The McMillan Diamond Heist

21 July 1909

It was the lunch hour on Wednesday, 21 July 1909. At McMillan’s Jewellery Store at 82 Sparks Street, Miss Tierney and Mr. J.E. Tremblay were behind the counter waiting for customers. At about 12:45pm, two men walked into the establishment. One asked to look at umbrellas while the other checked out nail files at the back of the store. Two more men then entered. When one of the McMillan clerks moved to help the new customers, the new arrivals said they would wait their turn. With Tierney’s and Tremblay’s attention focused on the original two customers, the other two deftly stepped behind a counter at the front of the store, opened a cabinet, and removed two trays of diamond rings. Each tray contained fifty rings. Some were solitaires. Others were set with two, three or more stones. The rings were said to have a value of $10,000—a huge sum at that time, equivalent to close to $300,000 today.

The thieves quickly left the store, walking down Sparks Street. Their two accomplices, who ostensibly had been checking out umbrellas and nail files, also disappeared in the ensuing confusion.

This was not the first theft at McMillan’s. Some twenty years earlier, Mr. McMillan had delivered some gold watches for inspection to a man dressed in a cassock at the main door of the Ottawa College. The watches and the "priest" were never seen again.

In September 1904, a tray of rings set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls with a value of $3,000 vanished. Similar to what was to happen four years later, a man entered the jewellery store purportedly to purchase a 35-cent purse on display in the window. When the clerk turned her back on him to get the item, he managed to open a display cabinet close to the front door and abscond with a tray of rings. The clerk didn’t notice the missing tray until sometime later. Again, the rings and the thief were never found.

Fast forward to the lunch-hour theft in July 1909, after fleeing the jewellery store, the four thieves disguised themselves by donning glasses and hats. But the police were on to them. Figuring that the crooks would want to get out of town as quickly as possible, Ottawa police staked out the downtown Central Station. The two MacMillan clerks were on hand to identify the suspects.

The police got lucky. The CPR train destined for Winnipeg was just about to depart. Detectives boarded the train and watched two men acting suspiciously in a first-class compartment. The two were seated at the opposite ends of the carriage from each other. As the train approached the Hull Station, police arrested one of them. Seeing this, the other leapt from the train as it passed near Matthew’s pork factory at about 20 miles per hour. The man made a clean escape. The captured man, who gave his name as Jason Maward, had no fixed address. He appeared to be under the influence of drugs, possibly morphine. When he was searched, a quantity of the drug was found in one of his socks.

Maward denied having any knowledge of the robbery, or knowing the man who had jumped from the train. Without anything directly linking him to the McMillan robbery, he was held and subsequently charged with vagrancy while the police looked for more evidence. The name Maward (or Mayward) was later found to be an alias. He was otherwise known as Jason Howard.

That night, Ottawa police began telephoning towns and cities as far west as Toronto and as far east as Montreal to be on the look-out for the other three suspects. In the wee hours of the next morning, Police Chief Bunting of Renfrew called Ottawa’s Chief of Police Major Stuart de la Ronde to tell him that two suspicious characters had arrived in Renfrew on the Soo train and were staying at the Ottawa House Hotel. The pair had registered as Charles. A. Woods of Kingston and Howard Conrad of Ottawa. Within minutes of talking to the Ottawa police chief, Chief Bunting agreed to arrest and hold the men until Ottawa police could come to Renfrew to identify and collect them.

At roughly 3:00 am, Bunting, accompanied by the hotel’s night watchman, arrested the two suspects while they were in bed. Both were apparently under the influence of drugs. According to the Ottawa Journal, Conrad "gave every evidence of a drug fiend." On the table in his room was a bottle labelled "Heroin," described by the newspaper as a "bronchial medicine containing opium." In Conrad’s suitcase there was soft hats and caps with Ottawa labels, several pairs of spectacles, a magnifying glass, and a revolver with ammunition. In Woods’ valise were a camera, several neckties and regatta shirts with Ottawa labels, and a Panama hat.

The suspects spent the rest of the night in Renfrew’s lock-up. They did not have a restful time. Woods and Conrad made repeated requests for morphine and appeared to be in a state of delirium. Later that day, Ottawa police accompanied by Mr. J.E. Tremblay from McMillan’s arrived in Renfrew to identify the suspects and return them to the capital. The following day, Woods and Conrad pleaded not guilty of theft in front of Judge Askwith. Messrs. Beament and Johnson, whose haberdashery had been robbed prior to the McMillan theft, identified the regatta shirts and caps as their stolen goods.

The quick work to capture three of the four suspects in the diamond heist won Ottawa police kudos from Ottawa newspapers. An Ottawa Journal headline read "Brilliant Work" by Chief de la Ronde and Chief Detective Dicks. All that was left was to locate the missing diamonds. In the meantime, Mr. McMillan had taken an extensive inventory of his stock and had lowered their estimated value to about $6,000. The entire amount was covered by an insurance policy arranged through Lloyds of London.

While Woods and Conrad initially refused to divulge the location of the stolen rings, Ottawa police somehow managed to persuade the pair to reveal where they were hidden. Two Ottawa detectives returned to the Ottawa House Hotel in Renfrew and recovered the gems which had been hidden behind the wooden panelling of an old boxed-in bathtub. The rings had been strung on a piece of tape and pinned on the inside of a wooden panel. The thieves also revealed that they were from New York, and that it had been their intention to take the diamonds from their settings and fence them to an American accomplice.

Following the discovery of the diamonds, McMillian said that he had made a valuation error. Instead of the rings being worth about $6,000, they had a retail value of only $3,874 and a wholesale value of no more than $2,500. Oops. He said that the overvaluation was not intentional.

Justice moved swiftly in those days, perhaps too swiftly this time. The three men were back in court within a couple of days. It was discovered that Jason Maward, alias Mayward, alias Howard, was wanted for pick-pocketing and skipping a $5,000 bail bond in New Jersey under the name Fred Smith. The vagrancy charge against him was dropped and, after waving extradition, Howard returned to the US accompanied by a New Jersey detective. Woods and Conrad pleaded guilty to the diamond theft and were each sentenced to one year in jail. The judge justified the light sentence on the grounds that the prisoners had voluntarily confessed, and by pleading guilty, the cost of a trial had been avoided. "The law is not vindictive," said the judge.

Press kudos for Ottawa’s police changed to horror at the lightness of the sentence. The Ottawa Journal raged that Ottawa didn’t need "a reputation for leniency with alien crooks" and worried that the capital would become a magnet for thieves. Local newspapers started to ask the police hard questions about the robbers, and the investigation process.

A few days later, New York police wired Ottawa’s Chief de la Ronde saying that they had the fourth member of the gang in custody. His name was James "Cockeye" Howard, leading to more confusion over the suspects’ true names. Oddly, de la Ronde seemed strangely indifferent to the news, and made no effort to extradite the suspect back to Ottawa for trial. He said that he didn’t have the necessary $50 to cover travel expenses, that the evidence against the man was weak, and regardless it was up to the Crown attorney to decided on extradition. The Ottawa Citizen said it would put up the necessary $50. When pressed by the Ottawa Citizen, Chief de la Ronde waffled. According to the newspaper, the chief of police "merely indulged in some low sneers and did nothing." Without a call from the Ottawa police asking the New York cops to hold James "Cockeye" Howard, the suspect was released. The Citizen raged, "If the Ottawa taxpayers desired a culminating illustration of police incompetence and worse, it seems to The Citizen to be found in the tacit connivance at the release of this crook in New York."

The press demanded an inquiry. The following month, Ottawa’s Police Commissioners—Mayor Hopewell, Judge MacTavish, and Magistrate O’Keefe—began hearings into the actions of Chief de la Ronde and other members of the police force.

The police force did not cover itself in glory. During questioning by a lawyer representing the press, Chief de la Ronde and Chief Detective Dicks had difficulty remembering key facts, and sometimes gave misleading testimony. Chief de la Ronde was at times flippant and rude. It became clear that instead of responding quickly to the news of the diamond heist, Chief Detective Dicks, who was on duty at the time, went to lunch. He didn’t bother to send a detective to investigate until afterwards. He didn’t even call de la Ronde who learnt about the robbery sometime later from Mr. MacMillan. De la Ronde then failed to verify the facts of the case, and did not take any action until late in the night when he and Dicks began telephoning neighbouring towns. De la Ronde was described as a near "non-entity" in the case.

Ottawa police also failed to alert the railway police at both Central Station in downtown Ottawa and Union Station in LeBreton Flats. Hull police were also not informed of the heist. The slow and inadequate police response meant that Conrad and Woods were able to leave Ottawa with the diamonds on a train from Union Station. Chief Detective Dicks admitted speedier action would have led to their capture before they left Ottawa.

The initial search for the diamonds at the Ottawa House Hotel was also poorly conducted. One of the detectives admitted that the rings should have been easily discovered without a confession from Woods and Conrad. How the police obtained that confession was also unclear. Up until that point, there was little hard evidence against the men. So, why did they confess? Did the police offer them something in exchange for the confession? After determining that the suspects formed a professional gang out of New York City by eavesdropping on them while in custody, Ottawa police also failed to contact the American police to obtain the suspects’ criminal records. This would have been standard police procedure.

It was also revealed that Ottawa police bought whisky and drugs on behalf of Woods and Conrad while the men were in detention. During their trial, the police did nothing to dispel the judge’s belief that the suspects were first-time offenders rather than the seasoned professional thieves the police knew them to be. This misimpression was likely a factor in in the lightness of their sentence. De la Ronde also admitted that he failed to tell the Crown that Maward (the man who the police arrested on the train and had been charged with vagrancy) was a member of a gang. With respect to the fourth man arrested in New York, de la Ronde argued that the reason why he did not take up the Citizen’s offer to pay the $50 costs of bringing the suspect back to Ottawa was because the offer came from the newspaper. It seems there was considerable bad blood between the newspaper and the police chief owing to previous press coverage of questionable police conduct.

The lawyer representing the press summed up by saying that "the entire case all goes to show that the police force is not what it should be, and if it is to be, it is up to the Police Commissioners to reorganize it, and put it in the shape it ought to be."

In response, the lawyer representing the police force argued that the force had not been treated fairly and that the police "had not been granted the rights of the merest criminal." He pointed out that no complaint had been made by Mr. McMillian in the way the investigation had been handled. Moreover, the best response to the newspapers’ complaints was the result the police obtained; three thieves were captured and the diamonds returned. The lawyer said that Chief de la Ronde was a competent officer and demanded a public apology from the newspapers.

Two months later, in February 1910, the police commissioners announced their verdict. Mayor Stuart de la Ronde, who had been Ottawa’s chief of Police since December 1904, was fired. He was replaced by Alexander M. Ross who was given a free hand to reorganize the police department.

Sources:

Ottawa Citizen, 1904. "Bold Theft Of Rings," 24 September.

——————, 1909. "Two Diamond Robbery Suspects Are Under Arrest at Renfrew," 22 July.

——————, 1909, "The Arrest In Renfrew," 22 July.

——————, 1909. "Took A Flying Lean Off Train," 22 July.

——————, 1909. "Thieves Refuse To Tell The Whereabouts Of Stolen Gems," 23 July.

——————, 1909. ‘American Officer Re-Arrested Howard As He Left The Dock," 29 July.

——————, 1909. "Diamond Thieves Plead Guilty, Will Be Sentenced Tomorrow," 29 July.

——————, 1909. "The Mystery Deepens," 6 September.

——————, 1909. "Fourth Man Is Arrested," 5 August.

——————, 1909. "Not Surprised Says Chief," 9 August.

——————, 1909. "The Expected Happened," 10 August.

——————, 1909. "Chief De La Ronde Cross Examined In Enquiry," 24 September.

——————, 1909. "Police Chief On The Stand,"24 September.

——————, 1910. "Reorganization of the Force," 23 February.

Ottawa Evening Journal, 1904. "New Chief of Police Appointed For City," 27 December.

——————————, 1909. "Diamond Robbery," 21 July.

——————————, 1909. "Suspects Are In Custody," 22 July.

——————————, 1909. "How Renfrew Arrest Was Made," 22 July.

——————————, 1909. "Baggage Was Interesting," 23 July.

——————————, 1909. "Stolen Rings Were Stamped," 24 July.

——————————, 1909. "Stolen Rings Were Stamped," 24 July.

——————————, 1909. "Hid Diamonds In Bathroom," 26 July 1909.

——————————, 1909. "Slight Slip Was Best Clue," 29 July.

——————————, 1909. "An Opportunity Lost," 31 July.

——————————, 1909. "Investigation Opens Into Administration Of Police," 16 September.

——————————, 1909. "How Police Acted," 16 September.

——————————, 1909. "How Police Acted In The M’Millan [sic] Diamond Case," 16 September.

——————————, 1909. "Second Sitting of The Police Investigation," 22 September.

——————————, 1909. "Investigation Facts in a Nutshell," 22 September.

——————————, 1909. "Police Investigation Has Been Concluded," 4 December.

Banish the Fly!

15 July 1912

The best way of getting rid of Mr. Fly is to get rid of his boarding house and his breeding house—the rubbish heaps, the old barrel, the exposed manure pile, or whatever is usually found in a neglected city back yard. Ottawa Journal, 1913

Musca domestica, the pesky housefly. Easily identified by the four black stripes on its thorax, the housefly, which measures about 5 to 7 millimetres, in length, can be found throughout the world wherever humans live. Indeed, the housefly has made a "career" of feasting on the detritus of humans and their domesticated animals. After mating, the female of the species lays her eggs in batches of 100 or more on rotting vegetable or animal matter, including carrion or feces. After a day or so, the larvae hatch and begin feeding. They mature in as little as two weeks depending on temperature conditions. A female housefly can live for about a month and can produce as many as 500 eggs during her lifetime. In the absence of avian and insectile predators, as well as humans armed with rolled up newspapers, two amorous flies can produce a gazillion descendants during a summer. Thankfully, this is not the case.

While houseflies play an important ecological role in recycling organic wastes, their habit of feasting on the garbage in the bin at the side of the house, or the dog poop in the backyard, before skittering over granny’s lemon chiffon cake is not an endearing feature. Consequently, they have long been considered a vector for the spread of disease. Their persistence and apparent clairvoyance are other annoying behavioural features. Who hasn’t futilely tried to discourage a determined fly from walking all over one’s arms or legs?

