An Artist's Rendition
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Ottawa was a strange place when I first saw it as a little kid of 12. Lined beautifully with parkways, parks and trees, the city was awesome to behold. From the gothic Parliament Buildings to the modern skyscrapers in downtown Ottawa and bridges over the rivers, the city glowed in grandness. I was amazed at the feat of combining the old, the new, and the beautiful. The city took my breath away.

In my family’s first little house in Ottawa, the sensation was magnified. The house was an old wood house and it felt ancient. I had heard my parents talk about it being a historical landmark - so it must have been old. But I loved it. The floor always creaked as I walked inside and the stairs always made the noise every time I went up or down. I made sure to walk slowly - I didn’t want to fall through and hurt myself. There was carpeting everywhere, old-fashioned heaters, and white sticky flooring for the kitchen; the kitchen floor was always cold so I would make sure to have socks on before eating dinner. There was also a porch! I never had a porch before, and I would sometimes sit in the porch during fall and look at the leaves fall off the trees in the park in front of our house. The porch was also useful in winter, when there was so much snow that boots would have thick shields of snow after a good time of playing. I always cleaned my boots before going inside to the carpeted floor lest my parents get mad at me.

What was most significant to me was my old house’s history. I was proud to live in certified historical landmark, an important part of Canada’s capital, and something important to remember - important because, besides the Parliament Buildings and perhaps a couple other important buildings downtown, there weren’t many other old buildings in Ottawa. Old, that is, to be considered historical landmarks.

This contrast and different dispositions of buildings in Ottawa sparked my interest. My house was seated in a residential neighborhood with duplexes and fairly new brick constructed houses. It was a strange sight seeing my wooden house next to brick ones - I felt like an oddball, a feeling that hit home when I looked out my porch to see the skyscrapers of Ottawa near by.

I could hardly believe my house was five minutes away from the busy hustle of downtown Ottawa. I went there often with my father, who would always make sure I was near. Every time we went I was always amazed. With its focus at the Parliament Buildings, downtown flows down Parliament Hill with new skyscrapers and old turn-of-the-century buildings to a blanket of two story homes that covers the rest of the downward slope to Dow’s Lake. The maze of old and new always amazed me, and every time out I would ask my dad to take me into all the different buildings, like the sparkly new Bank of Montreal building, or the brick building that housed the Library of Ottawa’s main branch.

After these trips I wondered about the connections of all those buildings to my old house. How many generations and different views of Ottawa had been seen from my front porch? How had the town, which Queen Victoria named the Capital of Canada, become the city it was today, with all the parkways, grand routes and gothic buildings? I didn’t know very much. I knew that the city had been named after Lt. Col. John By (sent there to construct the Canal), and that Bytown was primarily a military establishment and depot for the Rideau Canal. The Tourist Center for the Canal had much information on Lt. Col. By and even the early days of Bytown. But that still didn’t explain how my house and the city came to be.

The history of Ottawa was more complicated then I could ever imagine as the 12 year-old who imagined the grand scope of planning and design by a genius architect or engineer. Rather it was an evolution from many adaptations and flaws of its planning that have led to the beautiful city the Capital is now. Such evolution has taken place over conflicts between two urban styles - the official and the vernacular according to John H. Taylor an Associate Professor of History at Carleton University in Ottawa, which have left impressions on the city landscape (81).

This interaction of official and vernacular have been present in the design of Ottawa since its inception as Bytown. By, along with the Ordinance Department, were the major planning bodies for the early town. However, their influence in the early planning of the official was not a positive one; rather it halted proper growth of the vernacular and segmented the population by socioeconomic classes.

Bytown, like previous towns in the area, was subjected to imperial planning and placed an importance of a specific assignment of lots, which would be the property of military veterans and certain elites. In the case of Bytown, By, with instruction from Lord Dalhousie (current Governor of Canada), set lots of 66 feet by 99 or 198 feet for rental terms of 2 shillings 6 pence per lot annually with thirty year terms, records Michael Newton (23,25) These lots were set up on two different town sites, to the west of Barracks Hill, now Parliament Hill, lay Upper Town, the other lay on the east side of the Canal called Lower Town. Newton notes, such a climate was to retard the stable growth of the town [and] radically hindered the construction of substantial, lasting buildings, and it was through this environment that Bytown began its growth with the increased importance of the timber trade and the Rideau Canal (23). However, because along with the commercial success of town came the need to buy land and build stable structures, conflict grew between the imperial control of the lots and the growing number of speculators.

