Rockcliffe Park STD Clinic?

January 9 1961

There is a time and a place for everything and this was neither. Form can only follow function so far.

I found this drawing while researching Rockcliffe, the Park. The caption explains what was going on at the time, click to better view text. The Jean Issalys design would have replaced the original in what now gets called an "end of life-cycle" scenario. This was one of those NCC projects that so often fall by the wayside, thankfully. The old Pavilion still stands, a true Ottawa landmark.

I don't know what the NCC thought they wanted, but Issalys, a respected Modernist, gave them Modernism.  Which I normally love, but please, not here. Where is the grace, the whimsy? Are we here to have picnics, collect pine-cones and meet forest animals or are we visiting a walk-in clinic? A catty critique but ask yourself — how many thousands of Ottawa newlyweds would have posed for photographs in front of this thing between 1961 and now?

The early days of the Rockcliffe Pavilion are sparsely documented, but I've found evidence dating construction to 1893, when the adjoining adjoining "Keefer's Grove" was being turned into an "Electric Park".