My Day at the Ottawa Regional Heritage Fair

Hi, my name is Cece and I recently participated in the Ottawa Regional Heritage Fair and won the Ottawa Museum Network Award. My topic was the Aberdeen Pavilion, which is a building in the middle of Lansdowne Park in Ottawa.

Leading up to the fair, I did a lot of research which included going to the City of Ottawa Archives. Going to the Ottawa Archives was a wonderful experience. Once there, I asked the librarian how to access the materials I needed. I did not end up ordering items from the vault, but I did find many photos, booklets, and newspaper clippings. I scanned them onto a USB drive then transferred them onto a Google Doc and printed them out. I also put a lot of time into my tri-fold presentation board and table display.

The fair was held at the Canadian Museum of History. During the fair, my day was split up into three rotations. In the first section, I had lunch. Then I was judged. At the end during a heritage workshop in the museum, I explored various Canadian artifacts. After my three rotations were done it was time for the award ceremony. I was not expecting to win an award so imagine my surprise when my name was called. It was so much fun, and I saw many of my friends and got the chance to see their projects. A couple of my favorite projects were about the Diefenbunker (which I recently toured) and Japanese internment camps.

A Bit About the Aberdeen Pavilion

Let me tell you a bit about the Aberdeen Pavilion. The Aberdeen Pavilion is a building in the heart of Ottawa. It is a heritage building and a community landmark. It also hosts the local farmers market on weekends. The Pavilion is a yellow color with light green trim. Its roof is silver. Its width is 40 meters, its height is 22 meters, and its length is 94 meters. It is the only large-scale exhibition building from the 1800s.

The Aberdeen Pavilion was designed by the architect Moses C. Edey. Edey was born in 1845 in Wyman, Quebec. He died in 1919. The Pavilion was named after the Governor General Lord Aberdeen. It was built for the Central Canada Exhibition Association (CCEA) in 1898, who used it as a place to host agricultural fairs. In 1939 it was taken over by the Department of National Defense. It was also used as a skating rink where the original Ottawa Senators won the Stanley Cup. It was designated a Heritage Building in February 1984. But by late 1986 it was in such disrepair that it was condemned and then closed to the public in October 1987. It was going to be demolished but the officials decided to renovate the building with a budget of 5.3 million dollars. This was approved in July 1992. They finished the renovation on June 24, 1994. Now the building stands proudly in Lansdowne Park on display for everyone.

Part Two: Logging

Upon their arrival to Canada in 1830, Irish immigrants, Roderick Ryan and John Egan, entered the lumber trade. A year later, they were the subject of a complaint made by Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) chief trader, John Silverright, to the company’s director, Sir George Simpson. Silverright’s grievance was that the timber men were disturbing trade at the mouth of the Dumoine. [[1]]

It was prior to the arrival of Ryan and Egan, however, that saw the development of several key lumber trade innovations that made operations on the Dumoine feasible. First, in 1806, Philemon Wright (founder of Wrights Town) piloted a square timber raft from the town to the port of Quebec, establishing the logistics for how Ottawa Valley timber could be transported by river. By 1826, Wright’s son, Ruggles Wright, built the first timber crib slide there hastening everyone’s journey to Quebec. [[2]]Londoner merchants, George and William Hamilton Sr, relocated their timber business from Britain to Quebec as their timber source from the Baltic countries had been blocked by Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1809, the Hamiltons acquired a mill at the village of Hawkesbury. Within four decades, under the name The Hamilton Brothers (later named Hawkesbury Lumber Company), their sons would replace John Egan and run the largest timber operation in the Dumoine Valley.

Roderick established a base of operations across from the mouth of the Dumoine at the village of Rockcliffe (today called Stonecliffe) because of a colonization/supply road being built from Pembroke to Mattawa. By 1840, Ryan had begun cutting up from the mouth four kilometres to a chute now named after him. Egan’s crews, led by his chief engineer, William Moffat (son of one of the founders of Pembroke), were cutting lumber above Ryan’s Chute and up the west branch of the Dumoine by 1845. Within twenty years, other lumber kings, such as Joseph Aumond, Benjamin Moore, the Cullin Brothers, and the Hamilton Brothers, joined Egan and Ryan. [[3]]

A large log boom at the mouth of the Dumoine collected the logs from all the companies. From there, the individual companies formed their hewn property into twenty-six-foot-wide cribs to fit down the slides, then combined these cribs into giant rafts and hired special crews to pilot them on the two-month journey to Quebec City. The logging business was built on a strategy of first cutting the timber closest to the Ottawa River, then proceeding up the tributaries. Each company’s specialized timber appraisers called timber cruisers, blazed the trails to find the best timber stands and identify where to build the winter shanties. Building a supply road to haul food and materials for the men and horses into the shanty camps was a key part of this strategy.

