Wellington Street Part 12: 50 Years of Rapid Transit in Ottawa

Part 12: 50 Years of Rapid Transit in Ottawa

   [Show/Hide Contents]

• NCC Boost and Interprovincial Bus Loop
• Regional studies lead to first bus lanes
• Preston Street Extension
• What of the Albert-Wellington spaghetti?
• Context for rapid transit
• References

I wanted to pick up the narrative of Wellington Street to line up with an important milestone in Ottawa transit history: the 50th anniversary of bus lanes in Ottawa. It doesn't involve much in the way of the theme of this blog series—the connections, disconnections, and renamings of Wellington Street—but there is a dash of that. Alas, I missed the 50th anniversary for this blog post (by over a year!) but I did get a September 2023 article on the topic published in the Centretown BUZZ newspaper.

In the previous post in the series, we left off with the 1974 opening of the Portage Bridge, connecting the west end of Wellington Street, at the Ottawa River Parkway, to Hull, and severing Wellington Street from itself in LeBreton Flats. Today, we'll rewind a couple of years to look at how rapid transit in Ottawa began to reshape traffic patterns on the various Wellington Streets, such as here on the Ottawa River Parkway:¹

Wellington Street Part 11: The Portage Bridge

Part 11: Portage Bridge

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• Options for crossing the Ottawa River
• Splitting Wellington again
• Finishing touches
• Bridge name, location decided
• Construction begins
• References

The Jane's Walks Ottawa walking tour festival takes place this weekend, with a launch event picnic dinner under the Booth Street bridge at Pimisi Station today from 6-8pm. This year's festival theme is Building Bridges, which fits in very well with the next section of my blog series on the many traces of Wellington Street: The Portage Bridge.

In the previous post, Part 10, we took a step back into the NCC's rearrangement of land and roads in LeBreton Flats in the 1960s. This resulted in the splitting of Wellington Street ending just west of Bay Street as it turns into the Ottawa River Parkway, and connecting to itself via offramps, as we can see here in this photo:¹

That arrangement would be relatively short-lived.

Wellington Street Part 10: Nepean Bay and the Ottawa River Parkway

Part 10: Nepean Bay and the Ottawa River Parkway

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• Nepean Bay Infill
• Ottawa River Parkway
• Closing Britannia Terrace and other streets
• References

In the previous post, we talked about the peripheral effects on Wellington street from the Garden of the Provinces construction, the LeBreton Flats expropriations, and the lowering of the C.P.R. Prescott Subdivision (all NCC projects).

Today's post will look at the Ottawa River Parkway, whose history is not well documented insofar as it affects Wellington Street. We're still in the 1960s, prior to the breakup of Wellington at the viaduct covered in part 8.

To get us situated, this colour photo from the early 1960s shows Wellington Street winding up from the bottom of the photo up across the viaduct, through LeBreton Flats, and into downtown:¹

Wellington Street Part 9: The NCC's distractions (early-mid 1960s)

Part 9: The NCC's distractions (early-mid 1960s)

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• Sparks disconnection and the Garden of the Provinces
• LeBreton Flats Expropriation
• The Queensway and the CPR trench
• References

In the previous part of this series about the renamings, connections, and disconnections of Wellington Street, we looked at the Ottawa Journal campaign leading up to the August 1969 viaduct transplant that broke Wellington Street apart over the tracks to connect with Scott. Today we'll skip back a few years now to look at what the NCC was up to around Wellington Street in the early 1960s.

Wellington Street Part 8: Viaduct traffic, Journaled

Part 8: Viaduct traffic, Journaled

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• History written by the whiners
• 'Battle of the Bridge'
• Bayview slip lane
• Westward city growth gets the wheel squeaking again
• Viaduct repairs 1920s to 1950s
• Wellington Bridge is Falling Down 1960s
• New Wellington Viaduct to be built
• Wellington Street Officially Severed
• 'Replacement' viaduct will disconnect Wellington
• Reaction to Wellington disconnection
• Demolition of the Wellington Street Viaduct
• References

Although I set out in October 2019 to write this Wellington Street blog series looking to learn about the street's various connections and disconnections, the last three parts, ending with a look at a 1950s traffic study were a bit of a sidetrack.