Sustained efforts to rid cities of the much-hated housefly took place during the early years of the twentieth century in major Eastern US cities, such as Cleveland, as well as in major cities in Canada, including Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton, and Ottawa. The objective was to curb the spread of disease, particularly tuberculosis, typhoid, and infant diarrhea, believed to be spread by houseflies.

Such efforts had many elements. First, cities introduced bylaws requiring their citizens to take steps to minimize the breeding grounds of flies by collecting and covering manure piles. Recall the prevalence of horses during this period; cars had yet to replace them to any significant degree. As one horse can produce ten kilograms of manure daily, equine waste disposal was a major problem. Much was simply left on the streets, thereby attracting flies. Second, public health organizations distributed literature to households on the habits of houseflies, their impact on public health, and how to kill them or, barring that, keeping food uncontaminated and homes pest-free. Third, children, often the Boy Scouts, were mobilized to kill the bugs and to spread the word; the rationale being to harness youthful zeal, and to educate the next generation who might be more open that their parents to new health ideas. Recall that the germ theory of disease was still relatively new during the early twentieth century. Many people still thought bad smells, called miasmas, were the cause of disease. The idea that flies could transmit disease by just walking on food was a novel concept for many.

In July 1912, the Montreal Daily Star hosted a "Swat the Fly" contest in Montreal, offering prizes totally an amazing $350—a huge sum at that time, equivalent to close to $10,000 today—with first prize being $25. The contest was open to all children, both boys and girls. The contest was a huge success. Nearly one thousand Montreal children answered the call, swatting approximately 25 million flies, and, more importantly, spreading the word about household hygiene. Their tally, which far exceeded the paltry tally of 1.5 million flies caught by Toronto kids, as well as those of cities south of the border, earned Montreal the title of "world fly-swatting champion."

Ottawa also took up the anti-fly challenge. In May 1911, city council passed a bylaw requiring downtown stables to contain manure in bins with tight covers or to be connected to the sewers. At the time, the Ottawa Citizen estimated that as many as three-quarters of downtown stables were not doing this. As well, the enforcement of existing hygiene laws appears to have been lax owing to the cost of regular inspections. The newspaper opined that "the greatest single step towards the elimination of the house fly in Ottawa will be when all stable within the city limits whether by careful inspection, or otherwise, are compelled to follow the simple and easily kept rules which other cities have imposed thereon."

In June 1912, it was announced in the Ottawa Citizen that there would be an anti-fly contest in the nation’s capital running for two weeks beginning Dominion Day. Ottawa’s new slogan for the period was "Banish the Fly!" The contest was organized by the Public Health Committee of Ottawa’s local Council of Women in co-operation with the city’s department of health. The Council provided nine prizes with a total value of $25, with the event open to both boys and girls under fifteen years of age. The boy or girl killing the most houseflies would win $10, with second place earning $5. There were also three third-place prizes of $2 each and four fourth-place prizes of $1. Captured flies were to be turned over to the office of Dr. Shirreff, the city’s chief medical officer, at City Hall, for inspection and counting. Children could use any sort of container in which to bring their "catch." Any method of fly-catching was acceptable except apparently for the use of "tanglefoot paper." The newspaper said that the competition was "a new and vital form of educating people to a danger long overlooked or neglected," and hoped that the campaign would get a good response so that "Ottawa will this summer be a most unpopular resort for the fly." A similar "Swat the Fly" contest was also launched in Hull.

Consistent with doctors’ recommendations, the newspaper advised kids to catch flies outside before they had a chance to come inside and spread disease. Homeowners were told to equip all windows and doors with screens to keep out the pest, and to move rubbish and refuse away from back doors. The Citizen also recommended poison as the most efficacious means of killing flies. Helpfully, the newspaper provided recipes. The first was an innocuous mixture of the yolk of one egg, 1/3 cup of sweet milk, one level tablespoon of sugar, and one level tablespoon of pepper. Alternatively, it recommended a mixture of two tablespoons of formalin and 16 ounces of equal parts of water and milk. Regardless of the mixture used, the Citizen said that it should be placed in shallow plates, with a piece of bread floating in the middle to allow more room for the flies to land on. As a testimonial to the effectiveness of the formalin trap, it cited a Professor R. J. Smith of North Carolina who apparently caught 40,000 flies in a calf barn during a 16-hour period using the recipe.

One thing the newspaper neglected to mention, however, was the dangers of formalin. A lethal dose for an adult human is about 30 millilitres, the amount recommended by the newspaper in its fly poison recipe. Used for embalming purposes and in dilute amounts as an anti-bactericide, formalin, a colourless liquid, releases formaldehyde gas which is both flammable and poisonous. Dangerous to have around the house, and not something one would want children to handle, woe betide any thirsty household pet that might be attracted to the milk and bread mixture.

Despite the exhortations of the Citizen, the "Banish the Fly" contest got off to a slow start. More than a week into the campaign, only nine boys and one girl had entered. The city kept a running tally of each participant’s "kill" and issued receipts. Half way in, John Cooney of 138 Besserer Street was in the lead with a total of 20,000 flies out of a total of 46,500 turned into City Hall.

In case you were wondering, health department clerks didn’t laboriously count each fly. Instead, the flies, which were brought into city hall in bottles, envelopes, matchboxes, and even a talcum power can, were weighed. Their weight in grammes was then multiplied by 200 to get an approximate number of houseflies.

Additional participants trickled in. By the close of the competition, twenty-two children—seventeen boys and five girls—brought a total of 458,300 flies to the Department of Health. In first place was eleven-year-old Roy Judd of 136 Besserer Street who had killed 61,700 flies. His preferred method was poison. In second place was Mortimer Thompson of 164 Hopewell Avenue. Ethel Moffat (age 12 years), of 143 Kent Street took the third position, and was the highest-scoring girl. John Cooney (age 10 years), who had been initially leading the competition came in fourth with 40,700 flies. John Cooney and Roy Judd, the ultimate winner, were next door neighbours. The youngest competitor was Clyde Swan of 201 Division Street (Bronson Avenue). The five-year old collected an impressive 7,600 flies.

While anti-fly campaigns were launched in the years that followed, this was the only Banish the Fly contest held in Ottawa. Although the housefly population was barely dented, reviews were positive in that it helped to educate people about the relationship between public cleanliness and public health.

Whether the humble housefly deserved the opprobrium heaped upon it during the early twentieth century is less clear. According to Valarie Minell et al, the authors of Swatting Flies for Health: Children and Tuberculosis in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal, the housefly had been "vilified." Indeed, today the house fly is generally viewed a nuisance rather than a major transmitter of disease. This probably reflects the fact that in urban areas there are now few horses and other forms of livestock, outhouses are a thing of the past, and kitchen waste is picked up weekly for composting. With fewer feeding grounds and hatcheries, housefly numbers are likely much smaller today than a hundred years ago. Nonetheless, Musca domestica is reportedly a carrier of hundreds of different forms of bacteria. Many of these bacteria are pathogenic to humans and can cause many diseases, including dysentery, tuberculosis, typhoid, and polio. To this long list, recent research has shown that the house fly can be a carrier of the bacteria H. pylori that can cause stomach ulcers.

So, the next time you spot a housefly, swat it.

Sources:

Khamesipour, F., Lankarani, K. B., Honarvar, B. & Kwenti, T. E., 2018. "A systemic review of human pathogens carried by the housefly (Musca domestica L.), BMC Public Health, Article No. 1049.

Minnell, Valerie. & Poutanen, Mary-Anne, "Swatting Flies for Health: Children and Tuberculosis in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal," Urban History Review, Vol. 36, No.1 Fall 2007.

Ottawa Journal, 1911. "No Title," 22 March.

——————-, 1911. "The Sanitary Inspection," 12 June.

——————-, 1913. "One City Conquers Mr. Fly.

Ottawa Citizen, 1911. "Anti-Fly Bylaw," 29 October.

——————, 1912. "Premium On Flies," 7 June.

——————, 1912. "The Anti-Fly Campaign Gives Boys And Girls Chance To Earn Money," 15 June.

——————, 1912. "Here He Is! Swat Him!" 1 July.

——————, 1912. "After Hull Flies," 4 July.

——————, 1912. "Early Swatting," 10 July.

——————, 1912. "An Educative Campaign," 10 July.

——————, 1912. "Fly Campaign," 11 July.

——————, 1912. "Fly Swatters Who Win Prizes," 16 July.

The Carleton County Gaol

18 October 1972

Wednesday, 18 October 1972 marked the end of an era. That morning at 10:00am, the eighty-five occupants of the old Carleton County Gaol (Jail), were transferred to the gleaming, brand-new Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre on Innes Road in Gloucester. Like this new correctional facility, the Carleton County Gaol, located on Nicholas Street, had at one time been considered a model institution. When newly built in 1862, it was one of the finest jails in the Province of Canada, an example of what a modern prison should be like in both construction and administration. The Ottawa Daily Citizen noted with approval that harden criminals were kept separate from "those young in years and unconfirmed in vice" at the new Carleton County Gaol. This was quite a modern notion in the mid-nineteenth century.

The new prison was vastly better than the previous Ottawa lock-up located in the basement of the County Court House on Daly Street built by Thomas Mackay in 1842. That jail was more akin to a dungeon than a prison. The Court House building itself was described as lacking architectural pretensions or design. The only points deemed in its favour was that it was a massive structure whose walls were made of limestone, and it had a tinned roof.

As early as 1846, there were complaints about conditions in the basement jail with allegations that money allocated for prisoners’ food was being skimmed off. According to the Packet, the gaoler was given one shilling (twelve pence) per prisoner per day for food, but instead the prisoners were each receiving only seven and one-half pence worth of food, that was "not worth that amount, either with regard to quality or quantity."

In 1848, a Grand Jury found the jail to be unwholesome and insecure, the latter implying that the prisoners did not get any fresh air or exercise since there was no secure area for them to do so. A wall around the court house cum jail was recommended on several occasions but to no avail. The municipal council was not inclined to make jail improvements.

By 1860, the Carleton County Gaol was in a parlous state. Prison inspectors found it to be "totally unfit in every respect." The inspectors recommended the construction of a new prison to the rear of the existing court house, with space between for the jailer’s residence. They urged the government to act as quickly as possible.

On this occasion, the municipal authorities finally did something. In August 1860, they called for tenders for the erection of a new county jail. The plans were drawn up by the architectural firm of Messrs. Horsey & Son. Mr. J. Stewart was selected as the contractor. At the end of December of that year, the Ottawa municipal government passed a by-law to raise $20,000 to pay for the new jail. Interest and sinking fund contributions to repay the loan amounted to $3,200 per annum.

It was high time. A Grand Jury, which visited the Carleton County Gaol in November 1861 to again assess prison conditions, called it a "miserable and poisonous basement, miscalled a prison." Jurors rated it the worst in Upper Canada. So abominable were the privies a juror demanded that the city take immediate remedial action to have them thoroughly cleansed and closed, and a new cesspit dug. Action could not be put off to await the submission of an official report or because a new prison was already under construction.

At the time of the jurors’ visit, there were twelve occupants in the jail—six men, one of whom was insane, and six women who complained bitterly that they had been confined for six months for offences that had previously earned sentences of two months or less. The women promised to reform in order to keep away from this "nasty place."

The new Carleton County Gaol, which was ready for occupation in August 1862, was described as "a remarkably fine stone building." The difference with the old prison was striking according to the Ottawa Citizen. "The two buildings may be taken as not inappropriate types of the old prison system heretofore pursued in Canada and the new prison system which the Board are labouring to introduce."

In early January 1870, the old court house and the now-empty jail cells in the basement burnt to the ground. Destroyed in the conflagration were the offices of the County Sheriff and other county officials and the chambers of the Court of Assize. Many valuable records and documents were also lost. A painting of Queen Victoria, a copy of the John Partridge portrait that hangs in the Senate, was also destroyed. The copy had been a gift to the county from Hamnet Pinhey. Destroyed as well was the home of the building’s caretaker, and his family. The Court House was subsequently rebuilt at the corner of Daly and Nicholas Streets. Its architect was Robert Surtees. Today the now-defunct Court House is a heritage building, and is the home of the Ottawa Art Court.

Over the next hundred years, the Carleton County Gaol saw the seamy underbelly of Ottawa society from drunks and prostitutes, to rapists and murderers. There were three hangings at the jail. The first was that of Patrick Whelan, the convicted assassin of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a father of Confederation, in February 1869. This was the last public hanging in Canada. Shockingly, thousands of men, women and even children showed up to watch Whelan die on the gallows. The second was that of William Seabrooke in 1933 for the killing of a gas station attendant in a botched robbery. The last to die on the Carleton County gallows was Eugène Larment, executed in 1946 for killing a policeman.

By 1930, the once model prison was showing its age; indeed, the future of the entire county jail system in Ontario was being questioned. The Royal Commission on Public Welfare, chaired by P.D. Ross of Ottawa, condemned county jails, including the Carleton County facility for overcrowding; the indiscriminate "herding" together of different types of prisoners; a lack of medical oversight; a lack of occupations for prisoners; and the inclusion of reformatory cases (i.e., juveniles) in county jails. The Commission recommended that the government take over all 47 county jails and replace them with a dozen, "properly-conducted provincial institutions."

Nothing was done; the Ross Report was shelved. The Ottawa Journal complained later that same year that everybody talks about the conditions in the Ottawa County Gaol, but nobody does anything. The newspaper called the jail a "medieval dungeon" built in "the days of corduroy roads." Similarly, a Grand Jury said that the jail was in a "discreditable state" and that "no humane community should tolerate it." In 1945, another Grand Jury said that jail accommodations were "completely inadequate tor the reformation and rehabilitation of those placed in its custody." It strongly recommended closing the facility as soon as possible.

