Paul Anka, teen idol and internationally renowned singer/songwriter of the 1950s/60s, was born in Ottawa on July 30, 1941, to parents of Lebanese descent.

Paul's father came from Syria, and his mother, who died when Paul was 18, came from Lebanon. His family lived in an apartment on Slater Street at the time. Paul attended Fisher Park High School and sang in the choir at Ottawa's St. Elias Orthodox Church.

The Ankas ran a family restaurant, the Laconda, at Bank Street & Laurier Avenue. It was here that the Ankas got to know CFRA's Gord Atkinson, who would be instrumental in the launch of Paul's career.

Atkinson arranged for Paul and three schoolmates and their band "The Bobbysoxers" to make their radio debut on his CFRA show "Campus Corner" and Atkinson promoted Anka's first 45 on his show and through his weekly newspaper column.

Anka's rocket to stardom came in 1957 with the release of his love song "Diana", inspired by his crush on a 17-year-old neighbourhood girl he used to hang around with when he was 15. Diana Ayoub attested she'd had no idea that he had felt that way about her until the song came out.

In addition to his own long list of top hits, Paul Anka wrote Tom Jones' "She's a Lady", Johnny Carson's theme on the Tonight Show, and the lyrics for Frank Sinatra's "My Way".

In 1972, a street in the Hunt Club area of the city was named "Paul Anka Drive" in the singer/songwriter's honour. In 1981 Ottawa City Council proclaimed August 26 "Paul Anka Day" to mark Anka's quarter-century in show business.

Anka was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1980, was made an Officer of Canada in 2004 and was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2005.

Peter Atkinson recounts his father's legacy and contributions to the careers of Paul Anka, Rich Little and others in his excellent book "Gord Atkinson: Ottawa's Oldest Teenager": showbill.wordpress.com/showbill-books

The Canadian Encyclopedia article on Paul Anka: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/paul-anka-emc

Ottawa's Lillian Freiman was the first Jewish Canadian to be awarded the Order of the British Empire -- and was perhaps the most influential Jewish Canadian woman of her generation.

Lillian Freiman organized Canada's first poppy campaign in 1921 -- the original poppies made in her living room.

During WWI Freiman helped form what eventually became today's Royal Canadian Legion -- and she had furniture hauled out of her house in order to bring in 30 sewing machines so volunteers could make blankets and clothing for the troops overseas.

In times of crisis before government "safety nets" to address health and social concerns, Lillian Freiman would be called upon by prime ministers and mayors time and again. During the last great pandemic, she unhesitatingly answered the call to rally together thousands of volunteers in our city to deal with the devastating 1918 flu.

Lillian's father was Moses Blisky, patriarch of Ottawa's first Jewish family and she married Archibald "A.J." Freiman who, despite the fierce antisemitism of the times, founded and built the iconic Freiman's department store empire in our city.

Lillian Freiman was a remarkable activist, fundraiser, community leader and philanthropist. She passionately supported national Jewish causes -- yet would also fill 5000 stockings for families of absent military men at Christmas time.

Freiman would repeatedly come to the aid of orphans, veterans and whoever was in need. She "was not above marching into the Freiman's store (on Rideau Street) and grabbing coats, hats and mittens to help the destitute who, through the grapevine, arrived at her door."

Here is the Canadian Encyclopedia entry, authored by Hagit Hadaya in 2021, sharing the story of Ottawa's incredible Lillian Freiman: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lillian-freiman

HSO member Hagit Hadaya is an Ottawa-based architectural historian and heritage consultant.

As well, visit the website of the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship for"Remembering Lillian Freiman: A Remarkable 'Person of National Historic Significance'” by Betsy Rigal, Lillian’s granddaughter: chesatottawa.ca/newsletter-july-2025/remembering-lillian-freiman-a-remarkable-person-of-national-historic-significance

Gregorios Kanellakos was the first Greek to settle in Ottawa, in1895, followed by his brother Demetrios.

By 1900, there were still only 200 persons of Greek descent in Canada.

