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:

That time I was on the Skate Patrol for ten years (Part 1)

The 40th edition of Ottawa's Winterlude festival has opened this weekend, and its crown jewel, the Rideau Canal Skateway, is enjoying a good season. This year has had the earliest start in four years, after a record short 18 skating days in 2016 and 25 skating days in 2017.

The official @NCC_Skateway Twitter account often posts tidbits about the skateway, for example, a tweet mentioning that there is a team of 60 skate patrollers on the canal.

As it happens, I served on the Rideau Canal Skate Patrol for ten years, and I've been meaning to write about it. Now that I've been off the patrol for a while, it's time for me to come out of the shadows...

New Series - 3D Thursdays: Lansdowne Coliseum demolition

Since I posted my earlier 3D images, I've refined the process to get the 3D images looking pretty good, and I'm getting a collection of them going. Which means it's time to start putting them out on the blog!

So here it is: every Thursday, I'll post a new 3D image. Standard red/blue 3D glasses* are required. I'll also post the two source images that went into it, in case you think you can do it better (or if you want to use the wiggle method to view them).

Today's 3D image is of the lamentable demolition of the Coliseum building at Lansdowne Park. The Ottawa Citizen has a number of photos, including historical photos, accompanying its writeup of the demolition. (CBC also has an article)

I'd wanted to share this photo of the Aberdeen Pavillion and Horticulture Buliding, with a "DANGER" sign in front of it, in a separate post, but I'd might as well stick it here:

Here are the source images for the 3D Coliseum image. There are plenty of tutorials online to show you how to combine them into a 3D image. Here's the left image:

And here's the right image:
As a special treat to those of you who've read this far, here's my public Picasa web album of 3D photos. It updates automatically when I make a new one on my computer, so there isn't always a description for it (that's what the blog posts are for!). As you can see, I have a lot of them to work with, though many of them are in related sets. There's apparently an RSS feed on the album which might work; I don't currently have a functional RSS reader. Tip: click on the image to view the full resolution image, and zoom in to see things in the background pop out.

I hope you enjoy now getting four days a week of regular updates!

*If you don't have a pair of 3D glasses kicking around at home from the promotional poster you got in high school, you can buy them for $2.99 at the Comic Book Shoppe on Bank at Lisgar (they're on the display next to the front caah). Let me know if you find any other places to find them in Centretown. I have a few extra and usually have a spare pair with me to give to people.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

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!

Ottawa City Hall: my new haunt

[Edit: I left City Hall in October, 2015, after four years working in the Somerset Ward office for Diane Holmes (2011-2014) and Catherine McKenney (2014-2015)]

Mayor Watson decorated City Hall's heritage building (which is the part of City Hall that houses his office) for Hallowe'en, and it looked great! It appears that I only have one previous Hallowe'en-themed post, which also included a photo of City Hall, back from the first year of this blog.

Sorry for the gap in posts; I've been busy at a conference, and getting settled in to my new job. In case you hadn't heard the news (or the Buzz), I stepped down last month as president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association to take a job in the office of Councillor Diane Holmes.

Two weeks ago I was busy at a conference and didn't have time to prepare any blog posts for last week, which was my first week at the new one. A complicating factor is that I'll be part-time at both, and the transition is a bit time-consuming.

Nevertheless, I already enjoy being back on Elgin Street, after my office moved away last year. Commuting to City Hall will give me a chance to cross the neighbourhood a few times a week to keep an eye on things, and keep my camera on them too. Similarly, commuting to my West office will have me crossing Bronson Avenue a couple of times a week and keeping an eye on Chinatown, Little Italy, and the rest of the former Dalhousie ward.

It's a lot to handle, but keeping all those balls in the air is a challenge I'll enjoy.

Happy Hallowe'en!

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

Intermission

Sorry for the lack of posts, but you can get your fix of Centretown updates and photos by following me on Twitter (@Centretowner). This week I've tweeted many photos of the new Bixi stations, among other things. See just my Twitter posts with photos here. Since those are mostly photos I take with my Blackberry, I usually take another copy with my regular camera. Since some of those make it onto Images of Centretown, following me on twitter is like a sneak preview!

The Centretown Citizens Community Association is also on Twitter: @CentretownCCA

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

Twitter feed now avaliable @Centretowner

Just before leaving the Internet for Christmas, I hastily created a Twitter account. I get many hits to my blog coming from Twitter, and this seemed like an easier way to follow them than tredging through my blog statistics.

I plan to tweet links to my new posts, and extra comments about things that either don't warrant a full post, or are about posts in development. I've already been replying to other Ottawa bloggers' tweets about Centretown-related topics.