In the late 1940s that the Ontario government finally began to focus its attention on the province’s county jails. George Dunbar, Minister of Reform Institutions in the Progressive Conservative government of Leslie Frost, introduced a new penal program under which county jails would be replaced by prison farms. In 1948, ground was broken on such a facility located at Burritts’ Rapids, forty miles south of Ottawa, called the Rideau Industrial Farm (later known as the Rideau Correctional and Treatment Centre). The hope was that eventually, the Nicholas Street jail could close, its prisoners sent to the new prison farm. But, Dunbar’s successor in this portfolio, George Hamilton, had different ideas. Without indicating a change in policy, Hamilton said in 1950 that Ottawa needed a jail. The Carleton County Gaol stayed open. (The Burritt’s Rapids correctional centre became a medium security facility in 1985, and was closed in 2004.)

In 1954, a Grand Jury condemned prison conditions in Ottawa, saying that the county jail was overcrowded, its cells were too small (three feet by nine feet), there was inadequate visiting arrangements for prisoners to meet with lawyers, etc., and there were inadequate recreation facilities. It also condemned the jail for confining young prisoners with older ones—a practice that the prison had rejected back in 1862!

Little to nothing was done for more than a decade despite repeated calls from Grand Juries through the 1960s to fix the problem. A 1969 report reiterated the comments made fifteen year earlier. There was an absence of recreation facilities, a lack of adequate plumbing, lighting and ventilation, the cells were too small, minor youth offenders were grouped together with harden prisoners, the exercise yard was small and unsuitable in wet or cold weather, and there were only three showers in the whole facility. Even the Ontario Minister of Reform Institutions, Allan Grossman, called the Carleton County Gaol and other county prisons "dark, dank dungeons."

If the Carleton County Gaol was old, dating back to 1862, prior to Confederation, it was far from the oldest county jail in Ontario. The Brockville prison was constructed in 1842, while the l’Orignal facility dated back to 1825 when the region was still called Upper Canada. The l’Orignal jail closed in 1998, while the Brockville jail is still open in 2023!

In 1967, the City of Ottawa began plans for the construction of a new county jail, and entered, what turned out to be fractious, negotiations with other Eastern Ontario communities on how to share the costs of the new jail, estimated to cost roughly $3 million. People thought the end was in sight for the old Carleton County Gaol.

They were wrong. Construction was put on hold the following year when the provincial government decided to replace all county jails with provincially-run correctional institutions—almost 40 years after the Ross Commission had made this recommendation.

It wasn’t until 1970 that ground was broken for the new Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre on Innes Road. It took two years to complete, with the official opening held on 24 August 1972 in the presence of Syl Apps, the Correctional Services Minister. It was, however, another two months before prisoners were transferred from the old Carleton County Gaol. At that time, the new Regional Detention Centre was described as the "most modern of its kind in the province." The Ottawa Journal called it to a "country club." It was designed to house 187 inmates (152 men and 25 women) in colour-co-ordinated dorms, and was equipped with a 3,000-volume library and television. There were separate facilities for first-time offenders and hardened criminals. Cell doors, heat, water, and other utilities were controlled from a central control panel protected by bullet-proof glass.

Fast forward fifty years, and what was new is old again. In 2004, the detention centre was likened to an "Iraqi prison camp." Overcrowding, a perennial problem with the old Nicholas Street jail, had become a persistent problem at the Innes Road facility as well. Prison needs had not kept pace with a growing population. In 2015-16, it was revealed that prisoners were double bunked and sometimes even triple bunked, shower stalls were used as segregation cells, and there was an excessive use of solitary confinement. A special task force subsequently made a long list of recommendations aimed at correcting these and other deficiencies. Many though not all, were later adopted. A 2020 University of Ottawa thesis by Mariah Maadarani noted that the detention centre, "notorious for its austere conditions of confinement and human rights violations," continues to face major challenges, in part due to government officials and jail administrators being resistant to change.

The Victorian-era Carleton County Goal at 75 Nicholas Street, complete with a scaffold, was considered architecturally unique and worthy of preservation after its closure. Several ideas for repurposing the facility were floated, including as a museum, or a detoxification centre for alcoholics. In the end, it was converted into a European-style youth hostel. It is currently operated by Saintlo Hostels.

Sources:

CTV News, 2016, Take a rare look inside the notorious Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, 27 October.

Heritage Ottawa, 2023, Carleton County Gaol.

Maadarani, Mariah, 2020. Inside the Black Box of Jail: Barriers to Change at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, MA Thesis, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa.

Ottawa Citizen, 1852. "The Assizes," 16 October.

——————, 1860. "County Council Proceedings," 24 February.

——————, 1860. "Notice to Contractors," 25 August.

——————, 1860. "By-Law to raise by way of Loan Twenty Thousand Dollars toward the erection of the new Gaol," 25 December.

——————, 1861. "Fall Assizes," 25 October.

——————, 1862. "Carleton County Council," 8 February.

——————, 1862. "The Ottawa Jail," 12 July.

——————, 1863. "Quarter Sessions and County Court," 14 March.

——————, 1863. "The Assizes," 23 October.

——————, 1870. "The County Office," 10 January.

——————, 1870. "The Late Fire," 11 January.

——————, 1945. "Grand Jury Denounces Police Station, County Jail Conditions Also Scored," 5 December.

——————, 1969. "77 Nicholas St.," 5 April.

——————, 1970. "Carleton’s new jail ready in spring of ’72," 30 October.

——————, 1972. "Detoxification Centre proposed for jailhouse," 18 July.

——————, 1972. "Doors Clang Shut On Old County Jail," 18 October.

——————, 2016. "Top six recommendations for the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre," 1 June.

Ottawa Journal, 1930. "Drastic Change In Many Lines Social Welfare," 23 August.

——————-, 1930. "The Carleton County Jail," 24 March.

——————-, 1944. "Our County Jail," 21 December.

——————-, 1950. "Has Ontario a New Jail Policy? Must Ottawa Keep the Old Fort?" 30 May.

——————-, 1950. "Prison Farm To Empty Gaols Of E. Ontario," 26 December.

——————-, 1954. "Aging Jails Gov’t Problem says Supreme Court Justice," 17 September.

——————-, 1955. "The County Jails Stay With Us," 28 March.

——————-, 1967. "The End in Sight For a County ‘Disgrace,’" 2 March 1967.

——————-, 1968. "’Immediate’ Start on Plans TO Replace County Jail," 30 October.

——————-, 1972. "19^th century hostel," 1 August.

——————-, 1972. "County Club aura felt at modern regional jail," 25 August.

[The] Packet, 1846. "Gaol Allowances," 28 November.

—————-, 1848. "The Grand Jury Report," 13 May.

Saintlo Ottawa Jail Hostel, 2023. Welcome to Saintlo Ottawa Jail hostel.

Ottawa’s Sewage Problems

27 June 1963

Thursday, 27 June 1963 was a sweltering, hot day. Well-dressed dignitaries attending the official launch of Ottawa’s Green’s Creek sewage treatment facility were wilting in the sun. Mayor Charlotte Whitton told speakers to be brief, quipping that given the $8 million cost of the plant, the city couldn’t afford to pay damage claims for sunstroke. A few minutes later, George McIlraith, Liberal MP for Ottawa West, told the assembled crowd that the plant ended the "desecration" of the Ottawa River. He then pressed a button, sending thousands of gallons of Ottawa waste water into the facility for processing.

McIlraith was wrong. The opening of the Green Creek plant did not put an end to the desecration of the Ottawa River caused by the dumping of sewage. It wasn’t even the beginning of the end, but at least it was a beginning.

In the early 1960s, the Ottawa River was a national disgrace. Up and down its length, raw sewage and industrial waste poured in from communities on both sides the river. High fecal coliform counts often rendered the water dangerous to drink and to swim in. Fish kills were common.

The problem was not new. Ever since settlers arrived, the Ottawa River had used as a dumping ground for all sorts of human and industrial waste. When the lumber industry had been at its height during the late nineteenth century, the mills on the Chaudière annually dumped countless tons of sawdust and other waste wood into the river. Immense sawdust shoals collected in quiet bays, blocking navigation, including at the entrance to the Rideau Canal locks. Much settled to the river bottom stifling fish spawning grounds. There, the sawdust rotted, releasing foul-smelling fumes of methene that exploded with disturbing regularity, risking the lives of unsuspecting boaters above.

After decades of prevarication, public pressure finally forced the government to confront Ottawa’s lumber barons and deal with the sawdust nuisance. By the beginning of the twentieth century, this problem had largely been resolved. Unwanted wood and sawdust were burnt in large incinerators, thereby alleviating water pollution, albeit at the expense of worsening air pollution.

But nothing was done about other forms of industrial effluent and human sewage that entered the Ottawa River. With the growing number of people living along side the Ottawa River, water quality continued to deteriorate.

As early as 1898, an expert from the Public Works Department of Ontario urged Ottawa and other municipalities to purify sewage water by filtering it through two layers of coke and a bed of sand. Two years later, the Ottawa Citizen remarked that the capital had not yet adopted any improved system of disposing of its sewage, but that this was a problem city council would eventually have to deal with. It noted the direct link between disease and sewage and said that "the old system" of draining sewage directly into some body of water had been discarded elsewhere with beneficial results. Since London, England began to chemically treat its sewage in 1890, the newspaper commented that Thames’s water quality was improving, and fish were returning.

In Ottawa, nothing was done.

Almost thirty years later in 1929, the Ottawa Citizen opined that it "may be timely," to think about sewage disposal, musing that there must be a limit to the amount of sewage that could be poured daily into the Ottawa River. The newspaper postulated that federal or joint provincial action would eventually have to take place. Given this, it suggested that Ottawa explore how it might dispose of its sewage "in some less offensive way that by polluting the Ottawa River." The newspaper also hoped that upstream communities would do likewise, as they were dumping their sewage into Ottawa’s drinking water.

Nothing was done.

In 1937, the Ottawa Citizen described Canada as "backward" in the field of sanitary science. It likened Ottawa to a remote mining camp in the way it treated its sewage. As a consequence, the Ottawa River was "impregnated with sewage." While cleansing the Ottawa River would require interprovincial agreement, no jurisdictional difficulties stopped Ontario from protecting the Rideau River, or Quebec from protecting the Gatineau River. The newspaper urged action.

Nothing was done.

In 1944, a joint parliamentary committee recommended to Parliament that the federal government share in the cost of constructing a sewage disposal plant in Ottawa. But the following year, Ottawa’s Board of Control, which operated like a municipal cabinet, wasn’t sure that a sewage disposal plant was a priority. Ottawa’s Mayor Stanley contended that unless other communities on the Ottawa River, particularly Hull and Aylmer, also treated their sewage, there was little advantage for Ottawa to go it alone.

The Ottawa Citizen ridiculed Ottawa’s position, saying that it was obvious that Ottawa should act without delay to clean up its own portion of the Ottawa River, and that if it did so, the city would be in a strong position to make representations to other communities to join together in the common cause "of an unpolluted flow along one of Canada’s noble and historic rivers." The newspaper opined that city council was evading "the unsavoury fact that Ottawa’s system of sewage disposal [was] medieval and a disgrace to a modern city."

Nothing was done.

In 1949, a Toronto consulting firm, Gove and Storrie, issued a report on Ottawa’s sewage and water system for Ottawa’s Planning Board. The consultants made a number of recommendations, including a prohibition on the dumping of sewage and industrial waste into the Ottawa River upstream from the Chaudière Falls and as far as possible along the Rideau River, the separation of septic and stormwater sewers in all new and undeveloped areas, and the construction of a sewage treatment plant at Green’s Creek in Gloucester Township to handle waste from the city of Ottawa.

This report gained some traction. In 1951, Ottawa’s purchased a 320-acre site at Green’s Creek in Gloucester Township as the site for its future sewage treatment plant in line with the Gove and Storrie report. But further action was slow.

In 1954, Dr. Lucien Piché, a University of Montreal chemistry professor, said that the Ottawa River was "an open sewer," its waters "unsuitable for any use whatsoever," owing to the "callous" dumping of raw sewage by municipalities along its banks. Piché detailed the main contributors to the damage in the Ottawa area. These included: wood waste and residues, including sulphite liquor, from two E.B. Eddy pulp and paper plants, mixed sewage from a metropolitan area of 300,000 people in Ottawa, Eastview and Rockcliffe; mixed sewage from Hull and South Hull with a population of 45,000; and sewage from Gatineau, including the wood waste, and residue from the Canadian International Paper Company. Of course, inflows of sewage and industrial effluent didn’t stop there. The Ottawa River at Hawkesbury, downstream from Ottawa, was singled out as being in particularly vile shape. In addition to sewage, both locally produced and imported from upriver, fouling the river, the waters in the community had turned "wine-red" due to effluent from another plant owned by the Canadian International Paper Company.

In 1956, it looked like there would finally be action. The federal government, along with the Ontario and Quebec governments and Ottawa’s City Council under Mayor Charlotte Whitton were in agreement; pollution control would take priority over other city improvements. Plans were drawn up to build huge sewers to divert Ottawa’s raw sewage from the Ottawa River to a treatment plant at Green’s Creek. These plans, with an estimated price tag of $25.5 million, were submitted to the Ontario Water Resources Commission for its approval. The city also applied to the federal government for financial aid.

But a change in municipal administration with the election of Mayor Nelms in 1957 caused these plans to be put on hold. While acknowledging Ottawa’s responsibility for polluting the Ottawa River, Nelms said that Ottawa could not afford the project of that magnitude, and to undertake it would impair the city’s ability to address other development needs.

Ex-Mayor Whitton was livid. In her weekly column in the Ottawa Citizen, she thought the new City Council was giving in to big developers who didn’t want to pay sewage charges. The Ontario Water Resources Commission, the provincial agency that approved major municipal water and sewage projects, was similarly unimpressed. The Commission insisted that a sewage treatment plant was the highest priority, and sent a letter to Ottawa City Council in late 1957 stating that it would withhold permission for new sanitary sewers to serve new sub-divisions until a satisfactory program had been developed to address the sewage problem.

Many Ottawa Council members were incensed by the Commission’s action, saying that it was "arbitrary, mandatory coercion." This view was also expressed by Robert Campeau, one of the big developers affected by the order. But the letter worked. Within months, the required detailed plan was unveiled, consisting of the construction of an elaborate network of tunnels to intercept sewage from existing sewers that would redirect the flow to a sewage treatment plant at Green’s Creek. The project would serve Ottawa, Eastview (Vanier), Rockcliffe Park, as well as portions of Nepean and Gloucester Township.

