That time I was on the Skate Patrol for ten years (Family Day finale)

Today is Family Day and the last day of Winterlude, which makes for a good place to finish my series about my time as a member of the Rideau Canal Skate Patrol. You may want to first read part 1 and part 2.

Starting in 2011, the NCC wanted a skate patroller to be up on the ground level for the annual flag-raising ceremony which marks the official opening of the canal, and I was that skate patroller. I wasn't in the scrum during the actual flag-raising, instead I stepped back to take a video of the flag raising. I believe this one was take 2, because some of the media photographers missed the flag going up the pole the first time:

I then posed for some photos, including this one with an Ice Hog mascot (think groundhog, but with ice) and someone who was introduced to me as a dignitary from the insurance company that sponsored the skate patrol that year:

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...

3D Thursday: Hangar Doors Open Ottawa @avspacemuseum

This coming weekend, June 6 and 7, 2015, is Doors Open Ottawa, an annual festival where the public gets the chance to look behind usually-closed doors—for free! There are 22 new buildings this year, including the Canadian Nurses' Association headquarters, CNA House, at 50 the Driveway in Centretown.

Outside Centretown, but also new this year, is the Canada Aviation and Space Museum's Reserve Hangar, where they store all the airplanes and stuff that doesn't fit on the museum floor. Put on your 3D glasses and turn up your screen brightness and check out these aircraft photos!

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The above photo is from inside the museum itself, which isn't part of the free tour (but it's a great photo, isn't it?). All the other photos in this post are from a tour I had the fortune to attend a couple of months ago.

In the photo below, immediately behind the tour group is a wooden full-scale model of a forward fuselage for Bombardier's CSeries aircraft.

Centretown time capsule: August/September 2007

Happy Labour Day everyone!

For today's post, I want to do something a little different. I wanted to give a snapshot of what was happening in Centretown five years ago in August and September 2007. With a high proportion of renters, many Centretown residents—even those active in community affairs—weren't here five years ago (nor was this blog!). For the rest of us, it'll be a trip down memory lane.

The 2007 Labour Day parade, organized by the Ottawa and District Labour Council, ended as usual at McNabb Park for the annual festival with free hotdogs, corn on the cob, and other attractions (if you're reading this post shortly after it goes up, head out there now! They should be there from the end of the parade until 4:30pm). You might recognize this photo of the wading pool as one of the four at the bottom of the CCCA's 'promo cards':

September 2007 marked the official opening of the Corktown Footbridge on the 11th (the bridge opened to traffic the previous September). Municipal politicians and interpreters in 1830's period dress were there to cut the ribbon.

Doors Open Ottawa 2012: Château Laurier

This coming weekend is Doors Open Ottawa, and there are about two dozen sites in Centretown and Somerset Ward alone (which I've listed and linked to below). Doors Open Ottawa still needs volunteers, so get in touch with them if you're willing to help out for a couple of hours, even on just one day.

One location, just outside Centretown, is the Chateau Laurier hotel, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with its counterpart, Union Station. Much has been said and written about the Château (including a few posts on this blog.

The two were opened in April 1912 by the Grand Trunk Railway system, and connected by a pedestrian tunnel uner Rideau Street. This tunnel will be open to the public for Doors Open Ottawa this year, a particular treat. The Chateau will have special displays celebrating the century mark.

In 1911, prior to the hotel opening, these 14" wide colour posters were sent all around the world to promote the new hotel. David Jeanes, a local expert on railway history in Ottawa, recognized the image: "This poster is the same image as the framed print which used to hang in the main lobby of the Chateau until the end of the Canadian National era. It was done in 1911 by the famous creator of birdseye views, American artist Richard W. Rummell."

This particular one was purchased at an antique show a few decades ago, and hung on the wall in my parents' TV room growing up. Its colours have washed away, so the image above is after some adjustments in Photoshop.

The image shows the old Post Office and City Hall on what is now Confederation Square, the old Parliament buildings before the fire of 1916, the Alexandra (interprovincial) bridge and canal locks, trains running along the canal, streetcars and horse-drawn carriages, and of course the Chateau Laurier and Union Station.

For a more detailed (and illustrated) history of the Château Laurier, check out Vintage Chateau and Chateau Laurier: 1928 Wing on Urbsite, posted in 2009.