On one occasion, locals residents Joseph and Remi Miville, bought 66 by 66 feet patch of land from the lot of Master Carpenter of the Canal Works James Fitzgibbon for £ 200. Newton remarks, Fitzgibbon had only to pay the minimum 2/6 [(2 shillings, 6 pence)] per annum for the whole lot to ordnance authorities to maintain the right to the land in perpetuity [while] the Miville’s were paying a high price for the right to merely sit on leased land (27). With such high prices for leased land citizens of Bytown, especially citizens of Lower Town where speculators controlled many lots, were outraged at not be[ing] allowed to buy land outright in the town claims Richard Reid (39). This was such a problem for the vernacular that even the building of a courthouse was moved away from proper Bytown, comments Reid, to avoid Ordinance involvement since land held by the Ordinance Department […] must be leased and approved (39). Reid adds that not until 1843 did the Canadian Government passed and act vesting control of crown land within Bytown in the Ordinance Department but with the provision that land not needed for the Rideau Canal would be returned to the original parties (39). This forced the Ordinance Department to return all lands not used by the Canal, and Bytown was allowed to grow.

hough many leases were still respected until 1870, after the passing of the Vesting Act, Lower Town saw an immediate growth of substantial structures. Some of the oldest surviving buildings in Ottawa are from this era just after the passing of the act. The By Ward Market, comments Newton, was established on land purchased in 1848 and is today one of the oldest continuously operation open-air produce market in Ontario situated in the nucleus of Lower Town.

In spite of the Vesting Act, Upper Town became the center of the newly incorporated city of Ottawa instead of the more active Lower Town. After the Queen’s decision to make Ottawa the Capital of Provincial Canada, the Parliament Buildings were erected on Barracks Hill, on the opposite side of Lower Town. Along with the new buildings an influx of civil servants arrived in Ottawa along with their families, and the businesses that serviced them, which argues Taylor was what boosted Upper Town to its Victorian pre-eminence as the city’s commercial centre, placing Lower Town in the shade (85).

By 1870, Taylor notices, the Capital of the new Dominion of Canada was embedded in vernacular landscape, or rather that around the official was civic Ottawa - as if a sea of vernacular surrounded the official. This is a fitting description, since for a century municipal Ottawa grew with little planning, and according to Taylor urban form responded to the imperatives of the private market, coupled with the development of infrastructure from which there seemed to be no body - either that formed by the elite, or a response to necessitate for the common people - that planned the growth of the city. Not until the growth of Canada and its bureaucracy later in the 19th century, and the dreams of a wishful Prime Minister, did Ottawa first have some sort of planning body. Though it, and others to follow, had little success.

The first action take by the government to take control of the vernacular came in 1899 with Prime Minister Laurier’s Ottawa Improvement Commission. The OIC’s mandate was to acquire land in the Ottawa area to create and maintain parks, streets, and driveways writes Ken Hillis (47). Laurier soon put it to work and by 1902 it had cleaned up the canal banks according to the Bytown Museum website, which describes Hillis were cluttered with warehouses and lumberyards (Virtual, 47). After clearing the canal banks, the OIC constructed the Queen Elizabeth Driveway (a scenic drive of the canal), and by 1911, the Bytown Museum website adds that the OIC also created Strathcona, Rockcliffe, and Nepean Point parks (Virtual).

The OIC, states Taylor, was more concerned […] with the problems of urban design, Hillis however, believes that the OIC had limitations imposed by lack of professional staff; in any case, soon after the OIC’s creation there became a need for a defined plan for Ottawa (90, 47). Two reports, one in 1903 and another in 1913, were proposed that followed the City Beautiful plan, and though they were grand in scale they did provide some ideas that were to be found in later plans. The City Beautiful plan, which according to Hillis is associated with the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair [and] were preoccupied with three principles of urban aesthetics (47). A more appropriate description is given by Stanley Schultz, as a city with civic centers, parks, parkways and boulevards, zoned industrial districts, and surrounding belt of agriculture, all linked by rapid transit facilities (29). To this extent the Todd report of 1903 stressed greater importance of a diverse system of parks and parkways associated with City Beautiful design, including a grand idea with plans to beautify the city.

The Holt report of 1913 wasn’t much different, though it was somewhat more drastic. Hillis reports that if brought to fruition [it] would have required infrastructural rebuilding of the centre city (50). Yet along with its main City Beautiful theme, it did recognize the need of city efficiency. Among its proposals it recommended zoning of four industrial areas, a decentralization of government buildings, and moving current rails running through downtown underground to alleviate growing congestion (Hillis 50). These recommendations promoted a more balanced population distribution though because of the Great War, and the 1916 burning of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, the Holt Plan, describes Hillis, then withered under the fiscal stringency imposed by the unbroken string of Federal deficits (52).

By the end of the Great War in 1919, both the Todd and the Holt plan had little success, and though some of their recommendations would be implemented by the OIC, their grandeur and Canada’s involvement in the war consequently made it hard for both plans to succeed. However, the end of the war did bring about the need for housing for anticipated migration boost and returning servicemen. There were two planned housing projects at this time: one of them named Lindenlea was to have some effect on the future suburban communities around Ottawa. Lindenlea was the planning of British town planner Thomas Adams. Adams built the community from what Michael Simpson believes were apparent difficulties (97). Lindenlea was a miniature garden suburb paying ‘full regard to the need for pleasant surroundings’ (97). States Simpson, streets were narrow […] and rock outcrops were retained as scenic features, screened by the site’s many fine trees (98). The neighborhood also included many recreational facilities and even included an optimum separation of pedestrians and traffic, the avoidance of awkward junctions and compact yet low-density housing, adds Simpson (99).