By 1910, approximately ten Greek families had settled in Ottawa, growing to thirty households by 1930.

Today, Canada is home to over a quarter million people of Greek ancestry, with Ottawa-Gatineau among the four most highly concentrated metropolitan areas.

The HCO (Hellenic Community of Ottawa) chronicles their community’s proud history here in the nation’s capital: helleniccommunity.com/history-of-the-hco

In 1953, Tsin Van stood in a citizenship judge's office and declared his allegiance to the Queen and this country. Four years later, he was positioned only a few feet from that same Queen as a principal photographer during her visit in 1957.

In addition to Queen Elizabeth II, Tsin Van would photograph the likes of John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau, Marion Dewar, Zhao Ziyang, Jordan’s King Hussein and the Esquires — along with countless everyday Ottawans during his career spanning four decades.

Phil Jenkins had the opportunity to interview Tsan Van (1918-2010) at the age of 92, just months before he passed away. Here are excerpts from the article Phil prepared for the Citizen:

“Ottawa, in the fall of 1946, was not much of a place to Tsin Van's eyes, himself being a recent immigrant to the capital of a country bigger than even his native China.

The Chinese population in Ottawa the year after the end of the war was around 500, mostly Cantonese speakers with Billy Joe's Cathay restaurant as the social centre, and Tsin found only three others that could speak his Shanghai dialect.

But in the office on Rideau Street where he worked as a transportation manager for the Chinese government supply agency, he found something much better; a wife.

Betty was born in Ottawa, knew the town very well, and their attraction across a desk was palpable.

They eloped and then married with relative speed for the times and, with $500 in the bank, moved into a small apartment in Aylmer on the cheaper side of the river, a headquarters from which to plan and implement their Ottawan lives.

The job with the Chinese agency, which was working with a finite fund of $60 million, ended, and Tsin needed to find another line of work, along with all the other war veterans who were now returning to resume their interrupted lives.

He was trained in transportation, both in China and the United States, but it was his lifelong interest in photography that now surfaced.

On the understanding that everything in life operates on odds of fifty-fifty either it happens or it doesn't he sent some photographs of puppies in a basket, an "animal interest" shot as it is called in the trade, to Dick Jackson, the city editor at the Journal newspaper, then Ottawa's other daily broadsheet (The Journal lasted until 1980, having started in Ottawa in 1885).

Within a week Tsin heard that his puppies in a basket had been bought, for $3 a shot. And the paper would have a look at any more photographs of Ottawa city life he might care to send in.

He had embarked on the life of a freelance photographer, complete with a fedora hat with a card saying PRESS tucked into the headband.

Tsin kept up his ties with his family in China (his father had died during the war, of pneumonia), but then Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, after two decades of civil war, established the People's Republic of China on Oct 1, 1949, and one particular person in Ottawa knew that he would not be returning there for some time.

In 1953, Tsin stood in a judge's office and declared his allegiance to the Queen and this country. Four years later, as it happened, he was only a few feet from that same Queen when she visited us in 1957. He was one of the principal photographers on the royal occasion (as well as several later ones) and one picture in particular, of the Queen arriving by open car to open Parliament, enjoyed what we would now call global viewing.'

Another photo shoot stands out in Tsin's mind from among the thousands of portraits and weddings he has captured on the streets and in his studios on Sparks Street and later on Carling Avenue.

It came along in January 1984, when the premier of China, Zhao Ziyang, visited Ottawa and attended a gala at the National Arts Centre thrown by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Photographers lead an oxymoronic life, being both on the periphery in terms of standing at major events in the lives of others, and yet at the very centre of them physically.

On this occasion, Tsin was but a few feet from two men he admired Zhao was a reformer who five years later went into Tienanmen Square to make a sympathetic speech to the students and he was able to put them both in a single frame.

‘The RCMP liked me,’ he says, ‘because I wasn't pushy, not like now, and they let me get close to people they were guarding.’