It still took several years for the project to get underway as the various levels of government haggled over financing. In the end, the federal government provided a $5 million grant though the National Capital Commission while the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation providing a cheap $10 million loan. In the meantime, little Nepean got a jump on Ottawa, constructing a sewage treatment plant near Shirley’s Bay in 1960. This plant was designed to service much of Nepean Township, including Lynwood Village, Manordale, Merivale, parts of Bells Corners, and the new Northern Electric Company Research buildings.

On 14 June 1961, it was Ottawa’s turn. Charlotte Whitton, by now returned to the mayor’s chair, happily plied a shovel to break ground at the site of the $8.5 million Green’s Creek sewage treatment plant. Irascible as ever, Whitton complained that the NCC would likely get all the credit.

The sewage treatment project consisted of four parts: the main building and related structures ($3.5 million); the primary digestion tanks and sludge lagoons ($4.6 million); a pumping station ($0.3 million); and an elevated water tank ($0.1 million) for a total of $8.5 million. The Green’s Creek plant was designed to handle an inflow of 40 million gallons of sewage daily from a population of 350,000. However, it could be expanded to handle 75 million gallons from a population of 590,000.

Additional contracts with a value of $12 million were tendered for new sewers, including the construction of the 2.44-mile-long interceptor sewer from Fleet Street in LeBreton Flats to John Street in New Edinburgh, designed to "intercept" sewage from the existing network of sewage feeders and collectors. An outfall sewer, eight feet in diameter and 4.8 miles long, was also constructed from John Street to the Green’s Creek sewage treatment plant. Construction of both the interceptor and outflow sewers required tunnelling deep underground—as much as 185 feet below ground level at Rockcliffe Park—often through solid rock.

Initialy, Ottawa’s sewage only received primary treatment, which included the removal of solids, grit and grease. The remaining liquid was then chlorinated to kill any bacteria before being pumped into the Ottawa River. Secondary treatment was to come later.

The treatment of Ottawa’s sewage had a dramatic impact on the quality of the water in the Ottawa River. Just two years after the Green’s Creek plant commenced operations, the Ottawa Journal reported that the Ottawa River was on the way to rehabilitation. However, many communities along the river continued to dump raw sewage into the Ottawa River, including Pembroke, Renfrew and Arnprior, upstream of Ottawa on the Ontario side, and Aylmer and Hull on the Quebec side. Two industrial plants on the Quebec side—E.B. Eddy’s and the Canadian International Paper Company, which were accused of generating as much effluent as a city of 2.5 million, were still pouring their waste into the Ottawa River.

It was decades before all communities on both sides of the Ottawa treated their sewage. It took until 1982 for the Gatineau Wastewater Treatment Plant to be commissioned. The small village of Quyon was reportedly the last community on the river to treat its sewage with a plant built in 2004. However, even with all communities finally treating their waste water, raw sewage continued to flow into the Ottawa River during the spring thaw and during thunderstorms due to older stormwater drains being interconnected with the sanitary sewers (combined sewers). The sanitary sewers were not capable of handling sudden large surges in stormwater, leading to emergency outflows of untreated sewage into the Ottawa River to avoid back-ups. This problem in Ottawa was mostly addressed in late 2020 with the opening of the Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel. The CSST is designed to temporarily hold surges in wastewater from the combined sewers so that the Green’s Creek sewage facility, today known as the Robert O. Pickard Environmental Centre Wastewater Treatment Plant, is not overwhelmed leading to back-ups. Work continues on separating the stormwater and sanitary sewer systems.

Waste water at the Pickard Centre receives primary and secondary treatment and is disinfected with sodium hypochlorite before being returned to the Ottawa River. The centre meets all provincial guidelines. If you are wondering, the extracted biosolids (over 50,000 metric tonnes in 2022) are use to enrich agricultural lands.

Today, the Ottawa River’s water quality is infinitely better than it was in the 1960s. However, according to the Ottawa Riverkeeper, a grassroots charity, there is no one government agency charged with monitoring its health. Instead, testing is done in a piecemeal fashion, which makes it difficult to monitor long-term trends in the quality of the river’s water. We do know, however, that the legacy of past abuse lingers. Large fish, especially predator fish, that live in the Ottawa River are contaminated by heavy metals, such as mercury. The Ontario government advises pregnant women and young people to strictly limit their monthly consumption of certain types of fish caught there.

Sources:

Gatineau, 2023. Wastewater treatment plant.

Ontario, 2023. Fish Consumption Advisory: Ottawa River.

Ottawa, 2023. Wastewater and Sewers.

Ottawa Citizen, 1900. "Disposal of Sewage," 11 June.

——————, 1913. "Sanitary Experts Testify Regarding Treatment of River And Sewage," 13 May.

——————, 1929. "Ottawa’s Sewage Proposal," 22 August.

——————, 1945. "Don’t All Agree On Need For Sewage Plant Here," 21 November.

——————, 1945. "For Modern Sewage Disposal," 22 November.

——————, 1954. "Ottawa River’s Filth ‘Threat To Health,’" 2 December.

——————, 1957. "City Controllers Angry At Water Board Demand," 11 December.

——————, 1957. "Hopes Sewer Problems Cleared Up By January, 28 December.

—————— 1958. "Ottawa Looking To Future In Planning Disposal Plant," 9 July.

——————, 1960. "Nepean Meets Sewage Problem," 8 July.

——————, 1961. "The Wheres And Whys OF The Project," 25 January.

——————, 1961. "Whitton Terms Sewage Plant Start Historic," 15 June.

——————, 1963. "McIlraith opens city’s anti-pollution plant," 28 June.

——————, 1963. "$20 million sewage plant opening on Thursday," 26 June.

——————, 1985. "Pollution still plaguing Ottawa River," 18 April.

Ottawa Journal, 1898. "Ontario’s Health Officers," 27 September.

——————-, 1944. "Report Asks Gov’t Share Ottawa Cost," 2 August.

——————-, 1945. "Sewage Disposal Plan Is Needed," 8 August.

——————-, 1949. "Ask $23,000,000 Water And Sewage Work," 19 August.

——————-, 1957. "Sewage Disposal Plan Delayed," 18 April.

——————-, 1965. "The ‘Scenic’ Ottawa River," 31 May.

——————-, 1965. "Ottawa River Clean-Up," 1 June.

——————-, 1965. "Pollution – No Joke!" 2 June.

Ottawa Riverkeeper, 2023. Ottawa Riverkeeper.

Pontiac Council Report, 2004. "Sewage plant for Quyon soon," 13 April.

Whitton, Charlotte, 1957. "On Thinking It Over," Ottawa Citizen, 8 April.

———————–, 1957. "On Thinking It Over," Ottawa Citizen, 28 October.

For the Birds: The Arrival of the English Sparrow

20 July 1872

Passer domesticus domesticus, alias the House sparrow or the English sparrow, is ubiquitous in North America. Indeed, it is considered the most widely distributed bird in the world, with populations in all continents except Antarctica, and many remote oceanic islands, such as Bermuda. Its natural range extends from the British Islands east across Europe and Asia all the way to the Pacific. For the most part, populations outside of this range were deliberately introduced during the nineteenth century by Acclimatization Societies with the aim to introduce European birds, animals, and fish to their regions for reasons of nostalgia, sport, aesthetics, and pest control. The negative consequences of introducing foreign species on native wildlife and biodiversity was given little consideration.

One of the most egregious examples was the introduction of a wide range of avian species, including starlings, sparrows, thrushes, larks, and blackbirds, by the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861 by eminent scientists, the Society’s unofficial motto was "If it lives, we want it." The Society didn’t stop with birds, but also encouraged the introduction of hares and rabbits with disastrous consequences. In part, it was motivated by a view that Australian species were "practically useless" and inferior to European ones.

In North America, the introduction of the English sparrow began in the early 1850s. It is reported that 100 birds were released in Brooklyn, New York in 1851. About the same time, Eugene Schieffelin, a wealthy American bird enthusiast, imported sparrows from England to eat caterpillars that had infested trees near his home at Madison Square.

In 1871, Eugene Schieffelin founded the American Acclimatization Society with a mission to introduce "such foreign varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdom as may be useful or interesting." In a disastrous decision, the Society and Schieffelin "acclimatized" the European starling. Today, starlings, numbering in the hundreds of millions in North America, are considered a major pest, competing with native birds for nests, and even spreading e. coli bacteria. A flock of starlings in 1960 brought down an Eastern Airlines airplane taking off from Boston’s Logan airport, killing 62 people.

Following New York’s example, acclimatization societies were set up in many other cities across the United States. In Canada, the Zoological and Acclimatization Society of Toronto was started in 1880 by Harry L. Piper. The society established the first zoo in the city, called the Toronto Zoological Garden, the following year.

New York’s sparrow population got a big boost in 1864 when the Commissioners of Central Park released fifty pairs of the birds. The sparrows "multiplied amazingly," said the New York Times. Within just a few years, the birds, reportedly numbering in the hundreds of thousands, could be seen throughout the streets of New York City and Brooklyn, and were gradually spreading into the surrounding countryside. Other US cities also imported English sparrows, including Boston, Philadelphia, Syracuse, and Rochester. By 1877, so great were the number of sparrows that the New York Herald opined that the English sparrow was the "greatest nuisance ever introduced into this country."

Taking the lead from their US counterparts, Canadian cities also began importing English sparrows. First to do so was Quebec City during the summer of 1868. A Mr. W. Rhodes brought 50 birds from Britain, and released them in the Governor’s Garden, at the base of the monuments to Montcalm and Wolfe. Despite a harsh winter that year, a flock of at least twenty birds were living around the Artillery Barracks. To provide some protection from the elements, the Quebec Chronicle reported that people had erected sparrow houses as had been done in New York City. The newspaper that "Mr. Sparrow as a colonist is doing well and thriving."

Toronto received its first sparrows in the summer of 1871 when a small number were released in the city. They successfully nested and began to multiply. In 1875, two hundred birds were imported for release at Queen’s Park. According to the Globe newspaper, Charles Clark, the Liberal MPP for Wellington East who later became the Speaker of the Ontario legislature, was the sparrows’ "statutory friend."

Montreal also received its first colony of sparrows in 1871 when a Mr. Carpenter brought a "fresh cargo" of sparrows to that city. The Ottawa Daily Citizen said that the sparrows were "of infinite service in destroying insects." Carpenter imported more in November of that year. Forty birds were released in Viger Gardens where warm boxes were provided for the birds to help them survive the winter. Sparrows released in other city parks were not so lucky with respect to accommodations, and had to fend for themselves.

According to an article in the Canadian Field-Naturalist written by Hoyes Lloyd in 1944, the English sparrow was introduced into Ottawa in 1870. However, Lloyd provided no supporting evidence. While this date is plausible, given efforts at that time to introduce the birds elsewhere, there is no mention of this in Ottawa newspapers of the time despite considerable interest in the subject. More likely, the sparrow’s introduction to the capital happened two years later in a small way, and more substantially in 1875.

In April 1872, the Citizen reported that some gentlemen of the Civil Service planned to introduce a colony of English sparrows to the capital later that spring. Forty pairs, ordered from England, were scheduled to arrive on the first steamer to Quebec after the ice had opened on the Saint Lawrence River. The gentlemen intended to release the birds on "government grounds," presumably at Rideau Hall. Since the birds were noted "for their pluck and endurance," the newspaper thought that the sparrows would have no difficulty settling in their new home, provided they were not interfered with by mischievous boys. The Citizen also hoped that the municipal authorities would aid the gentlemen who had gone through so much trouble and expense to obtain the sparrows by making it illegal to disturb the birds. It noted that Quebec City had a flourishing colony.

The forty sparrows left Liverpool in mid-April 1872 but all died on the journey across the Atlantic, much to the disappointment of their sponsors. The Citizen hoped that a fresh attempt would be made so that "we shall still see the game little bird domesticated in our midst and hear his cheery chirrup in the streets."

On 20 July 1872, the Citizen’s hope was realized with the release of a sparrow, albeit a solitary one, by an unidentified person. More were to follow.

In March 1875, the Citizen reported that a gentleman living in Sandy Hill had obtained a lot of English sparrows and had released them in the neighbourhood. The newspaper wrote that the birds were "flying around in merry style, seemingly quite at home." It hoped that the "little strangers" would receive a hearty welcome and be protected, especially from youngsters tempted to pelt them with stones. A few crumbs scattered around the streets for the birds wouldn’t go amiss either given the inclement weather.

The gentleman in question who released the birds was most likely Benjamin Batson, a lumber merchant, of 137 Daly Street, as the newspaper reported later that year that the majority of Mr. Batson’s colony of English sparrows had taken up residence in Centretown.

Sparrow aficionados heeded the Citizen’s call to care and feed the sparrows. Ottawa’s City Clerk, William Lett, had sparrow houses placed on the old city hall building for the sparrows that had settled in that area. (The old city hall building located on Elgin Street was a wooden structure built by Nicholas Sparks in 1848. It was replaced in 1876 by a new stone building constructed nearby.) Bird houses were also installed in Major’s Hill Park for nesting sparrows.

William Skead, a lumber merchant, offered five bushels of oats in February 1876 to the city of Ottawa to help the birds survive the winter if the city would distribute the food to them. The Citizen approvingly noted that Mr. Noel of the Quebec Bank and Mr. Gilpin of the British Lion Hotel located on Little Sussex Street near the Rideau Canal fed the sparrows regularly, but thought that there should also be some public provision for the birds to protect them from winter’s rigours. The newspaper believed that it would be a wise investment as the sparrows would pay for their keep by destroying grubs, beetles, grasshoppers, and other insects.

Fast forward to today, the English sparrow has made Ottawa its home, as it has throughout North America, nesting in the nooks and crannies of buildings and other structures. It is abundant in urban areas, but is less plentiful in rural areas, staying close to where people live. The sparrow is an aggressive species, competing with native birds for nesting areas and food supplies.

