The Listening Post that Wasn't

May 30 1950, Ottawa Journal

It's a befuddling aspect of newspaper research — the fact that one so frequently finds articles announcing, hinting at, or speculating upon things that, in the end, never happened. These best laid plans can make one feel like character in Timeless, contemplating a split in the time-line and wondering "what if?"

Consider the above article, which appeared in late spring of 1950. We know that the RCMP never moved into the old Isolation Hospital (since demolished). But what if they had? What would the south end of Strathcona Park look like today? Probably a lot more built-up than it is now. Fenced off more than likely. The tantalizing question (for those of us in this time-line) is... what did the RCMP want with that hospital?

Goad Insurance Map, detail. The hospital was eventually replaced by the Sandringham Apartments.

The all-brick hospital, built on a silty bluff overlooking the Rideau River, opened to much fanfare in December of 1902. This, we should bear in mind, was a time when isolating contagious patients, often children, was crucial to preventing the spread of diphtheria, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, even smallpox. By mid-century however, increased access to penicillin along with widespread immunization programs, colluded with the Civic Hospital's new isolation ward (per article above) to render the "old" building redundant. By 1950 the city was trying to off-load it (ibid.) and by September 1954, tenders were being called for its demolition.

It's not entirely clear why the RCMP deal didn't go through, but somewhere in that 1950-1954 time-span, a "Plan B was already sprouting legs.

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Justice Building / "D Block", 294 Wellington Street

Let's step back half a decade to the late summer of 1945. Almost as soon as WWII ended (on September 2), the defection of Igor Gouzenko (on September 5) triggered the beginning of an international Cold War.

From day one,  the RCMP were front-and-center in the investigation, rounding up and interrogating suspected communist agents and otherwise liaising with the American FBI and the British MI6, which would have set them, suddenly, on a rather lofty footing. Headquartered in "D Block", now the Justice Building on Wellington (James Bond dropped by in For Your Eyes Only), the RCMP maintained several offices across the city, including the "Rockcliffe" facility at the north end of St. Laurent Boulevard (now the stables) where Gouzenko was debriefed and where suspected spies were held and questioned.

The RCMP's "D Block" is in there, somewhere.

Okay you can stop looking at her boob now. Five years into the Cold War, the RCMP had seemingly outgrown D Block and were looking for a larger HQ where they could better consolidate their staff. Well-centralized digs would eliminate the need to communicate across vulnerable phone lines or transfer sensitive documents by courier. Which is why I was saying the Strathcona Park location might well be thick with buildings by now if the Mounties had moved there.

Which they didn't. Instead, their particular sprawl would soon be sited on the NE side of the Hurdman Queensway Bridge, which see...

Looking east from above the Rideau River, note the dark grey "seminary" complex toward the top of the image.

This is the "Plan B" I alluded to — a campus on the east side of the Rideau, roughly 800 metres upstream from the Isolation Hospital. How did this happen? Let's feel free to speculate.

Consider this brutally short timeline...

April 1950 — Episcopal Corporation of Ottawa is building a seminary north of Tremblay Road, overlooking the Rideau River.
May 1950 — RCMP puts out feelers re moving into that not-quite 50 year-old hospital.
January 1953 — An Ottawa Journal headline reads "RCMP Moving Entire Offices to Tremblay Road Seminary"

Wait what?
The article which follows this pronouncement begins thus...

That's right. The RCMP moved into a newly completed but never occupied seminary campus. In fact, the RCMP were overseeing modifications to the buildings' designs even before they had been completed. "Five year lease" notwithstanding,  I can only guess that the Feds made the Episcopals "an offer they couldn't refuse".

But this only begs the question — why didn't the federal government just build the RCMP a state-of-the-art, made-to-order HQ complex in Alta Vista, or out on Prince of Wales Drive or wherever... something like the Sir Charles Tupper Building or the Sir John Carling Building, or that snazzy, tribrachial Edward Drake thingy out on Riverside, like they did for the CBC?

*      *      *

Why indeed? What was the deal with the Mounties and their Rideau River fetish?

Since 1945, the Cold War had been the RCMP's prestige dossier. And who were we "at war" with? Well, "commies" in general of course, but your friendly neighborhood Russians in particular — those Bolshie baddies in their brooding bastion overlooking the north end of Strathcona Park. From an eavesdropping standpoint, the old hospital at the south end would have been almost too good to be true — a air-gap of only 600 metres from building to building, with a killer sight-line served up on a silver platter. Scroll back up to the Goad plan and imagine the hospital's north with crammed with whatever listening equipment the NRC was dreaming up back in the 1950s.

In the end however, they chose a (much) newer building on a larger, flatter lot. Granted, "The Seminary" was further removed from the Reds at a distance of 1.5K (not quite a mile), but still close enough, with its own espionage-worthy sight-line. At least the Russians seemed to think so —they've had a dish antenna pointed horizontally in the general direction of The Seminary for decades now.

To sum up, the RCMP were trying to install a listening post as close to the Russian Embassy as they possibly could.

The yellow line shows the e-surveillance sight-line the RCMP would have enjoyed if they'd moved into the hospital. The Russians, of course, would have had fun with it too — ваше преимущество - мое преимущество, comrade! All of "Hospital Hill" would be fenced off by now, barbed wire, trees cut down, Alsatians snarling...

*      *      *

While "Plan B" was sprouting legs, "The Seminary was sprouting wings.

This is a 1958 geoOttawa view of "the seminary that wasn't", five years after the RCMP took command of the complex (hey what about that lease guys?). More buildings have added to the campus in the interim. The rail line to the left of the seminary is the old CPR line, originally the Bytown & Prescott, Ottawa's oldest intercity railway. The tracks have since been removed. A "grand defunct railway"* if you will.

This parcel of land would have originally been deemed part of the historic Hurdman Bridge settlement, although it was hardly ever built upon. Aerial photos from both 1933 and 1945 reveal a soggy field overlain by a grid of roadbeds (but no ditches, ditches would have been nice) flood-prone and well soaked through in so many spots. The land sits between old Overbrook to the north and former Bannermount** to the south. So yes, given its proximity to the Hurdman Bridge it would have been considered quite ripe for subdivision, and yet, somehow, no homes were ever built on it's lots. Of course WWII put everything on hold between '33 and '45. After the war, I assume the Episcopalians (Catholics, whatever) bought it for a song. I'd love to know what the Feds paid them for it...

*Actually, the Grand Trunk ran across Ottawa east-to-west and was replaced by the Queensway.
** "High and dry" as Alex Bannerman might have described it.