The last connection change was back in Part 4 when the Wellington Street Viaduct was built in 1909 (overtop an existing route). As it happens, the next major change to Wellington Street that we'll look at is when the viaduct was replaced.

The Viaduct gets an entire post thanks to the Ottawa Journal's obsession with its role as a bottleneck for afternoon rush-hour traffic.¹

Wellington Street Part 7: Dawn of "Modern" Transportation Planning in Ottawa

Part 7: Dawn of "Modern" Transportation Planning in Ottawa

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• 1955 Traffic and Transportation Plan for Ottawa
• Wellington intersection recommendations
• Wellington-Sparks-Fleet-Commissioner
• Wellington-Broad-Albert-Rochester
• 1949-1953 Collision Statistics
• First Advanced Green signals in town
• What came of it?
• Also on Wellington
• References

If A.E.K. Bunnell's 1946 report covered in Part 5 recommended a few tweaks to the road network, and the 1949 Gréber report we looked at in Part 6 reimagined large swathes of the City's buildings and transportation network, a January 1955 report report on traffic and transportaion in Ottawa by consultants Wilbur Smith & Associates came in somewhere in the middle. No renamings or disconnections of Wellington Street in this installment, this time we're going on full traffic nerd mode.

This 245-page report¹ took a detailed snapshot of traffic in Ottawa, and made a number of specific recommendations, many of which involved Wellington Street. In today's part of the Wellington Street blog series, we'll dive into this report and see what it had to say about traffic in general, and Wellington in particular, in the mid-1950s.

Wellington Street Part 6: Postwar traffic on Wellington

Part 6: Postwar traffic on Wellington

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• Jacques Gréber's Downtown plan, 1939
• Gréber's 1949 Plan for Canada's Capital
• The main connection to the west end
• The public weighs in on Wellington
• End of Part 6
• References

Back in January 2020, we left off with Part 5, in which we watched traffic get heavier on Wellington Street from the 1910s to the 1940s. After a hiatus to do more research and life getting in the way, we're now back to look at government interventions in and around Wellington Street in the ten years following the end of World War II.

The biggest change for the City of Ottawa was on January 1, 1950,¹ when Ottawa annexed nearly all nearby developed area, including Westboro, Ottawa West, Hampton Park, Highland Park, Woodroffe, Laurentian View, McKellar, Britannia, etc. Thich comprised 7,420 acres (3,000 hectares or 30 square kilometres) of Nepean and Gloucester Townships,² as seen in the two large sections on the map below.³ Much of this was burgeoning suburban development which fed a daily stream of workers into downtown Ottawa.

Although Richmond Road was thus brought into the City limits, it retained its name west of Western Avenue, where Wellington ends.⁴ Since there were no major physical changes to Wellington Street specifically in this period, today's post will look at traffic in general on Ottawa's Wellington Street.

Wellington Street Part 4: As the City grows, so does Wellington (1880-1912)

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• 1880 Renaming of George Street, Victoria Terrace, and Richmond Road
• Railway Crossings
• Great big fires
• 1908 Renaming of Richmond Road through Hintonburg
• Wellington Street Vidauct
• Wellington widening and paving through Hintonburg
• Clearing up the 'middle section' of Wellington
• 1912 Re-renaming of George Street and Victoria Terrace
• References

Before our foray into the east end of Wellington Street in the previous post, we were talking in Part 2 about the first roads in Ottawa and how the fledgling town's road network began to develop in the new neighbourhood that would one day be called LeBreton Flats.