2012 Doors Open Ottawa locations in Centretown

In previous years, I've blogged some Doors Open Ottawa locations outside Centretown, including the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat and the former Ottawa City Hall on Sussex.

Here's a list of locations on this year's official list of Doors Open Ottawa locations that are in Somerset Ward (* = in Centretown). Many are on the new free shuttle, and nearly every church in Centretown is on the list. Make sure to check the official website to confirm the hours and other restrictions. The numbers are linked, where possible, to the item in the official listing, and the building name is linked to relevant pages on this blog.

*8. Beaver Barracks, 464 Metcalfe at Catherine (Sun. only)
*11. Blackburn Building, 223 Somerset Street West (Sat. & Sun.)
18. Canadian War Museum, Lebreton Flats: guided tours of the museum's vaults (Sat. & Sun., registration required)
*22. C.D. Howe Building's green roof, 240 Sparks (Sat. & Sun.)
*23. Christ Church Cathedral (Sat. only)
*24. Church of St. Barnabas, James & Kent (Sat. & Sun.)
*29. Commissariat Building (Bytown Museum), North end of the Canal (below Parliament Hill) - I recommend their urban forest exhibit! (Sat. & Sun.)
37. Dominican University College/Saint-Jean-Baptiste Priory, 96 Empress Ave. (Sat. & Sun.)
39. Embassy of Hungary ("Birkett Castle"), 299 Waverley at Metcalfe. (Sat. only)
44. Chaudière Falls No. 2 Generating Station, Chaudière Island, Lebreton Flats (Sat. & Sun.)
*48. First Baptist Church, Laurier and Elgin (Sat. & Sun.)
*49. First Church of Christ, Scientist, 288 Metcalfe between Lewis and Gilmour. (Sat. & Sun.)
*56. City Hall Heritage Building (Sat. & Sun.)
58. Joyful Land Buddhist Centre, 879 Somerset Street West (near Rochester, Sat. only)
*59. Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar at Elgin (Sat. & Sun.)
#60. Laurentian Leadership Centre (Residence of J.R. Booth), 252 Metcalfe at MacLaren (Sat. & Sun.)
*63. Library of Parliament - Former Bank of Nova Scotia, 25 Sparks Street (Sat. & Sun.)
*64. Lisgar Collegiate Institute, 29 Lisgar Street (Sat. only)
*67. McPhail Memorial Baptist Church, 249 Bronson Ave (Sat. only)
*70. National Association of Friendship Centres, 275 MacLaren (Sat. & Sun.)
98. St. Vincent Hospital, 60 Cambridge St. N (Sat. & Sun)
*104. St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, 82 Kent at Wellington (Sat. & Sun.)
*114. St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 400 Sparks at Bay (Sat. & Sun.)
*117. Supreme Court of Canada, 301 Wellington near Kent (Sat. & Sun.)

Lots to choose from!

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

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 15: Finale - decorations and art

After a couple of months and 15 posts, we have come to the final part in the 15-part series documenting the reconstruction of Somerset Street West from the O-Train tracks, to Preston Street, and onward up into Chinatown to Booth Street.

This final post looks at the decorative and artistic elements of the reconstruction, including the four different street lamp designs, the public art component, and a few other artistic flourishes. This is over and above the previous posts that looked at the design of the sidewalks through Chinatown and the trees and bike racks.

The artistic theme is fitting, since the annual Chinatown Remixed art festival, which displays artwork in many establishments along Somerset Street from May 12 to June 12. I'll start off with some guerilla art that was installed on a street post sometime late last year. Flattened food and drink cans were attached to the post, effectively plating it in pop-art metal:

Getting back to the officially-sanctioned art, here are the old Chinatown lanterns that were installed 15-25 years ago with federal funding. At certain points, like in front of the Wah Shing store at Rochester here, these three-lantern posts were used:

All the lanterns between Booth and Preston will be replaced with the new design that debuted at the Chinatown Gateway Arch, minus the spotlights shown here on the ones surrounding the arch:

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 1: Introduction/Overview

Last year, Somerset Street West was dug up between Booth Street and the far side of the bridge over the O-Train tracks (Just as Bronson will be this year north of the Queensway. There's an open house tonight at McNabb Community Centre at 6:30pm to talk about the construction phasing for Bronson). This is the first in a 15-post series detailing the reconstruction, from someone who was involved in the reconstruction from the very first committee meeting of a long, involved process. Shown here is one of the public open houses at the Plant Bath:

After sorting through hundreds of my photos from this construction project, I'm proud to present this saga in rich detail. I'll be posting one or two entries per week. Here's the roadmap:

Show/hide list of posts in this series

• Part 1 (below): Introduction and overview
• Part 2: West of Preston
• Part 3: Wider sidewalks with unit pavers
• Part 4: Under Chinatown (Booth to Preston)
• Part 5: Aside — Rochester/Spruce sidewalk
• Part 6: Poles & signals
• Part 7: Trees & bike racks
• Part 8: Bridge sidewalks A
• Part 9: Bridge sidewalks B
• Part 10: City Centre
• Part 11: O-Train pathway — planning
• Part 12: O-Train pathway — tunnel construction
• Part 13: O-Train pathway — cantilevered boardwalk
• Part 14: Bridge railings
• Part 15: Finale - decorations and art

There were many other great photos and topics that didn't fit into the series that I intend to draw from subsequently. I did a similar series on the Bank Street reconstruction in 2009, though I wasn't involved in the planning part of that project. Other multi-part series can be found under the label Tours.

Now let's get this series started!

Part 1: Overview

Officially, this total reconstruction of Somerset Street consisted of phases 3 and 4 of the Wellington Street West reconstruction, which involved the reconstruction of Hintonburg's main street in the previous few years. Since Chinatown east of Booth was done a decade or so ago, these were the final sections in the reconstruction of the century-old water mains and sewers along Somerset and Wellington all the way from Elgin to Westboro.

Online maps in the fourth dimension

One of the fun things about having an archive of hundreds of photos from each of many construction projects in Centretown is that you can use it to tell when a particular photo was taken by somebody else. I made a reference to it in this post about Tommy & Lefebvre's reconstruction, when I pointed out that if you look at the site in Google Street View from one street, it's at one point in the project, and from another street, the photos are from a few weeks on.

So it didn't take me long to figure out when Google's 45-degree aerial photos (click screenshot below) of Centretown were taken. My Mondrian construction photos were a bust, but this big hole on the next block of Bank Street...

...was a dead ringer for this scene, taken as little as a few hours apart, from July 7, 2008:

Microsoft Live ("Bing") Maps introduced this view earlier than Google did (and with more promotion of it), and lets you look from four different perpendicular directions. Microsoft uses photos that are a bit older, also from 2008, but from before Bank Street was dug up that year (click to go to the page on Bing Maps):

Doors Open: Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat

(Oops, I meant to schedule this to go up yesterday. Sorry!)

It's that time - Doors Open Ottawa is back for its tenth anniversary in Ottawa. In what has become a bit of a tradition (more links are at the bottom of this post), I'm posting photos from one of the buildings I saw last year, the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, the Agha Khan foundation's fancy building at 199 Sussex.

The building was lauded when it opened for the quality of construction and the design of the spaces. Chief among them was the "crystal", a glass enclosure at the centre of the buliding.

On the same August 2009 weekend that I toured 111 Sussex, I took some exterior photos of the building. I was rather disappointed that, other than the "crystal", the building is mostly a white box in a field. A well-built white box, but a white box nonetheless.

Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour and posters

Today's Jane's Walk for the Rescue Bronson Avenue initiative went really well. It was right on time and we had about 35-45 people on each of the two parts of the tour (breaking it up into two parts worked really well, and some people joined us at noon for the second part). See yesterday's post promoting this walk here

Here are the volunteers who led the walk, from left to right: Will and Josée, who helped keep order and time; and moi, who gave the tour. We're standing at what the NCC calls "Bronson Park" at the top of Bronson overlooking Lebreton Flats, and across the street from Roper House on the Christ Church site.

Here's a shot I took near the end of the tour of the attendees on the second part of the tour as we ducked in to Florence Street for a respite from all that heavy traffic along Bronson:

I made eight different location-specific posters to illustrate the walk at the following locations, copied below (click on them to see full-size ~1.5MB ea). I left them up so you should be able to still see some of them and compare with what's there in person until they're inevitably taken down.