The Ottawa-Gatineau Christmas bird count held on 18 December 2022 spotted 50,841 birds, a record high. Of the total, 964 were English sparrows. This compares with 2,398 Black-capped chickadees, 2,750 European starlings (an invasive species), 2,852 Rock pigeons (another introduced species), and an amazing 30,000 American crows.

Sources:

Anderson, Ted, R, 2006. Biology of the Ubiquitous House Sparrow: From Genes to Populations, Oxford University Press, New York. NY.

Bird Gap, 2021. House Sparrows: Friend or Foe to Native Birds?, 2 July.

BlogTO, 2011. "The history of the Front St. zoo in Toronto," 23 December.

Kearney Nicolle, 2018. "‘If it Lives, We Want It.’ Exploring the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria’s Role in Australia’s Ecological History," Biodiversity Heritage Library, 24 January.

Gazette, 1869. "The Sparrow," 25 February.

———, 1871. "No title," 28 April.

———, 1871. "Our Feathered Visitor," 13 November.

Globe, 1864. "Acclimatization of European Birds in Australia," 23 September.

——–, 1869. "No Title," 1 March.

——–, 1869. "United States," 28 April.

——–, 1872. "United States," 12 April.

——–, 1873. "English Sparrows in Toronto," 23 July.

Ingersoll Chronicle & General Intelligencer for the County of Oxford, 1868. "No Title," 2 July.

Lloyd, Hoyes, 1944. "The Birds of Ottawa," The Canadian Field-Naturalist, September-October, Volume 58.

New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1906. "Schiefflelin, Eugene", Genealogical and Biographical Record, Volume 37, New York.

New York Herald, 1877. "Here, There And Everywhere," in Ottawa Daily Citizen, 10 February.

New York Times, 1877. "American Acclimatization Society, 15 November.

——————–, 2009, "Bird Hazard Is Persistent for Planes," 15 January.

Ottawa Daily Citizen,1867. "Editorial," 23 March.

————————-, 1871. "A New Importation," 11 November.

————————-, 1872. "A New Class of Immigrants," 16 April.

————————-, 1872. "The Sparrows," 29 May.

————————-, 1872. "Sparrows," 22 July.

————————-, 1875. "Be Kind To Strangers," 23 March.

————————-, 1875. "Sparrows for Queen’s Park," 31 March.

————————-, 1875. "Throw Them A Crumb," 18 November.

————————-, 1876. "Throw Them A Crumb," 14 December.

————————-, 1877. "Credible," 27 March.

————————-, 1878. "The Sparrows," 5 January.

————————-, 1878. "Feed The Sparrows," 23 December.

————————-, 1879. "The Sparrows," 5 November.

Ottawa Directory and Dominion Guide, 1875.

Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club, 2023. Ottawa-Gatineau Christmas Bird Count 2022, 21 February.

Reimann, Matt. 2017. "The foolish bird lover brought a few sparrows to America, and now there are 540 million of them," 7 August.

The Sawdust Menace

19 June 1875

Long before Ottawa was a government town, it was a lumber town. Indeed, during much of the 19^th century, Ottawa was probably the most important lumbering centre in Canada with the sawmills of the Chaudière shipping hundreds of millions of board feet of timber to the United States and the United Kingdom annually. Mills, such as those owned by Alan Gilmour, Henry F. Bronson, John R. Booth, and Ezra B. Eddy, employed thousands, with many more working in the hinterland of the Ottawa River felling and transporting trees. But along with the squared timber and planks of wood that the sawmills produced annually came thousands of tons of waste in the form of slabs (i.e., the first outside slice of wood), bark, and above all, sawdust. This waste was simply dumped into the Ottawa River.

When the industry first started in the early 19^th century—Philomon Wright took the first log raft to Quebec City in 1806—waste from the lumber mills was not a major concern. The industry was not large enough to seriously affect the health of the mighty Ottawa River. However, this all changed after the 1854 Reciprocity Treaty between the British colonies in North America and the United States that instituted free trade in raw materials. Ottawa’s lumber industry, much of it owned by US lumbermen, took off and it continued to thrive even after the termination of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866.

In 1874 alone, 424 million board feet of timber were cut in sawmills located in Ottawa and Hull, along with a further 25 million board feet of squared timber. Waste poured into the Gatineau, Rideau, and Ottawa Rivers. An 1877 report estimated that each year more than 12 million cubic feet of sawdust were entering the Ottawa River, with the amount increasing annually. Huge shoals of sawdust choked bays and inlets. In some areas, the river floor was covered with a layer of sawdust 40 feet deep. Logs, slabs, bark, and other wooden refuse obstructed waterways, hindering navigation. Fish were also being affected through loss of spawning beds and the pollution of the water, leading to declining stocks of important species, including salmon sturgeon, and trout.

Part of the problem was the nature of the sawmills on the Ottawa River. Powered by the Chaudière Falls, the mills were constructed over water with big gaps between the floor boards to enable the speedy and easy disposition of wood waste into the waters of the river below. While mills could have been powered by steam engines using the waste wood as fuel, this was a more expensive option. It was far cheaper to simply rely on the river to sweep the waste away. It was also safer as big burners presented a fire risk.

Successive governments were aware of the damage done to the Ottawa River as well as to other waterways on which sawmills operated. As early as 1843, laws were passed to prevent obstructions to navigation in rivers and rivulets in both Canada East (Quebec) and Canada West (Ontario). Acts to protect the fisheries in Canada were also enacted during the 1850s. But according to a 1986 article by R. Peter Gillis in the Journal of Canadian Studies, little was done until a new Fisheries Act became law in 1865 that specifically mentioned sawdust. One section read "sawdust or mill rubbish shall not be drifted or thrown into any stream frequented by salmon, trout, pickerel or bass, under penalty not exceeding one hundred dollars."

But mill owners balked at changing their ways. After they received a letter from the Department of Crown Lands requiring them to make changes to their operations to bring them into compliance with the law, the mill owners resisted, saying it was impossible for them to stop sawdust from entering the Ottawa River. The mill owners contended that the economic cost of doing something to divert sawdust from entering the river was too great for the region and for the country in terms of lost of jobs, taxes, and profits. Mills would have to close. Instead, they offered a compromise. Focusing on the navigation problem, they offered to build grinders to chew up waste wood into sawdust. The government agreed to the compromise, and the sawdust problem worsened.

The Ottawa Citizen supported the mill owners. In 1866, it wrote "Now all of these provisions [against fouling the water] are very good and necessary where the fish of any river are productive of a greater revenue to the country than the manufacturies [sic] upon it; by where the opposite is the fact, as with the Ottawa [River], the enactments are oppressive. With revenues for the Ottawa fisheries industry having an estimated value of only $2,000, "it is at once apparent that the fishing interest of the Ottawa will not in the slightest degree bear comparison with the manufacturing enterprise and the attendant individual and general interest; and to secure the latter the other must be ignored." So long as navigation of the Ottawa River was not impeded by drifting sawdust and refuse wood from the mills, then the mills should be allowed to continue to dump sawdust into the Ottawa River. The newspaper also blamed the decline in the fisheries not to sawdust dumping but to excessive out-of-season fishing. Once the mills had purchased the necessary machinery to grind up the wood, the newspaper expected to see "a clear river and good fishing."

This did not happen. The situation deteriorated. In 1872, a three-person Commission concluded that refuse from the Chaudière mills was a hinderance to navigation in the immediate vicinity of Ottawa. Immense deposits of slabs and sawdust had almost entirely choked Entrance Bay where the Rideau Canal locks joined with the Ottawa River. At the foot of the locks, sawdust coated the riverbed to a depth of twenty-five to thirty feet. To make matter worse, rotting sawdust caused the water to be "impure and unwholesome" which must be "deleterious to health." As well, the impure water swept around the foot of Major’s Hill where water carters collected water for the city. (This was before homes were supplied with piped water.) Additionally, escaping methane from the rotting debris cause constant explosions. It was reported that two men in a skiff almost capsized, the boat partially filled with water, when it was roiled by a series of gas explosions. The stench was described as "powerful."

By this time, the Citizen newspaper had changed its mind. Worried about disease, it opined in 1872: "The evil [mill rubbish] is very great and pressing, and calls for speedy remedy." While it recognized that the cost of remedial measures would be high, "something must be done to…save our noble river from destruction."

After repeated attempts, the Dominion government passed in 1873 new legislation to better protect navigable streams and rivers. This time there was concern that blockages due to mill waste might compromise the proposed (and ultimately doomed) Georgian Bay Ship Canal project that would link the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence via the French River system and the Ottawa River.

While some mills, such as Gilmour and Company, which operated on the Hull side of the river where Parc Jacques Cartier is located today, introduced new steam-operated saws, and grinders to dispose of slabs and other large pieces of wood, other firms did nothing.

One of the worst offenders was John R. Booth’s company. In late May 1875, Superintendent E.J. O’Neil of the Fisheries Department visited Booth’s mill. He found that no precautions had been taken to prevent saw blocks and sawdust from entering the Ottawa River. He also saw workmen throwing debris into the water. When he spoke to Booth, Booth admitted that his men allowed sawdust and refuse to drop into the water.

The case of O’Neil vs. Levi (Levi was a foreman in the Booth mill) was heard the following month in Police Court. After O’Neil provided the facts of the case, the defence tried to argue that the firm was not responsible for the waste falling into the water. The magistrate disagreed. On 19 June 1875, the Booth firm was found guilty and fined $20 plus court costs—the lowest fine under the legislation. While it wasn’t much, it set a precedent.

The following year, Superintendent O’Neil issued summons against J.R. Booth and H.F. Bronson for throwing slabs, edgings, and other mill refuse into the Ottawa River. Both Booth and Bronson were found guilty and each were fined $20 plus court costs. In 1877, it was E.B. Eddy’s turn. After Eddy failed to show up to court, the magistrate ordered him to appear immediately or be subject to arrest. Eddy hurried to the court where he changed his plea from "not guilty" to "guilty." Eddy said that he was a very busy man and to be forced to appear in court was an "inconvenience." Although the Crown asked for a substantial fine since Eddy was a repeat offender, he too was only fined $20 plus costs.

Although the court of public opinion was turning against the sawmills, and the government had chalked up some small legal successes, Ottawa’s lumber barons continued to pollute the Ottawa River. Little had apparently changed. In 1888, a Senate committee took evidence showing that sawdust islands had formed between Ottawa and Grenville, Ontario, chocking navigation. The Ottawa River was particularly fouled between the Chaudière to the mouth of the Gatineau River, a distance of two and a half miles. From Nepean Point to Gatineau Point, vast beds of sawdust were encroaching on the channel. Forty feet of sawdust laid on the bed of the Ottawa River within sight of Parliament Hill. Big gas explosions continued. Fishermen also complained about the continued decline in fish stocks. Others were concerned about the quality of the water and the damage done to the natural beauty of the Ottawa River.

Lumbermen reacted with their own study conducted by Sir Sandford Fleming, the father of standard time. As one might expect given who funded it, Fleming’s report supported the lumbermen’s case. He concluded that, with the exception of Entrance Bay at the mouth of the Rideau Canal, sawdust and other mill waste did not obstruct navigation.

Again, government was unwilling to upset the lumbermen. Sir John A. Macdonald said that if fish stocks were negatively affected, the government could restock the river after all the trees were cut down. Sir Charles Tupper from Nova Scotia, who later became prime minister for a short time, said sawdust on the riverbed didn’t present a problem since lobsters didn’t live in the Ottawa River.

In 1896, the Liberals under Sir Wilfrid Laurier came to power. While Laurier too was loth to upset the economically and politically powerful lumbermen, the situation had come to a crisis point. The government could no longer ignore public opinion. In 1897, a Montebello man was killed when a methane explosion upset his boat. The Ottawa River had become a national disgrace. The Department of Marine and Fisheries told the lumbermen that no more exemptions would be given for sawdust dumping after the end of June, 1898.

Most firms finally acted, erecting burners to dispose of unwanted sawdust and other waste. Some firms, like the E.B. Eddy Company, introduced new products, such as pails, that used sawdust in their manufacture. Some used the waste as fuel, replacing expensive American coal. The last holdout was R.B. Booth, who had received the first fine for polluting twenty-five years earlier.

The Department of Marine and Fisheries began legal proceedings in 1901. These proceedings were paused when the Laurier government gave Booth one last chance to clean up his act. In early 1903, the Booth incinerator, one of the largest in North America being 35 feet in diameter and 180 feet high, was finally in operation.

Complaints about sawdust continued for a time, but they gradually abated. Despite this success for conservationists, the health of the Ottawa River remained poor. Left still to be tackled was the massive amounts of untreated sewage flowing into the river from Ottawa, Hull and other riverine communities. It would take another sixty years for governments to begin tackling that problem.

Sources:

Gillis, R. Peter, 1986. "Rivers of Sawdust: The Battle Over Industrial Pollution in Canada, 1865-1903," Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 21, Spring, No. 1.

Evening Journal, 1886. "Sawdust," 4 May.

——————–, 1887. "Paper Pails," 30 December.

——————–, 1888. "A Tough Question," 26 September.

——————–, 1902. "Booth Incinerator," 9 June.

——————–, 1903. "The Sawdust Still," 29 June.

Ottawa Daily Citizen, 1866. "Pollution of Streams," 31 August.

————————-, 1866. "Editorial," 8 October.

————————-, 1867. "Slabs and Sawdust," 30 March.

————————-, 1871. "Mr. Cartwright," 1 March.

————————-, 1872. "Sawdust," 10 August.

————————-, 1872. "The Sawdust Question," 13 August.

————————-, 1872. "A Bank Burst," 3 September.

————————-, 1875. "Sawdust," 19 June.

————————-, 1876. "Slabs and Sawdust," 21 October.

————————-, 1876. "The Sawdust Case," 16 December.

————————-, 1876. "Sawdust Cases," 18 December.

————————-, 1877. "The Mill Refuse Case," 17 August.

————————-, 1888. "The Sawdust Nuisance," 14 May.

————————-, 1902. "The Sawdust Nuisance Again," 29 April.