In this post we'll look at the period from about 1880 to 1912, during which time rail lines cross over Wellington at grade, fires ravage the western part of the street, Ottawa absorbs various suburbs, and an excessive number of bylaws authorize the renaming, widening, and paving of Wellington Street. To set the scene, here's what it looked like to walk in the middle of Wellington Street in 1898:¹

Wellington Street Part 3: Wellington and Rideau's on again, off again, connection (1820s-1913)

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• The Fortress at Barrack Hill
• Wagon Trail to Sappers' Bridge
• Sparks Street Extension to the Canal
• Wellington Street extension to the Canal
• Dufferin Bridge restores Wellington-Rideau connection
• Postscript: Confusion Square
• References

In this blog series about 200 years of physical and nominal changes to Wellington Street, most of the action is West of Bank Street, particularly in LeBreton Flats. The previous post showed the earliest of these changes. Today we will examine the changes to the east end of Wellington Street in the 1800s, as it dabbled with connections to Rideau.

Wellington Street Part 1: Ottawa's earliest roads and their namesakes (1800-1826)

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• The first European settlers
• The earliest roads
• Eponyms of the earliest roads
• Establishing Wellington Street and Bytown
• References

To go beyond a simplified summary and conduct a thorough review of the history of changes to all the roads in Ottawa called "Wellington Street", we need to go back to Ottawa's earliest days as a settlement and where that all came from.

It's easy enough to say "Richmond Road was named after the Duke of Richmond and Wellington Street was named after the Duke of Wellington", but that doesn't answer the questions of who those people are and what relation they bore to Ottawa and to the people who built its first roads. So let's get into that.

¹

The many traces of Wellington Street - Introduction

You may already know that Ottawa has both a Wellington Street and a Wellington Street West, but it was not always so simple. A man standing at the corner of Scott and Bayview in the pre-smartphone days of the early 2000s asked me for help finding an address on Wellington Street, and I had to confess that I didn't know which of three Wellington Streets to direct him to!

I'm looking mostly at YOU Wellingtons. You are unnatural and should not both exist.

— Cassie 🚲🐈 (@cfulgham) August 15, 2016

I was reminded of this recently and got curious about when these various geometric and name changes took place. I already knew that the City of Ottawa renamed many streets, including two of the Wellingtons, following amalgamation in 2001, and a quick look at an aerial photo reveals clues to how various physical changes broke Wellington Street up. Dennis Van Staalduinen tried his best to explain it on a couple of Jane's Walks in 2012 and 2013, the notes of which he has posted on his website, and a follow-up map in 2016. I even covered the topic myself in a 2010 blog post!

But these were all snapshots; I wanted the whole story. I searched my own collection of books on LeBreton Flats, Ottawa, and the NCC, and found nothing describing the actual changes to Wellington Street. I searched the Web as well, but found only the most recent changes. It turns out that anybody who's written about LeBreton Flats has been more interested in the buildings, people, and land, than on the nomenclature and alignment of its primary artery! (I jest; this is entirely reasonable)

So I took a few trips to the Ottawa Room, bought a subscription to Newspapers.com, and collected a trove of information about Wellington Street, with many twists and turns along the way. Changing names and alignments is a Wellington Street tradition that goes back to the early 1800s and most recently this past September!

Over the past two months, I've painstakingly assembled this information into the following blog series to detail everything I can find out about Wellington Street—everything, that is, except for the buildings, people, and land! Depending on how you count it, Wellington Street was officially renamed between 7 and 21 times, and that doesn't even count all the times where it got physically disconnected or redirected! I've done my best to filter out the wrong information and provide sources for the rest; corrections are welcome by email, tweet, or comment (all comments are moderated).

The first part goes up tomorrow at noon, and the rest of the 10+ parts are in various stages of development and will be posted thereafter. The posts and the headings within them will be added to the bottom of this post as they are added. But first, a quick rundown of Wellington Street:

Onramp houses on O'Connor

Christopher Ryan had a timely post on Ottawa Start about Connor Court, describing one of the low-rise apartment buildings built in the first half of the 20th Century. As he mentions, O'Connor Street is little more than an onramp to the 417 freeway all the way from the office buildings at the north end through the apartment/commercial district through Centretown.