Here are all eight. I'm just listing the names of the posters, which don't have current pictures of the sites because they're intended to be seen in situ. I could make this post insanely long with additional photos and text, but I need some sleep after a long and successful day at the Jane's Walk and the wrap party at the Lieutenant's Pump (which was recently renovated).

Museum of Nature Re-Opening Day, part 1

The Museum of Nature had its grand re-opening last year, appropriately, on Victoria Day weekend (May 22-24). That day, I posted an entry titled Museum of Nature reopens after there years of renovations--referring to the previous renovations, ending in 1972, as covered at the time in the community-owned newspaper, the Centretown News. The more recent renovations took twice as long.

I bring this up because next week there will be a free public lecture by Heritage Ottawa, Victoria Memorial Museum Renewal: Competing Stakeholders' Interests, being held next Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 7pm in the museum's auditorium. Project director Maria Somjen will describe the process of extensive renovations to the building. This is part of Heritage Ottawa's lecture series, which is normally held at the Ottawa Public Library.

I visited the museum thrice on opening day, as admission was free. Throughout the day, I took about a hundred photos, which I'm posting in a three-part series on the Museum of Nature Re-Opening Day:

• Part 1: Front entrance and main hall
• Part 2: Spaces - new architecture meets old
• Part 3: Exhibits

Maybe one day I'll get around to posting my construction photos, too.

Part 1: Front entrance and main hall

The museum looked pretty sharp on opening day, and the grass was bright green. The meagre bicycle rack was full to the brim:

80 Florence - Chinese Community Building, part 1

If you've gone by the corner of Gladstone and Kent over the last year, this would be a fairly familiar view to the north-west. The eight-storey apartment building with the scaffolding is at 80 Florence. In a three-part post, I'll share photos of the exterior renovations.

In this post, I'll go over some of the building's past, and how the top of the building used to look and progress of its renovation. In the next post, I'll take a closer look at the building's former ground-level architecture and streetscaping. In the third and final post, the big reveal of how the renovated building looks, with many before-and-after angles.

Coming soon: What I learned in Montréal

On Car-Free Day, September 22, 2010, Ottawa City Hall entertained a panel presentation on cycling in Europe. Thirteen individuals from Ottawa, including (in order pictured below) City of Ottawa cycling coordinator Robin Bennett, Transportation Planning Manager Vivi Chi, Rideau-Rockcliffe councillor Jacques Legendre, National Capital Commission CEO Marie Lemay, and Gatineau mayor Marc Bureau.

The five were part of a 13-person contingent from the National Capital Region who attended the Velo-City conference in Copenhagen earlier this year (out of 33 total from Canada).

They visited four cities in Europe before and during the conference, and on the 22nd presented their findings to interested residents of Ottawa. Their talk is well documented in blog entries and a flickr photostream of the event. However, it reminded me that I have a similar collection to share.

On a Saturday in May 2010, I went with the CCOC's Meg McCallum on a day trip to check out Montreal's transit and cycling infrastructure. While I was born in Montreal, I haven't been there since I was a child, so I'd be seeing everything there with fresh eyes.

There were a few things in particular we wanted to look at for their applicability to Ottawa: subway stations (depth, design, and decoration), the Bixi bike rental system, and segregated bike lanes. We ended up seeing all that and more, which I present in a special 8-part* series: "What I learned in Montréal"

• Part 1: Chinatown
• Part 2: Bike lanes (segregated vs. sharrows)
• Part 3: Métro station function
• Part 4: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
• Part 5: Métro station look and feel
• Part 6: Bikes on Trains
• Part 7: Bixis and Bike Parking
• Part 8: Civic aesthetic

Look out for the series over the next three to four weeks, beginning Monday.

I'll post either a Montréal entry or a regular entry every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until the series is done (after which I'll revert to the regular schedule of new posts on Mondays and Fridays). As with my other series, I'll add links in this introductory post to help with navigation as the posts go up.

(*While I've got the series mostly laid out, there may be some changes to the order and number of entries as they are posted.)

