Joe Cassey, 1926-2012

Last Friday, longtime Centretown resident Joe Cassey passed away.

I had the pleasure of meeting Joe when I interviewed him in 2009 for the video celebrating the 40th anniversary of the CCCA. The video was debuted at a special event in April 2010 where the four couples featured in the video (Joe & June Cassey, Nan and Tony Griffiths, Maureen and Mike Cassidy, and Elspeth and Jim Menendez) were each given a special CCCA Legacy Award for getting Centretown organized in the first place back in 1969. Here are Joe and June with their certificate:

As a result of that interview, his is one of the voices that tells the story of the community association's beginnings in 1968-1969 in the video:

Joe was born in 1926 in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) Ontario, and served in the Navy in World War II.

He subsequently moved to Ottawa in 1959, and in 1968 moved into a house at the end of Cartier Street with his wife June, where the couple became famous for giving the best parties in Centretown, for which Joe did most of the cooking himself. The house dates to the late 1800s and served as a branch of the Bank of Ottawa from 1911 to 1919:

Just months after moving in, Joe and June learned that their house might be demolished (as previously described in the video, starting at 2m50s) in order for the City to run offramps through the neighbourhood as a replacement to Pretoria Bridge. This was part of a greater scheme of proposed massive downtown road projects including the 17-lane downtown distributor.

The fight to protect the Pretoria Bridge (and the neighbourhoods) involved many existing and nascent community associations banding together to form the Federation of Citizens' Associations (described in the video at 9m19s). As Joe recounts in the Video, he felt it was important that these efforts be recognized, which they were with a plaque that named the associations following the reconstruction of the bridge in the '80s:

After helping to found the community association, Joe succeeded Mike Cassidy as alderman for Wellington Ward (the Eastern half of what is now Somerset Ward) in 1973-1974, where he worked alongside Britannia Ward Alderman Marion Dewar, another community-based representative who treated the position as a full-time job.

Joe worked on many issues, including improving conditions in rooming houses (he told me of a pair of young women who had to use a garbage bag for a door or be kicked out if they complain to the landlord) and raising awareness of gay issues.

In the following municipal election, Joe made an unsuccessful bid for the Board of Control, coming in fifth in the race for four spots. A 1974 issue of the Centretown News covered his candidacy, as well as that of Marion Dewar who did get on the Board of Control that year, eventually to become Mayor of Ottawa: (click to view full size)

In 1976, Brian Bourns, who played a central role in the development of the Centretown Plan and who is still active in the CCCA, was running for a second term in Wellington Ward. Joe instead put in a successful bid against incumbent alderman Don Lockhart in Capital Ward, just on the other side of the Queensway. Here is an ad of his that ran in the December 1976 Glebe Report (PDF) days before the December 6 election:

The same issue has a profile of Joe on page 6. Already by this time he had served on community associations, the FCA, the Air and Water Pollution Board, the Regional Housing Committee and the Youth Services Board.

As he told me in the interview (mp3, 0m36s, 585KB), he got some criticism for not living in the ward. June recounts, at the end of the clip, that Joe's response was "Do you want an alderman who works in the ward or one who sleeps in the ward?"

Joe later served as President of the Central Canada Exhibition Association (he credits Nancy Smith for saving the Aberdeen Pavillion from demolition) and as the founding Chair of the Ottawa Congress Centre.


I didn't meet Joe until long after all this activity, but every time I stopped by he was always in the mood to talk.

I visited him in hospital a month before he passed away and he was still on top of current events at City Hall, asking me one by one for the latest news on each of the files. He was quite a force and I am glad to have known him.


Arrangements are to be held at Hulse, Playfair and McGarry (McLeod and O'Connor) this evening and tomorrow. Details are at Legacy.com, as is the virtual guestbook. Donations in memory of Joe can be made to the University of Ottawa Heart Institute Foundation.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 8: Bridge sidewalks A

This 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West finished with the section east of Preston with Part 7, which talked about trees and bike racks. We now turn our attention to the sidewalks on the section between Preston and Breezehill, over the O-Train tracks. Since sidewalks are pedestrian-related, this'll count as my Peds on Weds post for this week.

The drawing shown below was from the very first meeting where this project was introduced to the community. In stark contrast to the Bronson avenue consultation, the project team for Somerset West came to us with a drawing of what it looks like now, and some markers. Since then, they have worked with the community design team to make Somerset into a much improved street.

The sidewalks on the bridge weren't re-done simultaneously, so this photo of the sidewalks on the south side being broken up was taken at the same time that the forms were being laid for the sidewalks on the north side, which had been broken up quite some time before.

Unlike most sidewalks in Ottawa, the ones going over the O-Train tracks are built with reinforced concrete. This meant that they couldn't simply be pulled up by a big digger, but had to be chipped away by jackhammers. Here a few spent jackhammer tips sit amid the rebar.

CCCA News & Events March 2012

The following message was recently sent to the e-mail list of the Centretown Citizens Community Association by CCCA President Jordan Charbonneau. I've added the photos to this version. Join the CCCA and get on the e-mail list to receive 2-3 updates per month from the CCCA. Note that Images of Centretown is my personal blog and not a blog of the CCCA.