By the 1850’s, the flood of companies buying the newly surveyed timber limits in the watershed was unstoppable. Together they all formed the Dumoine Boom and Slide Company to engineer the river at bottlenecks to efficiently run logs down to their shared boom at the mouth. This extensive cutting required an army of support, farmers pulling sleighs of food and equipment into the shanty camps to keep the men and horses fed and equipped. In 1860, surveyor David Sinclair, credited William Moffat, who at the time was working with the Dumoine Boom and Slide Company, with building a beautiful wagon road from the Ottawa River to the Grande Chute (now called the Dumoine Tote Trail). [[4]] Moffat also built the first version of the Grande Chute timber slide, a 400-foot single slide clinging to the west short beginning at Grande Chute Falls.

It has been calculated that a winter shanty required three pounds of supplies brought in for every board foot of lumber taken out and there were hundreds of thousands of board feet cut in the Dumoine Valley. [[5]] This constant flow of goods going up and logs coming down the Dumoine created a need for extensive infrastructure of wagon roads with stopping places every ten miles to house the teams and drivers. The teams were only capable of travelling that far each day, pulling their 2000-pound load through the snow. [[6]]

Historic map of stopping places along the Dumoine - Tamarack Magazine Issue 3 / Bill Paterson

At Rowanton, the Hamilton Brothers, and Booth and Eddy at Lac Dumoine, built large depot farms staffed with black smiths and labourers where they stockpiled supplies, grew feed, raised livestock, and maintained sleighs, wagons and tools. These farms work with family homesteads, called Stopping Places, which were located ten miles apart to accommodate teamsters who delivered supplies in the winter.

The creeks in the watershed required the building of dams, slides, and rock walls to control the water to flush the logs down to the Dumoine each spring. The longest single log slide in the world, at 3,364 feet, was built in 1871 by the government that was around Grande Chute area to replace Moffat’s original slide. It was only used to transport squared timbers for a fee of .15c each. The last squared timbers were cut around 1920 and the slide was dismantled shortly after that for its timber value.

New mills were built at Chaudière Falls in the late 1850’s. These mills demanded thousands of smaller sixteen-foot saw logs to produce lumber. The saw logs were easier to cut and drive down the Dumoine than the squared forty-foot giants. With the closer Ottawa destination, versus the squared timbers bound for Quebec City, the saw logs could be moved by water to the mills quicker, therefore being cut further north, well beyond Lac Dumoine. JR Booth, along with EB Eddy and Bronson & Weston, were the three largest operators of the second generation of lumbermen in 1880. Canadian invented steam powered boats called Alligators replaced hand or horse powered towing methods. The remains of two alligator boats can still be viewed from the shore of Lac Laforge, located just below Lac Dumoine. From the catch boom at the mouth of the Dumoine, the saw logs were towed to the mills. A new lumber company cooperative, the Upper Ottawa Improvement Company (ICO), was created in 1868 to tow every company’s logs to the mills in Arnprior and Ottawa. Each log was stamped with the owner’s brand. By 1900, another type of log, the four-foot pulp log, was added to the Dumoine river drive. EB Eddy and Booth lumber companies both opened pulp and paper mills at Chaudière Falls beginning in the 1890’s. The last river drive on the Dumoine was April 1961. The ICO continued to tow Dumoine logs trucked out to the Ottawa River, until 1990 when all log drives were stopped due to environmental damage.

Dumoine Club members at Stonecliffe Station (1938) - Private collection D. Charbonneau, Stonecliffe, OntarioThe logging era overlapped with new forms of recreation, including outdoor hunting and fishing clubs, and canoe tripping camps. In 1892, the Quebec government allowed groups of mostly well-off gentlemen to apply for large private fishing and hunting leases and establish a lodge base camp. Many old lumber camps were repurposed as club lodges. There were five such leases in the Dumoine watershed, accessible mostly by foot or horse via the original logging tote roads. The Dumoine Rod and Gun Club still stands as a fine example of this era. By the 1940’s, there were a dozen camps running trips, and today, some of these original camps are still in existence and over a thousand independent canoeists paddle the Dumoine each season. [[7]]

Wallace A Schaber

I am not a professional historian or Anishinabe expert. I am a collector of maps, stories, and artifacts about the Dumoine based on fifty years of guiding there by canoe, ski and foot. My book, Last of the Wild Rivers (2016) is available as an e-book online.

