So I figured I'd pass along this blurb from Shell Oil's roadmap of downtown Ottawa, 1948. To its nameless copywriter*, kudos for spelling "Philemon" correctly, you've no idea how many Ottawans can't. Think "-lemon", like the fruit.
Seventy years on, we do not describe people as either "swarthy" or "picturesque". Even if they are.
In a letter dated December 31 1857, Queen Victoria notified our Governor General that she had chosen Bytown as Canada's capital, In fairness, and given the shitty state of the internet back then, none of us would have actually gotten the news until 1858 — the first ever transatlantic cable message would be sent some six-and-a-half months later, on August 16, 1858, between Ireland and Newfoundland.
Also note that in 1948, the National Art Gallery was housed with the nature collection at the Victoria Museum, now the Canadian Museum of Nature, on McLeod. The Archives were stored in a purpose-built "Tudor Gothic"-style building at 330 Sussex (extant) while the "Military Museum" (not mentioned here) was crammed into a shoebox-shaped government building next door at #350 (since demolished).
