout movement quickly found its way to the “colonies,” including Canada. According to Robert Milks in his book 75 years of Scouting published in 1981, the first boy scout troops were established in Canada in 1908 at Merrickville and St. Catharines, scarcely months after General Baden-Powell published his book on scouting. However, I could not find a reference in either the St. Catharines’ Standard or in the Merrickville Star about the formation of boy scout troops in either community in 1908. Still, Merrickville had an active scouting program for both boys and girls organized by Rev. Ernest Thomas by June 1910. Similarly, the Standard reported that St. Catharines’ boy scouts had paraded for the first time in September 1910 when they marched through the city with the 19^th Regiment.

Perusing other Canadian newspapers of the era, the Globe reported that a company of boy scouts was formed in Toronto in early October 1909 at the Armories after an organizational meeting was held the previous month. As well, the Edmonton Journal reported in July 1909 that the first colonial branch of the boy scouts had just been authorized in Vancouver, organized by Joseph Hynes who worked with the health department. The troop was given a set of colours and $150 for the purchase of uniforms.

Here in Ottawa, within days of the short Ottawa Journal article published in April 1909 about the boy scouts, hundreds of boys had sent letters to Mr. C.C. Campbell expressing interest in joining. Organizational meetings were held through that summer at the Drill Hall. Campbell became secretary pro tem of the national scouting organization with City Controller Wilson appointed chair of the local scouts’ branch. In mid-September, it was reported that the officers’ books for scouting had arrived in Ottawa from Britain, and would cost 40 cents each to purchase. A large number of “The Scout,” the official newspaper of the scouting organization, had also arrived and would be ready for sale at the Boy Scouts’ office at 94 Bank Street. In early October, a proper application form was developed. On it was the scout promise that a boy would do his duty to God and King, would help other people at all times, and would obey the scout law.

On Friday, 22 October 1909, twenty-five boys turned out at the Drill Hall to practise infantry movements in preparation for the King’s birthday celebrations to be held on 9 November 1909. Sadly, the boys’ uniforms, which comprised a grey sweater, khaki trousers, and a Stetson hat, did not arrive from their Toronto supplier in time for the event. The Ottawa scout organization immediately cancelled the order and bought the uniforms from the Ottawa firm A.E. Ray (located in what later became known as the Daly building). The uniforms were issued the following day.

The last drill of that inaugural year took place in late November at Cartier Square. A winter program of lectures by military officers, snowshoe tramps, hockey games and parties were planned for the winter months. It was hoped that recruitment would bring the number of boy scouts in Ottawa up to five hundred.

^{Ottawa Boy Scouts in front of the Patriotic Fund Headquarters, September 1914, Topley Studios, LAC 3623089.}

Recruitment must have received a boost when it was announced in February 1910 that Sir Robert Baden-Powell (he received a knighthood in 1909), would undertake a cross-country tour of Canada, stopping in all major cities, including Ottawa, in support of the scouting movement.  A troop of English boy scouts would accompany him on his journey.

Baden-Powell arrived in the nation’s capital on the morning of Thursday, 1 September 1910 from Toronto. He was greeted at the station by Lord Lanesborough, who was an aide of Governor General Lord Grey, and Lt-Colonel A.P. Sherwood. Lord Grey who had earlier agreed to become the Chief Scout for Canada, had appointed Sherwood, along with Lt-Col E.W.B. Morrisson, as commissioners to organize the scouting movement in Canada. After breakfast at the Rideau Club, Baden-Powell spoke to journalists at a press scrum outside of the building. He said that “the great idea of the boy scout movement is to instill honour and comradeship. In Canada, you need comradeship where there are so many different races.” He reiterated that the objective of the boy scout movement was not to make soldiers but to teach boys how to become useful citizens.

After a tour of the city, he had lunch at the Country Club before addressing scout leaders at a private meeting at the Y.M.C.A. That night, he addressed a mass meeting of scouts, leaders, and the public also at the “Y.” At that meeting, he appealed to Ottawa citizens to support the scouts, not through donations, but by giving jobs to scouts so that they could earn money to purchase their kit.

Citizens at the assembly were wildly excited about the boy scout movement. They passed the following resolution: “At this representative gathering of the citizens of Ottawa, assembled to hear the distinguished Imperialist Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the boy scout organization, advantage is taken to place on record the hearty endorsement of the movement which is destined to revolutionize the boy of today and to give him a character than means so much to future generations.”

Baden-Powell’s scouting movement quickly became a world-wide phenomenon. During his lifetime, he received many honours from Britain, other countries as well as the international scouting movement for his service to youth. In 1929, he was raised to the peerage as First Baron Baden-Powell.  He died in 1941 in Kenya and was buried at St Peter’s Cemetery in Nyeri. The Kenyan government made his resting place a national monument.

Today, the scouting movement continues to play a significant positive role in the lives of tens of thousands of Canadian boys and girls. However, the movement has not been without its challenges in recent years. In addition to substantial decline in enrollment from the peak years in the 1960s, cases of child abuse were revealed to have occurred.  This led to a tightening of the screening procedures for volunteers and other practices to ensure the safety of all children. The movement has also had to adapt to changes in Canadian society, including a more diverse population, and new social mores with respect to sexuality. Diversity and inclusion, something unthought of even a generation ago let alone in Baden-Powell’s time, are now elements of the scouting program, ensuring that disabled persons as well as vulnerable and minority groups have access to scouting activities.

For more information about the scouting movement in Canada, see Scouts Canada and Girl Guides of Canada.

Sources:

Baden-Powell, Robert. 1899. “Aids To Scouting for N.C.Os & Men,” 1915 Edition, Galt and Folden’s Military Series.

Baden-Powell, Robert. 1908. “Scouting For Boys,” Dover Edition, published 2007, originally published Horace Cox, London.

Edmonton Journal, “Organize Troop Of Boy Scouts,” 31 July.

Globe, 1909. “Boy Scouts For Canada,” 29 September.

——-, 1909. “Boy Scouts Organized,” 6 October.

Ottawa Citizen, 1900. “The Hero of Mafeking,” 23 May.

——————, 1909. “The Boy Scouts,” 5 July.

——————, 1909. “The Boy Scouts,” 22 July.

——————, 1909. “Organizing Boy Scouts,” 2 October.

——————-, 1909. “Boy Scouts In Force,” 9 November.

——————-, 1909. “Capital Boy Scouts,” 24 November.

——————-, 1910. “‘B.-P.’ Will Visit Ottawa,” 3 February.

——————-, 1910. “Baden-Powell On Boy Scouts,” 12 February.

——————-, 1910. “Defender Of Mafeking IS Guest Of Capital today,” 1 September.

——————-, 1910. “Enthusiasm On Boy Scout Idea,” 2 September.

Ottawa Journal, 1909. “Local Company Of Boy Scouts,” 27 April.

——————-, 1909. “Boy Scouts Interesting,” 11 June.

——————-, 1909. “Many Interested In Boy Scouts,” 25 June.

——————-, 1909. “Meeting OF The Boy Scouts,” 15 September.

——————, 1909. “Boy Scouts Held Regular Drill, 23 October.

——————, 1909. “ Capital Boy Scouts,” 24 November.

——————, 1910. “Boy Scout Leader Coming,” 4 August.

——————, 1910. “Visit Of Leader Of Boy Scouts,” 31 August.

——————, 1910. “Baden-Powell’s Best Doing,” 1 September.

——————, 1910. “Baden-Powell At Y.M.C.A., 2 September.

Times Colonist, 1908. “Boy Scouts,” 15 February.

Victoria Daily Times, 1907. “Boys As Army-Scouts,” 7 September.

The Saved Army Invades Ottawa

6 April 1884

The nineteenth century was a time of incredible change in Europe and North America. The industrial revolution was upending the existing economic and social order. A cultural renaissance, which drew inspiration from the past, was revolutionizing the arts. Meanwhile, evangelical preachers whose aim was to revive traditional Christian values were attracting thousands of converts, and in so doing threatening long-established churches. This religious revival was intertwined with other social crusades, including the temperance and abolitionist movements.

^{Rev. William Booth, c. 1862, Wikipedia}

Among these evangelical preachers were William Booth and his wife Catharine who in 1865 began bringing the word of God to the destitute and marginalized of London’s poor East End. Booth had been a minister of the Methodist Reform Church but grew frustrated with constraints placed upon his ability to preach. Consequently, he struck out on his own, bringing the message of Christian love and redemption to parts of society that had been neglected by mainstream churches. Realizing that it is difficult to save souls if the physical body is in need, the Booths started to provide food and other essentials at their gatherings. 

Not surprisingly, this new, vigorous, evangelical movement, initially called the “Christian Mission,” irritated many. Mainstream churches were hostile. The Booths’ brash, loud approach to reaching people, via parades, public hymn singing, drums and tambourines, was viewed by some as inconsistent with the biblical admonition Let all things be done decently and in order (I Corinthians, 14:40). The parades and loud music created disturbances. Bystanders mocked adherents and sometimes threw stones causing riots. This led to members getting into trouble with the law for disturbing the peace and other offences. Some went to jail. The Booths’ opposition to the consumption of alcohol also led to enemies. Organized on military lines, with officers (i.e., ministers) and soldiers, members of this new movement called themselves the “Saved Army.” In 1878, the new movement became known as the “Salvation Army.” William Booth was its “General,” with Catharine Booth becoming the “Army Mother.” Despite opposition, the Salvation Army quickly spread through Great Britain and continental Europe. It jumped the Atlantic to the United States in 1880 and to Canada in 1882 with an open-air meeting first held in Toronto in January 1882. Units of the Army were quickly established in other cities, including London and Kingston. They were often led by British immigrants who had been Salvationists in the old country.

^{The Ottawa campaign underway, War Cry, 4 April 1885.}

The first references to the Salvation Army in the Ottawa Citizen occurred in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Most were not complementary. An 1879 editorial stated that “One of the latest outbreaks of fanaticism among the lower classes in England is a society, calling itself the ‘Salvation Army,” which marches in procession, and gets up an excitement and causes riots.” An 1882 editorial claimed that the “ravings of the Salvation Army ‘soldiers’ [brought] religion into contempt.” In 1883, the newspaper reported that the Salvation Army had become such an “intolerable nuisance” in Toronto that legal action was planned by neighbours of the Army’s Queen Street “barracks.” However, these views mellowed over time, especially after the Army came to Ottawa and its works became better known.

The first report of the Salvation Army reaching Ottawa, was a news item that appeared in the spring of 1884 reporting that a meeting connected with the Salvation Army had been held on 6 April at a private home on Duke Street in LeBreton Flats. The purpose of the meeting was to lead an assault the capital. A few weeks later, the Citizen reported that the Saved Army had commenced the religious crusade and was drawing large crowds, owing to its “novelty.” The people behind the crusade appeared to have come from Portsmouth, a small village on the outskirts of Kingston. The Citizen noted several prominent Kingston supporters of the Army, including the chaplain of the Kingston Penitentiary, and the brother of Sir Richard Cartwright, a native of Kingston who had been Minister of Finance in the government of Alexander Mackenzie.

While still cool towards the new religious organization, the Citizen said that members had conducted themselves on Ottawa streets in a “ladylike and gentlemanly manner.” If people objected to the Army’s practices, it said that they should stay away; there was no requirement to attend Salvationist meetings. The newspaper added that “nobody but a biped destitute of all feelings of decency or manhood would go into any building where a so-called sacred service was being carried on and act in a manner to hurt the feelings of those taking part in it. A gentleman…would be careful to do nothing to offend the worshippers at any shrine, in the mosque, padoga (sic), Anglican High Church or Low Church, within the walls of the Roman Catholic Church, or even among the pestilent Mormons [!].”  The newspaper later opined that the Salvation Army reached people whom the mainline churches “either wholly neglect or seem indifferent to their fates.”

Across the country, the Salvation Army began to attract adherents, particularly among working people, the unemployed, and the destitute. In November 1884, the Army started publishing a weekly Canadian edition of the War Cry, the official gazette of the Salvation Army. The newspaper featured prominent Salvationists and discussed “war news” i.e., how the Salvation Army was faring across the country.

^{Unidentified Salvation Army soldiers, Salvation Army Archives.}

One May 1885 story prominent in both in the Citizen and in the War Cry was the donation of a drum to the Ottawa corps. Henceforth, Ottawa’s officers and soldiers paraded to the beat of a bass drum, as well as tambourines. A few months later, a concertina was added. These parades, while successful in attracting a lot of attention, were not always welcome. In June 1886, regular Sunday services at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church were disrupted as Salvationists noisily sang while parading down Wellington Street to and from their barracks at 309 Sparks Street (a former livery stable). On one Sunday, Rev. W.T. Herridge, the minister, had to stop his sermon twice as he could not be heard over the din.

While the Salvation Army gained converts as it “attacked” Ottawa, it found progress slow going. In an 1885 report on Ottawa in the War Cry, Captain Hind and Lieutenant Dalmage said that their meetings were being upset by young men led by the devil. They said that “It is surprising that in this 19^th century and especially in the Capital of Canada, to find the devil has men and women so completely in his clutches that he leads them to hoot, shout, and howl, while people are on their knees. God help Ottawa!  For with all the education, society, etc., the devil has entirely his own way so far.”