Friends of the Dumoine

In 2016, concerned Dumoine guides and travellers formed Friends of Dumoine to keep the rivers portages and campsites clean.

Mission Statement

“To champion conservation of the Dumoine watershed, promote non- mechanized recreation and strengthen knowledge of its natural environment and human history.”

Our major achievement to date is the re-opening and interpretation of the old Anishinabe portages that existed for centuries and linking them to the Dumoine tote road used by the lumber industry beginning in 1840. This hiking trail is now open from the Ottawa River to Grande Chute as a twenty-six-kilometre hiking-skiing trail www.sentierdumoine.ca . A visitor centre at Grande Chute complete with historic maps and artifacts is located at the northern gateway.

Please join us on the trail or virtually online to explore Canada's history and protect it. For more information about how to volunteer or donate write This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Friends of the Dumoine would like to thank our partners in helping to make this project a reality.

CPAWS Ottawa Valley
Zec Dumoine
Wolf Lake First Nation

Suggested Further Readings

Barrett, Harry B. and Clarence F. Coons. Alligators of the North. Nature Heritage Books: Toronto, 2010.

Lee, David. Lumber Kings and Shantymen. James Lorimer and Company Ltd: Toronto, 2006.

MacKay, Donald. The Lumberjacks. McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd: Toronto, 1976.

Reid, Richard ed. The Upper Ottawa Valley to 1855. Carleton University Press: Ottawa, 1990.

Whitton, Charlotte. A Hundred Years A -Fellin: Some Passages from the Timber Saga of the Ottawa in the Century in Which the Gillies Have Been Cutting in the Valley 1842-1942. The Runge Press Limited: Ottawa, 1974.

A record crowd of 130 came to hear Paul Couvrette’s Historical Society of Ottawa presentation on the Karsh brothers which was held at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on the afternoon of April 27, 2024. Paul, a celebrated Ottawa photographer, was both a professional colleague and family friend of the two Karsh brothers. Paul also has the distinction of having photographed all the Prime Ministers from Trudeau to Trudeau, and of being called upon to give photography lessons to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, so she could take better pictures of her Corgis.

Yousuf (1908-2002) and Malak (1915-2001) Karsh, with their parents and brother Jamil, fled the Armenian genocide making their way to Aleppo , Syria in 1922. Late in 1923, Yousuf sailed from Beirut to join his uncle George, a photographer, in Sherbrooke , Quebec. Yousuf had little formal education or knowledge of either French or English, but learnt photography from his uncle before apprenticing in Boston between 1928 and 1931. He then moved to Ottawa and worked for John Powis before opening his own studio in 1932.

Paul showed us a number of photos, some by Yousuf, some by Malak and some of his own. He used these to relate stories, sometimes about the photo itself, sometimes about the technique used, and sometimes focussing on a personal memory or incident. He mentioned that like all photographers starting out, Yousuf did passport photos, shot weddings, did commercial and industrial work, and essentially took on whatever work was available at the time. Yousuf was a member of the Ottawa Little Theatre and did many photos for them. Paul explained that this was where Yousuf developed his lighting style that would later become his trademark in his portrait photographs.

Paul showed us the portrait photo known as “The Roaring Lion”. This is the December 30, 1941 photo of then British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. Paul noted that the shoot, which only lasted a few minutes, was arranged by then Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who was a great supporter of Yousuf Karsh. Paul went on to discuss that story that just prior to the taking of the portrait, Karsh had taken the cigar away from Churchill. He said that he didn’t know if the story is true, but that if it is, it was something that Karsh had likely planned to do, as he researched and spoke with his subjects. This is a technique that Paul learnt from Yousuf and now employs himself. Although it is the best known portrait of Churchill, and is used on the British £5 note, it is not liked by the family. The family remembers Winston as a jovial man, not the scowling bulldog captured by Karsh that day. The photo changed the career and the life of Yousuf Karsh. The Karsh portrait became the “gold standard” and he was now sought out by all persons of importance, and those who believed themselves to be.