Ottawa Chinatown Gateway Arch--with Grace

This is Grace Xin (pron: "Shin"), whose tenure as Executive Director of the Somerset Street Chinatown Business Improvement Area (BIA) ends on October 15, 2010. Here, Grace is pictured Thursday afternoon, after pulling off a remarkable ceremony to officially open the Ottawa Chinatown Gateway.

While the project has been in development for decades, the first public expression was this 3D mural built on the wall of a neighbouring building in September 2007. It was made by Cairn Cunnane as a partnership between the Somerset Street Chinatown BIA and the Ottawa Police Service, hence the police officer in the final mural:

The Gateway was built as a partnership between the BIA, various donors, all three levels of government, as well as the Chinese embassy and the City of Beijing. It is built across Somerset Street West at Cambridge Street North, which is seen here in early April 2010 [edit: Justin Wonnacott's Somerset Online has a picture of it in 2006]:

The official groundbreaking ceremony was held on April 22, 2010, with a who's-who of Ottawa and of Chinatown in attendance. A traditional ceremony was held with firecrackers, incense and a roast pig, followed by a Western ceremony--a symbolic shovelling of a pile of dirt that had been specially carted onto Cambridge Street for the occasion.

Also in the audience at the ceremony were the labourers brought in from China to build the gateway:

The gateway was built in three distinct phases, the first two of which required Somerset Street to be closed to traffic for two months starting May 31, 2010. In the first phase a local contractor buried the adjacent power lines, then constructed the massive footings (which go down 28feet into the bedrock) and the columns and structural part of the arch. Here we can see the cylindrical forms for the steel-reinforced concrete columns that will support the 100-ton arch:

The second phase involves the Chinese artisans building and installing the roof pieces and decorative panels. They did this, using special wooden moulds built by artisans in China, in a staging area in the lot behind the Yangtze restaurant on Cambridge Street North (where some abandoned houses were demolished due to frequent fires).

Because of Ottawa's sister-city status with Beijing, Ottawa's gateway is a Royal Arch, with nine roofs--the greatest number in Chinese numerology. (Chinese numerology is also why the opening ceremony was at 3:58 instead of the unlucky 4 o'clock)

Built into the structure of the arch are sybols of good luck: five Chinese coins--one from the Tyng Dynasty, over 1000 years old, and one from the Ching Dynasty, about 200 years old--made of gold, silver, copper, iron & tin, and five coloured threads (red, yellow, blue, white & black).

By mid-June, four of the roofs had been installed:

In late June, three more roofs were added to the top:

These last two roofs were built just a little bit too wide, and didn't fit as they were supposed to, as Eric explained at the time. They would be modified and installed later, until which time they sat out on the road.

Eventually, all nine roofs were placed, and the glazed roof tiles were installed on top of them. Work was also underway to reconstruct the sidewalks in the vicinity.

Decorative panels were installed in the gaps under the arches in July.

And on July 31, traffic was restored under the gateway. New scaffolding was erected for the third phase: painting. This involved a different team of Chinese artisans that came in after the first team left.

The lowest part of the gateway is 5m (16') high, and the top is 11m (33') above street level. The two pillars are about 12m (36') apart, and the entire structure weighs about 130 tons (including the 30-ton footings). These artisans preparing the roof areas for painting are dwarfed by the massive structure:

Throughout August and September, the artisans continued to paint the arch in bright colours. I posted a photo at the time, with links to other coverage of the painting.

By the end of August, much of the painting was finished and the artisans turned to trimming the arch with half a kilogram (over 1 lb) of gold leaf. The dragon panels had not yet been gilded in this picture, and still showed the yellow paint:

By mid-September, the work on the gateway was complete, and the upper scaffolding was removed. The columns only had a coat of primer, and the lower scaffolding had yet to be reomved.

Fast-forward to October 7th, where sunny weather welcomed a large crowd in the official opening ceremony. Chinese Ambassador LAN Lijun, Federal Government House leader John Baird, Ottawa-Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi, Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien, and LIANG Wei, Senior Advisor of Beijing Municipal Government, all spoke at the event.