^{General Booth, 1907, postcard, Salvation Army Archives.}

Salvation came the following year when the General himself stopped in Ottawa while on a North America tour. General William Booth arrived in the capital on Friday 15 October 1886 on a CPR train from Montreal, disembarking at the Union Depot at 12:35pm. Every member of the Ottawa corps was there to cheer him when he stepped off the platform. He was accompanied by Col. Dowdie and Staff-Capt. Vint from England and Commissioner Coombs who headed up the Canadian branch of the Army. During his short visit to Ottawa, Booth stayed at the residence of John M. Mosgrove at 266 Lisgar Avenue.

On his arrival, a procession formed from the train station. Led by a brass band provided by the Kingston corps of the Army, the Ottawa corps conveyed the General to their Sparks Street barracks. That afternoon, a “holiness meeting” was held in the Grand Opera House for the area’s Salvation Army officers and soldiers, giving them an opportunity to meet the General in person. At 5pm, a banquet for 500 persons was held at the barracks, hosted by the women of the Army. The Ottawa Journal reported that long tables groaned “beneath appetizing delicacies.”  The General and the Army returned to the Opera House for an evening meeting open to all. The price of admission was 15 cents. The Citizen said that the General’s address was “most pointed and convincing.” It also “sparkled with humour, shone with earnestness and conviction and scintillated with dramatic power.” He told the audience that if people saw for themselves and examined the Salvation Army’s methods, they would have a better appreciation of the Salvation Army. Booth challenged any bishop or leading man of any known denomination to spend twenty-four hours with him, or even a Sabbath. If, after that time, the person did not support the work of the Army, Booth would donate $250 to any orphan asylum. Suffice to say, the General’s money was safe.

The following morning, General Booth left Ottawa for Western Canada on the continuation of his North American tour. A few weeks later, the Ottawa division moved into larger quarters at Victoria Hall at the corner of O’Connor and Queen Streets.

In March1907, General Booth, now 78 years old, returned to Ottawa in the context of a round-the-world tour, with stops across North America and Japan, before returning to England via India—a journey of more than 25,000 miles, a huge undertaking for a man of his age. His reception was far different from the one he received twenty-one years earlier. This time, he was a guest of Lord Grey, the Governor General, staying at Rideau Hall. His first public appearance was as the speaker at a Canadian Club luncheon held at Harmony Hall in front of 300 guests. Among them, were Lord Grey, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Robert Borden, and Ottawa’s Mayor D’Arcy Scott.

The General spoke on the objectives of the Army, specifically the raising of men and women “out of despair and misery, from vice and drunkenness, and from harlotry and debauchery.” The Army taught them that “life was beautiful and good if only the love of their Maker was implanted in their hearts.” He told the Canadian Club that the Salvation Army had succeeded beyond his own dreams, and that it had become a force in the world for uplifting mankind.

That evening, at the Russell Theatre, the General expanded on this theme in front of a sold-out house. He noted that the Salvation Army flag flew over fifty-two countries. There were twenty-five different editions of the War Cry, translated into seventeen languages, with a weekly circulation of more than 1 million copies. The Salvation Army provided a host of social services including rescue homes, refuges, maternity houses, emigration and colonization services, as well as food and shelter for the homeless. The reasons for its success were the open declaration of its aims, the self-sacrifice of its officers and soldiers, and its confidence in the possibility of converting anybody.

He left the next day bound for Winnipeg abord a private train carriage. General Booth died in 1912 at 83 years of age.

Fast forward to today, the Salvation Army remains true to General Booth’s objectives and vision. It currently operates in 133 countries. In Canada, it is active in 400 communities, providing hope and support to vulnerable people without discrimination. In 2022, it dished out close to 4 million meals, helped 1.5 million people with food, clothing or other assistance, provided 1.2 million days worth of beds, and fed 115,000 children through school meals programs. During emergencies, the Salvation Army is there providing immediate assistance, as well as longer-term physical, emotional, and spiritual aid to victims and responders. For more information about the host of services offered by the Army and how you can help, see Salvation Army.

Sources:

Ottawa Citizen, 1879. “Editorial Briefs,” 26 September.

——————, 1881. “Editorial Notes,” 7 April.

——————, 1882. “Editorial Notes,” 23 December.

——————, 1882. “Toronto,” 20 November.

——————, 1883. “Salvation Army,” 2 April 1883.

——————, 1883. “Latest News in a Nutshell,” 14 April.

——————, 1884. “Salvation Army,” 7 April.

——————, 1884. “The ‘Saved Army,’ 19 April.

——————, 1884. “Saved Army,” 7 May.

——————, 1884. “Editorial Notes, 31 May.

——————, 1885. “A Drum For The Salvation Army,” 4 May.

——————, 1885. “An Innovation,” 13 July.

——————, 1886. “General Booth,” 16 October.

——————-, 1907. “General William Booth,” 16 March.

——————-, 1907. “Gen. Booth At The Russell,” 21 March.

Ottawa Journal, 1886. “The Salvation Army Nuisance,” 7 June.

——————-, 1886. “Salvation Army Notes,” 29 November.

——————-, 1886. “Salvation Army Notes,” 13 December.

——————-, 1907. “Founder Tells of Army Work,” 21 March.

Salvation Army, 2024. Salvation Army.

[The] Salvation War, 1883, under the Generalship of William Booth, London, Salvation Army Book Depot, 8 & 9 Paternoster Square.

[The] Salvation War, 1884, under the Generalship of William Booth, London, Salvation Army Book Depot, 8 & 9 Paternoster Square.

War Cry, 1885. “Ottawa,” 11 April.

———-, 1885. “Ottawa,” 25 April.

———-, 1885. “Ottawa,” 30 May.

———-, 1886. “The General’s Tour,” 6 November.

———-, 1886. “Montreal and Ottawa,” 13 November.

The Old Ottawa Post Office

30 April 1876

^{Ottawa Post Office, circa 1877, Library and Archives Canada, 3358751.}

One of Ottawa’s iconic buildings that is now lost to history was its old Post Office. It was the subject of countless post cards and photographs during its era. The building was located on the west side of the Rideau Canal, sandwiched between Sappers’ Bridge on its southern side and the Dufferin Bridge on its northern side. The first mail received in the new building arrived on Sunday, 30 April 1876, with the first batch of letters departing the facility that same evening. (Note that the Post Office was exempt from bans on working on the Sabbath—the mails must get through!)

While commonly referred to as the old Ottawa Post Office, especially after its demolition in 1938, it was not the first post office in Ottawa. An 1876 Ottawa Citizen article noted that the city’s first post office dated back to 1828, just two years after the founding of Bytown. It was located on Rideau Street beside a drug store owned by Mr. Joseph Skinner. The first postmaster, and the only postal employee, was Matthew O’Connell. The revenues from the mails were apparently so small that they were “not sufficient to give one man an independent living.” After O’Connell’s death in 1834, a Mr. Baker took over the reins of postmaster until his death in 1857. During Baker’s tenure, the Post Office moved twice, first to a building on Sparks Street in 1854 and then to Elgin Street where it remained until the construction of what would become known as the “old” Post Office. Following the death of Mr. Baker in 1857, his son, Mr. G. Baker, assumed the position of Ottawa postmaster, and was the man in charge when the post office moved into its quarters beside the Rideau Canal. By this time, postal staff had grown significantly to 34 clerks who processed letters and parcels accounting for revenues totally roughly $41,000, excluding the value of government and other mail delivered free.

The building’s contractor was Messrs. Hatch Brothers of Montreal who agreed to build it for $107,000. However, after the foundation was laid, the Hatch Brothers were unable to fulfil the terms of its contract, and construction was taken over by the government.

The new post office building was opened to the general public on Monday, 1 May. Hundreds came to gawk and admire the new structure which housed not only the Post Office but also other government departments, including Inland Revenue and Customs. The fact that Customs also occupied the building explains in part the building’s location beside the Rideau Canal. By 1874, Ottawa was considered a “grade two” port with annual revenues in excess of $200,000 three years running. (By contrast, revenues of the port of Ottawa amounted to only $49 in 1848.) The building had three large vaults for the storage of goods being held by Customs which could be accessed from the Canal-side dock. The vaults connected to the basement which was occupied by the Customs Examining Warehouse, letter carriers’ rooms, as well as small apartments for Customs and Inland Revenue officers.

^{Architectural keystone feature above a window, Ottawa Post Office, LAC 3319295.}

The Romanesque-revival facade of the three-story building that faced the canal consisted of massive columns supporting a broken pediment and clock. Above the pediment and clock was a cupola with handsome vases at the corners, topped by a flag pole. Fourteen figureheads representing mythological and historical characters acted as keystones above the first-floor windows. The building had a mansard-style roof. The other sides of the structure had similar features to the front but were plainer. According to the Ottawa Citizen, it was “one of the prettiest public structures in Canada.”

The Post Office occupied the ground floor of the premises. There was a general delivery room and drop-letter boxes for posting letters and 1,160 lock-letter boxes in three sizes that could be rented by the public for $1.50, $3.50, and $6.00 annually. There were wickets for receiving parcels, a registered letters office near the Wellington Street entrance, and a money order office and savings bank on the south side. There was also a postmaster’s office as well as bedrooms for postal clerks, and space for mail sorting apparatus. When the new Post Office opened, the upper-story rooms were still unfinished but were later occupied by other government agencies, including the Railway Mail Service and the Ottawa River Works department.

In early 1904, a major fire gutted the upper floors of the post office building. It began at about 7:45 pm on the night of 4 January, starting in the attic. The fire was most likely caused by an electrical short circuit in the motor that powered the fans in the building’s ventilation system. Fire fighters had a difficult time extinguishing the blaze owing to the building’s “regular forest of rafters and woodwork,” and the bitter cold. The temperature hovered around -20° Fahrenheit. To fight the blaze, the Jubilee fire engine, stationed on Sparks Street in front of the Russell House Hotel, supplied two streams of water. The Victoria fire engine, stationed on Wellington Street, supplied another three streams. Three more streams of water played over the front of the building.

^{Post Office after the Fire, January 1904, Library and Archives Canada, 3381939}

Coincidently, less than one month earlier, the chief architect of public works had inspected the building and had raised concerns about the risk of fire and the likely difficulty in extinguishing a blaze located in the upper portion of the building. Such fears were clearly well founded.

Initially, dense smoke poured out of the upper story windows and tower. There was no sign of flames, though the fire was working its way through the inner walls and dry wooden floors. The offices of the Railway Mail Service and Ottawa River Works located in the roof story were destroyed, as were the offices of Inland Revenue on the floor below. The ground floor Post Office and Customs’ bonded warehouse escaped fire damage but were completely flooded.

Despite the obvious risks, postal and internal revenue workers laboured feverishly to remove the mail and other valuables from the building. They also covered equipment and supplies with tarpaulins to protect them from the torrents of water cascading down from the roof and upper storeys. Goods in the Customs’ bonded warehouse were also saved, including a $6,000 switchboard newly imported by Thomas Ahearn and Warren Soper, and a valuable instrument owned by the Dominion Observatory.

The residents of the upper floors were less fortunate. The contents of the Ottawa River Works’ offices were destroyed, as was a library. The records of the Railway Mail Service were also completely ruined.

Amazingly, the outward-bound mail service to Toronto left Ottawa as if nothing had happened. Sleighs were used to send mail to be transported to the House of Commons post office for processing. Other parliamentary facilities were also pressed into temporary service. The Office of the Accountant became the money order branch, the telegraph offices were used by the city letter carriers, while the press rooms became the office of the Railway Mail Service. Room 16, otherwise the government caucus room, temporarily became the Post Office’s sorting room.

Thousands of spectators lined both Sappers’ and the Dufferin bridges to watch the unfolding drama despite the bitter cold. Reportedly, people were not terribly sympathetic. A frequent comment was that Ottawa needed a new post office. Owing to the extreme cold, firefighters had to take frequent breaks at the nearby Russell House Hotel to warm up and, in some cases, cut off frozen mittens. Ottawa’s Mayor Cook supplied hot coffee to the half-frozen firemen.

^{Post Card of the rebuilt Post Office, circa 1910, Lost Ottawa}

The fire was finally put out around 3:30am the next morning but not before there was some concern that it might spread to neighbouring buildings. When the fire finally broke through the roof of the post office building, sending up a plume of sparks, Xavier St. Jacques, the manager of the nearby Russell House Hotel, brought out his house hose, and had water sprayed over the sides and roof of his hotel.

At dawn, Ottawa residents woke to quite the spectacle. The gutted building was described as an “ice palace” with the surrounding streets covered with several feet of ice.

^{Backside view of the Ottawa Post Station, circa 1929, Library and Archives Canada, 3358842. This view gives a good sense of the location of the Post Office beside the Canal relative to the Chateau Laurier Hotel on the left.}

Despite the considerable damage to the building—loses were estimated at $40,000—the federal government decided to renovate and rebuild rather than replace it. The government also took the opportunity to enlarge the building by adding another floor in the same architectural style.  The cost was approximately $160,000. Labouring around the clock, 128 workmen enabled the Post Office to reopen on the ground floor in less than four weeks after the fire. The interior of the newly refurbished premises was hardly recognizable. Meanwhile, work proceeded on rebuilding the upper floors. Once completed, the Inland Revenue, Customs and the Railway Mail Service returned to their new offices in the enlarged and improved Post Office building.