Paul then related a humourous side bar to the aforementioned photo. After the theft of a signed print of the photo from the reading room of the Chateau Laurier hotel was announced in August 2022, the Bytown Museum announced, the following April 1^st, the anonymous donation to their collection of a similar item. It was a great way for a small museum to garner some press.

Humour is something the public does not associate with Yousuf Karsh, but Paul maintains that he was a very funny man and recounted a couple of stories to illustrate this. On one occasion, Paul encountered Yousuf outside the Chateau Laurier, where he was then living. It was a terrible winter’s day, cold and with driving snow. Paul asked him why he had left the Middle East to come to Canada. Yousuf turned to Paul and replied “the weather”. On another occasion, Paul was talking with Yousuf about a recent portrait the latter had taken. Paul asked if Yousuf had noticed that there was a fly on the back of the chair behind the subject. Yousuf responded that the hardest part of that portrait was to train the fly to sit there while the photo was being taken.

As the fame, demands, and costs of Yousuf Karsh increased, he became unable to meet all the demands that were placed upon him. Paul noted that he was one of the beneficiaries of the referrals that Yousuf was forced to make, one client, a Supreme Court Justice, jokingly referring to Paul as “the poor man’s Karsh”.

In 1937, Malak joined his Uncle George and brother Yousuf in Canada and studied photography with them. Paul told us that although Malak is primarily known for his landscape work, he also did portrait, commercial, and industrial work and showed us examples of each. Malak is, however, best known for his images of Parliament Hill and of tulips. Malak was instrumental in the founding of the Tulip Festival in 1953.

Paul recounted an incident in which he encountered Malak taking a photo of some tulips. Paul remembers that Malak set up and waited for an hour to get exactly the right shot he wanted. Paul explained that in the age of film photography, you took one or perhaps two pictures, unlike the digital age of today when you can take as many pictures as you like and discard the many that are not worth keeping.

Perhaps Malak’s best known photo, (for those of a certain age), was entitled Paper and Politics, It was an unplanned photo taken in 1963 while he was working on a contract for E. B. Eddy and shows a number of logs and logging boats in the Ottawa River below Parliament Hill. The photo served as the inspiration for the engraving on the back of Canada’s last $1 bill. The fascinating story can be read at: Mishap on the dollar .

In 2017 to mark the 150 ^th anniversary of Confederation and the 25 ^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Canada, the Armenian people donated a bust of Yousuf Karsh to the people of Canada. The bust stands outside the Chateau Laurier at the corner of Rideau Street and Mackenzie Avenue. You can read more on this at: Yousuf Karsh Bust .

Currently, there is no similar monument honouring the career and contributions of Malak Karsh. There is, however, work underway to redress this inequity. You can read the proposal at: Malak Karsh Monument Proposal, and you can get involved or provide your support by contacting Michel Gauthier at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

 Paul Lauzon has recorded the presentation, available via the following link: https://historicallyspeakingottawa.blogspot.com/2024/04/take-one-paul-couvrette-friend-and.html

HSO is pleased to showcase the writings of Barry Padolsky, architect, urban designer, heritage advocate, and Winnipeg native.

From Barry himself, an introduction to this venture:

Friends and colleagues,

I am pleased to share “A Winnipeg Boy’s Imaginings” (2021) , “Shoreline Poems”(2022) and “Alphabet Soup” (2024) , a collection of my sketches, graphics, architectural explorations, poems, essays short stories, urban research and other miscellanea. This little project launched when I was wondering what to do during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

These volumes have also been published in hardcover, in a limited edition. They have been reserved and are being distributed to selected cultural institutions, libraries, and archives that contributed to my education. At the present time, they are not really available for purchase. I hope you enjoy this electronic version. You can even pass it on to someone else as a gift!  

Best wishes, Barry

A WINNIPEG BOY’S IMAGININGS (VOLUME 1)

SHORELINE POEMS (AWBI VOLUME 2)

ALPHABET SOUP (AWBI VOLUME 3)

Barry Padolsky B.Arch.,M.Sc.Urban Design OAA, FRAIC, RCA, CAHP

Copyright © 2024 Barry Padolsky.  All rights reserved. These volumes have been shared by The Historical Society of Ottawa with the express permission of the author.  No part of this collection may be reproduced or used in any manner without permission of the copyright owner except for brief parts in a review.