The two lions guarding the gateway were unveiled at the end of the ceremony by Somerset Ward Councillor Diane Holmes, Somerset Street Chinatown BIA Chair Peter So (owner of So Good restaurant), and other BIA representatives and contributors: Larry Lee, Peter Yeung,Frank Ling, Bill Joe, Ron Tomlinson, and Marion Hum. By this point, the invited audience members had all gotten up from their seats to join the media in taking photos, and those of us in the crowd took our own photos from beyond the fence. Robin Kelsey does a good job of explaining the symbolism of the lions on his blog.

Here is the male lion. Mayor Larry O'Brien and LIANG Wei then 'painted' the eyes of the lions to let them see, and a ribbon with the logos of Canada, Ontario, Ottawa, and Beijing was officially cut.

To top off the ceremonies, Chinese dragons danced at the base of the arch while everyone watched and celebrated:


The gateway is remarkably beautiful, and the artisans did an excellent job. Note the reflection in the red paint on the side of the roof section:

This great ceremony was all in a day's work for Grace Xin. Thank you and congratulations, Grace!

For more photos of this arch and others around the world, visit www.ottawachinatownroyalarch.blogspot.com/, maintained by Eric Darwin.

Gladstone Sports and Health Centre part 1: History of 18 Louisa

Tune in Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week for a series of posts on the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre.

If you don't have to go South of Gladstone between Bronson and Rochester, you might not know that there's a school there.

I was surprised to first find it in early April of this year, by which time it had ceased to be a school, and was undergoing renovations. I took some photos, not realizing the connection I would later have with the building.

For reference, the former St. Agnes Roman Catholic school is located at 18 Louisa Street, in the block bordered by Louisa, Bell, Arlington and Lebreton. Here's a shot of the school from Microsoft Live Maps' bird's-eye view, taken before the renovations (click the photo to go to MS Live Maps--bird's eye view not available in all browsers). At the top-left of the image, you can see the Southernmost corner of the Bell Street apartments—also known as Fairview Towers and Peyton Place—which will soon be undergoing major renovations to the exterior.

In the aerial view above, you can clearly see the original section of the school (lower-right of the image), and the two additions, classrooms with larger windows to the North (lower-left in the image), and an elevated Gymnasium to the East (upper-right in the image).

The building is now significant to me because my office has relocated to the building—in fact, I'm typing this entry from my office inside the building! (As a corollary, my blog entries will include more Dalhousie content, in addition to the regular Centretown content.)

In this series:

• This post: History of 18 Louisa Street (below)
• Wednesday: Exterior transformation
• Friday: Dalhousie Food Cupboard and interior tour

(2012 note: the GSHC now has a new website)

History of 18 Louisa Street

There are scant references to 18 Louisa Street and St. Agnes School on the web, which is the extent of my research.

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic District School Board has a comprehensive history of the School Board from 1856-1997 on their website, available in flash or PDF version.

In the School Board's History document, "St. Agnes School on Louisa Street existed as early as 1890-91 as indicated by the Ottawa city directory of that time." (p. 150)

However, this crop of a 1923 map of Ottawa shows distinctive residential-sized plots on the block, suggesting the school was either very small, or located elsewhere. (The current building wasn't built until the '50s, with an extension and gymnasium added in the '60s.) The History goes on to mention that St. Agnes worked in tandem with St. Anthony's school, built in 1925 (known as Dante Academy at the time).

Digging back a bit further to the 1894 map of Ottawa posted in this URBSite post, Louisa street had the same name at the time, but Bell Street was Lisgar Street (yes, there were two Lisgar streets within blocks of each other--one in Wellington ward and one in Dalhousie ward), Arlington was Munroe Street (with no connection to East-of-Bronson Arlington, then called Archibald), and Lebreton Street still had its generic name of Division Street.

There is little else written about St. Agnes from that point until the school reopened as a school for immigrant adults. Following amalgamation of the school board in 1998, these programs were moved form St. Andrew's adult school in the West end, with St. Agnes opening in Fall 2000. After decline in enrolment, the school closed in June 2005, and the site was sold in 2006. (pp. 46-47)

The building was purchased by the Polish community and was affiliated with St. Hyacinth Parish on the same block, operating as Ottawa Polonia Centre.

Incidentally, the Ottawa Polonia Centre has an album of images of 18 Louisa pre-construction on their website (the first few are all of the North entrance):

Back in March, Eric Darwin mistakenly attributes the renovations to the Polish community centre.