A generation later, in early 1938, the old Post Office building was demolished to make way for the construction of the War Memorial. With the new Ottawa postal station still under construction at the corner of Sparks and Wellington Streets, postal workers reported for duty at temporary offices in the Victoria Building located at the corner of Wellington and O’Connor Streets.

Sources:

Ottawa Citizen, 1876. “The New Post Office,” 1 May.

——————, 1904. “Post Office Fire, 5 January.

——————, 1904. “Splendid Work,” 5 January.

——————, 1904. “Post Office Plans,” 7 January.

—————–, 1904. “Brigade Enquiry Open,” 11 February.

—————–, 1904. “Post Office Plans,” 6 February.

—————–, 1904. “City Post Office,” 14 May.

—————–, 1904. “Pauper Immigration,” 1 June.

—————–, 1938. “Moving Fixtures From Post Office,” 21 March.

—————–, 1938. “The Post Office,” 14 April.

Ottawa Journal, 1904. “Fire Destroys Ottawa Post Office In The Intense Cold,” 5 January.

——————-, 1904. “City Post Office, 7 June.

The Arrival of Cable Television

21 April 1962

When it comes to television viewing, we are spoiled with choice. There are six English-language networks in Canada—CBC, CTV, Global, Citytv, CTV2, and Yes TV—and three French-language networks—Radio Canada, TVA, and Noovo. In addition to these networks, which are available in most major urban centres, we can also watch the big American networks—CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS—and a host of specialized Canadian and foreign channels that provide tailored programming from news, to sports, to erotica, all delivered to your living room, or, ahem, bedroom, courtesy of the cable television companies such as Rogers, Bell, Shaw and Cogeco. Additionally, millions of viewers are attracted to the offerings of on-line entertainment and news providers, such as YouTube, Netflix, Google TV, Hulu, Prime, BritBox and the Disney Channel. For those seeking serious fare, there’s the likes of the Curiosity Channel and Wondrium. The list goes on, with something for all ages and tastes.

Things were very different at the beginning of the 1960s. In our parents’ generation, most just received English and French CBC. Those lucky to live in a major urban centre, such as Ottawa, also received the private CTV network that opened for business in 1961. As well, some fortunate people living close to the US frontier could pick up US television signals from border stations. All of this was achieved using “bunny ears” antennae, which sat on the top of a television set, or an external TV antenna, typically attached to the chimney, the higher point of the house, to improve signal reception. Those of a certain age might remember the endless, subtle fine-tuning necessary to reduce the “snow” that obscured the television image. Of course, all shows were in black and white. Colour television was still a few years off.

Change began with the introduction of cable television, or community antenna television as it was called in the early 1960s. Community antenna television was provided by a private company that built a huge antenna close to an urban area that could pick up distant television signals. The signals were then distributed to private homes using coaxial cables for a small, monthly charge. This service was distinct from Pay TV which was also being promoted at this time. With Pay TV, which was also delivered by cable, subscribers purchased new movies and sporting events unavailable elsewhere by putting coins in a box attached to their set that unscrambled the television signal.

Community antenna television actually dated from the 1940s and 1950s when rural communities that couldn’t pick up distant television signals in the conventional way banded together to build a sufficiently high antenna that could. The television signal was then transmitted to homes via cable. But it was in the early 1960s that cable television became available in urban communities. This became increasingly necessary owning to the construction of tall buildings that obstructed over-air television signals. The first community antenna television company to operate in the Ottawa area was Interprovincial Cablevision that provided cable television services to residents of Hull, Quebec.

^{Advertisement for Cable Television, Ottawa Citizen, 21 April 1962.}

On 21 April 1962, the company advertised in the Ottawa Citizen “Cablevision is Here!” In addition to the three local television stations—CBOT (CBC), CBOFT (Radio Canada) and CJOH (CTV), subscribers could receive WCNY (a CBS affiliate at the time) from Watertown, New York, CJSS (CBC) from Cornwall, as well as Montreal stations CFTM (TVA) and CFCF (CTV). The cost of this cable service was $4.00 per month. Within three years, there were more than 5,000 cable subscribers in Hull.

Cable television came to residents of Nepean Township in late 1964 when Ottawa Cablevision began offering the service, starting with the Lynwood Village neighbourhood, followed by Manordale. In addition to the three Ottawa-based stations, Ottawa Cablevision transmitted television signals from Watertown, Kingston and Montreal for $5 per month. It also provided a number of FM radio stations. Cable television was an instant hit. By July 1965, more than 30 per cent of people owing televisions in Nepean Township had subscribed to Ottawa Cablevision.

In comparison to Hull or Nepean, cable television was relatively slow in coming to Ottawa. And when it finally did, it arrived with considerable drama, including charges of improper dealing. The Ottawa Journal said that cable television was “becoming the hottest potato” of Mayor Reid’s administration.

The delivery of cable television had actually been proposed for Ottawa as early as 1962, when local sports promoter and jeweller, Howard Darwin, approached the city with the idea. Darwin proposed that a community antenna be constructed outside of the city on high ground, and, when operational, would bring in five to six new channels to subscribers.

Darwin’s proposal went nowhere, foundering on Ottawa Hydro’s unwillingness to allow him to string the cables needed to supply the service on the hydro poles, and a lack of support from Ottawa’s city hall. Mayor Charlotte Whitton opposed to the idea, saying that the hydro poles had been erected for a public utility, not for a commercial enterprise. She was also concerned that stringing more wires on the hydro poles would delay the city’s program of burying wires. Moreover, it appeared that her concerns about creating a monopoly trumped the provision of cable television to the city.

This remained the status quo until Whitton vacated the mayor’s chair in 1964. Her successor, Donald Reid, was sympathetic to cable television. By this point, Ottawa must have looked increasingly backward, and public pressure for more television choice was rising. However, Ottawa Hydro remained opposed to any company using its poles. It took considerable pressure from Ottawa’s city council before the utility relented. Even then, there were further delays as the city wanted time for the passage of a private bill in the Ontario legislature to clarify its right to regulate cable television in its jurisdiction and tax it, draft a city by-law, and seek and study competing bids to provide the service.

Meanwhile, others were also becoming concerned about the implications of the widespread adoption of cable television. The Ottawa Rough Riders Football club was fearful that cable television would be a way for fans to circumvent the 75-mile radius black-out zone for games, leading to a loss of revenues. The Board of Broadcast Governors, the federal television regulator, was also concerned that cable television companies could circumvent Canadian content rules and wanted to regulate them. At that time, cable companies came under the Ministry of Transport, and were only required to pay a $25 licence fee to erect a community television antenna.

In October 1965, the Ottawa City Council was finally ready to act, and announced in local newspapers that it would accept bidders for a franchise to deliver cable television service to Ottawa, either to the whole city or to the eastern or western halves of the city, the dividing line being Bank Street. The deadline for submissions, initially set for early December, was extended to early January 1966. Four firms submitted bids: Ottawa Cablevision, which was already operating in Nepean; Skyline Cablevision; Capital Telecable, later known as the Great West Cable Company; and the Bytown Cable Company.

All of the competing companies offered similar cable packages. In addition to the three local channels, each promised to provide eight or nine additional channels, including the major US networks, picking up signals from Syracuse, Plattsburgh, Watertown or Burlington, as well as Canadian stations out of Montreal, Kingston and Pembroke. They also committed to provide free cable service to schools and hospitals. As well, most promised to provide a range of FM radio stations. All bidders said they would make available educational channels for schools, and provide colour television reception. Installation of cable in homes would be free. Ottawa Cablevision and Skyline Cablevision said the monthly fee would be $5 per month. Bytown Cablevision said their monthly fee would be $4.75 per month if it won the contract for the entire city, and $4.95 per month if it won the rights for half of the city. The Great Eastern Cable Company reportedly did not include the cost of its package in its submission. However, it indicated that it would be willing to pay more than 3 per cent of gross revenues to the city should it win a franchise, although payments would be based on a sliding scale depending on the number of subscribers.

Initially, the City’s Board of Control said that it would hire DCF Systems of Toronto, a subsidiary of deHaviland Aircraft, to evaluate the bids and make recommendations. However, this proposal set off a wave of complaints from certain members of city council who claimed that the consultants were connected in some way to one of the bidders. Despite vigorous denials from DCF Systems, the motion to hire the firm was withdrawn. After asking the federal government for advice on possible consultants, and receiving an unhelpfully long list of thirty-one names, city council asked the National Research Council if it would evaluate the submissions. The NRC declined, saying it wasn’t in the business of competing with private enterprise. Left with few other alternatives, the mayor decided to leave the decision up to an in-house technical committee comprised of the city’s solicitor, the finance commissioner and the works director.

In late June 1966, the Board of Control decided to split the city into two franchises and selected Ottawa Cablevision to supply cable services to the western half of the city and Skyline Cablevision for the eastern portion. The reason to divide the city into two franchises was based on the dubious rationale that this would provide a measure of competition. How this competition was to occur was not apparent as the two firms were given exclusive franchises over their respective territories, and were required to provide an identical service. The Board of Control chose Ottawa Cablevision and Skyline Cablevision over competing bids from Bytown Cablevision and the Great West Cable Company on the grounds that the winning companies would provide the best service. There was no further public explanation.

The fact that Ottawa Cablevision was selected came as no surprise as it was already providing such services to Nepean. Consequently, it was in a position to quickly expand in western Ottawa, its franchise territory. Far more controversial was the selection of Skyline Cablevision as the supplier of cable services to the eastern half of the city. A dissenter alderman said that Skyline had not been truthful when it claimed that it was a 100 per cent Canadian company as the US Paramount Pictures and Britain’s Grenada TV were part owners of the company. (Bytown Cablevision was itself partially owned by the Columbia Broadcasting System.) If it was not truthful here, what else was it hiding? argued the alderman. He also noted that two thirds of the aldermen from the eastern half of Ottawa opposed the Skyline bid. Consequently, the western half of the city was forcing the eastern half to accept a company it didn’t want.

Another councillor said the selection process had been “highly irregular” since senior civic department heads had not been consulted, and that the city had not followed its usual policy of accepting the lowest bid (i.e., that of Bytown Cablevision). As an aside, Bytown Cablevision had won the right to provide cable television to neighbouring Gloucester. Following a statement by Mayor Reid regarding the necessity of having two firms that had adequate financial resources, Bytown Cablevision, which reportedly had $3 million in capital, announced it was willing to post a $1 million performance bond should it receive a franchise.

This was not enough. In early July 1966, Ottawa city council voted 11-9 against revisiting the bids for the franchise for the eastern half of the city, thus confirming Skyline as the winning company.

Bytown Cablevision immediately filed an injunction that threatened to derail the launch of cable television in Ottawa. However, a month later, Bytown Cablevision dropped its legal challenge. There was no public explanation for the company’s change of heart. The firm also transferred its Gloucester franchise to Skyline Cablevision.

With the departure of Bytown Cablevision from the scene, the way was finally cleared for the introduction of cable television into Ottawa. Owing to the need to string wires to deliver the service, it was slow going in some neighbourhoods. As expected, Ottawa Cablevision moved quickly to extend services to Copeland Park by the end of October 1966 and to Bel Air Park by end-November. Service was later extended the following year through the rest of the western part of the city. With neighbourhoods, one after the other, being hooked up to cable television, the Ottawa Citizen’s “TV Weekly” began to report on shows broadcast by the new cable stations at the end of 1966.

It took somewhat longer for Skyline to provide service for the eastern part of Ottawa. It started first with the Sandy Hill neighbourhood in February 1967, and subsequently other neighbourhoods, including in Vanier, then called Eastview. While Skyline’s tower and antenna were being manufactured in Montreal, the Ottawa Journal reported that a cable had been run from Hull across the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge to bring service to Ottawa, using the facilities of Laurentian Cablevision, the successor cable company to the original Interprovincial Cablevision that had inaugurated cable service in the Ottawa region.

Since these early days, the cable television industry has changed dramatically both in Ottawa and Canada, and indeed the world, owing in large part to technological change, such as the introduction of fibre optic cables, satellite transmission and digital signals. Ottawa Cablevision and Skyline Cablevision are long gone, swallowed by telecommunication giants Rogers and BCE (Bell).  The entire Canadian entertainment and telecommunications industry is now regulated by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, the successor institution to the Board of Broadcast Governors.

Looking narrowly at the cable television segment of the market, the industry has been on a slow but steady decline in recent years as subscribers “cut the cord” in favour of internet-based entertainment options which can be viewed on televisions, computers, and held-held devices. According to a recent study (2020), almost three million Canadian households dropped their cable television subscription or never purchased the service between 2012 and 2020. The trend is also rising with 520,000 Canadian households turning up their noses at cable television in 2020 alone. The same is true in the United States where major cable providers collectively lost roughly 6 million customers annually from 2012 to 2021.

Sources:

Cook, Sam, 2022. “Cord Cutting Statistics and Trends in 2022,” comparitech, 5 April.

Lavers, Daphne, 2011. “History of Cable Television,” History of Canadian Broadcasting, September.

Ottawa Citizen, 1962. “City Hydro Blocking ‘Cable TV,’” 19 January.

——————, 1962. “Nation’s TV Settles Down To New Era of Expansion,” 25 July.

——————, 1962. “Televiews,” by Bob Gardiner, 15 November.

——————, 1963. “City won’t rush into cable TV,” 24 May.