Tsin's stock of stories of encounters with former high-ups in Ottawa fill many an album, like the snap he took of King Hussein of Jordan with a gun tucked in his belt and the portrait he did of Dief the Chief in his office in the late 1950s; he gave the prime minister a Hansard to play with while he composed the shot and Diefenbaker promptly found a speech he had been searching for about the Canadian flag, and thanked Tsin for changing his luck.

But Tsin reserves the most affection in his voice, as do many in this town, for Marion Dewar, Ottawa's best mayor in living memory.

He was a co-sponsor of a family from the Project 4000 Vietnamese refugees that Dewar invited to settle in Ottawa, and he even arranged for her to visit China along with 11 other prominent Canadians. They remained in contact until Dewar's death in September last year.

In 1989, in his early 70s, after 40 years of photographing, Tsin retired, donated a lot of his photographs to the national archives and concentrated on his family and his friendship association with China, continuing to make visits there, his last to Shanghai in 2006.

Betty, who is now 80, and Tsin have remained married for 62 years, and are blessed with children who have gone far in life; there are now great-grandchildren. They have settled, for the remainder of their incarnations, in Amberwood Village out in Stittsville.

Tsin still hoists a camera, a digital one now, but it is only every now and then, at family events. He still looks life square in the eye, and has left a space in his albums for a self-portrait at age 100.”

The Karsh brothers, arriving in Ottawa as young Armenian refugees, would build careers as world-acclaimed photographers — Yousuf with his penetrating portraits of some of the twentieth century's most prominent figures and Malak for his exquisite eye in capturing the sublime beauty of nature and landscape.

Yousuf Karsh’s career was launched in December 1941 on Parliament Hill, when the young photographer leaned forward and pulled the cigar from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s scowling mouth to capture the iconic photograph to become known as “The Roaring Lion”.

While Yousuf became famous for his portraits of world figures, Malak was more drawn to the beauty of nature. Malak Karsh’s efforts are credited with the establishment of the Canadian Tulip Festival held annually in Ottawa.

For many years, Malak’s scene of the log-strewn Ottawa River below Parliament Hill was featured on the back of Canada’s dollar bill, while Yousuf’s portraits of the Queen would grace the front our currency.

In 2024, international award-winning Ottawa photographer Paul Couvrette (a friend and colleague of the Karsh brothers) shared their remarkable story as part of the HSO Speaker Series. Here is Dave Kent’s summary of Paul’s talk, as well as a link to a recording of the presentation: www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/past-presentations/paul-couvrette-and-the-karsh-brothers

Herbert “Pops” Brown and his wife Estelle were among Ottawa's first Black business owners when they founded Brown’s Cleaners in 1957. The Browns would serve as an example for others of what could be achieved in Canada -- that success from the ground up for Canadians of African descent was attainable.

New immigrants to Ottawa in the decades to follow were given the advice: “Go and see the Browns.”  People of Caribbean or African origin who came to the capital to build new lives found comfort and guidance from Herbert Brown – more commonly known as “Pops” – and his wife, Estelle. Pops ran the cleaning side of the business and Estelle, a gifted seamstress, took care of the tailoring.

Pops Brown first came to Canada in 1937 and his family joined him in Ottawa in 1953. Brown enlisted in the Canadian army during the Second World War when it was a rare thing to see a Black man in the ranks –- perhaps one face among thousands. (It was Brown's wartime service that enabled him to fast-track to citizenship at a time when people of the Caribbean were not frequently accepted as immigrants.)

That first Brown’s Cleaners in 1957 was on Murray Street (after Brown initially having operated a dry-cleaning business out of the Beacon Arms Hotel).

His nickname “Pops” had come about for good reason. In the late 1950s, the Canadian government launched a domestic scheme to bring in Caribbean women for work as domestic helpers. Brown served as a stand-in father at the weddings of at least seven of them – while Estelle Brown made their wedding dresses.

Pops and Estelle retired in 1971 when Estelle’s health began to fail and the family sold the successful dry-cleaning chain in 1977.

Olivia Bowden shares the story of the Browns for this article in Black Scene Ottawa: blackottawascene.com/herbert-and-estelle-brown-earliest-black-ottawa-migrants/

Larocque’s, catering primarily to Ottawa’s French-speaking community, was a rarity along Rideau Street — a business district renowned for iconic Jewish-owned retail establishments such as Freiman’s and Caplan’s.