Garbage Collection

28 May 1906

Like most urban Canadians, Ottawa residents take their municipal services for granted. We expect clean water, prompt police and fire protection, safe parks and playgrounds, and good roads year-round. We also take as a matter of course regular, curb-side garbage pick-up paid for out of our municipal taxes. Each week without fail the garbage and recycle workers remove our residential waste. Organic materials are turned into compost, paper, metals, and plastics are sent to recyclers, with the remainder dumped as landfill.

This wasn’t always the case. For the first eighty years of Ottawa’s existence, waste disposal was the responsibility of the householder. The diligent took their refuse to city dumps themselves, or hired a private contractor to do it for them. The dilatory, which seemed to account for much of the population, accumulated debris in backyard middens, or dumped their refuse in streets, alleys, or the city’s waterways. Festering piles of kitchen slops, animal and human waste and even dead animals caused terrible odours, and hoards of flies. So bad were conditions, residents were often unable to open their windows or sit outside in the heat of the summer if the wind was in the wrong direction. Flies were everywhere. People naturally feared the spread of disease—cholera, typhoid, smallpox, and typhus.

Even as early as the 1840s, conditions in little Bytown were revolting. In July 1847, The Packet newspaper opined that "the disgusting nuisances and filth which has accumulated in many portions of the town should be removed." Stagnant pools of water and garbage were everywhere, said the newspaper, rendering the air "impure, and consequently unhealthy." Fears about nasty odours were magnified by the then-prevailing view that bad smells, or miasmas, were sufficient to cause disease. A few weeks later, municipal officials, possibly nudged by the press article, ordered Bytown’s residents to have "their premises cleaned from anything tending to create disease." Additionally, complaints about individuals keeping their property in a "filthy and dirty state" would be investigated by the Board of Health. Under a provincial act, health officials were empowered to order landowners to cleanse their properties and could enlist the support of the police. Fines for non-compliance ranged from £1 to £20.

It didn’t work. There were repeated notices in the newspaper ordering residents to clean up their properties. In 1865 and in 1866, Mayor Dickenson issued stern warnings saying that Ottawa’s nuisance bylaw required all persons within city limits to "keep cellars, yards and premises clean and healthy" and that this law would be strictly enforced.

In 1867, just a few months before Confederation, Mayor Robert Lyon issued a similar notice ordering and directing "all yards, cellars, stables, outhouses, and other buildings and enclosures, lanes and alleys, [to be] thoroughly cleansed of all filth, dirt or nightsoil or other impurities by the owners or persons occupying the premises." Those that disregarded the proclamation were threatened with punishment. FYI: nightsoil was a euphemism for the contents of chamber pots—human excrement. The nightsoil that was collected by scavengers at a hefty fee (10 cents per cubic foot in 1874) made its way to area farmers to manure their fields, or was dumped into the Ottawa River. During summer months, there were repeated instances of nightsoil, animal carcases and barrels of refuse being illegally dumped on the side of the river and even on Major’s Hill.

In 1866, one John Mercer, alias Sailor Jack, was convicted twice in police court for dumping nightsoil on the banks of the Ottawa River. The following year, Tyril Goslin and André Gervin were in court for depositing nightsoil on the ice of the Ottawa River for as long as six weeks—"a most disgusting spectacle" said the Ottawa Daily Citizen. The pair promised the judge that they would remove the nuisance by cutting a hole in the ice in the middle of the river and letting the offensive material be carried away by the current. No concerns were expressed about those living downstream.

Other waterways were also fouled by garbage and waste carelessly thrown away. There were complaints in 1871 about the remains of dead horses and barrels of nightsoil being dumped into Cave Creek, a small waterway that entered the Ottawa River at Nepean Bay. Not mentioned was the many outhouses abutting the creek from which human waste leached its way into Nepean Bay. The Ottawa Daily Citizen complained that each spring a "flood of rank decomposing vegetable and other impure matter [was] carried into the bay by the creek. The Hinton Farm on the Richmond Road (now the Hintonburg neighbourhood) was also used as a dumping ground for city nightsoil. A drain through the fields led to Cave Creek. Similarly, a stream running from the St. Louis Dam (now Commissioners’ Park at Dow’s Lake) through Rochesterville was fouled by the effluent from a tannery as well as illegally dumped trash, and decomposing vegetables and animals.

The newspaper’s health concerns were well-founded. Disease was rampant. In 1865, there was a serious cholera outbreak attributed by the Citizen to "deposits of vegetable and other matter, productive of pestilential and grossly offensive odours" that were allowed to accumulate and lie in the yards and even streets. "Such a state of things is not credible to the Capital City of Canada," said the newspaper. In 1871, there was a smallpox outbreak in the Stewart Street area of Sandy Hill, the location of many hog pens that were fed on kitchen slops. The Citizen remarked that such premises nurtured disease and pestilence and urged the municipal government to force piggeries out of the city. The paper also recommended that butchers’ stalls outside of the Byward market be abolished as Ottawa’s leading streets stank owing to rotting meat and pools of blood. One wonders what the market, the epicentre of such business, smelt like. Water fouled by human waste led to outbreaks of disease. As late as 1912, a serious typhoid epidemic, which caused many deaths, was traced to Cave Creek. Ottawa’s water intake pipe that served city residents was located in Nepean Bay, just a short distance from where the polluted waters of the creek entered the Ottawa River.

Despite bylaws and public health concerns, other than sending out stern warnings and the occasional dumping prosecution, municipal officials did little unless pushed. In an 1866 editorial, the Ottawa Daily Citizen noted that every city and town in Canada had sufficient powers to deal with the garbage problem but little was done until some contagious or epidemic disease threatened, whereupon the authorities would scramble to take measures, which may or may not work, to purify the city.

Residents of today’s upscale Patterson Creek area might be interested to know that their neighbourhood used to be Ottawa’s dump for tin cans, ashes, and similar materials. However, in 1892, the Ottawa Evening Journal sent a reporter out to investigate complaints of illegal dumping at the site. He found piles of rotting bananas, oranges, lemons, pineapples and other kitchen waste, lying in "the none too fresh water of the creek." (It’s striking that Ottawa residents had access to quite a range of tropical fruits at that time.) Kitchen waste was supposed to be sent out of town to suburban piggeries to be used as feed.

By the late nineteenth century, the situation was becoming embarrassing. Ottawa was reportedly the only large North American city without regular garbage collection—a poor showing for a capital city. Ottawa’s chief medical officer lobbied hard for regular garbage collection on health grounds. The major deterrent was the cost. Municipal leaders, while evincing support for garbage collection, pleaded empty coffers.

After three years of studying the problem, city council finally agreed in 1905 to set up a scavenging system. Waste was divided into two categories—refuse and garbage. Refuse was defined as ashes, broken dishes, tins, glass, rags, street sweepings, trash, and combustible materials of all kinds. Deemed to be comparatively clean, such refuse would continue to be disposed of in the traditional way—used as land fill in low-lying areas, such as Patterson Creek, a site on Carling Avenue near Dow’s Lake and Porter’s Island. Garbage, which was defined as kitchen and table scraps, condemned meats, fish, vegetables, etc. would either be incinerated or "reduced," in other words turned into usable fats to make soap (!), and fertilizer though a reduction process. Households would be required to separate their refuse into two, separated receptacles for pick-up. The city approved galvanized steel cans, wooden boxes, and barrels for this purpose.

Discussion then centred on the merits of an incinerator versus a reduction facility, and whether garbage collection should be contracted out or handled by city workers. Owing to the risk of unpleasant odours caused by both an incinerator or a reduction plant, and the difficulty in finding a suitable location within Ottawa’s city limits, city council rejected both options, choosing instead to continue with past practices—using refuse as land fill and sending garbage to suburban piggeries as feed. City council overruled a Board of Works recommendation to hire a private company to dispose of waste, and instead chose to use day labour at a cost of $17,000 per year. The horse-drawn garbage and refuse vehicles operated by the city would have a uniform appearance, be neatly painted, numbered, free of odours, and clean with approved covers to hide their contents and to stop leakage. The city bylaw also barred outsiders from collecting garbage or refuse privately within Ottawa. Garbage was to be delivered under contract to the Hurdman Brothers for disposal.

The new, city-run scavenging system began on Monday, 28 May 1906. City refuse and garbage collectors made at least one trip per week to each home, with five scavenging carts initially allocated to Wellington Ward and four carts to the By Ward. Garbage and refuse collection to other city wards commenced a few days later. After the initial visit, households were told their schedule for pick-up. Every home was required to have two approved receptacles, one for refuse and one for garbage.

The new scavenging system was immediately controversial. First, home owners didn’t do a good job in separating their refuse and garbage. This was a particular problem in winter as the city scavengers couldn’t easily tell the snow-covered contents of some receptacles. Second, there were frequent complaints that the scavengers failed to show up. Third, private scavengers who previously had contracts for collecting kitchen scraps and waste from hotels and tenements for a fee and then sold the material to suburban pig farms in Gloucester Township were out of business. With their livelihoods at risk, law suits flew. Gloucester retaliated by forbidding the dumping of Ottawa’s waste within its territory. Gloucester was also upset that Ottawa had managed to get the Clarkstown rendering plant located midway between the villages of Jane and Clarkstown (now part of Vanier) closed due to public health concerns over foul odours. This rendering plant had been approved by the Gloucester municipal authorities.

Although Ottawa won the initial court case against outside scavengers, it lost on appeal. Private scavengers were permitted to continue to collect kitchen slops as long as their garbage wagons were kept clean and watertight.

But problems continued. Ottawa had no place to rid itself of dead animals. As Gloucester wouldn’t take the bodies, private contractors dumped bodies in Hull landfills. When Hull objected, Ottawa found itself in a quandary over what to do. For a time, a contractor carted away dead horses to a farm on the Montreal Road across from Notre Dame Cemetery. In 1908, a city alderman discovered that the city’s engineering department, which was responsible for waste management, had buried the bodies of fifty dogs at the Patterson Creek tip in addition to dumping twelve wagon loads of mixed waste, including kitchen slops, daily for months contrary to city ordinances. Area residents were not amused.

Pressure mounted to buy an incinerator that was sufficiently large to burn large animals and to destroy all household wastes that was going to Gloucester piggeries; there was a growing revulsion in Ottawa about eating garbage-fattened pork. After examining the alternatives, city council purchased a Heenan-Froude incinerator for $34,650 from Messrs. Laurie & Lamb. The 75-ton plant was erected in Lee’s Field (the location of today’s Lees Avenue) in Ottawa’s east end on a plot of land that was purchased by the city for about $11,000. It began operations in September 1912. The plant could burn 75 tons of material in a 24-hour period, though it was only operated for one eight-hour shift per day, disposing of 30 tons of garbage daily.

Unfortunately, the incinerator did not live up to expectations and in about 1917, the plant was closed as it was cheaper to dump and bury household and other waste than to burn it. Several dumps were opened around the city to save on haulage costs. The dumped waste was covered with earth and ashes. Disinfectants were also applied during the summer months.

Much has changed since these early days of garbage collection, especially the volume. Ottawa residents generate more than 200,000 tons of household waste annually. However, residents still separate their waste. Instead of putting "garbage" and "refuse" into separate bins, we have green bins for kitchen and other compostable materials, black bins for paper, blue bins for plastics, glass, and tin cans, and a fourth receptacle for other non-recyclable material which becomes landfill. Instead of feeding pigs, compostable material is converted into rich compost, while recycled materials are sold. In so doing, hundreds of thousands of tons of waste are diverted from landfill, extending the life of the Trail Road facility. Like one hundred years ago, Ottawa recently tried to use an incinerator—the Plasco facility—as a means of disposing of waste and generating power. However, like what happened in the early twentieth century, the experiment failed. Plus ça change…

Sources:

Ottawa Citizen, 1865. "Notice," 26 June.

——————, 1865. "The Cholera," 8 November.

——————, 1866. "Proclamation!" 22 March.

——————, 1866. "Nuisances," 9 April.

——————, 1866. "Sailor Jack, Again," 20 April.

——————, 1866. "Editorial," 23 May.

——————, 1867. "Police Court," 13 March.

——————, 1867, "Proclamation!" 3 April.

——————, 1870. "That Nuisance," 11 January.

——————, 1871. "Sanitary Precautions," 13 May.

——————, 1871. "Correspondence," 22 September.

——————, 1874. "Sanitary," 8 April.

——————, 1874. "Board of Health Report," 19 May.

——————, 1893. "Charley Satchell On Top," 21 April.

——————, 1904. "Clean The Yards," 26 May.

——————, 1905. "Lighting Management By The Aldermen," 26 February.

——————, 1905. "Garbage System," 9 November.

——————, 1906. "The Scavenging System Starts," 28 May."

——————, 1907. "Serious Menace To Public Health," 29 January.

——————, 1907. "The City Had Full Power," 26 February.

——————, 1907. "Garbage Law Gone," 6 April.

——————, 1907. "Two Clauses Knocked Out," 8 April.

——————, 1908. "Move For Incinerator," 26 March.

——————, 1908. "Mr. Ker Speaks," 26 March.

——————, 1911. "Ottawa’s Civic Record, 1911," 1 December.

——————-, 1929. "Plan To Improve Conditions That Exist At Dumps," 24 April.

——————-, 2020, "Ottawa severs ties with Plasco as company files for creditor protection," 1 June.

Ottawa Journal, 1888. "Hintonburgh’s Public Health," 5 March.

——————-, 1892. "The Dump Inspected," 23 June.

——————-, 1905. "A Scavenging System For The City Of Ottawa," 18 July.

——————-, 1905. "Garbage Removal A Necessity," 13 November.

——————-, 1905. "A System Of Garbage Collection For Ottawa," 13 November.

——————-, 1905. "The Refuse Matter," 23 November.

——————-, 1906. "Garbage Collection By Day Labor System," 20 February.

——————-, 1906. "Herd of Pigs Devoured The Carcass of A Horse," 6 April.

——————-, 1906. "City Not Any Way Concerned," 10 July.

——————-, 1907. "Retaliation Is Proposed," 5 March.

——————-, 1908. "Gloucester Township Is After The Garbage Men," 21 February.

——————-, 1908. "Fifty Dead Dogs Are Buried In The Dump," 26 March.