Good evening,

I hope that you enjoyed the recent heat wave that has auspiciously marked the beginning of spring. While temperatures look as though they will be more seasonable for the near future, we've certainly had a taste of the coming warmth!

I've outlined below a short summary of some of the events and initiatives of note in Centretown. More information on upcoming events is available on the CCCA website, which I encourage you to check often.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 7: Trees & bike racks

We've had some very summer-like weather the last few days, and the bike counter on the Laurier segregated bike lane registered 1519 cyclists on Wednesday, 2/3 of the highest daily number ever counted at that location!

That makes a good opportunity to talk about the trees and bike racks in this installment of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West. Previously, in part 6 the subject was poles and signals.

In the seventeen meetings of the design committee, great persistence by the community representatives and creative thinking all around enabled many more trees to be fit into the design. A particular challenge was getting trees on the viaduct/bridges by the City Centre building, because the drainage patterns make a challenging environment for trees' chance of survival. The solution is described in the next post in the series, part 8*, but this preliminary diagram gives an idea of how many more new trees (the dark green circles) will be added to join the old ones (lighter green circles):

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 6: Poles and signals

Here's part 6 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West. In the previous part, we looked at the reconstruction of the roadway along Somerset between Booth and Preston. This time, we'll take a look at the traffic signals and hydro poles in the same stretch.

You'll note that the longer posts are now shortened on the summary pages. You can read more about that here.

Most of the photos in this post were taken in the winter, after Eric Darwin pointed out some concerns with the traffic signal pole design on his blog, West Side Action. I took this one, showing a carefully choreographed dance between two cherry pickers at Somerset and LeBreton, in mid-February.

Even though this is a couple of blocks east of the project limits at Booth Street, it looks like the opportunity was taken to replace some of the other streetposts that had been chipped away by years of snowplows edging past.

A few small changes to the blog...

"Read More" links

I discovered Blogger has an easy-to-use way of putting a "Read More>>" link in a post to break it up, so I've decided to use it. (If you're wondering, just put "<!--more-->", without the quotes, in the html at the desired point)

This should make it easier to skim the main page and search results. I found on other blogs, really long posts with lots of photos made it hard to find what I was looking for because it was hard to tell posts apart.

I get to choose whether and where to put the break, so I'm only breaking up posts with four or more photos, with some exceptions (so, for example, all of the Single photo posts are unbroken). So far I've edited old posts back to the beginning of 2011.

The main goal here is to make the blog easier to read and use, not to drive up page views. I could also have the RSS feed only show content that comes before the break, but I've left to show the full post (so the full post will still show at Blogawa.ca.

Feel free to leave feedback on whether you like/dislike how I've implemented this.

Redirect to centretown.blogspot.ca

Blogger now automatically redirects from centretown.blogspot.com to centretown.blogspot.ca. I didn't do this, I don't like it, and I can't disable it.

The best you can do is add /ncr (no country redirect) after the ".com" when typing the address to prevent it for the current session. Searching for the "Singles" label would thus be "http://centretown.blogspot.com/ncr/search/label/Singles". More info on this change is on this blogger support page.

I don't plan to go back and edit every single link in every post to add the "/ncr", much as I wish to.

More frequent posts?

Now that I've started posting weekly pedestrian-themed posts with my Peds on Weds posts, and with the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West (technically outside Centretown!), I'm considering adding another regular posting day, though I'm not sure which.

The Monday-Wednesday-Friday thing started with the similar nine-part series on the reconstruction of the T&L building and stuck, even if it means many posts are fluffy Singles posts. Stay tuned, maybe I will!

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 5: Under Chinatown (Booth to Preston)

Last time, in part 4 of the series will take a short walk down the sidewalks of Rochester and Spruce. Previously, in part 3 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West, I showed the reconstruction of the sidewalks between Booth and Preston. This time, we stay on the east side of Preston Street for the reconstruction of the roadway itself.

The intersection of Somerset Street West and Booth Street is a heavy pedestrian area, and for historical reasons is very skewed. For both of these reasons, the crosswalks are painted with well-defined zebra stripes. As of June 2011, the work was just getting started on this phase of the work, which continues down the hill past Rochester to Preston Street.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 4: Contemporary sidewalk design, not on Rochester

I swapped parts 4 and 5 of this series so I could put this one in as a Peds On Weds Wednesday post.

The previous post of this 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West showed the reconstruction of the sidewalks between Booth and Preston. Rochester is the street in between these two, and I figured we could take a little detour to talk about some sidewalk work in the area, and sidewalks in general.

While the roads, sidewalks and utilities underneath them were being dug up along Somerset Street West this past summer, the sidewalks were being replaced on Rochester Street and Spruce.

Not too far north of Somerset, the old sidewalks were dug up in early September, after the rest of the block was already prepared for concrete to be poured.

At the north end of the block, looking toward Somerset from Spruce, we can see the shape of the concrete forms creating the bulbouts (which are not new to this corner).