When Larocque’s founder had floundered in the 1920s, it was ironically a Jewish family, the Vinebergs, who had ended up taking over and then running the department store for most of the next half century.

The Vinebergs, however, held true to the department store’s French-Canadian heritage — keeping the name, continuing to offer bilingual service to customers and employing a largely Francophone staff.

Robert Vineberg recounts the story of the department store his family operated for more than three decades, as part of the HSO pamphlet series: www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/bytown-pamphlets/pamphlets-available-for-download/111-the-store-a-personal-history-of-larocque-s

In 2021, Robert Vineberg also shared the story for our Speaker Series. Here is a recording of that Historical Society of Ottawa Speaker Series presentation: www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/resources/videos/a-personal-history-of-laroque-s-department-store

James Powell also details the Larocque’s legacy: todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com/2021/08/28/larocques

Visit our website to view the entire collection of 100+ HSO digital pamphlets: www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/bytown-pamphlets

In 1897, Ottawa’s City Council voted to impose a new $10 tax, exclusively to apply to Chinese-owned laundries. Anti-Chinese sentiment in Ottawa had been festering. That same year, the Ottawa Trades and Labour Council had called for their men to boycott Chinese laundries and instead patronize “our laundries run by white people”.

The first Chinese people to come to Ottawa had arrived in 1887. As of the 1891 census there were still only five Chinese living in Ottawa, out of a total Ontario population of 97.

Chinese immigrants were barred from many professions in Canada and forbidden from buying property in certain jurisdictions. Ottawa’s first Chinese arrivals opened up laundries.

The first wave of Chinese had come to Canada in the 1850s and then a second wave arrived to do the dangerous work of railway building in the 1880s. Canadian resentment of the Chinese began to grow.

In 1885 the Canadian government instituted an exorbitant poll tax to put a stop to further Chinese immigration. This made it unaffordable for the men working on the railways to bring their wives and families to Canada, leading to many broken families.

By the beginning of the 20th century there were still barely 17,000 Chinese living in all of Canada yet they were still somehow seen as some kind of threat to the Canadian way of life.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1923-1947, further prevented Chinese immigration. Canadians of Chinese descent were only granted the right to vote in 1947.

That same year Prime Minister Mackenzie King had reiterated that “the people of Canada do not wish, as a result of mass immigration, to make a fundamental alteration in the character of our population” and Canada’s race-based immigration system remained in force until 1962.

The Historical Society of Ottawa's James Powell recounts a long, dark chapter from Canada’s past, including the adoption of the Chinese laundry tax here in Ottawa: www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-services-in-ottawa/ottawa-s-chinese-laundry-tax

Have you had a chance to hop aboard the fascinating “Black History in Ottawa Streets” bi-weekly bus tour offered by Black History Ottawa each summer?

BHO President Jean-Marie Guerrier touches on some of highlights of Ottawa’s Black history in this episode of “Time Travelling with the Historical Society of Ottawa” TV series recorded in 2024 in partnership with Rogers TV:  www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/resources/videos/time-travelling-series/time-travelling-with-jean-marie-guerrier-black-history-in-ottawa-streets

Visit our website to view additional episodes of “Time Travelling with the Historical Society of Ottawa”.

Archibald Jacob Freiman, born in Lithuania in 1880, immigrated to Canada in 1893 with his parents and three sisters. By 1899 he was co-owner of his first retail store, on Rideau Street.  Soon becoming sole proprietor, the store was renamed A.J. Freiman Ltd., and would reign as one of Ottawa’s most highly-regarded shopping destinations for the next three-quarters of a century.

There were periods in Canada’s history, such as during the 1930s, when anti-semitism was rampant. What challenges did this present for businessmen and community leaders such as A.J. Freiman?

The HSO’s James Powell shares the story: www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/personalities-from-the-very-famous-to-the-lesser-known/a-j-freiman