——————, 1964. “Controls for cable television,” 7 April.

——————, 1965. “City gets tough with Hydro,” 18 May.

——————, 1965. “City to get cable TV maybe by year-end,” 8 July.

—————–, 1965. “Cable TV for Ottawa: history and prospects,” 17 July.

——————, 1965. “Notice,” 6 October.

——————, 1966. “Consultants deny TV interest; controllers face censure motion,” 2 February.

——————, 1966. “Board of Control weights next step on cable TV,” 10 February.

——————, 1966. “NRC refuses to help city on cable TV,” 10 March.

——————, 1966. “2 firms win cable TV,” 16 June.

——————, 1966. “The Cable TV decision,” 21 June.

——————, 1966. “Skyline awarded contract to supply east cable TV,” 5 July.

——————, 1966. “Cable TV firm drops injunction,” 16 August.

——————, 1966. “Franchise for cable TV transferred to Skyline,” 18 December.

——————, 1966. “Something new is being added,” 31 Decembe.

Ottawa Journal, 1962. “Pay TV Proposal Sent to Hydro for Study,” 9 January.

——————-, 1964. “Gloucester Okays Cable Television,” 15 December.

——————-, 1965. “Forecast Cable TV In a Year,” 12 May.

——————-, 1965. “Television by Cable,” 19 July.

——————-, 1966. City Gets Four Cable TV Bids,” 4 January.

——————-, 1966. “Cable TV Decision In Month?” 27 January.

——————-, 1966. “Cable TV Bids Back in Shelf,” 24 February.

——————-, 1966. “Clear Way For Cabe TV,” 8 March.

——————-, 1966. “City opens four bids on cable TV,” 19 April.

——————-, 1966. “Which of These Four Will Get Ottawa Cable TV Franchise?” 20 April.

——————-, 1966. “Cable TV Storm Erupts in Board,” 20 June.

——————-, 1966. “Cable TV Picture Fuzzy After Council Session,” 21 June.

——————-, 1966. “Cable TV Expected by January,” 13 September.

——————-, 1967. “Cable Television 18 Months Away,” 18 January.

Stoll, Julia, 2021. “Number of TV cord cutter/cord never households in Canada, 2012-2020,” statista, 7 September.

The Byward Market in Flames

28 April 1874 and 2 January 1957

Ottawa’s Byward Market is one of the capital’s top attractions for both residents and tourists. Home to the oldest and largest farmers’ market in the city, the streets surrounding the main market building host a myriad of restaurants and chic bars intermingled with trendy shops and specialty stores. Long a Francophone, working-class, residential area as well as commercial district, the market area has in recent years begun to attract the well-heeled looking for residences in close proximity to work as well as to the vibrant nightlife that is here on offer. The district is also a draw for the city’s less fortunate with shelters for the homeless close by. This combination of wealth and poverty and old buildings cheek by jowl with glitzy, new condominiums gives the neighbourhood an eclectic, edgy vibe.

While some of its buildings date back to the mid-nineteenth century, most structures in the Byward Market neighbourhood are newer, owing to recurring fires that have beset the area over the decades. Indeed, the current market building only dates to 1926, when the previous market building was destroyed by fire.

^{Newspaper clipping, 2 May 1874, Ottawa Citizen.}

There had been at least two major conflagrations that destroyed entire blocks of homes and stores. The first broke out early in the morning of Tuesday, 28 April 1874. It was to be one of the most destructive fires every to occur in Ottawa up to that point, causing in excess of $100,000 in damages, a huge sum of money in those days. Insurance covered only a portion of the losses.

The fire encompassed more than an entire city block, extending from the market square at York Street to Clarence Street to Sussex Street. Destroyed on the west side of the market square were a row of wooden stalls and shops owned by the City of Ottawa and leased to a number of businesses. One of those businesses was a fish shop owned by Moise Lapointe. The family-owned business fortunately survived the blaze, and continues to operate in the Market to this very day.

Other buildings burnt to the ground included the City Hotel, the Smith’s block, the Henry Block, the McCann Block, and the Gibson building. Mr. T. Forfar’s agricultural implement warehouse was lost, as was a furniture store, a grocer located in the Gibson building, a fruit store in the McCann Block and Mr. A.B. Macdonald’s Auction and Commission Rooms which were full of furniture at the time ready to be auctioned off. Godbout’s Tailor and Lamontagne’s Jewellery, both located in the nearby Lyon Building, were damaged. Fortunately, no one was killed in the fire though there several individuals were hurt by falling debris or received burns. Many were left homeless.

The fire was fanned by a strong northerly wind that whipped sparks and cinders over adjacent blocks. According to the Ottawa Citizen, for a time, people feared that the entire Lower Town business district would go up in flames. Residents in the affected area began throwing personal belongings and furniture out into street. Neighbour merchants did likewise in attempts to save their stock. York and Clarence Streets were soon clogged with these effects. Reportedly, costly pianos stood side by side with old household stoves, some supposedly still lit with fires inside them. Their owners ranged in age “from helpless infancy to worn out old age.”

There was considerable criticism of the response of the Ottawa Fire Brigade under Chief Young. It took a long time before the firemen were able to bring their horse-drawn, steam engine, the “Conqueror,” to the scene of the fire despite the short distance from the fire station. There were also delays in getting the hoses into action with the result that the firemen didn’t really begin to fight the blaze until an hour after the alarm was sounded. The Citizen opined that the buildings on the south side of York Street might have been saved had there been better fire management.

When the hoses were finally brought into play, water pressure was lost owing to leaks in the hoses. One leak was so powerful that a spray of water was sent fifteen feet high into the air, with gallons of water wasted down the drains. None of the hoses were able to send streams of water over the roofs of the burning buildings.

There were other problems. The water level in the By-Wash, which led from the Rideau Canal through the market area towards the Rideau River and was the source of water to fight the fire, was low. A quick-thinking engineer built a dam made using an old door to raise the water level. Even so, gravel clogged up the suction pipe. There was also insufficient coal on hand to power the “Conqueror.”

Fortunately, the volunteer Chaudière Fire Company and its “Union” steam engine came to help the Ottawa Fire Brigade. The Citizen causticallynoted that they had no leaking hoses.

An inquest was held a few days later in Starr’s Hotel on Clarence Street. (This was the same hotel/tavern where Patrick James Whelan, the man executed for assassinating Thomas D’Arcy McGee, had been arrested in 1868.) The fire began in a pile of straw in a shed behind the Cardinal Hotel—another tavern—owned by Felix Cardinal to the rear of the McCann Block. The Cardinal family lived above. The alarm was sounded by Felix Cardinal Junior.  The junior Cardinal, who was a heavy drinker, had fallen asleep in the downstairs bar the previous night, after having downed four or five glasses of whiskey. Sometime before 5:00am, he awoke and spotted a fire in the back stable area. He called out to his father, and the two of them attempted to extinguish the blaze and save their horse. In the process, the senior Cardinal’s hands were badly burnt. Neither of the two Cardinals knew the cause of the blaze.

Mr and Mrs John Hurley, the neighbours to the rear of the Cardinal Hotel, testified seeing Felix Cardinal trying to extinguish a fire by raking the straw out into the yard, but that only made the fire worse. John Hurley, while not knowing the cause of the fire, alluded to regular fights and quarrels in the Cardinal household and said that he typically slept in his clothes in order to be ready in case there was a fire. However, while there had been a fight the night before the blaze, all had been quiet with no lights showing when he saw the fire.

The inquest never resolved the cause of the fire, beyond concluding that it started in Felix Cardinal’s shed. The Ottawa Fire Brigade was highly criticized, with the inquest saying that it had insufficient men to attend to the hoses and that it was not organized efficiently. In addition, the Brigade had not taken steps to ensure the adequacy of water in the By-Wash and that no measures had been taken to keep sand and gravel away from the suction pipe. The inquest’s jury found that Chief Young was either too relaxed in taking his responsibilities, or did not have the necessary authority to fulfill his duties as Fire Chief. The jury also censured the City’s Light and Fire Committee for not organizing a sufficient force to operate the steam engine efficiently. The jury furthermore recommended the prohibition of erecting wooden sheds behind buildings on the principal streets of Ottawa.

^{The aftermath of the disastrous 2 January 1957 blaze in the Byward Market neighbourhood, City of Ottawa Archives}

Another huge fire struck the Byward Market area on 2 January 1957, consuming the block between Clarence Street in the south to Murray Street to the north, between Sussex and Parent Streets, overlapping the site of the 1874 conflagration. The1957 fire started in the elevator shaft of the Book Unit and Typewriter Unit of the Department of Printing and Stationery, located at 47 Clarence Street. It was discovered shortly before 6:30 am by Gordon Low, a member of the cleaning staff in the building. Yvon Saumier of Navan, who was having an early morning coffee in the restaurant at the Chez Lucien Hotel at the corner of Clarence Street and Parent Avenue heard a blast and saw flames shooting through the roof of the government building. With a stiff north-westerly breeze blowing, the fire quickly spread through neighbouring buildings, eating its way along Clarence and Murray Streets toward Parent Avenue, leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. Flames shot up some 150 feet in the air. Scantily clad residents from area homes and apartments fled into the streets, shivering from the cold, clutching whatever they could rescue with them.

In addition to the government building, lost in the blaze were the Victoria Hotel, the 60-room Chez Lucien Hotel, which had been renovated two years earlier for $200,000, two apartment buildings, several rooming houses, Pioneer Distributing on Murray Street, Camille Methot’s barber shop, the Soublière Supply Company, Beaudry’s Confectionary, and Aline’s Dress Shop. Total losses were in excess of $1 million and roughly 200 people were left homeless. The Chez Lucien Hotel was later rebuilt.

More than three hundred firefighters fought the blaze, including off-duty men and firemen from Hull. Tackling the fire was made more difficult by the bone-chilling cold. It was -23 degrees Celsius that night, with the wind chill considerably lower. Ice was everywhere, making the footing dangerous. Hoses quickly froze as the firemen moved from hydrant to hydrant down the street as they chased the fire. Downed hydro wires lying in the streets were another hazard.

The Sisters of Joan of Arc, whose convent stood at the corner of Clarence and Sussex Streets, opened an emergency kitchen serving hot soup, coffee, doughnuts and toast with jam to weary firefighters and the homeless. The Salvation Army also set up a booth providing hot drinks. Additionally, a coffee kitchen was set up across from the Victoria Hotel on Murray Street at the John C. Preston Office Equipment Company. When firemen came in with frozen mitts, one of the workers in the company who was distributing refreshments, called A.J. Freiman’s, the big department store on Rideau Street. Within minutes, two large bags full of heavy, cowhide mitts were delivered for the firemen.

Given the size of the blaze and its intensity, it was surprising that there were no fatalities. Three firemen were hurt when a wall fell onto them. Two women were also temporarily hospitalized due to shock; one had a mild heart attack.

The city stepped in to provide assistance for the homeless. A week later, a fire victims’ benefit was held at the Français Theatre, sponsored by the East Ottawa Municipal Association. This included variety acts, and a full-length colour feature movie donated by Robert Maynard, the owner of the cinema. The film was a US civil war epic titled Great Day in the Morning, starring Virginia Mayo and Robert Stack. A “silver” collection was held, collecting $300 from the crowd of 500 cinema goers.

Despite the fire, the Byward Market, while physically altered, endured.

Sources:

Ottawa Citizen, 1874. “Destructive Conflagration,” 28 April.

——————, 1874. “Fire Investigation,” 2 May.

——————, 1874. “Fire Investigation,” 4 May.

—————-, 1957. “$1,000,000 Blaze,” 2 January.

—————-, 1957. “City Set To Provide Aid To Fire Homeless—Nelms,” 3 January.

—————-, 1957. “Fire Victims Benefit Show,” 11 January.

—————-, 1957. “200 Homeless In Ottawa Fire,” 2 January.

Thanksgiving

3 January 1850, 15 April 1872 and 6 November 1879

Thanksgiving is celebrated in Canada on the second Monday of October. Traditionally, it is the time to give thanks to the Almighty for the year’s harvest. And, indeed, it is still so celebrated in homes and churches across the country. However, in today’s secular times, the religious aspect of the holiday has diminished. Instead, the long Thanksgiving weekend provides a wonderful opportunity for family get-togethers between the Labour Day weekend in early September and the Christmas and Boxing Day holidays in December. For many Canadians, the Thanksgiving weekend is also traditionally the time for closing up cottages and camps for the winter, turning off their water, draining the pipes and clearing out any food in pantries that might attract both little and big critters.  

^{Turkey farm near Ottawa, circa 1920, Library and Archives Canada, 3360573.}

The Canadian Thanksgiving shares the same rituals and traditions as its American counterpart. Both holidays focus on family, food, and sports. The customary Thanksgiving feast in both countries features turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce with pumpkin pie for dessert. However, the Canadian holiday is roughly six weeks before the American Thanksgiving, consistent with its earlier harvest season.

While most people, at least in North America, are somewhat familiar with the story of the first American Thanksgiving (which it wasn’t) when pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts and members of the Wampanoag First Nation sat down to celebrate a bountiful harvest in the autumn of 1621, the first thanksgiving in the territory that would later become known as Canada is less well known. It had nothing to do with the harvest but rather refers to the thanks given to the Almighty by the British explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew for their safe arrival in 1578 in what is now Frobisher Bay in Nunavut. This occurred forty-three years before the Pilgrims broke bread with their Indigenous neighbours.