——————-, 1909. "Incinerator Again," 20 August.

——————-, 1910. "Recommended Incinerator," 4 November.

——————-, 1912. "Furnaces Going Into New Incinerator Plant Today," 16 August.

——————-, 1922. "Common Sense Garbage Disposal," 16 December.

Ottawa Life Magazine, 2013, "Digging into Ottawa’s Garbage," 28 May.

Packet, 1847. "The Board of Health Again," 31 July.

——–, 1847. "Advertisement," 18 September.

Le Hibou

12 May 1975

It would be an unkind exaggeration to describe Ottawa in the early 1960s as a sleepy little government town that rolled up its sidewalks by 8:00pm. There was in fact a fair bit of evening entertainment to be had. If one thumbed through a random Ottawa newspaper from, say, July 1960, one would find the listings for nineteen cinemas and drive-ins, with offerings including the likes of Solomon and Sheba, starring Gina Lollobrigida and Yul Brenner—the "mightiest motion picture ever created!"— and Ben Hur, winner of 11 academy awards. For theatre lovers, famed though aging American stars, Joan Bennett and Donald Cook were set to appear in a production of the hit play "The Gazebo" at a benefit held at the Laurentian High School. Daily dances and floor shows were on offer at four different locations, including at the Beacon Arms Hotel and the Château Laurier Hotel. Meanwhile across the Ottawa River, jazz greats, such as Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughn, made appearances at the Standish in Hull or the Gatineau Country Club. That particular July in 1960, the Standish was actually hosting Bill Haley and the Comets.

But for the most part, it was true that there was little to attract young adults. Places like the Standish were not easily accessible, being across the Ottawa River, and were relatively expensive. As well, with the drinking age then set at 21, teenagers were unwelcome at locations that served alcohol. Most importantly, would you really want to hang out at the same places your parents did?

All this changed in October 1960 with the opening of Café Le Hibou Coffee House at 544 Rideau, above a chiropractor’s office close to Ottawa University. There, high school and university students could drink quality coffee, while enjoying first-rate music, art films, avantgarde theatre, and even poetry readings. Sitting on second-hand wooden chairs at tables covered with white and red checkered tablecloths, lit by wax-encrusted, Chianti bottle candles, they could dream that they were in some left-bank Parisian café. Le Hibou was idealistic, bilingual and, above all, cool—a place where you could argue about existentialism while sipping an expresso.

Le Hibou (The Owl) was the baby of four University of Ottawa students, led by Denis Faulkner. Each threw in $800 in cash or kind to fund the new venture. One of the unique features of the coffee house was that it was promoted as a private club with a membership fee of $2.00 per year, though one could also get in for a 25-cent, one-night membership fee. Patrons received a membership card that depicted the coffee house’s distinctive owl logo. It offered twelve different kinds of coffee and eleven types of tea—quite a novelty for the era. The café also served food, though initially the fare was limited to a section of cheeses, smoked meat or cold ham on crusty buns.

In 1961, Le Hibou moved out of its modest Rideau Street digs to larger accommodations on the second floor of 248 Bank Street, its entrance sandwiched between a paint store and a novelty shop. The newly-located coffee shop had a stage, and could accommodate up to 70 persons at tables and even more for theatre productions if the furniture was pushed aside and people didn’t mind getting friendly with their neighbours. That same year, Le Hibou made the news by receiving the first Canada Council grant for poetry reading. The $600 grant helped cover the expenses for seven visiting poets, including Irving Layton, then a professor of poetry at Sir George William University in Montreal who had an international reputation as one of Canada’s finest poets.

Over the next several years, Le Hibou developed its own national and then international reputation for hosting up-and-coming folk groups, supplied by Harvey Glatt, a rising star in the music industry for concert promotion and music distribution. Glatt later became a part-owner of the coffee house. Early performers at the café included the American-born singer, Ed McCurdy, the singer-activist Pete Seeger, and the Ottawa trio of Cayla Mirsky, Russell Kronick and Mark Marx, also known as The Courriers. French chansonniers Claude Gauthier, Stephane Golmann, Renée Claude and then a little-known Robert Charlebois also cast their musical spell over appreciative audiences. As well, there were open nights where anybody could try out their musical skills. In addition to music, a ciné club was started, with showings of such European art films as Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, and Ingmar Bergman’s Three Strange Loves. A weekly improvisational theatre show was also put on for children. A civic affairs satire that portrayed the irascible mayor Charlotte Whitton with a dagger hanging from her mayoral chain of office, drew most of Ottawa’s city council to Le Hibou.

By mid-1962, the club reached a milestone of 1,000 members, which even included some young, hip politicians. The uptight Ottawa Journal called it a "haven for the unshaven." The Ottawa Citizen more charitably called Le Hibou, the "Bank Street house of culture" and a "hideout for highbrows." CBC taped a show for network distribution at the café. The coffee shop had hit the big time.

Despite being a success, especially with Ottawa’s younger crowd, it was viewed with suspicion by the Ottawa police’s morality squad who laid charges against Denis Faulkner, the owner-manager, for operating a "public hall" without a licence. Reportedly, two big policemen had "hulked" in the hall for several nights in a row. The Ottawa Journal wondered whether they were investigating irregularities, acting as bouncers, or were just there for the show. Later in court, Faulkner argued that Le Hibou was a private club and hence did not require a licence. The magistrate disagreed saying that the defence was a "sham" as anybody could enter the café. However, he dismissed the charge, ruling the relevant part of the municipal by-law ultra vires. Faulkner still undertook the required renovations for the club to conform to city regulations.

In 1965, Le Hibou moved again, this time to 521 Sussex Drive, a heritage property owned by the National Capital Commission. It was to be the coffee shop’s iconic home for the next ten years. Here, most of the popular folk and blues stars of the time, many before they were widely known, performed in front of the coffee house’s "big brick wall." Gordon Lightfoot made repeat performances at the club, as did Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, and the blues-singing pair of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Judith Orban, Joni Michell and Buffy Sainte-Marie also gave performances at Le Hibou. Let’s also not forget Murray McLaughlin, Jose Feliciano, Dave Broadfoot, and Oscar Brand, the author of the incomparable Canadian patriotic ballad This Land of Ours (also known as Something to Sing About). Theatre, in both English and French, continued to be a regular staple, with performances of plays by Eugene Ionesco and Henrik Ibsen, among others, thus demonstrating that one could be baffled in both official languages.

In 1968, Denis Faulkner and Harvey Glatt, by now sole co-owners, sold Le Hibou to John and Joan Russow for $5,000. Faulkner wished to pursue a career as a producer at CBC, while Glatt, who was more of an absentee investor, developed his music promotion and retail businesses through Bass Clef Productions and Treble Clef Distribution. John Russow, the new owner-manager, had been formerly the night manger of the coffee house.

At the end of February 1969, Le Hibou welcomed a very special guest. In the audience one Friday night to hear The Modern Rock Quartet was George Harrison of The Beatles. Harrison and three producers of Apple Records were in Ottawa to hear the American folk singer Eric Anderson perform at the Capitol Theatre. Later, John Russow commented that Harrison, with his long hair and "mod gear," was lost in the crowd of similarly attired people and went unrecognized. Bowing to Harrison’s desire for anonymity, he did not announce the Beatle’s presence to the crowd.

Despite the change in ownership, the parade of first-rate talent continued at Le Hibou. Lenny Breau, one of the most talented guitarists of the age and known for his chordal harmonics, performed on the coffee house’s stage. Other greats with gigs at Le Hibou included Chilliwack, the Canadian rock band from Vancouver, the American folk and blues singer Tom Rush, and Jerry Jeff Walker, the author and original performer of Mr. Bojangles, the song that later became Sammy Davis Jr.’s signature piece.

In 1972, Russow sold Le Hibou to Pierre-Paul Lafrenière, a one-time manager of the café and former equipment manager for Chilliwack, citing his disillusionment with the music scene. Instead of performers playing for the love of music, it was all about the money, he said. A few months later, Daphne Birks joined Lafrenière as part-owner. The duo gave the coffee house a major facelift. The stage was relocated, and a better sound system was installed. In an effort to widen the club’s audience, one week out of four was devoted to French-Canadian entertainers. As well, a lunchtime theatre program was introduced. The following year, after receiving an "Opportunities for Youth" grant from the federal government, they converted the top floor of the coffee house into a gallery and studio for struggling artists, called the Sussex Art Work, SAW Gallery, for short. While the coffee shop provided the space for free, people going to the gallery had to go through Le Hibou’s entrance to get there—a new source of potential customers.

The renovations were costly, as was a large publicity campaign through the summer of 1972. The café, which was only ever marginally profitable, went deeply into debt. Rumours of Le Hibou’s imminent closure were rife. In January 1974, the wolf was at the door. But a last-minute reprieve came in the form of a benefit concert at Roosters Coffee House at Carleton University and donations from patrons and friends. Raising sufficient funds to keep the bailiff at bay, Le Hibou staggered on. But on 12 May 1975, Birks and Lafrenière filed for bankruptcy. The coffee house had finally succumbed to a combination of rising costs, both for performers and rent, and changing tastes. The coffee house experience no longer attracted the crowds it once had. With the cut in the drinking age to eighteen in both Quebec and Ontario, young adults were looking for a different experience and a different sound. Le Hibou fell silent.

Daphne Birks resurfaced a few years later as one of the principals behind the trendy restaurant on William Street called Daphne and Victor’s. For a time, it was the burger place in Ottawa. Remember their pecan burgers with Mornay sauce?

Nothing ever really replaced Le Hibou. Perhaps the closest equivalent is the Black Sheep Inn (le Mouton Noir) in Wakefield, Quebec that commenced operations in 1994. Like Le Hibou, it too gained an international reputation, and attracted musicians and singers from far and wide. Sadly, the COVID pandemic forced its closure for two years. Its future is clouded. The SAW Gallery, the offshoot of Le Hibou, continues to thrive. The artist-run gallery and performance space currently operate in the basement of the old Ottawa Court House at 67 Nicholas Street.

Sources:

Denis’ Recollections, 2012? Café Le Hibou Recollections, https://lehibou.ca/recollections/recollections/.

Ottawa Citizen, 1961. "Poetry Grant To Le Hibou," 16 December.

——————, 1962. "Montreal Poet Layton A Sellout At Le Hibou," 11 January.

——————, 1962. "Le Hibou," 8 August.

——————, 1962. "Le Hibou: Hideout For Highbrows," 19 May.

——————, 1962. "Coffee House Claims Police Persecution," 19 May.

——————, 1962. "No Sets, No Costumes But Actors Are A Hit," 11 August.

——————, 1962. ""Le Hibou," 27 October.

——————, 1962. "Civic Affairs Satire at Le Hibou," 27 November.

——————, 1965. "Popular folk artis slated for Le Hibou," 9 October.

——————, 1969. "A Beatle drops in—quietly," 3 March.

——————, 1971. "Chilliwack returning to scene of triumph," 19 February.

——————, 1972. "Greed spoils a music showcase," 10 March.

——————, 1972. "Face-lifting for Le Hibou as new owner grasps reins," 19 May.

——————, 1972. "Innovations pleasing," 2 August.

——————, 1972. "New lunch hour theatre program at Le Hibou," 14 October.

——————, 1973. "OFY grant opening new vistas at Le Hibou," 19 May.

——————, 1974. "Will tonight be the last for Le Hibou?" 19 January.

Ottawa Journal,

——————, 1962. "Haven For The Unshaven," 13 June.

——————, 1962. "Rules City By-law Section Goes Too Far," 18 June.

——————, 1965. "Club Sandwich," 8 May.

——————, 1965. "Lightfoot Opens At Le Hibou," 24 June.

——————, 1974. "Le Hibou still percolating after major financial crunch," 24 January.

——————, 1975. "Le Hibou closing end of music era," 2 May.

——————, 1975. "Legal Notices, In the matter of the bankruptcy of Daphne Birks and Pierre-Paul Lafreniere. Trading as Le Hibou Coffee House," 24 May.

*Many thanks to Danny Baker for suggesting this story.

The Old Ottawa Post Office

30 April 1876

One of Ottawa’s iconic buildings that is now lost to history was its old Post Office. It was the subject of countless post cards and photographs during its era. The building was located on the west side of the Rideau Canal, sandwiched between Sappers’ Bridge on its southern side and the Dufferin Bridge on its northern side. The first mail received in the new building arrived on Sunday, 30 April 1876, with the first batch of letters departing the facility that same evening. (Note that the Post Office was exempt from bans on working on the Sabbath—the mails must get through!)

While commonly referred to as the old Ottawa Post Office, especially after its demolition in 1938, it was not the first post office in Ottawa. An 1876 Ottawa Citizen article noted that the city’s first post office dated back to 1828, just two years after the founding of Bytown. It was located on Rideau Street beside a drug store owned by Mr. Joseph Skinner. The first postmaster, and the only postal employee, was Matthew O’Connell. The revenues from the mails were apparently so small that they were "not sufficient to give one man an independent living." After O’Connell’s death in 1834, a Mr. Baker took over the reins of postmaster until his death in 1857. During Baker’s tenure, the Post Office moved twice, first to a building on Sparks Street in 1854 and then to Elgin Street where it remained until the construction of what would become known as the "old" Post Office. Following the death of Mr. Baker in 1857, his son, Mr. G. Baker, assumed the position of Ottawa postmaster, and was the man in charge when the post office moved into its quarters beside the Rideau Canal. By this time, postal staff had grown significantly to 34 clerks who processed letters and parcels accounting for revenues totally roughly $41,000, excluding the value of government and other mail delivered free.

The building’s contractor was Messrs. Hatch Brothers of Montreal who agreed to build it for $107,000. However, after the foundation was laid, the Hatch Brothers were unable to fulfil the terms of its contract, and construction was taken over by the government.

The new post office building was opened to the general public on Monday, 1 May. Hundreds came to gawk and admire the new structure which housed not only the Post Office but also other government departments, including Inland Revenue and Customs. The fact that Customs also occupied the building explains in part the building’s location beside the Rideau Canal. By 1874, Ottawa was considered a "grade two" port with annual revenues in excess of $200,000 three years running. (By contrast, revenues of the port of Ottawa amounted to only $49 in 1848.) The building had three large vaults for the storage of goods being held by Customs which could be accessed from the Canal-side dock. The vaults connected to the basement which was occupied by the Customs Examining Warehouse, letter carriers’ rooms, as well as small apartments for Customs and Inland Revenue officers.