I've also configured Twitterfeed to automatically tweet my new posts. I'm testing it with this one.

New look for Images of Centretown

I've wanted to customize the layout for Images of Centretown ever since Blogger introduced the Template Designer in March, and moreso since discovering Kate (and Mike)'s blog, The Incidental Cyclist, which used the same template as Images of Centretown (same initials, too!)

Here's the old IoC layout:

Compared with the IC layout:

The new layout is cleaner, and combined with the customizability of the template designer, makes it easier to distinguish between individual posts. I've retained the light brown colour for the titles as a reference to the old layout and to try to warm it up a bit. I've also refreshed some elements, like the "Recent Posts" module which was using an old version, and added social networking links in the event people like that stuff (thankfuly they're greyed out so as not to stand out). Unfortunately, I can't put a background behind the left sidebar, so some of the text might be a bit difficult to read.


The backdrop is a sepia-filtered scan of a 1961 aerial photo of Centretown and downtown from the Midcentury Modernist's collection. I haven't yet done so with this particular aerial, but the Mid Mod has used crops of the photo for some of his posts, like this one and this one.

If you have any problems with the template, or just want to say how much you enjoy it, why not leave a comment?

Centretown Heritage Project

Welcome to the Centretown Heritage Project!

The Centretown Heritage Project is designed to commemorate the history of Centretown, as well as the history of the Centretown Citizens Community Association, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2009.

The website for the Centretown Heritage Project, www.centretownheritage.ca, is currently being hosted on the Images of Centretown Blog. Simply follow the link to http://centretown.blogspot.com/search/label/CHP to see all posts with the CHP label.

The CHP will eventually branch out to include on-site posters of locations of interest, interviews of people who were involved throughout the history of the community, and clippings from old editions of the Centretown Buzz.

Update: the CHP video on the early history of the Centretown Citizens Community Association is now online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlPtm2dN95E

If you'd like to get involved with the Centretown Heritage Project, please contact me at centretown.ottawa@gmail.com

Calling all urban design geeks!

"Midcentury Modernist" has been involved in Centretown issues for over 30 years, and he is my primary mentor in the history of Centretown.

I've been encouraging him to join the blogosphere, and to contribute directly to the Centretown Heritage Project blog posts here on Images of Centretown, instead of just feeding me information.

Well, he's gone one step further, and has started his own blog:

Urbsite.blogspot.com

So far, he's got a post lamenting some losses in the ongoing renovations of the Warren Arms building (below), and one on the fountain in Confederation Park, which used to be in Trafalgar square (and a photo to prove it!)

We don't have nearly enough of this type of blog in Ottawa.

If you are interested in blogging about Centretown (or your central Ottawa neighbourhood), whether on your own blog or on this one, let me know. I've given M-M a start, and I've helped Eric Darwin (West Side Action) fix some problems on his blog.

Just drop me a line at centretown.ottawa@gmail.com

Welcome!

[Updated May 2012]
[Updated January 2020]
[See more extensive/recent bio in the "About" page]

Welcome to Images of Centretown.

My name is Charles Akben-Marchand. I live in Centretown* and love it.

I always carry a camera around with me, and I like to take a photo of anything that catches my eye. At best, it might tell a story. At least, it's an interesting image of something that has happened. In all cases, it's a record for the future.

In this blog I try to capture these various fleeting things about Centretown, and elsewhere in Somerset Ward, that many people might miss because they simply weren't there at the time. I'm also working on the Centretown Heritage Project to add a historical context to what Centretown has become.

I ride a bike year round, mainly because I prefer it to other transportation options, and participate in various formal and ad-hoc cycling advocacy activities (apparently I was the first to use the #OttBike hashtag on Twitter). From 2005 to 2008, I was President of Bike Ottawa (ex Citizens for Safe Cycling)), and since then I have been volunteering at RBC Bluesfest in charge of the very successful valet Bike Park, which has parked over 80,000 bicycles for Bluesfest patrons, volunteers, and staff.

I was previously President of the Centretown Citizens Community Association. I have been since 2009 on the Dalhousie Community Association. From 2011 to 2015 I worked in the office of Councillors Diane Homes and Catherine McKenney. I mention this purely for disclosure; this blog is about Centretown, not about me. Opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect any of my employers or groups with which I volunteer.

I have not posted regularly on the blog in some time, but used to post on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with Pedestrian-related posts on Wednesdays and 3D photos on Thursdays. You can also follow me on Twitter, @Centretowner

I hope you enjoy it!