^{Turkey and cranberry sauce, already a tradition in 1907, Ottawa Journal, 30 October 1907.}

In more modern times, three dates stand out in the history of Canadian Thanksgiving, and none of them are in October. These are 3 January 1850, 15 April 1872 and 6 November 1879. Only the last is related to giving thanks for the harvest.

The first refers to a Royal Proclamation by Lord Elgin, the Governor General of the Province of Canada, issued in mid-December 1849, announcing that Thursday, 3 January 1850 would be a day of “General Thanksgiving to Almighty God” to thank Him for his mercies, especially in delivering Canadians from “the grievous disease [cholera] which many places in the Province had been lately visited.”   

The announcement came after press reports of a comparable holiday recommended that year by US President Taylor. The Globe newspaper noted approvingly that the president had “recommended” rather than “ordered” the public to celebrate the event as a recommendation was consistent with religious freedom whereas a command was not. However, it added that this formula was “marvellous proof of republican selfishness to guard the privileged class with scrupulosity against the least encroachment of arbitrary power and yet suffer the bondage of the most foul mental and physical slavery to rest upon millions.” It added “in a country where there is extensive domestic slavery it is strangely inconsistent.”

Businesses throughout the Province of Canada were closed on that cold January Thanksgiving Day, with special services held in churches. According to the Globe, services were well attended “as on a Sabbath,” and sermons were given that were appropriate to the occasion. Unfortunately, a report on how Ottawa celebrated that first Thanksgiving is not available.

While days of Thanksgiving were subsequently sporadically organized by colonial governments in British North America, the first official Dominion-wide Thanksgiving Day was held on Monday, 15 April 1872. The occasion was to give thanks for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, from a serious bout of typhus that he had contracted while staying as a guest at country estate in North Yorkshire. Another guest at the estate had died from the disease, and for a time, there were serious concerns about whether the prince would recover. Typhus was the disease that had killed his father, Prince Albert, ten years earlier.

In Britain, a national day of Thanksgiving had been called for 27 February 1872. But in Canada, only New Brunswick had followed suit, much to the embarrassment of many. The Ottawa Daily Citizen opined that “this great national event, in which all British subjects must be deeply concerned, has been allowed to pass unhonored and forgotten.” This oversight was quickly rectified.

On 15 April 1872, commerce was suspended across Canada, including in Ottawa, with Divine services held to thank God for the Prince’s deliverance. The Citizen wrote: The loyalty of the Canadian people, which only requires an event of this kind to call forth an enthusiastic response, found fitting expression in every pulpit in the city, and in joining prayer of thanksgiving for the recovery of the Prince of Wales the people of the Dominion felt that they were welding another link of love to bind them to the altar and the throne of their forefathers.”

All denominations held services. The Methodists met together at the Metcalfe Street Church. The Presbyterians prayed in the Bank Street Church, while the Roman Catholics met at Notre Dame Cathedral. Governor General Lord Lisgar and his wife celebrated at the Bishop’s Chapel, which held a joint service with the congregation of Christ’s Church. The Bishop’s Chapel, located at the corner of Somerset and Elgin Streets, became known as the Church of St. John the Evangelist in 1874. The Garrison Artillery supplied the Governor General’s honour guard and a band. The Bishop of Ontario also attended the service.

The first, Canada-wide, harvest Thanksgiving Day occurred on Thursday, 6 November 1879 with that day set aside by the Governor in Council as a day of general thanksgiving. The proclamation urged every province in the Confederation to unite “in special prayer and praise for the many mercies vouchsafed during the past year” as an expression of the nation’s gratitude.

^{Thanksgiving sales, another tradition, Ottawa Citizen, 10 October 1890.}

In Ottawa, principal places of business were closed and the streets “wore a holiday appearance, according to the Ottawa Daily Citizen. There were special Thanksgiving services in all Protestant churches with appropriate sermons. Attendance was considered “unusually large.”

At St. Andrew’s, Rev. Gordon’s sermon drew upon Psalm 136 “O, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.” He said that the congregation was united with “our fellow countrymen from the Atlantic to Pacific.”

At Christ’s Church, the venerable Archdeacon Lauder urged his congregation “to beware the great sin of ingratitude.” The Archdeacon said that the poor were poor because God caused them to be poor for some reason of His own. (This harsh viewpoint was very common at this time.) He argued that there were two types of poor—the “strolling begging poor” and the “silent suffering poor who endure almost to death before they ask [for help].” Lauder had little sympathy for the first kind. The collection for the day was given to the Ladies Benevolent Society for the relief of the poor of the parish. Lauder assured his listeners that monies would not be spent on people until they had been visited and enquiries made into why they were poor.

Rev. Dr. Wood of the Congressional Church expressed gratitude for Canada’s bountiful harvest. He also said that the country had the blessing of peace, good governance, free schools, free press, reviving commerce, and general progress. The collection was raised for the Protestant Hospital.

Rev. Mr. Cameron of the Baptist Tabernacle contended that prosperity of a Christian nation is only guaranteed by being faithful to God. The recent five years of “hard times” experienced by Christian nations was due to people forgetting that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” Fortunately, God’s lesson—the hard times—was nearly over and prosperity would soon return. He added that Canadians had many reasons to be thankful, including a bountiful harvest, the opening of the Northwest [to the detriment of Indigenous peoples living there, one should note], prospects for returning prosperity, Canada being in a quiet corner of the British Empire, and for being alive to celebrate Thanksgiving. Like the Congressional Church, the Tabernacle’s collection was donated to the Protestant Hospital.

One notable absence among the denominations celebrating Thanksgiving was the Roman Catholic Church. The new government-announced celebration was not part of the Church’s liturgical calendar. The Feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas, on 29 September, or the Feast of St. Andrew, or Andermass, on 30 November, were already celebrated in many Catholic churches as harvest thanksgivings, depending on where you lived.

For roughly the next twenty years, Canadian Thanksgiving was celebrated on a Thursday in November. In 1899, it was switched to a Thursday in October. Starting in 1908, it was moved to a Monday in October. There was still not fixed day, with each Thanksgiving Day being annually proclaimed by the government.

The switch of month from November to October was generally viewed to be appropriate given the early start of winter in some parts of Canada. The Ottawa Journal opined that the “Dominion Government might remember the tendencies and diversities of its native climes when the date of Thanksgiving is being chosen.” It added that October was almost a winter month in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Northern Ontario. As for choosing a Monday over a Thursday, the Journal didn’t think it would lessen the religious significance of Thanksgiving in Canada. It also argued that choosing a Monday was convenient for people. A three-day weekend made family reunions possible.

After World War I, Thanksgiving was celebrated concurrently with Armistice Day, which was fixed by statute to be the Monday of the week in which 11 November fell. The holiday became known as Remembrance Day. However, in 1931, the two observances were separated, with Thanksgiving Day reverting to the second Monday in October (except in 1935 when Thanksgiving was shifted a week later owing to a general election). The date of the holiday was officially proclaimed annually by the federal government. It wasn’t until 1957 that the holiday was fixed by legislation to be the second Monday in October, thereby obviating the need for the government to make annual proclamations.

Sources:

Canada Gazette, 1849. “A Proclamation,” 15 December.

Canadian Heritage, 2008. Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day.

[The] Globe, 1849. “The Cholera – National Humiliation,” 26 July.

—————, 1849. “National Thanksgiving,” 18 December.

—————, 1850. “The Thanksgiving Day,” 5 January.

Miller, Jennifer, 2018, “The Catholic Tradition of Harvest Feasts at Thanksgiving,” Catholic Culture, 24 November.

Nagy, Alison, 2018. “The History of Thanksgiving in Canada,” Canada’s History, 4 October.

Ottawa Citizen, 1957. “Permanent Dates Given Two Holidays,” 1 February.

Ottawa Daily Citizen, 1872. “The National Thanksgiving in Britain,” 27 February.

————————-, 1872. “The Thanksgiving in England,” 2 March.

————————–, 1872. “Thanksgiving,” 16 April.

————————–, 1879. “Thanksgiving Day,” 8 November.

Ottawa Journal, 1907. “Thanksgiving Day,” 17 September.

——————-, 1909. “Thanksgiving,” 23 October.

The Rolling Stones

24 April 1965

One of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time is undoubtedly The Rolling Stones. Formed in 1962 by Brian Jones (guitar, keyboard, and harmonica), Mick Jagger (lead vocals and harmonica), Keith Richards (guitar and vocals), Charlie Watts (drums,) Bill Wyman (bass guitar) and Ian Stewart (piano), the group is still going strong at time of writing in 2021. Over the years, some of the band’s members have changed, starting with Ian Stewart who dropped out of the group’s official line-up in 1963 to become its road manager though he did subsequently play from time to time until his death in 1985. Brian Jones died in 1969 shortly after being cut from the band, and was replaced by Mick Taylor until he left the group at the end of 1974. (He did, however, rejoin the band for it’s 50^th anniversary shows.) In 1975, Ronnie Wood joined the Stones and has remained with the group ever since. Bill Wyman left in 1993. Despite comings and goings and untimely deaths, the core of the group, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, have been constants since the start.

The Rolling Stones in 1965, left to right, Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, and Keith Richards, Source: Pop Expresso, Original author and source unknown.

Back in the early 1960s, when they were young and fresh faced, the band, along with other British singers and groups such as The Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, Petula Clark, The Kinks, and The Animals, took North America by storm in what would later be called the “British Invasion.” British groups topped the charts in Canada and the United States, and followed up with concert tours that drew thousands of excited teenagers eager to see their idols in the flesh.

The Rolling Stones crossed the Atlantic in early June 1964, with their first American gig in San Bernardino, California, ending their tour two weeks later in New York City. Their second American expedition took place just a few months later that autumn. The group returned to North America in the spring of 1965, starting their tour with stops in Canada—Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto—before heading to the United States.

After playing a one-night gig at the Maurice Richard Arena in Montreal, a show sponsored by CKGM Club 980 and the English promotor and personality “Lord” Tim Hudson, the Stones rolled into Ottawa for a single engagement on 24 April 1965 at the old YM/YWCA Auditorium on Argyle Street. The Stones were brought to the nation’s capital by Treble Clef Productions, a music production company owned by Ottawa-born Harvey Glatt, the noted music promoter, broadcaster, music retailer and record producer. Over the years, Glatt brought to Ottawa an amazing array of international and Canadian music talent, including such luminaries as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Beach Boys, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, and Bob Dylan.

Tickets for the Stones’ show were sold through Treble Clef, Glatt’s music retail outlets located at 104 Bank Street and at 68 Rideau Street. The cost was $2.50 and $3.00 each (approximately $20 and $24, respectively, in 2021 dollars). In the lead up to the performance, the Ottawa Journal held a contest asking the question “Would you like to meet the Rolling Stones?” To qualify, contestants wrote to the newspaper and joined The Journal Swing Club. At the end of the contest, the names of two lucky winners  were drawn at random – Veronica Fosbery and Cathy Waiten.

The concert started at 8:30 pm. The Auditorium, which could seat 10,000 people, was only partially full with roughly 3,400 fans in attendance. The mostly teenaged audience made up for its size with its enthusiasm. The show started with two local folk singers, Nev Wells and Sandy Crawley, performing blues and country and western songs. The couple was followed by J.B. and the Playboys, a very popular group from Montreal, who played a mix of their own tunes and covers of the Beatles’ and other rock group songs. Reportedly, their set ended abruptly when the lead singer, Allan Nicholls, ripped his pants in the middle of one of their songs. (J.B. and The Playboys reunited in 2019 as J.B. and The Playboys 2.0.)

After the intermission, the Ottawa rock group The Esquires, not to be confused by the American rhythm and blues group by the same name, took the stage. Girls danced and swayed to their tunes. The Esquires, which had a national following, had just won the RPM Award, the precursor of the Junos, for best vocal and instrumental group of 1964. During the 1960s, The Esquires opened for other international stars, including the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, and the Dave Clark Five.

Advertisement for The Rolling Stones, Ottawa Citizen, 15 April 1965.

The excitement rose several notches higher when the Stones—Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman—finally appeared. Screaming teenagers rushed toward the stage, pushing back a cordon of eighteen policemen hired for crowd control onto the stage itself. One of the policemen was reportedly bitten on the ankle by one of the fans.

The Ottawa Journal’s headline said it all: “Pandemonium Greets the Rolling Stones.” John Pozner, the master of ceremonies, pleaded with the crowd to return to their seats so that the show could gone on. The Journal complained that the teenagers who had spent their allowance to buy the premium seats had been cheated by those who had rushed forward. Rushing the stage was also dangerous and ridiculous said the Journal reporter. Eventually, sufficient order was restored for the Stones to perform.

Despite being there to cover the concert, neither of Ottawa’s newspapers commented much on the music, beyond complaining that it was raucous and brassy. Both newspapers used quotation marks around the words concert and performance when describing the show, suggesting that in their opinion it was neither a concert nor a performance. They didn’t even comment on what songs were played. Oblique reference is made to only one song—The Last Time—which had been released as a single in Britain two months earlier and was to appear on the Stones’ Out Of Our Heads album.  One could also presume the group played selections from its Now! album which was then the number one pop album in Canada.