Richard Collins takes us on a virtual tour of some of Ottawa's most notable homes.

David C. Martin explores the early history of the Jewish community in Ottawa with a presentation entitled Paupers, Peddlers, Purveyors & Parishioners.

Another good crowd gathered at the Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on Saturday, April 20, 2024 to listen to the third and regrettably final installment of Phil Jenkins’ lecture series on four immigrant groups in Ottawa. In this session, Phil completed his discussion of the Chinese community and went on to talk about the role of the Italian community in Ottawa.

Phil highlighted two of the most famous members of Ottawa’s Chinese community before concluding this part with a brief discussion of the community as it exists today.

Adrienne Clarkson was born in Hong Kong in 1939 and moved to Ottawa in 1941 after the Japanese occupation of that territory. She attended public school and Lisgar Collegiate before going on to a very successful University education. Adrienne worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for some 30 years but achieved her greatest fame when, in 1999, she was appointed as Governor-General, a post she held until 2005. During this time, she led a “Team Canada” of artists and musicians to China to broaden cultural ties and understanding between the two nations. Recently, two members of the Historical Society of Ottawa met with Adrienne Clarkson and presented her with some old newspaper clippings that had come into their possession. This story can be read online: Tea with Adrienne Clarkson.

Denise Chong, a 3 ^rd generation Chinese-Canadian was born in Vancouver in 1953. After studying economics in Vancouver and Toronto she moved to Ottawa to work in the Department of Finance, eventually becoming a special advisor to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. This was remarkable for the time as the world of finance was dominated by white men. She left government work in the mid-1980s to pursue a career in writing and has since published four non-fiction books and edited one collection. Her books include: The Concubine’s Children (1994), The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story (1999), Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship (2009) and Lives of the Family: Stories of Fate and Circumstance (2013). The collection she edited is entitled The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women (1997). She still lives in Ottawa with her husband and two children.

The Chinese community in Ottawa remains very active and vibrant with 5 newspapers and many specialized support services. Focussed on Somerset Street West, its most recognizable symbols are the Royal Arch – Ottawa Chinatown that was constructed in 2010 and the annual Dragon Boat Festival.

History suggests that the first Italian to visit what would become Canada was John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto in Italian, Zuan Caboto in Venetian, Jean Cabot in French). Cabot was likely born in Genoa sometime about 1450 later moving to and becoming a citizen of Venice. By the mid-1490s he was in England and with financial support from Italian bankers in London and merchants in Bristol, he received letters patent from Henry VII to undertake expeditions of exploration. Phil read part of this, as follows: “…to find, discover and investigate whatsoever islands, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, which before this time were unknown to all Christians.” Phil noted that this can be seen as the start of colonialism in Canada. On June 24, 1497, Cabot landed on the east coast of North America.

Phil explained that Italian craftsmen worked throughout Europe, but as passage across the Atlantic became cheaper than train travel around Europe, they began to come across in the spring, returning home in the fall, thus avoiding the harsh winters, though some stayed and settled. Phil identified two major waves of Italian immigration, the first falling roughly between 1900 and 1914, with the other following the Second World War. The 1911 census recognized around 700 families of Italian origin in Ottawa, clustered mainly in Lowertown, and employed primarily as painters, plasterers, stone masons, bakers, and barbers.

Among the bakers were Frank and Maria Galla who arrived in Ottawa in 1908 and opened their bakery at 597 Somerset Street West in 1920, later moving it to Rochester Street. They had 6 children, 5 sons and a daughter, the boys all working in the bakery with their father and remaining bachelors until the business closed in the late 1960s. As seen with other immigrant community leaders, Frank and Maria were instrumental in welcoming newcomers, the bakery often becoming their first place of employment. The couple was also key to the evolution of recreation and cultural growth, especially with the heart of their community, their church, St. Anthony of Padua on Booth Street.

On June 10, 1940, Italy entered the Second World War on the side of Germany and Prime Minister Mackenzie King responded by authorizing the RCMP to apprehend Italians living in Canada who they perceived as a threat. Phil explained that there were about 150,000 Italians in Canada at that time, about half of which had been born in Canada. This distinction did not matter. Approximately 31,000 Italians were identified as “Enemy Aliens”. They were photographed, finger-printed and required to report to the authorities on a monthly basis. Between 600 – 700 men were placed into internment camps, the largest being Camp 33 in Petawawa, two other camps existing, one in New Brunswick and the other in Alberta. Some of these men were held for as long as 3 years. None were ever charged with any offence. As a community, Italians were shunned by other Canadians and demonized by the press, many losing their jobs. In 1990, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered an apology to Italian-Canadians for the internment but it was not until May 27, 2021 that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized on behalf of the Canadian Government.