Though there were many disagreements about the effectiveness of Lindenlea, it has been a major contributor to the newer suburban developments around Ottawa, which follow such type of planning and structure. Though this is more a representation of the vernacular being helped by the government, in the later growth of Ottawa and its suburbs the Lindenlea design has been seen throughout the area.

Neither the official, nor vernacular contrived of any plans for another ten years after the Great War. Prime Minister William Lyon McKenzie King, who, comments Taylor, as an amateur landscape designer, created the Federal District Commission as a simple successor to the OIC (91). King’s first plan for the FDC was the construction of a war memorial, park, and a ceremonial approach to Parliament Hill, notes Taylor. Finished by 1938, Confederation Place, which housed the memorial and park, was finished with the help of French beaux-arts planner Jaques Gréber (91). With the success of Confederation Place, Gréber was asked to return to Ottawa some years later and direct the making of a comprehensive plan for the national capital region states Taylor (92). With the booming economy after the Second World War, the Gréber plan saw implementation through a newly created National Capital Commission, successor to King’s FDC. (38).

The Gréber plan, writes Taylor, was much a city plan as a capital one (92). Though still focusing on City Beautiful design of grand parades to the Parliamentary Precinct, the plan also followed that design with the creation of two concentric belts, one of utility and one of recreation, making the plan more focused on the vernacular than the official (Taylor 92). This movement of utility and recreation of the Gréber plan was implemented in Ottawa with the decentralization of Government and Civic facilities as well as the development of parks around the city. Along with additions to nearby Gatineau Park, the NCC created a 44.8 Km of continuous green land around the city. This provided for the recreational belt of Gréber’s plan.

Offices and civic structures were also moved away from the Parliamentary Precinct to provide for the belt of utility planned by Gréber. This decentralization, says Taylor, was very fashionable, and for its implementation the NCC assembled tracts of land that circled the city core, like planets around the sun (93). Throughout these tracts of lands were placed government office buildings holding departments not as prestigious as those being housed in the Parliament proper. Railways were also moved away from Centre Town, and the yards were moved a distance away to a new station. In addition, the two main industrial areas were stripped and moved farther from the city centre.

The implementation of the Gréber plan allowed the Capital to become the centre of intellectual development of [Canada] and the Washington of the north, which Laurier had so envisioned when he created the OIC (Hillis 46). By the 1980’s, the Capital had such success with the planning and the beautification from the century of struggle that it now had festivals for every occasion, and two new structures to represent the newly focused city: the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Both of these structures, according to Michael Provost and Julie Teskey-Stroud captured people’s imaginations, yet that addition of these two structures, comments Taylor, gives Ottawa the citadel [design that] will have emerged as if by serendipity (Provost, 96).

Even if the current Ottawa emerged by serendipity as it stands now it has indeed become the grand city that Laurier once saw it as. This was evident to me as the little 12 year-old goggling at all the buildings in centre town and the old gothic structures sprinkled throughout it and Lower Town. I had never known that the By Ward Market was indeed a second-generation building of Lower Town, though the shops you find at the market are still filled with good produce, and even in winter you can find the delicious Beaver Tails (an Ottawa region dessert and snack - perfect with hot chocolate). Nor did I ever imagine that many of the green spaces in the city now, and where city hall stands, once used to be dense industrial areas. Yet there is something about Ottawa that makes it stand out. Maybe its irregular structure, along with random parks and driveways spice up the urban flavor and catch the eye.

And as I returned to my old house after those trips to downtown with my father, I remember looking at all the brick structures around my house, and those big buildings not so far. I just couldn’t help but feel like I was part of something big. From my old house, a cultural heritage, to the great gothic presentation of the Parliament Buildings and the skyscrapers they face, to the driveways and garden communities around the city, the feeling of pride never left. Maybe that’s what makes Ottawa special, and grand, that even if it may follow after a grand citadel design as Taylor points out, it makes the people feel a part of something.

Works Cited

Hillis, Ken. “A History of Commissions: Threads of an Ottawa Planning History.” Urban History Review 21 (1992): 46-60.

Newton, Michael. “The Search for Heritage in Ottawa’s Lower Town.” Urban History Review 9 (1980):21-37.

Provost, Michael, and Julie Teskey-Stroud. “All About the City of Ottawa: The History of Canada’s Capital.” Michael Provost & Julie Teskey-Stroud. Re/Max. 18 Apr. 2001. < http://www.teskey.com/ottawa/ >.

Reid, Richard. “The End of Imperial Town Planning in Upper Canada.” Urban History Review 19 (1990): 30-41.

Simpson, Michael. Thomas Adams and the Modern Planning Movement: Britain, Canada and the United States, 1900-1940. London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1985.

Schultz, Stanley K. Constructing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800-1920. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.

Taylor, John H. “City Form and Capital Culture: Remaking Ottawa.” Planning Perspectives. 4 (1989): 76-105.

Virtual Tour. Bytown Museum. 18 Apr. 2001. < http://collections.ic.gc.ca/bytown/virtual_tour/index2.htm >.