One place that evokes fond memories of Ottawa’s past shopping fortunes is the old Charles Ogilvy Ltd. store (or Ogilvys) on Rideau Street. I am just old enough to remember how the Ogilvys was in its last days in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even then, it was a place of old world grandeur […]

While casting about for an idea for a story about Ottawa’s Lowertown, I was struck by how much the the changes to the area have been documented over the past fifty years.  Various blogs (Urbsite and Ottawa Past and Present) and organizations (Lowertown Community Association and King Edward Avenue Task Force) have all done a good […]

In 1967, the Supreme Court of Canada heard a case between the Florence Realty Company and the Queen. Specifically, the Florence Realty Company included the Florence Paper Company in Ottawa’s lowertown neighbourhood, and the company was appealing the National Capital Commission for additional compensation to deal with the loss of a railway siding and the costs […]

Ottawans were witness to a major announcement on February 8, 1938.  On this date, the Ottawa Journal reported that the Government of Canada had unveiled and approved Jacques Greber’s plan for the beautification of Ottawa. “Greber Plans to Convert Ottawa into a Picturesque World Capital”‘ trumpeted the headline.  As front page news, this was indeed […]

Last time, I asked who photographed Ottawa in 1938 and speculated that a) it might have been Eugene M. Finn of the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, or b) it might have been members of the Civil Service Professional Photographers Association. Since then, I have uncovered information about another Motion Picture Bureau photographer who would […]

Over the past little while, I have been writing about the remarkable ca. 1938 photos of Ottawa streetscapes. These photos show us the Ottawa that Jacques Greber would have seen when he was conducting his preliminary planning studies. What is of particular interest – and something not yet remarked upon by others – is that […]

In looking at the major revisioning of Ottawa that took place from the late 1930s, there is one early casualty that has intrigued me more that others. I am thinking of the old Post Office and Customs Building, which was located roughly in the same spot as the War Memorial is now. Demolished in the […]

In the Greber Report of 1950, one of the streets that was noted in passing as an example of successful beautification was Clemow Avenue Driveway. It is surprising that Greber did not spend much time on Clemow, given its success as a planned streetscape. Extending from the Canal driveway, this tree-lined driveway included Monkland Avenue […]

“The store of 1001 gifts”. By 1938, this was the slogan George Wolf used for Ottawa Leather Goods, a store that sold luggage, handbags, and tourist novelty items on Sparks Street. At the height of the Great Depression in 1931, Wolf made a daring decision: he would move his ten year old business from 92 […]