Phil read us an account by Giacomo Moscatelli, a second generation Italian-Canadian that reflects on his own childhood and the transition through the generations from Italian, to Italian-Canadian, to Canadian-Italian, and finally simply to Canadian. It’s a great read: Growing up Italian.

In the late 1950s and 1960s the City of Ottawa undertook several “Urban Renewal” projects. These identified communities where it was felt that houses and other buildings were in poor condition. The area around Rochester and Booth Streets was one of the targets of this policy; large numbers of houses, mostly Italian-owned, were expropriated and demolished. The community was dispersed.

Phil went on to profile two of the best known members of the Italian community in Ottawa. Robert “Bob” Chiarelli, who was born near Preston Street (aka Corso Italia) has served as the Regional Chair, the Mayor of Ottawa, and as a Member of the Provincial Parliament, in which he was a Cabinet Minister. Mario Bernardi became the founding conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1969, becoming its Music Director in1971. He is credited with turning his hand-picked orchestra into one of the finest in the world.

One of the many pamphlets produced by the Historical Society of Ottawa is entitled “Growing Up in “La Colonia” and was written by Salvatore Pantalone. It provides more background on early Italian settlement in Ottawa and a collection of family anecdotes that colourfully describe life in “The Village” through the depression and the Second World War, with a special reference to the internment. Like many of the HSO pamphlets, it can be read online: Bytown Pamphlet #89.

Phil ended this session, and the series with his guitar. He performed Michael Bublé’s song "Home" , which was enthusiastically received, as were all aspects of this fantastic lecture series by one of our area’s leading public historians.

The Historical Society of Ottawa would like to thank Phil Jenkins once again for his time, his support, and especially for his passion.

Ottawa is one big graveyard! Cemeteries are peaceful. Some like to stroll among the dearly departed to get away from the noise and chatter of daily life. Historians, on the other hand walk among the graves hoping that the tombstones will tell a story of those below.

I feel the same way when I walk the streets of Centretown, Lowertown, Sandy Hill, and Hintonburg. Old houses are my memorials to the past. Big or small, elaborate or modest, Ottawa’s houses of the 19th and early 20th century tell us how the people who lived in them . . . lived. To me cemeteries are about death. But the homes of those now gone are about the life that they chose or inherited.

For the HSO March 13, 2024, Zoom presentation, I took people on a journey of the residences that were once a place of relaxation after a hard day at the office . . . or store, or operating room, or laboratory, or forest. The unadorned elegance of homes in Lowertown – some of wood, others of stone – reveal the modest lifestyles of Ottawa’s labourers and lower management civil servants.

Brick, on the other hand, was the preferred choice for the upper crust of Upper Town. The streets of Centretown run red with Edwardian masterpieces. These homes hint of a congenial social norm where the women played Whist in the parlor, while their husbands discussed the rising or falling business climate in the sitting room across the hall.

At the southern extremity of the Bank and Elgin streetcar lines, Glebe became the exclusive domain of brokers and bankers. These people could afford the services of local architects like Werner Noffke and William Caven Beattie, who were commissioned to design “revival” homes in colonial and Classical styles, and to avoid, at all costs, the staid British styles of the “old money” families.

Part One of Who Lived Here? can be seen at the HSO YouTube website.

Alastair Sweeny, author of "Thomas Mackay, The Laird of Rideau Hall and the Founding of Ottawa" recounts the beginning of Bytown.

We were excited to gather again at the Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on Saturday, April 13, 2024, to hear the second installment of Phil Jenkins’ lecture series dealing with the contributions of four immigrant communities to Ottawa. In this section, Phil would complete his discussions on the Jewish community and introduce us to the history of the Chinese community in Ottawa.

The audience was delighted when Phil chose to continue his history of the Jewish community in Ottawa with his guitar and a rendition of the Leonard Cohen song Tower Of Song which was greatly appreciated and an excellent reintroduction to the topic of Jewish history in Ottawa.