South of a certain point, O'Connor is mostly mid-rise residential or low-rise commercial, there are a couple of exceptions. I noticed this house for the first time just earlier this month. It's 231 O'Connor, between Cooper and Somerset on the east side:

231 O'Connor is on the 1958 aerials on GeoOttawa, but it isn't on the 1902 (1912 revision) fire insurance maps (unsurprisingly, given the architecture). (Er, on closer look, it appears to also be commercial)

The same day I noticed the house above for the first time, I also took an appreciation for these two houses at numbers 312 and 314, on the west side of O'Connor just north of Frank Street:

Peds on Weds: Part 4: A history of sidewalk design in Ottawa

Today for the fourth and final entry of the sidewalk-design series, I'm going to give a history of sidewalk design, starting at the establishment of the original City of Ottawa, in 1855 (and earlier!). In part 2 of this series, I already gave a "little history" of the Toronto-style sidewalk design, relating specifically to how they became standard back to the establishment of the current amalgamated City of Ottawa in 2001. This followed part 1, in which I described "Toronto-style" sidewalks and the problems they're meant to address, and part 3, in which I discussed some of the issues the Toronto-style sidewalk itself has faced.

Today's entry starts with the West Ward Market, built in 1848 by Nicholas Sparks. This was used as Ottawa's first City Hall, roughly where the NAC is today.

r

The first municipally-built sidewalks in Ottawa actually predate the City of Ottawa's 1855 incorporation: by-law number 37 of the Town of Bytown, approved the 23rd of September, 1850, was "To authorize the expenditure of £75 in making a Plank Sidewalk, S. side York Street":

3D Thursdays: Lotta Hitschmanova

After picking up my mail from the Sparks Street post office last week, I noticed a plaque on the entrance to 56 Sparks which I hadn't before, with a relief profile of the subject, Lotta Hitschmanova.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left (adjusted), Right (adjusted)

(I had to make some significant adjustments to the images with Photoshop's "lens distort" feature to get both of the images roughly square, and as a result the effect is much more crisp when you viewi the image full screen. I've included the adjusted versions of the source images above to save you some trouble if you wanted to have a go at it yourself.)


Not having noticed the plaque before, I also hadn't heard of her before either. Hitschmanova's Wikipedia Entry isn't too short, and longer than the entry for the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, which she founded in 1945 and remains operating at 56 Sparks Street, suite 705 as USC Canada.

The USC Canada website has a trove of information about Dr. Lotta, including historic audio and video clips of USC public service announcements narrated by her.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]
[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

The lonely elm

When the LeBreton Flats saw the arrival of the "road header" tunneling machine, its disembodied chewing tool seen here, an old Elm Tree played host.

The tree also played host to a stop along Dennis Van Staalduinen's Jane's Walk in May 2013, providing the walkers some shade:

Peds on Weds: the first sidewalks in Centretown (Updated)

I was doing some research for a post about sidewalks that I'll hopefully pull together one of these days, when I came across this entry in the 1896 City of Ottawa by-law book, "to provide for borrowing money by the issue of debentures secured by special rates, for the construction of an artificial stone sidewalk as a local improvement on Elgin Street in the City of Ottawa."

While many of the by-laws of the era barely filled a single page of the annual consolidated by-laws book, this one, and others with the same purpose in other parts of the city, takes five pages to go into great detail about how the funding would be structured for a two-block section of sidewalk "on that part of the west side of Elgin Street, lying between Maria Street [Laurier Avenue West] and Cooper Street in Central Ward, in the City of Ottawa."*

There are a few things that get my geek on with this: The first is that this is the same section of sidewalk where two squares of sidewalk survived until just a few years ago. In the other blog post, I said that my friend (who now blogs himself) recalled that sidewalk having a plaque dating it to 1905. I am not sure if perhaps he misremembered the year, or if the sidewalk was re-done in 1905 (the by-law books of that decade didn't give any clear information).

