You can say that the Historical Society of Ottawa’s guest speaker for September 15, 2021 is certainly an accomplished speaker. From 1973 to 1980, Jim Hurcomb was a familiar voice on CKCU-FM, Radio Carleton. From 1980 to 2000, Jim hosted a number of programs on CHEZ-106, including the morning show, and the afternoon variety show, In the City. From 2000-2008, Jim worked at CFRA Radio.

In all these years of jockeying everything from vinyl records to MP3s, Jim has gathered a wide collection of memories of the music scene in Ottawa. Did you know that Elvis Presley performed live only three times in Canada, and that one of these stops was at the old Auditorium on O’Connor Street?

Although Jim talked briefly about the big stars who visited Ottawa, the main theme of Jim’s presentation was Ottawa’s hometown bands. Most were short lived groups whose hits played only on the local stations. One of these, The Staccatos had a song, titled Signs that did not do well. Then the band took on a new name, The Five Man Electrical Band. They re-released Signs and this time around it went to the top of the Canadian and US charts.

Paul Anka is perhaps Ottawa’s most famous songwriter. His songs were hits in the US and Europe, but Anka was not well respected in his home town. As Jim noted, the movement in music in Ottawa was towards a hard-driving rock sound, while Anka was writing popular, but otherwise conventional love songs that didn’t have the kind of edge Ottawa’s music fans were craving.

Jim’s presentation was only able to scratch the surface of Ottawa’s music scene, but you can read more about Ottawa’s early rock and roll history in his new book, Rockin’ on the Rideau, available at amazon.ca or at local bookstores. You can also catch Jim on LIVE 88.5, Sunday nights at 9 pm for his show, The Sound of the Underground.

You can watch the full presentation on our YouTube channel.

Our last presentation before the summer 2021 break took us halfway around the world but the story resonated here in Ottawa in 1979. After seeing stories on the news about the plight of refugees fleeing Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam, Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar anxiously arranged a public meeting at Lansdowne Park to gauge the interest within the city for sponsoring refugees in desperate need. Dewar expected about 500 people to show up, but when she arrived to open the meeting she discovered that 3,000 had arrived to do their part to provide new homes for refugees fleeing war-torn countries.

It is at this point in our story where two of the evening’s three guest speakers enters the picture.

Michael Molloy was the director of refugee policy in Canada from 1976 to 1978 and Senior Coordinator for the Indochinese Refugee Task Force. Canada had never before experienced a refugee crisis of such magnitude, so Mike and his colleagues had no playbook to go by to process refugees and get them safely to Canada.

The second speaker for the evening was Robert Shalka. He was in Thailand and had hoped initially to settle refugees there but realized that Canada was going to have to do its part to find homes for those forced to flee Cambodia and Laos. Robert spoke about processing centres in Singapore, Bangkok and other places in Asia and of the challenges of interviewing refugees, reconnecting separated families, finding resettlement lands in Thailand, or arranging transportation to Canada for refugees, as well as the process in Canada of organizing sponsors.

In 2017, Mike and Bob and two other foreign service offers, members of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society, collected their stories into a book, Running on Empty, which you can order through the McGill-Queen’s University Press website, at mqup.ca.

Last to speak was Rivaux Lay, who was in Thailand during the crisis, a Cambodian refugee himself, contributing as a social worker, translator and teacher’s aide at the refugee camps. You need to hear Rivaux’s story in his own words to fully appreciate what he went through in those horrific years, finally came to Canada, after helping so many others before him.

You can view the June 2021 presentation online via the HSO channel on YouTube.

Our guest speaker for May 12, 2021 was James Powell, who is a long-time member of the Ottawa Historical Society, and a director on the HSO board.

For his presentation James spoke about one of the most tragic heroes in Canada’s history. Thomas D’Arcy McGee was murdered near his Sparks Street apartment on a chilly April evening in 1868. James talked about McGee’s early life in Ireland and his brief stay in the United States. While in the US he visited Canada, and it was here that McGee felt Ireland’s poor could find opportunities unavailable at home. Feeling that union of the French and English cultures would cultivate equality for all people, he promoted a greater Canada, thus becoming a Father of Confederation in the two years prior to his murder. It’s sad to think that a man who saw so much promise in Canada would be one of the few in this country’s history to be the target of a political assassination.