Phil told us stories of a number of individuals, the first being the remarkable story of Lillian Bilsky Freiman, who was also known as “The Poppy Lady”. At the outbreak of the First World War Lillian arranged to get 30 sewing machines put into her home and organized Red Cross sewing circles to sew blankets and other clothing for the troops overseas. In 1918 she was tasked by the Mayor of Ottawa to organize a volunteer force of some 1,500 to help combat the spread of the Spanish Flu in the city. In 1921, with growing interest in using the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, she crafted Canada’s first poppies in her living room and later became the Chair of Ottawa’s annual Poppy Campaign for much of the rest of her life. She also founded Canadian Hadassah and worked tirelessly for many other charitable organizations including the Ottawa Welfare Bureau, the Protestant Infants Home, the Red Cross Society, and the Salvation Army along with many others. In 1934 she was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by King George V, the first Jewish Canadian to be so honoured. Upon her death in 1940, among the many who attended her funeral were Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the Mayor of Ottawa, Stanley Lewis.

As a teenager, David Mirsky, the son of Ottawa's first rabbi, collected empty bottles and returned them to Brading’s Brewery. By 1920, he was filling bottles with spring water from a spring at the base of Nanny Goat Hill and selling them; he founded The Pure Spring Company in 1925 and it would become the largest independently owned soft drink company in Canada. The company remained in the Mirsky family until the mid-1960s when it was purchased by Crush.

Louis Baker was joined by his brother Jake and opened Baker Brothers at the corner of Booth and Duke Streets. It was the largest scrap yard in the area and survived in that location until the general demolition of Lebreton Flats in the mid-1960s. The business remains in operation, now located on Sheffield Road.

Phil then reminded us of the decision of the Canadian government not to offer sanctuary to the passengers of the St. Louis.

Scribe’s Note: The MS St. Louis sailed from Hamburg on May 13, 1939 bound for Havana with 937 passengers on board, mostly German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. When the ship docked in Havana on May 27, the Cuban authorities only allowed 28 passengers to disembark. Negotiations to allow the others to land in Cuba failed and the ship was ordered out of Cuban waters on June 2, 1939. They were unable to obtain permission to land in the United States, so on June 7 the St. Louis set sail directly back to Europe, not entering Canadian waters. The St. Louis did not contact Canadian authorities requesting permission to disembark its passengers in Canada, but Prime Minister Mackenzie King did receive a petition on the evening of June 7th from a group of prominent Canadians led by historian and professor George Wrong suggesting that sanctuary be offered. At that time, Mackenzie King was on the Royal Train in Niagara and the government was not sitting. He contacted the Undersecretary for External Affairs, Dr. Oscar D. Skelton, to consult with Minister of Justice, Ernest Lapointe, and the Director of Immigration, Frederick Blair, as he “would like to be advised immediately as to powers of government to meet suggestion which communication contains”. Blair informed Skelton that the refugees could be admitted to Canada by having their names listed on an Order-in-Council but advised against so doing. As a result on June 9 Mackenzie King was informed that only people from four specified groups (family, investors, entrepreneurs, and highly-skilled immigrants) could be admitted by Order-in-Council. Thus Mackenzie King was told that the passengers of the St. Louis were inadmissible. Mackenzie King recorded in his diary that the refugees’ plight was “much less our problem than that of the U.S. and Cuba” while Blair wrote “It is manifestly impossible for any country to open its doors wide enough to take in the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who want to leave Europe: the line must be drawn somewhere.”

The St. Louis returned to Europe and distributed her passengers to four nations, the Netherlands (181), Belgium (214), France (224) and the United Kingdom (288). The Second World War soon erupted and 254 of the former passengers of the St. Louis would die in the Holocaust, while one would die in a German air raid on London.

Source: MS St. Louis in Canadian Context | Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21

Phil then began his history of the Chinese community in Ottawa, with its very early beginnings a half of a continent away. The first 60 Chinese immigrants were brought to Nootka Sound , Vancouver Island in 1788 by British merchants. They built a schooner and what was intended to be a permanent fur trading post. An additional 80 Chinese workers were brought over the following year, but soon after, the post was taken by the Spanish and the fate of the Chinese workers remains unknown. There were two major events which spurred Chinese immigration to British Columbia. The first was the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858, which initially drew immigrants from California, but then directly from China. The second was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway between 1880 and 1885. Approximately 17,000 Chinese labourers were employed on the construction of the section through British Columbia. The work was dangerous and conditions hard, resulting in the deaths of between 600 – 700 Chinese workers. The Chinese labourers were cheap and it is likely that the railway would not have been affordable had they not been employed. Although the bulk of the Chinese who remained in Canada stayed in British Columbia, the now completed trans-continental railway served as a means for the eastward migration of the Chinese.