Instead of the music, the newspapers focused on the crowd. Wilf Bell, the Citizen reporter, distastefully described the audience as being “as uncontrolled as a jungle rabble,” with teenage girls shaking and trembling at the contortions of the performers, and teenage boys, “many barely recognizable as such with their long hair,” shaking and stamping with the beat. He rhetorically asked This was fun? This was entertainment? before claiming it was mob hysteria and mass mesmerisation. The Journal’s coverage was scarcely better. It too focused its commentary on teenagers who “jumped wildly, waving arms, and imploring the Stones to look at them,” and “in some cases passing out if they got the slightest glance from Britain’s number two group to the Beatles.” It also reported on fights breaking out in the stands before the performance, “in some cases egged on by girls.” The newspaper was, however, impressed by the band’s sang froid, reporting that the Stones played on “not in the least perturbed by the frenzy they sparked.”

The concert ended without serious mishap, though three young men were arrested at the Auditorium after the performance for fighting. Subsequently, a magistrate gave the offending teenagers the choice of a $10 fine or three days in jail. As for the Stones, the Journal reported that four of the five performers successfully exited the stage. However, it claimed that “the fifth, long hair flying, was grabbed by a couple of policemen who mistook him for one of the frantic females.”  

After the concert, Keith Richard, Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger apparently returned to their hotel, while Brian Jones and Bill Wyman went out clubbing.

The staid Château Laurier Hotel was clearly not prepared for the crowds of teenagers that swarmed the hotel in an effort to spot their idols. A hotel doorman needed four stiches to close a cut above his eye early Sunday morning when he was struck by a teenager trying to get into the hotel. A CNR policeman, Constable George Mosiuk, was also hit in the face and knocked to the ground by a young man who had been ejected from the hotel. The assailant was later charged with assaulting a policeman. The hotel’s manager said that he would never have allowed the group to book into the hotel had he known who there were. Apparently, the band had reserved rooms under their own names rather than under the group’s name. The manager also commented that these types of music groups “encourage an unpleasant element among teenagers.”

That Sunday, the morning after their gig at the Auditorium, the Rolling Stones left for Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto for their next and last stop on the Canadian leg of their North American tour. On 2 May, the Stones performed on the Ed Sullivan show for the second time of what would be six appearances. (See The Rolling Stones on The Ed Sullivan Show, 2 May 1965.)

Forty years were to go by before The Rolling Stones returned to the nation’s capital. In late August 2005, the band played in front of 43,000 fans, many middle-aged, at Frank Clair Stadium as part of their “A Bigger Bang” tour. While the rock stars were showing their age, they could still fire up a crowd. The Citizen called their performance “a triumph”—a far different assessment to their first appearance in Ottawa. There was one big difference between the two performances. With Mick Jagger now sporting a knighthood, which he received in 2002, the Stones were no longer the rebel iconoclasts of their earlier days. They had become (horrors) respectable.

Like they did forty years earlier, band members went clubbing while in Ottawa. This time to Zaphod Beeblebrox, the famous nightclub. Keith Richards tried to bum a cigarette from Rachel, the daughter of Ben Weiss, a fellow member of the Historical Society of Ottawa, but he didn’t like her brand. The Stones shot part of the video for their song Streets of Love at Zaphod’s.

In 2019, The Rolling Stones brought their latest “No Filter” tour to North America. Delayed owing to Mick Jagger having to undergo heart surgery, the tour resumed in June of that year following Jagger’s return to health. After playing seventeen extraordinarily successful gigs across the United States, the tour was extended into 2020. However, these later performances were postponed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. No Canadian stops were planned.

Sources:

CBC. 2017. Zaphod Beebelbrox, landmark Ottawa music venue, closing May 14, 3 May.

Classic Rock 101.1, 2018. Flashback: The Rolling Stones Debut on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ 25 October, https://classicrock1011.radio.com/blogs/stoneman/flashback-rolling-stones-debut-ed-sullivan-show.

Gazette (Montreal), 2016. “J.B. and The Playboys: Montreal’s Fab Five,”

J.B. and The Playboys, 2.0, 2019, https://www.jbandtheplayboys.com.

Ottawa Citizen, 1965. “Four Stiches, one punch and a bite follow Stones,” 26 April.

——————, 1965. “Fine 3 youths for fighting,” 26 April.

——————, 1965. “‘Stones’ rock Ottawa,” 26 April.

——————, 1965. “U.K.’s Rolling Stones on Ed Sullivan Show,” 1 May.

——————, 2005. “Stones Rock Ottawa,” 29 August.

——————, 2005. “Streets: Stones’ music reaches across city,” 29 August.

Ottawa Journal, 1965. “Meet the Stones,” 20 March.

——————, 1965. “‘Stones’ In Canada,” 23 April.

——————, 1965. “Pandemonium Greets the Rolling Stones,” 26 April.

——————, 1965. “City Girls Meet Stones,” 26 April.

——————, 1965. “Battle of The Sexes,” 27 April.

Perusse, Bernard, 1965. “Rolling Stones – Here Soon,” Gazette (Montreal), 3 April, https://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/j-b-and-the-playboys-montreals-fab-five.

Robb, Peter, 2017. “Remembering Treble Clef: Harvey and Louise Glatt changed Ottawa’s music scene forever 60 years ago,” Artsfile, 9 November, https://artsfile.ca/remembering-treble-clef-harvey-and-louise-glatt-changed-ottawas-music-scene-forever-60-years-ago/.

The Marbles and Jacks Competitions

21 April 1924

In February 1924, the Ottawa Evening Citizen announced that it would be hosting a marbles and jacks competition for children aged thirteen and under in Ottawa and surrounding towns. Little information was initially provided, except to say that there would be similar competitions held in other Canadian cities, and that city champs would meet in a grant final contest in Toronto to determine the Canadian champions of both games. Prizes would be awarded, and there was no entry fee. Reflective of the sexist times, the marbles competition was strictly for boys and the jacks competition strictly for girls. Similar announcements were made by newspapers in Toronto, Halifax, Hamilton, London, Winnipeg and Edmonton. All were members of the Southam chain of newspapers.

The official rules of both games were published the following month.

The version of marbles to be played was called “Marble in the Hole.” The game was very different from the typical game of marbles where contestants try to knock competitors’ marbles out of a circle drawn on the ground. In Marble in the Hole, a line, called the “rolling line,” is drawn on a flat playing surface ten feet from a hole which is four inches in diameter and three inches deep, shaped like an inverted cone. After determining the order of play, each player gives one of his three marbles to the player going first. The player who goes first, rolls his competitors’ marbles and one of his own simultaneously at the hole from the rolling line. He scores one point for every marble that goes in the hole. Then, stepping over the rolling line, the first player flicks with one finger each marble resting on the ground towards the hole, scoring one additional point for every marble successfully sunk. Should he miss, his turn is over.

The remaining marbles on the ground are picked up and given to the second player who rolls them towards the hole from the rolling line. Like the first player, he scores a point for every marble he gets in the hole. He then steps over the line and attempts to flick the remaining marbles left on the ground into the hole, scoring one point for every marble successfully sunk. Like player number one, the second player’s turn ends when he misses sinking a marble. It is then the third player’s turn. Play continues until all marbles are sunk. This is the end of the first round. Three rounds make a game. Whoever has accumulated the most points at the end of the game is the winner. All marbles are returned to their original owner.

The form of jacks that was played in the competition also differed from the game commonly played. Importantly, there was no ball. Like the marbles game, there were three rounds to a game. The rules were the following: After determining who goes first, the first player takes ten, six-pronged jacks in one hand while sitting or standing. She then drops, rolls, or throws the jacks onto the playing surface. This is called scrambling the jacks. She then picks up one of the ten jacks and tosses it into the air. While the jack is in the air, she picks up one of the jacks on the ground and catches the thrown jack with the same hand before it hits the ground. She repeats this until all the jacks are picked up. This is called “ones.” Each time, the jacks she picks up are put to one side. The competitor then picks up the ten jacks again with one hand and “scrambles” nine of them. Like before, she then tosses the remaining jack in the air, but this time picks up two jacks before the tossed jack hits the ground. She does this until all the jacks are picked up. This is called “twos.” As only nine jacks were scrambled, the remaining single jack is picked up by itself. This process is repeated for “threes,” “fours, “fives” all the way up to “eights.”

Advertisement promoting the marbles and jacks competition, Ottawa Evening Citizen, 16 February, 1924.

Each time, “residual” jacks are picked in the last toss. Then the player takes ten jacks in her hand and tosses one in the air. While the jack is airborne, she places the remaining nine jacks on the ground. Then the tenth jack is tossed again, with the player picking up the nine jacks on the surface with the same hand and catching the tossed jack before it touches the ground.

At any time should a player fail to pick up the right number of jacks, her turn is over. She must re-start the missed level.

The game now gets even more challenging. After completing the above levels, the player then takes the ten jacks in her hand, tosses them up into the air, and catches at least two on the back of her hand. The two or more jacks so caught are then tossed again and the remaining jacks are picked up from the playing surface. If a player is able to catch all ten jacks on the back of her hand, she has scored a ringer. As a reward, the player skips a round.

The winner of the contest is the first player who completes the three rounds of the games with the fewest number of turns.

The Citizen heavily promoted the city’s marbles’ championship over the next two months, exhorting boys to establish marbles’ clubs at their schools, churches and other organizations. The Y.M.C.A. boys’ division began hold training sessions. The newspaper boasted that “the game may soon be as popular as baseball.” It also advertised that it was ready to assist in the formation of marbles clubs across the city and neighbouring communities. Representatives from the newspaper visited schools throughout Ottawa and the valley during recess and lunch hours to interest boys in the game. School clubs were formed with inventive names, like “The Never Misses” and “The Sure Winners” of the Slater Street School, “The Sharpshooters” and “Shamrocks” of St. Patrick’s, and the “York Street Stripes” of the York Street School.

In early March, an exhibition game was held at the Glashan School yard between a Glashan School team and the Cambridge Street School team. The Cambridge boys won 16-14 before a large gallery of young marbles enthusiasts. The match was filmed as a learning aid for others. A month later, two St. Patrick’s teams, the “Tigers” and the “Sharpshooters” took on two Slater Street School teams, the” Never Misses” and the “Pickups.” In the finals, the “Never Misses” beat the “Tigers” twenty-one points to nine.

While the Citizen reported daily on progress made in organizing marbles clubs and the exhibition games, it was virtually silent on the jacks tournaments. The only comment it made was that interest among girls for the jacks competition was less than it was among boys for the marbles competition.  

Preliminary rounds of the Ottawa district marbles and jacks began mid-April. To help ensure fairness, Ottawa was divided up into sections by ward to help equalize the chances of winning. More than 1,000 boys and girls participated in the contests. Children who came from outside of Ottawa for the competition were put in in city hotels as guests of the Citizen.

Apparently, the ward contests were keenly followed by hundreds of people—schoolmates of contestants, parents and friends. After winning his ward marbles championship, Albert Groulx of 289 York Street, who attended St. Brigid’s School, was hoisted on the shoulders of his friends. There was so much hullabaloo that the “harassed” reporter had difficulty in obtaining Groulx’s correct address. Each ward winner received a silver medal.

The Ottawa district championships were held on Easter Monday, 21 April 1924. The marbles championship was played at Cartier Square which the Civic Playgrounds Commission had placed at the disposal of the Citizen. To control the crowds, police were stationed at the Square with the newly-rolled playing area, fifty feet by forty feet, roped off from the milling throngs there to witness the play. Alderman McGregor Easson, principal of the Elgin Street School, was the referee. The elimination games were played in four groups; eighteen boys competed. The final battle was among the four boys who won their individual groups. In the audience were prominent Ottawa citizens, including the president of the Rotary Club, several clergymen, schoolmates, and many girls and ladies.

The games were reportedly played with a high level of sportsmanship, with the audience of close to 300 cheering for all players. Many older spectators commented on the type of marbles being played. They concluded that it was far more sporting than the version they were used to—the version where you try to knock out competitors’ marbles out of a circle and you keep the marbles won. Mr. Harold Fisher, the provincial member of parliament for Ottawa and Mr. G.A. Disher of the Citizen played the ceremonial first game; Fisher was the easy winner.

Four boys made it to the finals: Harry Adelstein of the Elgin Street Public School, Anatole Charron of the Kiwanis Boys’ Club, Clifford Milford of Almonte, and John Carnegie of East Ward School, Pembroke. Adelstein had made it to the finals after having beaten Albert Groulx in the preliminaries. Groulx had taken a commanding early lead in the match but had come up short when he missed an easy shot in the final round. This left the door open for Adelstein who sank the remaining marbles—one was six feet from the hole!

In the finals, Harry Adelstein was declared the Ottawa district champion after Clifford Milford of Almonte, who had seemingly won the championship in a closely-fought battle, was disqualified. Milford had misread the entry requirements which stated that players had to be under fourteen as of May 1^st. He had had fourteenth birthday in March.

The girls’ jacks competition were held the same day, 21 April, in the Y.M.C.A. Special Exercise Room. Competitors were divided into three groups. The winner of each group met in the finals. The Citizen’s coverage of the event was thin. The newspaper opined that girls had shown a “keen interest” in the game but were reluctant to “face the limelight of public contests.” After indicting the names of the officiants, the Citizen reported that Marion Scharf of Eastview Public School had won the Ottawa championship. Helen Nicholson of Borden School was the runner-up.