James also told the story of the man put on trial for McGee’s murder, and gave us an account of the suspicion surrounding Patrick Whalen’s conviction and execution.

You can watch the full presentation on McGee via our YouTube channel.

Our meeting on April 28, 2021, was as much a romance story as it was a history lesson. HSO member Dorothy Phillips has researched the life of the Duke of Devonshire, Victor Cavendish and his wife, Lady Evelyn Petty-Fitzmaurice, which the duke affectionately called “Evie”. In 2017, Dorothy assembled her extensive research into a book, Victor and Evie: British Aristocrats in Wartime Rideau Hall.

Unlike many of Canada’s governors general who accepted their posting as just a stepping stone to better political opportunities in the UK, or to a future diplomatic assignment in a warmer part of British Empire, Victor Cavendish loved the time they spent in Ottawa. The couple contributed much to the city’s life. Evie was well known as a gracious host, holding twice-weekly dinners for government officials, and Saturday afternoon skating parties for the common folk. Victor and Evie spent their summers at a cottage at Blue Sea Lake, about 100 km north of Ottawa. Their eldest daughter Maud was the first child of a governor general to be married in Ottawa.

Evie was already familiar with Rideau Hall when her husband became governor general in 1916. She had lived in the same Governors’ Mansion as a teenager when her father, The Marquess of Lansdowne was Canada’s head of state.

Watch the video presentation from our April 2021 meeting via this link.

At the HSO virtual presentation on October 14, 2020, Jo-Anne McCutcheon of the University of Ottawa shared with us how technology and digitization techniques of today can help us explore the past.

On November 18, 2020, Stephen Garrett, Project Manager of the archeological excavation of Parliament Hill in 2019, shared stories and discoveries from his work in a virtual presentation to the Historical Society of Ottawa.

On March 10, 2021, Andrew King, Ottawa artist, cartoonist, columnist, and author of the Ottawa Rewind books and blog, shared some of his discoveries of long-hidden secrets from Ottawa's fascinating past.

Our March 31st guest speaker shares an interest history’s darker side. Author of nine award-winning books on Canadian history, Charlotte Gray published Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise in 2019 to tell the story of the rise to wealth, and the unsolved murder of Sir Harry Oakes.

Harry’s life was not a rags-to-riches story (his father was a lawyer, and Sir Harry studied to be a doctor) but his life became one of adventure (with a bit luck here and there) that lead to his becoming one of the world’s wealthiest men. Harry made some famous and influential friends along the way, but it’s possible that one of these might have been responsible for his brutal death.

Charlotte traveled to such diverse places as the silver mines of Kirkland Lake and the elegant mansions of the Bahamas, in search of details on the life and death of the mining magnate who was considered a generous philanthropist and gentleman to some, and a crude and arrogant monster to others. Which of these is the true version of Sir Harry? You’ll have to watch the video of Charlotte’s presentation to find out how she feels about this Murdered Midas.

The Historical Society of Ottawa went underground for our March 10th presentation, following author Andrew King on a journey to some of the hidden secrets of Ottawa’s past.

In 2019, Andrew wrote Ottawa Rewind: A Book of Curios and Mysteries. This was a collection of stories Andrew had written individually for local publications, about lesser-known people, places and events in Ottawa’s past. He followed this book up recently with Ottawa Rewind 2: More Curios and Mysteries, which takes a more “in-depth” look at the city beneath our feet.

One of Andrew’s earliest investigations lead to historic Pooley’s Bridge in search of a cave. Years earlier some girls had found the cave by accident, entered and followed the dark path about 150 feet before turning back in a panic after hearing what seemed to be the sound of mournful organ music.

Other secret passages are not so hard to find. One of the more curious of these is in plain sight, near the steps that lead from the Rideau Canal locks up to Parliament Hill.

Andrew not only searched for the location of the city’s many hidden tunnels, passageways and “subterranean secrets”, he mapped them out in 3D to help us better visualize where these mysterious place are; in case you’re interested in following Andrew’s path of research. Or, if you’d rather play it safe, watch the video of Andrew’s presentation and let him tell you his stories.