The Romanesque-revival facade of the three-story building that faced the canal consisted of massive columns supporting a broken pediment and clock. Above the pediment and clock was a cupola with handsome vases at the corners, topped by a flag pole. Fourteen figureheads representing mythological and historical characters acted as keystones above the first-floor windows. The building had a mansard-style roof. The other sides of the structure had similar features to the front but were plainer. According to the Ottawa Citizen, it was "one of the prettiest public structures in Canada."

The Post Office occupied the ground floor of the premises. There was a general delivery room and drop-letter boxes for posting letters and 1,160 lock-letter boxes in three sizes that could be rented by the public for $1.50, $3.50, and $6.00 annually. There were wickets for receiving parcels, a registered letters office near the Wellington Street entrance, and a money order office and savings bank on the south side. There was also a postmaster’s office as well as bedrooms for postal clerks, and space for mail sorting apparatus. When the new Post Office opened, the upper-story rooms were still unfinished but were later occupied by other government agencies, including the Railway Mail Service and the Ottawa River Works department.

In early 1904, a major fire gutted the upper floors of the post office building. It began at about 7:45 pm on the night of 4 January, starting in the attic. The fire was most likely caused by an electrical short circuit in the motor that powered the fans in the building’s ventilation system. Fire fighters had a difficult time extinguishing the blaze owing to the building’s "regular forest of rafters and woodwork," and the bitter cold. The temperature hovered around -20° Fahrenheit. To fight the blaze, the Jubilee fire engine, stationed on Sparks Street in front of the Russell House Hotel, supplied two streams of water. The Victoria fire engine, stationed on Wellington Street, supplied another three streams. Three more streams of water played over the front of the building.

Coincidently, less than one month earlier, the chief architect of public works had inspected the building and had raised concerns about the risk of fire and the likely difficulty in extinguishing a blaze located in the upper portion of the building. Such fears were clearly well founded.

Initially, dense smoke poured out of the upper story windows and tower. There was no sign of flames, though the fire was working its way through the inner walls and dry wooden floors. The offices of the Railway Mail Service and Ottawa River Works located in the roof story were destroyed, as were the offices of Inland Revenue on the floor below. The ground floor Post Office and Customs’ bonded warehouse escaped fire damage but were completely flooded.

Despite the obvious risks, postal and internal revenue workers laboured feverishly to remove the mail and other valuables from the building. They also covered equipment and supplies with tarpaulins to protect them from the torrents of water cascading down from the roof and upper storeys. Goods in the Customs’ bonded warehouse were also saved, including a $6,000 switchboard newly imported by Thomas Ahearn and Warren Soper, and a valuable instrument owned by the Dominion Observatory.

The residents of the upper floors were less fortunate. The contents of the Ottawa River Works’ offices were destroyed, as was a library. The records of the Railway Mail Service were also completely ruined.

Amazingly, the outward-bound mail service to Toronto left Ottawa as if nothing had happened. Sleighs were used to send mail to be transported to the House of Commons post office for processing. Other parliamentary facilities were also pressed into temporary service. The Office of the Accountant became the money order branch, the telegraph offices were used by the city letter carriers, while the press rooms became the office of the Railway Mail Service. Room 16, otherwise the government caucus room, temporarily became the Post Office’s sorting room.

Thousands of spectators lined both Sappers’ and the Dufferin bridges to watch the unfolding drama despite the bitter cold. Reportedly, people were not terribly sympathetic. A frequent comment was that Ottawa needed a new post office. Owing to the extreme cold, firefighters had to take frequent breaks at the nearby Russell House Hotel to warm up and, in some cases, cut off frozen mittens. Ottawa’s Mayor Cook supplied hot coffee to the half-frozen firemen.

The fire was finally put out around 3:30am the next morning but not before there was some concern that it might spread to neighbouring buildings. When the fire finally broke through the roof of the post office building, sending up a plume of sparks, Xavier St. Jacques, the manager of the nearby Russell House Hotel, brought out his house hose, and had water sprayed over the sides and roof of his hotel.

At dawn, Ottawa residents woke to quite the spectacle. The gutted building was described as an "ice palace" with the surrounding streets covered with several feet of ice.

Despite the considerable damage to the building—loses were estimated at $40,000—the federal government decided to renovate and rebuild rather than replace it. The government also took the opportunity to enlarge the building by adding another floor in the same architectural style. The cost was approximately $160,000. Labouring around the clock, 128 workmen enabled the Post Office to reopen on the ground floor in less than four weeks after the fire. The interior of the newly refurbished premises was hardly recognizable. Meanwhile, work proceeded on rebuilding the upper floors. Once completed, the Inland Revenue, Customs and the Railway Mail Service returned to their new offices in the enlarged and improved Post Office building.

A generation later, in early 1938, the old Post Office building was demolished to make way for the construction of the War Memorial. With the new Ottawa postal station still under construction at the corner of Sparks and Wellington Streets, postal workers reported for duty at temporary offices in the Victoria Building located at the corner of Wellington and O’Connor Streets.

Sources:

Ottawa Citizen, 1876. "The New Post Office," 1 May.

——————, 1904. "Post Office Fire, 5 January.

——————, 1904. "Splendid Work," 5 January.

——————, 1904. "Post Office Plans," 7 January.

—————–, 1904. "Brigade Enquiry Open," 11 February.

—————–, 1904. "Post Office Plans," 6 February.

—————–, 1904. "City Post Office," 14 May.

—————–, 1904. "Pauper Immigration," 1 June.

—————–, 1938. "Moving Fixtures From Post Office," 21 March.

—————–, 1938. "The Post Office," 14 April.

Ottawa Journal, 1904. "Fire Destroys Ottawa Post Office In The Intense Cold," 5 January.

——————-, 1904. "City Post Office, 7 June.

Tobogganing in Old Ottawa

10 March 1877

The Indigenous peoples of Canada have used toboggans since time immemorial for transporting goods and people over winter’s snowy and icy landscapes. Sometimes, a person on snowshoes pulled the toboggan using a cord around their forehead or shoulder. Other times, a dog or a team of dogs were used as the muscle. These days, dogs have been replaced by snowmobiles. Regardless, the toboggan was and remains a practical and efficient means of moving freight over snow.

European settlers quickly adopted the toboggan as their own for similar reasons. They also turned it into a sport which for a time was considered by some to be the national winter sport of Canada. It was subsequently introduced to the United States where it also gained considerable popularity.

While there was some similarity to the tobogganing that is enjoyed today by kids of all ages, it was not always a child’s game. Like now, tobogganers sat on slides, typically made of wood, that were curled at the front end, and slid down hillsides. However, some toboggan enthusiasts of the nineteenth century extended the slide by building a toboggan chute that rose many feet in the air at the top of a hill. This high wooden extension was accessed by steps up its side. That extension added to the natural inclination of the hill making for a fast, exhilarating slide—at speeds of up to 70 kilometres per hour—that could extend for a half a mile or more. The only downside, other that the very real risk to life and limb, was the long slog back to the top of the hill to repeat the experience.

When exactly tobogganing began as a sport in Ottawa is not clear. It was certainly already a well-known activity when Prince Arthur, the seventh child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, came to Ottawa in 1870 as there are photographs of him with a toboggan at Rideau Hall. Lord Dufferin, who became Governor General in 1872, and his wife were major toboggan aficionados. It was during Dufferin’s tenure that a toboggan run was built close to Rideau Hall. Library and Archives Canada have a number of photographs of the Dufferin family and their friends sliding on the run. Courtesy of an account by a reporter of the New York Herald, datelined Ottawa, 10 March 1877, and subsequently republished in the Ottawa Daily Citizen, we also have a good description of it.

The slide consisted of a wooden trough six feet wide and 140 feet long that was elevated at an angle of roughly 45 degrees. While the height of the slide was not mentioned, it must have been at least 30 feet, rising above the top of the hill. Alongside the slide were steps with a smaller trough up which toboggans could be pulled to the top. Thrill-seekers sat on six-foot long birch toboggans. The reporter wrote it was customary for a gentleman to take a lady down the slide with her in front and with him holding her tightly.

The American journalist said that the tobogganists on the Rideau Hall slide flew down the ramp and hill at about 40 miles per hour, at times bouncing ten to twelve feet in the air before losing velocity and coming to a halt about a half mile away. He added that the fun didn’t stop there because one only had to walk a few rods (a rod is 16 ½ feet) to arrive at the foot of another toboggan run.

His guide on the tour of the hill also told him that young "Ottawanians" trained during the summer to prepare for the upcoming winter tobogganing season by "mounting a tin tea tray or a sufficiently capacious chafing dish" and sailing down flights of stairs. He concluded his article by speculating that if the sport was introduced to Central Park, it would be a sure-fire success.

The Rideau Hill toboggan slide was not without its perils. A year after the New York reporter’s account there was a painful accident at the hill when an uncle of Lord Dufferin’s aide-de-camp, fractured his leg and received facial injuries when the four-person toboggan on which he was riding collided with a tree. The other three riders got off lucky with only minor contusions.

With vice-regal patronage, the sport of tobogganing soared in popularity. In 1885, the Taché Hill Sliding Club was formed with the sponsorship of Hon. (later Sir) Adolphe-Philippe Caron, Canada’s Minister of Militia and Defence in the government of Sir John A. Macdonald. (That same year, Caron sent 8,000 militia men to suppress the North-West Rebellion led by Louis Riel.) Arthur Taché was the club’s president. The location of Taché Hill is not exactly clear, but it may have been located near Water Street (now called Bruyére Street), close to the Ottawa River. The formal opening of the hill at the end of January 1885 was marked by huge crowds, and a parade consisting of three bands, including that of the Governor General’s Foot Guards, and various sporting clubs with fireworks. The parade stopped at Caron’s residence where he was picked up in a four-in-hand carriage and taken in style to the hill.

The Taché Hill Sliding Club’s official colours were cardinal red and light blue. Members wore light blue tuques with a red band, a cardinal red blanket coat with light blue piping, a capuchin lined with light blue fabric, blanket trousers sporting light blue stripes and a light blue sash. Members had to wear a non-transferable badge on a conspicuous place, just like one must do today with a ski pass. An annual club subscription costed $4.00.

The following year, the Lansdowne Toboggan slide was opened with the patronage of Lord Lansdowne, the governor general of that time. The president of the club was Ottawa Mayor McDougall. This slide was located at the corner of Lyon and Somerset Street on Ashburnham Hill. The chutes of the slide were one quarter of a mile long with a natural slope of twenty feet topped with a wooden board slide over 30 feet high which permitted a run of roughly 50 yards before a tobogganer hit the natural hill. A "cozy" house was built for members with electric lights. The slide was also illuminated with electric lights so that patrons could enjoy night sliding.

By the late 1880s, toboggan slides were all the rage in those parts of the United States where there was sufficient snow, said the New York World newspaper which also attributed a decline in roller-skating to the rise of the new sport. A major advantage of the new sport, claimed facetiously by the newspaper, was that it costed a great deal more than roller-skating and was "a most charming and effectual mode of relieving an overburdened pocket book." Tobogganers required a uniform with both men and women liking to dress for the occasion. Tongue in cheek, (I think) the newspaper said that tobogganing was more moral than roller-skating since a man and woman couldn’t elope while wearing toboggan suits and that it would be hard for a youth to feel romantic while carrying a toboggan up a hill. There was also no time for flirting on a toboggan chute. The newspaper thanked Canada for sending to the United States such a "healthful winter pastime."

The of Freeman of Kingston, New York recommended a double-decker toboggan for families of up to ten people wishing to slide together. The newspaper opined that the bottom level could be devoted to the elderly and stout, while children could ride on the upper level. Yikes! The contraption would be driven by the "paterfamilias" who would also be responsible for giving piggy back rides to the little ones on the way back to the top of the hill to repeat the experience.

In 1922, a high toboggan chute was temporarily installed beside the Chatêau Laurier Hotel for the Canadian National Winter Carnival. Thrill-seekers on the "Slide-a-Mile" run would slide well out onto the ice of the Ottawa River. The slide was immensely popular, running day and night through the week-long carnival.

Today, such an extreme form of tobogganing is largely a thing of the past. However, three toboggan chutes built in 1884 in Quebec City are still in operation today. Fittingly, they are located at the Dufferin Terrace, named for Lord Dufferin, the man who popularized the sport back in the 1870s. Up to four passengers can go down the slide on the same toboggan for only $3 per person.

Here in Ottawa, the top toboggan hills are reputedly located at Apollo Crater Park in Orléans, Green’s Creek, off of Bearbrook Road, Carlington Park, the site of a decommissioned ski hill in Nepean, Walter Baker Park, Craig Henry Park, Queenswood Heights Centennial Park, and Mooney’s Bay. Tobogganing at the Dominion Arboretum, once a popular site, is now prohibited. The City of Ottawa has an interactive map showing the tobogganing sites in the area. (See Ottawa’s Toboggan Hills.) It also lists the things one should do to toboggan safely.

Sources:

Fairmont, Chatêau Frontenac, 2023. Toboggan Slide au 1884.

Kingston, New York Freeman, 1887. "A Double-Deccker for Ten," 24 January.

New York Herald, 1877. "Rideau Hall," in Ottawa Daily Citizen 15 March.

New York World, 1887. "The Winged Toboggan," in Ottawa Journal, 21 January.

Ottawa, 2023. Sledding Hills.

Ottawa Daily Citizen, 1878. "The Danger Of Tobogganing," 8 January.

————————-, 1885. Tache’s Hill Club," 31 January.

————————-, 1886. "Tobogganing," 11 December 1886.

Ottawa Journal, 1886. "A Gorgeous Toboggan Suit," 1 March.

——————, 1886. "Lansdown Toboggan Slide," 10 December.

Savvymom. 2023. Here are the best Ottawa toboggan hills, January.

Taché Hill Sliding Club,1886. Constitution and By-Laws.