After the events, all the contestants were taken on a tour of the Parliament Buildings, the Citizen building on Sparks Street and the Experimental Farm.

Three days later, the Canadian championships were held in Toronto at the Pantages Theatre. In truth, it really wasn’t an all-Canada championship. Only three provinces were represented: Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, from communities where the Southam group of newspapers were located. The Vancouver Sun, which was not part of the Southam chain, cheekily held marbles and jacks competition for British Columbia. While its winners did not go to Toronto to compete in the Dominion championships, the winning boy and girl each received a gold medal.

Ottawa’s marbles champ, Henry Adelstein, was accompanied to Toronto by his mother, Mrs. L. Adelstein of 294 Laurier Avenue. They stayed at the Walker House Hotel free of charge, including meals, courtesy of the hotel. The jacks champion, Mildred Scharf, was accompanied to Toronto by her father, Mr. D. Scharf of Eastview. They stayed at the Carls-Rite Hotel where their lodgings and meals were also paid for by the hotel.

Oddly, while the Citizen reported that Adelstein and Scharf made it safely to Toronto, the newspaper did not report on the championship. In a printing error, on the day after the championship was held in Toronto, the newspaper re-ran on its front page an article that it had published a month earlier. An entry form for the now completed Ottawa district competition ran on page two. This oversight was not corrected the following day. Instead, the newspaper ignored the story. This must have been quite a blow to Ottawa’s two champions and their families.

A week later, a small article appeared on page six of the Citizen saying that Mildred Scharf, who had come in second in Toronto, had received a lady’s wristwatch and a silver medal, while her school, the Eastview Public School, had been awarded a silver cup. There was no mention of Henry Adelstein, though presumably he too received a watch and silver medal, with the Elgin Street Public School also receiving a silver trophy.

Other newspapers in the Southam chain did, however, report on the Toronto finals, though their coverage was hardly effusive. It seems that Kathleen Perry and Eddie Henderson, both of Toronto won the championships. After a nervous start to the jacks competition, Perry was an easy victor over the other players. In the marbles competition, Henderson, wearing his lucky red woollen toque, took the championship. Henry Adelstein of Ottawa came in third place.

The marbles and jacks competitions were not repeated.

Sources:

Edmonton Journal, 1924. “Marble, Jacks Cups Both Go To Toronto,” 25 April.

Ottawa Evening Citizen, 1924. “Championships in Marbles and Jacks For The Ottawa District To Be Decided In Capital,” 18 February.

—————————-, 1924. “Organization Work For Marbles And Jacks Contests Is Underway,” 19 February.

—————————-, 1924. “Every School Is Scene Marbles In The Hole Game,” 1 March.

—————————-, 1924. “Cambridge Team Winners Of Marbles In The Hole Exhibition,” 3 March.

—————————-, 1924. “Invites Marbles And Jacks Champions As Their Guest,” 6 March.

—————————–, 1924. “Rules for “Marbles,” Canadian Championship, 1924,” 24 March.

—————————-, 1924. “Rules for “Jacks,” Canadian Championship, 1924, 24 March.

—————————-, 1924. “Marbles And Jacks Contest Open About April 5^th,” 25 March.

—————————-, 1924. “Valuable Trophies Will Be Awarded To School Winners,” 29 March.

—————————-, 1924. “Slater Street School Team Winners In The Preliminary,” 7 April.

—————————-, 1924. “Big Marbles And Jacks Tournament Commences Tomorrow; Play Opens In The Schools of Central Ward,” 14 April.

—————————-, 1924. “By Ward Marbles Contest Brought Out Keen Battle,” 19 April.

—————————-, 1924. “Preparations Complete For District Finals In The Jacks And Marbles Championships,” 19 April.

—————————-, 1924. “Elgin Street School Pupil And Eastview Girl Winners,”22 April.

—————————-, 1924. “Marbles And Jacks Contest Open About April 5^th,” 25 April.

—————————-, 1924. “District Winner Of Jacks Contest Gets Wrist-Watch,” 3 May.

Vancouver Sun, 1924. “In Marbles And Jacks Finals,” 25 April.

Ottawa’s World-Famous Dairy

8 April 1927

You can whip our cream but you can’t beat our milk

Most patrons of the upscale restaurant e18teen, located in an elegant French-chateau style building just a few minutes walk from Parliament Hill, would be surprised to learn that they were dining in a former dairy. The building at 18 York Street was originally constructed in 1876 by the Institut canadien-français d’Ottawa as their headquarters. After a fire gutted it, the building was repurposed, and was for a time used by a pork packer. But for much of its history it was a dairy, producing each year thousands of gallons of homogenized milk, millions of pounds of butter, and crate loads of a processed cheese product that became a global favourite.

18 York Street, Home of Laurentian Cheese, Ottawa Citizen, 24 April 1928.

The story begins in 1922 with the establishment of the Moyneur Co-Operative Creamery by Charles H. Labarge. The creamery quickly became of one of the largest in the country, making 2-3 million pounds of butter annually. It also dealt in eggs, poultry and cheese. The business operated out of 12-14 York Street close to the Byward Market. In 1925, Labarge established a sister enterprise called the Chateau Cheese Company to produce and market a cheese product that he had developed after many experiments in a corner of his creamery. Chateau Cheese was a pasteurized, soft, cheddar cheese product similar to Velveeta. (Velveeta was invented by Emil Frey in 1918 and produced by the Munroe Cheese Company in Munroe, New York. The company was sold to Kraft Foods in 1923.) Chateau Cheese could be sliced, spread on crackers and toast, or melted to form a creamy, cheesy topping, ideal for making Welsh rarebit. In addition to the regular cheddar version, a pimento cheese product was also developed.

In August 1925, Chateau Cheese was demonstrated at the Pure Food Show, which was part of the Central Canada Exhibition. At the Moyneur Creamery booth, tempting samples of the cheese spread were offered for tasting. The company advertised that Chateau Cheese would not deteriorate with age. Instead, owing to its superior qualities and scientific manufacture, it would keep indefinitely if a small piece of wax paper was placed over a cut end.

Charles Labarge, Ottawa Citizen, 19 March 1928.

The product was also sold in a variety of convenient sizes, including half-pound packages, which appealed to budget-conscious consumers. This was a marketing innovation as cheese was typically sold at the time in much larger quantities, often as large as five pounds. The company imported specially-made machines from Switzerland that were capable of making the smaller packages. The manufacturing process was totally mechanical from the production of the cheese to when the boxes slid down the chute to the delivery wagons.

Chateau Cheese found a receptive market. A half-pound box of the cheesy food was on sale in Ottawa for 23 cents, with additional savings per pound to be had for larger packages. Within short order, it was available across Canada, and could be found in the finest hotels and restaurants.

A two-pound box of Chateau Cheese. The company used an image of the Château Laurier Hotel in its advertising.

Even while conquering the Canadian market, the company also started looking abroad. The director for sales of Chateau Cheese, Mr. H.D. Marshall, had extensive experience in overseas markets. Under his guidance, Chateau Cheese found its first foreign market, Germany, when the company was less than a year old. Within two years, the cheese was also on sale in Great Britain, the Balkan countries, and even in France, the cheese capital of Europe.  

The market reach of Chateau Cheese in 1930, Financial Post, 16 October, 1930.

The next market to be tackled was the United States where sales took off despite a 25 per cent tariff. So popular was Chateau Cheese south of the border that the company began to make the product in Plymouth, Wisconsin.

Before long, the cheese was available around the world, with advertisements for Chateau Cheese appearing on billboards in Havana, and on the sides of buses in Hong Kong and Shanghai. It also could be purchased in markets in India, throughout Central America, Bermuda, and parts of western Africa. Chateau Cheese boasted that it was “the cheese that is making Ottawa famous.” Sales rocketed. In March 1926, cheese sales totalled only $17,000. By October 1928, monthly sales had reached $230,000.

In 1927, Charles Labarge launched the Laurentian Dairy, and purchased 18 York Street next door to Moyneur Co-Operative Dairy as well as the Baskerville property in the rear to accommodate his growing dairy empire. The three related companies—the Moyneur Co-Operative Dairy, the Chateau Cheese Company and the Laurentian Dairy—together had 233 feet of frontage on York Street with a depth of 165 feet.

A bus in Shanghai advertising Chateau Cheese, Financial Post, 16 October 1930.

According to an article in the Journal of Dairy Science in 1963, the Laurentian Dairy sold its first bottle of homogenized milk on 8 April 1927; home delivery began ten days later. It was supplied by 125 milk producers in the Ottawa Valley. The dairy advertised that due to its special homogenizing process, cream was prevented from coming to the top but instead was scattered throughout the milk. Its advertising slogan was “The last drop of milk is just as creamy as the first.”

Advertisement, Canadian National Railway Magazine, July 1929, Lost Ottawa.

The company later developed and sold an innovative protein milk designed specifically for infants with delicate digestions. The protein milk was sold under a doctor’s prescription. The Laurentian Dairy considered it to be a treatment rather than a food, that should only be taken with the advice of a physician. The dairy claimed that the most dangerous ingredients in cow’s milk—the sugar, whey and whey salt—were removed in the making of the special milk. Protein milk was available for daily delivery on the company’s regular routes through Ottawa and Hull, and sold at a premium price of 30 cents a quart.

In 1928, Laurentian Dairy began selling shares in the enterprise to Ottawa residents. The shares were offered at $50 each with a dividend of 7 per cent. The investments were backed by the combined assets of Moyneur Co-Operative Dairy, the Laurentian Dairy, Chateau Cheese Company and Meadow Milk Products Ltd, another part of the Labarge dairy empire that made condensed milk and milk powder.  The total value of the businesses was placed at over $500,000.

In December 1928, Charles Labarge and his partners received an offer they could not refuse from Borden Farm of New York, a major U.S. dairy started in 1857 by Gail Borden. The American company, which was seeking to expand its Canadian operations, bought the entire enterprise for $3 million—a huge premium over the book value of the firm. Borden’s retained all employees, including Charles Labarge who continued to manage the Ottawa operations. Chateau Cheese, Laurentian Dairy and their related companies were a perfect fit for Borden’s. Owners of common stock in the Ottawa companies received shares in the Borden Company which were then quoted in New York at $164 dollars a share.

Earlier that same year, Borden Farm Company had also splashed out $1 million to acquire Ottawa Dairy, a locally-owned firm that had started operations in 1900. The Ottawa Dairy was a large concern with 300 employees, 200 horses, and 100 delivery horse-drawn wagons. It was also the parent company of Cornwall Dairy, a smaller business on the St. Lawrence that employed a further 30 people. Ottawa Dairy owned a model, 800-acre dairy farm in the City View area, roughly one mile south of Baseline Road. This farm stretched from the Prescott Highway (now Prince of Wales) to the Merivale Road. It was stocked with a heard of 300 prime Ayrshire cattle, which provided the company with “nursery milk,” sold at a premium price for babies and invalids.

Ottawa Dairy sleigh on Albert Street, 31 December 1910, Toronto Public Archives

The old Ottawa Dairy Farm, which became known as Borden Farm after the takeover, remained in operation until 1960.  When Borden’s found it increasingly difficult to operate from the site owing to the encroachment of housing and other developments on all sides, it decided to sell. The straw that seemed to break the camel’s back was a windstorm in 1959 that badly damaged the farm’s barns.

The bulk of the acreage was purchased by the Ontario Department of Planning and Development in co-operation with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for a housing project. A strip of land 500 hundred feet wide and 1¼ miles long was also bought by the National Capital Commission for a proposed western parkway.

Downtown, the Ottawa Dairy also operated a production facility at 393 Somerset Street, just west of Bank Street. This outlet, which produced and sold butter, ice cream and other dairy products under the Borden name, remained in business until 1971 when it too closed owning to cramped conditions. Borden’s moved out to new, modern quarters on St. Laurent Boulevard. The old plant was sold.

18 York Street today, Google Streetview.

18 York Street was expropriated by the NCC in 1962 as part of its “Mile of History” plan, a federal centennial project to preserve historic buildings in downtown Ottawa. Borden’s remained as a tenant in the building until the end of July 1968 when the company got out of the cheese-making business in Canada and stopped producing Chateau Cheese. Fifty employees at the dairy were affected, the majority of whom took early retirement or sought jobs elsewhere. A few found new employment within the firm. For a while, the building was used as temporary storage space. In late November 1970, it was gutted by fire. The NCC subsequently restored the structure and over the years rented the space to a number of ventures. During the 1980s, it was the home of Guadalaharry’s Tex-Mex restaurant.

18 York Street has been the address of e18teen restaurant since 2001. The NCC has installed a bilingual plaque on the historic building describing its history.

Borden’s sold its Ottawa dairy facilities to Silverwood Industries in 1980, leaving the Canadian dairy market.  As a consequence, Borden’s products vanished from Canadian grocery shelves. Borden Farm, its old dairy farm south of Baseline Road, is now the name of a neighbourhood to the east of Merivale close to Meadowlands Drive.

Sources:

Financial Post, 1930. “Chateau Cheese Achieves Success from Very Start in Many Far Countries,” 16 October.

——————, 1930. “Laurentian Co. Makes Progress with New Milk,” 16 October.

——————, 1930. “Moyneur Co-Operative Creamery Earliest of Labarge Enterprises,” 16 October.