Another is just the tremendous detail to which the financing arrangements are described in the by-law itself. It essentially starts with first principles and works each step toward the conclusion. Nowadays, the by-law would have very little information, the report surrounding the by-law might describe in vague terms how much it would cost, but the details about how much would be assessed to whom (setting aside the fact that we don't finance things this way anymore) wouldn't be available to anyone except with some tooth-pulling from the city bureaucracy and possibly an MFIPPA (freedom of information act) request)

I'm composing this far too late to type out the entire thing, but if anyone wants to do it and put it in a comment, I'd be happy to add in the text.

*EDIT: Owing to the aforementioned late hour, it was pointed out to me that the 100-year-old sidewalk was on the next block down, between Somerset and Cooper. Here are the by-law pages for the construction of "an artificial stone walk [i.e. concrete sidewalk] six feet in width on the west side of that part of Elgin street, which lies between Cooper street and MacLaren street in Central Ward". This will cost $671.58, "of this amount the City disburses the sum of $297.78, being the cost of two feet in width of the said sidewalk [which is the portion of sidewalk that will be on City property]. Like the first one, this took three pages of the by-law book in the form of by-law No 1618, "Given under the Corporate Seal of the City of Ottawa, this 4th day of November, A.D., 1895. Certified [by] JOHN HENDERSON, City Clerk [and] W. BORTHWICK, Mayor.":

[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]

Jane's Walks this weekend!

In case you haven't heard, Jane's Walk Ottawa happens this weekend. I haven't given any since the Rescue Bronson Jane's Walk I gave two years ago. It was fun, but a lot of work. So instead I'll try to go out on a couple of other people's walks. Here are some I'm looking at that are within Somerset Ward, with the description on the Jane's Walk Ottawa website linked to the headings:

Apt613 Blog Walk of Somerset
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 2pm-3:30pm
Meet at Dundonald Park, Somerset and Bay

Staying on the Bronson theme of my 2011 walk, Apartment 613 is holding a walk in Chinatown, whose businesses are suffering from the closure of the Bronson/Somerset intersection. This one has a neat format, where they'll interview some of the business owners in the same way they do interviews for their blog entries, only it'll be live and you'll be there!

Local Confectionaries
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 4pm-5pm
Meet at Somerset and Preston

A great segue from the Apt613 walk, local cartoonist/illustrator Colin White is giving a tour of the corner stores which feature often in his drawings. I don't think I've met him in person, but I like his depictions of familiar hyperlocal landmarks.

No more trading at the Athlone

The Athlone Apartments, 225 MacLaren Street. Unfortunately, I can't find any information online about the building's history, date built, etc. Just some apartment listings with scant information. That's unfortunate, since I go by it often on my way home from Bridgehead just up the street at Elgin.

There aren't even many good pictures of the building online (though this one has some indoor views of a bachelor apartment). Which means this post is probably going to get a lot of hits for people searching for it. This one shows nicely the bands of deocrative brickwork on a warm mid-September day in 2009:

342 MacLaren porch armour

The Alliance Française has its headquarters at 352 MacLaren Street, and they have an annex building at 342 MacLaren within the Centretown Heritage Conservation District (which doesn't even have a page on the City's website—go figure).

On the porch of 342 MacLaren is this little gem:

I'd say it suits the building well!

(PS: Don't forget the Beaver Barracks housewarming tomorrow. Walk, bike, or bus there, since tomorrow is also Car Free Day!)

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Peds on Weds: L'Es try something different (or not)

Recently some workers have been spotted on Laurier Avenue affixing drywall to the central podium section of the l'Esplanade Laurier office tower:

Stepping back a bit, both literally and figuratively, the building is a full-block structure surrounded by Laurier, O'Connor, Gloucester and Bank streets.