A favourite tale of Ottawa lore, re-told repeatedly, is the intriguing story that a plan to place the Rideau Canal entrance at LeBreton Flats was changed because of Lord Dalhousie’s anger at Captain John LeBreton, who the Governor General believed had used privileged information of the plan to purchase Lot 40 (the planned location) for personal gain.
Historians, however, as far back as Hamnet Pinhey Hill in 1919, have persevered to dispel the apparently groundless legend that this dispute actually had any impact on plans for the Rideau Canal.
Reproducing primary sources, including the full written accounts of both Dalhousie and LeBreton, Hill attests that the story of canal plans playing a part in the matter is without basis – the only plan figuring into Dalhousie’s anger having been one for placement of a storehouse to serve the terminus of the Richmond Road.
As per Hill: “There was however, an unpleasant misunderstanding between Lord Dalhousie and LeBreton over his purchase of Lot 40 at the sale, and the freedom with which Dalhousie vented his indignation probably accounts for the distorted story”.
Hill maintains that the land purchase disputed between Dalhousie and LeBreton had been in regard to planned use of the lot for a storehouse, not for the Rideau Canal.
Here is the link to the essay penned in 1919 by Hamnet Pinhey Hill, a local lawyer, MLA for Ottawa West and great-grandson of early March Township landowner Hamnet Pinhey.
We invite you to read Chapter V (pages 28-39), which will prove to be of particular interest to this long-running debate, as to whether the legend of the Dalhousie/LeBreton/Rideau Canal "scandal" is historical fact... or myth.