——————, 1930. “Ottawa Dairy Covers Whole Capital Area,” 16 October.

Gazette (Montreal), 1928. “Borden Dairy Co. Makes Purchases,” 20 December.

Ottawa Citizen, 1925. “Chateau Cheese,” 28 August.

——————, 1926. “Chateau Cheese,” 26 August.

——————, 1927. “The Romance of an Ottawa Industry,” 28 June.

——————, 1928. “Laurentian Dairy,” 25 February.

——————, 1928. “$50 Buys You a Partnership in Laurentian Dairy,” 17 March.

——————, 1928. “New Protein Milk Latest Product of Laurentian Dairy,” 31 May.

——————, 1928. “Three million Dollars Price Paid by New York Interests for Big Business in Ottawa,” 17 December.

——————, 1959. “Borden Dairy Farm Going Out of Business,” 25 July.

——————, 1968. “Chateau Cheese to close; Borden ending production,” 17 July.

——————, 1970. “New Dairy to be Boon to Farmers, 2 October.

——————, 1980. “Borden’s dairy bought, name will disappear,” 29 February.

Ottawa Journal, 1927. “Announcement, Laurentian Dairy Ltd,” 14 April.

——————-, 1928. “Majority of Stock IS Acquired In Deal Involving A Million,” 3 January.

——————-, 1928. “$3,000,000 is Involved in the Sale Chateau Cheese Co. Holdings,” 17 December.

Trout, G. M., 1963. “Our Industry Today, Official Acceptance of Homogenized Milk in the United States,” Journal of Dairy Science, Vol. 46, Issue 4, p. 342-245, April.

24 Sussex

28 April 1951

One of the best-known addresses in Canada is 24 Sussex Drive, the official home of the Prime Minister. It is situated across the street from Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor General, in the tony New Edinburgh neighbourhood of Ottawa. The home, located on a four-acre estate, is perched on a cliff beside the French Embassy with splendid views of the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills. Unfortunately, the house has been unoccupied since 2015, its last residents being Stephen Harper and his family. With it becoming increasingly dilapidated, Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, chose to live with their three children at Rideau Cottage on the grounds of Rideau Hall, rather than punish themselves by living at 24 Sussex Drive.

Actually, the house is worse than dilapidated. That adjective was used more than a decade ago to describe it; unlike fine wine the building has not improved with age. 24 Sussex is stuffed with asbestos, its wiring is a fire hazard, its roof leaks as does the plumbing, there’s mould in the basement, and it is home to little forest critters. As well, the rooms are freezing in the winter and broiling in the summer. There is no central air-conditioning. And then there’s its inadequate security. Just ask Aline Chrétien, who held off an intruder in 1995.

24 Sussex Drive, 2010, by Alasdair McLellan, Wikipedia

Simply put, 24 Sussex Drive is scarcely fit to live in let alone be the official residence of the head of government of a G-7 country. Besides the odd coat of paint and roll of wall paper, there has been little significant investment in the fabric of the home since the1970s, the victim of political optics. What prime minister wants to take responsibility for spending millions of tax payers dollars on their home? It’s political dynamite. The last person to have any money spent on the building was Pierre Trudeau back in the mid-1970s when anonymous donors coughed up $150,000 for an indoor swimming pool and sauna connected by an underground tunnel to the main dwelling. Much of the building dates from the early 1950s.

So, how did we arrive at this sorry situation?

Part of the problem may lie in a confusion in the public mind between what is spent for official purposes and what is spent for personal purposes. The two overlap. All prime ministers want 24 Sussex to reflect their personal taste, after all its their home, possibly for a decade or more if they are electorally successful. But frequent leadership changes can lead to wasteful decorating changes. As well, cosmetic alterations can become co-mingled with necessary structural and maintenance expenditures.

Until 1951, Canada’s prime ministers had no official residence. Prime Minister Mackenzie King lived at his home called Laurier House in Sandy Hill from 1923 until his death in 1950.  King had inherited the house from Zoé Laurier, the wife of another former prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier for whom the house was named. R.B. Bennett, King’s predecessor, lived in palatial splendour in a multi-room suite at the Château Laurier Hotel during his term in office. King’s successor, Louis St. Laurent, lived with his wife in a modest, rented flat in The Roxborough Apartments while in Ottawa.

Front of 24 Sussex Drive before the 1950 renovations, Macleans.

In 1943, the federal government expropriated 24 Sussex Street from the then-owner, Gordon Cameron Edwards. (It was Sussex Street not Sussex Drive. The change in name was to come in 1953.) The government was concerned about the possible “commercialisation” of a property so close to Rideau Hall. There was also a concern that other governments might buy the highly desirable property with such commanding views and choice location. The British government had purchased the nearby Earnscliffe, the former home of Sir John A. Macdonald, in 1930 while the French Government had purchased and built its Embassy on the neighbouring property a few years later. With the Mexican government reportedly taking an interest in the old house, the Canadian government decided to expropriate the property. It took three years to negotiate the price after Edwards balked at what the government offered in compensation. The court settled on $140,000 plus costs of $7,319 which was more than the $125,000 the government initially offered but far less than the $251,000 demanded by Edwards.

Front of 24 Sussex Drive after renovations, author unknown

Almost from the very beginning, Prime Minister Mackenzie King thought that the mansion would make an excellent “permanent and non-political residence for Canada’s prime ministers,” though the idea wasn’t made official until 1949. While the location was superb, many had doubts about the building, then almost eighty years old. At an expropriation hearing, a real estate agent said that the house, which had been previously remodelled in in 1907-10, didn’t fit the needs of 1943. Six years later, the Ottawa Citizen wondered whether remodelling the Edwards home was the right course of action as the building was “already old and out of date” and had no particular distinction. The newspaper also claimed it was draughty, ill-heated, and inconvenient.

The house was originally built over a two-year period from 1866-1868 by Joseph Merrill Currier. Currier was one of Ottawa’s lumber barons, and from 1863 to 1882 the Conservative member of Parliament for Ottawa, barring a few months in 1877 when he had to resign and seek re-election over conflicts of interest. He left politics in 1882 and was appointed Ottawa’s postmaster.

Currier built the home for his third wife, Hannah Wright, a descendent of Philemon Wright, the founder of Hull, Quebec. He called it by the Welsh name Gorffwysfa meaning “Place of Rest”. Reportedly, Currier’s brother James, who was an architect, helped in the neo-gothic design which was undoubtedly inspired by those other neo-gothic buildings under construction at the time—the Parliament buildings. In 1870, the Curriers hosted Prince Arthur, son of Queen Victoria, at a ball held in his honour at 24 Sussex. Prince Arthur, also known as the Duke of Connaught, was later to become Canada’s Governor General from 1911 to 1916. For the royal event, Currier built a ballroom at the rear of the home which was later turned into a picture gallery.

After Currier’s passed away in 1884, his widow lived in the home until her death in 1901, whereupon the house went to their son, James E. W. Currier, who sold it in 1902 to William Cameron Edwards for $30,000. Edwards was at the time the Liberal member of Parliament for the district of Russell. In 1903, he was appointed to the Senate. Edwards made significant modifications to the building, including adding a turret, a curved window on the second floor, and a covered entrance. On his death in 1921 and that of his wife Catherine the following year, 24 Sussex was bequeathed to his nephew Gordon Cameron Edwards who was the last private owner of the property. After the Canadian government expropriated it, the home was leased on a short-term basis to the Australian government.

In 1948, the government hired the modernist Toronto architectural firm Allward & Gouinlock to renovate the building. The firm’s treatment of the building was not sympathetic to the original design. It totally changed both its exterior and interior. In addition to adding a new wing, the architects stripped the house of its neo-gothic features. Gone were its turret and gingerbread. The ballroom cum picture gallery where Prince Arthur had danced was demolished to make way for an outdoor terrace. The garage and chauffeur’s quarters were also demolished. Inside, the principal rooms were reversed so that they overlooked the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills rather than facing the street.

The renovations cost more than $300,000. With an additional $105,000 spent on furnishings, the total cost of the new official residence for Canada’s prime minister came in at roughly $550,000 (equivalent to $6.3 million in today’s dollars). The Conservative Opposition was not impressed. Rodney Adamson, the Progressive Conservative member for York West, commented that it would have been cheaper to build a completely new residence rather than change 24 Sussex St. around so that the Prime Minister could have a view of the Ottawa River.

Subsequently, a Vancouver newspaper whined that the “final piece of extravagance” was an iron fence that was to be built around the property. It opined that maybe next to come were “a platinum portcullis and a squad of gold-embossed halberdiers.” This was clearly a more innocent time when security was not deemed a high priority by some. However, the comment underscored why future governments became squeamish about spending money on the prime minister’s residence. Any money spent would be considered either a waste or self-serving.

Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and his wife, moved into their new home on 28 April 1951, though their official move date was 1 May when their lease was up on their apartment at the Roxborough. The prime minister was not keen about having an official residence. “Uncle Louis” was a modest man. Before he would move in, he insisted on paying $5,000 per year for room and board, roughly what he had been spending before. This amounted to one-third of his prime ministerial salary. Politicians and bureaucrats reluctantly acquiesced to this demand, and it was written into the legislation passed for the maintenance of the home. Some years later, the law was changed so that the prime minister lived rent free. C.D. Howe, the Minister for Trade and Commerce, called the new prime ministerial residence “not a palace” but “dignified” and “well-equipped,” an official residence of which Canadians could be proud.

There are fourteen principal rooms in the house, with a formal drawing room and dining room for 24 persons overlooking the Ottawa River. There is a pine-panelled library to the left of the main entrance with an open fireplace. The ground floor was designed so that 150-200 guests could easily circulate between drawing room, dining room and library. A kitchen and pantry are also on the ground floor. On the second floor are the family living room and the main bedrooms with bathrooms. On the top floor are guest and staff bedrooms. A small elevator was installed that ran from the basement to the top floor.

There was some speculation in the press about the home’s name. Its original Welsh name was not in the running; few could spell it or pronounce it. The Ottawa Journal argued that to follow the British example and call the home 24 Sussex Street would be too prosaic. However, Canada House, Beaver House and Maple Leaf Gardens were already taken, and it couldn’t come up with a better idea. Regardless, newspapers thought that given time the address would become as well-known as London’s 10 Downing Street or Washington’s White House.

That prediction has come true. However, today the home is more infamous than famous. Instead of being dignified prime ministerial residence, it has become a money pit. More than ten years ago, a real estate agency thought that the property, then appraised at $7.5 million, was worth more without the house.

Many want the building pulled down, including Maureen McTeer, the wife of former prime minister Joe Clark. McTeer thinks it’s a dump without any redeeming architectural merit. Others, including some historians, disagree. Now that roughly a dozen prime ministers have lived in it, perhaps the residence has acquired some prime ministerial patina that’s worth preserving. As well, the residence has hosted distinguished visitors, such as the Queen, Sir Winston Churchill and John and Jackie Kennedy, who have provided their own gloss.

Renovating the old house will not come cheap. In 2018, the National Capital Commission, announced that to fix up the six official residences owned by the Government in the Ottawa region would cost $83 million over ten years. Only Rideau Hall, the Governor General’s home, and Stornoway, the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition, are in good condition. Ominously, Harrington Lake in the Gatineau hills, the country home of the prime minister, is considered to be in poor condition. If governments shy away from spending money on the official residence of the prime minister, the odds of a summer retreat getting sufficient funding look even more grim. Meanwhile, entropy prevails. The official residences continue to deteriorate and the cost to restore them continues to climb.

Sources:

CBC, 1980. A Tour of 24 Sussex with Maureen McTeer. https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hsimp=yhs-rogers_001&hspart=rogers&p=Maureen+McTeer#id=2&vid=c131ed57812f112dec7e53683dbe3e4e&action=click.

Calgary Herald, “Face-Lifting Starts on P.M.’s New Home,” 13 December.

NCC, 2019. 24 Sussex Drive, http://ncc-ccn.gc.ca/places/24-sussex-drive.

Ottawa Citizen, 1949. “What Kind Of House At 24 Sussex?” 4 October.

——————, 1950. “Approve Act Charging PM $5,000 For Home,” 21 June.

——————, 1951. “St. Laurents Move Into New Home,” 1 May.

——————, 2004. “Martin family finds it chilly in drafty old mansion,” 17 November.

——————, 2008. “It’s a tear-down,” 3 December 2008.

——————, 2013. “Inside 24 Sussex,” 30 November.

——————, 2013. “A Timeline of Troubles At 24 Sussex Dive,” 30 November.

——————, 2017. “This Old House,” 13 February.

——————, 2018. “NCC Seeks $83m to Address ‘Critical’ Maintenance Issues,” 17 October.

Ottawa Journal, 1949. “A Name for the Prime Minister’s Residence,” 4 October.

——————-, 1949. “24 Sussex St.”, 8 October.

——————-, 1950. “Cost of Renovating Residence at 24 Sussex for Prime Minister Startles Opposition,” 23 March.

——————–, 1951. “Apartment Living Over The St. Laurents Now Living in 24 Sussex,” 1 May.

Vancouver Province, 1951. “24 Sussex Street Nearly Ready,” 13 April.

—————————–, 1951. “Iron Fences And High Taxes,” 9 July.

Windsor Star, 1950. “24 Sussex Tradition In The Making,” 19 June.