With work on the railway completed, the Chinese workers needed to find another way to make a living. Hand laundry service proved a popular choice as investment was low and the hard work and long hours made it unpopular among white men, though there was some push-back from washer women. The first Chinese Hand Laundry in Toronto seems to have been opened about 1877 with the first in Ottawa being opened on Sparks Street by Wing On in October 1887. The Chinese laundries flourished, 2 more opening in 1889, offering good service at low cost due to the high level of competition. Phil told us that, by 1901, 56 of the 68 laundries in Ottawa were Chinese owned, increasing to 68 of 72 by 1914. They reached their peak at 83 in 1916. Phil explained that those who became successful would often move on to open cafes, which were seen as a higher class of business.

As the number of Chinese immigrants increased, so did the public backlash and the community was subjected to extreme racism and discrimination from the general public and through the press.

The Chinese also fell victim to official racism from the Canadian government with the passing of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885, which imposed a $50 Head Tax on Chinese immigrants. This was raised to $100 in 1900 and raised again in 1903 to a staggering $500. Those who paid the tax and so gained entry were issued a Certificate which carried their photo and personal information. This applied to children as well as adults. On July 1, 1923, the Canadian government replaced the Chinese Immigration Act with another piece of legislation with the same name, but more commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act that denied entry to Canada for all Chinese with the exception of diplomats, merchants, students and special cases. This made it impossible for Chinese men, who usually came to Canada on their own, to bring their wives, children or other family members to join them in Canada. It was not until 1947 that the Act was repealed and in 2006 Prime Minister Stephen Harper officially apologized for the discriminatory legislation and authorized token compensation payments to those who had paid the Head Tax, though not to their children.

Phil related the personal stories of a number of the Chinese immigrants to Ottawa, including that of Shung Joe, who came to Ottawa as a teenager in 1913 to work in the laundry owned by his half-brother. He worked diligently and saved enough to return to China in 1919 to marry and later in 1923, to send for his wife Kai Voon. This was a common practice among those who were successful enough to afford it. Kai Voon arrived just as the Exclusion Act was coming into force and it took the intervention of a church official in Victoria to permit her entry. Shung Joe’s own first laundry was in their home on O’Connor Street, follow by a second location on Slater Street before introducing the new service of Dry Cleaning. The couple had 7 children, one son tragically drowning near the Chateau Laurier. The family home was a welcoming place for new immigrants from China and the family would make weekly drives throughout eastern Ontario, visiting with other Chinese families to spread the news of what was happening in Ottawa and what they had heard from cChina. As a teenager in the 1940s, one of the sons, Bill, began working at two restaurants, the Canton Inn and the Cathay Chop Suey Palace, both on Albert Street. In 1950, Bill took over ownership of the Cathay and in 1958, over the objections of then Mayor Charlotte Whitton, it was granted the first liquor licence to a Chinese restaurant in the city. Bill went on to become one of the most important and influential members of the Chinese community in Ottawa, well respected for his leadership, he was responsible for the formation of the Ottawa Chinese Community Service Centre, and for his philanthropy.

Phil told us that Albert Street was Ottawa’s original Chinatown, the first Chinese restaurant in Ottawa opening at the corner of Albert Street and Metcalfe Street in 1904. By the 1920s many of the restaurants on Albert Streets were Chinese owned, but catered to a white clientele, employing white servers and had names such as Capital Lunch, Boston Café, Ontario Restaurant, and Harry’s, there being no taste yet in Ottawa for Chinese food. As this changed restaurants such as the Cathay and the Canton Inn, opened by Stanley Wong from Montreal, flourished. Often staff of these original Chinese restaurants would move on and open their own places, such as the Golden Palace on Carling Avenue. In the 1970s, higher rents on Albert Street forced most Chinese businesses to close or move. Many moved to Somerset Street West between Bay Street and Preston Street and now include Vietnamese, Korean, and other Asian owned businesses in what is Ottawa’s new Chinatown.