In fact, the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre was incorporated in August 2008, and by January 2009, Table Tennis Canada had already had plans underway to convert the building to their national training centre, as announced in their January 2009 newsletter (PDF):

"The National High Performance Training Centre has a new address in Ottawa. After many years of looking for a new permanent site, Table Tennis Canada, in cooperation with [the International Table Tennis Federation] and [TMS International] are now leasing a 24 hours/day, 7 days/week training facility. The gym is equipped with brand new tables, special flooring for table tennis courts and a state of the art lighting system."

The completion of renovations would later be postponed to May 2010 (PDF), and eventually to August 2010. The exterior renovations will be the subject of the next post, available this Wednesday at noon.

Throughout this time, the Dalhousie Food Cupboard has operated (and continues to operate) out of this building, serving the Dalhousie neighbourhood. I'll be profiling the Dalhousie Food Cupboard in Friday's post, along with a tour of the interior. Stay tuned...

Doors Open: The Horticulture Building

After the busy June in Centretown, I've decided to spend the rest of the month away from the hectic community-meeting sphere. This will allow me to catch up on blogging, right in time to gear up for Bluesfest.

In early June each year is a weekend event called Doors Open Ottawa, part of an Ontario-wide event that allows the public behind normally closed doors. You can see some Doors Open-like tours of Ottawa sites that I've blogged by clicking on the Tours label. Sites include the former City Hall at 111 Sussex, the former Union train station, and the Traffic & Parking Operations division building.

This year, however, I knew that I had to get into the Horticulture building at Lansdowne Park, as there is a good chance this would be the last year to see it. Heritage Ottawa sponsored the tour of this building.

As you enter the front doors, you're greeted by a brightly-coloured barnyard mural.

Right after the 'barn' entrance, turn right and you see the ramshackle 'Paint Room' concealing the stairs to the second storey.

Inside, it's obvious how the room got its name. A rather bleak utility room has been brightened by its occupants, making a rather fun space. The caution tape is only there for the tours.

On another wall are some fake footprints, and "G'day" is written cheerfully on a window looking out on another closed-off part of the main hall.


Through the Paint Room is the stairway to the second floor reception hall and viewing balcony. The paint has been peeling and growing mouldy.

But the banister is in very good shape. The details reflect the Prairie style of the building's designer, Francis C. Sullivan, a student of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Up the stairs, we see the cantilevered viewing balcony on the right. The balcony stretches the entire width of the building, with large windows for watching the wintertime curling games.

Straight ahead from the stairs is the main reception hall. But before going there, we'll take a peek to the left, into the kitchenette:

You can see at the far wall that only one of the three windows in this room has the original Prairie-style framing.

The windows in the adjoining room are in better condition, but that room was off limits to the tour.

The reception room is at the middle of the building in the second floor. The three windows at the left are the ones you see when you look at the front of the building. The middle window is the only one not boarded up. Similarly, only one of the three along the roof at the right is original.

Currently the room contains many old signs from various sporting events and from the Ex. Here's a sampling.

Looking out that big front window, we get a nice view of the Lady Aberdeen Pavillion. It would look even nicer when all three windows are restored.

The shorter front-facing windows on the sides of the reception hall have a slightly different design.

I've been saving the view of the main hall. Here it is from the viewing balcony. You can make out lots of stuff being stored from past events held at Lansdowne Park--a treasure trove of paraphernalia. In the winter, the side windows would have been boarded up (as they are now) with rudimentary insulation for the curling rinks. In the summer, the windows would have been opened up, allowing light for the horticultural society to keep its plants.

On the West side wall, we can see the front of the building at the right, and the main hallway to the left, including the large--but boarded-windows.

And that's the Horticulture Building in a nutshell.

See also Ottawa Citizen writer Maria Cook's photos from her tour of the building back in January on her blog Designing Ottawa. The Citizen's David Reevely also toured the building during Doors Open, and wrote about it on his blog, Greater Ottawa.

More information about the Horticulture building is available from the Heritage Ottawa website. Heritage Ottawa is worried that if the building is moved, it might not survive the move intact, and after money is spent moving it, there won't be any left to rehabilitate it to modern safety standards, and it will remain unusable and unused.